Did you read this? In 2004 1 out of 20 had a CRIMINAL record, now it's 1 out of 10??
Tucson Sector's moving stations viewed as vulnerable
Sean Holstege
The Arizona Republic
Jun. 27, 2007 12:00 AM
The Border Patrol wants to build three permanent, state-of-the-art checkpoints in Arizona, just miles north of the international frontier near Tubac, Ajo and Huachuca City.
The agency wants to plug what it considers to be a gaping hole in its long-held strategy of layered defense. Because there are no permanent checkpoints in the eastern half of the state, the Tucson Sector lacks defenses that exist elsewhere on the 1,950-mile U.S.-Mexican border.
There is no conclusive evidence that the permanent internal checkpoints make a significant difference in stopping drug smugglers or human traffickers. There are only anecdotal examples. advertisement
Still, security officials take as gospel the idea that a single barrier is brittle; even the Berlin Wall, with its concrete, razor wire and machine-gun nests, couldn't keep every East German defector out of the West. Instead, it is widely accepted that a network of interrelated tactics and facilities is the only way to block terrorists, smugglers and illegal immigrants. On Arizona's border, the strategy, which includes fences and cameras, works like a team of sheepdogs.
On a farm, dogs steer the flock by cutting off options for individual sheep to break away. Ultimately, the sheep run out of options and are corralled.
On the border, a network of checkpoints, barriers, sensors, cameras and roving patrols coordinates to steer smugglers and illegal immigrants into terrain that gives the Border Patrol the edge. That means open desert that slows people down, where their vehicles generate dust clouds that expose their location, or gullies where a single outpost, patrol or sensor can find them.
But for those who live north of the frontier, the defense-in-depth strategy is controversial because it often funnels violent criminals into neighborhoods.
The Tucson Sector
The Border Patrol cannot measure the effectiveness of internal checkpoints alone. What is clear is that the checkpoints provide more capabilities and are one factor that has helped lessen human and drug smuggling in California and Texas.
Border Patrol Assistant Sector Chief John Fitzpatrick says his agents, to be more effective, need fully equipped checkpoints, with X-ray truck scanners and live data links to terror watchlists and national crime databases. He estimates that replacing three existing checkpoints with permanent stations would cost a total of $40 million to $50 million and take up to four years each to build.
"The temporary checkpoint is simply not working. We've become a thoroughfare for smuggling of illegal immigrants and drugs," Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., said of the stop on Interstate 19 near Tubac, which is in her district.
The Border Patrol's Tucson Sector is the only one of nine along the entire U.S.-Mexican border without a permanent internal checkpoint.
The Tucson office, the Border Patrol's busiest, seizes 45 percent of the marijuana and arrests 37 percent of the illegal immigrants for the entire Mexican border. The Tucson Sector's 261-mile frontier accounts for 13 percent of the Mexican border.
Fitzpatrick and his bosses say the high arrest and seizure numbers are due to the fact that smugglers steer for the path of least resistance; the Tucson Sector, partly because the lack of permanent checkpoints, creates a security gap.
But arrests have fluctuated in Tucson and across the border since 2002, while in the Tucson region, the drug seizures continue to climb disproportionately to the entire Southwest.
When the Border Patrol put in a permanent checkpoint north of Laredo, Texas - the only one opened since Sept. 11, 2001 - the numbers didn't change much relative to the rest of the border.
Permanent site praise
In 2005, officials of the Government Accountability Office toured four border sectors, including Tucson, and found that the Border Patrol could not quantify the effectiveness of its permanent checkpoints, including four near Yuma. There are nine sectors with a total of 33 permanent checkpoints.
The GAO, which conducts investigations and audits for Congress, did find that permanent internal checkpoints, which are positioned at strategic pinch points 25 to 75 miles north of the border, were responsible for three-quarters of the cocaine busts and a third of the pot seizures. That, despite the Border Patrol assigning only 10 percent of its officers to internal checkpoints.
Congressional investigators also found that moving the I-19 checkpoint had disastrous consequences. At the insistence of then Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., the agency relocated the I-19 checkpoints every week starting in 2002.
After that, the number of apprehensions per agent dropped fourfold at the sector's internal checkpoints. Smuggling rings posted spotters, and when the checkpoint closed for relocation, the drug smugglers and guides for illegal immigrants would make a break for the freeway.
Since the roving policy ended last year, Tucson's internal checkpoints have been responsible for 10 percent of the sector's drug seizures and 4 percent of its arrests, far fewer than other states, but double the rate for the comparable period 12 months earlier.
The Border Patrol still has to close the I-19 checkpoint during rainstorms because of highway safety. When that happens, there is an immediate increase in smuggling.
A series of shootouts in and around the Santa Cruz River valley bolstered checkpoint critics.
Residents react
They say illegal immigrants and smugglers should be stopped at the border. Without a real barrier there, the checkpoint only funnels crime away from I-19.
"The checkpoints don't work. They go around it and into communities," said Jim Di Giacomo, executive director of the Green Valley chamber of commerce. "The smugglers are going into neighborhoods and over fences. People are scared."
In May in Tubac, he said, there was a shootout between rival smuggling gangs, a vehicle chase and the discovery of automatic rifles by children in a park.
In 2004, one in 20 people the Border Patrol detained had a criminal record. So far this year, it has been one in 10.
Answer:
you, like many others, seem unable to tell the difference between drug smugglers, and fruit pickers.
deporting all the undocumented workers is not going to help 1 iota with the drug trade.
what will deporting all the gardeners, farm workers, meat packers, and other undocumented workers to?
- make your racist butt feel better.
- make jobs for a few more Americans.
- increase fruit prices dramatically, because there will be too few people able to pick fruit. most Americans don't want a job that lasts 2-3-4 months, out in the sun, in the hottest part of the year.
all of the drugs you complain about will still come in, and the 10% of "criminals" caught will remain about the same.
people wanting to do honest (real) work, to support their families, aren't hurting you.
the people that are the targets of the piece you copied from have absolutely nothing to do with the 12m undocumented workers that you complain about.
it is not only related to crime with illegal aliens. crime has risen 100 fold within my life, which is about 50 years. it has risen all over the world. and the crimes themselves are getting to be of a worse nature. not much in the way of petty thievery anymore but more in the way of murder.
today there are some SIX BILLION people living on our planet. the reason is medical advances basically for all. just go to an old cemetery and read how long people born in 1870 lived. and see all the headstones that are there for their babies.
if it were not for politics, our planet in its natural abundance could easily feed, clothe, house, medicate and educate 18 BILLION people. politics = greeed. politics = domination for natural resources that get sold to the people of the world, therefore politics = greed. politics = power.
what people cannot see to attain legally, they will take illegally. too, when i was a kid, there may have been, at the very maximum, 5 serial killers cruising the streets of the usa. today the fbi conservatively extimates 100. as a percentage of population increase, the numbers of criminals is not equal to the rise in population; it has increased way higher than the population growth.
The Immigration information post by website user , MyTend.com not guarantee correctness.
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