Thread: Response to "Arrests on Southern Border Drop"

Published: May 25,2009

Op-Ed Contributor
Response to "Arrests on Southern Border Drop"
By Michael Cutler


The article I have attached below appeared in the Washington Post on May 21 and is important for a number of reasons. First of all the number of arrests on the border may indicate that the number of illegal aliens who are attempting to run our nation's borders has declined.

I use the term "may" because the Border Patrol only arrests a percentage of the total number of illegal aliens who attempt to circumvent the inspections process by entering our country without inspection. The question is whether or not the Border Patrol is doing as diligent a job of apprehending the illegal aliens seeking to enter our country illegally.

I raise this question, not out of any disrespect for the valiant Border Patrol agents who stand watch on our nation's borders 24/7 but rather because I am of the belief that after the outrageous prosecution of Border Patrol Agents Ramos and Compean who were arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned for doing their jobs, you have to wonder how eager agents would be to place themselves in jeopardy- not only in terms of facing down heavily armed smugglers but also from the government that employs the?

Furthermore, think of how demoralizing it must be for the agents to listen to statements made by House Speaker Nancy "The CIA Lied To Me" Pelosi, when she actually stated that it was "Un-American" to arrest illegal aliens. This is further exacerbated by Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano who is ordering ICE agents to only seek to penalize employers who intentionally hire illegal aliens while doing virtually nothing to punish the illegal aliens.

Incidentally, a reduction in the number of illegal aliens running our nation's borders is hardly the same thing as declaring that the border is secured. Even if the number of illegal entrants is reduced, thousands of illegal aliens are still entering our country each week. If, as the report indicates, the numbers may be down because there are far fewer illegal aliens running our borders because of the economic situation, then it raises the real possibility that if there was an incentive for illegal aliens to run our borders, then the Border Patrol would not be able to stop the flood of humanity from crossing our border illegally.

Now, Senator Chuck Schumer is apparently seizing the opportunity to declare our border to be secure so that his pet project that would accord millions of illegal alien's lawful immigration status and a pathway to United States citizenship. As usual, Chuck Schumer is wrong and exemplifies what is wrong with Washington and what has been wrong with the immigration system for decades. Schumer is focused on a strategy that would flood the United States with millions of new voters who would, presumably, be predisposed to vote for parties put up by the Democratic Party.

As I have often stated, I have been a registered Democrat for as long as I have been voting. However, I do not want any party to become a predominant force in our country. Our government needs to have the give and take of political debate and competing perspectives and ideologies. When companies enter into agreements to engage in price fixing and other such agreements that run contrary to our system of capitalism, the executives of those companies face (or used to face) prosecution for anti-trust violations.

Our nation and our successes can be traced to competition. Competition is important in government as well as in the corporate world. Of course for the politicians, it is all about winning and seizing power. So, that being said, Schumer and his cohorts are focused on any strategy that will give them the most control over Congress and the political process. Even, apparently, if it endangers our system of government and the safety of our citizens and the security of our nation.

So Senator Schumer concocts this argument that the border is now secure and so, in his judgment, it is now time to provide millions of illegal aliens with the keys to the kingdom! As I have noted on so many previous occasions, it is important to remember that these illegal aliens entered our country in violation of law. We know nothing about them. We don't know their true nationalities; we don't know their true names or dates of birth.

Therefore, we do not know and probably won't ever know if they have criminal histories in any other country. We don't know and have no way of knowing if they are fugitives in any other country. We also have no way of knowing if they are affiliated with any criminal or terrorist organization. We are also clueless about their intentions. What we do know is that they are here illegally and that Senator Schumer wants to provide them with the highest honor a nation may bestow upon a foreign national: citizenship!

Some of the plans for a wide-ranging and sweeping amnesty program for millions of illegal aliens require that the aliens in question demonstrate that they have lived illegally in our country for a minimum period of time. Consider how insane and unworkable this requirement is. We are dealing with illegal aliens who, most likely, have worked under various assumed identities.

