borders

Read the following article and comment about it. Is this a Civil Rights issue? If so, what can be done to stop it?


SAN LUIS RÍO COLORADO, Mexico — For 10 years, Eduardo Valenzuela has been crossing the border illegally near Yuma, Ariz., trekking over desert scrub and hopping a freight train to get back to his job with a construction company in Phoenix. The clandestine trip has become an annual ritual for him, as he goes home each winter to see his children.

But on a recent afternoon he and four travel companions from his hometown, Los Mochis, plopped down on a bench in a park in the border town of San Luis Río Colorado, exhausted and dispirited. They were beat. Border Patrol agents had caught them twice over three days, hounding them with helicopters and four-wheel-drive trucks.

“It’s become much more difficult,” Mr. Valenzuela said, echoing the comments of dozens of other migrants. “Before, you just arrived here and then you walked a little and got the train. You used to see a border patrol agent every 10 kilometers. Now you see four of them where there was one. Think of it.”

All along the border, there are signs that the measures the Border Patrol and other federal agencies have taken over the last year, from erecting new barriers to posting 6,000 National Guardsmen as armed sentinels, are beginning to slow the flow of illegal immigrants.
The only available barometer of the decline is how many migrants are caught. In the last four months, the number has dropped 27 percent compared with the same period last year, the biggest drop since a crackdown immediately after 9/11. In two sections around Yuma and near Del Rio, Tex., the numbers have fallen by nearly two-thirds, Homeland Security officials say.
“We are comfortable that this actually reflects a change in momentum,” Michael Chertoff, the secretary of Homeland Security, said in an interview last week during his first official visit to Mexico City. “I’m always quick to say it doesn’t mean we can declare victory. To some degree, I expect the criminal organizations or smugglers are pulling back a little, watching to see if we lose interest.”

Some immigration experts said it was too early to tell if the enforcement efforts had caused a permanent downturn. In the past, tougher enforcement has only caused smugglers to seek new routes. “It’s the squeeze the balloon phenomenon,” said Roberto Suro, the director of the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington. “Sometimes you can’t tell where the bubble will come when you squeeze until later.”

Nor can they rule out other factors, like a relatively cold winter on the border and Mexico’s solid economic growth last year. Border Patrol commanders say they see no explanation for the drop-off across the entire 2,000-mile border other than stiffer enforcement deterring migrants. The slackening flow, they argue, belies the conventional wisdom that it is impossible to stem illegal migration. Many veteran officers in the force are now beginning to believe it can be controlled with enough resources.

The new measures range from simply putting more officers out on patrol to erecting stadium lights, secondary fences and barriers of thick steel poles to stop smugglers from racing across the desert in all-wheel-drive trucks. The Border Patrol has deployed hundreds of new guards to watch rivers, monitor surveillance cameras and guard fences.

In the Yuma headquarters of the Border Patrol, for instance, Chief Ronald Colburn said that with the help of the National Guard the patrol had doubled the agents in his sector to about 900, extended the primary steel wall eight miles past the end of the Mexican town of San Luis Río Colorado, and constructed a vehicle barrier six miles beyond that. “It’s the right mix, the right recipe,” he said.

The federal government has also begun punishing migrants with prison time from the first time they enter illegally in some areas. For instance, along the 210 miles of border covered by the Del Rio office of the Border Patrol, everyone caught crossing illegally is charged in federal court and, if convicted, sentenced to at least two weeks in prison.