Guest Column
Illegal border crossings arrests down 63 percent
- Illegal border crossings arrests down 63 percent
- By Alicia A Caldwell
EL PASO — (AP) - December 6, 2006 - The number of illegal immigrants being arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border has dropped sharply in the first two months of this fiscal year, with some Border Patrol sectors seeing a drop of up to 63 percent.
Arrests along the border in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California have dropped about 27 percent, or by nearly 43,000 illegal immigrants, since Oct. 1, compared to the same time last year, Border Patrol officials in Washington said.
Reports of the decrease come about a month after Border Patrol officials announced a nearly 9 percent drop in arrests from 2004 to 2005. If the downward trend continues it would mark the first sustained decrease in illegal immigrant arrests since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Xavier Rios.
It's nearly impossible to know whether the drop in arrests really means that fewer people are coming across the border.
T.J. Bonner, president of the union that represents the majority of agents, said agents on the ground estimate that they only catch 25 percent to 33 percent of illegal immigrants.
"This is not a game of laser tag where you simply point at someone and say, 'Tag, you're it, go home,'" said Bonner, who is also a Border Patrol agent. "It's very time consuming to round them up and arrest them. In the meantime, who's watching the store? No one."
Border Patrol officials acknowledge that they don't know how many people make it across the border every year. But they insist that the drop in arrests, which varied widely — the San Diego Sector marked a 3 percent drop while the Yuma, Ariz., and Del Rio, Texas, sectors each showed a 63 percent dip — is a sign that recently launched border security efforts are working.
"All of these numbers are good," Rios said. "We're better staffed than we have been since the inception of the Border Patrol. We're more effective at what we do."
Despite the significant drop in the Yuma Sector, which covers far southwestern Arizona and parts of Southern California, agents in Arizona remained the Border Patrol's busiest.
Agents nationwide also reported a 58 percent decrease in the arrests of "other than Mexican," or OTM, immigrants.
Border Patrol officials first noticed a drop in arrests last summer, shortly after National Guard troops were ordered to the border as part of President Bush's Operation Jump Start. Those troops staff cameras, help maintain Border Patrol equipment and watch for illegal crossers.
OTM arrests also started to slide last year after U.S. Department of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff ordered the end to a "catch and release" program that allowed those immigrants to be set free after they agreed to appear in court at a later date.
Doug Mosier, a Border Patrol spokesman in El Paso, said localized agency operations and state-driven efforts also likely have helped curbed arrests.
In the Del Rio Sector, for example, any adult illegal immigrant arrested is prosecuted and sent to jail before being kicked out of the country. Operation Streamline is a cooperative effort between the Border Patrol, federal prosecutors, the U.S. Marshals Service and other federal agencies.
A prosecutor in Maricopa County, Ariz., is using an anti-smuggling law to prosecute illegal immigrants who have been smuggled. Elsewhere, cities including Dallas suburb Farmers Branch have created laws aimed at keeping illegal immigrants from living and working in the community.
Federal officials also have formed a partnership with their Mexican counterparts to try to prosecute more human smugglers.
The Operation Against Smugglers Initiative for Safety and Security — OASISS — started in earnest in July and allows for smuggling suspects who are not prosecuted in the United States to be turned over to Mexican authorities for prosecution.
"That's the idea, to put more teeth into our prosecutorial ability," Mosier said.
Though Mosier said it is too early to know whether the trend will last, the recent reports are promising.
"I think it's too soon for anyone to declare success, but certainly it's encouraging for those of us on the border," Mosier said.
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