Thoughts from a border patrol agent
A border patrol agent wrote to Hugh Hewitt with some recommendations for effective border enforcement. His recommendations include employing 23,000 agents (about double the current number of 12,349) as the most important element, and other steps as well:
-- Fences are useless without Border Patrol Agents to patrol them. They don’t prevent people from crossing, they merely slow them down. Fences are about certainty of arrest, not the physical barrier itself.
– It takes one Agent per 1/4 mile to effectively control a section of border fence. Anything less and the fence(s) are ineffective. We see it every day; the bad guys get over, under, or through.
– The U.S./Mexico Border is 1951 miles long. We need 4 agents per mile. We would need to deploy 7804 Agents per shift, 3 shifts per day. Total required manpower: 23,412 Agents per day. Projected BP staffing level: 18,000.’‘
He proposes defense in depth as a solution:
1. Forward deploy Agents in URBAN areas supported by fencing and stadium lighting (See San Diego/Texas).
2. Deploy roving patrols to rural/remote areas where agents have hours to days to make an apprehension. These agents need support from sensors, drive-through barriers, ground surveillance radar, infrared/daytime cameras, UAVs, air assets, etc to create certainty of arrest.
3. Stand up permanent immigration checkpoints in Arizona on major routes of egress from the border. Support these checkpoints with sensors, radar, remote cameras, etc to mitigate illegal traffic attempting to circumvent it.San Diego, New Mexico and Texas have employed this strategy with great effect; Arizona does not and is the weak link. Tucson Sector comprises 13% of the SW Border but accounts for nearly 40% of all BP apprehensions/illegal entries.
We’ve always thought of a “fence” as a metaphor for effective enforcement, but we may need to rethink that. What is interesting is that, according to this gentleman’s recommendation, 12,000 additional border agents would go a long way towards solving the problem. (We note that the Bush administration previously committed to hiring an additional 10,000 agents a couple of years ago, then promptly did nothing because of “funding” issues.) The total cost of implementing the increased personnel recommendations is on the order of $2 billion or so. So the real issue is not cost; it appears to be, rather, a lack of desire to do what is required to control the border.
May 21st, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Once upon a time, President Carter said that “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”
Everybody laughed at the fatuous stupidity expressed there.
People who invade the United States do so at the risk of their very lives. Why not? If I were stuck in Chiapas or Shanghai or Dacca, I’d do WHATEVER IT TOOK to get hhere.
If the worst that can possibly happen to an invader after arrival is to be sent back, that’s no deterrent at all.
The only way to enforce any law is to deter its violators. That means the penalty has to be fairly certain and worse than the thing that drives the violation.
Unless we start shooting them, all this enforcement talk is just wasted breath and bogus posturing.