Obama Plan to Claim Border Secure so Time for Amnesty?



Border agents cite pressure not to detain illegals

By: Sara A. Carter 04/07/11 8:05 PM

National security correspondent
NOGALES, AZ - Hundreds of cars wait to pass from Mexico into the United States at the border crossing on December 10, 2010 in Nogales, Arizona. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

A decrease in the number of illegal immigrants entering the United States from Mexico touted by federal officials is a fiction created by an unwritten policy to avoid arresting those crossing the border illegally and instead to use a variety of tactics to turn them back across the border, federal law enforcement agents said.

"This unspoken policy isn't anything new," said one federal law enforcement official, who asked not to be named for fear of reprimand. "For years we have been verbally ordered to 'turn back south' aliens who already illegally penetrated the border. Agents are verbally ordered to 'TBS' illegal entries by using intimidation tactics ... therefore, the agency avoids documented arrest numbers."

The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Immigration Statistics said in February that the number of illegal aliens has dropped by 1 million from the record 11.8 million in the country in January 2007. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has said the decrease is the result of adding more agents along the border, and fewer persons attempting the crossing because of a decrease in jobs in the United States.

However, several Border Patrol agents say those numbers don't reflect the reality of a porous border where arrests are discouraged as part of an unwritten policy aimed at limiting the numbers of detained illegals. Some segments of the border are deemed off-limits for detentions, the agents said.

Cochise County, Ariz., Sheriff Larry Dever received a letter of reprimand from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher this week for telling Fox News Channel that border agents were not making arrests but using tactics to force the illegal aliens back across the border.

Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher said in the letter to Dever that his "assertion is completely, 100 percent false."

But agents interviewed by The Examiner said Dever's comments are an accurate reflection of what is an open secret on the border -- that the goal is not to arrest illegal immigrants but to attempt to turn them back.

Agents won't come forward because "they know they will become the target of the investigation and in the end nothing will change," said T.J. Bonner, recently retired president of the National Border Patrol Council.

Border agents working along the Rio Grande River in Texas told The Examiner that sometimes scare tactics to drive back illegal aliens across the river came close to ending in the deaths of the migrants, as well as the agents. "Some didn't know how to swim so they would start to drown and we'd have to go in to save them," an agent working along the Texas-Mexico border said.

Sara A. Carter is The Washington Examiner's national security correspondent. She can be reached at scarter@washingtonexaminer.com.

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