Too many border agents are not enough
Residents see them as a cure - or a problem
By Tim Steller and Ignacio Ibarra
The Arizona Daily Star
The Arizona Daily Star Border Patrol supervisor Fred Esquivel discourages fence jumpers |
Down on International Avenue in Douglas, for example, the agents are ever-present, every couple of blocks. For some residents, they become a hassle.
``They keep us up all night because they're laughing, yakking and joking,'' said a 41-year-old woman, a lifelong resident of International. ``I don't think they need more. I just think they need to get to work.''
Since 1994, the number of agents stationed in Douglas has grown sixfold, from about 60 to around 350.
For the first half of 1999, even that number seemed inadequate for many residents. Especially in the rural areas outside of town, residents felt overrun by illegal entrants crossing their properties in unprecedented numbers.
With the agency approved to grow fast through 2001, the Border Patrol plans to continue placing more agents at Cochise County stations.
Gus de la Viña, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, said as part of his borderwide strategy, the increased number of agents will eventually control the illegal immigration problem.
``There is no doubt in my mind that with the proper mix of personnel, equipment and technology, the entire border can be brought to a good level of control,'' he said. ``The evidence for that is what has happened in El Paso, at San Diego . . . and at Nogales.''
But in the process, some border-area residents now worry they will lose their privacy, their sleep, maybe even their rights.
Those are not simple sacrifices for people living in rural areas, where peace and privacy are expected.
Renee Puzzi, for one, has given up any thoughts she might have had of roaming her yard in her bathrobe. She lives five miles west of Douglas in an area where steady cross-border traffic flows every night.
Around the desert scrub where she and her husband live, there are ``cameras all over,'' Puzzi said.
``It invades your privacy,'' she said. ``I don't know that they can't see everything (you) do in your yard.''
Puzzi's husband, Richard, also complains that he can't drive own his own property, which borders Mexico, without Border Patrol agents stopping him.
Still, the couple sees the disruption as a necessary sacrifice for living in the area. They hope that when the agency builds a Border Patrol station about a half-mile west of their house, cross-border traffic will veer away.
For rural residents, crossing agents' paths might not be a bad experience if they were more like the locals.
``It's hard for me to understand how they was raised, if they was raised not to trust people,'' said Frank Adams, a member of the Douglas station's Border Patrol advisory committee. ``The way we were raised, you trust everybody until they give you a reason not to.''
A group of illegal entrants from southern states in Mexico walks toward Pirtleville, just west of Douglas, to a rendezvous point |
Where it will end isn't clear; a May report from the U.S. General Accounting Office criticizes the agency's failure to define what it considers the adequate level of staffing and other resources needed to control the border.
A February study by the University of Texas estimated that to optimally control and deter unauthorized crossings in the Tucson sector, the staffing would have to more than double from about 1,100 to about 2,500 agents. The sector covers all of the Southern Arizona border except for a western stretch that includes Yuma.
But the GAO report even questions the assertion that more agents are necessarily reducing illegal immigration, saying the INS lacks supporting evidence.
The GAO concluded that even with massive budget and staffing increases, INS data ``do not yet answer the fundamental question of how effective the strategy has been in preventing and deterring illegal entry.''
De la Viña said experiences in El Paso, San Diego, and most recently Nogales show that sticking with this strategy eventually will lead to success.
The El Paso and San Diego areas accounted for 68 percent of border apprehensions prior to the implementation of the strategy in those sectors in 1993 and 1994. Last fiscal year, apprehensions in the two sectors represent just 24 percent of the Border Patrol's total apprehensions.
But along the entire Southwest border, apprehensions have climbed from about 1.2 million to 1.5 million over the last five years.
The Border Patrol buildup has allowed residents to reclaim the communities where the strategy has been implemented, de la Viña said.
Illegal entrants ``were running through back yards. We were having people running across highways, especially in the San Diego area,'' he said. ``That's no longer the case.''
``If you go to Nogales and talk to residents, they'll tell you things are getting back to normal there, too.''
But not everyone considers a border thick with agents normal.
An ongoing lawsuit argues the Border Patrol should be restrained from stopping motorists on Southern Arizona highways because the stops are discriminatory against Hispanics and without reasonable suspicion.
The suit was dismissed by Tucson U.S. District Judge John Roll in 1997, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived it in January.
Tucson attorney Isabel Garcia said that these stops are the landmarks of a region she calls the ``deconstitutionalized zone.'' That zone exists wherever border agents patrol and is risky for Hispanic drivers, she said.
Such concerns do not prevail among many Cochise County residents, especially in the rural areas.
Larry Vance, who organized a group of county residents concerned about illegal immigration, called for law enforcement officers outside the Border Patrol to be able to arrest people for immigration-law violations. It's a concept that Douglas Mayor Ray Borane supports; he called for his city's police force to be deputized as immigration officers.
Still others call for the National Guard to be deployed along the border in order to deter and arrest illegal immigrants.
De la Viña vowed that a continuation of the same Border Patrol buildup, even with its uncertainties, will work.
``We don't have a formula, and there is no magic number,'' he said. ``You're dealing with a process that is in a constant state of flux.''