INS Leader Vows to Beef Up Border Patrol
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SAN DIEGO — The nation’s top immigration official Sunday promised reinforcements and new, high-tech equipment to help beleaguered Border Patrol agents stem illegal immigration.
U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner made the pledge during a tour of the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector, which accounts for half of the 1.2 million illegal immigrants arrested each year.
“You have to start where the problem is the biggest, and it’s the biggest here,” Meissner told reporters at the Imperial Beach Border Patrol station.
During the next six months, 400 Border Patrol officers will be added to the San Diego area. Agents also will get 222 new patrol vehicles equipped with encrypted radios to bypass eavesdropping smugglers.
Most of the reinforcements will be stationed along a 14-mile stretch of border running from the Otay Mountains east of San Diego to the ocean.
The reinforcements will consist of new recruits and redeployed veteran officers, Meissner said. The first class of 40 newly hired officers already is on the job.
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