McALLEN, TX - The federal government should hire more Customs officers and increase the scrutiny of outbound traffic at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to recommendations presented Wednesday by a border task force created by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
Thousands of Border Patrol agents have been added in recent years to watch the areas between the ports of entry on the Southwest border, but that recruitment effort has overshadowed the ports them selves, which need more staffing and better infrastructure, a report from the Southwest Border Task Force said.
"We don't want to give up the security of our border, but we do want to see ways that we can facilitate commerce and trade," said El Paso Mayor John Cook, who was part of the task force.
Cook and Richard Dayoub, CEO and president of the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce, were part of the group that made its 19 draft recommendations to the Homeland Security Advisory Council on a conference call Wednesday.
The suggestions addressed two areas -- commerce and border violence -- and both said the ports of entry need attention.
Cook and Dayoub, who were part of the commerce subgroup, said it is important that the federal government invest in staffing to improve crossings at the border.
"In many places in El Paso we have the lanes (on international bridges) but what we don't have is the personnel to man those lanes," Dayoub said.
Dayoub said that federal officials should also take into consideration side effects of programs such as the checks of Mexico-bound traffic that cause traffic congestion in El Paso.
The concerns in El Paso were similar to other communities along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Customs "is the one agency that touches both sides (commerce and security) of the border issue," said Lupe Treviņo, sheriff of Hidalgo County, Texas, and head of the task force's border security subgroup. "We have to pump them up, augment their assets so they can meet the challenges."
The fiscal 2009 budget includes a request for $362.5 million to hire 2,200 Border Patrol agents, but only $25 million to hire 22 Customs officers, the report said.
From fiscal 2007 to 2009, the Border Patrol presence grew by about 55 percent on the Southwest border. During the same period, the number of Customs officers grew by 17 percent.
As of July, 17,113 Border Patrol agents and 5,586 Customs officers worked on the Southwest border.
The task force, led by William Webster, former director of the CIA and FBI, was created in June to study the balancing of security concerns with the need to facilitate trade at the border.
El Paso Times reporter Daniel Borunda contributed to this story.
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