Thread: Border agents say crackdown on U.S. employers is needed

Border agents say crackdown on U.S. employers is needed

May 28, 2006


BY KEVIN G. HALL


ARIVACA, Ariz. -- The agents who patrol the porous U.S.-Mexico border welcome proposals to clamp down on illegal immigration, but they also want a crackdown on employers who hire undocumented immigrants.

In and around the Arizona border with Mexico, many of the 2,400 men and women of the Border Patrol support President George W. Bush's call to raise the total number of agents protecting the southern border by 6,000 to 18,000. They also support Thursday's Senate action to extend barriers erected along the border with Mexico and to deploy more vehicles and technologies to frustrate illegal entry.

But they part ways with Bush on his guest worker program, a centerpiece of the Senate's immigration legislation. And they believe that without cracking down on employers, higher-paying U.S. jobs will remain a magnet for down-and-out people in Mexico.

"When the top guy offers amnesty and guest worker programs, what does that tell them?" grumbled one veteran Border Patrol agent, pointing to 38 men and women he and his colleagues had just apprehended near Arivaca Lake, about 40 miles from the border in Arizona's vast moonlike desert. The group had walked for two nights in hopes of reaching Tucson, about 68 miles from where they entered illegally.

The agent and several colleagues, who are prohibited by law from giving their names when discussing pending legislation, complained that Bush isn't willing to penalize those who've immigrated illegally, and they said that invites more illegal immigration.

On the Web site of U.S. Border Patrol Local 2544, the union that represents agents along much of the Arizona border with Mexico, there's contempt for Bush and Democrats as they work on immigration law.

"Every day that President Bush and the Senate hold real border security hostage to their misguided amnesty program, thousands upon thousands of illegal aliens continue to flood into the country," reads the chapter's home page. "Make no mistake, most of them get by us. We are losing this war, and it's not even close."

Local 2544 spokesman Mike Albon, a 32-year retired Border Patrol veteran, is equally blunt. Washington's solutions, he said, are bound to fail because they don't punish employers.

"The interior enforcement has taken a backseat to border enforcement. So once they get past the border, they're home free," said Albon. "If they don't have jobs that they can come to, then there's no reason for them to come, and they would stay where they are."

Rank-and-file Border Patrol agents also want more agents, more technology and more walls and vehicle barriers.

"The more effectively we can make use of technology, the more efficient we are," said Jim Hawkins, a senior Border Patrol agent and spokesman in Nogales. Agents particularly like the motion detecting sensors that are strategically placed throughout the desert. More than 10,000 are in use, but as of August 2005, those sensors covered about 4% of the U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Agents also want more drones, the unmanned aircraft that can pinpoint the location of anyone for agents wearing night-vision goggles.

Next week, Bush is to begin sending the first contingent of 6,000 National Guard members to the four U.S. states that border Mexico for temporary, rotating deployments until 6,000 new Border Patrol agents can be hired, trained and added to the current roster of 12,000 agents.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti ... 80605/1009

From the horse's mouth....surely this should be sufficient for Bush to rethink his ill-conceived notions?
Perhaps someone should divert Air Force One to the border on its next money-wrangling trip out (don't even ASK what the fuel costs per trip) and make Bush spend a week on the border with the agents?

Bump
This article should be "required reading" (both in this forum and on the floor of the House)

This drug cartel, foreign potentate and fortune 500 run administration and congress doesn't care even when US citizens are increasingly becoming the victims of crimes perpetrated by third world savages who are taking over our towns and communities. Comrade Bush will not allow anything to impede his continued march on the road to his Globalist Manifesto.