Money, technology will help bolster border security
By Brandi Grissom / Austin Bureau
http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_7679625


SAN ANTONIO -- With two years of practice under their belts, state officials are preparing to take Texas' border security efforts to another level with more money, more technology and more coordination.
Though some have criticized the operations as immigration roundups, Texas officials said their plan is a crime fighting model other border states aim to emulate.

In 2005, a group of border sheriffs sold Gov. Rick Perry and his homeland security department on their plan called Operation Linebacker.

The idea was that local officers in rural areas between ports of entry on the border had the know-how to help out understaffed U.S. Border Patrol agents trying to fight back gangs and smugglers taking advantage of the porous border. They just lacked the funds to accomplish the work.

Perry gave the sheriffs $10 million for the program, money the departments could use to buy equipment and pay deputies for overtime to patrol in border hot spots.

"It gives new tools and resources to local law enforcement, the experts in the unique security challenges of the border," Perry said in 2005.

The lesson from Linebacker was "more boots equals more time (on the ground); more time on the ground equals deterrence," said Jack Colley, chief of Perry's division of emergency management.

A few months later, Texas launched Operation Rio Grande, adding state police resources to the efforts and creating a hub in Austin where agencies could send reports and share information about border crime.

Reports from border sheriffs indicated significant crime drops in some counties during short, sporadic patrol increases.

Colley called that operation a "learning" and "perfecting" experience.

State officials took the border efforts statewide earlier this year, giving grant money to departments along trafficking corridors, so they could increase patrols and stop smugglers. Perry also deployed hundreds of National Guard troops to help out on the border.

"This unprecedented effort is just the beginning," he said in January, after he had asked lawmakers to provide another $100 million for more border security efforts.

Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw said the statewide patrols worked at reducing crime in some areas, but state officials found keeping up that many patrols wasn't possible in the long term. They decided more could be accomplished with resources focused on the border.

In September, state officials started Operation Border Star, using the lessons learned from nearly two years of border efforts.

Federal, state and local agencies in counties from El Paso to Brownsville and along the Coastal Bend participate. Their operations are coordinated through regional centers with decision makers from each agency instead of by state officials in Austin.

The efforts are working, McCraw and Colley said. Intelligence reports indicate Mexican drug cartels and smuggling operations are changing routes to avoid patrols. Local departments are getting fewer calls about suspicious activity and crime.

And now that lawmakers approved the millions Perry asked for, McCraw said plans are to have constant border patrols instead of sporadic ones.

They also plan to improve information-sharing technology so that officers across the border can see, in real time, where crime is happening and direct resources to those areas.

"What we're working up to is all operations, all the time," he said.

Controversial ops

While state leaders contend they are going after cartels and criminals, critics of the operations said statistics show officers were targeting undocumented immigrants.

El Paso County sheriff's deputies early on during Operation Linebacker began reporting dozens of immigrant apprehensions. The Mexican consulate complained local officers without training were doing federal immigration agents' work. Immigrant advocates said Sheriff Leo Samaniego's department was using traffic checkpoints to nab the undocumented. They called for his resignation.

El Paso Times investigations revealed that sheriffs borderwide during Operation Linebacker reported turning immigrants over to Border Patrol seven times more often than they arrested criminals.

Samaniego maintained his officers were not doing immigration work and state officials said the operation was not meant to target economic migrants.

"Linebacker was about them doing what they normally do but in areas where it's frequented by smugglers," McCraw said. "That's all it was."

During the statewide Operation Wrangler, reports showed officers reported catching twice as many undocumented immigrants as criminals.

Another Times analysis showed that crime drops along the border were far from the double-digit decreases Perry had touted.

Overall, reports showed, crime fell about 8 percent in border counties. Crime increased in some areas, including Webb County, home to Laredo, where some of the worst border violence has occurred.

"They're just thinking about enforcement-only strategies without any regard to the impact on border communities," said Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights.

Complaints of local officers conducting immigration work they are not authorized to do have quieted somewhat in recent months, though, immigrant advocates said.

As the border operations expand, Garcia said, his group would continue to monitor the community for reports of civil rights abuses.

"We're still on the defense, because this issue is not going away, and it's very dangerous in our communities," he said.

Future operations

Lawmakers will monitor border security efforts, too, hoping to ensure the $110 million investment they approved this year is used effectively.

The Border Security Council, an 11-member group charged with recommending to Perry how the border money should be spent, is traveling the state to gather input for its report, expected next year.

The group also will develop accountability measures so that departments that get border funds can report how the dollars were used and lawmakers can see the results.

"They're going to have to have some numbers, I think, that are little broader than just the immigration issue," said state Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, a member of the Border and International Affairs Committee, which will evaluate border security efforts ahead of the 2009 legislative session.

McCraw said he is excited to tell legislators about the results of state border security efforts.

"We've got to do a better job of informing them about what we're doing," McCraw said.

Reports from the most recent operation show that officers detained 1,873 people, including eight members of the violent gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13 and three members of the Mexican Mafia.

The operation also netted more than 136,000 pounds of marijuana and 2,300 pounds of cocaine.

Border Patrol chiefs praised the state-led operations and one said the efforts helped produce a 70-percent decrease in illegal activity in his sector since 2005.

That's what the effort is all about, McCraw said, using increased patrols and cooperating among agencies to prevent crime on the border and all over Texas. It's a model he said other states are looking to follow.

"That's the difference," he said. "That's the Texas paradigm."

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