They Just Don’t Get It : Washington blows a chance for better border control

The good news is that Congress has decided to hire 600 more Border Patrol agents to keep watch on this country’s notoriously porous frontiers. The bad news is that those new agents will be working in an outmoded border-control system that is not going to be changed any time soon, despite all the talk about “reinventing government.”

The wrongheaded decision came in a vote to approve a multibillion-dollar funding bill that includes $45 million to hire 600 new agents for the U.S. Border Patrol. The patrol currently has about 3,800 agents, about one-quarter of whom work along the U.S.-Mexico border. Because of recent concern over illegal immigration, language was inserted into the bill to ensure that most of the new agents are assigned to the Southwest.

Those agents can certainly be used in places like San Ysidro, south of San Diego, and El Paso, Tex.--the nation’s two busiest land ports of entry. Recently the Border Patrol spent $250,000 in overtime to temporarily assign extra agents to El Paso. This “Operation Blockade” put a virtual stop to illegal border crossing in the area, proving that even heavily populated sections of the border can be controlled if officials get the money it takes and spend it creatively.

Congress’ vote takes care of the financial side of the equation, but the Clinton Administration has unfortunately backed off from a proposal that would have used those funds within a more streamlined and efficient agency. During its deliberations, Vice President Al Gore’s commission to reinvent government dusted off long-pending proposals to merge the Border Patrol and the Customs Service into a single border management agency dealing with issues that now overlap, including illegal immigration and drug smuggling. But now the Administration has quietly decided to back off, instead ordering the two agencies to meet to “improve coordination.” That sounds like a sure-fire way to bury an innovative idea in bureaucracy. Modernizing U.S. border management must remain a priority for the Administration, or Congress will just be vainly throwing money at the border problems.