From the NewsMax.com Staff

For the story behind the story...

Agents to Patrol Border and Build Fence

Reprint Information

Book on Katie Couric Makes Waves White House: We're Not Subject to FOIA FBI Seeks 2 Mysterious Men on Ferry Publisher: Conservatives Do Read As Much As Liberals Romney Shrugs Off Mormon History Film

As if U.S. Border Patrol agents didn’t have enough on their hands, the agency is asking them to volunteer their help in building fences along the U.S.-Mexican border.

With the Bush administration withdrawing half of the National Guard troops sent to the border last year to build fences, a memo sent to Border Patrol sector chiefs acknowledged that the fence-building project would not meet Bush’s goal of completing 70 miles in fiscal 2007, which ends Sept. 30, "so the Border Patrol is now going back into the fence-building business.”

The memo asked the sector chiefs to provide a list of agents who "can and have built fences in the past,” according to the Washington Times. The Border Patrol, the memo stated, is seeking welders, equipment operators and "anyone else with construction experience.”

Rich Pierce, executive vice president of the National Border Patrol Council – which represents the agency’s 11,000 non-supervisory agents – told the Times that the Bush administration "on one hand is trying to convince the American public it is serious about immigration enforcement.

Story Continues Below

  "Meanwhile, the other hand reduces the National Guard by 50 percent, whose job to build the border fences has hardly started. Now the Border Patrol agents who were meant to replace the National Guard are pulled from border enforcement and tasked with building the fence.

"The president’s game of pretending to enforce our border continues. He had never been serious about this issue at all.” In May 2006, Bush sent 6,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexican border as part of "Operation Jump Start,” intended to provide the Border Patrol with time to recruit and train 6,000 new agents.

The Bush administration announced in early August that Operation Jump Start was "on track,” and the National Guard force on the border would be cut in half by Sept. 30, as scheduled.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Deputy Commissioner Jay Ahern said the use of Border Patrol agents in constructing fences is "an appropriate use of resources.”

© NewsMax 2007. All rights reserved.

Editor's note:
U.S. Border Patrol Cap - Get it Now!
Lou Dobbs Crusades to Protect Our Border, Join Him! Click Here
Real inflation is 3 to 4 times more than we’re told -- Read More Here

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Immigration/Borders

Inside Cover Stories
FBI Seeks 2 Mysterious Men on Ferry

Publisher: Conservatives Do Read As Much As Liberals

Romney Shrugs Off Mormon History Film

Bob Grant to Return to Radio

Carville Seeks Perfect '08 Bumper Sticker More Inside Cover Stories