Politics of border security hamper immigration overhaul

Once upon a time — a year ago — securing the U.S.-Mexican border was seen as the linchpin to getting immigration changes through Congress and onto President Barack Obama's desk.

But then, as now, the gap between Washington's political perceptions of enforcement along the border and realities on the ground has been vast.

In April 2013, then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told Congress that the border was more secure than it had ever been. A year ago in June, to lock down more votes as the Senate moved to adopt a comprehensive immigration overhaul, senators who wrote the bill agreed to a massive, last-minute border-security amendment.

The bill already called for more security along the border and better ways of tracking border crossers.

But the amendment proposed nearly doubling the number of Border Patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexican border, building 350 more miles of border fence and acquiring more drones and other technology, among other measures — even though the past three years have seen the lowest levels of apprehensions since the 1970s.

In the past fiscal year, the Border Patrol apprehended roughly 421,000 crossers, less than half of the annual figure for any year from 2000 to 2007.

In the House, many members of the Republican majority rejected the Senate bill from the start.

Some argued that the border needed to be more secure first. At the same time, many House members balked at the $46 billion price tag that the Congressional Budget Office assigned the border-security measures in the Senate bill. And some insisted they didn't trust the Obama administration to enforce immigration laws.

To the extent House leaders have acted at all, they have taken a piecemeal approach to border security.

GOP Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, sponsored a bill known as the Border Security Results Act. It mirrored many of the border provisions in the original Senate bill.

It passed with bipartisan support in the House Homeland Security Committee on May 15, 2013, but never has come to a vote on the House floor.

Now, most political analysts say any chance of immigration changes are dead. Some point to the June 10 Republican primary defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, seen at one time as the key to shepherding support — or at least tamping down opposition — from the most vocal tea party members.

And in the primary season leading up to this fall's election, House Republicans have shown even less appetite for change than last year.

Analysts now point to the news in early June of thousands of teens and children from Central America surging across the border into Texas' Rio Grande Valley — with hundreds of unaccompanied children being shipped to Arizona.

If we can't stop 12-year-olds, Napolitano was wrong: The border is not secure and immigration overhaul should wait, immigration opponents argue.

"I know a lot of Republicans who privately say they would like to vote on immigration reform," said Rep. Ron Barber, D-Ariz., who co-sponsored the bipartisan border-security bill that passed the House Homeland Security Committee. "Unfortunately, when we get into a campaign year, almost everything gets turned into a political football."

Barber said he still has hope that House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, will bring the bill to a vote.

Crossings keep shifting

On the ground, two seemingly contradictory facts are true: The border is more secure than it has ever been, and migrants who are sufficiently determined can get through.

In the past decade, the U.S. government has done the following:

• Spent more than $126 billion on border security and enforcement.

• Built more than 660 miles of fencing, installed thousands of ground sensors, built surveillance towers and acquired scores of mobile surveillance systems, drones, planes and other technology.

• More than doubled the number of Border Patrol agents to more than 21,000. Customs and Border Protection also employs more than 21,000 officers who work at the ports of entry.

The results have been dramatic in some places.

South of San Diego, which in the mid-1990s was the busiest crossing spot for migrants, a single strand of cable then marked some parts of the border. By 2005, 14 miles of fencing had gone up in double or even triple layers with a 150-foot, floodlit no-man's-land in between.

Apprehensions fell by 95%. Migrants turned east, to Yuma, Ariz.

A decade ago south of Yuma, hundreds of migrants would mass at one time to charge across the border in what agents called "banzai runs." Now layers of thick steel fencing and an overwhelming Border Patrol presence reduced migration through there to a trickle, too.

As Yuma was locked down, migrants turned farther east to the Tucson sector — and, now, to the Rio Grande Valley, which last year surpassed the Tucson sector to become the busiest crossing area, with 423 apprehensions a day.

