As Reform Falters, Immigration Focus Is on the Frontier
Meanwhile, in a flat slice of Texas that includes 210 miles of border along the Rio Grande, border patrols have pioneered their own detention strategy working with local judges and the U.S. Marshals Service. Here in the so-called Del Rio Sector, illegal border crossers are treated more like criminals than violators of civil immigration law. "Around here we lock you up for about two weeks, even if you're a Mexican first-timer," explains agent Hilario Leal. Officials say it appears to be having a deterrent effect. Of the almost 17,900 immigrants who have gone through the program, only 3 percent have been arrested trying to cross any part of the roughly 2,000-mile border again.
But it's what comes next, DHS officials say, that may bring the biggest changes in the border game: military-style technology, surveilling the entire Southwest border and possibly stretching dozens of miles inland. This week, the Border Patrol in Arizona will begin using nine towers with radar and cameras that are capable of identifying the slightest movement as far as 10 miles away. Within six years, if they work as planned, towers are scheduled to dot the entire southern border.
As impressive as the success seems, however, officials admit that holding on to it will be a challenge. The National Guard started drawing down its troops last month; by the end of this summer, Texas and Arizona will see their troops cut in half. "Seeing the progress we've made so far," says Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, "...I'm just extremely worried we're sliding backwards."
One of the problems is that the Border Patrol has never hired agents at such a fast pace. Jim Carafano, a homeland security expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said last year that to get 6,000 new agents by 2009, the Border Patrol's academy would have to pump out seven times as many graduates per year as it was doing. David Aguilar, the top U.S. Border Patrol official, says the agency is on track, but to some, the agency's recruiting tactics smack of desperation. The Border Patrol recently spent $975,000 to put its logo on a NASCAR car, for instance. And it upped the age limit for inexperienced applicants from 37 to 40. "They've basically made a lot of people think they're not going to pull this off," says T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, a union for agents.
Building more towers won't necessarily be easy, either, in the face of a skeptical Congress. Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has criticized Boeing Co.'s sweeping tower contract, which DHS estimates will cost $8 billion before the towers are ever built on the Canadian frontier. Meanwhile, tower opponents in the tiny town of Arivaca, Ariz., are crusading against what they consider a Big Brother invasion.
Even the real walls can be vulnerable. Smugglers trying to cross the border have successfully cut down some of the vehicle barriers, in some places with power saws. And on another front, Texas officials are protesting a DHS plan to build 153 miles of fence along the Rio Grande. Locals say the fence could destroy parkland and cut off livestock from water. Chertoff has overridden environmental regulations in the past, however, and says that he'll do so again if necessary for security. It's all part of the new border equation.
"It took [the government] 16 years to build 14 miles of fence in San Diego, and people were comfortable with that," Aguilar says. "The changes now can be difficult to accept."
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