Immigration officials hit lack of new hires

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The Bush administration's decision not to hire 2,000 new Border Patrol agents for fiscal year 2006 will seriously hamper efforts to control illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border, said current and retired officials.

President Bush is expected to seek an increase of only about 200 agents for the new fiscal year, according to law-enforcement authorities and others, significantly short of the 2,000 per year authorized for each of the next five years in the recently passed intelligence overhaul bill.

Passed by Congress and signed into law by Mr. Bush in December, the bill authorized 10,000 new Border Patrol agents as part of Congress' response to the September 11 commission's findings. The panel revealed deep institutional failings and missed opportunities by U.S. authorities in stopping the al Qaeda terrorists who crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing about 3,000 people.

The proposed influx of new agents would nearly double the size of the Border Patrol in the next five years as concern increased over new terrorist threats and a significant rise in the number of assaults against agents assigned along the border. Fears were heightened particularly in Arizona, where agents captured more than 40 percent of the 1.15 million aliens caught last year trying to sneak into the country.

Agents on a 260-mile stretch of Arizona-Mexico border, known as the Tucson sector, are being assaulted at a rate of once every two days, according to Border Patrol statistics.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson, who heads border and transportation security, confirmed separately that Mr. Bush will not seek funding for the extra agents this year. His fiscal 2006 budget request is due in February.

Mr. Ridge, who has resigned and will leave office tomorrow, referred to the intelligence bill authorization of 10,000 agents as "fool's gold," saying it would be an inefficient use of Homeland Security funds. Mr. Hutchinson, who has quit effective March 1, said funding issues within the department precluded such a large increase in manpower.

Mr. Hutchinson told reporters in Arizona that although there would be "some increase" in the number of agents, he would "leave it to the president" to determine how many. He said the addition of 2,000 agents this year "would not be doable within our budget constraints."

The intelligence overhaul bill also authorized increasing the number of U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) agents assigned to find and detain the 8 million to 12 million illegals in the United States from 2,000 to 6,000 and the number of beds where illegal aliens can be held from 20,000 to 60,000. The bill called for both changes in the next five years.

In a letter to Congress during the debate on the bill, Mr. Bush specifically praised those increases, calling them "an important step in strengthening our immigration laws."