U.S. Reviewing Border Security Strategy

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The New York Sun

WASHINGTON – The nation’s homeland security chief said yesterday he had ordered a review of border security strategy before two governors declared an immigration emergency on the America-Mexico line.


Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told reporters his department had recently begun mapping out its surveillance equipment, personnel, and other assets to combat the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who cross into America from Mexico each year – and the criminal “coyote” groups that smuggle some of them in.


“We have established working groups with ardent goals and short deadlines to make recommendations for better enforcement strategies all across the operations spectrum,” Mr. Chertoff wrote in a Monday letter to Governor Napolitano of Arizona.


He also called immigration enforcement an issue of utmost importance.


Citing security shortcomings by the federal government, Ms. Napolitano and Governor Richardson of New Mexico, both Democrats, last week declared an emergency on their states’ borders with Mexico. Doing so freed up more than $3 million combined in emergency funds for law enforcement overtime, for repairs of border and cattle fences, and for costs related to illegal immigrants’ deaths.


Homeland Security recommendations to prosecute immigrants increased by 65% – from 23,926 cases to 39,491 cases – between 2003 and 2004, according to a Syracuse University study to be released today. Most of the increase came in the Southern District of Texas, which includes the Houston area, where prosecutions spiked by 14,030 cases.


Immigration-related cases made up nearly 33% of all federal prosecutions last year – more than any other crime, according to the Syracuse study, which was based on Justice Department data.


The Homeland Security review, which should be completed within the next several weeks, will examine how best to tighten American borders while catching, detaining, and deporting immigrants already in the country, aides said.


Its results will be considered as part of a broad border security strategy that Mr. Chertoff has said will include a temporary worker program to help ease the flow of illegal migrants into the country. Security measures along the 5,000-mile border between America and Canada also will be examined, aides said.


More than half of the 1.1 million illegal immigrants apprehended in America last year entered at the Arizona border. Some are smuggled in by criminal human traffickers, or coyotes, who charge thousands of dollars a person. Others risk their lives and health by crossing through the desert’s insufferable heat.


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