Don’t live around the border in the Tuscon Sector, do you?
I can go days without seeing any members of the USBP, not even 10 miles north of the border. The USBP does its best, but it is fighting a losing battle. And they know it.
More people, more kit, more guys on the line and they are doing wonders. Need a bunch more but they are doing a lot more than a few years back when they numbered only about 3,500 Agents to cover the border, north and south. Morale is up.
These Border Patrol Agents primarily work the desert, avoid the roads mostly, as that is where the trail are and the bodies they grab. Then there are the Indian villages. Those places are drug dens and far off the main roads. Menengers is central for a lot of that action, for example. That is where you would find the Border Patrol Agents. The places they work are not places easily accessible off-road, that is why they use 4-wheel drive, ATV and horses. The Border Patrol Agents generally hate to work an “X” or to work a vehicle check-point. Boring to them, as you would expect from guys that would be drawn to the work (alone, outdoors, etc.)
What bothers them most is not so much the “catch and release” policy, but the policy of not prosecuting drug runners that are caught with a 50lb backpack of dope strapped to their body.
Or so say the Agents I know that work the Tucson Sector.