Nov. 1, 2007, 12:36AM
Fewer being caught along border
But does decline really mean more illegal immigrants kept from coming?
By JAMES PINKERTON
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

Apprehensions of illegal immigrants along the Southwest border have dropped 20 percent this past fiscal year, although experts disagree whether the downturn means fewer immigrants are slipping across the U.S. border.

Some credit stepped-up enforcement along the border for the dramatic decline, while others say a continued slump in the U.S. housing market could have reduced jobs that lure immigrants into the country.

Meanwhile, law enforcement officials say a tightened border is forcing immigrants to increasingly turn to organized human trafficking rings overseen by powerful Mexican drug cartels.

There were 858,638 apprehensions on the Southwest border during the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, according to preliminary figures provided by a senior U.S. Border Patrol source who did not want to be identified. In fiscal 2006, agents apprehended 1,071,972 people on the Southwest border.

''That's impressive," said Doris Meissner, former head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. ''But it's always hard to know what the reasons are — it's usually a combination."

The official figures are expected to be released today, said assistant Border Patrol chief Ramon Rivera. He did say, however, that the apprehension statistics will show a 20 percent decrease, adding that a number of factors contribute to the decline.

''It's a combination of things — technology, increased manpower, the infrastructure improvements, the assistance from the National Guard," he said. ''It's all working together. Everyone is contributing a little bit."

The Border Patrol has hired thousands of new agents in the past year, while the government has added detention space to house immigrants detained on the border while increasing budgets for security operations. However, the head of the border agents' union said apprehension numbers don't reflect the whole picture.

''There's no hard evidence the overall traffic has decreased," said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council.

Agents estimate that, for every illegal immigrant caught, two or three are getting through, Bonner added.

''You don't know how successful the Border Patrol is," he said. ''They've caught X number of people, but you don't know how many crossed the border, and that's the most important statistic."

Turning to trafficking rings

Along the border in Arizona, the hottest corridor for illegal entry along the U.S.-Mexico boundary, officials say tightened enforcement has discouraged many from attempting to cross on their own. And that has led to potentially dangerous consequences for many immigrants.

Undocumented immigrants increasingly are turning to human trafficking rings and paying up to $6,000 apiece to be smuggled into the country, said Special Agent Alonzo Pena, who directs U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Arizona.

''It's much harder than it ever was before, and some of the people who have handled their own situation are now having to rely on organized smuggling groups," Pena said. ''The more difficult we make it to cross the border, the more they're going to rely on people who want to exploit that to make a profit, and that creates a market."

The ICE official said the powerful Gulf and Sinaloa drug cartels control the main trafficking routes along the Texas and Arizona borders, and charge human smugglers for transporting clients through their turf.

''If they can make a buck by charging these organizations that smuggle aliens, they're going to do that," Pena said.

Violence has increased on the U.S. side of the border as agents encounter more stash houses, including immigrants being held while additional smuggling fees are being extorted from their families, Pena said.

Moving around

Critics say smugglers respond to Border Patrol enforcement operations by moving to less-watched border areas. Bonner, a senior patrol agent in San Diego, said apprehensions are increasing in his sector while zero-tolerance operations in Texas and Arizona — where all illegal immigrants caught entering unlawfully are prosecuted, jailed and deported — have produced dramatic reductions.

''So while they're claiming success on one part of the border ... it shifts around," he said.

Meissner, the former immigration chief, notes that the flow of immigrants ''is about jobs" and noted a downturn in the housing market has affected one of the employment engines of immigration.

Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform in Washington, which favors tighter immigration controls, said significant reductions in illegal immigration will not occur until jobsite enforcement increases.

In August, a federal court blocked a plan by the Department of Homeland Security that would have required employers to fire workers whose employment documents did not match Social Security records.

''The question is, can you really expect apprehensions to fall unless employers are getting hammered really hard, right in the teeth?" Stein said.

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