Green Valley News - McSally: Border Strategy will Protect Rural Residents

News Article

By Dan Shearer

U.S. Rep. Martha McSally said Thursday a new strategy to put more Border Patrol resources closer to the border will make Southern Arizona safer for rural residents while putting up a stronger barrier against drug cartels.

McSally, who sits on the Committee on Homeland Security, is helping craft The Secure Our Borders Act, which retools border strategy by emphasizing technology, National Guard funding and new infrastructure, among other measures. It has been called the toughest border security bill ever introduced in Congress.

McSally included an amendment to the bill calling for the Border Patrol to deploy agents "as close to the physical land border as possible" and to "deploy the maximum practicable number of Border Patrol agents to forward operating bases along the southern land border." The amendment also calls for a commission that consults with ranchers to independently verify that the border is secure.

The $10 billion plan, which requires the Department of Homeland Security to achieve 100 percent operational control of high traffic areas of the Southwest border in two years, passed out of committee Wednesday on an 18-12 vote and is expected to go to the full House this week. A similar bill was introduced in the Senate on Wednesday by three senators, including Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said the standards the bill is trying to set are "impossible to achieve" and called the bill "unworkable, plain and simple."
McSally, who was sworn in Jan. 6, has spent the bulk of her first two weeks in office touring the border and meeting with residents and Border Patrol officials. On Saturday, she joined more than 20 members of Congress and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee Michael McCaul on a border tour and discussion in Bisbee.

In an interview Thursday, McSally said the new strategy doesn't necessarily spell the end of interior Border Patrol checkpoints like that on Interstate 19 north of Tubac, but it does push the agency to consider other options that don't pose a threat to rural residents.

McSally said the current multilayer Border Patrol strategy, which includes checkpoints, pushes drug runners into rural areas by design.
"The checkpoints are intended to slow the cartel activity and make them go around it, then they (Border Patrol agents) have more time to intercept them in the rural areas," McSally said. "That all sounds reasonable unless you're living in the area where the traffickers are going."

McSally said the threat to public safety and property aren't worth it.
"Whether that would impact the checkpoints is to be determined," she said. "But I want to continue the conversation ... on how to adjust the strategy and what resources they need."

McSally wouldn't address whether a 100 percent secure border is possible, but, "I believe we should shoot for that as the goal."

In an August 2013 town hall meeting in Tubac, Leslie Lawson, the agent in charge at the Nogales Border Patrol Station, said the Tubac checkpoint is effective.

"Until we have an absolutely impenetrable line, we're going to have to have a secondary defense," she said. "If anybody can point out to us a single layer of defense that has ever worked in the history of mankind, by all means let us know what it is."

Tubac residents have long claimed the Interstate 19 checkpoint has hurt property values, discourages tourism and pushes potentially dangerous illegal immigrants and drugs into their community while attempting to skirt agents.

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