Tuesday, March 24, 2009
New Plan
The Obama administration announced a new border control plan to help contain violence attributed to Mexican drug gangs. It will send 500 American officials to the southwest border, including 16 DEA agents and about 100 ATF agents. (Who are the remaining 384?) I imagine some of the ATF agents will be working on gun dealers, joining about 200 already dedicated to tracking arms traffic. Otherwise, it seems like small potatoes. Five hundred agents is one for every four miles of the US-Mexico border, or about 15 for each of the 32 towns along the division.
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3 comments:
Depends on what they're doing, no? 500 more border patrol is nothing. 500 investigatory agents, though, seems huge, and could make quite a difference.
DEA and BATF do investigation, and if I had to guess, I'd guess that the remainder are FBI.
NM
I think the big question is what the rest of the bunch is going to be doing. Another 384 FBI agents would be a big deal, but if they were FBI agents, wouldn't they have said so? I kind of figured the balance were border patrol agents.
Here's more:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/03/25/20090325border0325.html
The article says that it's only 350 agents, and 100 of them will be searching southbound traffic for cash and guns. Again, the details are vital. If they are going to be investigating, I agree it could have a significant impact. If they are just standing there for window dressing, well, what a waste. Some of the stuff (automatic license plate registry for outbound cars, registering private aircraft flying to Mexico) sounds like it has some potential. Since this is all filling an empty void, it's a good start, but trying to do enforcement at border crossings --which it sounds like is the thrust of this, though perhaps not-- is like patching up a leaky dam with crazy glue.
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