Texan
Well-known member
Border Patrol Chief Says Broken
Border Not A Recent Development
By David Bowser
KINGSVILLE — "There is a tremendous amount of change that is happening in the Border Patrol today," says David Aguilar, Chief of the U.S. Border Patrol. "The reason that change is occurring is because of the amount of interest that this country has in bringing security to our borders."
The nation's highest ranking Border Patrol agent was in Kingsville to speak to the South Texans' Property Rights Association, a two year-old organization of ranchers and landowners.
Probably the loudest mantra in newspapers and on television today, Aguilar says, is the challenges along the border.
"The question I've asked some of these folks that complain about broken borders," Aguilar says, "is why all of a sudden did you wake up one day and realize that the borders are broken?"
Aguilar asks why there weren't reports on breaking borders 15 years ago.
"Nobody was paying attention then," Aguilar says. "This country was ignoring the borders."
When the borders were breaking, he says the Border Patrol and local sheriffs were working very hard, but the problem had not caught the public's eye.
Since 1986 when the Immigration Reform and Control Act was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, Aguilar says, it's gotten progressively worse.
"Today, we have broken borders," Aguilar says. "I'm here to tell you the borders basically are broken."
But he adds that the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local law enforcement officers, sheriffs and police departments, are working hard to take care of the borders.
"We should be very, very concerned about what's happening on our borders today," Aguilar says. "The good news is that a lot of folks who have been identified as illegal aliens, and more important, illegal aliens with criminal records, were identified because they were apprehended. We actually arrested them."
Still, he admits that there are challenges along the border.
Born in Edinburgh, Texas, Aguilar served part of his 29 years in the Border Patrol in Laredo, Hebbronville and Rio Grande City, so he's familiar with South Texas.
"For the longest time, the border was ignored," Aguilar says. "The Border Patrol was ignored. We did everything we could with what little we had to secure this country's borders."
Today, with the pressure brought to bear on politicians from the news media, the Border Patrol has increased funding which translates into more technology and manpower.
Aguilar says last year, the U.S. Border Patrol seized 1.3 million tons of narcotics at the border and apprehended 1.1 million aliens trying to come into the United States between ports of entry.
Of the aliens apprehended, more than 100,000 had criminal backgrounds and more than 150,000 were OTMs, the Border Patrol classification for “other than Mexican.”
"On our nation's borders, the challenge that we face, the real challenge, is border security and national security," Aguilar says.
Aguilar says the Border Patrol now has the resources and the national fortitude to finally do something about the challenges along the border.
He says the differences he has seen over the last 29 years of his career are like day and night.
"Especially in the fortitude this country has today compared to what we had way back there," Aguilar says. "That gives me good reason to feel good about where we're going and how we're going to get there."
The primary risks Aguilar outlines are the narcotic traffickers and potential terrorists.
"We are fighting a war unlike any other war we've fought in this country," Aguilar says. "If we think there is not a possibility of our borders being vulnerable to terrorists and coming across our borders, we've got a problem."
That is a real possibility, he says, though not as high a possibility as some people portray it.
"We cannot wait until something happens and then secure our borders," Aguilar says. "That's why it's absolutely critical that we take the actions that we're taking today to secure our borders."
Most of the activity between ports of entry, 98 percent, is along the U.S. border with Mexico. Aguilar says 58 percent of all illegal alien apprehensions last year were in the Border Patrol's Arizona area of operations. Fifty-nine percent of all narcotics apprehended by the Border Patrol, 1.3 million tons last year, was in Arizona. California's border with Mexico accounted for 23 percent of the aliens and about five percent of the narcotics.
Texas accounted for 19 percent of the illegal aliens and about 36 percent of the narcotics.
Aguilar says certain routes up through Mexico are used by smugglers and other routes from the border on into the U.S. Smugglers keep close track of law enforcement activity at border crossing points and can react quickly when one area is closed down. They can move contraband up through staging areas south of the border to move through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona or California.
"What they're looking for is infrastructure that's going to facilitate their means of entry into the United States," Aguilar says, "and then the way they're going to make their way into the United States."
Aguilar says the Border Patrol started looking seriously at the borders in 1993, when the chief Border Patrol agent in McAllen was transferred to El Paso.
"El Paso was being overrun," Aguilar says. "The downtown area was being overrun by illegal aliens and narcotics."
The new chief assigned to El Paso tried to hold the line. He shifted the flow of traffic to San Diego.
"The reason the shift occurred," Aguilar says, "was that the original infrastructure that had been available to them in El Paso was no longer available. They looked for the next easiest route of ingress into the United States."
