Subject: [Homestead] Bush flip-flop on border security
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 09:05:05 -0500
Bush integrity is an oxymoron---all important programs, including border
security, all safety net programs brought into being by each of a half
dozen prior Administrations, even Dole's Food Stamps are being
sacrificed to the Bush Mania of rewarding his superbribers with
unnecessary tax cuts and burdening our grandchildren with public debt.
Consistent with the Bush lack of integrity and deception---he refuses to
put the well-known Iraq costs in his budget---chooses to deceive
taxpayers into thinking those costs are buried somewhere in his budget.
This business of Bush approval of added border agents, and
surreptitiously removing them from the 2006 budget is typical Bush Bait
and Switch.
Immigration officials hit lack of new hires
By Jerry Seper and Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The Bush administration's decision not to hire 2,000 new Border Patrol
agents for fiscal year 2006 will seriously hamper efforts to control
illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border, said current and
retired officials.
President Bush is expected to seek an increase of only about 200 agents
for the new fiscal year, according to law-enforcement authorities and
others, significantly short of the 2,000 per year authorized for each of
the next five years in the recently passed intelligence overhaul bill.
Passed by Congress and signed into law by Mr. Bush in December, the bill
authorized 10,000 new Border Patrol agents as part of Congress' response
to the September 11 commission's findings. The panel revealed deep
institutional failings and missed opportunities by U.S. authorities in
stopping the al Qaeda terrorists who crashed jetliners into the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing about 3,000 people.
The proposed influx of new agents would nearly double the size of the
Border Patrol in the next five years as concern increased over new
terrorist threats and a significant rise in the number of assaults
against agents assigned along the border. Fears were heightened
particularly in Arizona, where agents captured more than 40 percent of
the 1.15 million aliens caught last year trying to sneak into the country.
Agents on a 260-mile stretch of Arizona-Mexico border, known as the
Tucson sector, are being assaulted at a rate of once every two days,
according to Border Patrol statistics.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and Undersecretary
Asa Hutchinson, who heads border and transportation security, confirmed
separately that Mr. Bush will not seek funding for the extra agents this
year. His fiscal 2006 budget request is due in February.
Mr. Ridge, who has resigned and will leave office tomorrow, referred to
the intelligence bill authorization of 10,000 agents as "fool's gold,"
saying it would be an inefficient use of Homeland Security funds. Mr.
Hutchinson, who has quit effective March 1, said funding issues within
the department precluded such a large increase in manpower.
Mr. Hutchinson told reporters in Arizona that although there would be
"some increase" in the number of agents, he would "leave it to the
president" to determine how many. He said the addition of 2,000 agents
this year "would not be doable within our budget constraints."
The intelligence overhaul bill also authorized increasing the number of
U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) agents assigned to find
and detain the 8 million to 12 million illegals in the United States
from 2,000 to 6,000 and the number of beds where illegal aliens can be
held from 20,000 to 60,000. The bill called for both changes in the next
five years.
In a letter to Congress during the debate on the bill, Mr. Bush
specifically praised those increases, calling them "an important step in
strengthening our immigration laws."
Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican and chairman of
the House Judiciary Committee, told reporters last week that he was
"disappointed in Secretary Ridge's comments" because they seemed to go
against what Mr. Bush had promised in the letter.
In a letter to Mr. Bush, he asked the president to fully fund the
increases authorized in the bill, particularly the number of Border
Patrol agents — a staffing provision that was among the recommendations
of the September 11 commission.
"Now that you have signed into law the conference report implementing
the recommendations of the 9/11 commission, we as the conferees to the
House-Senate conference committee are asking you to join us in seeking
full funding for the resources it authorizes," the letter said.
It was signed by all five House Republican leaders on the intelligence
bill: Mr. Sensenbrenner and Reps. Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, chairman of
the House International Relations Committee; Duncan Hunter of
California, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee; Peter
Hoekstra of Michigan, chairman of the House intelligence committee; and
David Dreier of California, chairman of the House Rules Committee.
T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC),
which represents all 11,000 of the agency's nonsupervisory agents, said
it was a "mistake" not to fund the staffing increases. He said the NBPC
would push members of Congress to persuade Mr. Bush to rework the 2006
budget to include funding for the additional 2,000 agents.
"Foreign terrorists continue to pose an extreme threat to the safety of
our nation, and illegal immigration remains out of control," said Mr.
Bonner, a 27-year Border Patrol veteran.
He also described as "unwise" a Bush plan to substitute $64 million for
sensors and surveillance technology and $10 million for unmanned aerial
vehicles instead of increasing the number of agents, saying, "While such
technology can be useful in pinpointing the location of those who cross
our borders illegally, it cannot catch a single violator.
"As long as our borders remain porous, they are just as open to
terrorists and other criminals as they are to illegal aliens," he said.
Michael W. Cutler, a retired U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS) senior agent who lead major INS drug-trafficking investigations
for more than two decades, said it was "difficult to understand" why the
administration would not fund authorized staffing increases as Border
Patrol agents face a significant increase in assaults, particularly in
the volatile Tucson sector.
"Just last week, the State Department issued a traveler's warning about
escalating violence in the northern regions of Mexico, including
incidents of kidnapping and murder," Mr. Cutler said. "These crimes are
being committed on our southern doorstep, many of them against our own
agents. It's time they got a little help."
[Homestead] Bush flip-flop on border security,
tvoivozhd, 01/31/2005