By David North, February 22, 2016

As a recovering governmental press secretary (Department of the Interior 1997-99), I often look at the press releases produced by Customs and Border Protection — the DHS agency that includes the Border Patrol and the immigration inspectors at the ports of entry.

Much, if not most, of its day-to-day work involves migration control and the apprehension of illegal aliens — but you would never know it from its press releases. Here are the headlines of the agency's three most recent releases as of this writing:

"CBP at JFK Seizes Counterfeit Hoverboards with Potentially Dangerous Batteries"

"Douglas CBP Officers Seize $178K in Marijuana"

"Nogales CBP Officers Seize $274K in Cocaine"

Douglas and Nogales are ports of entry in Arizona. Pressies love action verbs like "seize", which is used in all three of the release headlines.

The hoverboard incident was one of many noted in CBP releases, and the news of drug seizures seems to account for a large majority of these press items. If you read the whole set of them you will find that there are many different ways to try to smuggle drugs into the country, such as hiding them in the panels of trucks, putting them in tightly sealed bags within gas tanks or inside spare tires, and tucking them into clothing. If is often the drug-sniffing dogs that get the credit for the seizure.

Sometimes when an illegal alien who has also committed a violent crime is located CBP writes about it, but rarely the significant work it does in apprehending and/or turning back illegal aliens at the border.

From my experience I know that when a government agency releases a news item, it is something that the political leadership wants discussed. So it is clear that the DHS leadership is not interested in the detection of illegal immigration — otherwise its pressies would tell us about it.

http://cis.org/north/cbp-pressies-wo...illegal-aliens