San Luis gets $363,000 to help federal agencies fortify border

San Luis, Ariz. — Federal funding of more than $363,000 will be used by police here to help federal law enforcement agencies secure the border.

But the Operation Stonegarden dollars don’t come with strings attached that force San Luis police officers to become immigration agents responsible for rounding undocumented immigrants.

At a time of hardening rhetoric on the issue of immigration, that’s the message San Luis officials are trying to get out to their constituents in the Arizona border city.

The San Luis City Council voted recently to formally accept a grant of $363,575 in funding from Operation Stonegarden, a program started in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to provide funding to local law enforcement agencies to perform supporting functions to federal agencies responsible for homeland security.

That represents an increase of nearly $80,000 over the amount provided last year to the city, which typically uses the funding to cover such expenses as overtime pay for officers and mileage costs for police patrols.

Those functions help the Border Patrol and Department and Customs and Border Protection in stopping illegal border crossing and drug smuggling, said Mayor Gerardo Sanchez, but they also help height the overall level of safety in San Luis

“Operation Stonegarden is for the general benefit of the community,” he said. “It helps us a lot in provide better public safety services.”

San Luis police Lt. Miguel Alvarez said Stonegarden funding does not come with any strings at-

tached requiring police to take an active role in immigration control.

“The Operation Stonegarden rules have not changed,” he said. “The community can be assured that were are not going to go around knocking on doors or stopping people to question about their immigration status. That’s the function of the federal agencies, in this case the Border Patrol, with whom we collaborate only to support it in its mission.”

Alvarez said the priority of the program, assisted by local law enforcement agencies, is to prevent drug trafficking and to safeguard the border against entry by possible terrorists.

“Those funds are very important for us, and for the safety of the public,” Alvarez said. “If we didn’t have them, people would see fewer officers patrolling, and it would also affect us in the training of our canine units and the bicycle patrols.”

While Stonegarden helps the federal agencies to stop illegal border crossings, that mission has a secondary benefit to San Luis is preventing such crimes in the city as home invasions for burglaries, he said.