http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/knau/local-knau-968221.mp3
Phoenix, AZ – Horne was one of four Southwest officials called to testify before a House subcommittee to look at the question. He said it is possible to get control of the border. Horne pointed to the Yuma sector, where the number of people caught went from 134-thousand in 2005 to just 72-hundred last year.
(But in the Tucson sector, last year well over 400,000 people crossed illegally into the United States in this sector. That is the equivalent of an invasion from various countries of 20 divisions.)
In his Texas speech, the president detailed all the efforts to secure the border, including doubling the number of Border Patrol agents.
(Even as we have stepped up patrols, apprehensions along the border have been cut by nearly 40 percent from two years ago. That means far fewer people are attempting to cross the border illegally.)
But Horne told members of Congress that fact does not make the border secure.
(Even if that were a decrease from the prior year in absolute terms, it is utterly unacceptable. And things are possibly going to be getting much worse because the support for President Calderon politically, his heroic actions, is waning. So things could get much worse. To promote complacency at this time I think is very dangerous and scary.)
Horne's assessment that the border is not secure was shared by three Texas officials: a sheriff, a police chief and the head of that state's Department of Public Safety. For Arizona Public Radio this is Howard Fischer.