LA Times: Plunge in Border Crossings Leaves Agents Fighting Boredom

According to the LA Times, arrests of illegal crossers along the Southwest border dropped more than two-thirds from 2000 to 2010, from 1.6 million to 448,000.

The Department of Homeland Security gauges success in a sector along the border not by an increase in apprehensions but by a drop in the number of apprehensions.  When Customs and Border Protection identifies an area were there have been a high rate of encounters with migrant crossers they flood the area with personell, at which point you have a high rate of apprehensions. If all goes well the number of apprehensions drop because the area is secured.

Richard Morasi of The Los Angeles Times has the full story here:

Wild foot chases and dust-swirling car pursuits may be the adrenaline-pumping stuff of recruitment efforts, but agents on the U.S.-Mexico border these days have to deal with a more mundane occupational reality: the boredom of guarding a frontier where illegal crossings have dipped to record low levels.

No where is this more appearent then in Yuma, AZ were The statistics speak for themselves:

Then double and triple fencing went up. Stadium lighting was installed. Every arrested immigrant, instead of being returned to Mexico, was jailed. Outside town, workers laid steel barriers on previously wide-open borders to block drug-smuggling vehicles from driving through.

In Yuma From 2005 to 2010, apprehensions of immigrants:

• Dropped 95%, from 138,460 to 7,116.
• Vehicle drive-throughs fell from 2,700 to 21 during the same period.
• Farmers are now able to plant crops in once-trampled fields.
• Residents don't find immigrants hiding under their cars anymore.

With such stark drops in apprehensions along the border and with an increase in the number of border patrol agents in the area many who joined the border patrol are seeing little in the way of action. The reports in this story hardly sound like messages from a war torn region. Hopefully local and national politicians take notice.

This is further evidence that this administrations border strategy is working, please look at all the work we at NDN have done to highlight the positive effect of the border at our 21st Century Border page.

Also make sure to watch Secretary Napolitano's recent speech on the advances made along the border.