Utahns building border wall
Guardsmen working in 115-degree heat at the Mexican border
You've got to dig a 4-foot trench in the powdery, messy sand, then build a plywood form and reinforce it with deep stakes so the whole thing doesn't crack and ooze when concrete is poured into the footing.
That part is the 19-year-old Carter's job. Another group is building the 18-foot, wall-sized panels out of rusted steel left over from the Air Force. The unwieldy panels are intended to interlock but are so old they really don't anymore. Someone else is operating the crane that sets the one-ton section in the footings. Welders meld the whole thing together. Concrete is poured today.
So, Carter, a former wrestler at Roosevelt's Union High School and the rookie on this project, says he agrees immigrants shouldn't enter the United States illegally. Making sure they don't is another story.
"It's a lot harder than what people realize," he said.
Twenty-five miles south of Yuma, Ariz., past fields of corn, wheat and melons, 55 Utah Army National Guard men and women have come to the border town of San Luis to help out the U.S. Border Patrol. Several Guard members, like Carter, are assigned to close a 1,000-meter gap in the steel wall where only hot, dusty air now separates Mexico from its northern neighbor.
There is some question as to whether the Utah forces are technically part of Bush's "Operation Jump Start" — they've done border duty before and this deployment was even scheduled before the president announced plans to send Guardsmen to the border. But the troops who are welding, pushing shovels and driving machinery in the blistering heat say they don't care about the distinction.
"It's a bold move on the president's part," said Staff Sgt. Jon Bylsman, 29, of Pleasant Grove. "That's what he feels is necessary to do, and we're down here following orders."
"I think it's an honor that we are one of the first units to come down here and do our part," said Sgt. Dee Gibson, 31, of Salt Lake City.
Like 70 percent of the Guard troops on the border this week, the 31-year-old Gibson served in Iraq. Now he studies civil engineering at the University of Utah and works at a Salt Lake engineering firm.
"This is a good thing," said Sgt. Steve Larsen of Payson.
Back home, Larsen, 36, is an industrial electrician for Pacific States Cast Iron Pipe Co. in Provo. Ordinarily, he would be programming the computers that tell the big machines how to churn out the pipes. But on Tuesday, as part of his annual military training, he was supervising a crew laying electrical conduit that will extend a row of high-powered floodlight towers about one-eighth of a mile.
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