It is supposed to rain today, so there will be no time by the pool. That makes this a propitious time to analyze the appointment of some new officials to the FBI’s new National Security Branch, which appears to be Domestic Security Light. The Bureau has been fighting the establishment of an institution like Britain’s MI-5, which is charged with collecting internal security information.

After the London train bombings, it appears that the FBI might have a point. More intrusive powers of investigation allotted to MI-5 did not help prevent the bombings, nor did the extraordinary resources apportioned to following around a few dozen potential terrorists from overseas.

MI-5 was wrong on who the terrorists were, and setting up an institution like it here would not guarantee any different outcome.

But I was pouring my third cup of coffee, listening to the reports from the Gaza Strip about the Isreali pull-out when I realized I could not cogently argue the case about America’s border, which isn’t quite as well defined, and who is defending it.

I was flipping back and forth in organizational charts trying to figure out how the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) people interact with Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Agency.

The last two I figured out pretty easily. The Coasties seem to be mostly on ships, which is straightforward enough. based on the budget, the TSA folks are mostly checking bags at the airport.

There are good people in all these agencies doing good work, let me say that, and the ones who have come to the mission lately are wrestling with problems that are decades or even centuries old. So it is to be expected that things are a little ambiguous. But as best I can figure, the only place the chain of command comes together is in the office of DHS Secretary Mike Chertoff.

That makes him a busy guy, and he has one of those awful jobs where he is charged with draining a swamp and there are too many alligators biting him to get to the drain plug. But he is trying, and announced a new plan to secure the borders. That is one of the larger alligators in front of his desk.

If I can be permitted a mixed metaphor, I prefer to shoot the wolf nearest the sled, and if there were a pack of alligators in back of me, I know one of the ones I would go after first. It is a colossal embarrassment, it has Congressional impact, and is even dragging in one of my favorite Americans, Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico.

For a couple years after 9/11, it looked like the longstanding problem of illegal immigration from Mexico was finally being solved. The flow of illegals across the southern border appeared to slow, and the number of arrests fell.

The decline was attributed to bold new initiatives, but it appears that it actually was a function of the smugglers thinking that it had to be harder to get across. But the border was not any better defended. A network of cameras and sensors was woefully mismanaged. There just were not enough agents to patrol the unfenced arroyos and muddy bottom of the Rio Grand, and the smugglers got bold again.

In the past year, border patrol agents have apprehended more than a million illegal migrants from Mexico. That number only reflects the percentage that were ill-prepared enough to get caught, of course, so the problem was swiftly getting out of control.

Congressman Duncan Hunter, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, pushed an impressive border project to defend 3.5 miles of the border near his district. The project includes construction of a triple fence with lights and motion detectors, the leveling of steep ridges, and the filling of a great canyon called Smuggler’s Gulch.

Defending El Cajon is a commendable initiative, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t address the other couple thousand miles of trackless desert. The embarrassment in Washington came from the fact that there are not enough people to defend the ill-defined Mexican frontier.

Things came to a head when a vigilante organization called the Minutemen announced that if the Federal Government was not interested in defending the borders of the United States, they were.

In a high-profile publicity exercise, the armed private citizens set up lawn chairs and check-points and began to document the undocumented.

There were fulminations of outrage from human rights activists, who advocate open borders and civil rights for non-citizens, and opposition to the exercise of the Second Amendment by the Minutemen, who cheerfully strapped six-guns to their hips and promised to be responsible in their use.

As it turned out, there was little violence and the Federal and State authorities were mightily embarrassed by the documentation that was produced. There were vows to hire additional uniformed agents to patrol the border.

The Feds did what they could with what was available. They launched a thing called the Arizona Border Control Initiative and beefed up patrols around Tucson, th worst area reported by the Minutemen. The crackdown has caused a surge of violence in New Mexico, prompting a state of emergency and a demand for the immediate allocation of resources.

That is where Governor Richardson comes in. I was in the office in Sante Fe last year to talk to the State Homeland Security people. I was peddling some good ideas for border security, but that is all they were. They were fairly expensive, too, at least for a state government. I had to report back that I did not see a state market for our ideas. The local homeland security people are good folks, and they have an impossible job. There might be ten or twelve people in the office, total, and their job is to coordinate things with the counties and cities and the sovereign tribes.

Bill issued the state of emergency for four counties on the border. He said his people and local law enforcement have done all they can to combat the situation. He called for the Mexican Government to bulldoze the ghost town of Las Chepas, which is directly across from Columbus, New Mexico. Columbus is being inundated nightly, literally overrun.

Bill says there has been total inaction on the part of the federal government and Congress. Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, a sister Democrat, is not convinced that additional resources in her state are working out that well, either. She is reportedly close to declaring her own state of emergency to keep DHS from surging resources to New Mexico.

The 9/11 Commission called for 10,000 extra Border Patrol agents to be hired over five years. Congress approved 500 in an emergency supplemental spending bill earlier this year. Another thousand are included in the 2006 Appropriations bill.

That is only 8,500 short of the requirement. I understand the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps of New Mexico intends to set up camps starting in October. That is a much more comfortable time to be on the border.

But I think Bill ought to give Duncan Hunter a call and see what a well-defended congressional district looks like.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

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