Soldier of Fortune Magazine The Journal of Professional Adventurers
Rusting Vietnam-era landing mats and weathered steel still mark the remains of Clinton’s 1990s border fence. Retired Border Patrol agent Richard Hansen was part of the team that built it.
by Richard Hansen and Heath Hansen
In 1994, under the Clinton administration, Operation Gatekeeper received bipartisan support to help secure America’s Southern border. Starting just beyond the crashing waves at the shoreline of the Pacific Ocean, it continued miles into the San Diego mountains. The theory behind this strategy, according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, was “prevention through deterrence,” theorizing that essentially pushing migrants deep into unforgiving, treacherous terrain would dissuade them from even attempting an illegal crossing.
For this mission, the government tapped units from the U.S. Army Reserve, the California National Guard, and even the U.S. Border Patrol (BP) to erect the fence.
Upon receiving an initial first-year budget of $46 million, materials rolled in and the men got to work. A unit of engineers arrived from the US Army Reserve, supported by an element from the “Russian River Rifles” of the California National Guard, as well as a detail of agents from both the Imperial Beach and Brown Field Border Patrol Stations.
Senior Patrol Agent Richard Hansen (ret.) describes his experience as follows.
In the early nineties I was stationed at Brown Field Border Patrol Station. I volunteered for the Fence Detail. It was a five or six man team of Border Patrol Agents that worked alongside a Reserve or National Guard unit erecting a steel fence along the border from the ocean at Border Field State Park to the foothills of the San Ysidro Mountains, roughly 14 miles in length.
Construction on the border fence in the 1990’s. Photo courtesy of Richard Hansen.
We operated in plain clothes and provided construction labor with the Guard and Reserve units. Because we were sworn agents we were also armed with our service pistols and badges, so we provided security for the team and enforced immigration law as well.
Our first task was to prep the border for the new fence. We did that by removing the old barriers we put up over the years. These barriers included steel posts sticking three feet out of the ground with thick inch-and-a-half steel cable running through the top of them which had been cut through and repaired hundreds of times through the decades.
Once the debris was cleared the area was smoothed out. The Army then re-surveyed the border. The Border Patrol team then marked the line with string and sprayed a large bright X on the ground every 10 feet along that line. We then operated a backhoe with an auger attached to the stinger and drilled out roughly a three foot deep hole into the X’s.
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With that done we set steel sleeves into the holes where we cemented them into place along the string line. The Army then came in the next day and placed long steel poles inside the sleeves, welded them in place then hung the large steel landing mats on them and welded them as well.
We kept this method up making our way east all the way to the end where we were forced to stop at a cliff that sloped into a steep draw known as Washer Woman’s.
After the border fence was constructed, a patrol agent paralleling the fence in his Ford Bronco was struck by a large rock thrown from the south side of the barrier. It destroyed the windshield, but luckily did not penetrate it completely. The perpetrator was never caught.
Authorities never caught the perpetrator who threw a rock through the windshield.
Once construction was complete, the fence could be seen for miles from the surrounding mountains and hilltops.
Over the years, the effectiveness of the fence has been debated. Proponents say it cut illegal crossings within the City and County of San Diego drastically, while opponents argue it simply pushed migrants further East, causing exposure and dehydration deaths, but not curbing overall illegal migration long-term.
In 2019, unable to convince Congress to provide border security funding, President Trump declared a national emergency and diverted money from the Department of Defense to the U.S. border. Now, along more than 500 miles of the American boundary with Mexico, stands Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Wall.”
The fence and wall by night.
While much of Clinton’s fence was removed to make room for the wall, at some spots along the border, the two barriers stand side by side. At just nine feet tall, Clinton’s fence is dwarfed by Trump’s 30-foot wall. But its legacy along the dividing line is seen today. The corrugated walls, some with seemingly fresh green patina, standing next to worn and rusted pieces of landing pad, seem to reflect the now inconsistent American politics throughout the decades.
Richard Hansen is correspondent Heath Hansen’s dad. He has appeared previously in Soldier of Fortune.
