SAN DIEGO, Calif. —  It was just two years ago that Border Patrol agents like Jacob MacIsaac were celebrating the completion of a nearly $150 million border wall upgrade along San Diego.

It spanned miles between a middle-class neighborhood in Tijuana and the mountainscape of Otay Mesa.

“With the wall came the additional infrastructure: the all-weather roads, the remote video surveillance. Basically it just afforded us some much-needed response time so we can do more with less,” MacIsaac said.

The border wall’s construction was halted by President Biden’s administration earlier this year and MacIsaac showed Spectrum News 1 where that work came to a stop.

The area where the border wall construction came to an end is an area that MacIsaac said is prominent for border crossings, or what they refer to as illegal incursions. Wall or no wall he said their mission doesn’t change. But he said the wall definitely made it easier to enforce the law.  

“It’s got approximately a four-to-six-foot concrete footer as well to mitigate the rudimentary tunneling and then at the top you’ve got the five-foot anti-climb plate,” MacIsaac said, pointing out features on the large wall.

And that’s just the primary wall standing at 18 feet, it stands parallel to an even taller, 30-foot secondary wall.

Agents try to keep all smuggling and crossing apprehensions within that zone.

“Our primary mission is national security. We keep a ton of drugs off the streets. This fiscal year we’ve arrested 36 convicted sex offenders just here in San Diego sector. Another eight gang members. Keeping that stuff out of communities, it matters to me,” MacIsaac said.

MacIsaac has been boots on the ground for more than eight years. He said in April 2021 alone his sector had more than 70,000 encounters with migrants trying to cross the border illegally. That’s compared to just 50,000 for the entire year of 2020. He added the numbers haven’t been this high since about 2009.  

Which is why agents like MacIsaac said his team hopes border wall funding and construction is re-instated.

He showed us the infrastructure that used to be in place before the upgrades.

“When you hear people make the argument there was already an existing wall in place, this what they’re referencing,” MacIsaac said as he pointed out a much shorter wall that remains as a historical reference point.

Made of refurbished helicopter landing mat brought back from Vietnam, the old wall, according to MacIsaac, didn’t do the job.

“You can get over this in seconds. Something else that was common was just to burrow beneath it because there’s no footer,” MacIsaac said.

MacIsaac said most people don’t realize that migrants who are trying to make illegal entry can’t do it without paying off a smuggler.

“There are different smuggling organizations that operate along the southwest border and essentially there’s no crossings going on without their blessings,” MacIsaac said. “So if you don’t pay the toll you’re not going to cross through their area.”

Often times the smuggling happens remotely because many parts of Tijuana have the high ground. They’ll have a spotter essentially guiding someone via cell phone.

Other times the smugglers come directly to the wall to assist with breeches.

“They’ll wait for their opportunity or shift change when agents are moving around,” MacIsaac said.

He said the dangers of crossing this way, as opposed to coming to a U.S. Mexico checkpoint and making a claim, put people’s lives at serious risk.

“They pretty much see the people they’re smuggling as commodities you know? And safety is essentially either nonexistent or at the bottom of their priority list,” MacIsaac said.

MacIsaac points to examples of recent smuggling incidents that put children’s lives in grave danger.

In April, a smuggler recklessly dropped a pair of unaccompanied three and five-year-old Ecuadorian girls over a remote area of the New Mexico border. It was all captured on video surveillance.

And in San Diego in April, a two-year-old boy was dropped over the 18-foot wall to his father waiting down below. MacIsaac took us to that spot, where the father and son were quickly met by a Border Patrol agent on an ATV.

“It’s terrible. As a parent myself you know we hate to see it,” MacIsaac said. “That could have ended in a tragedy.”

MacIsaac said it takes a toll when it feels like the public isn’t behind their efforts to keep the border secure. He believes protecting the country and enforcing immigration laws is a noble calling that he is proud to serve.

“Our agents are human beings as well. Sometimes we catch a lot of flak for what we do but at the end of the day we’re all here trying to keep our country safer and we do as much as we can with the resources that we have,” MacIsaac said.