How to fight illegal immigration [Archive] - SoonerFans.com Message Boards

Mazeppa

7/11/2012, 08:16 PM

July 11, 2012
How to fight illegal immigration? Shut down border patrol stations
Rick Moran

Because what we don't need in the middle of an election is a bunch of border patrol agents running around down there doing their job and trying to stem the flood of illegals crossing the border. That just won't do - especially when there's ethnic pandering to be done to please some Hispanics.

Fox News:

The Obama administration is moving to shut down nine Border Patrol stations across four states, triggering a backlash from local law enforcement, members of Congress and Border Patrol agents themselves.

Critics of the move warn the closures will undercut efforts to intercept drug and human traffickers in well-traveled corridors north of the U.S.-Mexico border. Though the affected stations are scattered throughout northern and central Texas, and three other states, the coverage areas still see plenty of illegal immigrant activity -- one soon-to-be-shuttered station in Amarillo, Texas, is right in the middle of the I-40 corridor; another in Riverside, Calif., is outside Los Angeles.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it's closing the stations in order to reassign agents to high-priority areas closer to the border.

"These deactivations are consistent with the strategic goal of securing America's borders, and our objective of increasing and sustaining the certainty of arrest of those trying to enter our country illegally," CBP spokesman Bill Brooks said in a statement. "By redeploying and reallocating resources at or near the border, CBP will maximize the effectiveness of its enforcement mandate and align our investments with our mission."

But at least one Border Patrol supervisor in Texas has called on local officers to "voice your concerns" to elected officials, warning that the "deactivation" will remove agents from the Texas Panhandle, among other places. Several members of Congress have asked Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher to reconsider the plan. And local officials are getting worried about what will happen once the Border Patrol leaves town, since they rely on those federal officials to assist in making immigration arrests.

"It could impact us tremendously since we've only got two agents up here now for 26 counties," Potter County Sheriff Brian Thomas told FoxNews.com.

It would make sense to have depth to our interdiction efforts so that if the illegals escape detection at the border, they could be picked up further inland. The Obama administration is putting all our marbles in one basket, making it a hit or miss situation where if the illegals manage to avoid agents at the border, they are almost home free.

And the phrase used by the spokesman -- "align our investments with our mission" -- would seem to indicate there are budget issues also.

This will please Hispanic groups like La Raza who believe in open borders. A helluva price to pay for a little political good will.

SanJoaquinSooner

7/11/2012, 09:28 PM

WE know where you will be basing out of ,

Here a different spin from back in 2004 -- about here in San Joaquin County.

A Bitter Goodbye For Border Patrol [Stockton, CA]
The Record ^ | July 25, 2004 |

Agents, families upset over closing

The Diaz family appeared to have it all: the big-screen TV, the boat, the new 3,000-square-foot home. But last week, Lora Diaz, 39, sat in her darkened family room in dread, seated across from her husband, Raul, a U.S. Border Patrol agent. The wood blinds of the couple's Lathrop home were shut, and she was dressed in black, as if someone or something had died.

Raul Diaz, a 20-year veteran of the agency commonly referred to as "La Migra," is one of five agents who work the interior of the state and part of Nevada. But now, the Diazs' American dream is about to be yanked from its roots and sent to the border. At the same time, a bit of social history in Stockton will come to an end.

On Saturday, the Border Patrol's interior headquarters, which is based in Livermore and oversees Diaz's Stockton station on Rough and Ready Island, will shut down for good.

These are the final days of the U.S. Border Patrol in Stockton.

Diaz, 42, has spent his entire career sending other people back home to their countries of origin. Now he will try to figure out where home will be for him. His wife is loath to leave. "We don't want to lose our home," she said.

But soon, a new group from a different wing of the Department of Homeland Security, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement will take over. And the Border Patrol agents -- La Migra -- will be gone. Agents then will be responsible for protecting the borders and managing customs.

In late June, Raul Diaz was given two weeks to make a decision: relocate or quit. Reluctantly, he chose to transfer. "If they had told us a year ago, we wouldn't have bought a new house," said Lora Diaz, still angered over the "unfamily friendly" treatment by the new Department of Homeland Security.

Raul Diaz's sister, Connie Borjon has taken the emotional upheaval the hardest. "He's my best friend," she said. "When I think about it, I cry every day."

Diaz knows that in some parts of the community, there's little sympathy for "La Migra." "Some people love us. Some people hate us," said Diaz, half-Filipino, half-Mexican, and born and raised in Stockton. He's arrested relatives' neighbors, even old classmates from Stagg High School. "Border Patrol agents are seen as racists. I hear it all the time," he said.

That's when people ask him, "How can you do this to your people?"

"They're not my people," Diaz said. "My people are my family and friends. I have a job to do." And he'd rather keep doing it right where he is.

Diaz and partner Brian Naluai in Stockton, along with intelligence agent Millie Creager in Livermore and agents Steve Munoz and Rafael Velarde in Fresno, are the agents who work the Border Patrol region that covers everything from Oxnard to the Oregon border, from the Pacific to northern Nevada. Like the mythic Greek figure Sisyphus, who each day pushes a boulder uphill only to have it tumble downhill again, the agents are asked to plug a seemingly endless flow of undocumented workers flooding across the Mexican border.

According to the sector's arrest figures, the agents are doing a good job, in spite of years of staff reductions that saw the sector go from 80 to just five agents. This year, the five have rounded up more than 900 deportable aliens and 800 criminal aliens with no loss in efficiency.

