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Impact of Guard on border is unclear

Web Posted: 12/27/2006 10:49 PM CST

Jesse Bogan and Hernán Rozemberg
Express-News

REYNOSA, Mexico — Tired of laboring 12 hours a day at a maquiladora in Honduras for just enough wages to feed his three children and wife, Giovani Castro decided to gamble for a better future.

Despite multiple fears — old and new — about obstacles he'd have to face to join relatives working illegally in Minnesota, he planned a solo trip north.

So far, Castro had made it to the steps of the Guadalupe Shelter, a dorm-style refuge in this border city across from McAllen, where on Wednesday he contemplated the upcoming leg of his journey with a small group of immigrants, all with similar stories, but apparently in fewer numbers than last year.

In 2005, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 111,995 undocumented immigrants in South Texas from July through the end of November. During the same time period this year, that number dropped 44 percent.

Just how much of that decline can be credited to the National Guard, which was deployed to the border area in mid-June, is unclear.

Border Patrol officials said the Guard may have played a major role in the overall reduction in arrests across the entire southern border, but that their presence is just one of numerous factors contributing to the decline.

"It's difficult to put a number on it, but it's not all about the National Guard," said Mario Martinez, a national spokesman for the agency in Washington, D.C. "We have a lot of factors influencing illegal migration patterns, especially in South Texas."

Nuns runs the shelter here, which has a capacity of about 50 people. They said they've noticed a 20 percent drop in sojourners since 2005. They speculated the slowdown was due to the large immigrant rights demonstrations and propaganda about President Bush ruling with an "iron fist."

"The people are scared," confirmed Castro, rail thin and 34. "They fear ranchers, the Border Patrol, smugglers, soldiers and — what's the name of that armed group of people called? There's a lot of death, too."

Others around him at the shelter spoke of the Guard and false rumors that a border wall already was built or under construction.

Martinezsaid South Texas saw tremendous enforcement activity in 2006.

A skyrocketing increase in prosecutions for illegal entry in the Del Rio area slowed traffic to a trickle, he said. And increased resources put into jailing as opposed to setting free non-Mexican crossers — the infamous "catch-and-release" policy — also vastly slowed activity in the Laredo and Rio Grande Valley sectors, Martinez said.

There's no doubt the National Guard's deployment has had a positive impact by allowing border agents to do their jobs, Martinez said. But the level of its impact varied at different spots along the border, he said.

Prior to the troops being dispatched, the agency identified 581 agents that were performing duties other than actually patrolling the border. Of those, about 400 were able to return to enforcement assignments thanks to soldiers taking jobs such as filing paperwork and repairing SUVs and equipment.

Agents on the ground downplayed the role of National Guard even more, saying the move was more effective at improving the government's image on border security than anything else.

Sure, a few agents were freed up to get back on patrol, but the soldiers' presence had not much else to do with the decline in arrests, said one agent in the Rio Grande Valley who asked that his name not be used due to fear of upsetting his supervisors.

"I haven't seen them do anything productive," the agent said. "Even if they get sent out in the field, they always have to go out with an agent. We all know this has been a PR thing."

The agent, who said the deployment has been a heavily discussed topic among his peers, said soldiers have told agents that, though bored, they'd much rather volunteer for border assistance than risk being called up to fight in Iraq.

The reason or motive notwithstanding, Guard members are glad to have been called to border duty and will continue doing so as long as they're needed, said Col. Bill Meehan, spokesman for the Texas Guard.

He said there currently are about 1,500 soldiers along the 1,254-mile Texas-Mexico border, though the numbers are supposed to go down next year as the Border Patrol continues to beef up its ranks.

"Soldiers feel they're doing what they've been tasked to do. They feel they're having an impact and it's nice to see the true professionals at the Border Patrol recognize our work," Meehan said.

While apprehension numbers often change from year to year, clipped fences and empty water jugs just south of the Border Patrol checkpoint on northbound U.S. 281 near Falfurrias show there's still illegal traffic pushing through in high numbers.

Castro and the other immigrants possibly will try to circumvent the checkpoint, and the National Guardsmen and Border Patrol agents manning it, by walking around it through the brush, like scores of others do.

Guardsmen recently searched overhead in a military helicopter for immigrants in the area, said Curtis Gruetzmacher, 59, who Wednesday was fixing a gate by the highway just south of the checkpoint that somebody had rammed.

He picked up garbage — eight large plastic bags full of discarded water jugs and clothes — and mended four large cuts in a few stretches of deer fence that many immigrants apparently had gone through. Worn trails leading into the thickets were clearly visible.

"I can't hardly say they are controlling it," Gruetzmacher said of the efforts to stem the tide of undocumented immigrant traffic. "I think they are controlling it the best they can."
jbogan@express-news.net