in his remarks at Tuesday's breakfast, sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor, he said his staff was mapping every mile of the Mexican border and preparing estimates of how many illegal immigrants use each of the various entry corridors so he could best decide how to deploy 1,000 or so new Border Patrol agents Congress appears likely to provide for the coming year.
The department will also then identify where it should place as many as 2,250 new detention beds that will be financed in next year's budget, a 10 percent increase. It also plans to place immigration judges closer to detention centers and allocate more money for lawyers who argue deportation cases on behalf of the government, increasing capacity in part by simply deporting illegal immigrants faster, a Homeland Security official said after Mr. Chertoff spoke.
What about lawyers for those facing deportation? Sounds like a railroad job to me.
More plans:
....The new campaign also entails an eventual doubling of the number of fugitive search teams to track down those who do not show up for deportation hearings, the official said.
Chertoff also criticized the citizen militias patrolling the borders, calling them amateurs. And, he again called for support for Bush's guest worker program.
The other side:
Some immigration experts questioned Tuesday whether this latest push to stabilize the border would result in much change. For example, these experts said, the Bush administration has not indicated any willingness to crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants.
"If you have a boat with numerous holes in it, the boat will sink unless you plug all of the holes effectively," said Michael W. Cutler, a former senior immigration enforcement special agent who is now a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington research group. "He is only addressing a few of the holes, meaning he may slow the flow but it will not solve the problem in the long run."
