Thread: Opponents knock Perry’s border security plan

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Opponents knock Perry’s border security plan
BY ELIZABETH PIERSON
The Brownsville Herald

AUSTIN, September 10, 2006 — It’s too much money. Or not enough money. It’s a random, meaningless number. It’s just a politi-cal maneuver.

These are some of the criticisms opponents of Republican Gov. Rick Perry have lodged regarding his request to the Legislature to designate $100 million in the name of border security. The money would go to local law enforcement agencies to fight crime related to illegal immigration and drug smuggling.

Each of the four campaigns said their candidates would, like Perry, continue to send money to border sheriffs under certain cir-cumstances.

“Perry’s proposal, which includes overtime pay, new technology, the Web cam stuff, I think that any future proposals by the Kinky campaign would include some of this,” said Laura Stromberg, spokesman for independent candidate Kinky Friedman.

That’s not to say Friedman likes what the governor is doing with respect to the border. This week, Friedman unveiled his plan to increase the National Guard presence on the Texas border from 1,500 to 10,000 troops at a cost to the state of about $500 million, Stromberg said.

The increase is necessary because Perry and the federal government have neglected the border, Stromberg said.

“Spending about 5 percent of the state surplus on one of the biggest issues facing Texas today, we believe, is very fiscally respon-sible,” Stromberg said. “I don’t believe we would have to spend nearly as much money if the governor hadn’t ignored immigration for the past six years.”

Perry’s campaign contends the governor has allocated more money to border security than any other governor in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001. His Operation Rio Grande project has sent nearly $25 million to local law enforcement agencies along the border since October 2005, money he found by scrounging up a mix of state and federal funds, said campaign spokesman Rob-ert Black.

Now, he wants another $100 million in purely state funds so Operation Rio Grande can continue into the future. The money would help border sheriffs and police pay for overtime, cars and equipment as they deal with fallout from the drug trade and human smuggling. It would also allow for expansion of the program to Dallas, Houston, Austin and other Texas cities, which may need help fighting crime related to holes in border security, Black said.

“We found all the money in the couch cushions, certainly,” Black said. “We have looked high and low throughout the budget to help local law enforcement, and we’ve done a good job at that, but the bottom line is that the Legislature is going to have to come forward to fund this in the future.”

Perry’s opponents are screaming about his timing, saying he has had six years as governor to ask the Legislature for the money but didn’t do so until five months before the Nov. 7 election. The issue arose again last week when Perry mentioned the money in a TV campaign advertisement.

Perry didn’t have to ask the Legislature for the money earlier because he has so far found other state and federal funding sources, Black said.

Mark Sanders, spokesman for independent Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn’s campaign, said the governor’s $100 million plan is a political maneuver that oversimplifies the many problems involving poverty and crime on the border.

Strayhorn has yet to explain her plan for border security, but Sanders said she will unveil it in a border community in the coming weeks. She would help local law enforcement departments pay for fighting crime, but Sanders said he did not know how much money she would dedicate to the issue.

“That’ll come out in her plan,” Sanders said. “Obviously, what she’s said is she’s going to dedicate every resource that the local governments need to deal with the problem on the border.

“The question is not, ‘Is it enough or is it too much?’” Sanders said, referring to Perry’s $100 million plan. “The question is, ‘Why the hell didn’t you do something about it while they were in session?’”

Democratic candidate Chris Bell called the $100 million request “a dollar amount that’s being tossed around for political pur-poses” because it comes from Perry’s campaign and is not based on actual needs of local law enforcement.

“I wouldn’t see myself just proposing an arbitrary number,” Bell said. “I would have a plan. I have a feeling that in terms of the need for local law enforcement it is far less than $100 million.”

Still, Bell said he supports sending money to local sheriffs.

“If the situation is such where a county doesn’t have the resources to deal with a crime problem that they face then, certainly, we need to listen to those pleas and see if the state can help them out,” Bell said. “That’s fair.”

Black said Perry has worked closely with border sheriffs in doling out the money. Operation Rio Grande has decreased crime be-tween 40 and 70 percent in some border communities, and the federal government should look to it as a model upon which to base a federal plan, he said.

But until then, the state must pay, Black said.

“Essentially, the broader idea for the $100 million is to continue Operation Rio Grande and expand on it until the federal govern-ment acts in such a way that they begin fulfilling their duties along the border,” Black said.

So why would a fiscally conservative governor dedicate state money to this federal issue, but not to, say, reimbursing hospitals for 100 percent of the care they give to undocumented immigrants, another federal issue? Black said it’s because security comes first.

“The state has a paramount responsibility to protect its citizens, and the fact is, the world changed after 9/11, and the intelligence community has told our homeland security division that the Texas border is a prime target of terrorists wishing to enter the United States,” Black said.

Talking about border security has scored big points with Perry’s conservative base, said Jerry Polinard, chairman of the political science department at the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg.

The $100 million proposal is largely a symbolic number to please those voters, he said.

“The point is he’s advocating more money,” Polinard said. “It would have been seen like a cheap date to say, ‘I’m going to advo-cate $20 million or $25 million this summer.”

“I’m not suggesting he doesn’t have a commitment to it, I’m just saying he could have done it in the special session, so this is a po-litical move, not a policy move,” Polinard said.

Perry and other candidates’ ideas about border security are based on the false idea that the border with Mexico can somehow be secured under current immigration law, said James Werner, the Libertarian candidate for governor.

“One hundred million dollars, great, well, that’s a hundred million less that you and I have in our pockets, and it will not make one iota of difference in the number of illegal immigrants who cross our borders, or the amount of illegal drugs that cross our borders,” Werner said. “And so it’s just a feel-good measure that won’t help the underlying problems.”

Werner supports allowing anyone into the country to work, as long as he or she is not a criminal.

Until federal law is changed, he, too, would send money to border sheriffs to fight crime in some circumstances, he said.

“I’m not saying that I don’t want to assess any legitimate law enforcement requests and provide economic assistance as appropri-ate,” Werner said. “I’m just saying that a sort of one-size-fits-all solution of sending huge amounts of money to the border just be-cause it’s a trendy issue should not go unexamined.”

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“One hundred million dollars, great, well, that’s a hundred million less that you and I have in our pockets, and it will not make one iota of difference in the number of illegal immigrants who cross our borders, or the amount of illegal drugs that cross our borders,” Werner said. “And so it’s just a feel-good measure that won’t help the underlying problems.”

Why wouldn't a hundred millon dollars help seal Texas' border? I'm not sure Perry really wants to do much, however. Many of the elite republicans just give lip service to the illegal immigration issue.

I saw Friedman on Fox the other day. He appeared quite serious about deploying the guard on the border. If I lived in Texas I'd vote for him.

Perry is too late! Don't buy into this lame last minute save the election scam. Perry has had 6 years of doing nothing. We need a more efficient governor in Texas.

Perry is all for the NAFTA Super Highway and he needs to stay in office to punch it through. He is refusing to publicly release the documents that have been ordered by a court. He is hiding something. We need him out of office.

Dixie