A CHECKPOINT RUNS THROUGH IT

They're going to do it anyway. The U.S. Border Patrol is going to install a permanent checkpoint on Interstate 19 and that's all there is to it. No amount of subcommittee hearings, pleas to Democrat Gabrielle Giffords, letters to the editor, nothing is going to prevent Chief David Aguilar's dream from coming true. It doesn't help that the committees designated to come up with some kind of analysis of the situation came up with a weak and insipid conclusion that added absolutely zero to the debate. The committees' conclusions are so tepid that I hope taxpayer money didn't go into their writing. Whether checkpoints work or not, and if you'll indulge me for a moment, you'll see why they don't, the Border Patrol is going to build that checkpoint. The U.S. Border Patrol, once the bastard child of the federal law enforcement agencies in America, has sky-rocketed up to the vaunted number one spot. The agency's rise is extraordinary. The DEA, the darling child of the 1980s, is in a hiring freeze. The FBI lost so many senior agents and intel analysts that now it's apparently okay for G-men to be former potheads. The ATF seems suspended in determining whether an E (for explosives) should be added to its name. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has had at least five top-notch supervisors flee the agency in Tucson alone this year. And Customs and Border Protection, with Border Patrol under its mandate, now tops the New York City Police Department as the largest law enforcement agency in the country. It's been an amazing acceleration, one that Chief David Aguilar drove forward with the gusto of a Roman chariot. And considering the public-circus that is border security, the rise of the agency is a masterpiece. Customs and Border Protection is the only federal agency which earns more budget dollars because of its failures than because of its successes. It is the only law enforcement agency that sees annual increases in its budget without any substantial evidence of success; indeed, the country's immigration debate exists because people are so easily able to slip into the country to work illegally every year. It is an agency that prides itself on stopping "terrorism" without offering any conclusive proof it's apprehended anybody of the remotest interest. Let the FBI come up to the podium and tell the American public they're stopping terrorists without offering one up and it'd be laughed off the stage. The U.S. Border Patrol does it every day. It's even a nut-graph at the end of every press release the agency disseminates; every group of ten illegal migrants, every 300 pound seizure of dope, the most innocuous press release about pulling some migrant out of a car, it's everywhere. "CBP is charged with keeping terrorists and terrorist weapons out of the country while enforcing hundreds of U.S. laws." The checkpoint issue in southern Arizona is an old one; nobody can even remember when it first came up, but there it is. Congressman Jim Kolbe tried to bring some sense of logic to the things, concluding – correctly – that smugglers would simply go around the checkpoints. His rules for the checkpoints in Tucson sector were sloppily written though and that's where he lost. Under Kolbe's rules, the checkpoints have to be torn down and moved every 14 days. By 2003, it'd become something of a bad joke; the Border Patrol would simply shut down the checkpoint for a few hours or move it 17 kilometers north or south along Interstate 19. Now, the Border Patrol is aiming for a permanent checkpoint and there's nothing that's going to stop them. Two subcommittees advising Giffords on the issue were useless in their assessments. One concluded that the checkpoints represent incomplete thinking, the other took no stand on the issue. The two are supposed to present their findings today in Sahuarita. I strongly wish they'd stay home. With findings like these, there's nothing to add to the debate. And the fact is, there should be a debate. Nobody should be able to say with a straight-face that checkpoints work or fail. There's simply no way to know unless you track the number of successful illegal entries. Even that won't give you a straight answer because you don't know how everybody came in. Some come in through Sasabe, others through Nogales. The Border Patrol hasn't the faintest idea how many people circumvent its checkpoint and I'll go you one further, there's no interest in determining that number. It would raise some very uncomfortable facts. Instead, the agency counts on apprehension numbers, a number that the media stupidly latches onto in its attempt to wrap its mind around the issues. I wasn't at Tucson Sector Chief Robert Gilbert's meeting today; but I can guess what he did; whipped out his pointer and corkboard and started throwing out the stats. I'm sure there was an increase in migrant apprehensions and drug seizures he pointed to, all the while ignoring the cold, hard reality that adjusted-for-inflation street prices on everything from tomatoes to hotel room service to marijuana haven't increased in ten years. It's a game of the Border Patrol throwing out raw data as conclusive fact, television and newspaper reporters choking it down with little follw-up to state the obvious and confused residents arguing the smallest nuances of the debate until they forget what they wanted in the first place. The Border Patrol is going to build that permanent checkpoint and there is nothing the residents of Tubac or Green Valley can do about it. But the real joke is on the public; a permanent checkpoint has about as much success of stemming the flow as that UAV did. The only real question left is who's going to get the contract to build the sucker.