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Remarks by Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar and National Guard Bureau General Steven Blum on Operation Jump Start

Release Date: 07/25/06 00:00:00

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretay
Contact: 202-282-8010
July 25, 2006

Chief Aguilar:  Good morning, everybody.  Welcome.  It's good to be here with you this morning.  And the intent this morning is to give you an update on operations and an update on Operation Jump Start.

As you all have heard us speak before, Operation Jump Start has been tremendous, has been real and has been very positive for the United States Border Patrol, and you'll hear us talking about that as we progress through this morning.

First, let me just revisit one thing that I think is critical, and that is that as all of you have heard us speak to in the past, the approach to border security, all borders, is a comprehensive approach -- one of technology, one of personnel, and one of infrastructure.  In all three facets of those components, the Guard is now playing a part.  

Let me tell you that right now, since the beginning of the fiscal year, we have added 598 Border Patrol agents to the cadre of the Border Patrol.  As we speak, there are approximately 654 Border Patrol agents at the United States Border Patrol Academy.

Technology.  We have continued to add -- as an example, I'll give you San Diego.  We've literally flipped the switch on 14 pole sites, remote video surveillance sites in San Diego approximately a month and a half ago, two months ago.

Infrastructure.  We're continuing to build, as is depicted by some of the static displays that we have up here, of which the Guard and Operation Jump Start are a very critical part of.

Oasis.  You have heard us speak about our binational, international prosecutions programs between Mexico and the United States -- 222 cases that have actually been prosecuted since we began that effort.

OTMs -- other than Mexicans.  I am pleased to announce this morning that basically OTM apprehensions are down right now by about 24 percent.  They are falling, they are falling dramatically, and they continue to fall.  The Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, which was our most active OTM sector for apprehensions, is down by about 25 percent as we speak.  

Deaths.  Deaths are down nationally by about 7 percent.  Tucson, which was our heaviest toll, if you will, in the number of border deaths, is down by 29 percent, and Yuma is down by 32 percent.  The numbers for Tucson are 120 deaths versus 169; 23 for Yuma versus 34.  

Now, the only other thing I will mention before I get into the actual narcotics and alien apprehension numbers is the fact that we have begun our interior repatriation program out of Arizona.  We are averaging about 150 repatriations into the interior of Mexico on a daily basis.

Narcotics.  We are up by 20 percent.  I will tell you that I strongly believe that one of the reasons that we are up in the interdiction of narcotics is because of the expansion capability that the Guard has given us along our nation's borders, our enhanced capacity to actually take in more of the border.  We are up by 20 percent in the area of narcotics apprehensions, over 1.2 million pounds of narcotics so far this year.

Alien apprehensions.  Nationally, we are down by 2 percent.  But this is the important number:  Since the day that the President announced Operation Jump Start, if we use that date as a dividing line, we go back 69 days prior and 69 days to today, our apprehensions are down by 45 percent, 45 percent.  

Now, some of you may ask, how does that compare to the seasonal downtrend?  Well, last year, it was 25 percent.  So the increase in the downward trend is, in fact, positive, it's real, and it's impacting.  So 45 percent.

Now, Operation Jump Start.  We chose these -- the General and I chose these depictions because I think they tell the story very accurately.  You will see we have talked often about how Operation Jump Start was an interim bridge to getting us additional personnel hired and, very importantly, the agents that were working non-direct enforcement duty, getting those badges back to the border.

As we speak today, because of the general National Guard deployments, we have placed 250 badges back on the border, 250 Border Patrol agents that were previously doing non-direct enforcement work.  How have we done that?  By actually placing National Guard personnel to handle our law enforcement communications assistant work; by, in some cases, building or maintaining roadways that we used to have to do on our own; by actually placing them on entry identification teams that used to be manned by Border Patrol agents.  Now they are manned by the Guard personnel and directly supported by Border Patrol agents on the ground.

In addition to that, we have at our checkpoints -- this is a checkpoint depiction of south Texas -- that is over 5,000 pounds of narcotics that were found in a semi trailer.  When agents or canines detect this contraband, in the past, we would have to pull in Border Patrol agents from the field in order to offload and things of this nature.  Now the Guard personnel are doing a lot of the searching, a lot of the seizing, a lot of what we used to have to be doing on our own.

And very critically, infrastructure building.  Infrastructure building, this depiction right here is in San Diego, where we continue to build the fences, we continue to build the infrastructure that's necessary to assist us in bringing control to the United States border.

