Gil Kerlikowske, commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency, recently met with the San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board. Here are edited excerpts of the interview

By San Diego Union-Tribune | 5:45 p.m. Sept. 2, 2015

: There is a lot of political rhetoric out there these days about what’s happening at the border and the rhetoric does not always match the reality. Give us your assessment of the state of control of the border today, particularly San Diego.

A: The nine years that I was police chief in Seattle, no elected official ever said you have to have a crime-free city. They wanted to make sure that you were treating people fairly and that you had the right technology and that you were taking all of the smart approaches to preventing crime and reducing crime. I think we very much try to do the same thing with the border. So we have more people on the border now than ever before. We have more technology on the border and our apprehension numbers so far this year are down about 36 percent total across the southwest border.

Q: What does that 36 percent mean?

A: It’s around 280,00 apprehensions along the Southwest and that’s through this fiscal year which is a significant reduction compared to last year and, compared to the 1970s, a dramatic reduction. When I look at all of those things combined and talk to my friends who are still police chiefs from El Paso or San Diego or anywhere else and you look at the crime rates in those border cities, there are lots of cities in the United States that would like to have a crime rate as low as San Diego or as low as El Paso. You put all of that into context and the border is significantly more secure. And certainly the areas along the border are less dangerous.

Q: It’s more secure, but if it is not as secure as political Washington wants, what would it take to make it more secure?

A: Well, one, nobody can agree. You can agree on numbers, that the numbers are down, but we always run into this. Well, yes your numbers are down and that’s because more people are getting through. You can never win in just a numbers game. You’re certainly not going to secure, whatever a definition of secure means, almost 2000 miles of border from an urban area like San Diego to a desert like Arizona to the Rio Grande in Texas.

Q: The issue of sanctuary cities is back in the news. Definitions of what is a sanctuary city change, it’s different from place to place. In your view is San Diego city or Sheriff’s Department policy in the county are those … do they make us a sanctuary city?

A: Our role particularly on apprehensions is very narrow and it’s either along the border or usually within 25 miles of the border and so apprehensions within cities and communities is very much the role of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. So rather than try to either define or label a particular city and I think the relationship that Customs and Border Protection has with state and local officials, including here, Sheriff Gore and the San Diego Police Department, is very good. I think there also needs to be the understanding that the Secure Communities program which caused a lot of angst among city officials and many other people about what it was supposed to be, how it was actually implemented and what the results turned out to be where none of those were positive. So ending the Secure Communities program and starting the Priority Enforcement program which is very clear and so you don’t have to hold someone after they’re going to be released, but we would appreciate a phone call before you release them if they meet a priority for removal makes a lot of sense. The Priority Enforcement program is a good way to get beyond Secure Communities and move to a pretty common sense way of removing somebody who is here illegally and is also a danger to the community.

Q: What is the status along the Texas border now, particularly with Central Americans, Guatemalans, women and children coming across?

A: The numbers are down by about half from what they were last year, but last year, last summer in particular, was a record number. That’s why two weeks ago in El Paso and then this morning in San Ysidro, we are renewing our campaign that started July 20th in those three Central American countries using a variety of media that says, one, it’s dangerous to try and make that journey and … which we know and which is quite factual, but number two, if you enter the country illegally, particularly any time after January 2014, you will be a priority for removal, and that’s a two-part message in those three Central American countries.

Q: How informed do you think Donald Trump is on immigration?

A: I very much try to just stay away from referring to a particular candidate but what I could tell you and I’ve gone to the border with a number of congressional delegations, if you’ve seen one part of the border with Mexico, you’ve seen one part of the border. If you don’t recognize the difference between that urban environment of San Diego or the desert of Arizona or McAllen with the river and the way it’s laid out you could clearly just think that there’s some simplistic answer to a complex problem. We can all be assured that that’s not the right answer.

Q: Just like law enforcement has been troubled by video cameras, videos showing officers misbehaving., there’s YouTube videos hugely notorious in Mexico showing people having interactions with Border Patrol agents after rocks have been thrown at them. A couple of the videos show people getting killed. Do you have a body camera policy in place and are you worried that there’s still insufficient firmness as to when you can use lethal force when responding to rock attacks?

A: We just finished an experiment with body cameras from Seattle down to the border. There’s room for expansion for the cameras within our vehicles, but the Border Patrol environment is much different from working here in San Diego. So in the experiment we didn’t find a camera that lasted more than 90 days before the sand and grit would cause it to not function anymore. So we’re looking at companies that may be willing to make an adjustment or have an interest in modifying for those types of cameras. But the other part is on the Border Patrol use of force. Our uses of force are down dramatically. Complaints about use of force are also down and we’re in the process of changing the academy curriculum for the Border Patrol. We also have introduced a lot of technology, less than lethal technology from Tasers to pepper ball launchers to other things. The training that’s been done is much closer to real life decision making using a variety of a 360-degree studio where instructors can watch both people in the academy, but also more seasoned or veteran officers enter into what’s almost like a real life situation and then make a decision about using force and if so what type of force. Using voice commands and using available cover to protect yourself. So we’ve seen reductions in both use of force and reductions about the complaints.

Q: Among the population of undocumented immigrants, do you have any hard data on who they are in terms of the number of criminals, people who were criminals in Mexico or elsewhere who had crossed into the United States? What Donald Trump said is, they’re sending us murders and rapists. Do you have any documentation either that it’s true or isn’t true?

A: No, I guess one of the reasons that I’ve never actually spent any time trying to look at it is that whether it’s my 11 trips to McAllen or anywhere else along the border or meeting with the nongovernmental organizations that represent these people who are frankly sitting down in the holding cells, whether it’s in a port of entry or whether it’s somewhere else is that I found the absolutely total vast majority to be people who want the same thing that everybody else wanted when they came to this country from some other country. They were looking for a better life and safety and security and better education for their kids and a better economy and I never had any of the least bit of concern sitting there with 25 people in a holding facility asking them about that. You know we fingerprint everybody and we take biographic data. We take biometric data, but I think what we find is what everyone else wanted when they came here.

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