Predator Drones to Scour Border for Illegal Immigrants

KTLA News

December 7, 2009

PALMDALE -- Military predator drones will soon be patroling the skies of Southern California, looking for illegal immigrants and smugglers at the border.

The unmanned and unarmed planes called Maritime MQ-9 Predator B Guardian Unmanned Aircraft Systems are being unveiled Monday. The aircraft will fly above the California-Mexico border using radar and long-range video cameras in search of illegal immigrants crossing into the country.

The planes have already been used along the Mexican border in Arizona and Texas, and along the Canadian border in North Dakota.

The drones will be based at a priate airport operated by General Atomics in the Antelope Valley.

One of the drones has the capacity of detecting vessels in the water, according to Juan Munoz-Torres of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The Predators are used by the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Predators used by Customs and Border Protection are controlled remotely by a two-person team on the ground, Kimberly Kasitz, a spokesperson for General Atomics.

One flies the aircraft and the other handles the sensors, cameras and radar, Kastiz said.

Any intelligence gathered is transmitted from the aircraft to law enforcement.

Kastiz said its main purpose is to counter drug smuggling. The unmanned aircraft also will transmit data on human smuggling by sea, which has been on the rise. Customs and Border Protection agents apprehended 22 illegal immigrants Thursday on a boat off La Jolla.

Investigators continued to search for two men who walked out of a federal prison Friday.

By Patrick George
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, November 24, 2009

As the search continued Monday for two men who escaped from a Bastrop County federal prison, authorities said they obtained security camera footage of one of the men at an Austin grocery store and think he may be headed to Mexico.

Adan Chavez, 53, who had been sentenced to 30 years in prison for cocaine and weapons convictions, and Leandro Luna, 52, who had been sentenced to 10 years for marijuana importation, walked out of a low-security area of the Bastrop federal prison Friday, officials said. They have been on the loose since.

Hector Gomez, supervisory deputy for the U.S. Marshals Service, said Monday that officials discovered an abandoned Ford Crown Victoria government car at the H-E-B at Interstate 35 and East William Cannon Drive. A review of security camera footage from about 9 p.m. Friday showed Luna stepping out of the car, which Gomez said was from the Bastrop prison and may have been used in the escape, and into a blue or silver Chevrolet pickup.

The truck's license plate could not be seen on the video, Gomez said. The video did not show Chavez, he said.

Investigators have learned that Luna has relatives in Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, which is near Del Rio.

"It's not far-fetched to say he could be there now," Gomez said. "We feel pretty certain he's not in the Austin area."

Authorities have fewer leads on Chavez, Gomez said. He has no relatives in the Central Texas area and also may be headed to Mexico. Both men are U.S. citizens, so if they are caught south of the border they probably will be deported quickly, Gomez said.

It's typical for investigators to not release information about fugitives for the first 24 to 48 hours after an escape because during that time, they have the "element of surprise" and can track them down based on who their associates and families are, Gomez said. Once that window passes, investigators enlist the public's help, but he said that publicity often causes fugitives to go deeper into hiding, he said.

"We are doing everything we possibly can," he said.

Luna is described as being 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighing 334 pounds. Officials say he has gray hair, brown eyes and a scar on his abdomen.

Officials said Chavez is 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighs 215 pounds. He has graying black hair and brown eyes.

Anyone with information on their whereabouts is asked to call the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force at 916-5393.

Agents arrest men suspected of smuggling thousands into US

City News Service

9:10 AM PST, November 20, 2009

 

SAN DIEGO - Two brothers and a third man were in federal custody Friday on suspicion of conspiring to help thousands of illegal immigrants enter the United States west of the Otay Mesa border crossing, authorities said.

Maurilio Mosley, 27, of Chula Vista, was the ringleader on the U.S. side, while his brother -- Erik Mosley, 24, of Tijuana -- ran things on the Mexican side, according to a statement from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. George Sandoval, 42, of San Ysidro allegedly acted as a driver and recruiter.

Their arrests Tuesday were the result of a yearlong investigation by both ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The smuggling operation, which involved cutting holes in border fencing, went on over the past several years, according to the agencies.