As we speak, we have Guard personnel forward deployed, at Joint Task Force headquarters, and in transition to getting on the ground with us.

With that said, I'm going to pass it on to my good friend and partner here, General Blum.  

General.

General Blum: Thank you, Chief Aguilar.  He covered it quite well.  Operation Jump Start is a Customs and Border Patrol operation.  It's not a military operation, it's a law enforcement operation.

The National Guard's part in this is to provide military support to civilian law enforcement, as directed by the President and the Secretary of Defense.

We, as you remember, are not doing Border Patrol law enforcement work.  We're doing everything else that other badge-carrying Border Patrol people used to have to do.  We are replacing them so that he can get badges back to the border.  But in addition to that, as he said, we're assisting them with their tactical infrastructure so that they can be more effective; they have better roads so that they can move laterally along the border much faster and better than they can today; that they have fences and lighting and sensors put in that can detect illegal activity along our border so they can do their law enforcement work in a more focused manner.  

And probably the biggest thing that we bring in terms of numbers and capability to the game are the additional eyes and ears of the initial entry teams that the National Guard will be providing to Customs and Border Patrol so that they have greater situational awareness of what is going on in places where they could not go, or could not see, or could not hear what was happening before.  We are going to provide that capability.

I think the numbers speak for themselves in the deterrent effect of the early stages of the operation have already -- speaks volumes to the effectiveness of the National Guard teaming with the Customs and Border Patrol as they increase their capabilities internally and we assist them with some of their tactical infrastructure and helping them in seeing and reporting what's going on along the border so that they can take the appropriate law enforcement action.

I think it's been a magnificent team.  The National Guard is on target to deliver up to 6,000 citizen soldiers and airmen from various states around the nation.  They will be in these border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas on the 1st of August.  We will meet the President's commitment to do that.  I was briefed early this morning.  We actually will exceed that by a small margin, and then we'll make an adjustment because military units are not really built to meet numbers, they're build to deliver capabilities.  So we won't really have 6,000 there; we'll have slightly over 6,000 to deliver the capabilities that Chief Aguilar has requested.  And then we'll make those adjustments as necessary as time goes on.

I think that's about all I'm going to say right now, and we'll wait and see what your concerns are and questions.

Question:  How many Guard troops are on the border now?

General Blum:  There are 4,500 National Guard soldiers -- army and air -- in the states of California and Arizona and New Mexico and Texas, the southwest border states that are -- each one, every one that's there is an essential member of this Operation Jump Start team or they would not be there.  These were sent there for the purpose of supporting or performing a function or delivering a capability, a military capability that was requested by the Customs and Border Patrol.  And there are some people down there that enabled that effort to be sustained over the next two years.  So there are some people in there that provide command and control, administrative logistics that are necessary to sustain that effort over the next two years.

Question: Chief, about a month ago, we were told that the arrival of the Guard had allowed you to move 125 border agents back.  And today you're saying the number is 250.

Chief Aguilar:  Yes.

Question:  Where is that going?  When the full 6,000 are there, or eventually who do you -- how many do you hope to replace?

Chief Aguilar: The number that we'd identified originally when we started planning this operation that would -- the numbers of badges back to the border, if you will, was 581.  So we're about at the halfway point right now.  And that, in itself is a -- well, let me give you this comparison.  Two hundred and fifty badges back to the border equate to five Border Patrol classes through our academy, because our academy classes are about 50 per class.  But one thing that I ask you to take into consideration is these are mature journeymen, trained officers that we immediately -- overnight put back on the border, as opposed to taking five classes of trainees and putting them through the academy, and then, of course, on-the-job training and things of that nature.

So again, very, very impacting, very positive for our efforts out there.

Question:  And the 581 would be sort of by what point in the -- over time?

Chief Aguilar:  Time-wise?

Question:  Yes.

Chief Aguilar:  Well, as the General said, by August 1, he intends to have 6,000 within the theater.  As we transition from theater to actual implementation, I would anticipate that that would be shortly thereafter.  Now, whether that's days, weeks, it will be within that time frame, okay?  

Let me go here.

Question:  Chief, a couple of questions.  There's a 13 percent increase in the El Paso sector.  Can you address why that is happening?  And secondly, is there anything being done to try to help the federal courts, which as you increase your numbers, increase your case load, the judges are all feeling stressed out dealing with lawyers, transportation costs, et cetera?

