Number of Border Detainees Declines

Immigration officials credit tougher security measures since Sept. 11 for a sharp drop in the number of people detained trying to cross the U.S.- Mexico border in the past seven months.

Yet, the number of drugs seized along the Southwest border rose significantly in the same period, as drug traffickers tried to move contraband that had accumulated in the weeks after the terrorist attacks.

From Oct. 1 to April 28, the Border Patrol caught 518,812 people trying to cross the 2,000-mile border that stretches between California and Texas, according to figures released by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

That is a 34% drop from the same period last year, when 786,099 were caught, the largest decline in eight years.

While the figures may include multiple attempts by the same person, apprehensions are viewed as the best measure of how many people try to enter the country illegally.

That number has been decreasing since the end of 2000, the year that arrests for illegal immigration on the Southwest border hit a record high of 1.6 million.

INS officials said the decline that followed was due to a combination of factors, including more border enforcement, an economic downturn in the United States and optimism in Mexico after the election of President Vicente Fox.

The number of people attempting to cross illegally dropped even more dramatically after Sept. 11, when Border Patrol agents increased their presence and officials more thoroughly scrutinized people at border crossings.

“The conventional wisdom for so long has been that greater enforcement doesn’t work, and I think this post-9/11 effort is challenging that,” said Alan Kessler, a visiting scholar at the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at UC San Diego.

However, tighter border security since the terrorism attacks has merely delayed drug smuggling, not stopped it. Narcotics seizures dropped in the first few weeks after the attacks, then shot up in the months that followed.

Customs officials seized 16,570 pounds of cocaine along the border in the last six months, almost twice as much as in the same period last year.

Marijuana seizures are up 12%. And in California, officials captured 199 pounds of heroin, more than six times the amount seized last year.

Some officials believe that the boost in seizures is being caused by a backlog of drug shipments that accumulated in the weeks after the attacks.

“There was a lot of reluctance to move drugs because of the scrutiny on the border,” said Donald Thornhill Jr., a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration in San Diego.

“But if [the drug smugglers] don’t make money, they can’t pay their sources,” he said. “They’re playing catch-up.”

And with the tighter security measures, more drugs are being discovered.

“Since we’ve gone to the highest level of alert, we have had much more intensified inspections of people and cargo,” said Jay Ahern, who directs Customs field operations in Southern California.

Unlike drug traffickers, undocumented migrants apparently remain discouraged by the increased border security.

Apprehensions crept back up after an initial plunge in October and November, but the number of people being detained remains far below the levels before the attacks.

In San Diego County, the number of undocumented immigrants caught using false documents or hiding in vehicles at the three border crossings in the last seven months fell to 11,929, a 66% decline from the same period last year.

The beefed-up security is most noticeable in San Ysidro, the busiest border crossing in the world, where cars and pedestrians now idle in long lines as they wait to cross.

Between 30% and 50% of vehicles are now physically searched, up from less than 1% before the attacks, officials said.

In addition, all pedestrians must show photo identification to get into the country, and inspectors run more names through a criminal database.

Unarmed National Guard troops are on hand to assist the efforts.

“We know our effectiveness increases with length of the inspection,” said Adele J. Fasano, director of the INS’ San Diego office.

“It’s always a balance between the wait time and security, and the balance has shifted to security after Sept. 11,” Fasano said.