Dear HCN,
The author of “Battered
Borderlands’ (HCN, 9/27/99) went to extra lengths to unfairly
portray the Border Patrol as being totally oblivious of, and
uncaring toward, the environmental impact of our activities in the
desert. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have been
working diligently to comply with NEPA, and at the same time
balance environmental concerns with the potential for loss of human
life in the harsh desert climate.
The article
states that the “wave of immigrants and chaos of Border Patrol
trucks and helicopters may overwhelm desert wildlife.” That is
considerable literary license. Currently, we make one helicopter
patrol each morning of the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge,
the primary habitat for the Sonoran pronghorn antelope. The route
has been carefully reviewed to minimize any impact upon the
antelope during critical fawning periods. Patrolling by vehicles in
the area is limited to existing roads. Only in the event that
aircraft locates persons do vehicles travel off road to arrest and
to remove them from the desert.
To say that our
personnel have not received any training or maps of the pronghorn’s
habitat is simply inaccurate reporting. The personnel who work in
the Cabeza Prieta have been trained each year, for the past two
years, on the habitat and sensitivities of the area. Moreover, all
sector managers were briefed at a supervisors’ meeting during
fiscal year 1999 by staff from the Bureau of Land
Management.
The article reported that the Border
Patrol has never completed a biological opinion on our activities
in the habitat area. The Border Patrol does not do biological
opinions; those are done by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The
Border Patrol is only required to conduct a biological assessment,
the latest of which was completed in January 1999. This assessment
was completed by a well-known consulting firm with a highly
qualified staff of environmental scientists.
The
article alleges that the Border Patrol has not participated in
meetings regarding pronghorn recovery efforts. In fact, the Border
Patrol has two representatives on the Barry M. Goldwater Executive
Council (BEC), and we have attended several such meetings within
the past two years.
James S.
Switzer
Yuma,
Arizona
The writer is chief
patrol agent of the Justice Department’s Immigration and
Naturalization
Service.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Give the Border Patrol credit.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
