[Eagevawax]

Some interesting satellite photos (I think), courtesy of GoogleEarth.

This one zooms in on the towns of San Luis, AZ in the upper left corner, and San Luis, Mexico, south of it. There's a farm on the American side, on the right side of the picture, with some rectangular fields and some round irrigated circles. The triangle just north of it is an airstrip. The border itself runs from the upper left of the shot, to the lower right. GoogleEarth tried to draw a thin yellow line along the border, and they got it prettty close, though not exactly right. The yellow line is a few hundred yards north of where the actual border is.


This one zooms in even further. The westernmost irrigated circle is at the top. South of it is a stretch of desert, then a dirt road and either a paved road or a railroad. South of that is a little more desert. GoogleEarth mistakenly put a yellowish line there, where they think the border is, but it isn't. I've seen them screw this up before - in my neck of the woods around Jacumba and Campo, CA, GoogleEarth puts the border north of Boundary peak, but BP is definitely in the U.S.

Just below the misplaced yellowish line, is the grayish border road on the U.S. side. And just south of that, on the left half of the picture, you can barely see a thin black line, which I believe is the border fence. That's about 1 foot on the U.S. side of the real border. Notice that the thin black line seems to stop just past the small, curved section of the border road.


This pic zooms in even further - GoogleEarth's optics are great, even if their geography sucks. You can alearly see the curved part of the border road, and the small parking are built by the Border Patrol. Looks like they've got a truck trailer or a portable office building on it. You can also see the thin black line clearly, which I believe is the border fence built years ago.


Has anyone actually visited this area recently? Is my description accurate? Most importantly, does the border fence stop right there? Or maybe diminish to a few strands of barbed wire or something that doesn't show up on photos very well (and don't halt illegals worth a damn)?

It's hard to tell the terrain from directly above, but it looks pretty flat and smooth to me. Crossing the border there (or anywhere east) looks like a walk in the park. And notice the handy warehouses and truck parks on the Mexican side of the border - a big one on the lower right part of the picture, and another in the lower center. That center one's the most interesting - it seems to have some well-worn areas going right up to the border itself, gravelled over as though heavy vehicles regularly used that stretch of land.

That's all speculation on my part, of course. I've never been there, and I'm just guessing, based on what I see in these pictures. But I've flown over the border in California quite a lot on Minuteman missions, doing both photography and active patrolling for bad guys, and this looks like a huge red flag to me. It could be the main reason why the Border Patrol put their parking area where they did.

Has anyone on this forum, actually been to San Luis, AZ? Are you going back any time soon? Any chance you could drive out to this area and see if this is where the new fence (well, vehicle barriers) is being built? It's maybe two miles east-southeast of the edge of the city. (Bring a camera! )