Guarding the US border (catch all)

[ganulv]

I spent part of last week in Québec and chose to do the border crossing at a very low-key CBSA checkpoint in order to have a look at the unusual situation shown in the photo below. It put the task of border control into better perspective for me.


Looking west down Rue Canusa. The international border is at the center line of the street -- westbound traffic travels in Canada, eastbound traffic travels in the United States.

[bourbon]

Out on the Border: Numbers and politicians tell us we are winning the war along our Southwest border - A closer look and inside view tells a very different story, by Will Grant. Dangerous Magazine, 5 May 2013.

There is a sense of urgency and frustration as humans and contraband flow into the US from Mexico and law enforcement tries to stop the influx. Last year, the US spent nearly $18 billion on immigration security, more than all other law enforcement agencies combined. In 2013, Customs and Border Protection alone has been allotted nearly $12 billion to enforce border security, up from $5.9 billion in 2003. Like any issue that has additional money and resources thrown at it, the problem should be lessening. Border security should be increasing. It is not.

Though US law enforcement presence along the Southwest border is at an all-time high, the number of arrests is as low as it’s been since the 1970s. Arrests increased from 2011 to 2012 from about 328,000 to about 357,000, but the overwhelming trend during the last decade has been a decrease in apprehensions. The peak year for arrests of illegal aliens was 2000 when 1.7 million people were apprehended. Some credit the depressed US economy with attracting fewer illegal aliens. Others say stricter enforcement of immigration laws is actually working. Either way, more officials and fewer arrests would indicate a downward trend.

But if we steer away from official statistics and instead sample non-political indicators, the story seems very different.

Solid piece of journalism, proving a boots on the ground perspective. The author embeds with Maricopa County (Arizona) HIDTA Task Force operators - who are outfitted in multicam, milspec ATVs, M4s, and velcro.

[davidbfpo]

Bourbon,

Good catch! Two passages struck me; the first one with my emphasis:

The Center for Investigative Reporting was skeptical of the political optimism. Thanks to the statistics provided by the all-seeing Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar, or VADER, mounted on the same Predator drone used by the CIA to launch drone strikes, we can use cold-blooded statistics. From October to December last year, law enforcement arrested 410 of the 7,333 individuals detected by VADER during operations in Arizona. That’s half of one percent of the illegal border crossers caught on camera, and works out to a rough average of five illegal entry attempts an hour…just in a small area along the Arizona–Mexico border.

When Napolitano gets up there and says the border is as secure as it’s ever been, who does she think she’s talking to?” Bailey says. “It’s complete mayhem out there.”