Overall, Border Patrol agents last fiscal year apprehended slightly fewer than 421,000 migrants. That's up 24% from two years earlier. But it's less than a quarter of the nearly 1.7 million apprehensions agents made in 2000 and well below the more than a million a year agents averaged through fiscal 2006.

Migration analysts attribute both the huge drop in apprehensions in the several years before 2011 and the increases in the past two years less to enforcement efforts than to the state of the U.S. economy. As jobs dried up during the recession, crossings dropped; with the slow economic recovery, crossings are increasing again.

The demographics in Mexico also are changing, according to David FitzGerald, a sociologist at the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California-San Diego. Fertility rates have dropped, and the Mexican economy and educational opportunities are improving.

"We're unlikely to reach the levels we saw a decade ago, no matter what happens with immigration reform," he said.

The migration also has shifted. Most of the growth in illegal border crossers has come from Central America — particularly Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, said communications director Michelle Mittelstadt of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan Washington think tank.

But the combined populations of those countries is less than one-fifth that of Mexico, another reason the flow isn't likely to reach the levels of a decade ago, she said.

For Central American migrants, the Rio Grande Valley is the closest part of the U.S. border.

Customs and Border Protection began shifting more resources to the Rio Grande Valley sector last year, moving agents and beginning work on 14 miles of new fencing. But the river in places is shallow enough to walk across.

Migrants can and do sneak through.

The recent surge in unaccompanied children and families drawing so much attention has been very different. Agents have reported that many of the families and children aren't trying to run or hide. They wait to be caught or even actively flag agents down to apprehend them, perhaps because they've been misinformed that, once in this country, they'll be able to stay.

No success measure

Historically, the Border Patrol has struggled to measure how many people it doesn't catch.

For three years, the Department of Homeland Security has been promising to create a Border Conditions Index to measure more accurately the effectiveness of all the new agents, technology and infrastructure. But that index remains pending.

Meanwhile, few expect that much of anything will happen in the House this year.

Most Republicans agree on the need to secure the border, strengthen immigration enforcement inside the United States and provide a way for the nearly 12 million immigrants already here to earn legal status, said Executive Director Frank Sharry of America's Voice, an immigration-rights group.

But Republicans, who already have a majority in the House, have decided they don't want — or need — to bring the issue up in an election year that promises to be a good one for them, Sharry said.

"When you're on the verge of taking back the Senate, it's very hard to bring up an issue that could divide the Republican caucus," Sharry said.

House Republicans say they can start over on the issue next year, when the Senate may be under GOP control. But Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said he thinksbeginning again would be a mistake.

"We're still going to have divided government," Flake said, referring to the fact that Obama still will be in office. "We still need to get the president's signature on the bill. I just wish we'd get it done."

Executive Director Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, which opposes the Senate bill, said he believes the House debate may have moved beyond border security to include revamping the visa system for legal immigrants and ensuring that employers hire workers with legal status.

"My sense is the debate has matured so much and almost gotten beyond this simplistic focus on the border with Mexico," he said. "Not that it's not important to control the border, but it's just one piece of a much bigger puzzle. I can only hope that a lot of people have grown up enough that just saying 'border security' over and over is not really adequate in talking about immigration control."

Louis DeSipio, professor of political science and Chicano/Latino studies at the University of California-Irvine, agrees that the border shouldn't be the only focus.

According to the Homeland Security's own data, as many as 40% of the people here without proper authorization have overstayed after entering legally through official ports of entry.

"All the scholarly evidence is that the border is not where the problem is anymore. It's more about interior enforcement," DeSipio said. "And we haven't really seen a consensus on interior enforcement. There are humanitarian issues involved, and there are economic issues. The business community doesn't want the disruption of the government going after undocumented workers."

Sharry, the immigration-overhaul advocate, said Republicans are focused on what promises to be a strong 2014 election season for them. But he said they are setting themselves up for defeat in the 2016 presidential election by alienating Latino voters, who could be key to victory.

"I think it's going to go down as a mistake of historic proportions," Sharry said.

Erin Kelly also reports for the Gannett Washington Bureau.