By Hernan Rozemberg
TEXAS — The message is plastered on huge billboards. It’s the talk of job fairs across the country. And it’s even part of a $1 million advertising campaign on a racecar.
Now, recruiters with the U.S. Border Patrol will try to lure soldiers stationed abroad to return home to protect the nation’s borders as part of the agency’s hiring goal mandated by President Bush.
Now home to a record-setting 15,500 agents, the Border Patrol is rushing to build a force of at least 18,319 by the end of the year and more than 20,000 in 2009.
More than one-fourth of all agents are military veterans, a recruitment pool the agency has traditionally tapped domestically but never overseas. Now, for the first time, recruiters will be dispatched outside the country, tasked to convince soldiers stationed in Germany to try a new way to serve their country.
“The military would love to keep their seasoned soldiers,” said Joe Arata, national recruiter for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol’s parent agency. “But they know some of them are going to leave, and we see them as a great source for us.”
A spokeswoman for the Department of Defense said she was not aware of the Border Patrol’s recruitment plans in overseas bases and therefore could not comment.
Arata said he already goes to bases all over the country, so he doesn’t see much of a difference going overseas. The military supports his agency’s mission and readily welcomed him, said Arata, a former Army paratrooper.
The first Border Patrol international mission will involve two trips targeting 12 Army and Air Force bases in Germany. The first begins Wednesday and the second is planned for May.
“This is as much about recruitment as about getting the word out,” said Arata, who’s hoping the effort will produce close to 200 potential border agents.
He said soldiers make for great recruits due to their rigorous training and strong sense of patriotism, loyalty and discipline.
A former longtime Border Patrol agent and administrator agreed that soldiers tend to make good agents and he backed the Germany effort.
But some, like Kent Lundgren, chairman of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers, say the mandated recruitment goal is a constant pressure on the agency, forcing it to turn into an assembly-line shop prioritizing quantity over quality.
Lundgren said his group, composed of about 150 mid- and high-level former administrators, has heard complaints from current bosses who say that unlike in their day, agents now typically lack intelligence and good judgment. They’re swiftly dispatched to the field to fend for themselves before they’re ready, he said.
“An incompletely trained officer is a danger — he might kill aliens or get himself hurt because he doesn’t know how to act,” Lundgren said.
Copyright 2008 The Houston Chronicle