Border Patrol sector chief's tenure tied to transition

EDINBURG — The U.S. Border Patrol was an agency in flux when Ronald Vitiello arrived in the Rio Grande Valley three years ago as the agency’s newly appointed sector chief.

The policies of President George W. Bush’s administration and a rising nationwide concern over border security had brought a new national prominence to the green-clad frontier foot soldiers.

That transition continues as Vitiello leaves the area this month to become the Border Patrol’s second-in-command in Washington, D.C.

“I always had the feeling when I left headquarters, I’d be back soon,” he said. “(In the Valley), the foundation is here, and we’re only going to become more successful.”

Vitiello, 46, was appointed in 2007 to oversee the agency’s Rio Grande Valley Sector — which stretches over 17,000 square miles from Roma to Brownsville and north to Corpus Christi — after predecessor Lynne M. Underdown announced her retirement at the end of two years as the local face of the agency.

He previously held the top job in the Border Patrol’s Swanton Sector, where he oversaw 295 miles of the country’s border with Canada in New Hampshire, New York and Vermont, and served as an assistant chief for the agency during the creation of U.S. Customs and Border Protection under the Department of Homeland Security.

But as Underdown noted in a 2007 interview, her departure came at a turning point for the agency.

A mandate from Bush dispatched thousands of National Guard troops to supplement the Border Patrol’s ranks while the agency undertook a massive, 6,000-man hiring push, nearly doubling its numbers.

Meanwhile, plans to construct 70 miles of border fencing locally had political leaders in Washington praising the new method of border protection and many locals in the Valley spoiling for a fight.

Vitiello arrived acknowledging the agency’s shifting role and promising a smooth transition in this region.

“It’s important to maintain your ties to the community and to your overall mission,” he said in 2007. “We are standing between the rights of this nation and border security. That’s the job.”

Some efforts were more successful than others.

Since 2006, the Border Patrol has added more than 700 new agents to the Rio Grande Valley Sector, increasing the ranks by 40 percent.

While union leaders feared such a massive hiring push would flood their ranks with poorly screened and inexperienced new workers, Vitiello said last week he believes the sector managed to successfully assimilate those new members into the ranks.

“My biggest concern when I first came in was how to manage the growth,” he said. “And now, we’ve become more effective with what we can do.”

Preparing the region for construction of the border fence was arguably harder to accomplish.

Protest quickly grew among residents, business leaders and politicians as agents fanned out across Cameron, Hidalgo and Starr counties in 2007 to discuss plans with border landowners while government attorneys began a push to seize necessary plots of private land.

From the start, the mission stuck agents in the uncomfortable position of having to carry out congressional mandates no matter the response of the local community.

But despite those constraints, Vitiello remains proud of some of the local compromises he helped engineer, such as replacing plans for traditional fencing in Hidalgo County with a combination border wall-levee enhancement. He also helped spare the University of Texas-Brownsville from having a heavy wall built across its campus by pushing for a lighter version well equipped with cameras and sensors.

“Our goal was to maximize its effect while minimizing its impact on local landowners,” he said of the border fence. “In a practical sense, I think it worked out fairly well.”

Vitiello is set to start his new job June 21 at Border Patrol’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., and his work as a transitional figure will likely continue.

Nationwide concern over border violence has reached an all new pitch in recent months, some legislators are calling for a second round of border fencing, and a new deployment of National Guard troops ordered by President Barack Obama’s administration last month will again balloon the Border Patrol’s support staff.

Some of the Rio Grande Valley Sector’s top officials will temporarily fill the sector chief post on a rotating basis until a permanent replacement can be named.

“We recognize we have a role in the community,” Vitiello said. “And I’ve always appreciated the community recognizing our role.”

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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 587-9377.