Panorama de la Linea: Stories and photos from the U.S.-Mexico border

A teenaged boy runs from the border wall that separates the U.S. and Mexico in Nogales just after illegally climbing over the wall from a ladder. — Paul Ingram/TucsonSentinel.com

On a late January afternoon, a a group of men play soccer along one of the dozens of dusty roads truncated by the steel border wall that separates Nogales, Sonora, from its sister city just to the north in Arizona. 

For a few moments, the men joke and laugh and one of them pats a teenage boy, dressed in a black jacket and blue jeans, on the back before saying to him, "It's time, let's go." 

Three men pick up a battered ladder, while a fourth picks up a length of yellow rope and as a group, they run toward the brace of steel beams that rise 18-feet tall and mark the protected border of Nogales, Arizona. 

The men push the ladder against the wall, and tie the rope around the boy's waist. He quickly climbs the ladder, peeking out over the top of the wall before he decides to leap for it. The rope catches him, and rides up to his armpits. For a moment, he's suspended in the air, his feet kicking out against the metal wall. 

As the boy struggles with the rope, a Border Patrol vehicle is coming in from the east, while another is coming from the west. 

The men lower him and his tiptoes, clad in red Nikes, touch the ground. 

The boy looks in both directions, and he runs for the center — a hole closed by a third Border Patrol truck that has pulled up from the neighborhood. The boy makes it past the agent, but moments later, another agent reports that the boy has been apprehended. 

This is just one of the stories captured by reporters and photographers for TucsonSentinel.com, who have spent months along the Arizona-Mexico border for our project Panorama De La Linea, or photographs of the line. 

The project to take at least one representative photo of every mile of the Arizona-Mexico border, begun in 2015, has become especially paramount with the election of President Donald Trump, who promised repeatedly during his campaign that he would build a wall along the 2,000-mile long border between the U.S. and Mexico, and that he would force Mexico to pay for it. While work is still underway to capture photographs from some of the most inaccessible areas, here is a progress report.

The double-layer fence near Yuma, Arizona during an early monsoon storm at night. — Paul Ingram/TucsonSentinel.com

Perceptions & reality

While Trump's rhetoric on the wall may have struck many Americans as extraordinary, the reality is that border security — and legal and illegal immigration — has been inextricably tied to the idea that the United States needs a formal bulwark along the U.S.-Mexico border. 

For more than 20 years, there's been a bipartisan effort to build up border security along the Southwestern border. Along with the construction of walls in cities like Nogales, Yuma, and Douglas, there's been an increasing array of sensors and infrastructure deployed along the frontier. 

As the Government Accountability Office said in a February report, "From fiscal years 2005 through 2015, CBP increased the total miles of primary border fencing on the southwest border from 119 miles to 654 miles—including 354 miles of primary pedestrian fencing and 300 miles of primary vehicle fencing."

From 2011 to 2016, the agency also replaced or prepared to replace another 14.1 miles of fencing at a cost of $68.26. 

Following the passage of the Secure Fence Act in 2006, there was a rush to build new barriers along the borderlands, resulting in two major organizational failures that cost millions in overages and extra costs. 

As CBP worked to complete 299 miles of fence, it failed to "effectively manage the purchase and storage of steel" and spent about $69 million that "could have been put to better use," said the Inspector General's office for DHS in a 2011 report. 

This included the cost of 27,557 tons of extra steel, worth about $44 million, which remained in storage after the agency finished construction, and an extra $9.8 million in additional storage costs because CBP failed to move the remaining steel to a government facility more than 2 years after the original storage contract expired, said the Inspector General's office. 

The agency also spent nearly $1 billion on a "virtual fence" program known as SBINet, that was eventually sacked by then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in 2011 after it became clear that project had failed to meet its design goals and covered only 53 mile range. 

At the same time, the number of Border Patrol agents more than quintupled from 3,555 agents in 1992 to 19,828 agents in 2016. Much of this growth came after Sept. 11, 2001, leading to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and a reorganization that put Border Patrol and Customs officers, along with the helicopter and boat crews in the Office of Air and Marine, into a single agency known as Customs and Border Protection. From 2004 to 2011, the number of Border Patrol agents doubled, and have continued to expand, though in recent years, attrition and job dissatisfaction has driven down the number of agents. 

The annual budget for border security and immigration enforcement went from $1.5 billion to $19.5 billion. 

Despite this spending and hundreds of miles of new walls under the 2006 Secure Fence Act, much of last year's political rhetoric presented an image of a wild and undefended border, where cartel members and terrorists quickly make their way across the the line.  

