Border Agency Retention Problems...

In the last few months, I have had the pleasure of seeing many of the young Officers that I have trained in the last couple of years. Unfortunately, they have been wearing another agency's uniform.

If you are a regular, you know that I have repeatedly mentioned the fact that CBP needs to stop hiring old folks. No disrespect intended, but when you hire old folks, they don't stay very long. They may want to work for just a few years before they retire or they decide that wrestling bad guys for a living is not what they signed up for ( even though it is).

So we end up with transitional Officers with no job experience. On the other hand, the young Officers are looking for jobs with a twenty year law enforcement retirement. Sometimes they are looking before they finish their basic training. You really can't blame them.

The agency just closed an announcement taking in 25,000 applications. Why, because we are losing Officers and we need to plug some holes. I have seen some very good young people come and go. Until the agency can make the job enticing enough to retain some of the good young Officers, it will continue to hemorage.

Now put it all in perspective, these are the folks charged with keeping the terrorists out of the country. It would be nice if we could train these young people and nurture their careers in such a way that the country would be safer and they would be likely to stay and continue to learn the job. Anyone that thinks that they can master the CBP Officer position in a few short years is sorely mistaken. It is a job that is so broad that you can never learn it all, hence the need for specialists and if you need specialists, you have to make the job benefits good enough to retain Officers long enough that they can master certain aspects of the position.

Plain and simple, it is just common sense. The excuse is always money, but at stake is the nation's security. In the old days, it was called cutting off your nose to spite your face.

BT

Nogales on Tuesday and Wednesday....

Marijuana->2,000 lbs

Meth-45lbs

Cocaine-3 lbs

Another slow week in Nogales, maybe the weekend will pick up a little .


Good Job Folks!

BT

Manpower Issues...

Recently, CBP apprehended over twenty stowaways from China at the seaport in Seattle. They had come over in a container. While the container had been targeted for examination, due to the number of containers that have to be looked at, it would have been a few days before the can was inspected. This is pretty normal.

Don't you think we would like to do better, check more cargo, process shipments faster? It comes down to this, over the last several years CBP has been using high tech equipment to examine cargo, this was done to process cargo faster and more efficiently. Unfortunately, you have to have people to run the equipment. Now you hear more and more about radiation portal monitors. They are work great. The problem once again is that they need to be monitored and if they alert, the situation has to be resolved. This takes manpower. So instead of having Officers examine cargo, they are monitoring equipment. Doing this for three shifts a day, times the number of pieces of equipment that need to be monitored digs deeply into the resources of the Ports.

The long and short of it is this, Congress needs to allocate the funds to hire a lot more Officers to examine containers, utilize the equipment, and to monitor the equipment. This is just for the Cargo environment. We continue to lose some of the best employees to positions offering law enforcement retirement. It leaves CBP in a less than desirable position when it comes to trying to protect the country at the borders.

There does not appear to be a cavalry on the way.....

BT

Maybe the media is catching on....

I have to congratulate the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise on hitting the nail on the head. Seguin is a small town East of San Antonio on I-10 and home to Texas Lutheran College. The local newspaper ran a story stating that immigration is not just a Southern problem. In the story, they mention that an organization smuggling people from Pakistan and India was taken down along the Northern border by US ICE Agents and Canadian Federal Officials. This is the second group taken down in the last couple of months along the Northern border. The other group was utilizing trains to cross their human contraband.

It is nice to see that someone in the media is doing more than fluff stories on the threat from Canada. Lou Dobbs should take notice the next time he wants to tell Canada how much love he has for them. Hopefully this trend (it's a stretch, but I can hope) in the media will continue.

Read the prior posts on the threat from Canada and how it tends to be down played by the media and for that matter politicians.

Before I forget, Happy Easter. In keeping with the Blog, I will say this: The more you know about religion, the more you will understand the terrorist threat.

BT

Mexican Protests...

My friends,
If you think that the demonstrations going on across the country have much to do with illegal aliens, you are not even in the ballpark. If you think that most of those demonstrating are illegal aliens, you are wrong. It is about people who work hard and contribute to this country wanting respect. It doesn't matter if they are field workers, social workers, or whatever, that is all they want. Respect from politicians, respect from those whose families immigrated before them, respect from employers, just respect.

Coming from South Texas, where my parents bore the brunt of discrimination through segregated facilities and society, I was relatively unscathed. Isn't it amazing that I have experienced more discrimination working for the government than I did in the private sector. Of course, I am in what is known as the deep South now, but I feel it more from the from those I work for, than the locals (even though every once in awhile, I have to bite my tongue when the old locals start to rattle off).

All I want is what I deserve...

That is all that those in the streets want too.

BT

Canadian Border Threat.....

I read... while shaking my head, James Pinkerton's piece in the on-line version of the "Olympian" newspaper (Olympia, WA) stating that hundreds of OTMs (other than Mexican illegal aliens) had been apprehended with origins in terrorist source countries along the Southern border. He named Mexico as the global turnstile into America, quoting the "Denver Post". I don't know where his figures come from but from 10/03 through 06/04, 132 illegal aliens from these countries were interdicted along the Mexican border.

But, lets look at what he fails to report. For the same period of time along the Canadian border, 145 illegal aliens from these same countries were interdicted by Border Patrol. As well as, 144 from Communist China, 201 from India, 16 from the Philippines, 8 from North Korea, 8 from Ireland, and a bunch more from the Stan countries of the former Soviet Union.

So if Mexico is a turnstile, Canada must be an open door!

Now at the end of 2003, there were slightly over 1,000 Patrol Agents on the Canadian border and at the same time, there were approximately 10,000 Patrol Agents on the Mexican border

The Canadian border is about 4,000 miles long.

The Mexican border is about 2,000 miles long.

So in review, the Canadian border is twice as long as the Mexican border and there is ten times the number of Patrol Agents assigned down South.


Here is an illustration for the more visual:


X
____________________
CANADA


XXXXXXXXXX
___________
MEXICO

Where X=BP Agents and the Solid Line=Proportionate Border Length


Of course this is very simple, but for some ignorance is bliss.

Now if you were a terrorist, which border would you sneak across?


Add to this the fact that Mexican immigration policy is much stricter than Canadian policy.

Plus the fact that we have already caught terrorists from these countries coming across the Canadian border.

Now from a terrorism perspective, when we conduct threat assessment, which border should garner more consideration?

Once again, for those who aren't regulars:
Canada is a much bigger threat for terrorism than Mexico.