Thread: Border Conferece in El Paso

Border to take center stage today at conference
By Andrew Kreighbaum / El Paso Times
Posted: 08/09/2009 12:00:00 AM MDT

EL PASO -- The sixth annual Border Security Conference, which will begin today at UTEP, will focus on increasing cooperation between Mexico and the United States.

The headline speaker will be new Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who will speak Tuesday morning.
University of Texas at El Paso political science Professor Kathleen Staudt will participate in a panel Tuesday on commerce and academia.

"I want to challenge people to think about broader conceptions of security than the militarized form of border security that currently exists," she said.
Staudt said she would focus on poverty, violence against women and dangerous journeys for immigrants.

Other panels will discuss the Merida Initiative, which sent hundreds of millions of American dollars to Mexico to help fight drug trafficking, to finance technological developments and to develop a common homeland security policy among federal agencies.

U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, established the annual Border Security Conference to bring together leaders from the U.S. and Mexico to discuss security issues facing the region.

Among the panelists from Mexico will be Juárez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz.
Staudt said the timing of the conference -- when a new U.S. president is in office -- is especially exciting.

"There's always a new opportunity when there's a new president elected, whether Republican or Democrat, to rethink some notions," she said.
The conference is free and open to the public. It will take place Monday and Tuesday at the Undergraduate Learning Center at UTEP.
Kim Alton, legislative director for Reyes, said more than 600 people had already registered online to attend the conference.

Andrew Kreighbaum may be reached at akreighbaum@elpasotimes.com.

Speakers of note
Monday
# Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, 1:45-2:30 p.m.
# Ambassador Benito Andion, a coordinator with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mexico, 5:15-6 p.m.

Tuesday
# Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, 11:15 a.m.-noon.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_13024159

Billions on border: Security, drug war to be debated at conference
By Brandi Grissom / Austin Bureau
Posted: 08/09/2009 12:00:00 AM MDT

AUSTIN -- Congressional leaders traveled the nation, hosting hearings and ginning up political furor over illegal immigration, lax security on the southern border and drug violence in Mexico.

That was three years ago, when Texas Gov. Rick Perry, in a heated re-election battle, promised to use state dollars to bolster border security in the absence of federal action.

Since then, the federal government has spent more than $3.7 billion on border security, including building 700 miles of fence, beefing up patrols and helping Mexico fight drug cartels.

Texas has spent nearly $200 million on its own border initiatives, sending dollars to help local officers patrol the border, installing Web-based surveillance cameras and buying more helicopters and squad cars to track down criminals and undocumented immigrants.

As the spending continues, so does debate over how secure the border is and how the United States can keep the raging drug war from spilling north.

Those discussions will go on Monday and Tuesday at a Border Security Conference at the University of Texas at El Paso. Speakers will include U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who is to make a policy speech on border safety after a trip to Mexico with President Barack Obama.

Government officials and law enforcement agencies say the billions spent on border security have prevented crime and dammed the flood of undocumented immigrants from Mexico.

Civil-rights groups and scholars,
Advertisement
however, question whether the initiatives have done anything to deal with the roots of complex causes that drive the drug trade and immigration.

Federal action

In the fall of 2006, after lawmakers finished their round of immigration and border security hearings, including one in El Paso, Congress approved the Secure Fence Act.

The legislation called for 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border to stop, or at least slow down, illegal crossings between ports of entry.

All but a small part of the fencing has been completed, despite a spate of lawsuits and protests, primarily in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

As of July 24, homeland security officials said, they had completed nearly 634 miles of pedestrian and vehicle barriers.

Along with the fencing, Congress and former President George W. Bush allocated money for 6,000 more U.S. Border Patrol agents.

The Border Patrol's budget has more than doubled since 2006, and the number of agents has soared from 12,300 to 19,600.

The fencing, the added manpower and technology upgrades have helped the agency better secure the border, said DHS spokesman Michael Reilly.

"Since we've been catching a lot of illegal aliens and shutting down a lot of smuggling routes É we've been catching more narcotics than ever before," he said.

At the same time, he said, immigrant apprehension numbers are falling.

In 2006, the department caught nearly 1.1 million undocumented crossers. As this fiscal year comes to a close, Reilly said, agents have caught about 470,000.

The downturn in the economy and lack of work opportunities contribute to the reduced traffic, Reilly said, but he said the border security initiatives were also a big factor.

Texas security efforts

Border-security efforts in Texas have focused primarily on manpower.
Lawmakers approved about $110 million for these operations for the 2007 and 2008 budget years. This year, they approved an additional $87 million to continue those efforts in 2009 and 2010.

Much of that money went to Gov. Perry to award as grants for border sheriff's departments to pay officers overtime to patrol the border.