In some places the border between the U.S. and Mexico is marked only by a barbed wire fence in a remote canyon, but in other places, the border is obvious, marked by a rusty steel line that rises nearly 20 feet into the air, and is defended by flood lights, double-layer fencing, protected roads, sensors, locked gates and dozens of agents, each watching their section of border from an air-conditioned Chevy Tahoe. 

Many local political leaders and residents who live hard against the border say that a more imposing physical wall is unnecessary, or impossible.

A Border Patrol supervisor said there are "places where it just doesn't make sense." Another BP agent said a wall is "never going to happen."

Just-elected Pima County Sheriff Mark Napier, a Republican whose jurisdiction covers 126 miles of the border, called building a wall a "medieval solution," while Sheriff Tony Estrada of neighboring Santa Cruz County, a longtime Democrat, said it was "a fantasy ... (that is) not going to work."

Outside voices —including Trump administration figures such as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who said in a recent controversial visit to Nogales that "It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand" (Sessions stumbled over the end of the line, omitting the phrase "against this filth" that appeared in his prepared speech) — have pressed to expand the fortifications along the border.

Some local residents have pushed for a wall, too.

Sue Krentz, whose husband was shot and killed by an unknown person on their border-area ranch in 2010, said "People don’t understand. It’s all relative, until its your relative."

The 'big beautiful' wall

In September, Trump told a crowd of thousands in Phoenix that he would seek the construction of an "impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, and beautiful southern border wall." 

The wall would use "the best technology" along with sensors, towers, and surveillance to protect the new wall, and he insisted, despite Mexico's refusal, that Mexican authorities would "work with" the United States and pay for the wall, Trump promised. 

Following his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order directing Homeland Security to "secure the southern border of the United States" with the "immediate construction of a physical wall on the southern border."  

This order was backed by a request to Congress for $2.6 billion to begin construction, including $999 million for the "planning, design, and construction" of the first installment of the border wall. 

In March, U.S. Customs and Border Protection began accepting proposals to design and build prototypes for two walls along the U.S.-Mexico border, one a "physically imposing" wall of reinforced concrete, rising 18 to 30 feet high above the desert.

Cost estimates vary widely. 

On the campaign trail, Trump estimated the cost of the wall at $8 to $10 billion dollars, but an internal Department of Homeland Security report estimated that the cost of a wall would be $21.6 billion and take three to five years to complete. 

However, an estimate released by members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee,  reported that the wall could cost up to $66.9 billion, with another $150 million in annual maintenance costs. 

Last year, the Obama administration agreed to revamp the border wall surrounding the Hector Castro Port of Entry in Naco, Arizona. Built along flat terrain next to the small city of Naco, just south of Bisbee, nonetheless the total cost of the project, which includes the removal of 7.5 miles of old fencing and the installation of 18-foot high bollard fencing, is estimated at $44.7 million. 

However, Trump's rhetoric misses an important point about the borderlands: nearly 650 miles are already protected by some kind of barrier, and much of the rest is watershed where rivers like the Rio Grande, make construction of a 30-foot wall along the border nearly impossible. 

In 2011, the current commissioner of CBP told Congress that the Department of Homeland Security has "dedicated historic levels of personnel, technology, and resources to the Southwestern border." 

"We increased the size of the Border Patrol to more than 20,700 agents today, more than double the size it was in 2004. As of March 31, 2011, we have constructed 649 miles of fencing out of nearly 652 miles where Border Patrol field commanders determined it was operationally required, including 299 miles of vehicle barriers and 350 miles of pedestrian fence, with the remaining three miles scheduled to be complete by the end of the calendar year," he said.

The double-layer fence near Yuma, Arizona during an early monsoon storm at night. — Paul Ingram/TucsonSentinel.com

'We already have a wall'

In Arizona, most of the border is already marked by some kind of barrier. 

Of the 262 linear miles of border covered by the Tucson Sector Border Patrol, 80 percent is defended by some type of barrier, including 72 miles of "pedestrian fencing," according to the Tucson Sector Border Patrol's own figures. 

This includes the 18-foot high "bollard" fencing designed to keep people from crossing into the United States; vehicle barriers, known as "Normandy" barriers, named for anti-tank traps used by the Germany military to stop tanks in World War II; and other kinds of fencing, including steel landing mats welded onto frames near Naco, and wire fences. 

The Tucson Sector also notes that the remaining 50 miles are protected by "some form of natural barrier" which includes three major mountain ranges that make construction difficult if not impossible, along with vast stretches of open desert. 