Agents said they seized evidence from Mosley's home and business in National City, including five vehicles, nearly $18,000, numerous alien smuggling ledgers and nine counterfeit $100 bills.

All three men appeared in federal court Thursday in San Diego to be charged of conspiracy and human smuggling for financial gain. The human smuggling charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

WASHINGTON — Immigration enforcement officials said Thursday that they were expanding a program for auditing companies that might have hired illegal immigrants and had notified 1,000 companies this week that they would have to undergo such a review.

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Related

Times Topics: Immigration and Emigration

John Morton, who heads Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, announced the new initiative, saying it was part of the administration’s plan to deal with companies that hire illegal workers. “ICE is focused on finding and penalizing employers who believe they can unfairly get ahead by cultivating illegal workplaces,” Mr. Morton said.

He said that because the program was a law enforcement operation, he would not identify the companies that would undergo an audit except to say that they had been selected as a result of investigative leads and their connection to public safety and national security.

The language suggests the audits will affect private companies involved in infrastructure operations like gas and electric utilities and contractors on military bases but not retailers and manufacturers of nonessential goods.

The announcement of the action appears to be part of a two-pronged strategy by Homeland Security officials to crack down on companies that regularly rely on illegal workers while simultaneously trying to reward companies that are diligent in checking the documentation of prospective workers.

At a separate event on Thursday, Janet Napolitano, the secretary of Homeland Security, urged American consumers to favor companies that make efforts to ensure that they do not hire illegal immigrants.

To that end, Ms. Napolitano said that her department was permitting companies that use a new computerized system to check the legal status of employees to feature a special logo on their products and ads saying “I E-Verify.”

The E-Verify campaign allows employers to match a prospective candidate’s name against a database that combines several government lists, including Social Security, passport and border information.

The first audit conducted by ICE covered 654 companies and resulted in the filing of formal notices to seek a fine from 61. ICE officials said they were considering seeking fines from an additional 267 companies from that first audit.

An audit consists of ICE officials checking each worker’s Employee Eligibility Verification Form, known as an I-9, to determine what steps were taken to confirm the person was eligible to be hired. If irregularities are found, the companies may then be fined for lax monitoring.

The strategy is part of the Obama administration’s effort to reduce illegal immigration by forcing companies to fire unauthorized workers rather than by conducting raids at the workplace, actions that are often accompanied by great personal trauma, including deportation and the dividing of immigrant families.

Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, a leading Republican on immigration policy, on Thursday sharply criticized the administration’s approach. Mr. Smith said it was unwise to end “worksite enforcement” actions, or raids.

“The most effective means we have of making these jobs available to American citizens and legal immigrants is U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement worksite enforcement actions,” he said. “Each time ICE detains and deports an illegal immigrant worker, ICE creates a job for an American worker.”

The audits, however, have resulted in large-scale dismissals at the hands of employers, leaving the government one step removed.

In September, American Apparel, a clothing maker with a large garment factory in downtown Los Angeles, fired about 1,800 immigrant employees — more than a quarter of its work force — after a federal audit turned up irregularities in identity documents the workers presented when they were hired.

Human Smuggling Ring Busted

How Eisenhower solved illegal border crossings from Mexico

By John Dillin

WASHINGTON – George W. Bush isn't the first Republican president to face a full-blown immigration crisis on the US-Mexican border.

Fifty-three years ago, when newly elected Dwight Eisenhower moved into the White House, America's southern frontier was as porous as a spaghetti sieve. As many as 3 million illegal migrants had walked and waded northward over a period of several years for jobs in California, Arizona, Texas, and points beyond.

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President Eisenhower cut off this illegal traffic. He did it quickly and decisively with only 1,075 United States Border Patrol agents - less than one-tenth of today's force. The operation is still highly praised among veterans of the Border Patrol.

Although there is little to no record of this operation in Ike's official papers, one piece of historic evidence indicates how he felt. In 1951, Ike wrote a letter to Sen. William Fulbright (D) of Arkansas. The senator had just proposed that a special commission be created by Congress to examine unethical conduct by government officials who accepted gifts and favors in exchange for special treatment of private individuals.

