Data Indicate Border Patrol Buildups Ineffective
The Border Patrol is bigger than ever, but South Texas ranch manager Bill Hellen says he still sees more illegal immigrants than ever.

When the Border Patrol put up a new checkpoint along the highway, he said illegal immigrants simply slashed his cattle fences and sneaked through his ranch.

And he doesn't see that changing any time soon, even with President Bush's promise of 6,000 new agents along the border.

"All the ranchers surrounding the checkpoint say the same thing," he said. "It's just a constant strain of illegal aliens on our pastures."

Many experts and critics agree with Hellen that building up the Border Patrol hasn't done much good. Border Patrol has doubled in size between 1995 and 2005 to 11,500 agents.

"What we find pretty consistently is that the number of agents just does not seem ato be related to the number of apprehensions that they make," said Linda Roberge, senior research fellow at the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University who studies immigration. "The flood, it may go up and it may go down, but there's always more that get through than get caught."

Press officers for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Washington, D.C., which encompasses the Border Patrol, didn't return several phone calls seeking comment.

Those who support Bush's call say there's no way fewer than 12,000 agents can control 7,000 miles of northern and southern U.S. border. U.S. Reps. Solomon Ortiz and Silvestre Reyes, both Texas Democrats, have been calling for more agents and more detention space for years.

But others say that's not a realistic answer.

"Ultimately, I suppose if they spend enough money they can build a wall, station a Border Patrol agent every hundred yards for 2,000 miles, that might do it. But what would that achieve?" said Doug Massey, a sociologist at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Government.

Massey said Border Patrol buildups gum up a cyclical migration among mostly Mexican men who usually stay a year or two and then go back. The buildups make them stay in the U.S. and have their families smuggled in because they fear they won't be able to come back, Massey said.

Reyes, chief of two Border Patrol sectors and architect of an immigrant crackdown in El Paso in 1994, said that in addition to adding agents there must be penalties for employers who hire immigrants.

"It's all smoke and mirrors," he said. "If the job is there, (the immigrants) will find a way to come."

A bill passed by the Senate on Thursday calls for an electronic system for employee verification to hold employers accountable for hiring decisions and calls for maximum fines of $20,000 for each worker and possible jail time for repeat offenders.

John Keeley, spokesman for the Center for Immigration Studies, wondered why there was no call to dramatically increase the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel at job sites in the interior United States.

"Border resources can't be the exclusive focus of Congress or the administration," he said. "The magnet for illegal immigration in the United States is the widespread availability of jobs."

ICE's enforcement force for the entire nation outside the border areas number about 200, he said, and Bush's 2007 budget calls for 200 more. Keeley said that was laughable considering the New York City police force numbers about 36,000.

Nathan Selzer, an immigration activist in Harlingen, said increased Border Patrol so far has meant the deaths of more immigrants risking deadlier routes, such as through the Arizona desert or in stifling cargo train cars.

In recent years he and others have commemorated the Mexican "Day of the Dead" by reading a list of the year's recorded fatalities, with many of the listed as "male, unknown."

The Border Patrol reported 473 deaths for fiscal year 2005 and 210 so far for fiscal year 2006. When immigrants are found alive, the Border Patrol terms it a rescue. The agency reported 1,887 rescues.

"Frankly that kind of policy we have real problems with," Selzer said. "They're knowingly shifting the flow of undocumented immigrants into dangerous places. It seems a little disingenuous to say, 'Look at all the ones we've saved.'"

Private land owners say the problem worsens each year. When they do call Border Patrol, the immigrants are gone by the time agents come. It's out of this frustration that groups like the Minuteman Project, and before it, Ranch Rescue developed.

Joe Sutton, a former neighbor of Helen's, moved to Hebbronville because he was tired of all the immigrants coming through his place in the Rio Grande Valley.

Then came the new checkpoint, and the immigrants. Frustrated with the broken fences, debris, and soap left in cattle troughs by bathing immigrants, he invited the Arizona-based Ranch Rescue to patrol his ranch.

Casey Nethercott, the founder of the group, pistol-whipped a Salvadoran immigrant during a patrol. Nethercott lost his Arizona ranch in a lawsuit brought by the immigrants, and Sutton paid a $100,000 settlement.

He has since given up on the ranch and left town, said his attorney, Marvin Rader.

"It's a sad story," Rader said. "The landowners don't have any property rights any more."