Thread: Border Patrol takes to Mexican radio to discourage crossers

Border Patrol takes to Mexican radio to discourage border crossers

Posted: Friday, September 2, 2011 8:30 pm
By Philip Franchine Green Valley News | 0 comments

U.S. Border Patrol agents are going on the offensive against human smuggling with announcements on central Mexico radio stations urging potential border crossers to stay home.

The approach could help put annual arrests in the Tucson Sector under 100,000 for the first time since 1993, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Alan Bersin said in an interview Thursday in Tucson. That would signal that the easy pickings are over for smugglers who long have targeted the Tucson Sector, which stretches across most of the Arizona-Mexico border.

Senior agents for the past month have been speaking on radio to residents of the five Mexican states that have produced the most illegal border crossers in recent years.

Bersin said he spoke on Mexico City radio Thursday telling listeners that the desert is more dangerous than coyotes tell them; that walking distances from the border to Tucson or Phoenix are far greater than they are told; that the coyotes are connected to cartels that are likely to assault or extort them; that jobs are few; that their odds of escaping capture are dropping fast; and that they will face consequences if arrested, unlike in the past.

Now, arrestees are more likely to be jailed, bused to the far border or flown to Mexico City rather than simply deposited across the border near where they crossed.

It makes more sense to talk to people in interior states, such as Michoacan, Tabasco and Oaxaca, than those who already are near the border because the latter have already invested in bus fare and other items and are probably less open to such a message, Agent Danielle Suarez said.

Last year, there were 212,000 arrests in the Tucson Sector, triple the number of the sector with the next highest, San Diego, with 68,000, and the only one of nine Border Patrol sectors with more than 100,000 arrests of suspected illegal immigrants. It is on track for 123,000 this year, a 43 percent reduction.

Arrests down

The Tucson Sector “is the last stand of the smugglers. We want to see the Tucson district down to double digit arrests,â€

[quote][i]“We are really pushing very hard on trusted traveler programs, sentry programs, the sentry pedestrian programs, the global entry program at the border. We also making the case we need more officers. It has not escaped us. We have to re-engineer our processes to act more efficiently, and add more officers.â€

Now if Nappy would just track Visa overstays we might get ahead of this problem.My guess is visa overstays are as Big a problem as border jumpers.

I don't want to hear any complaints from mexicans either. Whenever I turn my radio on, and move through the channels, I hear too much spanish language. In some areas, I lose reception of my favorite radio stations to overpowering spanish stations. What gives?