Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
USA Today
April 14, 2008
Pg. 3
Recruits at bases overseas in effort to double ranks
By Mimi Hall, USA Today
The Border Patrol, scrambling to hire thousands of agents by the end of the year, is taking its recruiting efforts overseas to try to enlist military veterans who have fulfilled their tours of duty.
Two teams of agency officers just returned from visiting six U.S. military bases in Germany, where they persuaded nearly 100 veterans to apply to join the Homeland Security Department as border agents.
"This is a premier law enforcement agency, and we offer an opportunity for service on the front lines of the country," said Joe Arata, a recruiter for Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection (CBP) division, which includes the Border Patrol.
CBP spokeswoman Tara Dunlop said the department plans to do more recruiting overseas.
The Homeland Security Department has been trying to drastically increase the number of agents along the nation's open borders.
The recruiting drive also comes at a time when law enforcement agencies nationwide, from city and state police departments to the FBI, are competing for hires.
In 2001, the Border Patrol had fewer than 10,000 agents covering the northern and southern borders with Canada and Mexico. A buildup in recent years has brought the ranks to 15,500.
President Bush has said he wants the size of the agency doubled, to 20,000 agents, by the time he leaves office next January.
The government has done some unconventional recruiting, plastering the Border Patrol's name on the side of a NASCAR racer and sending CBP's honor guard to professional football games in Texas and Michigan.
Dunlop said recruiters plan to blanket Ohio on Saturday in a massive "Buckeye Blitz" recruiting effort that will cover the state's seven biggest cities. The agency routinely recruits at U.S. military bases and at job fairs within the USA.
In Germany, Arata said, recruiters went after military veterans looking for their next career and promoted the Border Patrol as an agency that pays up to $70,000 a year after three years. An average Army sergeant with four years' service would earn $26,964 base pay, plus housing and other benefits.
Union chief T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, criticized the Bush administration for not hiring more agents sooner.
He said the push to hire thousands of agents so quickly inevitably will result in the same problems other major law enforcement agencies and police departments have run into when they hired too many officers too fast: poor training and inexperience.
"This will cause headaches down the road," Bonner said. "This is serious business. It takes a great deal of training and experience to mature. They should slow it down."
Before they are sent to the border to work, new agents go through 55 days of training at the Border Patrol's academy in Artesia, N.M.
If they don't speak Spanish, they take another 40 days of intensive language training, Dunlop said.
She said the academy averages 50 trainees per class and it graduates an average of two classes per week.
April 14, 2008
Pg. 3
Recruits at bases overseas in effort to double ranks
By Mimi Hall, USA Today
The Border Patrol, scrambling to hire thousands of agents by the end of the year, is taking its recruiting efforts overseas to try to enlist military veterans who have fulfilled their tours of duty.
Two teams of agency officers just returned from visiting six U.S. military bases in Germany, where they persuaded nearly 100 veterans to apply to join the Homeland Security Department as border agents.
"This is a premier law enforcement agency, and we offer an opportunity for service on the front lines of the country," said Joe Arata, a recruiter for Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection (CBP) division, which includes the Border Patrol.
CBP spokeswoman Tara Dunlop said the department plans to do more recruiting overseas.
The Homeland Security Department has been trying to drastically increase the number of agents along the nation's open borders.
The recruiting drive also comes at a time when law enforcement agencies nationwide, from city and state police departments to the FBI, are competing for hires.
In 2001, the Border Patrol had fewer than 10,000 agents covering the northern and southern borders with Canada and Mexico. A buildup in recent years has brought the ranks to 15,500.
President Bush has said he wants the size of the agency doubled, to 20,000 agents, by the time he leaves office next January.
The government has done some unconventional recruiting, plastering the Border Patrol's name on the side of a NASCAR racer and sending CBP's honor guard to professional football games in Texas and Michigan.
Dunlop said recruiters plan to blanket Ohio on Saturday in a massive "Buckeye Blitz" recruiting effort that will cover the state's seven biggest cities. The agency routinely recruits at U.S. military bases and at job fairs within the USA.
In Germany, Arata said, recruiters went after military veterans looking for their next career and promoted the Border Patrol as an agency that pays up to $70,000 a year after three years. An average Army sergeant with four years' service would earn $26,964 base pay, plus housing and other benefits.
Union chief T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, criticized the Bush administration for not hiring more agents sooner.
He said the push to hire thousands of agents so quickly inevitably will result in the same problems other major law enforcement agencies and police departments have run into when they hired too many officers too fast: poor training and inexperience.
"This will cause headaches down the road," Bonner said. "This is serious business. It takes a great deal of training and experience to mature. They should slow it down."
Before they are sent to the border to work, new agents go through 55 days of training at the Border Patrol's academy in Artesia, N.M.
If they don't speak Spanish, they take another 40 days of intensive language training, Dunlop said.
She said the academy averages 50 trainees per class and it graduates an average of two classes per week.