Anger Grows at 'Bullying' Border Patrol as Funding for Border Protection Increases Edward Helmore - The Guardian
go to original June 22, 2014

Residents of Arivaca, Arizona, monitor the Border Patrol checkpoint in the town. (Bob Torrez)

Arivaca is a town with a difference. While most of America backs the White House announcement last week to curb surging numbers of migrants crossing the US-Mexican border, many residents of this dusty, former gold-prospecting town 10 miles north of Mexico have chosen a different foe: the Border Patrol.

Theirs is an odd counterpoint to the political drive to tighten the border against impoverished migrants – overwhelmingly women and children – from Latin America. But Arivaca’s stand has become a beacon for more progressive policies in what has become a complex but defining voter issue.

The Border Patrol, townsfolk claim, has become an interior police force operating outside legal authority which subjects migrants to racial profiling and unlawful searches. Flush with a $30bn boost in Washington-authorised spending, the agency is planning to double the number of border agents to 39,000 – hypothetically enough to place one every 100 yards along the entire 1,900-mile US-Mexico border.

“This is the face of militarisation,” says Peter Ragan of the Arivaca group People Helping People, gesturing toward a Border Patrol checkpoint well inside US territory. “Searches are done to intimidate and harass. They can assert control at any time. There’s no accountability, no transparency and no oversight.”

Protesters say that the agency, which gets more funding than the FBI, Secret Service, DEA and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives combined, is now an important customer for contractors previously focused on supplying drones and sensing equipment for use in foreign military deployments.

They claim that the “border surge” has not only led to the erosion of civil liberties, a decline in tourism and diminishing property values, but that it has forced migrants to trek through remote and dangerous desert areas. Even as overall number of migrants has fallen, figures show, deaths from dehydration and exposure remain constant.

Read the rest at The Guardian

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