Despite new technology, Border Patrol overwhelmed

Security officials warn that terrorists want to use Mexico to strike at U.S.

USA Today 02/23/05
author: Mimi Hall
(Copyright 2005)

LUNA COUNTY, N.M. -- Across an expanse of desert where nothing marks the Mexican border but a flimsy line of barbed wire, Border Patrol agent Mitch King flies his helicopter low to search for signs of illegal entry into the USA.

He spots footprints and tire tracks and hovers to get a better look. If the sandy impressions are fresh, he'll radio agents on the ground. But King's experienced eyes tell him these prints are at least a day or two old. Now, they serve only as evidence that more people have crossed the border illegally without getting caught.

More than three years after the terrorist attacks in 2001, the 11,000 men and women who serve as the border's front-line defense are overwhelmed. Despite an influx of new technology, such as underground sensors and cameras that pan the desert, agents catch only about one-third of the estimated 3 million people who cross the border illegally every year.

Most of the illegals are poor Mexican laborers looking for work. But officials are alarmed that a growing number hail from Central and South America, Asia, even Mideast countries such as Syria and Iran. In 2003, the Border Patrol arrested 39,215 so-called "OTMs," or other-than-Mexicans, along the Southwest border. In 2004, the number jumped to 65,814.

Those figures worry intelligence and Homeland Security officials, who say al-Qaeda leaders want to smuggle operatives and weapons of mass destruction across the nation's porous land borders. James Loy, deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told Congress last week, "Several al-Qaeda leaders believe operatives can pay their way into the country through Mexico and also believe illegal entry is more advantageous than legal entry for operational security reasons."

T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, says the Border Patrol has "reliable intelligence that there are terrorists living in South America, assimilating the culture and learning the language" in order to blend in with Mexicans crossing the border.

...

Although the government has added about 1,300 agents to the force since 2001, there still aren't nearly enough to patrol the 6,900 miles of border with Mexico and Canada.

Recognizing that need, Congress late last year authorized a near doubling of the size of the agency by adding 2,000 agents a year for the next five years. But this month, the Bush administration's budget requested $37 million to pay for one-tenth as many agents -- 210 -- in 2006.