The increase in arrests involving illegal entry into the US from Mexico may indicate that alien smugglers are in a rush to beat the Border Patrol enforcement effort announced earlier this month that will begin in June.  Unmanned aerial vehicles, more helicopters and 200 new agents will be working on the Arizona-Mexico Border as part of what is being called the Arizona Border Control Initiative.  Although arrests of illegal border crossers in large numbers and in vehicles have been more common in the past couple weeks, but the agency is not saying why they are occurring.

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Mexican and American officials met in Mexico City recently to discuss plans to repatriate Mexican some border crossers deep into Mexico rather than returning them to the border.  Mexican officials insist that any such program must be voluntary, and have concerns about funding and logistics.  The US effort is aimed at stopping the revolving door of illegal immigration in border states, particularly Arizona.  Due to tightened border security in California and Texas, Arizona is becoming a key state of entry for illegal immigrants, accounting for about 40% of all illegal entries.  Most migrants caught illegally crossing are quickly transported to the border, where many try again repeatedly to cross within a short time frame.  Last year, of the 400,000 people caught illegally entering the US in Arizona, federal prosecutors brought charges against only 3,000.

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Various government departments have been working on creating a unified terrorist watch list.  This unified database would allow police and airport inspection officials to run names against one list of suspected terrorists.  This effort has met several challenges because the nine agencies involved have twelve lists, which are incompatible and contain overlapping but different information.  Other challenges are the need for established guidelines to determine the criteria for adding and removing names to the list, how information is shared across different agencies and how agencies should react to a “hit” on the list.

In written testimony to a joint hearing of subcommittees for the House Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, Director of the Terrorist Screening Center Donna Bucella stated that the center is in phase three of unifying the lists, which should be concluded before the end of 2004.  According to Bucella this third phase would “create a more dynamic database and use a single, integrated system for ensuring known or suspected terrorists’ identities are promptly incorporated into all appropriate screening processes.”

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The Customs and Border Protection Bureau (CBP) has requested $340 million in spending increases for 2005 in order to implement its ‘smart border initiatives.’  The bureau wants to improve its technology in order to identify high-risk containers being brought into the US instead of trying to inspect close to 23 million containers every year.  CBP stated that its goal is not to find large amounts of dangerous cargo but to deter terrorist groups from exploiting cargo containers.