Chief Aguilar: Let me begin with the 13 percent increase in El Paso.  El Paso sector, as you know, and for the rest of you who don't, takes in that little corner of Texas, which is El Paso County, literally, and then all of the entire state -- good point up here, the entire state of New Mexico.  One area that we had not -- and I repeat -- we had not been able to do a very good job Border Patrol stand-alone was in the area of New Mexico -- Deming, Lordsburg, that area.  We just didn't have the resources.

Now, let me go from there to what I refer to as the dynamics of illegal immigration.  In order to make an impact on that flow, the first thing you have to do is resource.  The General has now assisted us in resourcing.  The next dynamic is that when you resource, you see an up-take in apprehensions because the flow doesn't know that you're there.  Once you get that increase in apprehensions, you should have a downtrend on it shortly thereafter.  That's what we're going through right now.  So El Paso sector, New Mexico state is seeing an increase in apprehensions as a means to actually create the deterrence that we're looking to do.

Now, that takes me to the next part of your question about the federal judges I believe you asked.  I ask this group to keep in mind that one of the most important things that we're looking to do is to create just that, that deterrence effect.  Is that going to create in the initial phases an increase upon the judges, upon the U.S. Attorneys, the marshals, things of this nature?  Yes.  But because we are quickly going to be able to ramp up to becoming an overwhelming force to these criminal organizations, I believe that the deterrence effect is going to take hold, and it will therefore reduce the workload eventually on those other entities that you just referred to.

Up here, sir.

Question:  If you could refresh my memory about how long this project was to last?  And if I recall correctly, as these classes graduate, they were going to replace the National Guardsmen.  So what are we talking about?  Is it a two-year program or --

Chief Aguilar:  Well, let me begin here.  It's two years, up to two years.  The first year will be up to 6,000 Guard personnel.  The second year will be up 3,000 Guard personnel.  The one thing I have to reiterate is that it is not a one-per-one replacement.  At the present time -- in fact, the General and I have talked about this in depth -- at the present time, our requirements, our need, Border Patrol, are to have a deterrent effect, to quickly ramp up our interdiction, identification, deterrence capabilities.  That's what the General is supplying us with.

As we move through this continuum over a period of two years, what we both anticipate is that we will be heavy on Guard deployments towards the engineering missions -- what you see here, what you see here in this area -- because that will give what I refer to as residual value to the Guard.  In that continuum we will be ramping up our Border Patrol agent deployments.

Now, it's coincidence that we will have 6,000 Border Patrol agents net by the end of calendar year '08, hired, recruited and finishing up their training.

Question:  Chief, you also have a 20 percent increase in both San Diego and El Centro sectors.  How do you account for that?  Because those are sectors where you have had resources in the past, it's not like New Mexico where you (inaudible) devoting things to that area.  Is that a sign that traffic is shifting --

Chief Aguilar:  Oh, absolutely.  One of the things that we've always stated is whenever we place resources in a given area of operation, the criminal organizations are going to look to adjust.  The one situation that we can't lose sight of is that San Diego is now very well prepared to receive that shift, if you will.  And the increase, the 20 percent that you're talking about, is because of the fact that they can detect, deter, detain, identify and bring to resolution that increased flow.

So it is that added capability that we have built up, and continue to build up, that is going to keep that area -- San Diego, El Centro -- at a level of control.

Question:  So you don't think there's proportionally more traffic -- you don't think that in addition to a 20 percent increase in apprehensions, there's also a 20 percent increase in flow?  You think you're catching more of them now --

Chief Aguilar:  We're much more efficient, absolutely.  We're much more efficient.  When we have that kind of capability, that infrastructure built -- I talked about those 14 remote video surveillance poles that are on the ground that we just flip the switch on; the additional sensors, the additional manpower that San Diego and El Centro are getting -- we're becoming much more efficient.  And that's where we want to be, to increase the efficiency of our resources on the ground.

Question:  It's often said that you estimate that out of every, I think it's, four that you -- I mean, one that you catch there are three or four that do come across.  Do you still estimate that to be true?

Chief Aguilar: When you say we "estimate" -- we have never really given an estimate on that.  Those are numbers that are out there and they're varying numbers.  And the reason I explain that is because in a given area of operation, where we are heavily deployed, I can tell you that we are upwards of 80, 90 percent effective.  So it's one in maybe 10 that get away from us.  But there are other areas where we are expanding our operations where we may be at one out of every four, one out of every two, in some cases, that we're apprehending.

