Efforts to secure US borders 'have slowed since 9/11'
Financial Times

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12269124/from/RSS/

By Christopher Swann in Washington
Updated: 4:14 p.m. ET April 11, 2006

The growth in the number of agents patrolling US borders has slowed in the 4½ years since the September 11 terrorist attacks and concerns over illegal immigration override fears of terrorist infiltration in the allocation of border resources, according to a new analysis.

The report, by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (Trac) at Syracuse University and released last week, also found that, although the national commission investigating the 2001 attacks warned of vulnerabilities on the long northern border with Canada, the southern border with Mexico has continued to take priority.

The administration and Congress "have not taken the commission's recommendations to heart", the study said.

"Although there have been modest changes, the analysis indicates that, in the main, the nation's concern about stopping illegal immigrants coming from Mexico has trumped the commission's worry about terrorists slipping into the US from Canada."

Deborah Meyers, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think-tank, said: "The rhetoric from politicians suggests that we are concerned with counter-terrorism on the borders, but the figures reflect that the concern is mostly on undocumented immigrants."

Congress is in the midst of a wrenching debate over immigration reform that has focused mostly on how to deal with the nearly 12m illegal immigrants already in the country, and how to prevent more from entering.

The data gathered by Trac show that the US has poured resources into border security over the past decade, but that the effort has actually slowed since 2001.

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It said the annual growth rate in the number of full-time Border Patrol agents was higher in both the first and second terms of president Bill Clinton than it has been so far under President George W. Bush. Between 1997 and 2001, the second Clinton term, the number of agents increased by 42 per cent to 9,651. In the four years following the attacks, that number has risen by a more modest 15 per cent to 11,106.

Proposals under consideration by Congress would almost double the size of the Border Patrol to 21,000 – making it by far the largest federal law enforcement agency, nearly double the current size of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The report also underscored that most of the US effort was focused on the southern border with Mexico. The 9/11 commission had warned that the border with Canada posed a particular threat, given past examples of terrorists entering the US from Canada and the country's lenient immigration laws.

The Department of Homeland Security denied there was insufficient focus on the border with Canada, saying it had responded to concerns by beefing up northern border enforcement with both personnel and technology.

"Even in terms of patrol officers we have trebled the number facing north since 9/11 to 1,000," said Jarrod Agen, a spokesman. "We have also deployed $122m [€100m, £70m] worth of technology on the northern border, including $60m in radiation portal monitors."

He said that between 2001 and 2004 the Border Patrol apprehended nearly 43,000 individuals illegally trying to enter along the northern border.

But the Trac report said that enormous imbalances remained.

There were 28 times more border patrol agents facing the southern border than the north per mile guarded. Almost 90 per cent of agents were located along the Mexican border, while just 9 per cent were facing Canada, it said.