Congress to Review Border Patrol Disparity

Take this from a certified border brat, you’re not going to gain traction in a fight against undocumented migration or drug smuggling by putting more bodies along the border, especially when you send the majority of the bodies to survey cacti and guard jack rabbit crossings.

A story in USA Today says that congress wants to review how Customs and Border Protection agents are deployed along the US border with Mexico.

So far efforts have been futile, and expensive.

It’s common border lore: build a fence and people will go under, over and through it. Bring in the National guard and increase border Patrol agents, and the smuggling will move to more rural areas. Move the guards out to the rural areas and the smugglers will find the weak points, usually back at the traditional crossings. The mouse is much better at the game than the cat.

From 2006 to 2010, the number of Customs and Border Protection officers who inspect people and cargo crossing through the ports of entry along the southwest border increased by 15%, while the number of CBP Border Patrol agents who patrol the rugged terrain between those ports increased by 59%, according to CBP figures.

Meanwhile, the official border crossings are under staffed and the agents are over worked.

Add to this the impending loss of more than half of the Border Patrol workforce, as News Taco reported, and you have an untenable situation.

What’s important about this is that border security has long been the standard of immigration hawks who use the issue to instill fear, especially around election time. It’s a convenient political ploy: pump your fist on the soapbox; pump money to enforce the border and to back your fist pumping. But it’s money ill spent.

Immigration hawks are silent about the “success” that President Obama has been having with his silent immigration raids – where federal officials audit employee work permits at targeted companies and industries.   He’s been more successful this way than President Bush was with his business friendly raids against immigrant workers.

But it’s more politically efficient to drain the federal coffers with inefficient border patrol plans.

We could use the money in our schools.

Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda

[Photo by jim.greenhill]