Sometimes, you just can’t rely on the federal government and it’s best to take matters into your own hands.

That seems to be the opinion of Border Fence Project, a group that wants to use donated materials and volunteer labor to build a 1,952-mile fence along our southern border. The group also wants to install cameras, microphones, lighting and motion sensors along the fence. On its Web site (www.borderfenceproject.com), the group boasts it can build the fence for “less than $5 per foot, or $50 million.”

Neat. It sounds like a big Habitat for Humanity project, only instead of building houses for the poor, they’re stopping Jose and Paco from leaving their own cardboard hovels in Guadalajara.

Obviously, this group thinks illegal immigrants threaten our safety and security. The Web site says, “Because illegal aliens murder 5,000 innocent Americans every year and we take a trillion dollar hit overall to our economy, illegal immigration rewards us with a 9/11 or worse every year.”

I wonder, will building a fence really make us feel safe? I mean, some of the people who already live here are no bargain. Take, for example, the cheerleader beating story. I read about it in the Orlando Sentinel last week, and it was picked up nationwide.

In Lakeland, Fla., a cheerleader was lured over to a friend’s house where she was beaten by six other teenagers while two teen boys stood guard outside the home. Video of the savage beating was posted on YouTube, and it’s pretty graphic. You can hear the girls’ fists hitting the victim’s face and body. You can hear the assailants urging her to fight back, and at least I appreciate the irony of a cheerleader not responding to the crowd. The victim suffered bruises, a concussion and injuries to her left ear and eye.

As an aside here, I’m not sure what form of self-defense cheerleaders are taught to use against multiple attackers, but you’d think at least she would have been able to push ’em back, push ’em back, waaaaaaay back.

One of the Sentinel’s stories quoted the grandmother of one of the attackers describing her granddaughter as “really a loving, caring kid”; thus proving that no matter how dirty, evil and despicable you are, grandma still loves you.

Lest you feel too sorry for the victim, keep in mind that the incident started when the cheerleader made comments about the other girls on her MySpace page. In one entry, she wrote that the other girls were too scared to fight her. As the bruises heal, this girl probably should re-evaluate her ability to intimidate other people.

If you’re shocked by this, don’t be. This is teen justice these days and it’s violent. What boys used to do in a remote area of the playground, girls are now doing, recording it on video and posting it to the Internet.

Here’s another story; this one appeared in the Rocky Mountain News.

A man walked into a Hollywood Video store in Commerce City, Okla., and began harassing his ex-girlfriend, who became frightened and called the police. The man fled before officers arrived.

When the cops asked what started the argument, the ex-girlfriend told them she is pregnant with the man’s child. However, the expectant couple each belongs to a rival street gang and have been quarrelling over the baby’s future affiliation.

Hey, I sympathize. It’s got to be tough to pick out a border for the nursery wallpaper when you’re not sure what the baby’s colors will be. Let’s see, that’s blue for Crips, red for Bloods, right?

You read these stories and suddenly building a fence to close off our Mexican border shrinks into insignificance. In fact, I don’t want anyone to build any fence around any of our borders.

Don’t get me wrong, I do think we should stop or slow illegal immigration into this country. I just don’t want to be trapped with some of the people who are already here.

Steve Booher’s column runs on Mondays.