THE BORDER REPORT

Well this is interesting.

The Homeland Security bosses are postulating the successes of their zero-tolerance program for illegal migrants in Tucson Sector before they've even begun but the Feds working the back end of the deal give some insight into how fast this program may fall through. More importantly, they give a pretty good idea of how many people are actually captured by border officials every year.

If the Justice Department's assessments of Homeland's efforts are true, it would appear the U.S. Border Patrol has not been nearly as busy as they like us to believe they are. Either that, or a lot more people escape their scrutiny than I initially believed.

The Office of the Federal Detention Trustee, the go-to agency for federal incarcerations, has put out a request for ideas on how to handle the influx of migrants captured by the U.S. Border Patrol.

If you recall, the zero-tolerance program, dubbed Operation Streamline, is scheduled to begin in the next few months. The program will slap apprehended migrants with a few weeks in the federal prison for first-time offenders, in hopes of deterring people from attempting to cross the border.

But acting on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service, the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee has put out a request for proposals on what to do with the fresh crush of jailed migrants. The request came up while I was doing a public records search for where the Feds like to spend our money.

According to the request, the Feds are anticipating a growth of "2,500 to 3,000 prisoners within the next 5 to 8 months in the area of Tucson, Arizona. We project this growth to last a minimum of 24 months. The growth would be misdemeanor cases being housed for 30-60 days, which would not require high security."

2,500 to 3,000 prisoners in five to eight months?

I need to go slow here because I still haven't wrapped my brain around this.

According to an Arizona Republic story, in 2007 through August, 396,000 apprehensions were made in Arizona. That'd include the Tucson and Yuma sectors.

We know that the Border Patrol only releases apprehension data which gives a grossly inflated view of how busy they've been.

Now, with this zero-tolerance program being put in place, the agency is going to have to disseminate the real numbers of captured migrants.

And apparently, 2,500 to 3,000 make up a lot of these apprehensions.

-- Michael Marizco