Border Patrol union calls security plan ‘showmanship’
3/26/2009
The leader of the Border Patrol union says the Obama administration’s plans to secure the border against escalating drug cartel violence miss the mark and leave him “underwhelmed.”
Furthermore, the prospects of working closer with Mexican law enforcement and military — in a culture of corruption that has left many officers in Mexico “rotten to the core” — leave agents wary after years of dodging bullets fired from Mexican soil, said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council.
Bonner told The Hill that “the emphasis is not in the right place, in our view” in the government’s plan to try to stop guns and money from going south to fuel cartel violence.
“When they know that we’re setting up checkpoints to try to intercept guns and money going south, they’re going to find others means,” Bonner said, adding that the plan announced this week by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is “going to commit a fair amount of resources without predictable results.”
“[The plan will] divert agents away from stopping people and contraband from coming into the U.S.,” Bonner said, stressing that the administration touted the plan as cost-neutral.
Harold