But their numbers make those at the border look bad, said Naluai, 50, a 16-year-veteran agent. He said it exposed the shortcomings of the current strategy of fence-watching guards at stationary positions.

Border Patrol union representatives, led by President T.J.Bonner, met with the agents after the closure announcement in June. "They said we were an embarrassment," Naluai said.

The agents began to wonder about the departmental politics behind the closure. "Instead of being recognized for doing what we're asked to do, they're covering up," Naluai said. "So they don't have to explain why their efforts at the border aren't working."

They aren't doing much work at the Livermore headquarters these days either -- just dismantling it. A doormat welcomes you with the name "Border Patrol, Livermore Sector." But the door is locked. There's no receptionist. On entry, the offices have the emptied out, offering the ghostly feel of college dorms at term's end. In the hallway, flags on poles hang limply next to a thick binder of agents' names -- those who have died in the act of duty.

In an adjacent office sat Gilbertina Bravo-Paisley, the acting deputy Border Patrol agent in charge.

"I'm the heavy here," she said. "I was sent from San Diego to close this down. I have no control over that. It's a directive from D.C. But it's been difficult."

Bravo-Paisley admitted that the agents' work has been exemplary. But she said closure is just part of the overall change in emphasis at the year-old Department of Homeland Security. "ICE is on the immigration end of the house, and we've become customs and border protection," said Bravo, explaining the new duties. "ICE is the interior, and we're on the border."

The transition has slowly begun locally. But even Bravo-Paisley indicated it would be a challenge. The current agents under ICE working with the Border Patrol are mainly transporters. "Bus drivers," Bravo-Paisley said. Now, ICE is giving the detention and transportation officers a crash course -- six-weeks of immigration law and Spanish, so they can do the same job as the Border Patrol agents.

ICE will take over the Border Patrol space at Rough and Ready Island.

But the Border Patrol agents are concerned about the undocumented people who will slip through the gaps: the small-fry violators and people who enter legally but overstay visas. Chuck De More, the special agent in charge for ICE based in San Francisco, admitted ICE won't be doing everything. "Frankly, we will respond to criminal-alien calls," De More said. "Our resources are more focused to criminal and egregious offenses." He added that none of the changes was made for budget reasons.

"It goes back to the philosophical debate of whether the Border Patrol should be deployed that far from the border," he said. "Their decision was they should be on the border."

But De More was not without sympathy. "A reorganization on par with the creation of Homeland Security will cause stress, anxiety and discomfort among all of us," he said.

Outside the headquarters, a Dumpster was slowly becoming a kind of museum of immigration enforcement and bureaucracy. A thick congressional report of immigration reforms written in 1994, the year that advocated fences at the border and mobile sweeps to stymie smugglers, was discarded unceremoniously. There were broken-down chairs and attaches, and documents with now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service logos.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks, a newly created Department of Homeland Security took over the INS. Raul Diaz said that at times, it felt like Homeland Security had heaped the five agents and the dozen support staff of Livermore into the Dumpster along with everything else. "It's depressing," he said as he sat in the employee lunchroom.

The closure has changed the agents' basic routines. No longer do agents go down to the jails to check for criminal aliens. City patrols, where arrests were made on the streets and work sites and agents responded to public complaints, were phased out years ago, when Stockton went from 13 agents to two.

"We did everything," Diaz reminisced. "I felt like we were all making a difference." In the final days, Diaz doesn't even bother putting on his uniform. There is nothing to do but take down the radio gear, move some ammo and add more to the Dumpster.

Past some empty, dark holding cells, Livermore intelligence agent Creager sat in her office cleaning out her desk. She found some unfinished work. She read from a long list of names that the shutdown had prevented her from processing. Scanning the list, she rattled off labels of criminals she would not apprehend. "Rapist, pedophile, multiple rapist," said Creager, 49.

She's convinced of the need for what the Border Patrol does on the border and in the interior. But she felt the closing of Livermore is just the beginning. "We're the guinea pigs," she said. But she doesn't mind leaving and is willing to relocate. "I love my job. I love kicking dirt bags out of my country," she said.

Others like Naluai are concerned about being forced to separate from his wife and two young children. Diaz regrets leaving his new home. But Creager, a single mother with five dependents -- two children of a deceased daughter, and a younger daughter with two children -- has requested to move to a sector in Washington state. Just a year away from retirement, she needs the job. She just doesn't like the way the things have been handled.

"It's not worth the emotional upheaval," she said. "This is totally wrong. You don't do this to people."

The agents said their expenses will be paid and jobs assured. But the same kind of deals weren't offered to support staff. Others are still waiting for reassignment, some at lower rates of pay.

Joyce Smith, 52, a supervisory law enforcement communications assistant, isn't answering calls anymore. The radios are dead. And so, she fears, is her career. After 15 years, she's making $60,000 and is unwilling to start all over again or leave the area.

"I've had three grandbabies in seven months," the longtime Livermore resident said. "I'm not going to leave my family." Her eyes water as she realizes that on Monday, the radio room will be totally stripped and not worth locking. "I have nothing to do," she said.

Back in his home, Diaz wondered if the new Department of Homeland Security will ever achieve the kind of unity it sought post-Sept. 11. "I don't see where we've all come together," he said. Still, he has made a choice to stick it out.

The family waits to hear if they'll be reassigned to Riverside or Temecula in Southern California, where housing and living costs are higher than in Stockton. "They could have offered us positions locally, but they say it's not possible," said Diaz, counting the days to the end. "It could happen. They can wait to the last minute and surprise us and treat us like decent human beings. But they can say no. Then we have to go."