Is the United States-Mexican border better secured than it used to be?

Asks the New York Times, at its very prominent front-page story on immigration, "Border Security - Hard to Achieve, and Harder to Measure":

PENITAS, Tex. — The border fence behind Manuel Zamora’s home suggests strength and protection, its steel poles perfectly aligned just beyond the winding Rio Grande. But every night, the crossers come. After dark and at sunup, too, dozens of immigrants scale the wall or walk around it, their arrival announced by the angry yelps of backyard dogs.

“Look,” Mr. Zamora said early one recent morning, “here they come now.” He pointed toward his neighbor’s yard, where a young man in a dark sweatshirt and white sneakers sprinted toward the road, his breath visible in the winter dawn. Three others followed, rushing into a white sedan that arrived at the exact moment their feet hit the pavement.

“I don’t know how the government can stop it,” Mr. Zamora said, watching the car drive away. “It’s impossible to stop the traffic. You definitely can’t stop it with laws or walls.”

The challenge has tied Congress in knots for decades, and as lawmakers in Washington pursue a sweeping overhaul of immigration, the country is once again debating what to do about border security.

A bipartisan group of senators has agreed in principle to lay out a path to American citizenship for an estimated 11 million immigrants in the United States illegally, but only after quantifiable progress is made on border security, raising thorny questions: What does a secure border mean exactly? How should it be measured? And what expectations are reasonable given the cost, the inherent challenges of the terrain and the flood of traffic crossing legally each year in the name of tourism and trade?

Some Republicans argue that the southern border remains dangerously porous and inadequately defended by the federal government. Obama administration officials, insisting there is no reason for delaying plans to move millions of people toward citizenship, counter that the border is already safer and more secure than ever. They say record increases in drug seizures, staffing and technology have greatly suppressed illegal traffic, driving down border apprehensions to around 365,000 in 2012, a decline of 78 percent since 2000.

Indeed, by every indicator, illegal migration into the United States has fallen tremendously — in part because of stricter immigration enforcement — and has held steady at lower levels for several years.

But all camps leave a lot out of the discussion. Visits to more than a half-dozen border locations over the past two years show that the levels of control vary significantly along the line in ways that Congress and the White House have yet to fully acknowledge.

It's not secure. Even asking if it's secure is a joke. Here's that Casey Wian report at CNN from last month, "Locals: Arizona border is not secure."

The Democrats don't want a secure border. They want to pad their Hispanic voting constituency. But we'll see how it goes. Thankfully the House GOP's lukewarm to immigration reform. But folks need to hold their feet to the fire. Boehner's on a roll right now, and he might used that momentum to cave to the White House, again.