General Eisenhower, who was gearing up for his run for the presidency, said "Amen" to Senator Fulbright's proposal. He then quoted a report in The New York Times, highlighting one paragraph that said: "The rise in illegal border-crossing by Mexican 'wetbacks' to a current rate of more than 1,000,000 cases a year has been accompanied by a curious relaxation in ethical standards extending all the way from the farmer-exploiters of this contraband labor to the highest levels of the Federal Government."

Years later, the late Herbert Brownell Jr., Eisenhower's first attorney general, said in an interview with this writer that the president had a sense of urgency about illegal immigration when he took office.

America "was faced with a breakdown in law enforcement on a very large scale," Mr. Brownell said. "When I say large scale, I mean hundreds of thousands were coming in from Mexico [every year] without restraint."

Although an on-and-off guest-worker program for Mexicans was operating at the time, farmers and ranchers in the Southwest had become dependent on an additional low-cost, docile, illegal labor force of up to 3 million, mostly Mexican, laborers.

According to the Handbook of Texas Online, published by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas State Historical Association, this illegal workforce had a severe impact on the wages of ordinary working Americans. The Handbook Online reports that a study by the President's Commission on Migratory Labor in Texas in 1950 found that cotton growers in the Rio Grande Valley, where most illegal aliens in Texas worked, paid wages that were "approximately half" the farm wages paid elsewhere in the state.

Profits from illegal labor led to the kind of corruption that apparently worried Eisenhower. Joseph White, a retired 21-year veteran of the Border Patrol, says that in the early 1950s, some senior US officials overseeing immigration enforcement "had friends among the ranchers," and agents "did not dare" arrest their illegal workers.

Walt Edwards, who joined the Border Patrol in 1951, tells a similar story. He says: "When we caught illegal aliens on farms and ranches, the farmer or rancher would often call and complain [to officials in El Paso]. And depending on how politically connected they were, there would be political intervention. That is how we got into this mess we are in now."

Bill Chambers, who worked for a combined 33 years for the Border Patrol and the then-called US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), says politically powerful people are still fueling the flow of illegals.

During the 1950s, however, this "Good Old Boy" system changed under Eisenhower - if only for about 10 years.

In 1954, Ike appointed retired Gen. Joseph "Jumpin' Joe" Swing, a former West Point classmate and veteran of the 101st Airborne, as the new INS commissioner.

Influential politicians, including Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D) of Texas and Sen. Pat McCarran (D) of Nevada, favored open borders, and were dead set against strong border enforcement, Brownell said. But General Swing's close connections to the president shielded him - and the Border Patrol - from meddling by powerful political and corporate interests.

One of Swing's first decisive acts was to transfer certain entrenched immigration officials out of the border area to other regions of the country where their political connections with people such as Senator Johnson would have no effect.

Then on June 17, 1954, what was called "Operation Wetback" began. Because political resistance was lower in California and Arizona, the roundup of aliens began there. Some 750 agents swept northward through agricultural areas with a goal of 1,000 apprehensions a day. By the end of July, over 50,000 aliens were caught in the two states. Another 488,000, fearing arrest, had fled the country.

By mid-July, the crackdown extended northward into Utah, Nevada, and Idaho, and eastward to Texas.

By September, 80,000 had been taken into custody in Texas, and an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 illegals had left the Lone Star State voluntarily.

Unlike today, Mexicans caught in the roundup were not simply released at the border, where they could easily reenter the US. To discourage their return, Swing arranged for buses and trains to take many aliens deep within Mexico before being set free.

Tens of thousands more were put aboard two hired ships, the Emancipation and the Mercurio. The ships ferried the aliens from Port Isabel, Texas, to Vera Cruz, Mexico, more than 500 miles south.

The sea voyage was "a rough trip, and they did not like it," says Don Coppock, who worked his way up from Border Patrolman in 1941 to eventually head the Border Patrol from 1960 to 1973.

