Thread: Arizona Border Patrol Sees a Payoff in 2008

Lights, cameras, agents: Arizona Border Patrol sees a payoff

12:00 AM CST on Friday, January 2, 2009
Arthur H. Rotstein, The Associated Press

TUCSON, Ariz. – The Border Patrol had a turning-point year in Arizona in 2008, with increased manpower, resources and technology bringing dramatic drops in illegal-immigrant arrests, top officials say.

U.S. Border Patrol Agent Santos Flores walks in front of the old border fence (back left) where it meets a five-mile section of new border fence in Nogales, Ariz. They're confident more is on the way in 2009. There is a continuing shift away from a policy that let most illegal immigrants return home after being caught sneaking across the border.

The heads of the patrol's Tucson and Yuma sectors cite the goal of eventually eliminating most voluntary returns as a significant step toward stopping illegal entries. They say it ensures that those who cross into the United States unlawfully will pay a price for doing so.

"My goal has always been to eliminate voluntary return," said Chief Robert Gilbert, head of the patrol's Tucson sector, which covers most of the Arizona-Mexico border. "I believe that's one of the keys to border security – that's through certainty of arrest and a penalty for the crime."

Beefed-up arsenal

Programs aimed at adding consequences were increasingly part of the mix during 2008, when the patrol also added to its arsenal of agents, fences, barriers, roads, lights and cameras. The programs included prosecutions of some border-crossers for illegal entries and efforts that return migrants to the Mexican interior or to distant border communities to sever ties to their smugglers.

"We've been pretty successful in Yuma to ensure ... that if you enter the United States illegally, there will be a consequence," said Paul Beeson, chief of the Yuma sector, which covers the southwestern corner of Arizona.

During the 2008 fiscal year, 52,000 of the 317,000 illegal immigrants apprehended in the Tucson sector, or about one in six, were not voluntarily returned.

Isabel Garcia, Pima County legal defender and a longtime human rights activist, deplores the shift but isn't surprised.

"It's what we've been sounding the alarm about for over the last 10 years," she said, "that the enforcement would continue to increase dramatically, especially trying to eliminate voluntary return, knowing full well that it has horrendous consequences for immigrants."

Often, she said, they have spouses and children who are American citizens.

Tucson traffic

In the Tucson sector, historically more than 70 percent of those arrested in the most heavily trafficked areas southwest of Tucson re-entered the country.

"They would just be sent back to Nogales and come back in, be sent back to Nogales and come back in," Gilbert said. "Eventually we don't catch them anymore. Either they went home or they were successful."

Increased lights, fencing, roads, sensors and mobile and remote camera surveillance systems, as well as 70 illegal entry prosecutions a day, have cut the recidivism rate in that area to less than 30 percent, Gilbert said.

Tucson began prosecutions in March with 40 a day, totaling 9,600 by the end of September. Yuma's prosecution program began more than a year earlier.

Both sectors also bring some of those arrested before immigration judges for administrative formal removal, typically for those who have overstayed visas.

In Tucson, nearly 10,000 others were processed through expedited removal – essentially removed without a hearing because they've entered illegally.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent ... 5f7fe.html

The fence and border patrol might have had something to do with it but the economy is the factor that outweighs everything else. Watch for Obama and the Democrats and of course McCain and Graham to start pushing their favorite item as soon as the Great One takes office.

I originally placed this comment from Glenn Spencer of American Patrol Report at the bottom of the article. However, I think it is more appropriate here.

Rothstein Hogwash

Glenn Spencer -- January 2, 2009

The Rotstein Missile I read with amusement. Arthur H. Rotstein's piece on the success of the Border Patrol in Arizona.

This guy is a guided missile, used when necessary to destroy the truth about the border. In this instance the Rotstein missile is directed toward subverting the impact of the border fence on apprehensions of illegal aliens. He wants to give all the credit to the prosecution of border intruders, when, in fact, it was the border fence that did the job.

http://www.americanpatrol.com/SPENCER-G ... apGS_.html