They may have rented an apartment under an assumed identity or simply sub-letted a room in an apartment or simply paid someone to let them sleep on a bare, filthy mattress that was located on the bare floor of a room in a tenement building. How could our bureaucrats possibly figure out how long that person was in the United States? Remember, there would be no way of doing field investigations, only to run a name that an alien provides that he (she) claims relates to him and a set of fingerprints.

Under such a system, someone whose name was on a terror watch list who had never been fingerprinted previously in this country could provide a false name and because the name he provides would come up "no record" and his fingerprints would come up "no record" would be almost immediately provided with a temporary identity document he could use to obtain a driver's license, a Social Security card and even a library card. He could open bank accounts, get credit cards, buy a car and get a job anywhere he wanted.

Such a person could enter the United States and, within a couple of days, purchase all sorts of bogus receipts that would satisfy the overworked adjudicators at USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) that he was here for as many years as would be needed to qualify for amnesty. The problem is that no one is talking about the huge problem that immigration benefit fraud poses to any sort of amnesty. Right now fraud runs rampantly through the immigration benefits program and this overburdened system would be the system that would be given the responsibility of adjudicating tens of millions of applications for amnesty!

Incidentally, what do you this sort of incentive would do to the arrest statistics on the border when millions of aliens realize that they can make a "run for it" and charge the border? At present, USCIS processes more than 6 million applications for all sorts of benefits each year. They have fewer than 700 investigators to conduct investigations to try to create a semblance of integrity to that broken system. Imagine now that they will have to process 3 times as many applications.

Chaos would not adequately describe what would happen! Here is another thought for you. When we drive our cars we are familiar with the concept of speed limits. This is done to help improve safety. If a motorist drives too quickly he may quickly find that situations arise too quickly for him to respond. On roads with extreme curves the speed limits are generally further reduced to make certain that the drivers don't drive off the road.

I recall seeing signs that said that "speed kills." Nearly 50 years ago a young attorney by the name of Ralph Nader wrote a book about the Chevrolet Corvair. He was concerned about that car because of safety issues. The title of his book was "Unsafe at Any Speed." That title could just as easily apply to USCIS today. The adjudications process cannot be done to rapidly without compromising safety also.

The safety of our nation and our citizens. Yet Chuck Schumer and company apparently don't care about safety, only votes! If you read the 911 Commission Reports you will see that it was determined that the terrorists used immigration fraud and visa fraud in order to enter our county and then embed themselves in our country to hide in plain sight among us. It is also important to remember that an estimated 40% of the illegal aliens in the United States did not run our nation's borders but rather entered through ports of entry and then, in one way or another, violated the terms of their admission into the United States.

The entry of these aliens into the United States has absolutely nothing to do with the Border Patrol. At present there are only a few thousand ICE special agents who are charged with enforcing the immigration laws for the interior of the United States. It is estimated that there fewer than 6,000 ICE agents for the entire country and they are also responsible for enforcing Customs laws.

That means that there are probably no more than 4,000 ICE agents who are dedicated to enforcing the immigration laws for the entire United States of America. To put this in perspective, the NYPD has about 37,000 police officers to enforce the laws for the City of New York. That "small army" of police officers is widely accepted as the principle reason that New York has the lowest crime rate of any large city in the United States.

ICE has fielded roughly 10% the number of ICE agents for the entire country as there are police officers for New York City! Until and unless Schumer and those who advocate for Comprehensive Immigration Reform are willing to address the issue of the major inadequacies of the hobbled USCIS, any bill to furnish illegal aliens with amnesty will create a national security nightmare of unprecedented proportions. It is of immeasurable importance that you contact your elected representatives and make your concerns known.

The GAO has issued numerous reports on various aspects of immigration benefit fraud and other failings of the immigration system.

You can see a list of these reports here.


It is time for our nation who will put the needs of our nation and the futures of our citizens ahead of their own selfish goals and agendas. I urge you to forward that link to both of your senators and to the member of Congress who represents you and your family. We the People must make our voices heard! Right now the administration and members of Congress are moving forward with their plans to create an amnesty program for millions of illegal aliens currently living in our country in violation of law and we know absolutely nothing about them.

