Posted on 07/29/2002 1:27:42 AM PDT by sarcasm
WASHINGTON -- With the anniversary of Sept. 11 nearing, a new study concludes that vast stretches of the nation's northern border are guarded just as thinly as before last year's terrorist attack.
The U.S. Border Patrol so far has added just 22 agents to the 331 already posted along the 5,525 miles of mostly wilderness that separates the United States and Canada, according to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
That means there are 16 miles of border for each agent, says a new study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
By contrast, the Border Patrol along the 1,989-mile Mexican border currently has 9,100 agents, the INS said.
That's roughly one agent for each 1,000 feet.
"Earlier considerations may well have justified this stark disparity in resources," the Syracuse study said.
But with the new threat of worldwide terrorism, it concluded that the Bush administration "may have to consider the wrenching and costly relocation of thousands of Border Patrol agents."
Russell Bergeron, spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, confirmed that as of the middle of May, the Border Patrol had 9,788 agents.
That's roughly 750 short of the number that Congress has ordered for the current fiscal year, which ends in September.
However, Bergeron said late last week, "I think it's, frankly, premature to judge where we're at" on border reinforcement.
He said that it takes about five months to recruit, hire and train a new Border Patrol agent.
Moreover, he noted that the INS has been losing agents at a fast clip. More than 1,200 have left the agency this year, most of them to transfer to the better-paid ranks of the new Transportation Safety Administration, Bergeron said.
The departure rate for the Border Patrol has soared from just over 10 percent a year ago to almost 19 percent this year, he said.
Responding to the TRAC study, the INS late Friday announced that it will add 245 agents to the Canada border within the next two months.
Defending the practice of keeping most of its Border Patrol along the Mexico border, the INS said in a statement, "Well over 90 percent of all border-related apprehensions occur along the southwest border."
In the first weeks after the Sept. 11, the United States reinforced ports of entry with National Guard troops and moved Border Patrol agents temporarily from the Southwest border to assist in the north, chiefly at airports and land crossings.
Reinforcing the border lands between those ports of entry -- which is the chief job of the Border Patrol -- has been slower, however.
The Bush administration has stepped up cooperation with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and announced efforts to use more high-tech equipment to improve border security.
But deploying new personnel has taken longer.
For example, the INS is installing cameras at about a half-dozen sites in the North.
In one of the biggest projects, the Border Patrol in January installed a 32-camera operation to keep 24- hour watch over the border near Blaine.
However, for months the agency did not hire personnel to monitor the pictures the cameras relayed to TV screens.
John Bates, deputy chief for the Blaine office, said in an interview last week that the first new assistant for that work will arrive today, and a second will begin work next month.
"It's a start," he said.
The TRAC report, based on INS criminal enforcement data, also painted a statistical picture of the changing flow in illicit border crossings after the INS stepped up patrols along the Southern California border, thus pushing more of the illegal traffic into Texas and Arizona.
The study also found that criminal problems at the borders nationwide have increased, after a temporary drop last fall.
The number of criminal referrals made by the INS nationwide fell to just more than 1,000 in November.
By March, the monthly total was back up to 1,775 cases -- roughly the same as March of the previous year.
"There was a significant decline of people crossing the border legally and illegally right after 9/11," INS spokesman Bergeron said of the temporary drop in arrests.
Defending the practice of keeping most of its Border Patrol along the Mexico border, the INS said in a statement, "Well over 90 percent of all border-related apprehensions occur along the southwest border."
Just over 97% of all BP apprehensions happen along the southwest border.
Congress has approved a large pay raise for Border Patrol agents that takes effect in August, so that should help keep the agents from jumping ship.
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