$30 million more for help along border

The federal government is putting $30 million more into helping local police agencies deal with border-related crime, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Tuesday.

That anouncement, made in a video conference from El Paso, drew a smile and hand claps from Sahuarita Acting Police Chief Jim Gerrettie, who monitored the event at the Border Patrol office in Tucson.

The boost for Operation Stonegarden on the Southwest border is in addition to $45 million already given in the spring, Napolitano said.

“In the past eight months almost 85 percent of all Stonegarden money has gone for the Southwest border,” she said.

Operation Stonegarden assists local authorities with operational costs and equipment purchases that contribute to border security.

Gerrettie and Sahuarita Sgt. Matt McGlone said their department now receives $8,000 under the Stonegarden program, mostly for officer overtime. They said the overtime, plus the spirit of cooperation with Border Patrol that has accompanied the money, has produced clear-cut results in pushing drug smugglers out of Sahuarita.

The three main smuggling corridors through Sahuarita and Green Valley are the Santa Cruz River bed, Interstate 19 and Mission Road, and McGlone said Border Patrol agents have told Sahuarita police that the town’s efforts under Stonegarden have helped push drug traffickers off those routes and into other areas. While acknowledging that this does not solve the larger problem, Sahuarita police are pleased to reduce problems on the heavily traveled interstate and Mission Road, and to push drug smugglers into rougher terrain, where the Border Patrol will pursue them.

Gerrettie said Sahuarita patrol officers and Border Patrol agents in the field are communicating directly under Stonegarden and coordinating efforts, without having to always go through commanders, as in the past.

McGlone praised the Tuesday event, which included several dozen law enforcement officials in Tucson, and sites in San Diego, New Mexico and Texas, saying, “This is laying a foundation for future efforts.”

While Napolitano said sharing of intelligence and other cooperation among federal, state and local agencies is a key to reducing border crime, the mayors and police chiefs in the video conference asked that federal funding be continued or expanded will help as much as intelligence-sharing efforts.

Napolitano summarized changes in the Obama administration’s border policy from policies of the previous eight years by saying the Southwest border will no longer be isolated from other national issues.

“You can’t separate Mexico from what happens here and you can’t separate what happens here from Kansas City,” Napolitano said at the University of Texas-El Paso.

Napolitano said an integrated view of the problem has led to vastly increased efforts to check southbound vehicles for guns and cash headed to Mexican drug cartels. She said past efforts on human smuggling had focused solely on the supply side of illegal workers, and that DHS is now prosecuting employers of illegal aliens caught in roundups at work sites, in an effort to decrease the demand for illegal workers.

Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup told the Homeland Security secretary that he viewed Congressional approval of a guest-worker program as critical in reducing human-smuggling across the border.

Napolitano later said, “I share in interest in changing immigration laws, but our job is to enforce the law, this law. If and when there is change, and I believe it will be when, we will be prepared to enforce that law as well.”

The former Arizona governor said the swine flu pandemic is not expected to grow significantly beyond its spring level of virulence, because it has not mutated into highly virulent strains in the Southern Hemisphere, but she warned that it is likely to spread rapidly, as would any influenza outbreak, when students return to school.

She said that by using mobile X-ray machines and canine patrols, “for the first time we are inspecting all southbound train shipments” and said Mexico is cooperating with efforts to spot guns and cash headed south.

BY THE NUMBERS

Department of Homeland Security figures for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30:

$69 million in cash seized; 2.4 million pounds of drugs; 95,000 rounds of ammunition and 500 handguns and assault rifles.

181,000 illegal immigrants arrested, 216,000 illegal immigrants deported.