(Source: Salt Lake Tribune - Wednesday, November 7, 2007)

U.S. border agents let in 10% of those they shouldn't 

By Spencer S. Hsu 

The Washington Post 

Washington - U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers failed to stop roughly one in 10 undocumented immigrants and serious drug and weapons violators from entering the United States through airports and official land border crossings last year, according to a new congressional review. 

	While screeners turned back more than 200,000 foreigners in 2006, random audits indicate they missed another 20,000 violators. The Government Accountability Office, Congress' audit arm, blamed failures by officers and supervisors along with inadequate training and staffing. A Customs and Border Protection (CBP) study this summer concluded that the agency needs 1,600 to 4,000 more officers and agricultural specialists at the nation's air-, land- and sea-ports, or a boost of 7 percent to 25 percent, the GAO reported.
	The federal government has embarked on a costly buildup to guard remote stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border, doubling the Border Patrol ranks to 18,000 agents between 2000 and 2008, planning to add 570 miles of fencing and vehicle barriers and 200 miles of sensors, and boost in spending on border security to $9 billion last year. 
	But experts say as many a half of the estimated 12 Million undocumented immigrants entered the U.S. not by sneaking across the border but by evading detection at the 326 1egal ports of entry or by overstaying visas. 
	At CBP's request, the GAO withheld the screening failure rate and staffing estimate from a report made public Monday, calling the data sensitive to law enforcement. The Washington Post obtained the information from two sources familiar with the full report. 
	In an interview, CBP Deputy Commissioner Jayson Ahern acknowledged staffing shortages, but he cast doubt on the accuracy of estimates of how many violators his agency fails to catch -- without discussing the GAO's figures in either case. Auditors cited a CBP program that, since 1999, has compared the rate of violations found at ports of entry among random travelers, who are selected for more detailed inspections, to its arrest totals. 
	Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, CBP has expanded screening of travelers and deployed radiation-detection equipment and fingerprint scanners. But 400 million people cross U.S. borders each year, and authorities have been unable to effectively screen them without affecting border communities and trade with Canada and Mexico. That might improve after Jan. 31, when the United States will require travelers to present passports or a reduced number of more secure, machine-readable identification documents than the 8,000 types now used, Ahern said. 
	The GAO cited officers' mistakes in waving through vehicles without requiring interviews and letting traffic pass as officers changed shifts and logged on to computers. 
	GAO testers conducting tests at eight sites found individual cases of officers waving on a pedestrian without looking up from the computer, clearing another by asking from 10 feet away if he was a U.S. citizen and leaving an inspection booth unattended for three or four minutes.