Turning the Tide on Illegal Immigration

An important story is taking place along our nation’s southern border that has largely escaped the attention of the American public and the national media. For the first time in decades, a historic shift is occurring in illegal immigrant traffic into the United States.

From Texas to California, fewer immigrants are attempting to enter our country illegally by breaching our southern border. Annual immigration trends also have begun to reverse direction, favoring legal immigration over illegal immigration. And third-party indicators, such as remittances to Mexico and Latin America, have plummeted. In short, the tide of illegal immigration is turning.

According to a recent Pew Hispanic Center study, for the first time since 2001, there has been no net increase in illegal immigration in the United States, and it is likely that there has been a net decrease in the number of illegal immigrants in our country. To be sure, a down economy has caused some to rethink whether to illegally cross the border. But tighter border security, a significant expansion of the Border Patrol, the deployment of new technology, and increased interior enforcement are having an undeniable impact.

On a recent visit to Arizona, I had an opportunity to tour the border with the Chief of the Tucson Border Patrol sector to see firsthand some of these changes. As a result of new border infrastructure, including hundreds of miles of physical and virtual fencing, additional Border Patrol agents, and stepped up enforcement, arrests of illegal aliens have dropped 16 percent in the Tucson sector over the past year. Across Arizona, they have fallen 22 percent. For the entire southern border, they have decreased 17 percent. These are the lowest levels in more than a decade.

Moreover, in areas where the Border Patrol has implemented Operation Streamline, a program where illegal immigrants are prosecuted and face jail time for crossing the border, even greater reductions have occurred. In Yuma, Arizona, apprehensions have fallen 68 percent. In Del Rio, Texas, they have dropped 46 percent. These are not seasonal anomalies. They reflect increased border security and the deterrence that comes with the prospect of spending time in a federal detention facility.

The Border Patrol’s own estimates of known illegal entries also support these trends. Known illegal entries are internal estimates of the number of immigrants who have crossed the border but managed to elude capture. Tracking these figures helps the Border Patrol assess the volume and pattern of illegal crossing on a given day so it can adjust its tactics and deployment of personnel. Over the past fiscal year, known entrants eluding capture dropped below actual arrests, suggesting that not only are fewer people attempting to illegally enter the country, but even fewer are successfully making it through.

Beyond the statistics, there are numerous anecdotal signs of positive change along the border. Communities once plagued by drug smuggling and criminal activity are flourishing. Crime rates have dropped in many areas. And businesses that once relied on illegal labor are dying down or closing their doors.

Unfortunately, there have been some negative consequences of heightened enforcement, namely a rise in cross-border violence by criminal organizations fighting to control territory and smuggling routes. Assaults against the Border Patrol rose 11 percent over the past year. It is a regrettable fact of stepped up border security, but one that is necessary for the security of our country.

Despite this progress, there is still more work to do. Our challenges at the border have been years in the making, and they will take time to fully address, including action by Congress to enact immigration reform. In the interim, it is important that we not scale back or surrender the progress we’ve achieved in just a few short years.

Proponents of immigration reform should remember that part of the reason past efforts have failed in Congress is because the government lacked credibility on the issue of border security.

Over the past two years, we have attempted to establish that credibility and help pave the way for a more comprehensive solution, including a temporary worker program that will take pressure off the border and address the underlying motive for illegal immigration. Until that time, it would be a mistake to allow the tide to turn in the wrong direction. To do so would only set back efforts to control the border, endanger our country, and create additional barriers to future reform.

Michael Chertoff

Yes We Are Safer

Last week, the nation marked the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in solemn fashion, focusing on memorials and reflection, rather than on point scoring. Too bad Richard Clarke couldn’t manage to do the same.

Clarke, the official in charge of antiterrorism efforts before 9/11, commemorated the anniversary of the attacks by publishing a finger-pointing screed in U.S. News and World Report.

Clarke’s argument went something like the following: Here we are, seven years after 9/11. We haven’t been attacked. But we could be. Al Qaeda still exists, Bin Laden remains at large, and terrorists still commit terrorism. We’re backsliding, and no safer now then we were then. On the home front, our borders are still porous, we’re still not screening people, and security grants are too much about pork and not enough about real risk.

Clarke is mostly wrong.

In fact, we are safer today than we were seven years ago. We haven’t been attacked since 9/11 in part because we have destroyed al Qaeda’s headquarters, enhanced our intelligence assets across the globe, captured and killed terrorists on nearly every continent, and partnered with our allies on information sharing and other security-related efforts.

Today, al Qaeda no longer has a state sponsor. Contrary to Clarke’s claims, most of its original leadership has been captured or killed. It is losing in Iraq -- thanks to the surge and to the Awakening movement among the Sunni tribes--and its savage attacks on innocents have reduced its popularity there and across the Muslim world. Muslim scholars and clerics are increasingly condemning its beliefs and behavior as a desecration of Islam.

This progress has come because we abandoned the practice of treating terrorism solely as a criminal matter – exactly the kind of September 10 policy that Clarke celebrates in his article.

Closer to home, the Department of Homeland Security has made clear progress that belies Clarke’s claims.

