US-Mexico Border update

[Morgeruat]

Border Patrol Credits Guard With Drop in Apprehensions Army News Service | Sgt. Jim Greenhill | August 01, 2006 Nogales, AZ. - The number of illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico into the U.S. Border Patrol’s busy Tucson, Ariz., sector have dropped from about 600 a day in March to 200 this month, according to Border Patrol officials. Although apprehension rates typically vary with the season, Border Patrol officials attribute the latest drop to the arrival of National Guard troops for Operation Jump Start, the initiative President George W. Bush announced in mid-May to help the Border Patrol secure the U.S. border with Mexico. “We’ve seen dramatic decreases in the number of entries and apprehensions,” said John Fitzpatrick, patrol agent in charge of the Nogales Station. “They’ve basically come in and shut down those areas where they’ve been deployed overnight.” The Tucson Sector patrols more than 280 miles of border, 32 miles of it within the Nogales Station’s territory. The border terrain is as difficult for the agents who police it as it is for the human smugglers and drug traffickers who try to negotiate it for profit. “If we can put enough pressure on the border so that it’s not feasible and not economically viable for these smugglers to continue to smuggle people across, that allows us to then focus on everything else that’s going on,” Fitzpatrick said. Nogales is one of the nation’s peak places for human crossings. About 800 pounds of marijuana are seized there each day. And some 450,000 people were apprehended in the sector last year, including 30,000 criminal aliens, some of them rapists and murderers. Fitzpatrick credited National Guard Soldiers with helping the patrol make a significant drug bust during the second week of July. Guard members are also building a road that will improve agents’ access to the border. “They’re putting up hundreds of feet a day and covering areas that we’ve never really been able to address with infrastructure,” he said. “And it’s happening at a rapid rate, so there’s significant and immediate impacts.” Guard members also are relieving agents who could not perform their law enforcement duties because they had to carry out other tasks. “We had agents in here who were answering phones, working in dispatch, working as administrators, working as mechanics,” said Jose Maheda, a field operations supervisor. The Guard’s arrival is an important contribution to improving border security, said Fitzpatrick. “I’m not sure that people in the interior of the United States necessarily see and understand the magnitude of the problem that we have, and the threat that we face along our border and the potential vulnerabilities that we may have.” Guard members have upbeat attitudes about the mission. “It’s great that we’re supporting the Border Patrol, that we’re serving our country this way,” said Staff Sgt. Desi Hermosillo. Capt. Jeremy Cook also understands the importance of the Guard’s mission. When he’s not commanding Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 158th Infantry, 29th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, he’s a senior Border Patrol agent at the Nogales Station. “It’s alleviated a lot of pressure on us,” said Cook. “It’s helpful, very helpful.” Up to 6,000 troops participating in Operation Jump Start are expected to be on duty along the 1,300-mile border from Texas to California by Aug. 1. The $770-million operation in support of Customs and Border Protection could continue for up to two years.

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[shamrock_uk]

Excellent, it's good to see a focused political effort towards a secure border.

I just wish the UK was following your lead

[Morgeruat]

Lay the pressure on the politicians, grassroots movements are what caused it to come about, get your friends involved in letter writing campaigns, petitions, etc. Use the political process (then again I'm a bit of an idealist in hoping that on some level the system will work the way it's supposed to)

[shamrock_uk]

Trouble is that I don't think the groundswell of opinion from the grassroots exists to effect any kind of political change.

Ignorance of the risks mean the lower classes will only be aware of this if the Sun or Mirror picks it up. The middle-classes have been ground under the heel of an oppressive government and will never mobilise against it and indifference paralyses the upper classes.

We pretty much have to resort to students, hippies or peace activists to mobilise any kind of public opinion, and they have their hands full with Iraq and Lebanon.

I would much rather have 'fortress Britain' from the outside, followed by complete freedom/lack of government control on the inside than the current situation

[ 08-03-2006, 10:13 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[Olorin]

I think that in the US, the public opinion has affected the politicians to an extent. The House of Representatives passed an immigration plan that focused on securing the border and targeting employers who hire illegal immigrants. On the other hand, the Senate passed a plan that doesn't do very much to secure the border, and gives legal status to many immigrants who came here illegally, which will only give more incentive for more people to cross the border illegally.

Interesting how the House, where every single member is up for election in November, is more in line with public opinion than the Senate, where only 1/3 of the members are up for election.

I'm just worried that in December, the House will cave in and go what the Senate and Bush want, once the elections are over.

I'm very against the Senate immigration plan because it will promote more illegal immigration, and it will also hurt the immigrants who are currently here. Employers are hiring them because they can pay them less, since they are not here legally. If they become legal, they're going to lose those jobs, because employers aren't going to suddenly be happy to pay them decent wages; instead, they'll just find some new illegal immigrants to take their place.

I'd rather see a plan that focuses entirely on employer enforcement, including paying illegal workers back pay for any time they've spent working for less than minimum wage. If the jobs for illegals disappear, so will the incentive to sneak into the country.

Of course the Democrats don't like to take away jobs from the lower class (even when the workers aren't voters), and Republicans don't want to upset the business owners who are increasing profits by hiring low-wage immigrants who don't have any legal standing to protest their wages or working conditions.