Recently, I was talking to a colleague still on the job. He was telling me that arrests at the Buffalo Border Patrol Station are up 500% over last year. The problem they are having is one of bed space. They have so many arrestees that they need to ship them out as quickly as possible. A lot of the time, the illegal aliens are coming in as Other Agency calls, what we abbreviate as OA calls. The OAs are coming from local police departments who are thrilled that the Border Patrol is back to arresting illegal aliens, unlike, what was going on during the Biden/Mayorkas administration.
Unfortunately, New York State still has the “Green Light Law”. This law does not allow New York State to share license plate information with any component of the Department of Homeland Security. It has been argued that this law is completely unconstitutional, and it is an officer safety issue. This means that a CBP Officer checking vehicles coming in from Canada over the Peace Bridge cannot run a New York state license plate, but the CBP Officer can run license plates from 49 other states and even Canadian plates and get information on the vehicle owner. A Border Patrol Agent seeing a New York state plate cruising slowly on a road next to the Niagara River shoreline cannot run the plate to see if the driver has a criminal record, or, outstanding warrants. Thankfully, the U.S. Department of Justice is suing to stop New York State’s “Green Light Law” (formally known as the Driver’s License Access and Privacy Act). This law also allowed illegal aliens to obtain driver’s licenses.
When I first moved to New York state, it was hard for me to get a New York state driver’s license. I was coming from Maine and it wasn’t sufficient to bring along only my driver’s license from Maine. I believe I had to get a second form of ID, so, I brought along my passport, social security card, and other documentation showing that I was now living in New York. This was because in the wake of the World Trade Center attack several of the terrorists had driver’s licenses that they should not have been able to obtain. New York state used to be so good at verifying that someone was legally in the country that when an alien handed me a New York state driver’s license, it was almost certain they were legally here. With the Green Light Law allowing those illegally present to have driver’s licenses that is no longer the case.
When Andrew Cuomo became governor, he stopped allowing New York state employees cooperating with federal immigration enforcement under just about all circumstances. The only exception I can remember is if an illegal alien had just crossed over from Canada. This came up once when a man walking his dog in Beaver Island State Park on Grand Island, New York observed a jet ski drop off a man on the south part of the island. (Grand Island sits in the middle of the Niagara River with Canada to the west).
The man drove to the front gate of the park where he had seen a New York State Parks police officer and let her know about the man. She followed him down and wound up detaining him and putting him in her vehicle. The dog walker had to suggest to her to call us in the Border Patrol. She was reluctant to do so because she was so fearful of retribution from Cuomo’s new policy.
Who knows how many times New York State Troopers may have pulled over illegal aliens, but not called us thanks to that policy, and yes, Governor Hochul has continued that policy. I can remember one time where the New York State Troopers had pulled over some illegal aliens on a vehicle stop. The Troopers called the local police with some sort of bull hockey excuse, and when the local town’s police showed up, the State Troopers took off. Then, the local PD called us and we sacked up the illegal aliens. It was their way of working around the New York State policy.
In other news, ICE Special Agents are feeling the pressure of having to make immigration related arrests. There are some ICE SAs who used to be Border Patrol Agents or CBP Officers, but a lot of them have no experience doing immigration enforcement. They never took an immigration law course. This is posing problems as they do not know who to arrest and who not to arrest. They don’t know immigration visas and non-immigrant visas. The databases to run to find out if an alien is in the country legally or not are not simple. Add to that, you have to see if the illegal alien made an asylum claim.
Tom Homan has made the point before that when the old Immigration and Naturalization Service was combined with U.S. Customs Service to form Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) there was a battle between the immigration enforcement side and the customs enforcement side. In many ways, the legacy customs side won the fight. Whenever immigration became too hot button an issue, ICE Special Agents just focused on the customs side of things; mainly drugs and counterfeit goods. I spent a brief detail on one of the ICE led task forces and the focus was all on drugs, not on illegal aliens. So, a lot of the mindset of the ICE Special Agents needs to change.
Fortunately for the ICE Special Agents, there are a lot of former CBP Officers who have been hired over in various support roles and they have been educating the Special Agents on the databases that need to be run and who is in the country legally and who is not. Fortunately, there are things like the Alien Registration Act of 1940 that require non-citizens to carry papers with them that show their legal status. For a long time, this was a law that was not enforced, but now it is being brought back.
I can remember a journeyman Border Patrol K9 handler regaling us with tales of his detail to Albuquerque, New Mexico. He said that they had a jail cell with a pay phone in it. If they picked up someone who claimed he was a green card holder, but didn’t have his green card, he was thrown in the cell and told, “We don’t care who you have to call, but call whoever it is to get it.” Sometimes, they legitimately had cards that relatives took to the station, but other times it turned out that they were illegal aliens. Nowadays, this is less likely to happen because once back at the station their fingerprints can be run.
Of course, morale is great for Border Patrol right now. Less so for the ICE Special Agents, especially those Special Agents who would rather be working narcotics or counterfeit goods. But hey, drugs don’t walk themselves across the border. It takes a human to do that and hopefully there will be less work on the narcotics side of things. Oh wait, that’s already the case.
Before I go, I should add the propaganda portion to this. The left is trying to make hay over US citizens being deported, or, detained. As usual, their claims are lies. Children born here are being sent back with their illegal alien parents so the left is falsely claiming the kids are being deported too. The right is pushing back on the lies a little bit, but in my opinion, not enough. I follow ICE on Facebook and they have been very good at showing how many illegal aliens arrested have criminal records. Unfortunately, this message is not getting out to a wider audience as the mainstream corporate media ignores it since it interferes with their open borders agenda.
P.S. I still think that as long as TSA is checking everyone’s ID, they should be able to check visas to see if they’ve expired.
20 year veteran of the U.S. Border Patrol. Author of "What Bridge Do You Work At? Or, Kids Are Cute; Therefore, Open Borders" & "East into the Sunset: Memories of patrolling in the Rio Grande Valley at the turn of the century". Books are available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, as well as Thrift Books.
Master's Degree in Justice, Law and Society from American University.
Grew up partly in Europe.
