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Nearly 600,000 entrants caught, Border Patrol says

PHOENIX - The Border Patrol said Thursday that it nabbed nearly 600,000 illegal entrants coming into Arizona in the last year, a drastic increase attributed in large part to an aggressive enforcement effort launched in March. The beefed-up enforcement involves helicopters, ground sensors, two unmanned surveillance aircraft and dozens more border agents in Arizona - the busiest illegal entry point on the U.S.-Mexican border. "We are just making it very difficult for the smuggling organizations to get across the border," Border Patrol spokesman Andy Adame said. "Enforcement has never been better in Southern Arizona." The Border Patrol apprehended about 586,000 illegal immigrants in the fiscal year that ended Thursday. That is an increase of nearly 184,000 from the previous year. It is the second-most apprehensions ever, behind the record 725,093 in 2000. Since the $28 million enforcement initiative began six months ago, more than 375,000 illegal entrants have been apprehended in Arizona. That compares to nearly 250,000 during the same period last year. Richard Boren, a volunteer with No More Deaths, a coalition of human rights groups and churches from both sides of the border, said the initiative has been a "massive failure" and has done nothing to address the country's broken immigration system.