El Paso border chief urges immigration reform

Carolyn Hileman - The Voice* | April 30, 2008

By ALICIA A. CALDWELL Associated Press Writer
EL PASO, Texas — The key to curbing illegal immigration rests in the hands of Congress, the chief of the U.S. Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector said Tuesday.

Chief Patrol Agent Victor M. Manjarrez Jr., in an interview with The Associated Press, said without comprehensive immigration reform border agents continue to split their attention between “economic migrants,” criminals, and potentially terrorists.

“Most of these people are economic migrants but we have to deal with them between the ports of entry because we have not, in terms of a legislative fix, determined what we do with these people,” Manjarrez said. “I think it’s pretty obvious that the country has a need for economic migrants. To what degree, I don’t know. That’s for the country to decide and for the politicians to decide.”

In the El Paso Sector, an area that encompasses 268 miles of border stretching west from Hudspeth County in far West Texas to the Arizona state line, agents arrested about 75,000 border crossers in fiscal year 2007. Manjarrez estimates that at least 87 percent of those were just looking for work.

Immigration reform stalled in 2006 amid a flurry proposed bills that included everything from criminal sanctions for illegal immigrants to guest worker programs to paths to citizenship for the millions of illegal immigrants already living in the United States.