Along the 126 miles of the Yuma Sector, which extends into California, there is a mishmash of defenses, which includes nearly 40 miles of vehicle barrier, as well as "floating beam" fences that stand 16-feet tall above the sandy dunes, steel bollard fences, mesh fencing, and steel landing mats. All together, there's 107 miles of fencing covering the border in the Yuma Sector. 

While the vehicle barrier in Yuma Sector may seem significant, it is backed by an open stretch of hostile desert and the Barry Goldwater Range, a 1.7-million acre chunk of land used as a bombing and gunnery range by the U.S. military.

"We already have a wall," said Dan Millis, a program coordinator with the Sierra Club's Grand Canyon chapter. "At this point, we’ve seen nearly three decades of wall construction along the borderlands. Under President Clinton, we built walls, and then President Bush built more walls, and each time those walls failed to address the problem," said Millis.

"At this point, we’re tripling down on failure,” he said.

A sign warning people not to cross the Barry Goldwater Air Force Range, a bombing and gunnery range that butts against the U.S. Mexico border, about 150 miles west of Tucson. — Paul Ingram/TucsonSentinel.com

In 1994, U.S. immigration officials, including Doris Meissner, the commission of the Immigration and Naturalization Service,  and the Department of Defense developed the Border Security Strategic Plan, which depended on a strategy of "prevention through deterrence." In the memo, Meissner acknowledged that as the agency increased security in cities like Nogales, Douglas, and Yuma, migrants would be forced into more "hostile terrain," which would place them in "mortal danger." 

From 1994 to 2001, two programs, Operations Gatekeeper and Hold the Line, where implemented in San Diego and El Paso. However, as the U.S. General Accounting Office found, there was no decline in crossings along the entire border, instead rather than reducing migration, it simply shifting migration to new areas. 

In Yuma, the construction of a "double-layer" fence coincided with a sudden apprehensions from 138,438 in 2005 to 8,363 in 2008.

This trend held until 2015 when apprehensions suddenly ramped up, nearly doubling from 7,142 to 14,170, according to CBP statistics. 

Neighboring Tucson Sector increased just slightly, only two percent, during the same period, while El Centro to the west, increased nearly 52 percent. 

Consequences

In 2001, a group of 14 men, many from the Mexican state of Veracruz, perished in the desert near Yuma, the largest group of border crossers to die in Arizona. 

In June 2016, the Border Patrol's Search, Trauma, and Rescue unit, better known as BORSTAR announced it was on high-alert because of extreme temperatures in the desert, and would be focus their efforts on remote areas of the Sonoran Desert where the "secluded and dangerous"environment" made the chances of survival "slim for border crossers." 

In July, as the temperature rockets upward, Border Patrol agent John Adkisson, a BORSTAR supervisor, stands at the tip of the Tinajas Atlas mountains, more than 170 miles wests of Tucson, and points out Yodaville, the name of a complex used to train soldiers in urban combat tactics. 

Then he points to the south to a dark line where the faint colors of semi-trailer tractors pop in the white, sun blasted desert. 

"That's the highway in Mexico," he said. "People will try to cross that line, and walk to Tucson or Phoenix from here." 

"There's really no water here," said Adkisson, "except for these tanks that are full of really nasty water and if people drink from there, they're more likely to die here." 

Just a few weeks before, officials discovered the remains of Eleuteria Santos Mendoza, a 30-year-old woman, who died of exposure in the Goldwater range. A few days later, the body of 33-year-old Juan C. Hernandez was found on private land. Hernandez died from a gunshot wound. 

This year, in March officials found the skeletal remains of a man in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, one of at least 29 people who have died since 2001. 

Overall, the remains of more than 6,000 people have been found in deserts along the borderlands. 

Adkisson works each year to rescue people in the desert, and over the years, the Border Patrol has worked to deploy more BOSTAR agents, and agents with emergency medical training, along with more than 34 emergency beacons, which allow border crossers to call for emergency help. 

Last year, Yuma Sector reported that agents had rescued 10 people and discovered the bodies of seven people. Tucson Sector reported that agents had rescued 1,409 people, and discovered the bodies of 84 people. 

However, that's only part of the 170 remains found in 2016 and tracked by Humane Borders and the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner. Since January, officials have added discovered remains for 40 new cases of remains found in Arizona, a gruesome discovery that comes even as the number of apprehensions continue to decline. 

"We have seen billions spent wasted on an attempt to control the optics of immigration, but that doesn’t mean that people are not crossing, we know people are crossing because we get bodies in the medical examiners office nearly every single week," said Kat Rodriquez, a family network coordinator at the Colibri Center for Human Rights, a non-profit that has worked since 2006 to identify people using detailed missing persons reports, forensic science, and overlooked details like tattoo and unique belongings.