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Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com

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Monday, March 12, 2012

Immigration Decreases, But Tensions Remain High

New York Times (by Julia Preston): The impact of steep declines in the number of migrants illegally crossing the border with Mexico in recent years has rippled across Arizona and other border states, with federal and local law enforcement seeing big drops in crime related to illegal immigration.

In Arizona, federal agents have found far fewer drop houses, where smugglers stash border crossers. Police chiefs in Arizona cities say their crime rates are low and are falling, along with the numbers and costs of illegal immigrants coming through their jails.

Federal officials met with state and local police departments on Tuesday and Wednesday at the Border Security Expo in the convention hall in downtown Phoenix. They broadly agreed that the decrease in illegal crossers —down to about 340,000 migrants apprehended in 2011 from a peak of 1.1 million in 2005 — has lightened the workload for the police, but has also brought worrisome changes in the type of crimes they confront.

While they no longer see huge flows of illegal migrants heading for low-wage work in the United States, federal and local officials said they now faced smaller numbers of more determined and potentially more dangerous crossers, including migrants carrying illegal drugs.

Sharp differences, even tension, arose between federal officials, who pointed to statistics and charts showing plummeting illegal entries as the border was reinforced over the last five years, and some local officers, particularly sheriffs who patrol the sun-seared expanses of desert in counties along the international line.

“We’ve got a lot of rural county, a lot of ranch families, and a lot of those people are living in fear every day,” said Rodney W. Rothrock, chief deputy sheriff of Cochise County, which borders Mexico in southeastern Arizona.

In a bright hall next door to the law enforcement conclave, dozens of technology vendors were offering the latest military-style tools to make the border even more secure. Contractors large and small displayed radar devices that can see through walls, thermal imaging cameras mounted on mobile masts that retract in seconds and unmanned drone boats to scout rivers too perilous for human navigation.

The face-off between state and federal officials started with an opening speech on Tuesday by Arizona’s governor, Jan Brewer, who said federal border enforcement was an “overarching outrage.” Ms. Brewer, a Republican, is leading Arizona’s legal fight against the Obama administration over a state law that would give the police new powers to arrest anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant.

“No amount of distortion can hide the absolute truth,” Ms. Brewer said. “For years, Washington has stood idly by, letting our borders grow more porous and more dangerous.”

In a riposte, Jayson P. Ahern, a former top official at the Customs and Border Protection agency, described Ms. Brewer’s criticism as “a very individualized opinion.” Channeling many officials who were less outspoken because they are still in federal office, Mr. Ahern said border security had undergone “remarkable improvements.”

He cited the expansion of the Border Patrol to more than 21,000 agents, the highest number in its history, and an array of new technology that is in use, including remote video surveillance systems and seven unmanned drones.

Matthew C. Allen, the special agent in charge of investigations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the state, said 51 migrant smugglers’ drop houses were raided in Phoenix last year, down from a peak of 186 in 2008. About 800 illegal migrants were arrested in those raids in 2011, compared with about 3,200 migrants in 2008, Mr. Allen said.

The police chief of Mesa, just east of Phoenix, said the crime rate was the lowest since the 1960s. The chief, Frank Milstead, said that only about 2 percent of the 17,900 people arrested in Mesa last year were suspected of being illegal immigrants. “The operational impact on our jails,” he said, “is minimal.”

Raymond Cobos, the sheriff of Luna County, 3,000 square miles of border scrublands and sierras next door in New Mexico, said his deputies now arrested an average of eight illegal immigrants a day, down from a daily average of about 300 three years ago.

Chief Deputy Rothrock also acknowledged a new reality. In 2010, he said, more than 300 illegal crossers detained by the Border Patrol were turned over to Cochise County because they were wanted for crimes in the United States. Last year, he said, the number of illegal crossers with open warrants was seven.

But Chief Deputy Rothrock warned that Cochise deputies were beginning to encounter “a different type of illegal alien”: migrants alone or in small groups toting backpacks loaded with marijuana or methamphetamine. The migrants often plan to hand off the narcotics to a courier and return quickly to Mexico, he said.

“A lot of times they take the opportunity to help themselves to the citizens’ property,” Chief Deputy Rothrock said, breaking into homes.

Jeffrey Scott Kirkham, the police chief in Nogales, the busiest legal port of entry in Arizona, said his city’s crime rate was very low, with two homicides in the last seven years.

But in an arrest that shocked Chief Kirkham, a high school student was recently found with nearly four pounds of heroin, worth about $80,000, in his backpack.

Federal investigators also reported “an alarming increase” in attacks by migrants on border agents, according to James Turgal, the F.B.I.’s special agent in charge in Arizona. In 2011, the agency opened investigations of nearly 500 assaults on federal officers along the Arizona border, from rock-throwing to shootings. That was more than four times the 117 assaults in 2008, he said.

Federal officials said they were confident progress would continue, since handling fewer illegal migrants means they can devote more agents and surveillance equipment to drug trafficking.

But even optimists urged caution. “The primary magnet that draws people across our border from Mexico is employment,” said Mr. Allen of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “I think we all recognize that the real test for us is going to come when the economy turns around in a very significant way.”

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