Border security Smugglers use portable ramp to jump border fence

Published 19 April 2011

Drug smugglers along the U.S.-Mexico border are relying on increasingly more innovative ways to bypass additional security measures deployed along the southern border; law enforcement officials recently discovered a mobile folding ramp that allowed vehicles to drive over the border fence; the portable ramp was found in the Barry M. Goldwater Range east of Yuma, Arizona as Border Patrol agents chased a vehicle that had just used the ramp to leap over the fence with 1,000 pounds of marijuana

Border-jumper's ramp truck // Source: blogspot.com

Drug smugglers along the U.S.-Mexico border are relying on increasingly more innovative ways to bypass additional security measures deployed along the southern border.

Law enforcement officials recently discovered a mobile folding ramp mounted on a truck that allowed vehicles to drive over the border fence.

The portable ramp was found in the Barry M. Goldwater Range east of Yuma, Arizona as Border Patrol agents chased a vehicle that had just used the ramp to leap over the fence with 1,000 pounds of marijuana. Gaston Loaiza, the federal preventative police commander, said, “We believe that the ramp could have been used previously, but it is a sign that there is a lot of drug smuggling activity in that area.”

The section where the ramp was located is a route frequently used by drug smugglers. According to Loaiza, the day after the ramp was found Mexican authorities apprehended two individuals carrying twenty kilos of marijuana as they prepared to cross the border at the same spot.

Loaiza says that the border fence cannot stop drug traffickers as the ramp proves that they will constantly find new ways to smuggle drugs over the border.

“We have that area heavily guarded, but now it will be more so. We have to be even more coordinated with law enforcement agencies of the United States,” he says.

So far San Luis Rio Colorado, a Mexican border town which lies less than twenty-six miles from Yuma, has avoided much of the escalating drug related violence that has plagued other border cities like Ciudad Juarez located just across the border from El Paso, Texas.

In 2010 roughly 3,000 people were murdered in Cuidad Jurez, a sharp increase from the 2,763 deaths in 2009 and the 1,623 in 2008.

According to Boanerges Medel, the commander of an army regiment based in San Luis, the Mexican Army keeps a strict watch over highway checkpoints around San Luis Rio Colorado to stem the spread of violence.