As the Border Patrol sought to shut down access to the U.S. from Tijuana, smugglers moved their routes through South Texas. The Border Patrol reacted with Operation Rio Grande.
"We increased the resources," Aguilar says. "We built some infrastructure. We worked with landowners and applied pressure down here. It hasn't gone away, but the numbers are down."
Smuggling is like water, Aguilar says. Smugglers will find the easiest way to get into the United States. They will follow the path of least resistance.
That led the smugglers back to Arizona, he says, and the Border Patrol responded with Operation Safeguard.
"The last remaining infrastructure of cities was where they hit," Aguilar says.
Juarez, Mexico, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, is a city of about two to 2.5 million people. Tijuana, Mexico, across the border from San Diego, is about 1.5 to two million people.
Smugglers went from using the infrastructure of cities like Juarez and Tijuana to cities like Nogales with about 100,000 and Agua Prieta across from Douglas, Ariz., with a population of 28,000.
"These were the last areas they could use to jump off into the United States," Aguilar says.
They moved out into the mountains and desert.
As the environments of smuggling have changed, so have the operations. Aguilar says that in urban environments, such as El Paso or Brownsville or San Diego or Douglas, agents have seconds or minutes to identify and apprehend anybody coming across the border into the United States before they disappear into the crowds of the cities.
It is in these areas that the Border Patrol can use fences, lights and roads.
The illegal immigrants try to move quickly through these areas to get into the malls and get into stores and businesses where they can mix with locals.
In rural areas, the Border Patrol has minutes to hours to identify and apprehend illegal aliens. There is no longer an infrastructure in which they can become lost.
"So our tactics and our equipment varies," Aguilar says.
The Border Patrol makes more use of video surveillance camera systems.
"Down here on the river, we actually ride the river on boats," he says.
He says they erect heavy metal barriers to prevent smugglers from driving across the borders. They use planes and helicopters in rural areas to get to the illegal incursions.
"In South Texas," Aguilar says, "we still use horse patrols. It's the only way to get there sometimes."
In the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, the Border Patrol has a forward operating base where agents are flown in and live for 12 to 30 days at a time.
"They work 12 hours on and 12 hours off," Aguilar says. "They patrol that general area of operations."
Most of the Border Patrol's tactics are intrusive on private landowners to some degree, Aguilar says.
"We try to minimize it," he says. "We use horses instead of vehicles wherever we can."
The next step in patrolling the border, Aguilar says, is SBI Net, or Secure Border Initiative.
Narcotics seizures are up 30 percent this year all along the border.
"In 2005, we apprehended over 154,000 OTMs," Aguilar says. "Of those, over 74 percent came from this part of the country."
In 2006, that flow was reduced by more than 70 percent, Aguilar says.
"We are no longer releasing Other Than Mexicans as we were in the past," Aguilar says.
With the human trafficking down, Aguilar says they are able to spend more time on narcotics trafficking.
In the future, Aguilar says they will be able to detect any illegal incursion along the border.
"We need to be able to classify what that illegal incursion is," Aguilar says. "In other words, is it a person, a vehicle, a cow, a horse or a group of people?"
They've got to respond to that incursion and resolve the outcome, whether it is with arrests, deportations or something else.
"Resolution is very important," Aguilar says. "We arrest, we deport, and we prosecute."
All of this is part of the SBI Net. The backbone of SBI Net is ground radar and camera coverage, including thermal imaging cameras and a laser range finder.
"The high resolution of the equipment that we're getting will be able to tell us if it is a person, a group of people, a horse, so we don't have to waste time," Aguilar says.
They will also be able to tell when and how to approach the person to apprehend him or her.
It is a virtual fence, Aguilar says.
"We would prefer this," he says. "It's less intrusive."
The SBI Net will include unmanned aircraft, towers and mobile units.
"We will have the entire Southwest border covered by 2013," Aguilar says. "Not all of the border will be under this, but this is the capability that we will have."
Physical fences, he says, cost between one and three million dollars a mile, depending upon location.
In San Diego, the Border Patrol started building a fence in 1993.
"It took us 16 years to build 14 miles of fence," Aguilar says. "This year, we're going to build 70 miles of fence. Next year, we're going to build 225 miles of fence. The rate at which we're building more infrastructure and hiring personnel and getting technology is unprecedented."
That technology will build a virtual fence that is much less intrusive for landowners and is much more effective.
"One of these towers will give us coverage of seven, eight, nine miles versus one mile of physical fence," Aguilar says. "One of these towers will cost us about $750,000. It's a better, more efficient use of our money to get us the security we need."
The system is now being tested in Arizona, he says.
