Thread: TX: A beefier border operation

A beefier border operation

Web Posted: 08/11/2007 11:16 PM CDT

Todd Bensman
Express-News

AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry's Office of Homeland Security is planning an intensified, nonstop border enforcement program that will tap the $110 million that state lawmakers approved in the spring for border security.
The operation calls for two years of continuous patrols involving law enforcement agencies along the Texas border with Mexico, according to planning documents reviewed by the San Antonio Express-News.

Larger questions remain unanswered regarding whether success of the operations can be accurately gauged, as well as whether small local law enforcement departments along the border will withstand the prolonged demands on limited personnel.

Planning calls for sustained patrol operations that will be coordinated among dozens of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, extend west into five New Mexico border counties and include more intensive U.S. Coast Guard patrols along the Texas Gulf Coast ranging as far north as Corpus Christi.

The program, known internally at the moment as "Operation Border Star," is not a new concept. It builds on the shorter-term coordinated air, land and sea patrol operations arranged by Perry's homeland security department since the spring of 2006, sporting names such as Operation Wrangler and Operation Rio Grande.

But Steve McCraw, the governor's appointee overseeing the department, said the new operations will bear important differences from past underfunded ones, made possible by the infusion of tens of millions of dollars the state Legislature approved earlier this year.

About $57 million of the appropriation would be used, in large part, to pay overtime for dozens of border region sheriffs and police departments.

"It's the same concept (as previous operations), but now that the Legislature has funded this, the magnitude, scope and tempo is going to increase," McCraw said. "What we didn't have before was the funding to be able to sustain these past three-week and four-week intervals. When we get started with this one we won't be slowing down."

Is it working?


Both houses of the Legislature overwhelmingly approved Perry's homeland security budget request in May, but only after adding provisions that acknowledged nagging questions about past surge operations, chiefly whether they worked.
One provision, for instance, requires McCraw's office to come up with an index of measurements that can empirically demonstrate that intensive patrolling can stop the flows of illegal traffic from Mexico.

The governor and McCraw have claimed success from past operations by pointing to double-digit reductions in criminal activity and apprehensions of undocumented entrants in border counties. But those measures have been challenged as unscientific.

McCraw said the office is working on the means to collect data such as crime reports, apprehension numbers and fluctuations in the street cost of drugs. A panel to be appointed in the coming weeks by the governor will oversee progress and recommend any changes in how the state tax money is being spent.

"We need to be judged, quite frankly, and we will be," McCraw said.

Republican state Sen. John Carona, who sits on the transportation and homeland security committee, counts himself among those who question whether past short-term enforcement programs have yielded any lasting impact.

He agrees with McCraw that a long-term, sustained program all along the border is needed to supplement federal deployments of U.S. Border Patrol and electronic surveillance systems. However, he questions whether the money actually will sustain the one now on the drawing boards long enough.

"A hundred million dollars? I don't know what is enough," Carona said. "Those kinds of operations are very, very expensive. We need to be careful how we spend it."

McCraw said the objectives of the new enforcement program are straightforward: an "overwhelming presence" of law enforcement officers will deter those who smuggle drugs and people, including potential terrorists.

Since 9-11, more than 5,700 undocumented immigrants from more than 40 countries deemed national security threats have been caught trying to cross U.S. borders, many using smuggling organizations, an Express-News series published in May found.

"The same thing that generates crime also generates the national security threat," McCraw said. "It's the organized smuggling activities related to human trafficking that presents the national security threat."

McCraw would not say when the operations will begin, other than "soon." He and his team have been meeting with federal agency heads, obtaining commitments to participate and disclosing plans for the new program. The appropriations law signed in June by Perry at a San Antonio ceremony makes the money available to police and sheriffs departments starting next month.

The enforcement program envisions integrating the U.S. Customs and Border Protection patrol, National Guard, the Coast Guard, Texas Department of Public Safety aircraft, state parks and wildlife officers, sheriffs' deputies, and police to achieve a total "domination" of the border at pre-planned times and places, planning documents say.

Word of the plans, however, did not meet universal approval.

Some sheriffs' departments eye it with some dread, complaining that overtime demands of previous state programs over the past 18 months have exhausted their deputies and that the appropriation law should have supplied funds to hire added staff instead. Legislators rejected efforts to provide money for new hires during a contentious debate over the spending bill earlier this year.

"When it comes to this additional overtime we've got to make sure we're not putting an officer out there who can't perform because they're so fatigued," said Rick Glancey, a spokesman for the El Paso Sheriff's Department and a former head of the Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition. "Our day job is our priority."

The law provides a solution to the concern: money that departments can use to hire former employees or deputies from departments away from the border on a per diem basis when hands are short. Glancey said his department, for liability reasons, would shy away from hiring outsiders unfamiliar with department culture and procedures but might consider former employees.

Other sheriffs welcome the operation and the money.

Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo "Sigi" Gonzalez Jr. has long argued, before Congress, the state Legislature and elsewhere for the kind of money and operations now in the offing. He said a variety of plans are already in place for his 38 deputies to patrol riverbanks, highways and areas known as places where migrants have crossed illegally, including special-interest aliens from some 40 countries deemed by the government as high risks for terrorism.

"We're not going to be looking for people who are coming for work. We'll be looking for people of ill will, to deter them from coming into the country," the sheriff said.

Paying twice


Any new enforcement program would complement massive federal programs already enacted by the president and Congress since 9-11 and which are now being implemented all along the Texas border, including thousands of new Border Patrol agents, multibillion-dollar electronic surveillance systems, and deployments of National Guard, which recently were scaled back.
Perry began pushing for the multimillion-dollar border security appropriation during last year's election campaign. Combined, the state and federal programs amount to one of the most comprehensive and expensive border security efforts in history.

The fledging state plans have not yet been introduced to House and Senate members of homeland security committees, some of whom have been critical of past coordinated surge operations as wasteful and their impacts temporary.

One frequent challenger of the provision, Rep. Rick Noriega, D-Houston, who ultimately voted for the governor's homeland security bill and commanded a National Guard unit on the border, said he is frustrated that Texas taxpayers are being billed twice for border security programs.

"This is a responsibility of the federal government," Noriega said. "Clearly, there is a need for increased boots on the ground because we have people running narcotics and human beings. That's a very real issue. The other side is it's a shame that we as Texas taxpayers are having to pay for something twice."

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/ ... 30de0.html

But man it has got to be worth it .... People dont even go out at night anymore

maybe if we withold remittenes to Mexico until they do their part