The rest has gone to state law enforcement, including the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, to beef up their border forces.

With the grants, the departments have conducted so-called surge operations, increasing law enforcement presence in areas deemed hot spots for border-related crime.

Don Reay, executive director of the Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition, said 18 of the 20 counties in his organization have received about $12.5 million to conduct Operation Border Star from February 2008 through August 2010.

Reay said sheriffs know that the increased patrols have made border communities safer, because they get fewer calls from angry residents.
"If we're not hearing complaints about things, that's a good indicator something's going right," he said.
Crime reports in some rural areas, the sheriffs and Perry have said, have dropped about 60 percent because of border operations.
Katherine Cesinger, a spokes woman for Perry, said the border initiatives were intended to deter crime.

Deterrence was also the goal of Perry's Web-based border surveillance cameras. He gave the border sheriffs coalition $2 million to line the border with cameras so that anyone, anywhere with an Internet connection could troll for undocumented crossers.

The first year of the program, though, produced just 11 arrests and eight drug busts.
Perry has defended the cameras as a way to use technology to enhance border security where the federal government has failed to.

Perry's spokeswoman Cesinger said Perry has taken a "proactive approach" to border security.
"Border security is a fed responsibility, but a Texas problem," she said.
Is it all working?

Perry's border-security efforts have produced mixed judgments. Some, like the border sheriffs, have hailed the initiatives. Others, including civil-rights groups, have worried that they encourage racial profiling, discrimination and unnecessary law enforcement work.

Initially, reports from border sheriffs who received money for border operations showed that they caught far more undocumented immigrants than criminals.

The operation in El Paso involved vehicle checkpoints that sparked accusations of racial profiling and caused among immigrants as officers allegedly asked motorists for immigration papers.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas studied the most recent border effort, Operation Border Star. Earlier this year, the group reported that many departments involved in the operation used grant money to do routine police work, not to investigate border-related crime.

While some agencies, including the El Paso Police Department, produced a significant number of arrests, others reported very few. Instead, they reported issuing thousands of warnings and tickets for traffic violations.

And reports of racial profiling concerns are still coming in to the ACLU of Texas, said policy analyst Rebecca Bernhardt.

"The lion's share of the responsibility is on the lack of guidance from the state of Texas about how to target resources and make them effective," she said.

The Department of Public Safety has also faced heat for its use of border-security money. A state audit last spring showed the department had allocated millions in resources, including a helicopter and about 100 cars, that were meant for the border to other areas of the state.

Another audit, released last week, said that demands to put more state troopers in the border region were exacerbating a critical personnel shortage in the department.

Howard Campbell, a sociology and anthropology professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, who will be one of the featured speakers at the Border Security Conference, said the United States needed to rethink its approach to border security.

Military-style tactics of building barriers and installing more armed officers on the border, he said, ignore the root problems that cause illegal immigration, drug trafficking and the cartel wars in Mexico.
"It's sending the message to Mexico that the U.S. views the situation almost as if Mexico were a hostile enemy," Campbell said.
As long as American drug consumption continues and U.S. companies need cheap labor, he said, the demand for those resources will remain.
"We're deeply complicit," he said.

The United States, he said, would improve security by finding ways to allow workers to legally come to the country and by investing in prevention and treatment of drug addiction to reduce consumption.

Stephen Meiners, senior tactical analyst for Latin America at the Stratfor global intelligence agency, said higher prices for illicit drugs in the United States and indications that Mexican criminals are turning more to kidnapping and extortion for money are signs of some abatement in drug trafficking.

Security measures such as the fence, he said, could be factors. But it's hard to find evidence that security policies alone are driving those changes.

"This is not an issue that can be solved by law enforcement or by any one tool for that matter," Meiners said.
But slowing immigration numbers can be attributed primarily to economic conditions, he said.
There's no one "magic bullet" solution to the complex problems that plague the U.S.-Mexico border, Meiners said.
"There's a reason these problems have continued for decades," he said. "It's not easily addressed."

Brandi Grissom may be reached at bgrissom@elpasotimes.com; 512-479-6606.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_13024690

Border Security Conference Day 1

Rethinking strategy key to battling drugs
'War on drugs' doesn't reflect Obama's plans

By Ramon Bracamontes / El Paso Times
Posted: 08/11/2009 12:00:00 AM MDT



EL PASO -- It is time to retire the "war on drugs" catchphrase, President Barack Obama's chief drug policy adviser said Monday at UTEP.

Speaking to about 600 people at the sixth annual Border Security Conference, R. Gil Kerlikowske said this administration's drug strategy will not be a war because a war limits what can be done.

