'Zero Tolerance' on the Mexican Border

New Policy Ends 'Catch and Release' for Illegal Immigrants
By MIKE VON FREMD and GINA SUNSERI
AP Photo

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.