Yuma BP chief talks with Trump
Porvaznik, president discuss border issues
As part of his brief stop in Yuma on Tuesday, President Donald Trump visited the Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Air and Marine hangar, where he spoke with Yuma Sector Chief Patrol Agent Anthony Porvaznik.
After the visit, Porvaznik said he and the president discussed how the Yuma Sector was able to achieve “Operational Control” of its 126 miles of U.S.-Mexico border in 2008 and how it could be used at other sectors along the border.
Once a thoroughfare for drug smugglers and hundreds of thousands of illegal border crossers, Porvaznik said he told the president that the Yuma Sector now records barely 8,000 arrests each year.
From 2005 to 2008 apprehensions in the Yuma Sector decreased by 90 percent due to an increase in manpower, technology and infrastructure.
Contributing to that success, Porvaznik said, was the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which mandated the construction of hundreds of additional miles of secure fencing and infrastructure investments, and Operation Jump Start, which deployed National Guard units to Yuma to build the fence.
“The things you saw in 2005, 2006, even into 2007, you don’t see anymore today,” Chief Porvaznik said. “The border wall helped us gain that operational control, that initial impedance and denial of that illegal traffic, when at one time there was not any.”
Now, every mile of the Yuma Sector’s border with Mexico has some type of fencing, man-made or natural barriers and/or sensor technology, the border is routinely patrolled, and additional agents have been hired.
When asked by the president how effective the wall had been, Porvaznik said he responded it had been one of the main reasons why the sector had gained “Operational Control” – which is the term used to describe areas where officials are reasonably assured of capturing most crossers.
“I told him it was one of the reasons,” Porvaznik said. “It is not one thing, it is a system of systems.”
While touring the hangar, which is also at Yuma International Airport, President Trump inspected a predator drone, a river patrol boat, a helicopter and a surveillance truck.
Porvaznik added the Yuma Sector was honored by the president’s visit, and he is pleased the sector is used an example to other states that border Mexico.
The Yuma Sector extends from the Imperial Sand Dunes in California to the Yuma-Pima County line. This area consists of vast open deserts, rocky mountain ranges, drifting sand dunes and the Colorado River.