In a sad and disquieting note, the new head of the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) has announced an upcoming new enforcement strategy, a risk based strategy rather than a resource based strategy.  For the uninitiated that means that the once formitable USBP, one with decades of its own enforcement culture, will be adopting the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) non-enforcement policy.  This was foreshadowed early last year.

Homeland Security Today May 26, 2011 by Anthony Kimery

DHS: An Acceptable Level of Illegal Migration; a Downsized Border Patrol?

A variety of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials on the US border with Mexico interviewed by Homeland Security Today offered a candidly astonishing revelation. They said because of the decrease in apprehensions of illegals and the increase in seizures of narcotics trying to be smuggled into the country, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) leaders in Washington, DC are mulling over the notion of whether, as a matter of official policy, there's an acceptable level of illegal migration into the United States - and whether the CBP workforce needs to be slashed as a result.

The officials said the decrease in apprehensions has caused some officials to believe that some Border Patrol stations and outposts and CBP operations along the southern border are “over-manned” and not as busy as they’d been in recent years. Some of the officials even said "things" have had to be "found ... to [keep some agents] busy."

The most recent Obama DHS budget included a decline in over 100 Border Patrol Agents.  To complement the planned decline in Border Patrol Agents and the acceptance of a level of illegal immigration the new Chief Patrol Agent,  instead of shifting to an interior enforcement strategy based on the decline in the number of illegal border crossers, will be accepting lower staffing levels and decreasing the number of aliens arrested.

The Republic  March 7, 2012 by Amanda Myers, AP

Border Patrol Chief Says New Agency Strategy To Shift Focus From Resources To Risks

PHOENIX — U.S. Border Patrol Chief Mike Fisher unveiled parts of his agency's new strategic four-year plan to tackle border security on Wednesday, saying that agents will focus on better responding to risks.

Fisher addressed a crowd of law enforcement and those working in the border-security field at a major border expo in downtown Phoenix.

Details of the Border Patrol's new strategic plan were still being finalized and that the plan won't be made public for about another two months, he said.

But Fisher outlined the basics, saying that the agency's last strategy, written in 2004, will move from being resource-based to risk-based.

"In 2004, quite frankly, our strategy was nothing less than brute force," he said. "We said, 'Get everything we can and get it at the line.'"

"There are people that wake up every day in this world and think of nothing other than how to harm this country," Fisher told The Associated Press. "It's not necessarily at this point, 'Give us more stuff.' It's about applying the stuff we have to reduce risk."