Napolitano to make National Guard announcement soon

by Erin Kelly -
Apr. 20, 2010 02:12 PM
Republic Washington Bureau .

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will announce "in the near future" whether or not she will send National Guard troops to help secure the Southwest border, the head of Customs and Border Protection told a key Senate panel Tuesday.

"The National Guard is one option that's under consideration," CBP Commissioner Alan Bersin told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He was responding to a question from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who serves on the panel.

Bersin's comments came the day after McCain and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., announced a 10-point border security plan calling for the immediate deployment of 3,000 National Guard troops to the Arizona-Mexico border in response to continued violence by drug cartels in Mexico and increased crime reported by local sheriffs in Arizona border communities.

The plan by McCain and Kyl calls for the troops to remain until the governor of Arizona certifies that the federal government has achieved control of the border. At the same time, the senators are calling for the federal government to permanently add 3,000 border patrol agents to the Arizona-Mexico border by 2015.

The Arizona senators won support Tuesday from committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., who told Bersin the Obama administration should grant their request for National Guard troops. "This is a homeland security problem," Lieberman said. "I don't want to come back a year from now and hear from witnesses who I trust that things have gotten worse."

While saying that Napolitano has not ruled out deploying the National Guard, Bersin touted other actions that his agency has already taken.

At the end of fiscal year 2009, the number of border patrol agents had grown to 20,119, Bersin said. As of this month, the government had built 646 miles of fence along the Southwest border, with the remaining 10 miles scheduled to be completed this year, he said.

The agency also has purchased and deployed 38 mobile surveillance systems to provide radar and camera coverage along the Southwest border, Bersin said.

"During the first six months of fiscal year 2010, we seized nearly half a million pounds of drugs and encountered more than 113,000 inadmissible aliens at our ports of entry," Bersin said. "We also seized over 1.3 million pounds of drugs, apprehended more than 245,000 (aliens) and seized more than $8 million in currency between our ports of entry. These numbers demonstrate the effectiveness of our layered approach to security, comprised of a balance of tactical infrastructure, technology and personnel at our borders."

Bersin said the level of violence caused by Mexican drug cartels in the United States simply does not compare to what's happening south of the border, where an estimated 22,000 Mexicans have been killed.

"That's not to say we aren't seeing troubling signs," Bersin said.

Among them: the slaying last month of Arizona rancher Rob Kretz on his land near the border in Cochise County. The county's sheriff, Larry Dever, told senators that he suspects that Kretz may have been killed by a scout for Mexican drug smugglers. He said scouts climb to high elevations and radio the location of border patrol agents to the smugglers.

Dever said he also is alarmed by an increase in the number of home-invasion robberies in which armed Mexican criminals, heading home after smuggling drugs or people into the United States, break into houses and rob people of their cash and jewelry.

Burglaries are also on the rise, Dever said, with one Cochise County family being hit 18 times. "I've heard a lot of numbers here today, but all of them added up to a big fat zero for Rob Kretz and for the residents of southeast Arizona," Dever said.

Unlike the past, when immigrants or would-be drug smugglers would sneak across the border on their own and flee when confronted by authorities, they are now being led by "ruthless people prepared to fight," Dever said.

"Today, everything is much more organized and dangerous," he said.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... worse.html