Agents shift to south border
Hundreds moved to assist with spike of immigrants seeking entry, agency says
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has shifted at least 300 Border Patrol agents, primarily from the northern border and coastal sites, to help deal with the spike of immigrants seeking entry at the southern border, the agency said.
CBP, in response to questions from the Times Union, declined to provide further specifics about the numbers of redeployed agents and where they had been working, or overall staffing levels at the northern border.
U.S. Reps. Elise Stefanik, R-schuylerville, and John Katko, R-syracuse, sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Thursday saying “staffing along our Northern Border has been and continues to remain, dangerously low specifically along the sectors of the North Country and waters of Lake Ontario
and the St. Lawrence River.
“Despite these low staffing levels your administration proceeded with the reassignment of Border Patrol agents from the North Country to the southern border; proposed flying illegal immigrants from southern to northern border states for processing; and tasked Border Patrol agents along the northern border to work overtime and virtually ‘process’ illegal immigrants crossing the southern border,” they wrote.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D -Miss., chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the temporary redeployment should not be a long one.
“Temporary redeployments of CBP personnel are not unusual,” he said. “The security of the northern border remains a priority. Fortunately, CBP has an array of tools at its disposal to carry out its mission at the northern border and the U.S. benefits from close cooperation and coordination with Canadian law enforcement and intelligence counterparts.”
As more people attempt to cross the U.s.-mexico border, the Biden administration has also tapped resources from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and over 1,000 Department of Homeland Security volunteers to help manage the situation, according to administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
More than 170,000 people presented at the southern border in March, the largest number in three years. Border encounters have spiked during the Biden administration, although the number of immigrants attempting to cross has steadily increased since April 2020. The Biden administration has said its policy is to process and let in unaccompanied children, but to expel almost all adults and families.
In addition to boosting staff, the administration has had to open new processing and detention facilities, as well as new care facilities to deal with the influx of unaccompanied children.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which operates many of the facilities, did not respond to an inquiry about the potential transfer of immigrants to northern states.
Shifting resources from the northern to southern border was a strategy also used by the Trump administration. In 2019, Customs and Border Protection reassigned 731 officers from ports of entry nationwide to the U.s.-mexico border because “apprehensions of family units and unaccompanied children from Central America had overwhelmed Border Patrol capabilities and facilities,” a CBP official said at the time.
Customs and Border Protection officers regulate ports of entry, while Border Patrol agents guard between the ports. There are now roughly 1,190 CBP field operations officers and supervisors working at New York’s northern border ports of entry in Alexandria Bay, Buffalo, Cape Vincent, Champlain, Massena, Ogdensburg, Rochester and Trout River, as well as at airports in Albany, Rome and Syracuse. Thousands more officers work at ports of entry in other states along the U.s.-canada border, which is the longest land border between two countries in the world.
The New York Post reported this week at least 15 percent of patrol members from the northern border were sent south, citing an anonymous Border Patrol source.
A CBP official told the Times Union securing and maintaining effective control of the northern border requires a different mixture of facilities, operations, infrastructure, and technology resources from those appropriate to the southwest and coastal borders because the operating environment and the nature of threats faced on the northern border are different.
Even with some CBP agents redeployed to the southern border, the agency can secure the northern border “utilizing a multi-layered, risk-based approach to enhance the security of our borders while facilitating the lawful flow of essential people and goods entering the United States,” the official said, adding that the agency collaborates with other law enforcement partners and Canadian agencies.
“CBP seeks to deter and disrupt human smuggling activities by transnational criminal organizations and ensure our personnel are properly equipped to maintain border security,” said Kris Grogan, a public affairs officer for CBP.
Border encounters have spiked during the Biden administration, although the number of immigrants attempting to cross has steadily increased since April 2020. The Biden administration has said its policy is to process and let in unaccompanied children, but to expel almost all adults and families.