by TChris

In most of the country, little attention is paid to the Border Patrol. Taxpayers might begin to pay greater attention if they notice that the Border Patrol is now the largest uniformed police force in the country, at a cost of $20 billion over the past decade. The agency will soon spend another $10 million to add 260 agents, unmanned aircraft and more detention space in Arizona.

Is this money well spent? Dramatic increases in Border Patrol resources haven't been effective in the past.

Although the number of agents has more than tripled, thousands of undocumented immigrants cross the border each day and hundreds of them die each year. A decade after the start of [Operation Gatekeeper], arrests have dropped to 900,000 last year from 1.2 million in 1993.

It may take 16,000 agents to fully patrol the border, but a General Accounting Office study concludes that Operation Gatekeeper, started in the 1990's, did not clearly reduce the number of illegal entries along the southwestern border. It did, however, made illegal entry a riskier proposition, leading to an increase in deaths.

As a record number of immigrants tried crossing through Arizona, the Border Patrol increased the number of agents by 666 percent, and the death count rapidly climbed. In 1998, Border Patrol agents in Arizona recorded 28 deaths in the Yuma and Tucson sectors. Last year, the agency counted more than 150, though an independent count by The Arizona Republic came up with 205.

Treating illegal entry as a criminal justice problem that can be solved with more Border Patrol agents and some unmanned aircraft is doomed to failure. In the meantime, taxpayers will continue to pay the rapidly growing cost of enforcement and people seeking a better life in the United States will continue to die in the Arizona desert.