Moving targets: Part 4

last in a four-day series on border control

It s a game of cat and mouse along the border, and it s costing more to play. In the end, the U.S. wins if poor migrants are priced out of the smuggling market.

Story by Michael Riley
Denver Post
Article Last Updated:03/07/2007 06:22:38 AM MST
Photo by RJ Sangosti | The Denver Post

Altar, Mexico

Follow the new highway heading west from Santa Ana, past the towering saguaro cactus and the weaving obstacle course of belching buses, and suddenly there it is: smugglers' paradise.

The improbable bustle of this isolated outpost is a cautionary tale for those with high expectations that new technology and more border guards can effectively seal the country's southwestern border.

If there's one thing policymakers sometimes forget, experts say, it's that the border is a moving battlefield, a game of tit for tat with a strongly motivated foe willing to risk just about anything to protect the billion-dollar smuggling industry.

Indeed, for anyone keeping score, smugglers have easily outwitted just about everything the country's security agencies have thrown at them.

The first three parts of this series.