But that is the purpose of this operation, Operation Jump Start, and the purpose of the administration building up our capacity, internal capacity, by way of personnel, the 8,800 that we're going to hire that will net 6,000 by the end of 2008; the infrastructure that we're continuing to build.  And one thing we haven't talked about is SBI net, which we are letting the contract out on at the end of September, which will give us a tremendous amount of infusion of technology to continue reducing -- or increasing the effectiveness, efficiency, thereby reducing those numbers that you're talking about.

Question:  Would you say that if you had all of those things in place, or when you do in, say, 2008, you will have that kind of capacity throughout the border to capture eight to every one --

Chief Aguilar:  To increase our efficiency?  Absolutely.  That's exactly what we're working towards.  Secure Border Initiative, by that comprehensive approach -- now, comprehensive approach that I'm speaking about is the comprehensive enforcement approach:  technology, personnel, tactical infrastructure -- the rapid response capabilities that we're looking to get along our borders.

One thing we haven't talked about is the potential labor regulation, if you will, into this country, which will also assist in the area of border control.

Question:  In other words, work site --

Chief Aguilar:  Well, work site enforcement is already ongoing.  We've already seen an increase by our partner agency, our sister agency, ICE, in increasing their focus on interior enforcement.  Labor regulation refers to what most people -- or is commonly called the temporary worker program.  The possibility of that happening will also have an impact, of course.

Okay, I won't go into any more detail than that, because obviously that's in the political arena and that's in the legislative arena.

Question:  General, there were some concerns early on about the strain that this might have on the Guard, this operation.  Have you seen an indication of that?

General Blum:  No.  It's almost counterintuitive.  You think the more you ask the Guard to do, the less effective it would be -- it's exactly the reverse.  This morning, while we're here, I have 68,000 National Guardsmen deployed in the global war on terrorism in 40 countries, primarily in Iraq and Afghanistan, Kosovo, the Horn of Africa and the Sinai Peninsula, but in 40 other countries total; overseas, away from home, out of their communities, away from their jobs, fighting the war on terrorism as part of the joint force overseas.

At the same time we have the states from Maine to Texas in intensive hurricane preparation, putting plans, equipment and National Guard soldiers ready to respond to hurricanes, as you saw less than two weeks ago in Pennsylvania, where the National Guard saved over a thousand lives in Pennsylvania alone, using their Chinook helicopters and their high water trucks to evacuate people.

While this is going on today, there are 10,000 National Guardsmen performing missions all around the country -- fighting forest fires, flying C-130s with military fire-fighting equipment in it to help the states that are dealing with forest fires, mostly caused by lightening, but, nevertheless, threatening homes and lives all across the Rocky Mountain area and out West.  

In spite of that, when Secretary Rumsfeld and the President asked us could we support this Operation Jump Start mission, before I could answer that question, the answer had to fit.  We do not want you to be able to -- be diminished in any way to be able to provide trained forces and equipment for the hurricanes and for natural disasters.  We want the governors to retain capability within their state to protect their citizens, whether it's a mudslide, or a forest fire, hurricane, civil unrest, or, God forbid, an act of terrorism right here in our own nation.  So we have been very careful to balance that and balance the overseas mission.

But still, after all of that is said and done, we have a pretty good residual capability, almost 300,000, in every zip code of this great nation of ours, of citizen soldiers that are ready to respond.  So we can, by rotating the forces during the year -- obviously we're not going to take a heavy rotation during the summer or until November, we're not going to take a great contribution out of Florida and Texas and Alabama and Mississippi, and those kinds of states, and Louisiana, in particular, because we want to leave them their capability to be able to respond for the hurricanes.  

But they will -- they will take their fair turn, probably during the winter when the hurricane season has passed and the threat has left that geographical region.  They will become part of the rotational forces that will come in and help Customs and Border Patrol along the southwest border as part of their normal regular scheduled training, except instead of training in Louisiana or Mississippi, they may be training in Arizona or New Mexico.

The short answer is, our recruiting has been better the busier we have been.  We just finished our ninth consecutive record-breaking month of recruiting.  That means taking young men and women out of high school and college and having them want to volunteer to join the National Guard.  That's the best nine consecutive recruiting months in the history of the volunteer force.  We have never had nine consecutive months of the gains we have seen, and we haven't had the number of enlistments that we've enjoyed.

