December 28, 2005

Break on Through to the Other Side

By Donna Locke
Tennesseans for Immigration Control and Reform
U.S. Border Patrol agents estimate that for every person caught crossing our borders illegally, four to seven slip by. Some of those caught are repeat crossers.

From Oct. 1, 2004, to Sept. 30, 2005, the Border Patrol made 1,188,977 apprehensions along our land borders between the ports of entry, according to Maria Valencia, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman I talked with today. Of those apprehensions, 165,175 were non-Mexican illegal entrants, Valencia said, and non-Mexicans apprehended in fiscal year 2004 came from about 175 countries. Multiply those apprehensions by the estimate above, and you'll have some idea of the number of people who were not caught but slipped past the Border Patrol and into our country.

Often, illegal entrants, including those from terrorism-sponsoring countries, are released into our country with orders to appear in immigration court. In 2004, 90 percent of those so ordered did not show up. What a shock. I don't know the current percentage of no-shows, but I doubt it's much improved, although in Sept. 2005, the Department of Homeland Security expanded its expedited removal process from three to nine Border Patrol sectors, implementing the program across the southwest border. Expedited removal targets non-Mexican illegal aliens only and returns those aliens to their countries of origin as soon as possible, without release into the United States.

Since the early 1990s, 1 million or more people have illegally settled in our country each year. That's in addition to the whopping 1 million legal immigrants entering annually for many years now. Anyone who researches immigration knows the official estimates of the number of illegal aliens in the United States are lower than the reality. The true number probably is between 20 million and 30 million, based on what some economists, labor analysts, immigration-enforcement agents, and ethnic-advocacy groups are saying. An estimated half of illegals did not run the border but came through our ports of entry illegally or legally (initially).

Last year, American Border Patrol, an immigration control/reform organization, smuggled a simulated weapon of mass destruction across our southern border - twice - and walked up to the Tucson (Ariz.) Federal Building with it, unquestioned. I think they did it again this year.

Don't say it's impossible to secure our borders. It's never been tried. A University of Texas study estimated that 16,133 Border Patrol agents are needed to secure our borders. We have 11,289 BP agents, as of Dec. 10, 2005, according to Valencia, for nearly 6,000 miles of land border.

Away from the border, we have 6,000 special agents for interior enforcement of immigration laws, said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That number does not include other ICE employees such as detention and removal officers, the Federal Protective Service, or intelligence analysts, Boyd said. Because of the 2003 merger of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) with Customs, some sources say 2,300 or fewer agents are doing real interior immigration enforcement now. ICE has been instructed to concentrate only on illegals who have committed other crimes here or have absconded.

For a trip behind the smoke screen, read John W. Slagle's book, Illegal Entries. Slagle, a retired Border Patrol special agent and highly decorated military veteran, rips the veil off the Homeland Security charade and details how we've lost our national sovereignty via our presidents and Congress since 1965. Also, please read this.