Say adding agents won’t stop migrants
By Susan Carroll, The Arizona Republic
TUCSON -- In the decade since the U.S. government launched a massive operation to seal the Southwestern border, enforcement spending has topped $20 billion and the Border Patrol has swelled to become the largest uniformed police force in the nation.
But experts say the infusion of money and manpower along the 2,000-mile Mexican border has had questionable results: Although the number of agents has more than tripled, thousands of undocumented immigrants cross the border each day and hundreds of them die each year. A decade after the start of the operation, arrests have dropped to 900,000 last year from 1.2 million in 1993.
Still, the government remains committed to the strategy, said Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. On Tuesday, he announced additional reinforcements in Arizona as part of a campaign to secure the most porous and deadly stretches of desert in the nation. The agency is adding 260 agents, unmanned aircraft and increasing detention space in Arizona in coming weeks at a cost of $10 million.
“Our goal is to control the southern border and create a safer and more secure Arizona,” he said at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson.
But some experts doubt the government will be able to shut down the Southwestern border and, if so, at what cost?
From the nation’s capital to business boardrooms, the call for immigration reform has grown louder in recent months.
President Bush has proposed major immigration-policy reform, acknowledging the system is “not working.” At least three bills have been crafted to overhaul the existing worker program.
Reps. Jim Kolbe, John Shadegg, J.D. Hayworth and Trent Franks, all Arizona Republicans, and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., praised the announcement.
Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., a member of the House Immigration and Border Security subcommittee, said he welcomes additional border agents but said it amounts to a short-term solution to a long-term problem.
But Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., opposes the buildup, saying that the overall effectiveness has yet to be evaluated for previous federal strategies that have “rerouted migrants through treacherous (desert) areas” where many have died in isolation.
More agents needed
The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, estimated in 2000 that fully implementing the strategy, Operation Gatekeeper, launched in the 1990s, could take until 2010 and determined that there was “no clear indication overall (that) illegal entry along the Southwest border has declined.” Conservative estimates put the necessary number of agents at 12,000 to 16,000, far above current staffing.
Frank Bean, a professor at the University of California-Irvine, studied one of the first Border Patrol initiatives designed to put more manpower at the border, Operation Hold the Line, in Texas. He then built a model that would estimate the number of agents needed along the Southwestern border and concluded 16,133 agents would be necessary nationally and 2,512 in the Tucson sector alone. Current staffing is 11,000 across the border and about 2,000 in Tucson, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Bean said the number of agents is getting closer to what is needed to be effective but added that “there are lots of ways to get in” to the country illegally, such as presenting fraudulent documents at airports or ports of entry.
But Hutchinson said the government’s Arizona Border Control Initiative announced Tuesday does more that just add agents. The latest operation involves law enforcement on federal, state and local levels, introduces new technology and increases government resources to deal with immigrants once they are in custody, he said.
Detention space for immigrants will increase 66 percent with the addition of 550 beds in tent housing next to the detention center in Florence. And the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix will have six additional assistant attorneys to help prosecute cases generated by smuggling investigations and arrests at the border.
“It is a huge challenge, and these new assets are substantial that we are devoting. But it’s not just people, it’s not just new technologies,” Hutchinson said. “It’s the coordination and . . . putting those (resources) into play how they are effective.”
The strategy
Starting in the early 1990s, the Border Patrol developed a strategy to control the Southwestern border. From Brownsville, Texas, to San Diego, the agency fortified fences and doubled, then quadrupled, manpower. The crackdowns led droves of immigrants to cross in more remote, dangerous areas.
In 1995, the government launched Operation Safeguard, targeting Nogales, where immigrants were sneaking in through tunnels. Then a wave of immigrants hit Douglas-Naco, which remains the most popular crossing point in the country today because of its proximity to roads that lead north.
As a record number of immigrants tried crossing through Arizona, the Border Patrol increased the number of agents by 666 percent, and the death count rapidly climbed. In 1998, Border Patrol agents in Arizona recorded 28 deaths in the Yuma and Tucson sectors. Last year, the agency counted more than 150, though an independent count by The Arizona Republic came up with 205.
Reporters Billy House and Daniel Gonzalez contributed to this article.