Now you have to consider, we're a nation that's been at war for five years, putting an increased reliance on the National Guard for the overseas war fight, putting extreme pressures on them to be able to respond in a moment's notice here at home when the governors call them for floods and hurricanes and civil disasters, and perhaps terrorism events.

In spite of all that, we are seeing great success, which is, to me, the greatest metric in measure.  Are they joining us?  And then, are they staying with us?  That's where you really measure the strain on the force.  If they were not staying with us in high numbers, if our retention rate, our reenlistment rate would slip, then I'd say, we may be seeing too much pressure on the force.  Our retention rate, our reenlistment rate, our ability to keep the trained and experienced people that have just come back from Afghanistan or Iraq or from Hurricane Katrina-like events is 122 percent of our target goal.  In other words, we are keeping people, experienced, trained veterans, at a higher level than we ever had in the history of the volunteer force.  I'm talking about going back 35 years now since the end of the draft.

So our recruiting is at an all-time high, our retention is at an all-time high, and up-tempo is at an all-time high.  In other words, how busy we are is at an all-time high, and what we're doing is everything that we could be asked to do simultaneously.  We're doing the overseas war fight, the at-home mission, and the military support to Customs and Border Patrol.  Up to 6,000 troops for the first year is not going to break the Guard.  As a matter of fact, it will have no negative effect on the Guard.  It will probably only have a positive effect on two people.  We'll probably get additional recruits for this mission, and Chief Aguilar will probably get some Customs and Border Patrol agents from the National Guard that want to do that kind of work because they worked together with them and soldiers kind of tend to gravitate to those kind of missions anyway.

Chief Aguilar:  And by the way, we are focusing on working with the Guard for recruitment purposes.  We have found them to be very capable, very willing, and very patriotic Americans.  And that -- I think that needs to be said.

Yes, sir.

Question:  I wanted to ask you, General, in this operation, are you using some technology or assistance developed by the military that may be proven to be effective in Iraq or similar places?  And also, I understand the Mexican government have deployed some of the troops.  Is there any way they can work cooperatively --

General Blum:  Well, let me start with the first part of your question and say, yes, and then I'll give you more detail on it if you like.

But absolutely, except for the lethal systems.  We don't plan to -- we are not invading Mexico and we are not defending the United States from an invasion of Mexico.  That's not what's going on here.  We're not closing our border, we are not militarizing our border.  We are trying to assist -- the National Guard has been tasked to assist.  Our military mission is to assist Customs and Border Patrol in helping control the border.  This country wants not to stop immigration.  We just want to make sure that we want to stop the criminal element and we want to stop the criminal activity that's taking advantage of this open border, and we want to get a little more control of it than we presently have.

So we're giving them capabilities that make them more effective in doing their job.  That's not the military's job, that is Custom and Border Patrol's job.  They are legally charged with the authority and responsibility for maintaining control of the border.

The reason that we selected the National Guard for this mission is that the New Mexico National Guard has a long-standing relationship with its partner states in northern Mexico and California, the same there; and Arizona, the same there; and Texas, also.  So there is something called the southwest border states that meet every year, and those southwest border states are not all on the north -- on the United States side of the border.  The same states on the Mexican side of the border meet with these four states every year.  And there is very good cooperation between the armed forces of Mexico and the National Guard of those four states.  

For example, New Mexico last year hosted a parachute competition between the Mexican army and some parachutists -- paratroopers, United States Army airborne qualified soldiers, in New Mexico.  It went very well.  This year, that same event is being hosted by the Mexicans, and the United States soldiers will go to Mexico and compete in a very friendly competition.  It is very helpful; there's good long-term relations, good trust and confidence between military personnel on both sides of the border, which will be very, very helpful in this operation so that it is not misunderstood, and that the Mexican citizens that are used to seeing the National Guard operating near the border see the National Guard doing the same things they've been doing for the last 20 years, except they happen to be doing it at a much higher rate -- normally it's 400 or 500, now it will be up to 6,000.

The reason that is has to grow is that we need to get the infrastructure, the roads, the lighting and what the Chief calls the tactical infrastructure, we want to assist Customs and Border Patrol with that, so that they can move along this border more effectively than they can in places where trails and roads don't exist, where they don't have barriers or fences where people -- illegal criminal activity are taking advantage of and either smuggling dope or smuggling people into this nation.  So that's the purpose of it.  

