By John Waters, Publisher

In an effort to disrupt human-trafficking, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) will bus will transport two busloads consisting of 94 Mexican Nationals, per day, caught illegally in Arizona, to the Port of Entry in Presidio. The transported individuals will then be released and allowed to walk across the international bridge to Mexico.

Once in Mexico, those deported will be offered bus tickets home, purchased by Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM) and the Consulado de Mexico. A temporary shelter in Ojinaga will be available.

At a press conference held in late October, John Smietana, CBP Chief Patrol Agent of the Marfa Sector, outlined the program, formally known as The Alien Transfer and Exit Prorgam (ATEP). Under ATEP, the 94 daily adds up to 34,000 Mexican nationals that will be deported through Presidio-Ojinaga, a jump from the 4,500 deported under different programs last year.

Of the 4,500 deported out of Presidio last year, only 169 were apprehended re-entering the U.S.

For the last three years, CBP has used buses contracted by Wackenhut Corporation. The company will continue to operate the daily Arizona-Presidio buses.

The rationale behind this new program is to take the apprehended individuals away from the infrastructure necessary for the entrenched smuggling network there – safe houses, where smugglers attempt to ensnare former clients into re-attempting illegal border crossings. What the states of Arizona and Sonora are rife with Presidio, Texas and Ojinaga,Chihuahua lack. This new strategy comes at a price, of course. According to Smietana, $2,500 is the going price for the financially-, legally- and life-threatening attempt to cross illegally, as is often made by hiring “coyotes.”

“Smuggling is a business and it’s the business of making money,” says Smietana. According to the Los Angeles Times, in the Tucson Sector, the going rate coyotes charge to help migrants illegally enter the United States is $6,000 per person for Central and South Americans. It can be up to $20,000 for Haitians, and still more exorbitant charges apply to the recent influx of Chinese from Fujian, who will indenture themselves for $30,000 to $70,000, and then spend several years laboring in the sweatshops of Los Angeles or New York.

The ATEP program has been, in effect, transporting immigrants from Tucson to ports of entry in California. In 2008, 5,830 Mexicans were sent home from Arizona, via California. Managing the Tucson-Presidio corridor will be the largest ATEP program to date.

“If they are returned in the [same] area [where] they are caught,” explains Smietana, “the smuggling organization that they [originally] paid is right there, so [deportees often] go back to the smuggler and get right back into the pipeline.”

By bussing the 34,000 Mexicans caught in Tucson, Arizona to Presidio each year, the Border Patrol will separate them away from the previously-engaged smuggling apparatus and return them to a very rural environment, where they are far less likely to attempt reentry into the U.S.

Only males aged 20-60 with no criminal record are offered the choice of returning home under the ATEP program. The program is voluntary, stressed Smietana, and while in transport, passengers are neither shackled nor handcuffed, though the busses have two armed personnel on board and the windows have bars.

Over 300,000 apprehensions per year are made in the Tucson Sector, confirmed Agent Jimarez, of CBP Tucson, who added that only solo males are eligible for the program. Jimarez said women are not offered the program due to safety concerns, nor does the agency break up families caught together.  

In 2009, the Tucson Sector made 580 emergency rescues of illegal aliens who were abandoned by their smugglers and would have faced almost certain death. In 2008, 167 fatalities of illegal immigrants occurred in the harsh Sonoran Desert of the sector.

Currently two bus companies, Omnibus de México and Transportes Chihuahuenses, operate nine daily departures from Ojinaga to Ciudad Chihuahua. At current exchange rates, the bus tickets to Chihuahua alone will cost IMN and the Consulado $469,000 per year. That estimate does not include transportation costs for the 34,000 beyond Chihuahua.

Currently the Marfa Sector has over 700 employees. No new staff will be required to facilitate the ATEP program, said Smietana.

Wackenwho?

Wackenhut, which is contracted to transport the 34,000 Mexican nationals from Tucson to Presidio, is a U.S. subsidiary of the UK-based G4S, a global conglomerate operating in 110 countries.

The company, whose motto is Securing Your World, described itself to its stockholders in 2008, as “The world’s leading international security solutions group, which specializes in outsourced business processes in sectors where security and safety risks are considered a strategic threat.”

The company provides a wide range of security services, including the bussing of Mexican Nationals to Presidio. Other enterprises operated by G4S include operating the first private prison in South Africa, securing the Romanian postal service, and providing security at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hanford nuclear site in Washington state.

The global security business is good these days; in 2008, G4S reported that revenues in Kenya were up 14%; in Peru, up 20%; in Norway, up 40%.

Recent acquisitions include “Progard Securitas,” a security services company in Serbia, “Coastal Security,” in Namibia, “Quantico Limited,” in Thailand, and “Sec Point, Limited,” in Ghana.

G4S employs over 585,000 people, worldwide (more than General Electric and Bank America, combined), including over 52,000 in the United States. G4S also sold several companies.

To understand the size and extent of any company’s operation, a good place to start is its career section. G4S Wackenhut currently has over 300 job openings in the United States posted on its website. Locally, the only position for which the company is hiring is in El Paso, for a Surveillance Investigator. Applicants must be able to “independently investigate insurance claims filed for a variety of coverage to include workers’ compensation, general liability, disability, property and casualty, life and health cases.” Applicants must also “interview persons known to be involved or having knowledge of an insurance claim.” Applicants must also be able to discreetly video claimants. Those interested can visit www.g4s.com.

In late October, the company’s stock closed in London at 253p, its highest since 2000.