Thread: National Guard troops leaving, Border Patrol filling void

National Guard troops leaving, Border Patrol filling void
By Louie Gilot / El Paso Times
El Paso Times
Article Launched:07/28/2007 03:27:28 PM MDT

The number of National Guard troops helping Border Patrol agents in El Paso and New Mexico will be cut by about half in September, government officials said.
The reduction will leave New Mexico with 300 guardsmen instead of 600 and Texas with 900 instead of about 1,500, officials said. There were no specific figures available for guard members working in El Paso. The guard started leaving in June, a year after the beginning of the border deployment known as Operation Jumpstart.

The Border Patrol academy in Artesia, N.M., has doubled the rate of graduation of new agents to replace the departing soldiers.

"El Paso will hang on to those resources as long as we can with the idea that we will replace these resources with manpower, infrastructure and technology," said Border Patrol spokesman Doug Mosier.

The plan is to add 2,500 new Border Patrol agents nationwide in 2007 and 3,000 in 2008, if the funding is available. That would bring the total number of agents to more than 17,819 by the end of fiscal year 2008.

So far this year, 545 trainee agents have been assigned to the El Paso sector, which covers El Paso and Hudspeth counties and all of New Mexico. There are now 2,126 Border Patrol agents working in the El Paso sector.

Col. Bill Meehan, spokesman for the Texas Army and Air National Guard in Austin, said it was always part of Operation Jumpstart to scale down troops during the second year.

President Bush deployed 6,000 guard members to the U.S.-Mexico border in May 2006 to assist the Border Patrol in a support role for two years -- to do such things as build barriers, monitor surveillance cameras, and maintain roads. In September, they will be only about 3,000, officials said.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., sent a letter to Bush last week expressing concern over the planned reduction.

"I do not believe that there are enough Border Patrol agents on the ground in New Mexico yet to justify a reduction of National Guard personnel by over 50 percent," he wrote.

Activists who had lobbied for a military presence on the border and hoped the two-year term would become permanent, were disappointed by the partial pullout.

"That's yet another broken promise by this government. The commitment was for two years," said Bob Wright, a former member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps who now started his own group, the Patriots' Border Alliance, based in Deming, N.M. "The little bit of effort they put into it worked. It was certainly a start to have our border protected. Just their presence is a deterrent. Pulling them out is irresponsible. Border security is the single most important issue this country faces."

Apprehensions in the El Paso sector have gone down 42 percent in the past year, from 105,095 from Oct. 1, 2005, to June 30, 2006, to 61,387 at the same time this year, Border Patrol officials said.

Despite concerns by immigrants' advocates that soldiers would be trigger-happy on the border, there has not been any incident involving the guard in the El Paso sector. Near Laredo, a three guard members on border duty allegedly ran an immigrant smuggling operation before being arrested earlier this summer.

Immigrants' advocates said they are now worried about the number of rookie Border Patrol agents assigned to the border.

"There is a concern that they rush Border Patrol agents to the border without the training they need. We believe it's better to have well-trained Border Patrol agents to enforce the border," said Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights.

Border Patrol officials said the training at the Border Patrol academy takes 81 days to complete and includes legal instruction, firearms and driving training, defensive tactics, arrest techniques and "intense" Spanish language classes, according to a press release.

The academy graduates two classes of about 35 agents a week.


http://www.elpasotimes.com/breakingnews/ci_6489248

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