Mission At The Border Can’t End

Last week I was invited by Assemblyman Van Tran to go on a fact-finding tour with the California National Guard to see the work our men and women in uniform have been doing to stop the flow of illegal immigrants, cocaine and other contraband across our southern border. To say the least, I was very impressed by what was being done by our California Guards. What was really an eye opener was to realize that before the Guard was in place, there was really no substantial barrier between the U.S. and Mexico.

For most Americans who cross from Mexico to the U.S. at the Tijuana or Otay check point, all they see is high steel fences, concrete walls and a lot of Border Patrol personnel. What most of us do not realize is that for most of the border, until the Guard started building a secondary 16-foot fence, there was only an easily scalable 10-foot steel fence, between the U.S. and the millions of people who live just across the border in the Tijuana metropolitan area. The secondary fence is several hundred feet north of the primary fence.

With millions of people living right on the border, it is physically impossible to stop the flow of illegal immigrants without some physical barrier. Before the secondary fence was installed, the existing 10-foot fence proved to be only a minor speed bump for people crossing illegally into the U.S. The 12-plus million illegal immigrants in this country are a testament to how ineffective it was.

What we really had was a very sophisticated game of cat and mouse with our Border Patrol agents trying to stop the wave of people crossing California’s 157-mile border with Mexico. Many times a small group of illegals would act as if they were about to cross to draw the Border Patrol agents to them only to have another group cross where the agents just left. The secondary fence has put a stop to that.

Not only is the Guard building a proper fence but also an all-weather, high-speed access road between the two fences that allows our border agents to quickly get to any points of incursion along the border.

When the National Guard started the program called “Jump Start” 20 months ago, it was set up to help the Border Patrol get a jump start on controlling the border. President Bush and Congress had approved funding to add 6,000 additional border agents in 2006, but it takes 18 months to hire and fully train a border agent.

So far, the Border Patrol has been able to hire only 3,000 agents. Besides building infrastructure, the Guard is used to backfill positions such as vehicle maintenance, electronic early detection “eye on the border” and aviation support.

This releases border agents to do enforcement duties such as apprehending people who cross the border illegally, which the military is precluded from doing. By law, the military is not allowed to act as police on U.S. soil.

Now that we have a program that seems to be working, it is about to end. The funding to extend the program has not been approved by Congress. The Guard has orders to shut down and pull out by July. It seems the Democrat-controlled Congress doesn’t feel the pressure to even bring up an extension for a vote.

So here we are with only half of the additional border agents hired, the 15-mile secondary fence needed in the Tijuana/Otay area not complete, and we are about to send the Guard home before the mission is complete.

Protecting the border is a responsibility of the federal government. Until recently the only reason the feds were concerned about controlling the border was for the “war on drugs.” Later, 9/11 raised the concerns of protecting borders from terrorists. The fact is the federal government is not really concerned about controlling the flow of illegal immigrants across the border. The real cost of illegal immigration is not borne by the federal government. It is borne by local governments with increased costs of education, medical care, law enforcement and incarceration.

Unless Congress is politically forced to do something, they won’t. Call, write or e-mail our U.S. Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein to ask them to continue the funding of the California National Guards efforts to protect our borders. It’s the least the federal government could do.