Mr. Coppock says he "cannot understand why [President] Bush let [today's] problem get away from him as it has. I guess it was his compassionate conservatism, and trying to please [Mexican President] Vincente Fox."

There are now said to be 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens in the US. Of the Mexicans who live here, an estimated 85 percent are here illegally.

Border Patrol vets offer tips on curbing illegal immigration

One day in 1954, Border Patrol agent Walt Edwards picked up a newspaper in Big Spring, Texas, and saw some startling news. The government was launching an all-out drive to oust illegal aliens from the United States. The orders came straight from the top, where the new president, Dwight Eisenhower, had put a former West Point classmate, Gen. Joseph Swing, in charge of immigration enforcement. General Swing's fast-moving campaign soon secured America's borders - an accomplishment no other president has since equaled. Illegal migration had dropped 95 percent by the late 1950s. Several retired Border Patrol agents who took part in the 1950s effort, including Mr. Edwards, say much of what Swing did could be repeated today. "Some say we cannot send 12 million illegals now in the United States back where they came from. Of course we can!" Edwards says. Donald Coppock, who headed the Patrol from 1960 to 1973, says that if Swing and Ike were still running immigration enforcement, "they'd be on top of this in a minute." William Chambers, another '50s veteran, agrees. "They could do a pretty good job" sealing the border. Edwards says: "When we start enforcing the law, these various businesses are, on their own, going to replace their [illegal] workforce with a legal workforce." While Congress debates building a fence on the border, these veterans say other actions should have higher priority. 1. End the current practice of taking captured Mexican aliens to the border and releasing them. Instead, deport them deep into Mexico, where return to the US would be more costly. 2. Crack down hard on employers who hire illegals. Without jobs, the aliens won't come. 3. End "catch and release" for non-Mexican aliens. It is common for illegal migrants not from Mexico to be set free after their arrest if they promise to appear later before a judge. Few show up. The Patrol veterans say enforcement could also be aided by a legalized guest- worker program that permits Mexicans to register in their country for temporary jobs in the US. Eisenhower's team ran such a program. It permitted up to 400,000 Mexicans a year to enter the US for various agriculture jobs that lasted for 12 to 52 weeks.

Obama Administration to Fine Employers as GOP Pushes to Replace Illegals with U.S. Workers

Full story: www.cnsnews.com

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Assistant Secretary John Morton made appearances in Washington on Thursday to announce that they are cracking down on businesses that employ illegal immigrants as well as recognizing those that try to follow the law by using an online system that verifies an employee's legal status.

On the same day, Republicans said that while some businesses are being investigated, most illegal workers are not being removed.

“We at DHS are committed … to investigating and penalizing employers that break the law,” Morton said at a legal workforce symposium. “And as I said, we are also committed to the vast majority of employers who want to comply with the law.”

At a Capitol Hill forum, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and other Republicans discussed data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) showing that enforcement of immigration laws in the workplace has plummeted during the first year of Obama’s presidency.

“It is hard to conceive of a worse time to cut worksite enforcement efforts by more than half,” Smith said. “There are 16 million Americans out of work. And yet the administration has chosen to ignore the fact that there are nearly 8 million illegal immigrants in the workforce.

“Those stolen jobs should be returned to out-of-work citizens and legal immigrants,” Smith said. “The Obama administration should put citizens and legal immigrants first, especially when it comes to jobs.”

Smith said the data -- not yet available to the public -- shows that arrests, indictments, and convictions of workplace violations fell by more than 50 percent from fiscal year 2008 to fiscal year 2009.

The only area of enforcement that saw an increase was record audits, but Republicans said those audits are considered a “cost of doing business” for large companies.

The DHS responded by saying the data were not current and that the Obama administration is getting the results it wants.

“These statistics reflect a myopic, outdated, and distorted view of effective enforcement,” said DHS spokesman Matt Chandler. “Just a week ago, we highlighted the more than 11,000 murderers, rapists, and kidnappers identified in our jails by the Secure Communities program in the last year, nearly 2,000 of which have already been deported.

“ICE has prioritized its enforcement efforts by focusing on hardened criminals and employers who knowingly hire illegal workers and break the law,” Chandler added.