Now the first part of your question, we will use everything that we have in our inventory that makes sense.  For instance, we will use airplanes that can see at night, we will use airplanes that have infrared -- forward-looking infrared radar so that we can detect and see over the vast areas of the desert people that are moving across the desert.  We will report that to the Customs and Border Patrol.  They will evaluate whether they need to intercede, whether it's illegal activity or something that fits a profile that they want to react to.  The Chief and his sector chiefs will decide what the response will be and how large it will be and what the composition of that response force will be, and then the actions that they take are completely law enforcement activities.  The National Guard will not be involved in that.  The National Guard will just see it, report it and then it will transfer over to the proper authorities to do their job.

So you will see, eventually, probably unmanned aerial vehicles being used along the border, you'll probably see sensors that you would see in Iraq or Afghanistan to detect terrorists moving through mountain passes used on some of the mountain passes here, so that we have virtual eyes and ears on locations.  The illegals will not know they're being watched.  The illegals will not know that they have sensors out there, they'll be very, very difficult to detect.  Yet he will have the benefit of this new information that he doesn't have right now, which will obviously make the numbers that he does have much, much more effective.

This is not about numbers.  You guys keep focusing on numbers, and that's a big mistake.  You need to focus on the capabilities.  The capabilities we're bringing him, the military capabilities, the equipment and the technology and the skill set that we're bringing him increases the ability of his numbers to do their job much better.

Let me take it out of law enforcement for a second.  If you've ever had any brick work done or stone work done in your house, you can have one brick layer come there and you're going to pay that brick layer a pretty hefty fee per hour to do his work.  If he comes by himself, you're paying a lot of money for a lot of that time for him to do non-skilled work, or less than brick-laying work.  He's got to mix his own mortar, he's got to carry his own bricks, he's got to do this, he's got to do that.  The brick layer that comes with two or three helpers can lay a lot more brick in that day than one guy coming by himself.  We're the brick layer's helpers, that's what we're doing.  We're trying to make sure he can lay as many bricks with the agency he has as possible.  

Question:  When the federal government announced this program, it was very careful to say that you weren't militarizing the southern border.

Chief Aguilar:  That is correct.

Question:  I talked to one of your guys within the past week, and he said that the federal government is very much benefiting from a perception or a misperception among people south of the border that, in fact, you have militarized it, that people are afraid of the border now more so than they might have been in the past because of this announcement.  Do you think that you're benefiting from that misperception?  Do you agree with that?  And what are the ramifications when the Guard leaves?

Chief Aguilar: Well, first of all, I think we need to make sure that what the General and I, the President, the Secretary, the Commissioner have said all along, that the Guard is not involved in law enforcement work.  They do not detain, arrest or interdict anything coming across that border.  What they do serve as, as the General was saying, is a tremendous force multiplier for us.  

The perception, I believe, that is occurring in Mexico, and frankly even further south than Mexico, is that our capabilities have increased dramatically.  When we talk about increasing the number of apprehensions in New Mexico, when we talk about increasing the number of apprehensions in San Diego, and seeing the downtrend in Arizona that we're seeing today, that is what the flow, if you will, of the criminal organizations perceiving to be a much greater capability.  Are there some people that think that we are, in fact, lining up along the border and militarizing?  There may be.  But I think we have been very clear with the media -- foreign, domestically, everywhere -- as to what the Guard is doing.

Now what's going to happen when the Guard leaves, because I think that's a very important part of your question, this has been thought out very well.  When the Guard leaves, the void that would have been left had we not ramped up the Border Patrol's capability would, in fact, be a void.  But that's not going to happen.  That will be a transition of enforcement capabilities, enforcement support, to the Border Patrol, along our southwest border and our northern border that will, in fact, transition the responsibility for total border enforcement back to us, without -- we're looking without any kind of a void being created.  

Why?  We will have added the 6,000 Border Patrol agents net new, we will have added the tactical infrastructure that the Guard is building for us and will continue to build for us for two years, and, very importantly, we will continue to add the technology that will give us the ability to fill the void that we had before the Guard deployed.  And that void was, we just didn't have enough resources, we didn't have enough eyes and ears, we didn't have enough tactical infrastructure.  And that's what we're building up to right now.

So I anticipate a smooth transition when the Guard moves out -- it has been planned, the logistics are in place, and for the Border Patrol to take the handoff in its entirety for the security of our nation.  Okay?  Thank you, appreciate it.  

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This page was last reviewed/modified on 07/25/06 00:00:00.