Border Patrol Agents Ordered to Reduce Arrests

[JBeukema]

Dever said he’d been told by Border Patrol officials, including at least one senior supervisor, that they have been ordered to reduce and to sometimes stop arresting people attempting to cross into the U.S. illegally. Homeland Security officials, including Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher, have repeatedly denied these claims, but a flood of current and retired Border Patrol agents from across the country continue to come forward with details of their own that support Dever’s initial remarks.
Dever leveled another new charge: That TBS-ing is going on within the American judicial system.

 

[waltky]

Border security varies along different parts of the border...

Arizona border: Security differs in Yuma and Tucson regions
May. 18, 2011 - Yuma Sector under control, feds say; can strategy work in Tucson Sector?

Along a bleak expanse of U.S. border in western Arizona, where the sun beats down mercilessly, Border Patrol agents nowadays spend a lot of time listening to wind blow across the sand dunes. Once a thoroughfare for hundreds of thousands of illegal border crossers, the Yuma Sector now records barely 7,000 arrests each year. The 126-mile stretch of landscape is the only southwestern border segment listed under "operational control" by the Department of Homeland Security.

That status, used to describe areas where officials are reasonably ensured of capturing most crossers, was gained in 2006 when the government launched a crackdown known as Operation Jump Start. National Guard troops swarmed the area, building multilayered fences and vehicle barriers along the entire Mexican line. The Border Patrol tripled its number of agents. Observation posts, equipped with giant spotlights, were established.

At the same time, the Justice Department imposed a new prosecution policy, dubbed Operation Streamline. Instead of merely rounding up illegal immigrants and dumping them back into Mexico, nearly every person arrested for unlawful entry was charged with a crime, convicted and imprisoned. As word spread about the campaign, drug runners and human smugglers abandoned their routes in the Yuma area. The number of illegal immigrants apprehended in the desert plummeted from 138,460 in 2005 to 7,116 last year.

"It was chaos," said Rodolfo "Rudy" Karisch, acting chief agent of the Border Patrol's Yuma Sector. "Now, we've been able to manage it. . . . The border can be controlled if you apply the right resources." Critics, including Sen. John McCain, want to know why President Barack Obama - who last week cited improved border security as he called for comprehensive immigration reform - hasn't applied the same resources to the Tucson Sector. Nearly half of all illegal-immigrant arrests along the border take place in the Tucson Sector, where narcotics seizures set a record last year.

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Canadian Border Bigger Terror Threat Than Mexican Border, Says Border Patrol Chief
Wednesday, May 18, 2011 Washington (CNSNews.com) – The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency has apprehended more suspected terrorists on the nation’s northern border than along its southern counterpart, CBP Commissioner Alan Bersin said Tuesday.

“In terms of the terrorist threat, it’s commonly accepted that the more significant threat” comes from the U.S.-Canada border, Bersin told a hearing of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and Border Security. Bersin attributed the situation, in part, to the fact that the U.S. and Canada do not share information about people placed on their respective “no-fly” lists. As a result, individuals deemed a threat who fly into one country may then cross the land border into the other.

“Because of the fact that we do not share no-fly

• information and the Canadians will not, we are more than we would like confronted with the fact where a [person designated as a] no-fly has entered Canada and then is arrested coming across one of our bridges into the United States,” he said. As it screens air travelers, the Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration places individuals who are considered a threat to aviation on a no-fly list, which is a subset of the terrorist watchlist.
  
  Bersin’s comments came after the subcommittee’s ranking Republican, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, asked him about the relative numbers of people apprehended along the northern and southern borders. He responded that the detentions and arrests along the border with Canada were “a small, small fraction” when compared to the number apprehended in the south. "That doesn’t mean that we don’t face significant threats” along the northern border, he added.
  
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[waltky]

Border Patrol agents on the take...

127 Border Patrol and Customs Workers Arrested for Corruption
Thursday, June 09, 2011 Washington – Largely because of the spreading influence of Mexican drug cartels and illegal alien smugglers, 127 agents of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have been arrested, charged, or convicted of corruption, including drug smuggling, since 2004.

Testifying on Thursday before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery and Intergovernmental Affairs, Alan Bersin, commissioner of the CBP, said: “Since 2004 in October, 127 CBP personnel have been arrested, charged or convicted of corruption. This breach of trust is something that we do not stand for, and while seven years and tens of thousands employees have been besmirched by this, these evidences of corruption, we take each and every one of them seriously.” In his prepared testimony, Bersin said 127 employees were involved in “acts of corruption, including drug smuggling, alien smuggling, money laundering, and conspiracy.”

“Of the 127 arrests, 95 are considered mission compromising acts of corruption,” he said. “This means that the employee’s illegal activities were for personal gain and violated, or facilitated the violation of, the laws CBP personnel are charged with enforcing.” The CBP is a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Bersin said overall the CBP employs about 60,000 people, 40,000 of which work at the U.S. borders.

“Apart from the 95 cases identified above, the remaining 32 arrests are considered non-mission compromising acts of corruption in which the employee’s illegal activities involved the misuse or abuse of the knowledge, access, or authority granted by virtue of their official position in a manner that did not facilitate the violation of laws that the agency is charged with enforcing at the border,” said Bersin. “These cases fall into one of five broad categories: Theft; Fraud; Misuse of a Government Computer/Database; False Statements; and Drug-Related Offenses.” Furthermore, Charles Edwards, the acting Inspector General for DHS, testified that Mexican drug cartels have turned “to corrupting DHS employees,” adding that “Border corruption impacts national security.”

