US Officials Decide to Confine Border Patrol Sweeps to the Border
Tron Nick
Still NO Canadians or Europeans Rounded Up and Arrested; Only Brown Skin People
Two months after Border Patrol agents made a series of controversial arrests in the Inland Empire, federal officials are finalizing a policy to limit the agency's operations in interior areas. Documents and interviews show that Department of Homeland Security officials want to concentrate Border Patrol agents at the borders and limit their inland activity to arresting illegal immigrants while they are traveling from the border and at transportation centers such as Los Angeles International Airport and highway checkpoints such as those in Temecula and San Clemente. Authorities said the changes were under discussion before the June arrests, which stirred protests in the Latino community. About 450 suspected illegal immigrants in Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties were arrested in less than a month by a specially trained team of 12 agents called the Mobile Patrol Group. Agents arrested the immigrants in residential and commercial areas, saying they were acting on information about smuggling. The arrests ended when a Homeland Security official said the sweeps violated agency policy because they had not been approved in Washington. [more]