Border Patrol agents to be moved from Nevada, California to Washington state

Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2000 | 10 a.m.

According to an internal Border Patrol document obtained by the morning daily, the agents would come from closing the agency's Livermore sector, which covers California from Los Angeles to the Oregon border and the northern half of Nevada.

Ten agents would go to the Blaine sector on the Canadian border between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia, and 15 would be reassigned to the Spokane sector, which covers the Canadian border between the crest of the Cascade Range and the Rockies.

The internal document says the proposed realignment reflects a strategy of focusing resources along borders rather than in the interior, where the Border Patrol's work consists mainly of deporting illegal immigrants with criminal records.

"If we get the approval, we will move forward as quickly as possible," said Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for the western regional office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Officials and Border Patrol agents in Washington state said the additional staffing would help but criticized the plan, saying the agency needs more staff nationwide rather than reassignment of existing resources.

Rep. Jack Metcalf, R-Wash., whose district includes Blaine, believes the shift would be only "a temporary expedient that we benefit from," said his chief of staff, Lew Moore.

"The next political uproar down on the southern border could mean we will have a huge redeployment down there. It has happened before," Moore said.

"We certainly need more agents up here, but not at the expense of closing Livermore," said Daryl Schermerhorn of Blaine, vice president of the agents' union. "It's a disgrace."

Livermore, which covers 196,000 square miles and 51 of California's 58 counties, was established in 1952 because of a growing number of illegal immigrants drawn by farm work in the San Joaquin and Central valleys.

Closing Livermore, where 18 agents arrested almost 7,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records last year, would "result in a lot of criminal aliens being released back into communities," union president T.J. Bonner said.

"We know that we can't stop them all at the border," Bonner said. "It's like giving people amnesty once they are past the border."

Repeated shifts of Border Patrol planes and personnel from the Canadian to the Mexican border have drawn complaints over security issues ranging from drug traffic to terrorism.

When the agency's only airplane in the state was temporarily reassigned to Arizona, Washington's congressional delegation lodged a protest last month, citing increased marijuana shipments from British Columbia and the arrest of a man with a car trunk full of explosives in Port Angeles in December.

On July 18, Sen. Slade Gorton added an appropriations amendment that directs immigration officials to stop shifting resources and agents from the northern border to bolster security in the south. Congress has also sought to boost staffing along the northern border.

Kice said that in the 10 months ending Sept. 30, the nearly 1,400 agents in the Tucson, Ariz., sector made 509,101 illegal alien arrests, compared with 1,658 arrests by the 45 agents in Blaine and 932 arrests by the 35 agents in Spokane.

"We recognize that the northern border needs additional resources," Kice said, "but our most acute need continues to be southern Arizona. They are arresting thousands of people a week."