“A corrupt DHS employee may accept a bribe for allowing what appear to be undocumented aliens into the U.S. while unwittingly helping terrorists enter the country,” said Edwards. “Likewise, what seems to be drug contraband could be weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical or biological weapons.” In his prepared testimony, Edwards added that his office has 267 active corruption-related investigations of CBP employees underway.

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[waltky]

Mexican drug cartels already control parts of our border...

Border Patrol Official: Drug Cartels 'Have Taken Control' of 'Several Areas Along Our Border'
Thursday, July 21, 2011 Washington (CNSNews.com) -- Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Deputy Commissioner David Aguilar told CNSNews.com that Mexican drug cartels control “several areas along our border with Mexico.”

In Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, CNSNews.com asked Aguilar, “Do you think Mexican drug cartels have taken control of the human trafficking that takes place from Mexico to the U.S.?” Aguilar said, “There are several areas along our border with Mexico where in fact we believe that the drug cartels not only have taken control, but control the areas by which the illegal crossings occur.” When CNSNews.com also asked if he thought Mexican drug cartels had made human trafficking from south of the border into the United States more violent, Aguilar said, “absolutely.”

“All the violence that occurs, against illegal aliens that occur, occur at the hands of smugglers,” said Aguilar. “The smugglers are working in coordination with the drug cartels and the drug trafficking organizations.” Aguilar spoke with CNSNews.com at a press conference in the nation’s capital held to raise awareness about human trafficking. Regarding Mexican drug cartel involvement in human trafficking from Mexico to the United States, Aguilar said the drug cartels, much like the Mafia, are involved in multiple criminal enterprises that go beyond trafficking narcotics. “Drug trafficking organizations being involved in [human] smuggling has been historical. It has been a legacy. It has happened consistently in my 30 some years of service,” Aguilar said. “This is something that we have seen evolve into what we see happening today: that the cartels are turning into more of a Mafia-like organization that are specializing not just in any one crime, not in the singular fashion.”

“Now they may have a focus of narcotics, but they will expand very Mafia-like into other criminal opportunities, one of them being the smuggling of people in the United States,” said Aguilar. “Therefore, being involved in what we are discussing today -- the exploitation of young men, young women, children for human trafficking, slavery, forced labor, and things of this nature -- they are looking to make that all-mighty dollar and that is what they focus their efforts on, any crime that will get them that profit,” he said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Deputy Director Kumar Kibble, who spoke alongside Aguilar during the press conference, agreed. “I agree, unfortunately, with what Deputy Aguilar has stated, when you consider that [Mexican drug cartels] are diversifying, whether it’s kidnapping, whether it’s intellectual property theft, narcotics, human smuggling,” Kibble told CNSNews.com. “They, of course, control the plazas [in Mexico], the approaches that facilitate smuggling into the country -- the cartels, of course, control the territory and the approach and tax other criminal ventures that may be operating in their area of responsibility. So there is certainly that kid of involvement as well.”

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Arizona raises nearly $40K for border fence in 1st day
21 July`11 — Arizona launched a fundraising website Wednesday to build fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border, a newly authorized project that supporters said is needed to close gaps exploited by smugglers and illegal immigrants.

"Arizona once again has to do the job the federal government isn't," said state Sen. Steve Smith, a first-term Republican who sponsored the legislation authorizing the fence project. Smith, Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, state Attorney General Tom Horne, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and other supporters gathered Wednesday evening in a restaurant in Smith's legislative district to kick off the fundraising campaign. The public will back the effort, Pearce predicted. "I know where America stands," Pearce said. "We have a nation at risk. And why are we going to build a fence? Because you'll never get it built by the federal government."

The website, buildtheborderfence.com, received 884 online donations totaling $39,085 within its first 17 hours, said Arizona Senate spokesman Mike Philipsen. Initial online donations ranged from the minimum of $5 to "dozens in the $250 to $500 range," Philipsen said. Contributions also can be mailed. Smith said during a Tuesday interview that his initial goal is to raise $50 million. "It's not my end goal," he said. "If we can raise $50 million, we're off to a fabulous start." Smith said he was optimistic about the fundraising potential because people have donated nearly $3.8 million to a fund to defend the state's 2010 immigration enforcement law known as SB1010.

That effort raised money for "an intangible service — you're paying for a lawyer," Smith said. "This, you can taste and smell what you're getting — you're paying for a secure border." What the money will actually buy has yet to be determined. A border security advisory committee consisting of legislators, state agency directors and county sheriffs will make recommendations to the Legislature on how and where to spend the money.

Fencing currently covers about 650 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, or about one-third of the 2,000-mile boundary. It ranges in quality from simple barbed wire or vehicle barriers to carefully engineered, 18- to 30-foot high fences near cities. Smugglers often circumvent the barriers by cutting or driving through them, climbing over them, or digging often-elaborate tunnels under them. Wednesday's website launch was keyed to the date most new laws passed during the state Legislature's 2011 regular session go into effect. While Arizona lawmakers rejected several immigration enforcement measures this year that were opposed by business groups, the border fence measure didn't get as much attention.

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[Momanohedhunter]

Gotta keep them slaves coming.