But while several violent high-profile incidents in the Tucson, Arizona, sector have gained national attention and colored political rhetoric, an ABC News analysis of immigration and crime data, combined with interviews with law enforcement officials, shows something very different -- that violence and crime on the U.S. side of the 2,000-mile border with Mexico are generally on the decline.
By numbers alone, the border region appears, as Department of Homeland Security Secretary and former Arizona Gov.
Janet Napolitano put it, is as "secure now as it has ever been."
More than 646 miles of the border are protected by fence, according to Customs and Border Protection.
More than 20,000 border patrol agents serve on the front lines -- an 80 percent increase over 2004 and the largest number in history.
The number of illegal immigrants apprehended along the border, which CBP uses to gauge the flow of migrants, is down nearly 55 percent from 2005. The agency captured 540,865 last year.
...
In many of the U.S. border communities themselves, local law enforcement officials report violent- and property-crime rates that have fallen over the past year, and, in several cases, are among the lowest in the country.
Cities like Tucson; Chula Vista, California; and Lardeo, Texas, have all seen year-over-year drops in violent crime, murder, and rape. El Paso, Texas, continues to have one of the lowest rates of violent crime of all U.S. cities, just behind Honolulu, according to the latest
FBI Uniform Crime Report.
"I don't see the border in chaos at all," said Octavio Rodriguez, who studies drug-related violence along the Mexican border at the University of San Diego Trans-Border Institute. "The Tijuana-San Diego border area in particular is very secure."
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