Good article linked by MamaDearest on the Threat Matrix page. Note that the OTM's are still being released on their own recognizance.......totally insane!
Posted on Fri, Apr. 21, 2006
Scope of job can overwhelm Border Patrol By JAY ROOT
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
HIDALGO — We got a sense of the enormous task facing the U.S. Border Patrol as we watched agents play cat and mouse with the immigrant smugglers in and around this Texas border town.
The agency’s Rio Grande sector, without counting an extensive coastal jurisdiction that stretches from the mouth of the Rio Grande to Corpus Christi, covers everything from Boca Chica at the Gulf of Mexico to Falcon Lake. Look at the map — it’s a long way.
The sector has 1,400 agents, but that’s an awful lot of ground to cover — 320 river miles, in fact, according to sector spokesman Roy Cervantes. We were told it was a very slow day, but at least 12 people were caught trying to cross a three-mile stretch of river during our four-hour ride-along with several agents. There’s no telling how many immigrants might have slipped past us. Sometimes electronic sensors went off or calls from citizens were reported over the radio, without a subsequent catch. Who knows what or who triggered them.
Among those arrested late Thursday were three unidentified Hondurans — a “family unit,” as authorities call them — a 24-year-old woman, her 17-year-old brother and her 1-year-old daughter. They hadn’t eaten in three days and had been reduced to drinking water from the polluted Rio Grande.
I can’t imagine the desperation that would lead a young mother to put her baby on an inner tube and cross that swift and foul river, not to mention the awful trek north from Central America. She said “terrible things” happened on the journey, which began March 5 and ended in Hidalgo on Thursday.
The agents’ work is hot and sweaty, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much dust in all my life. I’ve got the grit in my socks and shoes to prove it. All up and down the river there are hot spots like this, but the Rio Grande sector offers an exotic twist.
It is a major crossing point for OTMs, or “Other Than Mexicans.” On the trash-strewn riverbank “landings” where immigrants cross, we found ample evidence of it. In one spot, we gathered torn letters, receipts, photos, ID cards and other items from Brazil and Honduras.
The numbers speak for themselves: In fiscal 2005, 60 percent of the 134,174 apprehensions in this sector were from countries other than Mexico — 72 nations in all. In the current fiscal year, 51 percent have been OTMs in the Rio Grande sector — a reduction that officials attribute to the “expedited removal” process that helps streamline deportation in many cases.
When jail space is available — often it is not — many of these immigrants are taken to the Port Isabel detention center maintained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agency did not give the Star-Telegram permission to tour the facility, but we’ll keep trying for access farther up the border.
“It’s impressive to see how many people from different nations are apprehended here. It’s almost like a mini-United Nations at the detention facility,” said one U.S. government official, who did not have approval to speak on the record. “Everyone thinks Mexico or El Salvador or Guatemala, but when you see how many people from Asia, South America or even the Middle East are apprehended on the southern border, it makes you think about it.”
If detention space is not available, the immigrants are released on their own recognizance — a process many refer to as “catch and release.” They’re supposed to show up for a court hearing, but many slip away, never to be seen again.
We have no way of knowing whether the Hondurans we saw will show up for their hearing, but Cervantes said they would be released on their own recognizance a few hours after the agents apprehended them. There is simply nowhere to house immigrants with families, he said.
“There is no detention space for family units, especially for mothers with young children,” he said.
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/14400858.htm
Thanks for bringing this over, I've not been on there for a few days