National Guard Bureaunews release |
PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICECommand Information
For more information: Phone: (703) 607-2647 CELL (202) 438-4115 DSN: 327-2647 FAX: (703) 607-0032 |
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For Immediate Release:JUNE 29, 2006 |
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Border Patrol official calls Jump Start a winning proposition
By Sgt. Jim Greenhill
National Guard Bureau
YUMA, Ariz. – The sight of National Guard members pulling in to the Yuma Border Patrol Station on June 18 thrilled Richard Hays.
The supervisory Border Patrol agent said Operation Jump Start – up to 6,000 National Guard members assigned to help his agency secure the nation’s southern border with Mexico – already is making a difference.
“Having the National Guard troops here is going to allow us to put agents – law enforcement personnel, the badge-wearers and the gun-toters that have been providing mission support roles – back on patrol,” Hays said.
The Border Patrol is part of Customs and Border Protection in the Department of Homeland Security. The continental United States is divided into 19 Border Patrol sectors, with Puerto Rico in a 20th sector. The Border Patrol has 143 stations within those sectors. About 11,000 agents are active nationwide, a number President Bush has vowed to increase by 6,000 by 2008.
“As these 6,000 Border Patrol agents start to come on, the number of National Guard troops on the border will decrease proportionally,” Hays said.
In the meantime, the arrival of Guard members “is going to provide an immediate, short-term solution and speed up our national strategy to secure our borders,” Hays said during an interview at the Yuma Station where, on a peak day on March 7, agents arrested 840 people in 24 hours.
“We’re very pleased to have the National Guard here,” Hays said. “It’s a force multiplier to us. It’s a win-win situation.”
Border Patrol agents are highly trained in law enforcement techniques, law and languages, and it takes about two years for an agent to get fully up to speed, Hays said.
The Border Patrol culture would be no shock to a Guard member. It places similar emphasis on technical and tactical proficiency, discipline, courtesy and competence.
Someone who is interested in being an agent first talks with a recruiter. They take a written test and go before a hiring board where the candidate is quizzed by three senior agents. Medical screening, drug screening and a background investigation follows.
Candidates attend the Border Patrol Academy in Artesia, N.M., for 19 weeks.
“You will be challenged not only physically but academically,” Hays said. “Immigration law and naturalization law, which our agents learn, are some of the most nebulous laws on the books.”
Graduation from the academy is followed by six to eight weeks in a field training unit. Newly minted agents must pass a law exam and a Spanish oral board at six months and again at 11 months.
“If you are not successful at completing both of those both times, you will then be asked to leave the service,” Hays said.
For those who pass, agents get on-the-job training in their area of responsibility.
“Being a Border Patrol agent, you are required to work in such a dynamic environment,” Hays said. “The border is a living, breathing thing that constantly changes, and we must be willing as it changes to adjust what we do in enforcement.”
National Guard troops are not apprehending anyone or militarizing the border. Missions that Guard members will have, Hays said, include maintaining sensing platforms that warn agents when the border is being violated, maintaining vehicles, and performing administrative duties to free up Border Patrol agents.
The Guard also will gather intelligence for agents to act on. “They are going to serve as our eyes and ears,” Hays said.
Hays comes from Pennsylvania, and he hadn’t seen the border before he joined the Border Patrol. “It was an eye-opener,” he said. “It was a different world. It’s been a phenomenal experience. It’s likely to be a memorable experience for the troops that come down.”
Guard members are coming at an active time. Through June 19, Yuma Sector agents had arrested 105,829 people since the fiscal year began on Oct. 1. In the same period a year earlier, 99,935 were arrested.
More than 36,000 pounds of marijuana had been seized in the Yuma Sector this fiscal year through June 19 – drugs with an estimated street value exceeding $30 million. “We’ve pretty much doubled our narcotics seizures this year already,” Hays said.
At the same time, 102 assaults against agents were reported – up from 85 a year earlier.
“Unfortunately, that’s a good sign,” Hays said. “It lets us know we’re having an effect on these smuggling organizations. As we continue to disrupt their illicit trade, they cannot carry out what they have done illicitly in the past, which they did at will at points. As we start to affect them financially, they’re going to lash out.
“When business is good, nobody wants to rock the boat. The narcotics loads are getting through. The smugglers’ loads are getting through. There’s no need. But when we start targeting stash houses, identifying smuggling rings, arresting their people, seizing their narcotics – when business is bad – they become frustrated.”
Border Patrol agents see everything. An undocumented alien hollows out a car seat and sits inside the upholstery, head where the head restraint would normally be. Another is found underneath a hollowed out dashboard; another in the engine compartment.
Smugglers have in the past built sandbag bridges across the Colorado River substantial enough to support a sports utility vehicle, smuggling people and drugs. They use torches to cut holes in fenced border sections. They dig elaborate tunnels.
It used to cost $1,500 to $2,000 for a person to be smuggled across the border – a price that Hays has heard has increased with the mere announcement of Operation Jump Start.
“To the smugglers, these individuals are not human beings. They’re nothing more than a commodity, a cash cow,” Hays said. “Chinese nationals we’ve arrested have stated they’ve paid upward of $50,000 to $55,000 a head.”
In the whole of the 2005 fiscal year, 138,460 people were arrested in the Yuma Sector. Hays said the number is running about 6 percent higher this year.
“Ten percent, or roughly 14,000 of those people, have some sort of criminal history here in the United States or have an active criminal warrant. That’s just one sector out of 20,” he said.
“We are starting to see an increase in the number of individuals with criminal histories. At times, very severe criminal histories. Aggravated felonies, Murderers. Those individuals that have committed sexual crimes against children.”
Some of the increased narcotics seizures and arrests might be explained by technology, Hays said. Technology has improved the odds of finding drugs. Sensors, cameras and other devices – often installed by the National Guard – have made it easier to see people by day and night. Computers allow agents to get fingerprint results, which used to take months, in a few minutes.
But the border and the Border Patrol are under pressure – pressure that Hays and other agents said the National Guard is already helping to relieve.
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PHOTO CAPTION
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Border Patrol agents assigned Staff Sgt. Dominic Flores, 162nd Fighter Wing, Arizona Air National Guard, to the Nogales Station communications center in Arizona because of his civilian skills as a Tucson police officer. Flores was running criminal records checks just three days after he arrived for Operation Jump Start. That made it possible for Border Patrol agents to return to duty on the border. (Photo by Sgt. Jim Greenhill, National Guard Bureau)
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