Progressives for Immigration Reform

May 27, 2010

by Wais Hassan

On the morning of Thursday, May 27th, the US Committee on Homeland Security had a lengthy hearing on the Merida Initiative; which was a 2007 drug enforcement bill that former president George W. Bush spearheaded. Merida is a security cooperation between the US and Mexico, in which the US pledged money for training and military equipment. Deputy Assistant Secretary Alonzo Pena of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Deputy Assistant Secretary Roberta Jacobson of the State Department, Deputy Assistant Secretary Mariko Silver of the Dept. of Homeland Security and Assistant Commissioner Allen Gina of Customs and Border Protection fielded questions by members of Congress. The hearing came at the heels of the President’s proposed deployment of 1,200 National Guard troops to the US-Mexican border and thus most of the questioning revolved around this issue. Merida’s ineffectiveness at quelling escalating drug violence in Mexico was also a major topic of discussion during the 4-hour hearing.

Ranking Republican Congressman Connie Mack (R-FL) of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee opened the committee meeting by sharply criticizing components of President Calderón’s speech. Mack felt that Calderón’s comments about the US weapon’s policy was inappropriate as he claimed that Americans simply need to, “enforce gun laws already on the books.” Mack implied that Merida’s ineffectiveness, not US gun law, was the main cause for alarming rates of violence in Mexico. Mack pointed out that only 2 percent of the total 1.3 billion dollars that Congress allocated for Merida has actually found its way onto the ground.

Like all members of the Congress overseeing the hearing, Mack was deeply perplexed about why the State Department has not released more of the authorized Merida funding to Mexico. State Department officials responded that technological lags and Mexico’s lack of infrastructure and capacity were the primary reasons that so little of the Merida money had been dispersed. According to the officials testifying Mexico had never embarked on a drug war campaign of this intensity before and thus did not have the proper governmental oversight capacity to oversee the Merida funds when the measure passed in 2007. Officials also claimed that they were attempting to build the helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles and other equipment Merida promised to Mexico but had suffered some serious delays in construction during the past few years. The State Department promised that the equipment would be ready soon.

Mack was also deeply skeptical of the recent National Guard deployment and labeled it a ‘PR move.’ He did not receive any timeline on the length of deployment for National Guard troops or discover which states the members would draw from. Officials also did not provide details on how the troops would be distributed among various southern border-states. Mack questioned why the Obama administration waited so long to react to border violence and the illegal immigration crisis. An ICE official countered by claiming that in fact, they had been responding to the problem aggressively for the last few years. ICE statistics show that the number of apprehensions along certain corridors of the Mexican border have decreased tremendously during the past year while the number of agents have increased by eighty percent since 2004.

Despite this testimony, no one in the committee was convinced that the situation was improving or that the border was secure. Arizona Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords helped deflate the notion of sustained progress when she relayed many of the tragedies she witnessed as a representative to the border community of Cochise County. She grilled Federal agents about what capacity National Guard agents will take once they arrive at the border area. Upon learning that guardsmen will not patrol the border, she expressed her severe disappointment and declared that such a policy was unacceptable. Many of her constituents are ranchers that are continuously being threatened by illegal aliens trespassing on their land.

Various other members on the committee questioned why the deployed National Guard members would not be authorized to do more at the border and why many of the guard members would not even be armed. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), chairman of the Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism, made it clear that he did not want to see National Guard troops doing administrative tasks. In the past, Cuellar heard testimony from Customs and Border Patrol officials who admitted that they assigned Guardsmen to clerical tasks in the office in order to free Border Agents to return to the field. That would obviously be a huge waste of talent and resources. ICE responded that agents will engage in more complex assignments like surveillance and reconnaissance. Despite these assurances, officials did not provide any specifics on whether they would adopt new metrics in the future in order to evaluate the progress of Merida.

Texas Republican Representative Lamar Smith wrapped up questioning by inquiring about a recent statement made by John Morton, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, about how the Feds will treat those detained under the new Arizona law. He said he would not necessarily process illegal immigrants referred to ICE by Arizona authorities. Alonzo Pena, from ICE, backpedaled from that response and claimed that ICE would continue applying immigration laws in a uniform manner. He said they would continue to prioritize prosecution of criminal aliens over other types and use discretion in a case-by-case basis.

A lot of the details of the National Guard deployment are still being worked out, but one hopes that the snail progress of Merida will not serve as an indicator of how National Guard troops will be integrated into the border security mission. A new nationwide telephone by Rasmussen Reports survey finds that an overwhelming majority of Americans want to use troops to discourage illegal immigration; not just for the stated purpose of combating narco-violence. The recent survey found that sixty-seven percent (67%) of U.S. voters say military troops should be sent to the Mexican border to prevent illegal immigration, while just 18% are opposed and another 15% are not sure.