New agents, priorities straining Border Patrol
Jeremy Roebuck
May 6, 2007 - 2:28PM


EDINBURG — Felipe Lopez left the University of Texas-Pan American on Saturday confident he’d passed the test.

This exam would never show up on any college transcript, yet the 24-year-old Brownsville resident felt his future hinged on the final grade.

“This is the first step to becoming a Border Patrol agent,” he said. “When you’ve dreamed of working in law enforcement your whole life, you have to take that seriously.”

Lopez, and hundreds of other hopeful applicants, came to the university Saturday hoping to join an organization working under a new national prominence in the Bush administration.

Now focused on goals such as fighting terrorism and combating drug and human smugglers, the Border Patrol has found need for thousands of new agents.

But those that make it through subsequent rounds of physical testing, interviews and the rigorous Border Patrol academy in Artesia, N.M., could find they are still unprepared to work along the nation’s frontier, veteran agents fear.

What’s worse, these agents fear the recruits may be joining an organization unprepared to work with them.Long-time veterans report a growing frustration with the way federal leadership has handled the screening and training of recruits. The problems, they say, indicate a larger dissatisfaction with the influence national politics has had on the agency’s top leaders.

Last month, the National Border Patrol Council issued a no-confidence vote against Chief David V. Aguilar at a meeting in Corpus Christi. The union, which represents the organization’s rank-and-file agents, cited dissatisfaction over “misguided policies and politics.”

“Anyone who tells you that our border is secure is either terribly misinformed or lying,” union President T.J. Bonner said. “The current leadership is so detached from what’s going on on the ground that they will say anything they are told from above.”

For new recruits, like Lopez, this ongoing debate may determine the future of their careers — and more importantly, the security of our nation’s frontier.

NEW RECRUITS
Last year, President Bush announced a major expansion of the agency, calling on Congress to appropriate funds for 6,000 new agents by 2008.

So far, the agency has filled about 2,000 of the new positions, said Xavier Rios, a Washington-based spokesman for the agency. Among them are more than 160 new recruits hired in the Rio Grande Valley sector since May 2006.

“As the times change, we need to change with the times,” he said. “We’ve had to shift our hiring to address the new security threats facing our nation.”

But with 3,000 open jobs still remaining, former Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Joe Garza worries that too many new agents could be pushed into the agency at once.

“The (Border Patrol) has been historically understaffed and under-budgeted,” said Garza, who is now Palmhurst’s city manager. “It’s not enough to just hire someone and put them on the river.”

Union leaders remain concerned that hiring pressures will continue to force the Border Patrol to relax its standards and slash its training time.

Since announcing the latest hiring drive, the agency has pushed back the age limit on new hires from 37 to 40 and cut training time at its academy from 19 weeks to 17.

While, in years past, recruits fresh from the academy were often paired with veteran agents for one-on-one mentoring, Bonner has seen elder agents responsible for as many as 12 new hires in some sectors.

He fears that relaxing those standards could result in problems for the Border Patrol’s new agents — many of whom have no prior law enforcement experience or are straight out of college.

Agency representatives in Washington deny that the changes to the training and hiring process are leaving agents unprepared for the realities of field work.

The shortened training period came as a result of redundancies eliminated from the curriculum, Rios said. The growing recruit-to-agent ratio stems from new structuring of on-the-job training.

The agency has also recently lengthened the period of on-the-job training from one year to two for all new recruits.

“All new hires are basically placed in a two-year internship,” Rios said. “They still are working in the field, but they’re constantly mentored and evaluated by journeymen agents.”

CHANGING OF THE GUARD
Rising attrition rates across the agency have dropped added pressure on recruiters to not only maintain current staffing levels but also meet federally-mandated hiring goals, Bonner said.

Despite hiring 160 new agents since May 2006, the total number of agents in the Rio Grande Valley sector still hover around 1,400, according to local spokesman Oscar Saldaña.

Recruiters have signed up hundreds of interested candidates at job fairs across the Valley, but only a few have made it through the rigorous screening and training process.

Of every 25 recruits sent to the academy, only 15 will graduate and go on to become agents, former sector chief Garza estimates.

In addition to preparing these entry-level trainees, the agency has also found itself with several high-level vacancies.

This year alone, six sector chiefs agency-wide have announced plans to retire, including the Rio Grande Valley sector’s most recent chief, Lynne Underdown, who stepped down April 30.

Of those, four will leave high-profile positions in regions along the U.S.-Mexico border. All but two are leaving before the federally mandated retirement age of 57.

Although none have publicly cited frustration with changes in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as a reason for their departure, Bonner finds their timing suspicious.
Unrest at the bottom of the agency has spread to its top field agents, he said.

“We’re seeing a lot of senior management throwing up their hands in frustration,” he said. “They really can’t say or do anything about it except fill out their retirement papers.”

THE NEXT GENERATION
Still, Washington-based Rios maintains that the increased presence along the border has already produced results for his agency.

Since President Bush ordered 6,000 National Guard troops to assist the Border Patrol last year, the agency has consistently reported a decrease in illegal immigrants detained and a higher rate of drug seizures.

Both can be attributed to the increased personnel, he said.

Results like these are what prompted 24-year-old Lopez to sign up.

“It’s mainly just the idea of working to preserve homeland security,” he said. “I like the idea of battling the evil forces trying to get into our country.”

With hundreds of others like him, former sector chief Garza believes the agency will overcome these recent personnel changes and emerge better-equipped to fulfill its mission over time.

“The Border Patrol is a big organization,” Garza said. “And there’s always an understudy waiting to take any place.”

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