March 30, 2005

The Reason Behind Operation: Full Court Press

MSNBC's Brock Meeks missed the boat on the border patrol's new effort to stop illegals from coming into Arizona from Mexico. There's plenty of material on what the border patrol will do and whether it will be successful, but Meeks misses the reason why "Operation: Full Court Press" [NOTE: Homeland Security needs to borrow those military people who make cool operation names like "Operation: Iraqi Freedom."] started this week. The Minuteman Project starts Friday. Washington heard the "airhorn." Bryan Preston also thinks the MS-13 threat against Minuteman participants may also have something to do with the personel boost.

Will Operation: Full Court Press stop citizens from patroling the border? No, because one operation won't immediately win back trust.

"U.S. Agency Poised for Big Border Security Operation" [via InTheBullpen]

UPDATE: How dumb does this Homeland Security spokesman think we are?

More than 500 additional Border Patrol agents are being assigned to beef up patrols along the Arizona-Mexico border, with as many as 150 to 200 officers already headed there, federal officials and others said Tuesday.

That news comes just days before civilian volunteers, calling themselves the Minuteman Project, are to begin their own monthlong patrols for immigrants crossing the border.

Organizers have said they expect at least 1,000 people to participate.

"This has absolutely nothing to do with the so-called Minuteman people," Christiana Halsey, spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection Bureau, said Tuesday.

Instead, Halsey said, the additional agents, equipment and other resources for Arizona, to be detailed at a news conference today in Tucson by Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner and other officials, have been planned as Phase II of the Arizona Border Control Initiative, a program initially launched last March.