Morton on Thursday cited the millions of dollars in fines that have been levied against businesses that break immigration law. He announced that ICE has issued “Notices of Inspection” to 1,000 unnamed businesses across the country to “determine compliance with employment eligibility and verification law.”

DHS also launched an “I-E-Verify” campaign on Thursday to recognize the businesses that use the online program to confirm the legal status of potential employees and to encourage “voluntary compliance” for others businesses that have yet to sign on to the program. E-Verify was first launched by the Bush administration.

“ICE is focused on finding and penalizing employers who believe they can unfairly get ahead by cultivating illegal workplaces,” Morton said. “We are increasing criminal and civil enforcement of immigration-related employment laws and imposing smart, tough, employer sanctions to even the playing field for employers who play by the rules.”

The focus on employers –- and not on individuals who are living and working in the country illegally -– is in keeping with the changes at DHS and ICE, which Napolitano announced in April. The changes included a focus on the businesses that knowingly employ illegal aliens and the identification and detention of illegal aliens who have committed serious crimes.

As reported earlier by CNSNews.com, Napolitano said last week that the Obama administration would push for “immigration reform” by giving the estimated 14 million people who are in the United States illegally “fair pathway to earned legal status.”

“A tough and fair pathway to earned legal status will mandate that illegal immigrants meet a number of requirements, including registering, paying a fine, passing a criminal background check, fully paying all taxes and learning English,” Napolitano said at a panel discussion at the liberal Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C.

At Thursday’s symposium, Napolitano repeated the Obama administration’s commitment to that kind of immigration reform.

“Our immigration problems are complex, but they’re also fixable,” Napolitano said. “This administration is dedicated to helping Congress tackle these problems and adopt real, workable solutions.

“A part of these solutions will be to ensure that our immigration system works for American businesses both large and small,” she said. “At the same time, there is no doubt that a major part of any reform bill will be to make sure employers are held accountable for maintaining a legal workforce.”

In his opening statement at the forum to discuss how illegal aliens are affecting the job market in America, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) dismissed the notion that illegal aliens are necessary to the U.S. economy because they are doing jobs that Americans supposedly do not want to do.

“Americans are willing to work at any job,” King said. “The hottest, most difficult, dirtiest, and dangerous job in the world is rooting terrorists out of Iraq and Afghanistan. And Marines are doing that job for about $8.09 an hour.”

Criminal deportation up 40 percent in Pacific Northwest

Credit: AP Photo

by By MANUEL VALDES, AP Writer

Posted on November 19, 2009 at 6:56 PM

SEATTLE (AP) -- Deportations of illegal immigrants with criminal records from Alaska, Oregon, and Washington this past year spiked by nearly 40 percent, while overall removals dropped for the first time in five years, according to new data released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The data, from October 1, 2008 to September 30, 2009, shows that 10,793 people were deported from the Pacific Northwest, a drop of 117 compared to the previous year.

That marks the first time in the last five years that deportations from the Northwest have dropped. Deportations had increased from more than 4,000 in 2005 to nearly 11,000 in 2008.

But removals of people with criminal records went from more than 3,100 to nearly 4,500 between 2008 and 2009 -- a jump of 39.7 percent. Since 2005, criminal removals have more than doubled.

The data "illustrates pretty vividly the priority we're placing on the removal of criminal aliens," ICE spokeswoman Lorie Dankers said. "We believe it's the best way to enhance public safety."

Dankers said moving resources resulted in a slight decrease in deportations of immigrants with no criminal records, but she said that ICE cannot ignore that section of the illegal immigrant community.

She added ICE has moved its resources to focus on immigrants with criminal records. Crimes under which a person may be deported can range between a misdemeanor and a felony.

ICE has various programs that feed its criminal removals, including the "Criminal Alien Program," in which agents comb jails for people who are not in the country legally. Another program -- "Secure Communities" -- uses computerized analysis to help local law enforcement determine a person's background.

Dankers also said ICE is heavily involved in anti-gang initiatives around the region.

