Congressmen, Border Patrol butt heads over checkpoints

By AMANDA LEE MYERS

PHOENIX -- Two U.S. congressmen who requested an investigation of the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson Sector received a response they never expected.

They had hoped the investigation -- conducted by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General -- would prove Tucson Sector officials were flouting a federal law prohibiting them from using permanent border checkpoints.

What the report concluded, however, is that the Tucson Sector has been hampered by the absence of such checkpoints.

Reps. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., and Harold Rogers, R-Kentucky, requested the investigation in a June letter addressed to Inspector General Richard L. Skinner.

The report, released Thursday, did find the Tucson Sector was sidestepping the federal law. Rather than relocating checkpoints every 14 days as the law stated, agents in the Tucson sector simply closed down a location for about eight hours every 14 days and then reopened it in the same place, the report said.

"This investigation proves the inability of the Customs and Border Protection to respect the will of Congress," Kolbe said in a statement Friday. "The intent of Congress was very clear: Checkpoints should not be permanent installations."

But the real issue, the report said, is the agency's ability to apprehend illegal immigrants and seize drugs being smuggled across the border.

The best way to do that would be to establish permanent checkpoints, said Michael Nicely, chief of the Tucson Sector, the only Border Patrol sector prohibited from having permanent checkpoints.

"A checkpoint is ineffective unless you can man it 24/7," Nicely said. "I don't believe for a moment we can have the success we want to have here in Arizona without the permanent checkpoints."


The Tucson Sector changed its procedures in October after the appropriations committee in the U.S. House of Representatives reworded the law, requiring the Tucson Sector to move its checkpoints every seven days, rather than 14.

Now, the sector opens one of its eight checkpoints for seven days at a time, and then closes it for the next seven. At any given time, an average of four checkpoints are up and running, Nicely said.

The policy is compromising border security, he added.

"The law says we can't set it up in the same place within seven days," Nicely said. "What do I do if I get specific intelligence that terrorists are entering into that corridor? If I follow the language of the law, I can't act on that.

"I don't know how that's good for border security. It's very dangerous."


The inspector general's report recommended that the federal law prohibiting the Tucson Sector from using permanent checkpoints be reconsidered.

"No one has identified a reason that could explain why permanent checkpoints, which Congress has funded elsewhere, cannot operate effectively in the Tucson Sector," the report said.

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Why is there this ridiculous law in the first place? If the Border Patrol says we need to have permanent checkpoints in order for them to best do their jobs, then we better being doing everything we can to insure they have them, and every other tool available, not tying their hands with lame ass regulations like this one. And why the hell would our elected representatives be arguing against the Border Patrol for trying to man checkpoints that are necessary to the halting of illegals and drugs, and essential to possibly stopping terrorists from entering the country illegally? Thank goodness this moron Kolbe is leaving Congress after this term, he is more dangerous to America than some of our worst enemies, and he is supposed to be a Republican. What the hell is the matter with these idiots?