Border Agents upset with leaders

Houston Chronicle:

Relations between Border Patrol management and rank-and-file agents appear unusually tense, with many agents feeling estranged from their leadership and angered by President Bush's push for what they view as amnesty for illegal immigrants.

The rift widened this week when leaders of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing 11,000 of the force's 13,000 agents, made public its unanimous vote of no-confidence in Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar.

Local union representatives, rather than their national leaders, pressed for the vote at their recent convention in Corpus Christi, council Executive Vice President Richard Pierce said. More than 100 of the local leaders, most of them senior agents, participated.

"There is so much going on in this outfit. The morale is so shot because of all the policies the administration has instituted," said Pierce, a retired agent.

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Chertoff blamed the tension on the prosecution of two Texas agents for wounding a fleeing drug smuggler.

The case of ex-agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos, serving 12- and 11-year sentences, respectively, for the 2005 shooting, has become a flashpoint. Defenders say the men were prosecuted for doing their job; federal officials say they fired on an unarmed man and concealed evidence.

"I understand there is a certain amount of unhappiness over the result of what happened in the prosecution of the two Border Patrol agents," Chertoff said about the no-confidence vote. "That, of course, is a matter in the courts currently ... None of this has to do with Chief Aguilar, who has been a magnificent leader."

But Pierce and union President T.J. Bonner said Chertoff is misreading the situation if he believes the Ramos-Compean case is the main area of friction.

"This no-confidence vote is an indictment against the entire administration and its policies, including Michael Chertoff and the president," Bonner said. "Their policies and their philosophy is just counter to what the men and women out there on the line believe needs to be done to secure our borders."

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Within the ranks, many believe the only way to reduce illegal immigration is to crack down on employers.

Bonner, Pierce and others blame Aguilar for promoting legalization and guest worker programs. Also, they also accuse him of insufficiently defending his agents.

Agents are quitting at an increased clip, Bonner said, with attrition at 12 percent this year, up from 4 percent a year ago.

"I've been an agent for 29 years now, and I've never seen morale lower," he said.

The prosecutions of Ramos, Compean and others who used force is doing more than harming agents' morale, some said.

"When they see that aggressive kind of prosecution against law enforcement officers, I think we run the risk of a Border Patrol officer being killed in the line of duty because he hesitates to pull his service revolver or hesitates to take action," said Rep. Steve King of Iowa, the top Republican on the House immigration subcommittee.

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The border agents are right about employer enforcement. Where the administration and those who favor a "path to legalization" are wrong is in the idea that you can't deport everyone. If you attack the problem at the job level, you want have to deport everyone, because most will deport themselves if they cannot get a job. The self deportation aspect of the solution has been completely ignored in this debate.

The administration and its enforcement efforts have also been greatly hampered by Johnny Sutton's bad judgment in prosecuting the border agents rather than the drug mule. That was a disastrously bad decision and backing it has been a huge mistake that is still costing the administration and people in it like Alberto Gonzales.