Thursday, June 3, 2004

Border control initiative runs into troubles

SUSAN CARROLL and DANIEL GONZÁLEZ

The Arizona Republic

NOGALES - The federal government's plan to control illegal immigration and cut deaths along the Arizona-Sonora border this summer is over its budget, understaffed and behind schedule.

When Department of Homeland Security officials launched the Arizona Border Control Initiative in March, they said the agency planned to add 260 agents, four helicopters and two unmanned aerial drones, and expand detention space to hold illegal immigrants.

The effort was supposed to be in full swing by Tuesday. But more than half of the promised U.S. Border Patrol agents have not arrived, officials have scrapped plans to add tents for detained immigrants, and the drones remain on the ground.

Asa Hutchinson, Homeland Security's undersecretary, acknowledged Friday in an interview that the push to secure Arizona's 350-mile stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border has posed significant challenges, including "substantially exceeding" the initial $10 million cost estimate.

"We are moving as expeditiously as possible," he said. "In the meantime, we are supplementing (the initiative) in a multitude of different ways."

Hutchinson, who visited Tucson yesterday to assess the initiative's progress, said officials are committed to controlling the Arizona border, the most popular and deadly illegal crossing corridor in the nation.

He said the initiative has scored successes, including "breaking the cycle" of smuggling organizations that shuttled illegal immigrants from the border to Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, a major distribution hub for the rest of the country.

Hutchinson said arrests of illegal immigrants in the state have increased to 3,000 daily from an average of about 2,000 a day since March.

Manpower problems

The plan announced in March called for adding 260 agents on the Arizona border this summer, including 200 who would be assigned permanently to the Tucson sector. The remaining 60 agents, members of tactical and search-and-rescue teams, arrived in March on temporary assignments from other Border Patrol sectors. In April, officials sent an additional 50 agents to temporarily help in Arizona.

But the 200 experienced agents still are not on the job. Hutchinson said 159 agents have been selected for the spots, and officials are working to fill the remaining slots.

"It's been simply a matter of giving them a reporting date to get on duty, and that process is ongoing," Hutchinson said. "It is just administratively taking some time to get that done. We're moving as rapidly as we can to get those 200 positions filled."

By the summer's end, officials plan to have more than 2,000 additional agents in Arizona.

In the meantime, the Border Patrol union has raised concerns about an cap set by Congress that limits government employees' overtime. The cap has hamstrung agents who typically work lots of overtime, including members of search-and-rescue search and rescue and tactical teams, said T.J. Bonner, the National Border Patrol Council's president.

Union officials said the cap is of particular concern in the Tucson sector, where one-third of the search-and-rescue agents are restricted from working overtime as the migrant deaths continue to outpace last year's record. Since Oct. 1, the start of the federal fiscal year, the Border Patrol has reported 39 deaths in the sector.

"It's fairly obvious this whole Arizona Border Control Initiative is focused on the aspect of having search-and-rescue agents going out there to try and prevent, to the extent possible, needless death," Bonner said.

"And the fewer agents there are out there, the more likely it is that the body count is going to be fairly high this year."

Tucson sector Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar said the overtime cap is "an operational challenge," but officials are adapting and using technology to increase agents' effectiveness in the field.

Hutchinson, who has the power to waive the cap, said in Friday's interview he was unaware of problems that would restrict agents from working overtime. He said he planned to make sure the overtime issue "does not hamper our ability to get the job done."

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