The spike in criminal deportations was welcomed news for Jim Ludwick, president of Oregonians for Immigration Reform, a group that lobbies for stricter immigration rules. But he deemed the decrease in deportations of non-criminal immigrants as a letdown.

"That's disheartening, if you look at unemployment in Oregon, it's about 11 percent, and I know it's similar in Washington; when you have millions of people who are working here, who are willing to work for less than living wages, it depresses the wage market for Americans," Ludwick said.

Deportations of immigrants with no criminal record dropped by 18 percent to 6,331 in the Northwest in that period.

At Salem-based CAUSAOregon, an immigrant advocacy group, executive director Francisco Lopez said that drops in deportations don't mean immigrants are not being affected by immigration enforcement. He points to an Obama administration policy of going after employers with audits. That, Lopez said, has caused immigrants to lose their jobs.

"It doesn't matter if they're deported. They're getting people to leave. They leave them without a livelihood, because they're losing their jobs," Lopez said.

Nationwide, deportations jumped to more than 387,000 in the same period -- an increase of 65 percent over the previous year.

Opinion

Commentary>Opinion from the July 06, 2006 edition How Eisenhower solved illegal border crossings from Mexico By John Dillin WASHINGTON – George W. Bush isn't the first Republican president to face a full-blown immigration crisis on the US-Mexican border. Fifty-three years ago, when newly elected Dwight Eisenhower moved into the White House, America's southern frontier was as porous as a spaghetti sieve. As many as 3 million illegal migrants had walked and waded northward over a period of several years for jobs in California, Arizona, Texas, and points beyond. President Eisenhower cut off this illegal traffic. He did it quickly and decisively with only 1,075 United States Border Patrol agents - less than one-tenth of today's force. The operation is still highly praised among veterans of the Border Patrol. Although there is little to no record of this operation in Ike's official papers, one piece of historic evidence indicates how he felt. In 1951, Ike wrote a letter to Sen. William Fulbright (D) of Arkansas. The senator had just proposed that a special commission be created by Congress to examine unethical conduct by government officials who accepted gifts and favors in exchange for special treatment of private individuals. General Eisenhower, who was gearing up for his run for the presidency, said "Amen" to Senator Fulbright's proposal. He then quoted a report in The New York Times, highlighting one paragraph that said: "The rise in illegal border-crossing by Mexican 'wetbacks' to a current rate of more than 1,000,000 cases a year has been accompanied by a curious relaxation in ethical standards extending all the way from the farmer-exploiters of this contraband labor to the highest levels of the Federal Government." Years later, the late Herbert Brownell Jr., Eisenhower's first attorney general, said in an interview with this writer that the president had a sense of urgency about illegal immigration when he took office. America "was faced with a breakdown in law enforcement on a very large scale," Mr. Brownell said. "When I say large scale, I mean hundreds of thousands were coming in from Mexico [every year] without restraint." Although an on-and-off guest-worker program for Mexicans was operating at the time, farmers and ranchers in the Southwest had become dependent on an additional low-cost, docile, illegal labor force of up to 3 million, mostly Mexican, laborers. According to the Handbook of Texas Online, published by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas State Historical Association, this illegal workforce had a severe impact on the wages of ordinary working Americans. The Handbook Online reports that a study by the President's Commission on Migratory Labor in Texas in 1950 found that cotton growers in the Rio Grande Valley, where most illegal aliens in Texas worked, paid wages that were "approximately half" the farm wages paid elsewhere in the state. Profits from illegal labor led to the kind of corruption that apparently worried Eisenhower. Joseph White, a retired 21-year veteran of the Border Patrol, says that in the early 1950s, some senior US officials overseeing immigration enforcement "had friends among the ranchers," and agents "did not dare" arrest their illegal workers. Walt Edwards, who joined the Border Patrol in 1951, tells a similar story. He says: "When we caught illegal aliens on farms and ranches, the farmer or rancher would often call and complain [to officials in El Paso]. And depending on how politically connected they were, there would be political intervention. That is how we got into this mess we are in now." Bill Chambers, who worked for a combined 33 years for the Border Patrol and the then-called