Yet again, it looks as though the governmental solution to a problem is not to solve the actual problem; it is to define the problem away. CNS:

Richard M. Stana, director of homeland security and justice issues at the Government Accountability Office (which is responsible for “auditing agency operations to determine whether federal funds are being spent efficiently and effectively”), told the Senate Homeland Security Committee yesterday that the federal government can actually prevent or stop illegal entries into the United States along only 129 miles of the 1,954-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border.

That leaves 1,825 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border where the Border Patrol cannot prevent or stop an illegal entry.

Nonetheless, Stana told the committee, the Border Patrol itself says it has established “an acceptable level of control” along 873 miles of the 1,954-mile-long southwest border. This is because of the way the Border Patrol defines “an acceptable level of control” of the border.

“According to Border Patrol,” Stana told the committee, “an acceptable level of border control is established when it has the capability (i.e., resources) to deter or detect and apprehend incursions at the immediate border or after entry.” [Emphasis added.]

In addition to the 129 miles where the Border Patrol says it can actually “deter or detect and apprehend illegal entries” at the border itself, Stana told the committee, there are another 744 miles where the Border Patrol says it has the capability to deter or detect and apprehend illegal entrants after they have entered the county and penetrated U.S. territory to “distances of up to 100 miles or more away from the immediate border.”

Of course, basic geometry tells me that at 100 miles inside the border, the area of coverage that would come to count as border area, under such a definition, would increase exponentially — meaning that the coverage area by percentage diminishes the deeper inside the border illegals penetrate (barring such things as single-lane bottlenecks or some such) — further making the case that more security directly along the border would work best to staunch the flow of illegals into the country.

Not to mention that such measures would also have the salubrious effect of not ceding entire southwestern US towns to Mexican drug cartels.