The Border Patrol has traditionally used thermal cameras alone that take two to three minutes to cover a swath of desert 10 miles in width. The system did not work well in extreme heat.
With ground surveillance radar, a 180 degree turn is accomplished every 10 seconds. With SBI Net, the Border Patrol expects 95 to 100 percent detection. The system can provide accurate GPS coordinates to agents on the ground and in the air and update those coordinates as targets move. The system is expected to be as effective at night as during the day.
But there is more than technology involved, Aguilar says. He says he would also like to see landowners involved in training new Border Patrol agents. He says they need to learn ranch etiquette.
"One of the most important things that I learned as a Border Patrol agent when I was in South Texas is, ‘Son, you leave that gate just the way you found it,’" Aguilar says. "If it was open, you leave it open. If it was closed, you close it. If you see something wrong, your best friend is that ranch foreman. Call him."
Aguilar says they teach that today to new agents, but he says they need local ranchers to reinforce those lessons.
He says not all of their recruits come from South Texas. Some of them come from New York or Chicago, and they have to be trained.
"The reason I bring that up," Aguilar says, "is because we're going to bring a lot of resources to South Texas, and it's important that we maintain relationships that we have built up over the years with the ranching community."
He says the landowners are absolutely critical to the effort to keep the border safe.
"We will give our best shot at putting on the ground the best qualified, the best trained agents that we can," Aguilar says.
Border Patrol has about 13,500 agents. When Aguilar first joined the Border Patrol there were about 2000 agents. By the end of calendar year 2008, the Border Patrol will have a strength of 18,000 agents, and it will be part of a larger, better coordinated effort under the Department of Homeland Security.
"For the first time in the history of the United States," Aguilar says, "we have one agency, one man in charge of the entire responsibility for our nation's borders."
Aguilar says the system isn't perfect, but they are working toward that end.
"One of the biggest challenges that we have is taking the old way of doing business, the old culture from which we came, and meshing them all together into one culture of border security," Aguilar says.
Aguilar says that from a budgetary standpoint, the Border Patrol has never had it better.
The culture he is talking about is how formerly different agencies operate together as one agency in a post-911 world.
He says the Border Patrol was picked up as a whole and put into the Homeland Security Department. He says little has changed concerning the organization of the Border Patrol since it was first established in 1924.
"What has changed is our approach, our way of thinking, the resources," Aguilar says.
Border Not A Recent Development
By David Bowser
KINGSVILLE — "There is a tremendous amount of change that is happening in the Border Patrol today," says David Aguilar, Chief of the U.S. Border Patrol. "The reason that change is occurring is because of the amount of interest that this country has in bringing security to our borders."
The nation's highest ranking Border Patrol agent was in Kingsville to speak to the South Texans' Property Rights Association, a two year-old organization of ranchers and landowners.
Probably the loudest mantra in newspapers and on television today, Aguilar says, is the challenges along the border.
"The question I've asked some of these folks that complain about broken borders," Aguilar says, "is why all of a sudden did you wake up one day and realize that the borders are broken?"
Aguilar asks why there weren't reports on breaking borders 15 years ago.
"Nobody was paying attention then," Aguilar says. "This country was ignoring the borders."
When the borders were breaking, he says the Border Patrol and local sheriffs were working very hard, but the problem had not caught the public's eye.
Since 1986 when the Immigration Reform and Control Act was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, Aguilar says, it's gotten progressively worse.
"Today, we have broken borders," Aguilar says. "I'm here to tell you the borders basically are broken."
But he adds that the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local law enforcement officers, sheriffs and police departments, are working hard to take care of the borders.
"We should be very, very concerned about what's happening on our borders today," Aguilar says. "The good news is that a lot of folks who have been identified as illegal aliens, and more important, illegal aliens with criminal records, were identified because they were apprehended. We actually arrested them."
Still, he admits that there are challenges along the border.
Born in Edinburgh, Texas, Aguilar served part of his 29 years in the Border Patrol in Laredo, Hebbronville and Rio Grande City, so he's familiar with South Texas.
"For the longest time, the border was ignored," Aguilar says. "The Border Patrol was ignored. We did everything we could with what little we had to secure this country's borders."
Today, with the pressure brought to bear on politicians from the news media, the Border Patrol has increased funding which translates into more technology and manpower.
Aguilar says last year, the U.S. Border Patrol seized 1.3 million tons of narcotics at the border and apprehended 1.1 million aliens trying to come into the United States between ports of entry.
Of the aliens apprehended, more than 100,000 had criminal backgrounds and more than 150,000 were OTMs, the Border Patrol classification for “other than Mexican.”
