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Hourly Update

Company donates hi-tech fencing for Minuteman group

By Arthur H. Rotstein
Associated Press
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.23.2006
A Washington-based company is donating up to $7 million worth of fiber-optic security fencing material for the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps to use in any new barriers the group erects to try to keep illegal immigrants out of Arizona.
The mesh has embedded sensors that can differentiate between human and animal contact and conditions such as high winds or heavy rain. Tied into cameras and alarms, the system can alert monitors to the precise location of any intrusion.
"We're certainly not against immigration," said Nina May, the head of FOMGuard USA, which is donating the material. "We're against illegal immigration, because there are standards to follow. Too many people stand in line for years, and it's not fair to them."
FOMGuard USA represents FOMGuard Co., a South Korean enterprise that developed the fencing material.
May said the mesh security fencing was designed for use along the demilitarized zone with North Korea.
The system pushes infrared light pulses continuously through the fiber-optic wire mesh, which is called FOM, for Fiber Optic Mesh. It can use the pulsing light to detect if the mesh is stretched or cut and what is pushing or pulling at its strands.
Connie Hair, a spokeswoman for the Minuteman corps, a volunteer group that patrols the border to watch for and report illegal immigrants to federal authorities, said the material could be used on range fencing similar to what the group put up earlier this year on a southern Arizona ranch.
Arizona's 377-mile border, much of which is isolated desert, has been the focal point for smugglers bringing illegal immigrants into this country for years. Much of the immigrant traffic crosses through unprotected border separated at most by old, rusty barbed wire.
May said the number of miles of fencing to be donated will depend on how the Minuteman volunteers want to configure it.
A 5-foot-high stand-alone fiber-optic mesh fence would require a different configuration and use less fiber-optic material than one 10 feet high, May said.
The anti-illegal immigration Minutemen have already erected more traditional fencing.
Volunteers began stringing a five-strand barbed-wire fence this spring along 2 1/2 miles of ranchland near Naco and Palominas and are about to start adding another seven miles of fencing and vehicle barriers on the same ranch.
They also plan to install nearly a mile of double fencing _ incorporating trenches, razor wire and cameras _ on another ranch about 20 miles to the east.
The federal government has erected just under 20 miles of steel border fencing in the state, along with some 35 miles of vehicle barriers, according to the latest Border Patrol figures.
Border Patrol spokesman Jesus Rodriguez said federal authorities are planning to add more barriers to connect with existing fencing in the Douglas and Naco areas. That would create a continuous barrier of about 40 miles in a stretch between the towns.
The present and future government structures will be on the international border, just south of a dirt road that parallels the border. The Minuteman structures are on the northern edge of the border road on private property.
The government and Minuteman structures will not be tied together because doing so would block Border Patrol agents from driving on the road, Rodriguez said.
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