US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), says politically powerful people are still fueling the flow of illegals. During the 1950s, however, this "Good Old Boy" system changed under Eisenhower - if only for about 10 years. In 1954, Ike appointed retired Gen. Joseph "Jumpin' Joe" Swing, a former West Point classmate and veteran of the 101st Airborne, as the new INS commissioner. Influential politicians, including Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D) of Texas and Sen. Pat McCarran (D) of Nevada, favored open borders, and were dead set against strong border enforcement, Brownell said. But General Swing's close connections to the president shielded him - and the Border Patrol - from meddling by powerful political and corporate interests. One of Swing's first decisive acts was to transfer certain entrenched immigration officials out of the border area to other regions of the country where their political connections with people such as Senator Johnson would have no effect. Then on June 17, 1954, what was called "Operation Wetback" began. Because political resistance was lower in California and Arizona, the roundup of aliens began there. Some 750 agents swept northward through agricultural areas with a goal of 1,000 apprehensions a day. By the end of July, over 50,000 aliens were caught in the two states. Another 488,000, fearing arrest, had fled the country. By mid-July, the crackdown extended northward into Utah, Nevada, and Idaho, and eastward to Texas. By September, 80,000 had been taken into custody in Texas, and an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 illegals had left the Lone Star State voluntarily. Unlike today, Mexicans caught in the roundup were not simply released at the border, where they could easily reenter the US. To discourage their return, Swing arranged for buses and trains to take many aliens deep within Mexico before being set free. Tens of thousands more were put aboard two hired ships, the Emancipation and the Mercurio. The ships ferried the aliens from Port Isabel, Texas, to Vera Cruz, Mexico, more than 500 miles south. The sea voyage was "a rough trip, and they did not like it," says Don Coppock, who worked his way up from Border Patrolman in 1941 to eventually head the Border Patrol from 1960 to 1973. Mr. Coppock says he "cannot understand why [President] Bush let [today's] problem get away from him as it has. I guess it was his compassionate conservatism, and trying to please [Mexican President] Vincente Fox." There are now said to be 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens in the US. Of the Mexicans who live here, an estimated 85 percent are here illegally. Border Patrol vets offer tips on curbing illegal immigration One day in 1954, Border Patrol agent Walt Edwards picked up a newspaper in Big Spring, Texas, and saw some startling news. The government was launching an all-out drive to oust illegal aliens from the United States. The orders came straight from the top, where the new president, Dwight Eisenhower, had put a former West Point classmate, Gen. Joseph Swing, in charge of immigration enforcement. General Swing's fast-moving campaign soon secured America's borders - an accomplishment no other president has since equaled. Illegal migration had dropped 95 percent by the late 1950s. Several retired Border Patrol agents who took part in the 1950s effort, including Mr. Edwards, say much of what Swing did could be repeated today. "Some say we cannot send 12 million illegals now in the United States back where they came from. Of course we can!" Edwards says. Donald Coppock, who headed the Patrol from 1960 to 1973, says that if Swing and Ike were still running immigration enforcement, "they'd be on top of this in a minute." William Chambers, another '50s veteran, agrees. "They could do a pretty good job" sealing the border. Edwards says: "When we start enforcing the law, these various businesses are, on their own, going to replace their [illegal] workforce with a legal workforce." While Congress debates building a fence on the border, these veterans say other actions should have higher priority. 1. End the current practice of taking captured Mexican aliens to the border and releasing them. Instead, deport them deep into Mexico, where return to the US would be more costly. 2. Crack down hard on employers who hire illegals. Without jobs, the aliens won't come. 3. End "catch and release" for non-Mexican aliens. It is common for illegal migrants not from Mexico to be set free after their arrest if they promise to appear later before a judge. Few show up. The Patrol veterans say enforcement could also be aided by a legalized guest- worker program that permits Mexicans to register in their country for temporary jobs in the US. Eisenhower's team ran such a program. It permitted up to 400,000 Mexicans a year to enter the US for various agriculture jobs that lasted for 12 to 52 weeks. • John Dillin is former managing editor of the Monitor.