What's the one thing missing from San Diego's border fence?

San Diego has an impressive border fence with Mexico.  It is a tall, sturdy fence ringed on the top with a big, curly layer of barbed wire so sharp that it can deter even those who badly desire a life of American taxpayer-funded education, health care, housing, and Obamaphones.  The fence even comes in two layers in many sections.

The fence even extends into the Pacific Ocean!

(Hey, is that an illegal swimming at the very end there?  I hope not!)

But there's still one thing missing from this border fence!  Can you guess what it is?

The answer is about 1,000 feet.

This fence extends all the way across San Diego's southern municipal border, eastward toward a range of mountains, but it stops short about a thousand feet from the hills.

One is accustomed to seeing little or no border fence in isolated areas, but this gap is in a suburb of San Diego called Otay Mesa.

In the close-up satellite photo above, you can see the end of the wall, and you can see that so many illegal aliens have crossed simply by going around it that they have made their own paths. Once they spend five minutes crossing the border, it is basically a one-hour walk to the nearest bus stop in Otay Mesa.  It is hardly the stuff of having to walk days and days through the desert.

The INS does not even have any checkpoints between Otay Mesa and San Diego. It's not very difficult to get into the U.S. from this point.

Ironically, this gap needn't exist.  If the fence extended about a thousand feet farther, it would abut a steep mountain.  All it needed was another thousand feet.  Even illegals with calves the size of cantaloupes would have had a hard time climbing such a slope.

Practically speaking, illegals have been tunneling into Otay Mesa for years.  But tunnels take time and effort and money to make.  Walking across the border unimpeded doesn't.

I found this vulnerability unintentionally while exploring Google maps in satellite mode.  It's startling to discover vulnerabilities such as this one, where anyone can come across the border bringing anything with him and get into a major metropolitan area in such a short time.

Ed Straker is the senior writer at Newsmachete.com.