The open border advocates are providing hefty campaign contributions for the politicians and making their voices heard. They are determined to foist Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) on this country and our citizens. If they succeed, there will be no way to undo the damage or reverse the process. Many people complain that the politicians don't listen to us. The point is that few Americans are even trying to be heard. The apathy and silence of the vast majority of Americans must end! I do not know of anyone who would walk into a restaurant and tell the waiter or waitress to serve him whatever the waiter thought he should eat.

We are all very specific about the food we want to eat and how we want it prepared. We need to be no less specific where our government is concerned. As members of a democracy We the People have more than the right to speak out, we have the obligation to speak out! This is not a Conservative issue nor is it a Liberal issue, this is an AMERICAN issue! You are either part of the solution or you are a part of the problem! Democracy is not a spectator sport! Lead, follow or get out of the way!

Arrests on Southern Border Drop 27% Decline Marks Fewest Seizures by Agents since 1976
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03644.html

The number of arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border has dropped 27 percent this year, a decline that could put the figure at its lowest level since the early 1970s, federal officials said yesterday. The decline accelerates a three-year-old trend that experts attribute to the economic downturn, with stronger U.S. immigration enforcement measures also playing a role.

U.S. Border Patrol Chief David V. Aguilar released the data to the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, refugees and border security, noting that the number of Border Patrol agents has more than doubled from 9,000 in 2001 to a projected 20,000 by September. The government also has completed 626 miles of fencing and vehicle barriers.

It plans 661 miles of barriers on the 2,000-mile frontier. "By several measures, the border is far more secure than it has ever been and, with our help, will soon be even more secure," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), chairman of the panel, which held the first of four hearings scheduled to take place before the August recess.

Aides said the hearings are meant to build a case for overhauling immigration laws. President Obama has invited advocates to hammer out a legislative approach and has set a June 8 meeting at the White House for a small, bipartisan group of Senate and House leaders, a spokesman said yesterday, "with the hope of beginning the debate in earnest later this year."

The committee's senior Republican, Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), noted that the Border Patrol made 723,000 arrests last fiscal year. That is "still a lot," he said. "That is not a lawful border. . . . We're not there yet."

Arrest figures only partially measure illegal immigration because authorities do not know how many immigrants evade capture and because one person can be arrested many times. But the trend is corroborated by declining rates of remittances sent by immigrants to their native countries and by Mexican census data. More than 11 million illegal immigrants live in the United States, and experts do not see evidence that many are leaving. The Border Patrol reported 354,959 arrests from October 2008 to May, down from 486,735 over that period a year ago.

About 97 percent of the arrests were on the southern border. The figure for fiscal 2008 is less than half the 1.7 million in 2000 - the peak - and is the lowest since 1976, the Department of Homeland Security said. Spending on U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the patrol's parent agency, has climbed 82 percent since 2004, from about $6 billion to about $11 billion. Douglas S. Massey, a professor at Princeton University, said the crackdown has increased the average cost of border crossings from $600 in the early 1990s to $2,200. But he noted that the cost of each arrest has also risen. The number of fatalities also has climbed as migrants seek more remote areas to avoid capture.

Illegal immigrants rest in a holding cell at a U.S. Border Patrol station after being caught in August crossing from Mexico near Laredo, Tex. The Border Patrol reported 354,959 arrests from October 2008 to May, down from 486,735 over that period a year ago. About 97 percent of the arrests were along the border with Mexico.

© 2009 The Washington Post Company

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I want to sign up for the US border patrol - are they hiring? Is there a website?

The porous southern border is a thorn in the side of homeland security - I hope it doesnt reach the day where we will have to hold it down with a ten mile DMZ - Korean style

Added to Homepage
http://www.alipac.us/article-4243--0-0.html

Originally Posted by Gringo_in_Miami

I want to sign up for the US border patrol - are they hiring? Is there a website?

The porous southern border is a thorn in the side of homeland security - I hope it doesnt reach the day where we will have to hold it down with a ten mile DMZ - Korean style

The Border Patrol is hiring! Do a search for US customs and Border Protection. You shouldn't have any problem finding them.
Good luck to you.