Border Patrol heads north in search of 6,000 agents
Thursday, December 13, 2007 3:22 AM
By Mark Ferenchik

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Top News StoriesThe U.S. Border Patrol is looking for you -- to work for them.

The Border Patrol will be recruiting Saturday at the Hyatt Regency Downtown as part of a national effort to hire 6,000 agents by the end of next year.

"Border security affects everybody," said Lloyd Easterling, a supervisory agent based in Washington, D.C. "This is an opportunity for us to go out and find people interested in law-enforcement work."

But a local Latino leader thinks the agency is here because it wants to recruit Midwesterners who are frightened by immigration and eager to halt Latinos at the U.S.-Mexican border.

The Latino community here views itself as isolated from the rest of the community, said Joseph L. Mas, chairman of the Ohio Hispanic Coalition.

"They feel they're a community under siege," he said.

Recruitment manager Joe Arata said Mas' comment on why the Border Patrol is recruiting here is "absolutely incorrect."

He said his team recruits in areas far from the borders to reach people interested in law enforcement who might not have considered the Border Patrol.

And, he added, "Anybody in the country can apply online."

Latinos who are U.S. citizens are encouraged to apply along with everyone else, he said.

Columbus is just one stop on the Border Patrol's recruiting itinerary. A job fair two weeks ago in Memphis, Tenn., drew 300 people, Arata said. In addition to Columbus, the patrol will be in Charleston, S.C., on Saturday.

Next month, job fairs are planned in Hattiesburg and Jackson, Miss.; St. Louis; and Richmond, Va., as well as Corpus Christi, Texas, which is about 160 miles from Mexico.

Starting pay is about $40,000, which can rise to more than $70,000 after three years with overtime or promotions, Easterling said.

The patrol has about 15,000 agents but lost almost 10 percent this year to retirements and resignations, he said.

One agent who has stuck it out is 39-year-old Greg Lambert, a former Powell resident who patrols the desert east of Yuma, Ariz., as a Border Patrol supervisor.

"Occasionally, we can get into situations that are fairly dangerous," said Lambert, a 1986 graduate of Olentangy High School. Lambert has been with the Border Patrol nine years and usually works solo, calling in backup when he needs to.

Easterling said the agency reported 987 assaults against agents for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

Lambert said he was part of the Marine vanguard that entered Iraq during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, one of the first to breach the Iraq-Kuwait border. Now, he's patrolling a border to try to keep others from getting in.

"It's a logical fit," he said.

Recruits go through 95 days of training that includes handling firearms, learning immigration laws and tracking people, Easterling said.

Everyone is required to learn Spanish, Arata said.

Once trained, the agents are sent to California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas and assigned to rural areas along the border, much of it rugged desert.

Mas said the Border Patrol is seen by the Latino community as the "epitome of intolerance" and an organization whose goal is to send back as many people as it can catch with no concern for civil rights.

Baldemar Velasquez thinks that beefing up border security is a waste of money.

"It's one of those harebrained strategies that is really like treating the symptoms and not really getting to the heart of the disease," said Velasquez, president of the Toledo-based Farm Labor Organizing Committee, a union representing 12,000 farmworkers in six states, including Ohio.

Mexicans come to this country because there are no opportunities back home, Velasquez said. Free-trade agreements have sent commodity prices plunging in Mexico, where American farmers have dumped tons of corn.

"The Mexican market can't compete," he said.

Velasquez has proposed a visa program that would allow workers to cross the border to find work.

"To really control the border, you can't throw money and people at it," he said.

The U.S. Border Patrol job fair will run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday in the Union Room of the Hyatt Regency, 350 N. High St. Prospective recruits must be U.S. citizens who are 18 to 39 years old with valid driver's licenses and a year's worth of job experience. No high-school diploma is required, Arata said. They also must pass a criminal-background check and take tests, including one to judge their ability to learn a foreign language if they don't speak Spanish. Information and applications are available online at www.cbp.gov.

mferenchik@dispatch.com

Copyright © 2007, The Columbus Dispatchhttp://www.dispatch.com/live/co ... ml?sid=101