Greater Vigilance Along Border has Not Improved Security EFE
go to original April 20, 2012

A U.S. National Guard trooper uses binoculars to watch the border with Mexico a mile away southeast of the border city of Nogales, Arizona. (EFE)

The substantial increase in funds, personnel and monitoring equipment along the U.S. border with Mexico has not improved national security and is causing a growing humanitarian crisis, according to a study released Thursday.

"The security buildup has resulted in a confusing tangle of agencies whose mission is undermined by the lack of a clear strategy," according to one of the study's authors, Adam Isacson, Senior Associate for Regional Security at the Washington Office on Latin America.

WOLA and Mexico's College of the Northern Border published the 61-page report.

Both groups emphasized the importance of the debate over the situation along the border in a year when both the United States and Mexico will hold presidential elections in which immigration, drug trafficking and violence will be much-debated issues.

The study found that in the past decade the Border Patrol contingent has multiplied fivefold to more than 18,000, to which may be added a new and unusual role for the Armed Forces on U.S. soil.

The border surge has also included use of "drones and other high-tech surveillance, plus hundreds of miles of completed fencing - without a clear impact on U.S. security," the authors say.

"The facts contradict the frequent call to escalate the massive buildup of U.S. border security forces, including the military," Isacson added.

Although drug-related violence has resulted in the deaths of more than 50,000 people in Mexico since 2007, the mayhem "is not spilling over the border," according to the study.

Researchers compared the murder rates in Mexican cities near the border with those in neighboring U.S. cities.

In all the Mexican border cities combined the murder rate in 2010 was 96 per 100,000 residents, compared with 22.9 for all of Mexico, according to the study. In all the U.S. border cities combined, the murder rate was 3.6 per 100,000, slightly lower than the national rate of 4.8 per 100,000.

Apprehensions of undocumented immigrants at the border, which up until 1999 totaled 1.4 million per year, is now down to some 300,000 per year, the same level as 40 years ago, the report adds.

In 1992, captures of undocumented migrants totaled 308 per year per Border Patrol agent and the next year the rate rose to 337 annual captures per agent. Currently, the report says, the rate is just 20 captures per agent per year.

"The whirlwind security buildup should stop now," WOLA's Isacson said Thursday. "The U.S. and Mexican governments need to pause, reconsider, and take steps to make the world's busiest frontier more efficient, lawful and humane for the rest of the 21st century."

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