New BP chief accepts challenge

TUCSON—The Border Patrol’s No. 2 man and 200 other people watched as the agency’s new local chief took his oath and promised to “accept and overcome the extreme challenge” of helping make the country safer here.

Robert W. Gilbert, new Tucson Border Patrol Sector chief, will head an operation with 2,800 agents and employees in five stations watching 90,000 square miles of rocky, cactus-infested desert.

Gilbert, who now wears two silver stars on his collar as sector commander, said becoming the chief here was “a threshold I never imagined” when he started in 1985.

In the audience were his parents, Robert and Ann Gilbert. His father is a retired Border Patrol agent.

In a short press conference, new chief Gilbert said he needs to study the issues surrounding a checkpoint on I-19 north of Tubac before commenting on it.

For years it has been a mobile checkpoint, relocating along the freeway every few weeks.

The national Border Patrol office now says it wants to create a permanent one on the interstate, which some northern Santa Cruz County residents oppose.

Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever chatted with Gilbert briefly after the ceremony. He was the highest ranking local law enforcement official present.

Scores of agents in olive green uniforms and wearing four-cornered campaign hats, stood and saluted as the flags were carried to the podium—the American flag and the flags of the Homeland Security Department, Customs and Border Protection and the Border Patrol.

Five kilt-wearing pipers and drummers led the flags.

Overhead lights glinted off some of the golden badges all the agents wore.

Before administering Gilbert’s oath, National Deputy Chief Stevens defined the role of the Border Patrol.

“It’s about border security, plain and simple.”

The Border Patrol works to seal the border between ports of entry, so illegal entrants can’t come across. It has intercepted murderers, rapists, drug smugglers.

“Our job is securing the border from those who would do us harm,” he said.

Last year the men and women of America’s 21 Border Patrol sectors “arrested more than a million people and seized more than a billion pounds of drugs,” said Stevens.

It was something of a homecoming for Stevens. He once commanded the Border Patrol’s Nogales station and then the overall Tucson Sector.

Current national chief David Aguilar also once commanded the Tucson Sector. His successor, sector chief Michael Nicley, officially retired when Gilbert became chief.

Gilbert said the Tucson sector is the Border Patrol’s busiest.

As more agents go to work in California, Texas and New Mexico, smugglers and illegal entrants are pushed toward Arizona.

“There’s no place else for them to go.” He pledged “We will get the job done.”

Besides agents on the ground, the Border Patrol relies on better and in some cases high-tech fencing, pilotless aerial drones that scan the desert and sensors in the desert to detect the faintest footfall.

And are the agents here ready for the change of command?

At 8 a.m. Thursday an agent at the I-19 checkpoint was reminded that later today he’d get a new boss.

“That’s right,” he said. “I guess it will be o.k.

jlamb@gvnews.com | 547-9749