Border Patrol

The Department of Homeland Security, positioning itself to cut its losses on a so-called invisible fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, has decided not to exercise a one-year option for Boeing to continue work on the troubled multibillion-dollar project involving high-tech cameras, radar and vibration sensors. The result, after an investment of more than $1 billion, may be a system with only 53 miles of unreliable coverage along the nearly 2,000-mile border. The virtual fence was intended to link advanced monitoring technologies to command centers for Border Patrol to identify and thwart human trafficking and drug smuggling.

In 2007, the Bush administration set out to double the size of the U.S. Border Patrol. It was a tall order and called for some creativity, with the Border Patrol even sponsoring its own racing vehicle at NASCAR events as a recruitment tool. Because recruits were hard to find, Border Patrol - part of the Department of Homeland Security - also lowered its standards and training regimens were relaxed. Individuals without a high school diploma could already join the force, but background checks were also deferred.

It's a law enforcement truism. Any time you get two cops together over a cigarette you're going to hear complaints about the honchos who run things downtown. But the exchange on a recent afternoon carried more than the standard bitterness when a plug of a Fresno cop asked senior U.S. Border Patrol Agent John Crockford how many illegal immigrant lawbreakers he takes off the streets every month. Crockford, a white-haired man of 48, guessed it was between 70 and 80. "What do we do when you're gone?"

House Republicans are backing legislation in Congress to give the Department of Homeland Security control of more than 50 national parks and forests within 100 miles of the U.S. borders. The legislation involves a sweep of land along the frontier with Canada and Mexico, but exempts state land, private property and federal holdings used for mining, livestock grazing and timber harvesting. The new authority would carve through 54 national parks, including Joshua Tree, Saguaro, Acadia and Glacier.

In 2007, the Bush administration set out to double the size of the U.S. Border Patrol. It was a tall order and called for some creativity, with the Border Patrol even sponsoring its own racing vehicle at NASCAR events as a recruitment tool. Because recruits were hard to find, Border Patrol - part of the Department of Homeland Security - also lowered its standards and training regimens were relaxed. Individuals without a high school diploma could already join the force, but background checks were also deferred.

One by one, Border Patrol agents took the witness stand in the federal courthouse here last week to testify against a fellow officer, their faces creased with anguish. By their accounts, Agent Jesus Enrique Diaz Jr., a husband and father with seven years on the job, tortured a 16-year-old drug smuggler two years ago by wrenching his handcuffed arms upward as he pressed a knee into his back. In an effort to make the boy reveal where he had hidden marijuana bundles near the Rio Grande, Diaz also kicked him and dropped him face-first on the ground, agents testified.

A Mexican man with a history of illegally moving across the U.S. border has been indicted with several still-unnamed defendants in the slaying of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry during a late-night encounter in a remote southern Arizona canyon. A federal grand jury indictment unsealed Friday charges Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, who was wounded in the confrontation, with second-degree murder, assault of a federal officer and other crimes stemming from the Dec. 14 incident. Authorities said several other suspects named in the indictment, including the man thought to have fired the shot that killed Terry, remain at large.

As the sponsors of the amendment to the crime bill to provide an additional 6,000 Border Patrol agents, we were disappointed by your editorial of April 22 ("Immigration Aid: At Last, a Bit of Fairness"), which criticized this initiative. We take exception to your conclusion that hiring these new agents will be ineffective. Experience shows that numbers do matter. In a March 30 letter to us, INS Commissioner Doris Meissner commended Congress on our initiative last year to add 600 agents.

The U.S. Border Patrol vowed Monday to investigate allegations of a quota system at its Riverside office, which allegedly required agents to arrest a set number of illegal immigrants each month or face punishment. "The Border Patrol has never had a quota system and is not expected to operate on quotas," said Agent Richard Velez, an agency spokesman. "Right now these allegations are under investigation. We will soon find out what happened."

Gustavo De La Vina, a former U.S. Border Patrol chief who worked to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into the country, has died. He was 70. De La Vina died Monday in the Balkan nation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, where he worked as a private advisor, said Steve Cribby, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The El Paso Times reported that De La Vina died of natural causes. De La Vina joined the Border Patrol in 1970 at the Eagle Pass, Texas, port of entry. He taught Spanish at the agency's training academy in Georgia and rose through the ranks to become deputy El Paso sector chief, San Diego sector chief and the Western regional director.

