Border patrol employs zero-tolerance approach in Del Rio

Sun, May. 25, 2008
Border patrol employs zero-tolerance approach in Del Rio
By JAY ROOTStar-Telegram staff writer


DEL RIO -- Many enforcement hawks in Congress are counting on border walls to discourage illegal immigration and drug smuggling. In Del Rio, authorities are using prison walls instead.

The ever-expanding Val Verde County Jail is filled with illegal immigrants ranging from would-be yard workers and maids to hardened gang members. They've been caught in a law enforcement dragnet known as Operation Streamline, a zero-tolerance program that began here and has spread east and west along the border.

The lock-'em-up approach has its share of critics. They question the skyrocketing costs, complain of poor conditions in the detention facilities and predict that it ultimately won't stop immigrants and drugs from making their way north.

But supporters here say the long arm of the law is reducing crime and pushing the numbers of illegal immigrants caught in the Border Patrol's Del Rio sector down to their lowest levels since the early 1970s.

"Enforcement works," Val Verde County Sheriff D'Wayne Jernigan said. "We're definitely seeing a reduction in crime throughout the border area and a reduction in the number of aliens running loose in our community."

Though federal authorities plan to build a small section of border fence near the bridge linking Del Rio and Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, Jernigan, who prefers boots on the ground to physical barriers, says the illegal traffic has slowed without a wall.

In 2007, 22,920 people were caught in the Del Rio sector, many of whom passed through the Val Verde jail. In 1974, the earliest year-end figures available, almost twice that many -- 44,806 --were caught. Authorities believe that fewer captures mean fewer illegal crossings.

As recently as 2000, 157,178 illegal immigrants were caught in the sector, which stretches along 210 miles of the Rio Grande and encompasses 41 counties. Then, in late 2005, after an outcry from the sheriff and other local officials, the Border Patrol started Operation Streamline in the Del Rio sector. It was later expanded to Yuma, Ariz., and most recently to Laredo.

The new approach does away with the practice of "catch and release." For years, thousands of undocumented foreign nationals caught along the border were released for lack of jail space and given a notice to appear in court. Most simply vanished into the underground economy.

Now the buzz phrase is "catch and detain," meaning virtually everybody who gets caught is sent to federal court or returned to their home country immediately. As a result, the Justice Department has dramatically increased prosecutions, creating a logistical and financial burden that Attorney General Michael Mukasey recently called "staggering."

Along with it has come an almost insatiable demand for jail space.

Eight years ago, the Val Verde County Jail had 180 beds. This year, after a second 600-bed expansion, the maximum-security jail has room for 1,425 prisoners, an increase of almost 700 percent. While the state prisoner population in Val Verde has remained about 70 to 80 a day on average, the number serving time for federal immigration and drug offenses has skyrocketed, officials say.

"If it wasn't for federal prisoners, we wouldn't need any of this. It just wouldn't be necessary," Jernigan said while giving a tour of the huge facility he oversees in Del Rio. "This is a federal court city, and there's a need to house federal prisoners here."

Two prisons specializing in federal detainees are going up along the Texas-Mexico border southeast of here -- a 654-bed unit in Eagle Pass and a 1,500-bed jail nearing completion in Laredo. Like the Val Verde lockup, these facilities are run by the Geo Group, formerly known as Wackenhut, which last year posted its best financial results ever, the company said.

Even the largest jail for illegal immigrants, the Willacy County Jail, is too small to accommodate federal demands. Located in Raymondville -- nicknamed "Prisonville" -- it is expanding capacity from 2,000 to 3,000 beds this year, officials say.

The detention boom hasn't been done on the cheap.

According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, it costs $88 a day to house a prisoner in privately run jails.

Nationwide, the average number of prisoners the agency holds daily has increased 44 percent since 2001, figures show. Meanwhile, its budget for detention and removal operations has more than doubled in the past four years, rising from $959 million in fiscal 2004 to $2.4 billion in 2008, according to agency data.

Securing the porous southern border became an urgent national priority after the 9-11 attacks. The number of Border Patrol agents on duty, for example, will have doubled by the time President Bush leaves office, to 18,000, according to federal officials.

But Bush's proposed immigration overhaul, which would have given guest worker permits to certain Mexican laborers, collapsed in Congress last year. That paved the way for workplace raids, an increase in fines for people caught hiring illegal migrants, an expansion of electronic worker verification programs and a series of anti-immigrant measures enacted by state legislatures.

Critics say the get-tough policies have been extraordinarily costly, both in financial and human terms. The U.S. already locks up far more people than any other country per capita, according to the London-based International Centre for Prison Studies. And a recent Washington Post investigation revealed medical negligence and substandard healthcare in detention facilities that hold foreign nationals, prompting congressional inquiries.

Judy Greene, an analyst at Justice Strategies, a nonprofit group that studies incarceration alternatives, compared the repressive measures to the war on drugs. She said other approaches, including supervised release and electronic monitoring, are effective, more humane and far less expensive.

"Throwing money at the problem and then claiming that temporary gains are total victories is futile," she said. "I think Americans will come to see this over time, just like they did with the drug war, which didn't have the advertised effect."

Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, which provides legal aid to many undocumented workers, said the crackdown is doomed to fail because it doesn't address the root causes of illegal immigration. He blamed a massive "economic dislocation" in Mexico, where he said free-trade policies have devastated rural agriculture and sent field hands fleeing.

"I think we could lean on Mexico and tell them there's no financial aid, reciprocity, any of that stuff, unless Mexico makes progress toward democratizing its own economy," Harrington said. "Without that, we're going to continue what we're doing now, and that's investing an endless amount of money into a Band-Aid that's just not going to hold."

Ricardo Ahuja, the Mexican consul in Del Rio, said migrants are already breaking through the physical and legal barriers.

"They're finding other routes," Ahuja said. "It's a question of supply and demand. If there weren't jobs waiting for them in the U.S., they wouldn't cross."

But supporters of the crackdown say that the data prove it's working and that the alternative is to suspend the rule of law on the border. U.S. Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, is pushing Congress to expand the zero-tolerance polices along the entire border.

"This has an unbelievable deterrent effect," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said during a recent news conference. "When people who cross the border illegally are brought to face the reality that they were committing a crime, even if it's just a misdemeanor, that has a huge impact on their willingness to try again."

Spending is up

Immigration and Customs Enforcement's spending for detention and removal of illegal immigrants has soared 148 percent since 2004.


Fiscal year DRO budget
2004 $959,232
2005 $1,218,391
2006 $1,645,370
2007 $1,984,345
2008 $2,381,401
Source: Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Apprehensions are down

Since the Border Patrol began Operation Streamline in 2005, arrests of illegal immigrants in the Del Rio sector have dropped 66 percent.


Del Rio sector arrests U.S.- Mexico border arrests
2007 22,920 858,638
2006 42,636 1,071,972
2005 68,506 1,171,396
2004 53,794 1,139,282
Source: Customs and Border Protection; fiscal year apprehension figures

jroot@star-telegram.com
JAY ROOT, 512-476-4294

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