BP targeting 40 illegal crossers a day in Tucson Sector

By Brady McCombs

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Border Patrol officials are sending as many as 40 illegal entrants a day for prosecution and jail time under a downsized version of the agency's zero- tolerance initiative.

Even though the process and the consequences for the selected illegal border crossers are the same as Operation Streamline — the program's name in the Yuma and Del Rio and Laredo, Texas, sectors where it's also in use — officials in the Tucson Sector are calling it an "enhanced enforcement operation," until they get approval from headquarters, said Jesús Rodriguez, a Tucson Sector spokesman.

"Once the numbers start to increase for prosecution, it will be called 'Streamline,' " said Rodriguez said.

The agency must be able to prosecute every single person caught in a designated zone, something that isn't happening yet in the Tucson Sector, for it to be called Operation Streamline, said Lloyd Easterling, a Border Patrol spokesman in Washington, D.C.

"That is not to say that Streamline won't be developing there," said Easterling. "It is very possible that it will be."

The entrants selected don't come from one designated zone but from across the sector's 262 miles, which stretches from the New Mexico line to the eastern edge of Yuma County, said Rob Daniels, another Tucson Sector spokesman. The agency is making about 950 apprehensions a day this month.

Under the program, illegal entrants face 15 to 180 days in jail even if it is their first arrest, a fate that used to be reserved only for repeat crossers and those with criminal records.

The maximum daily total of 40 people a day was agreed on by all the agencies involved based on the resources available, Daniels said.