The federal government has tried just about everything to stop the flow of migrants crossing the border illegally. It boosted the number of Border Patrol agents, made punishment harsher, deployed drones and motion sensors, built and rebuilt fences. For years it has even quietly funded the dissemination in Mexico of songs and mini-documentaries about dangers at the border. Now it is using a more proactive tactic: Since last year, agents in Arizona have called Mexican and Central American television and radio stations and newspapers, asking for the opportunity to tell of the dangers of crossing illegally, particularly through the Sonoran Desert . The outreach, which was initially greeted with skepticism, is being embraced.

In the calculus of cross-border human smuggling, Maria Lopez-Diaz allegedly concluded that black instead of brown equals green. The 60-year-old Compton woman, prosecutors say, tried to cash in on racial profiling by operating a human smuggling ring that hired mostly African American drivers who didn't speak a word of Spanish to ferry small groups of immigrants from Mexico to Los Angeles. In the end, the alleged venture failed. Authorities announced charges Thursday against Lopez-Diaz and four others, including conspiracy and transporting and harboring illegal immigrants.

Trying to blunt a backlash from Republicans who balked at his support for tuition benefits for children of illegal immigrants, Rick Perry sought to reassure voters of his law-and-order credentials Tuesday: He brought in Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona to vouch for his toughness on border security. Pledging to "detain and deport every illegal alien who is apprehended in this country," Perry repeatedly promised to devote thousands of National Guard troops, as well as Border Patrol agents, to securing the border within a year.

When Luis Alarid was a child, his mother would seat him in the car while she smuggled people and drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border. She was the sweet-talking commuter, he was her cute boy, and the mother-son ploy regularly kept customs inspectors from peeking inside the trunk. FOR THE RECORD: Corruption case: An earlier version of this online article showed a photo of the San Ysidro border crossing and included a caption that stated that a Border Patrol agent who was hired there was engaged in illegal activity.

Reporting from San Diego -- An illegal immigrant was found dead inside a smuggling boat that came ashore at San Diego's Pacific Beach and another died in a failed attempt to swim around a border fence in separate maritime incidents since Tuesday, according to federal authorities. Early Wednesday morning, U.S. Border Patrol agents inspecting a 16-foot panga boat near Law Street at Pacific Beach discovered a dead Mexican man and another unidentified person. Following footprints along the beach, the agents found 13 additional illegal immigrants hiding in a residential area.

More than 1,000 National Guard troops will remain on the Southwest border at least through the end of December. After months of wrangling over how to pay for keeping 1,200 National Guard troops in position along the border, the Department of Defense has agreed to cover the approximately $10 million in monthly costs through the end of this calendar year, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters in Washington on Thursday. "[The Department of Defense] found the money" to extend the guard beyond Sept.

The Border Patrol wants its leaders to talk to one another, and the agency is willing to pay some former government employees nearly half a million dollars to help make that happen. In an example of how common it has become for government agencies to outsource seemingly routine tasks to former officials, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection has awarded a "strategic consulting" contract worth up to $481,000 over five years to a small firm staffed by former agency insiders. One of the three major tasks outlined in the deal is to "facilitate discussions among senior Border Patrol leaders" at conferences near the agency headquarters in Washington, according to the contract documents.

A former Border Patrol officer said Thursday that constant demands to meet monthly arrest quotas led agents in the Inland Empire to cruise streets, bus stops and even medical clinics looking for illegal immigrants.

The 1,200 National Guard troops deployed along the Southwest border could be going home on Sept. 30 unless the Department of Defense agrees to cover the cost. The military pays $10 million a month to keep the troops on the border to assist the Border Patrol in spotting illegal crossings and smugglers. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Tuesday that her department offered to cover the tab, but Congress said no. “It comes down to whether [the Department of Defense]

Certain intersections of time and geography are ideal as settings for thrillers: Think the south of France after the fall of Paris in 1940, behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, especially Berlin in the '60s, the Middle East - and for the past 20 years or so, the border between Mexico and the United States. In the past decade a number of excellent books have explored this fertile border territory from different perspectives. Add to that list "Triple Crossing" by Sebastian Rotella, a former Los Angeles Times correspondent who knows the area well.