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Reviewed by Allen Appel, HSO Contributor Midnight On The Line: The Secret Life of the U.S. - Mexico Border By Tim Gaynor. Thomas Dunne Books, $25.95 Raucous town hall meetings with red-faced screaming protesters, gun toting wing nuts, harried public officials and a gleeful national press eager to report every push and shove exchange. Health Care Reform madness? Well, yes, but don't forget the subject of this book, illegal immigration, was just as incendiary a couple of years ago. |
Reviewed by This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , HSO Contributor
Midnight On The Line: The Secret Life of the U.S. - Mexico Border
By Tim Gaynor. Thomas Dunne Books, $25.95
Raucous town hall meetings with red-faced screaming protesters, gun toting wing nuts, harried public officials and a gleeful national press eager to report every push and shove exchange. Health Care Reform madness? Well, yes, but don't forget the subject of this book, illegal immigration, was just as incendiary a couple of years ago.
Unfortunately, even though the issue has faded from the public's fickle eye, the problem has not only endured, it has grown, and, from most indications, will continue to confound the best efforts of both the US and Mexican governments long into the future. Gaynor's book lays out the problems of illegal immigration in an interesting, sometimes personal, sometimes amusing, general overview that hits all of the high points and some of the lows in the national discussion.
The author opens Midnight On the Line with a personal attempt to cross the border into the United States by hiking from Altar, Mexico where five hundred illegal migrants a day begin their own illegal journey across a desolate chunk of the Sonora Desert. Gaynor lasts around 48 hours and racks up a pitiful 18 miles before being forced, as are many who attempt the same journey, to give up.
Over the next 11 chapters he details the many ways both drug smugglers and human traffickers attempt and succeed in crossing the border into the United States; and the many ways U.S. law enforcement agencies attempt and often succeed in thwarting these efforts.
In Tijuana alone -- The jewel in the crown of Mexican drug trafficking. -- the resident cartel smuggles one third of the drugs snorted, smoked and shot up across the United States, part of an overall thirty billion dollar a year business. At this and other urban crossings, the two favorite smuggling methods are packing drugs into secret compartments in vehicles and buying off border agents who simply wave through specific cars and trucks loaded with narcotics and illegals. The use of incredibly sensitive sniffer dogs, able to locate drugs wrapped up and submerged in filled gas tanks, stuffed into tires and even hidden inside engines has put an end to much of that traffic. The Border Corruption Task Force has investigated and brought many cases against compromised agents, though the huge amounts of money involved make it unlikely that they will ever be 100% successful.
Other weapons employed by border agents are interestingly low tech: men on horseback who camp and ride long stretches of empty back country, Indian trackers known as Shadow Wolves, and of course, the much ballyhooed fence. The south side of the two-tiered, nine mile fence is ten to twelve feet tall while on the north it is seventeen feet high with a wide open track between the two walls. Gaynor finds that this barrier doesn't really stop many illegal immigrants, but it does slow them down, allowing agents, who must constantly patrol the entire nine miles around the clock, to apprehend climbers. Most knowledgeable authorities feel that however appealing the fence concept might be in the eyes of the public, it would be inappropriate in the vast empty reaches of much the border. In other words, it doesn't really work.
High tech and costly tools are increasingly becoming more valuable: Black Hawk helicopters, state-of-the-art ground radar systems, night vision capabilities, virtual fencing and pilotless Predator aircraft are all beginning to prove their worth.
The HSO takeaway: It's an interesting read, but the larger questions of what drives the illegal immigration and drug trade and the ultimate solutions to these problems have been left for another, more substantial book. Read this one for the fascinating facts and entertaining interviews, but don't expect much beyond a good basic social history of the border and its denizens.
Allen Appel is a book and media reviewer who lives and works in Washington, DC. He specializes in reviewing thriller fiction and homeland security and terrorism issues. See his literary book blog at The Thriller Guy.
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