Border Patrol: “We don’t approach people based on race”

Anne Galloway of Vtdigger.org interviewed Mark Henry, operations officer for the U.S. Border Patrol last week. What follows is a tweaked-for-clarity transcript of their conversation.

Vtdigger.org: I understand local police departments sometimes report undocumented foreign nationals and that CBP picks them up for detention. How does that work?

Henry: Our job is on the border. The illegal aliens, the drugs, other contraband are coming from Canada into the United States. We patrol the borders. That doesn’t mean we don’t from time to time get a call from a police department or something, and we would go down and take care of that. But we don’t handle this in the sense that you’re thinking – that would be ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

Vtdigger.org: I’ve been reading up on Operation Stonegarden, and what I’ve read would lead me to believe that the border patrol, ICE and local law enforcement, like the Vermont State Police, would work together in certain instances to apprehend undocumented migrant workers or illegal aliens.

Henry: No. Operation Stonegarden is a national program that allows the Border Patrol to pay overtime – just overtime, not regular time – to police officers to help them patrol the border. It has no focus on migrant workers at all. We’re interested in illegal aliens.

Vtdigger.org: Sometimes migrant workers are illegal aliens.

Henry: Well, if we get a call from a police department or something, then we would respond. But we don’t handle — it is not our primary focus – people who are employed illegally or otherwise in the United States; that’s ICE’s purview. If we find you coming from Canada at 2 a.m. in the woods, that’s what we do; we’re all threats on the border.

But as far as us going down and knocking on farmers’ doors, we don’t do that. Now, that doesn’t mean that from time to time we don’t get calls from a local police department, and they say we have this person in custody, and we go down and see who it is, and it turns out that they may be employed illegally someplace. But even then we would take that person – after we process them – and turn them over to ICE.

Vtdigger.org: I understand that sometimes you get tips from people.

Vtdigger.org: What do you do with those tips?

Henry: We will evaluate them, and depending on what we find out, then we may take whatever the appropriate law enforcement action is – which may be turn it over to some other agency. Or we might act on it ourselves, depending on what it is concerning.

Vtdigger.org: Under what circumstances would you act on it yourselves? If you got a tip that there was a woman who looked like she was of Mexican descent and she was trying to catch a bus in St. Albans, what would you do with that tip?

Henry: Well, it would depend on who it came from and when. First, we’d have to evaluate it. Is the person that called in, do they know what they’re talking about? So we evaluate the information because oftentimes they’re anonymous. Do we have the wherewithal to handle this complaint, and where does it lie in our priorities for today, this month, or whatever it is, but in any event, if we believe the report was accurate, then we would try to determine as best we could, is this something that is illegal? How is this person illegal? What do we have to show this person is illegal?

Vtdigger.org: It seems like it would be difficult to determine whether someone was illegal from a tip like that. How would you do that?

Henry: Well, sometimes it is. Sometimes you’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t. Let’s assume somebody called up and said I’m a 17-year-old kid, and I said I saw somebody at the bus station who’s illegal, well OK, how do you know that? Well, maybe they don’t. Maybe we don’t pay attention to that one, but let’s assume now that the person that works at the bus station was the one who called you, and you have a 10-year relationship with the person, and they’ve called you 100 times, and of that 100 times, 97 of them have proved to be true, then we probably will act on that tip. Or a police officer might say, hey, this is the deal. Then we might act on that.

So, you have to evaluate who’s calling as much as what the information is before you decide on whether you’re going to act on it or not.

Vtdigger.org: How many tips do you get, in, say, a day?

Henry: We don’t count’em up, but a lot. We get them every day. We have 295 miles of border. We have two and a half states we work in, and we get calls every single day. And never mind the calls. Agents get them every day when they’re going around on patrol. We get them from citizens of the United States. We get them from Canada, we get them from all kinds of people, from all walks of life, and we get them every day.

Vtdigger.org: And who do people call?

Henry: You call right here at (Swanton) sector headquarters. We have a number that goes out as far as to report suspicious activity. I know you’re focused on illegal aliens, but that’s not our focus, our focus is all threats. Our primary focus is terrorism, so to call for somebody to be smuggling narcotics, contraband or terrorists or terrorists weapons in the United States. To report any suspicious activity, the number is 800-689-3362.

Vtdigger.org: Do you have rules against racial profiling?

Henry: Our officers are trained at the academy. They have many years of experience, and we operate under the same rules and regulations we do in the regard to probable cause, reasonable belief to make an arrest.

We don’t just approach people based on race, if that’s what you mean. The main rules we use are statutes and policies, of which there’s a lot out there, and of course overriding that is the Constitution of the United States. That’s what we operate under.

Vtdigger.org: Do you have any statistical information you’d be willing to share with me regarding arrests the Border Patrol makes in Vermont every year?

Henry: We don’t usually break them down like that. We have statistics for all 295 miles of border in the Swanton sector — New Hampshire, Vermont and half of New York.

In 2005, we arrested 1,932 illegal aliens; we seized $1.1 million in currency and 4,608 pounds of marijuana. In 2006, we made 1,542 arrests, seized $2 million and 3,873 lbs. of marijuana. In 2007, we made 1,115 arrests, seized $2 million and 3,388 lbs. of marijuana. In 2008, we made 1,275 arrests, and seized $2 million and 5,878 lbs. of marijuana. In 2009, we made 1,017 arrests, and seized $2.2 million and 7,930 lbs. of marijuana.

Vtdigger.org: If you do find someone who is illegal, what’s the procedure?

Henry: We would take them into custody (arrested) and process them.

Vtdigger.org: Where are they housed?

Henry: Wherever ICE is going to put ’em. I believe they use local jails here until they can move them elsewhere.
Vtdigger.org: How long does the custody period take?

Henry: I don’t know. Each one is different. You would have to talk to ICE about that. We take ’em, we arrest ’em, we process ’em, we turn them over to ICE – after that, they’re theirs.
Vtdigger.org: What does the processing entail and how long does it take?

Henry: You do a bunch of paperwork – biographical data, criminal arrests, you run ’em through databases to see what their criminal history is, how many times they’ve been arrested before. Fingerprints, photographs. (It takes) a couple hours.

Vtdigger.org: Is there anything else you’d like to say?

Henry: We don’t have much more to say about migrant workers, I’ll tell you that. If you want to come back and talk about the Border Patrol, call me back. This is just one small thing that we do. You’re interested in 1 percent of what we do, and you’re ignoring the other 99 percent.

Vtdigger.org: How many CPB employees are on the border?

Henry: We don’t put that out.

Vtdigger.org: Why is that?

Henry: We don’t think it’s helpful to have terrorists and others know exactly what our forces are on the border. You have to understand what we’re up against. There are people in this world that want to cross this border and kill people in the United States. We’re trying to stop that.