Border Patrol on watch for recruits at uptown festival
Car sponsorship part of strategy to branch out of Southwest for agents
GREG LACOUR
glacour@charlotteobserver.com
On Food Lion Speed Street's main drag on South Tryon Street -- amid the vendors peddling beer, funnel cakes and racing knickknacks -- stands a booth offering something a bit weightier: service in the U.S. Border Patrol.

A group of about 10 agents from stations in Laredo, Texas, and Tucson, Ariz., are at tables under a tent, passing out brochures, answering questions and pitching their agency as part of a large-scale -- and, to this point, successful -- recruiting effort. Other agents run a booth outside Lowe's Motor Speedway.

The booth on Tryon delivers a mild jolt to the unsuspecting. Who'd suspect this at a racing festival?

"You know, you're walking along the street, you see food stand, food stand, and then -- `the Border Patrol's out here?' " said Everett Anderson, a 24-year-old Charlottean who picked up a brochure Friday out of curiosity. "It's just ... interesting."

For the past year, the Border Patrol -- an agency responsible for patrolling 8,000 miles of U.S. border -- has labored under a call from President Bush to increase the number of agents protecting the southern border from 12,000 to 18,000.

So the agency has begun setting up recruiting stations at universities and job fairs, said Border Patrol Assistant Chief Michael Olsen, who spent time at the booth Friday afternoon.

Two weeks ago, it signed a contract with Monroe-based Jay Robinson Racing to sponsor the No. 28 Chevrolet Monte Carlo in NASCAR's Busch Series. A version of the car, sporting green-and-white Border Patrol decals, sat next to the recruiting station Friday.

The Robinson contract is part of the recruiting effort, too, Olsen said, and the uptown festival and this weekend's schedule of races in Concord provide a chance for the agency to recruit in a NASCAR setting.

It's also the kind of place, removed from the border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, where the Border Patrol is trying to establish a toehold, he said. "The biggest hurdle when it comes to recruiting," he said, is that people in nonborder states tend not to think of the agency or understand what it does.

"If we can get that message out to them," Olsen said, "we'll be a lot more successful."

The effort seems to be working. The agency is on track to meet its goal of 6,000 new agents by 2009, said Todd Fraser, a Border Patrol spokesman.

It also helps, they said, that border security is a hot national topic.

The issue was on Julie Mitchell's mind Friday, as she picked up a brochure for her son.

"I believe in the Border Patrol ... I think hiring more people is way overdue," Mitchell said. "I don't care who comes in (to the United States), as long as they're legal. I think you should have to file a Form 1040 every year just like everybody else."

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