"If the only tool is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail," said Kerlikowske, director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy. "That phrase -- war on drugs -- tells you that the only answer is in fact force. ... We want to have a different conversation when it comes to drugs."

The term "war on drugs," coined by President Nixon 40 years ago, does not adequately describe what Obama's strategy will entail, Kerlikowske said.

Kerlikowske said his visit to El Paso was part of a national tour to solicit ideas before making recommendations to the president. Once unveiled, Obama's drug strategy will probably include treatment centers, education, drug courts, more cooperation with Mexico and increased law enforcement, Kerlikowske said.

What it will not include is the legalization of drugs.

"Some think legalization will reduce the violence," Kerlikowske said. "It will not. If drugs were to become legal, I doubt very seriously that (the criminals) would take up jobs at Microsoft or Intel. Criminals are not going to change."

He was one of several high-ranking officials at the conference, which began Monday at the University of Texas at El Paso. Organized by U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, its main goals are to provide policymakers in Washington, D.C., with a firsthand look at how their decisions affect the border, and to give El Pasoans a chance to tell national leaders what programs work.

The United States first declared a "war on drugs" in 1969, when Nixon escalated efforts to stop the flow of drugs at U.S. ports of entry.

Though the phrase is catchy, experts say it is not working because illegal drug consumption in the United States has risen every year, drug production throughout the world is up and drug-smuggling cartels are in a protracted war in Mexico.

Until the new Obama policy is announced, the United States will continue a strategy implemented earlier this year, said U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, D-Texas.

It includes inspection of southbound vehicles at ports of entry as federal agents continue to try to stop the flow of guns and cash into Mexico. Weapons and money are used by the cartels to protect their billion-dollar industry.

Another strategy that will continue is the Merida Initiative. Through it, the United States has agreed to spend $1.4 billion to help Mexico fight the cartels.

Alan Bersin, border czar of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, urged those at the conference to be patient with Mexico as it fights the cartels. He said it took the United States 25 years to rid itself of the mafia that thrived in this country in the 1960s and 70s.

It might take Mexico just as long because it has to cleanse all of its law enforcement agencies, Bersin said.

But Howard Campbell, a UTEP professor who is an expert on Mexican drug cartels, said the strategy being used by Mexican President Felipe Calderón to fight the cartels was flawed.

He said Calderón was relying too much on the military, which is also prone to corruption.

"Despite an initial decline in crime when the military got involved, 2009 is now on its way to being the most deadly year," he said.

Throughout Mexico, more than 12,000 people have been killed since the drug cartel violence began in 2008. In Juárez alone, there were 1,600 killings in 2008. So far this year, more than 1,100 people have been killed in Juárez.

Ramon Bracamontes may be reached at rbracamontes@elpasotimes.com; 546-6142.


http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_13034708

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announces $30 million for border security
By Armando Durazo / El Paso Times
Posted: 08/11/2009 12:13:55 PM MDT

EL PASO - Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano today announced that $30 million will be spent along the U.S.-Mexico border to support security measures.
Texas is expected to receive about $12 million, officials said.

The money will go to Operation Stonegarden and will be used to deter violence, enforce immigration law and combat illegal trafficking.

"Operation Stonegarden grants direct critical funding to state, local and tribal law enforcement operations across the country," Napolitano said. "I am proud to announce an additional $30 million in funding specifically for the Southwestern states to ensure our first responders are equipped with the resources they need to confront the complex and dynamic challenges that exist along our Southern border."

The money will go to Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.

Arizona will get $7.2 million, California $7.3 million, New Mexico $2.5 million and Texas 12.7 million.

She made the announcement at the Sixth Annual Border Security Conference at UTEP.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_13036475

Added to Homepage:
http://www.alipac.us/article-4446--0-0.html

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announces $30 million for border security

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announces $30 million for border security
By Armando Durazo / El Paso Times
Posted: 08/11/2009 12:13:55 PM MDT



EL PASO - Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano today announced that $30 million will be spent along the U.S.-Mexico border to support security measures.

Texas is expected to receive about $12 million, officials said.

The money will go to Operation Stonegarden and will be used to deter violence, enforce immigration law and combat illegal trafficking.

"Operation Stonegarden grants direct critical funding to state, local and tribal law enforcement operations across the country," Napolitano said. "I am proud to announce an additional $30 million in funding specifically for the Southwestern states to ensure our first responders are equipped with the resources they need to confront the complex and dynamic challenges that exist along our Southern border."

The money will go to Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.

Arizona will get $7.2 million, California $7.3 million, New Mexico $2.5 million and Texas 12.7 million.

She made the announcement at the Sixth Annual Border Security Conference at UTEP.



http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_13036475

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-166502.html
Napolitano on the border, immigration and more

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-166668.html
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano: U.S. to punish employers