"On our nation's borders, the challenge that we face, the real challenge, is border security and national security," Aguilar says.
Aguilar says the Border Patrol now has the resources and the national fortitude to finally do something about the challenges along the border.
He says the differences he has seen over the last 29 years of his career are like day and night.
"Especially in the fortitude this country has today compared to what we had way back there," Aguilar says. "That gives me good reason to feel good about where we're going and how we're going to get there."
The primary risks Aguilar outlines are the narcotic traffickers and potential terrorists.
"We are fighting a war unlike any other war we've fought in this country," Aguilar says. "If we think there is not a possibility of our borders being vulnerable to terrorists and coming across our borders, we've got a problem."
That is a real possibility, he says, though not as high a possibility as some people portray it.
"We cannot wait until something happens and then secure our borders," Aguilar says. "That's why it's absolutely critical that we take the actions that we're taking today to secure our borders."
Most of the activity between ports of entry, 98 percent, is along the U.S. border with Mexico. Aguilar says 58 percent of all illegal alien apprehensions last year were in the Border Patrol's Arizona area of operations. Fifty-nine percent of all narcotics apprehended by the Border Patrol, 1.3 million tons last year, was in Arizona. California's border with Mexico accounted for 23 percent of the aliens and about five percent of the narcotics.
Texas accounted for 19 percent of the illegal aliens and about 36 percent of the narcotics.
Aguilar says certain routes up through Mexico are used by smugglers and other routes from the border on into the U.S. Smugglers keep close track of law enforcement activity at border crossing points and can react quickly when one area is closed down. They can move contraband up through staging areas south of the border to move through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona or California.
"What they're looking for is infrastructure that's going to facilitate their means of entry into the United States," Aguilar says, "and then the way they're going to make their way into the United States."
Aguilar says the Border Patrol started looking seriously at the borders in 1993, when the chief Border Patrol agent in McAllen was transferred to El Paso.
"El Paso was being overrun," Aguilar says. "The downtown area was being overrun by illegal aliens and narcotics."
The new chief assigned to El Paso tried to hold the line. He shifted the flow of traffic to San Diego.
"The reason the shift occurred," Aguilar says, "was that the original infrastructure that had been available to them in El Paso was no longer available. They looked for the next easiest route of ingress into the United States."
As the Border Patrol sought to shut down access to the U.S. from Tijuana, smugglers moved their routes through South Texas. The Border Patrol reacted with Operation Rio Grande.
"We increased the resources," Aguilar says. "We built some infrastructure. We worked with landowners and applied pressure down here. It hasn't gone away, but the numbers are down."
Smuggling is like water, Aguilar says. Smugglers will find the easiest way to get into the United States. They will follow the path of least resistance.
That led the smugglers back to Arizona, he says, and the Border Patrol responded with Operation Safeguard.
"The last remaining infrastructure of cities was where they hit," Aguilar says.
Juarez, Mexico, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, is a city of about two to 2.5 million people. Tijuana, Mexico, across the border from San Diego, is about 1.5 to two million people.
Smugglers went from using the infrastructure of cities like Juarez and Tijuana to cities like Nogales with about 100,000 and Agua Prieta across from Douglas, Ariz., with a population of 28,000.
"These were the last areas they could use to jump off into the United States," Aguilar says.
They moved out into the mountains and desert.
As the environments of smuggling have changed, so have the operations. Aguilar says that in urban environments, such as El Paso or Brownsville or San Diego or Douglas, agents have seconds or minutes to identify and apprehend anybody coming across the border into the United States before they disappear into the crowds of the cities.
It is in these areas that the Border Patrol can use fences, lights and roads.
The illegal immigrants try to move quickly through these areas to get into the malls and get into stores and businesses where they can mix with locals.
In rural areas, the Border Patrol has minutes to hours to identify and apprehend illegal aliens. There is no longer an infrastructure in which they can become lost.
"So our tactics and our equipment varies," Aguilar says.
The Border Patrol makes more use of video surveillance camera systems.
"Down here on the river, we actually ride the river on boats," he says.
He says they erect heavy metal barriers to prevent smugglers from driving across the borders. They use planes and helicopters in rural areas to get to the illegal incursions.
"In South Texas," Aguilar says, "we still use horse patrols. It's the only way to get there sometimes."
In the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, the Border Patrol has a forward operating base where agents are flown in and live for 12 to 30 days at a time.
"They work 12 hours on and 12 hours off," Aguilar says. "They patrol that general area of operations."
Most of the Border Patrol's tactics are intrusive on private landowners to some degree, Aguilar says.
"We try to minimize it," he says. "We use horses instead of vehicles wherever we can."
