Federal plan would charge all illegal border crossers

McALLEN — The Rio Grande Valley could be the next place to implement a zero-tolerance policy credited with cutting illegal immigration rates by almost 70 percent in other parts of the state.

But critics of the program fear the prosecution of every undocumented migrant caught crossing the border would overwhelm federal prosecutors and crowd local detention centers.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Border Patrol’s Laredo Sector became the second region in Texas to implement Operation Streamline — a policy that charges all illegal crossers with a federal misdemeanor and arranges for deportation. Second-time offenders face felony charges and jail time.

At a press conference announcing the policy, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, suggested that federal authorities have already begun discussing expanding the program downriver.

“We’re looking at how this works in the Laredo sector and then we’ll see what comes next,” he said Thursday.

The Border Patrol’s Del Rio and Yuma, Ariz., sectors are the only other two regions to have adopted the policy in the country. But Streamline’s results are already drawing attention, Del Rio-based Border Patrol Supervisory Agent Hilario Leal said.

“It’s gaining ground,” he said. “It appears to be very popular among congressmen. (Homeland Security Secretary Michael) Chertoff gets briefed on it every few weeks — and the president once a month.”

SUBSTANTIAL RESULTS

Currently, Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector offer most first-time illegal immigrants the option of voluntary departure. Those who opt in are processed, fingerprinted and put back on a bus to Mexico.

But in the Del Rio Sector, which implemented Streamline in December 2005, illegal immigrants are arrested, charged with a misdemeanor and deported. Second-time offenders face felony charges and jail time.

In two years, the policy has slashed immigrant apprehensions in the sector by 67 percent.

“The word has gotten out through the Mexican and Central American media,” Leal said. “People know not to cross in Del Rio and try to cross somewhere else.”

And now that agents spend less time processing illegal immigrants in offices, they can devote more time out in the field addressing problems like drug smuggling.

In the year before Del Rio adopted Streamline, agents seized nearly 24,000 pounds of marijuana. Last year, they took in 60,500 — a 152 percent increase over two years.

Val Verde County Sheriff A. D’Wayne Jernigan, who houses many of the prosecuted immigrants in his jail, has already noticed the effects.

During Streamline’s early days, about 90 percent of the jail’s inmates were illegal immigrants held under the custody of U.S. Marshals. But since then the numbers have dramatically dropped .

“Once the word got out, they just stopped trying to come here,” Jernigan said. “Before, we’d be getting complaints from residents asking who these people were roaming around their yard, but we’re having so few incidents now.”

At Del Rio’s federal courthouse, immigration cases have spiked to more than 14,000 in the fiscal year that ended earlier this month, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas.

But the Border Patrol has consulted with federal prosecutors, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Marshals and public defenders to clear bottlenecks and maintain the heavy case load.

OVERLOAD?

But what works for the rural areas of West Texas could clog up the judicial system in more heavily populated regions like the Valley, where court dockets are filled with felony human and drug smuggling cases and detention centers are already packed with immigrants facing more serious charges.

Illegal immigration caseloads in the Southern District of Texas, which includes the Valley, are already double that of the next highest U.S. District Court, according to a report earlier this year by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. And they are only expected to rise with President Bush’s plan to double the size of the Border Patrol by 2008.

“If Operation Streamline were to become more widespread ... the caseload of the magistrate judges and the workload of court staff would probably skyrocket,” the report states.

And unlike Del Rio, where many of the prosecuted immigrants serve their sentences in the county jail, Hidalgo County has no room to house jailed border crossers. Currently, migrants serving prison sentences in the Valley are held in federal or private detention centers.

“It would kill us to take them on,” Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said.

Still, early results from Laredo’s month under Operation Streamline look promising. If similar results could be duplicated farther east, the policy might serve as an alternative to other less popular tactics like a border fence, Rep. Cuellar said.

“From what I’ve been told in Laredo, there’s already been a decrease in the people coming over,” he said. “It’s already working.”

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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts, law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4437.