Border Patrol hires civilians to ease need

SAN DIEGO » Dozens, even hundreds, of asylum-seeking migrants often wait hours to surrender to U.S. Border Patrol agents, but the thousands of Haitians in Texas may be unprecedented and point to a glaring problem with the federal police agency’s staffing.

Instead of conducting patrols and uncovering smuggling activity, its agents spend about 40% of their time caring for people already in custody and administrative tasks unrelated to border security.

The agency hopes to free up agents to go back into the field by hiring civilians for jobs like serving food, checking holding cells and collecting information for immigration court papers.

The Border Patrol graduated its first class of “processing coordinators,” with the goal of eventually hiring 1,200. The position requires less training than for law enforcement officers and pays less. It is also seen as a recruiting tool for an agency that has struggled to find qualified applicants, particularly women.