Desert Invasion - U.S.

Border Wars - More illegal immigrants. More violence. More death. The public has had it. Now the Bush administration has a new plan. But will it matter?

By Angie C. Marek, U.S. News and World Report

November 28, 2005

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/051128/28border.htm

...For years, Americans have worried about the country's porous borders, but in the past year or so the concerns have grown significantly, polls show, and for good reason.... The number of arrests made by Border Patrol agents is one of the few reliable measurements of the rising influx. That number dropped right after 9/11, but it has since been climbing.... In the fiscal year that ended in September, the Border Patrol reported 1.19 million arrests, compared with 932,000 in fiscal year 2003....

Concerns. As a result, the political ferment over immigration has never been greater. An October CBS News poll showed that 78 percent of Americans think the government is not doing enough to control the borders; talk shows bristle with demands for action. Terrorism is also a concern....

In 1993, when most illegal immigrants sneaked across the southwestern border with short, frantic dashes in the dark of night, the Border Patrol began shifting its strategy from one of arrest to deterrence. El Paso's then Border Patrol chief, Silvestre Reyes, lined his agents up along the Rio Grande, each within line sight of the next. "We detained so many people," Reyes recalled, "we had to put them in tents." ...

Enter the law of unintended consequences. Instead of trying their luck along the Rio Grande and other traditional crossing spots, thousands of illegal aliens set their sights on the open desert of Arizona....

Until now, the Department of Homeland Security's strategy has been to shift with the tide. Last year, the department, a hydra-headed behemoth fashioned from 22 different government agencies after 9/11, launched the Arizona Border Control Initiative, an effort that focused on a 261-mile stretch of border...

Disappointments. The results, however, were not as significant as Washington might have hoped. Border Patrol officials made almost 439,000 arrests in the Tucson sector this past fiscal year, down 11 percent from the 491,771 they snagged the year before....

And the cat and mouse game only grows more complicated. The Border Patrol's Yuma sector, which includes the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, saw a staggering 54 percent jump in arrests in fiscal year 2005....

Targets. For the agents assigned to protect urban border areas--like Nogales, Ariz.--the work has also gotten more dangerous....

The fear of terrorism, however, eclipses most people's concerns about traditional violence. In the fiscal year that just ended, the Border Patrol had 155,000 arrests of illegal immigrants from countries "other than Mexico"; 649 were from "special interest countries," including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen. In fiscal year 2002, only 37,316 OTM immigrants, as they are called, were caught in the Border Patrol's net. "It's a whole different type of immigrant coming over the border," asserts Texas Sen. John Cornyn. Some 83 percent of OTM arrests were in Texas last fiscal year...

Added to this combustible mix are the Minutemen, the angry denizens of the border who have decided to take matters into their own hands by forming armed teams to watch over the green line, as the border is called. [Note: approximately 10% of Minutemen were armed, legally, under Arizona law in April, 2005 according to the April Minuteman Media Liaison]....

...Chertoff hopes within a year to end the policy of "catch and release" that has allowed those OTM immigrants to be let go because of a lack of bed space in U.S. detention facilities. Theoretically, the migrants promise to show up for subsequent court dates, but historically, only 63 percent do....

In the meantime, some critics would like to see Chertoff take a harder stance against illegal immigrants who are here now and the businesses that hire them....

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