Feds’ border plan dumps burden on local budgets

Not even the federal government, it appears, is immune from what is commonly referred to as the ripple effect in the criminal justice system.

Snohomish County is familiar with it: hire more sheriff’s deputies and you’ve got to hire more prosecutors, jail guards, public defenders, etc. to handle the increase in arrests. In other words, if you don’t budget for the ripple effect, you’re going to have problems down the road. And that’s the case with the additional troops brought in by the federal government to patrol the northern border.

We certainly aren’t complaining about the National Guard troops being brought in to ease the workload of desperately understaffed Immigration and Naturalization Service agents. Nor are we complaining about plans to double the number of agents along our border with Canada. We’ve been pushing for that for several years.

Whether it’s National Guard troops or newly hired and trained border patrol agents or INS agents, more law enforcement bodies mean more arrests. Those counties along the northern border are feeling the effects on their own struggling budgets as they handle these additional arrests. In Whatcom County the price tag is more than $2 million a year to handle such border related cases, according to a letter from Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and Rep. Rick Larsen sent to Attorney General John Ashcroft last month.

The three are asking Ashcroft for the same kind of federal reimbursement southwest border jurisdictions receive to cover the cost of such border related cases. The disparity in agents and budgets between the two borders is still outrageous. Until recently, the northern border boasted fewer than 300 agents while the southern border was guarded by more than 8,000 border officers. A mere three months after last year’s terrorist attacks, authorities moved 21 northern agents to the U.S.-Mexican border. All that, despite the potential disaster two years earlier when Ahmed Ressam almost slipped through the border at Port Angeles with a trunkload of explosives.

The United States is fortunate to have Canada as its northern border ally. But as terrorists have proven already, they are adept at studying our systems and can find ways to slip through the cracks by exploiting our weaknesses.

The federal government must back up its hiring of northern border agents with money for the local jurisdictions charged with taking on the burden of incarcerating, prosecuting and defending those people.

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