Buzz Words—The New Border Patrol Strategy
05/10/2012
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The U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) has announced a new strategy for enforcement, or lack thereof, for the foreseeable future.  It appears to be a long-term plan for serious cuts to border enforcement as it seems to depend on a reactive game plan and to depend on its "partners" to enforce the laws of the United States.

USA Today/Associated Press May 8, 2012

Border Patrol Gets First New Strategy In Eight Years

SAN DIEGO (AP) – The Border Patrol on Tuesday unveiled its first national strategy in eight years, a period in which the number of agents more than doubled and apprehensions of people entering illegally from Mexico dropped to a 40-year low.

The new approach — outlined in a 32-page document that took more than two years to develop — uses buzzwords like "risk-based" and "intelligence-driven" to describe a more nuanced, targeted response to constantly evolving threats.

The Border Patrol previously relied on a strategy that blanketed heavily trafficked corridors for illegal immigrants with agents, pushing migrants to more remote areas where they would presumably be easier to capture and discouraged from trying again.

"The jury, for me at least, is out on whether that's a solid strategy," Chief Mike Fisher told the Associated Press.

The new strategy draws on intelligence to identify repeat crossers and to try to determine why they keep coming, said Fisher, who was expected to address a House subcommittee on the plan Tuesday.

"This whole risk-based approach is trying to figure out who are these people? What risk do they pose from a national security standpoint? The more we know, the better informed we are about identifying the threat and potential risk," he said in a recent interview.

However the elephant in the room, or the dog that did not bark, is what is missing from the report.  And that is there is nothing concerning redeploying excess capacity at the border to interior enforcement. 

Long ago the USBP had an enforcement mission within the United States, maintaining stations, mostly in agricultural areas of the interior, where it enforced immigration laws.  They shared interior enforcement duties with the legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) District Offices that helped keep illegal aliens from establishing a permanent presence in the United States, keeping illegal aliens off balance and always in fear of discovery.

Since the Jorge Bush Administration, the USBP abandoned that force posture, closing interior stations and moving all resources to the border.  The USBP also gradually restricted and almost completely abandoned agricultural and interior enforcement near the border as well. 

Previously in border counties the USBP shared worksite enforcement and general enforcement duties with the legacy INS' Investigations section, but that was ended under Bush as well, with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) gradually ending interior enforcement as well, culminating in the Obama Regime Administrative Amnesty.  Interestingly enough with the formation of ICE in 2002, one of its first demands was the transfer of all interior enforcement to itself, which it promptly abandoned;  a clear sign that the Administrative Amnesty was well underway before the Obama Regime came into office.

What should be the new operational strategy for the USBP is to take up the work that ICE has abandoned.  The USBP has the personnel to shift substantial resources from the border to the interior and capitalize on improvements on the border and begin the process of attrition through enforcement.  That is not to say to abandon the border, but shift 5,000 or so Border Patrol Agents to the interior and effect a real change in security strategy by bringing enforcement to where much of the problem is, the interior.

 

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