Immigration update

Plunge in border crossings leaves agents fighting boredom: Arrests of illegal crossers along the Southwest border dropped more than two-thirds from 2000 to 2010, from 1.6 million to 448,000.

"When the traffic stops … of course it's going to be difficult for the agents to stay interested," said Supervisory Agent Ken Quillin, from the agency's Yuma, Ariz., sector. "I understand guys have a tough time staying awake.... they didn't join the border patrol to sit on an X," Quillin added, using the slang term for line watch duty.
To stay alert, agents are encouraged to walk around or take coffee breaks. Some agents play video games on their mobile phones or read books. There are agents known as "felony sleepers" who intend to slumber — bringing pillows or parking in remote areas — but most dozers are victims of monotony who nod off despite their best efforts to stay awake.
In the agency's San Diego sector, where apprehensions are at their lowest since the early 1970s, a supervisor last year was caught dozing in his parked vehicle by a television news crew. In the agency's busiest region near Tucson, agents have been left glassy-eyed amid a steep drop in activity. "When you go from 700,000 arrests in a sector to 100,000 … of course boredom is going to settle in," said Brandon Judd, president of the local border patrol agents' union, using approximate apprehension figures.
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Perhaps no area has more action-starved agents than the Yuma sector, a vast expanse of desert and agricultural fields straddling California and Arizona that shares a 126-mile border with Mexico. In 2005, it was the border's most trampled region, a place where immigrant rushes, called banzai runs, sent hundreds of people into backyards and lettuce fields, and teams of drug smugglers shot across the Colorado River atop sandbag bridges.
Outnumbered agents resorted to spinning doughnuts in their vehicles, trying to kick up mini-sandstorms to disorient the hordes. Agents had to prioritize pursuits, focusing on the groups closing in on front lawns. "We were overrun," said agent Jeff Bourne, 34, but "your brain was always working. We were always doing something."
Then double and triple fencing went up. Stadium lighting was installed. Every arrested immigrant, instead of being returned to Mexico, was jailed. Outside town, workers laid steel barriers on previously wide-open borders to block drug-smuggling vehicles from driving through.
From 2005 to 2010, apprehensions of immigrants dropped 95%, from 138,460 to 7,116. Vehicle drive-throughs fell from 2,700 to 21 during the same period. Farmers are now able to plant crops in once-trampled fields. And residents don't find immigrants hiding under their cars anymore.
More than 900 agents, triple the number from 2005, are now stationed in what is one of the slowest sectors along the entire border. On a recent day, Bourne and his partner, Fernando Salazar, rode their patrol bikes through Friendship Park, where immigrants ran through Little League baseball games until the border fence was extended through left field.