DPS proposes border security cuts

Millions of state dollars allocated to beef up border security this year could be in jeopardy in the face of an estimated $10 billion to $16 billion budget shortfall.

On Tuesday, the Texas Department of Public Safety proposed slashing almost half the $22 million set aside to fund overtime hours for local law enforcement agencies and recommended eliminating money to purchase 41 new squad cars for the border region.

The suggestions come under a mandate from Gov. Rick Perry for all state agencies to come up with ways to slash their budgets by 5 percent.

But cutting back on border spending could drastically impact the resources available to many of the region’s rural police agencies that depend on state and federal grant money to fund their operations, said La Joya police Sgt. Ramon Gonzalez. His department received $150,000 in state dollars for overtime patrols last year.

“A lot of times we work one person a shift,” he said. “There’s a lot of stuff to take care of on your own. There’s a lot of crime we might miss.”

Perry pushed hard during the 2009 legislative session for a $134 million security package for the Texas-Mexico border that included some of the DPS funding now up for elimination. Lawmakers cut that request by 35 percent in 2009 amid declining revenue and a series of reports that suggested past spending had done little to make the border region safer.

Many border police departments that received funds under a similar 2007 initiative dubbed “Operation Border Star” used their overtime money to subsidize day-to-day police work such as traffic stops and routine assistance calls instead of focusing their efforts on organized crime and drug-related activity.

In cities like La Joya and Sullivan City, the spending resulted in more traffic tickets than trafficking arrests, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas reported in March 2009.

“No matter what people think about the immigration issue on the border, a lot of them care about wasting money,” ACLU Executive Director Terri Burke said Tuesday. “The (proposed) cut to the overtime budget is, frankly, heartening.”

But Gonzalez, who oversees grant applications for the La Joya police, defended allocating overtime to increasing regular patrols. Almost every human trafficking or drug smuggling arrest he and his fellow officers have made started with a traffic stop, he said.

“We put more people out on the streets,” he said. “Wherever criminal activity is taking place, that’s where we focused. At the least, it means more man-hours for the community.”

DPS targeted the $10.3 million for elimination from its border overtime fund, hoping that $16 million in federal stimulus money already set aside for security efforts could help fill that gap, said Tela Mange, a spokeswoman for the agency.

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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.