At the border that Clarke thinks is so porous, DHS has built hundreds of miles of fence and will double the size of the Border Patrol. We’ve also deployed fingerprint-based screening and radiation portal monitors at all of our border entry points.

To protect against a repeat attack, DHS has built nearly two dozen layers of security into our aviation system, and it has developed comprehensive security plans for other critical infrastructure.

Clarke claims that the executive branch has proved incapable of managing new terrorism programs to success. Tell that to US-VISIT – a massive government IT project that compares fingerprints of travelers to a database of millions and does it in 30 seconds for officials all across the country and the world. We got it up and running from scratch, despite the doubters. And it’s so successful that we’re expanding it to collect all ten prints and to compare them to prints found in terrorist safe houses around the world. We’ve done all that since Dick Clarke left government – and without a word of support from him.

Despite his claims of backsliding, it’s DHS that has been battling complacency, and Clarke who seems to have been sitting on the sidelines.

We’re the ones who’ve been fighting for the carefully targeted, risk-based homeland security grants he favors. It’s Congress that has added billions and made them less risk-based. Has Clarke criticized Congress or praised DHS for our risk based approach? If so, I missed it.

On our southern border, DHS’s fence-building and increased border enforcement have been hampered by local NIMBY (“not-in-my-backyard”) forces and advocates for illegal immigration. Did Dick Clarke speak out against them? Not so I’ve noticed.

To secure our northern border, we’re implementing tougher document standards, and we were ready to require all travelers to produce a passport or passport-equivalent by the end of this year. Where was Dick Clarke when Congress decided to push back that deadline to mid-2009? I don’t remember an op-ed then complaining about how porous this would make our Canadian border.

Clarke says that terrorists who look European have been trained by al Qaeda and may have European Union passports and clean identities unknown to intelligence agencies. He thinks such people could enter the United States almost as easily as did the 9/11 hijackers. It’s indeed true that during Dick Clarke’s tenure, Europeans could come to the US without any opportunity to screen them before they were in the air. As of this January, though, no foreign travelers other than Canadians will be able to come to the US without supplying -- in advance -- the information we need to screen them. At last, we’ll have the time and information we need to investigate risky travelers (and to prepare a rude surprise for terrorists who try this route). That’s all happened since Dick Clarke left government, and without any support from him.

There’s no question that Dick Clarke contributed to strengthening our national security, but his recent assertions are not only incorrect, they disrespect the work of many national security professionals he once called colleagues. That is indeed unfortunate.

Stewart Baker
Assistant Secretary for Policy

Answers About the Fence

In recent months there has been much discussion and speculation about the fence we're building along our southwestern border. As part of this discourse, Americans have been asking a number of thoughtful questions on this Journal and in other venues. For the sake of accuracy and fairness, I would like to cite some of the more crucial ones and provide the kinds of straightforward answers they deserve.

Why does America need a fence? Our country has an illegal immigration problem that challenges its sovereignty and security. While fencing is not a panacea, in some areas it does make guarding our homeland easier. It slows down illegal border crossers, buying our Border Patrol agents time to apprehend them before they can reach our nation's interior.

What kind of fence are we building and how much fencing is being built? We are constructing a combination of pedestrian and vehicle fencing.

More than 300 miles of literal fencing, including more than 167 miles of pedestrian fence and 134 miles of vehicle fence, have been laid down. We are on track to building a total of 670 miles of fencing by the end of this year.

Are there places along the southwestern border where no physical fence will be constructed? In certain more remote areas, or areas with natural obstacles, we will install "virtual fencing" -- sensors, surveillance cameras and other kinds of technology -- in place of physical barriers.

What is P-28 and is it really being delayed for three years? P-28 stands for Project 28, a demonstration project involving one type of "virtual fencing" deployed along a 28-mile stretch in Arizona. It was designed to determine whether a certain kind of technology mix could be used to help secure the border.

Last summer, as part of the process, we discovered technical deficiencies. Those were corrected and last week, after successful field testing, our Department formally accepted P-28. Already, it has helped us identify and apprehend over 2,400 illegal aliens trying to cross the border since December.

Reports that we are delaying technology deployment across the border are overstated. We have been deploying and will continue to deploy solutions that will incorporate integrated radars and cameras, mobile surveillance systems, unattended ground sensors, unmanned and manned aviation assets, and an improved communications system.

We already have ground sensors in place and will acquire more of them in the coming year. We are also expanding our ground-based mobile surveillance systems.

Why does it appear that the literal fence is taking a while to construct? Appearances can be deceiving and building is not as simple as it sounds. In order to build a pedestrian fence, for instance, a long period of preparatory work is needed. Holes must be dug, concrete poured, and posts and bollards dropped into the holes. Only then can the wire sheeting be laid between the bollards and an actual fence created.

That's one reason visible signs of progress occur in spurts. But we have built more fence this past year than in the previous 20 years.
Another reason is this: Before any of this happens, the land must be possessed, surveyed, and graded. There are environmental laws to contend with, as well as an occasional landowner who refuses to grant the United States government access to any of his land.

Despite these challenges, we remain on course to achieving our construction goals by year's end.

Why didn't someone explain this to us the way you just did? That's a very good question indeed.

Michael Chertoff