'Zero Tolerance' on the Mexican Border

May 2, 2006 — -- Border patrol agents in Eagle Pass, Texas, had been frustrated for years, because hundreds of illegal immigrants a day would pour across the border, taking advantage of a loophole to get into the United States.

Border patrol agent Martin Clark said it astounded him.

"There were no unhappy faces ... everyone was trying to get caught," Clark said. "People were running toward us, not away from us."

The problem was simple: The border patrol station in Eagle Pass has no jail space to hold illegal immigrants. That didn't matter when illegal immigrants from Mexico were caught, because they could be processed and then just bused back across the border.

But the procedure to return people from El Salvador or Nicaragua or Brazil is more complicated, so all that a border patrol agent could do was elicit a promise from them to return for a court date for a formal deportation hearing, which meant they were free to go, and rarely did they show up for ourt dates. The loophole was dubbed "catch and release," and it frustrated many border patrol agents.

"There was a five-mile area specifically where these OTM's, 'other than Mexicans,' were flooding in," Commissioner for Customs and Border Patrol David Aguilar said. "Their perception was that they could be apprehended by the U.S. border patrol, and if there was a lack of detention space, we were obligated to release them on what is known as their own recognizance."

Their perception was reality until four months ago, when a dramatic "zero tolerance" crackdown called Operation Streamline began.

The border patrol has instituted a blanket policy of prosecuting in federal court anyone caught coming across the border. Detaining people for up to six months was initially expensive and overwhelmed the prisons and the courts. But now it is working.

"If the system can sustain the initial shock, the deterrent effect will come in and we will have less numbers and that is what we experience now," Clark said.

Since Operation Streamline went into effect, nearly 1,000 immigrants crossing illegally have been jailed. Once they appear before a federal magistrate they either are sentenced to jail or deported to their home country.