The next step in patrolling the border, Aguilar says, is SBI Net, or Secure Border Initiative.
Narcotics seizures are up 30 percent this year all along the border.
"In 2005, we apprehended over 154,000 OTMs," Aguilar says. "Of those, over 74 percent came from this part of the country."
In 2006, that flow was reduced by more than 70 percent, Aguilar says.
"We are no longer releasing Other Than Mexicans as we were in the past," Aguilar says.
With the human trafficking down, Aguilar says they are able to spend more time on narcotics trafficking.
In the future, Aguilar says they will be able to detect any illegal incursion along the border.
"We need to be able to classify what that illegal incursion is," Aguilar says. "In other words, is it a person, a vehicle, a cow, a horse or a group of people?"
They've got to respond to that incursion and resolve the outcome, whether it is with arrests, deportations or something else.
"Resolution is very important," Aguilar says. "We arrest, we deport, and we prosecute."
All of this is part of the SBI Net. The backbone of SBI Net is ground radar and camera coverage, including thermal imaging cameras and a laser range finder.
"The high resolution of the equipment that we're getting will be able to tell us if it is a person, a group of people, a horse, so we don't have to waste time," Aguilar says.
They will also be able to tell when and how to approach the person to apprehend him or her.
It is a virtual fence, Aguilar says.
"We would prefer this," he says. "It's less intrusive."
The SBI Net will include unmanned aircraft, towers and mobile units.
"We will have the entire Southwest border covered by 2013," Aguilar says. "Not all of the border will be under this, but this is the capability that we will have."
Physical fences, he says, cost between one and three million dollars a mile, depending upon location.
In San Diego, the Border Patrol started building a fence in 1993.
"It took us 16 years to build 14 miles of fence," Aguilar says. "This year, we're going to build 70 miles of fence. Next year, we're going to build 225 miles of fence. The rate at which we're building more infrastructure and hiring personnel and getting technology is unprecedented."
That technology will build a virtual fence that is much less intrusive for landowners and is much more effective.
"One of these towers will give us coverage of seven, eight, nine miles versus one mile of physical fence," Aguilar says. "One of these towers will cost us about $750,000. It's a better, more efficient use of our money to get us the security we need."
The system is now being tested in Arizona, he says.
The Border Patrol has traditionally used thermal cameras alone that take two to three minutes to cover a swath of desert 10 miles in width. The system did not work well in extreme heat.
With ground surveillance radar, a 180 degree turn is accomplished every 10 seconds. With SBI Net, the Border Patrol expects 95 to 100 percent detection. The system can provide accurate GPS coordinates to agents on the ground and in the air and update those coordinates as targets move. The system is expected to be as effective at night as during the day.
But there is more than technology involved, Aguilar says. He says he would also like to see landowners involved in training new Border Patrol agents. He says they need to learn ranch etiquette.
"One of the most important things that I learned as a Border Patrol agent when I was in South Texas is, ‘Son, you leave that gate just the way you found it,’" Aguilar says. "If it was open, you leave it open. If it was closed, you close it. If you see something wrong, your best friend is that ranch foreman. Call him."
Aguilar says they teach that today to new agents, but he says they need local ranchers to reinforce those lessons.
He says not all of their recruits come from South Texas. Some of them come from New York or Chicago, and they have to be trained.
"The reason I bring that up," Aguilar says, "is because we're going to bring a lot of resources to South Texas, and it's important that we maintain relationships that we have built up over the years with the ranching community."
He says the landowners are absolutely critical to the effort to keep the border safe.
"We will give our best shot at putting on the ground the best qualified, the best trained agents that we can," Aguilar says.
Border Patrol has about 13,500 agents. When Aguilar first joined the Border Patrol there were about 2000 agents. By the end of calendar year 2008, the Border Patrol will have a strength of 18,000 agents, and it will be part of a larger, better coordinated effort under the Department of Homeland Security.
"For the first time in the history of the United States," Aguilar says, "we have one agency, one man in charge of the entire responsibility for our nation's borders."
Aguilar says the system isn't perfect, but they are working toward that end.
"One of the biggest challenges that we have is taking the old way of doing business, the old culture from which we came, and meshing them all together into one culture of border security," Aguilar says.
Aguilar says that from a budgetary standpoint, the Border Patrol has never had it better.
The culture he is talking about is how formerly different agencies operate together as one agency in a post-911 world.
He says the Border Patrol was picked up as a whole and put into the Homeland Security Department. He says little has changed concerning the organization of the Border Patrol since it was first established in 1924.
"What has changed is our approach, our way of thinking, the resources," Aguilar says.