Mexicans Build Home Security Walls With Stolen Razor Wire, And America Paid For It

We need WALL to protect our precious concertina wire. And another wall to protect that.

In news that ought to make for a nice subplot in a movie someday, we learn that Donald Trump's stupid, wasteful, militarily useless deployment of Army troops to the US-Mexico border has finally been good for someone. Thieves in Tijuana have been stealing lengths of concertina wire the military recently attached to the US side of existing border fences, and suddenly houses in parts of the city are sporting fancy new concertina-wire barriers to protect the properties from crime! Let's hear it for innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit!

The San Diego Union-Tribune  reports sections of the super-sharp razor wire have been vanishing from the fences where the military and DHS installed it in November and being added to residences in Tijuana.

Some homes in the same area had identical wire installed in front of their homes, as an added layer of protection to their property lines and fences, but residents declined to comment about how they obtained the material.

"I don't actually live here in this house, so I have no idea how that wire got here," said one woman who declined to give her name in Colonia Libertad at a house where the razor wire was visible in front.

You know, things fall off a truck on either side of the border. These things happen, we hear. The paper notes that Monday, contractors could be seen "replacing some of the stolen wire" on the US side of the fence. It's important to keep the supply chain steady, we suppose.

Crom knows people in Tijuana have a hell of a lot more use for military-grade razor wire than the border fences do, since

Tijuana was the most violent city in the world in 2018, according to a new report by the Citizens' Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice.  Homicides rose to historic levels in recent years while local Tijuana gangs battled over a lucrative domestic drug market, averaging about seven killings per day, the report said.

Note that the arrival of several "caravans" of asylum-seekers from Central America has nothing to do with Tijuana's violence -- although the refugees definitely face additional danger now that the Trump administration is forcing asylum applicants to wait in shelters in Mexico while their cases are considered. Not that such fine distinctions would matter to the proponents of universal border panic.

Tijuana secretary of public safety Marco Antonio Sotomayor Amezcua confirmed the theft and repurposing of the concertina wire:

"We have detected that the barbed wire that was installed in the border area is no longer there. We know about the stealing of the concertina (wire) from United States authorities who have asked us for help through the liaison staff" [...]

Sotomayor said the material is distinctive anddiffers from anything sold in storesin Tijuana. Razor wire isstronger, sharper and more likely to cause injurythan regular barbed wire, which can be found in any home improvement store, he said.

The head of the Tijuana border liason unit, Reynalo González Mora, said 15 to 20 suspects had been nabbed in the thefts. And nah, we're not talking about a ruthless criminal syndicate here, either:

"The people arrested were mainly Mexican (citizens), and most were people who have been deported from the United States, and people who have problems with drug addiction and live mostly on the street," González said.

You know, it's almost enough to make you think that poverty and addiction cause a hell of a lot more problems on the border than Guatemalan, Salvadoran, and Honduran families fleeing gangs and violence in their home countries.

Back in November, Donald Trump touted the new lengths of concertina wire as another great innovation in securing the border from evildoers:

It's unclear what response, if any, the WALL-obsessed White House brain trust will come up with to the disappearing concertina wire. More than one commenter on the Union-Tribune story suggested our precious wire be protected by military guards with orders to shoot Mexicans on sight. Others suggested electrifying all the wire to light up the crimers, or maybe dropping hundreds of big scary snakes on the Mexican side. You'd better bet similar deep thoughts have occurred to President Shithole, too.

Or maybe we'll be forced to invade Tijuana to reclaim the pilfered razor wire. Trump may be holding that in reserve if his polls dip during the 2020 campaign.

[ San Diego Union-Tribune ]

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