Border Patrol: RGV illegal immigrant apprehensions up, drug seizures down last year

November 6, 2008 - 8:40AM
Jared Taylor
The Monitor

EDINBURG - The U.S. Border Patrol has seen its undocumented immigrant apprehensions jump in the past year, bucking a national downward trend, according to statistics released Wednesday.

During the 2008 fiscal year, which started Oct. 1, 2007, agents apprehended 75,473 people in the Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley sector, an area that covers 17,000 square miles across southeast Texas, including Hidalgo, Cameron, Starr and Willacy counties.

The apprehensions across the region represent a 2.7-percent increase from the year before. Nationwide, Border Patrol apprehensions dropped 17 percent.

Government officials view the drop in apprehensions as a sign that heightened border security efforts are working.
In the Border Patrol sector that covers Yuma, Ariz., apprehensions dropped 78 percent. At the El Paso sector, apprehensions dropped by 60 percent.

But not in the Valley.

Border Patrol officials attribute the slight increase in Valley apprehensions to having more agents on the ground, not greater numbers of people migrating through the area.

"I don't think crossings have been much different, but we do have additional agents out there," said Dan Doty, a local Border Patrol spokesman. "In areas where we have ranchlands, where we'd get to once or twice a shift, we now get to them more often."

Nationwide, about half a million immigrants came to the United States in the 2007 calendar year, far less than the 1.7 million who came here the year before, according to U.S. Census bureau figures. Much of the slump has come amid the economic slowdown that has beset the country.

Apprehensions across the sector are down 43 percent from the 2005 fiscal year, when 134,136 people were detained.

The overall drop in apprehensions has led some local leaders along the border to continue their scrutiny of the border wall.

"We recommend a variety of border security initiatives that are more effective and not a waste like the border wall," Chad Foster, chairman of the Texas Border Coalition and mayor of Eagle Pass, said in a statement.

Illegal drug seizures in the Valley sector have dropped, as well.

Agents picked up nearly 189 tons of marijuana, at least a 5 percent drop from the previous year. And there was 4,636 pounds of cocaine seized, down nearly 36 percent from the year before.

"Some people are deciding to try and not run their drug loads through," Doty said.

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