The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Border Patrol cops have been stepping up their presence in the Tucson area in an effort to harass and send back to Mexico those crossing the border. They claimed to have captured some 520,000 immigrants in this sector over the past nine months, up from 387,000 for the whole of the 1998 fiscal year.

Since passage of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which won bipartisan backing and was promoted by the Democratic Party administration of William Clinton, the INS has been expanded into the largest federal police force with 15,000 officers carrying weapons and authorized to make arrests.

According to the Mexican government, Washington's stepped-up cop operation has since 1996 figured in nearly 1,000 border-crossing deaths, most from heat exposure and dehydration.

In its latest attack on democratic rights, INS commissioner Doris Meissner announced plans in early August to beef up the presence of Border Patrol cops at the Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix and Las Vegas McCarran Airport, supposedly to stop "immigrant smuggling." According to Karen Dorman, who is in charge of the Las Vegas INS office, the Border Patrol cops will be watching for groups of people where a single person buys tickets on their behalf, as well as viewing late boardings by groups of people as suspicious behavior.

This harassment effort, dubbed "Operation Denial," includes increased coordination with state police in Nevada and Arizona. Individuals stopped by highway police for possible traffic regulation violations may also now have to face interrogation by INS cops over their immigration status, according to Dorman.

Meanwhile, the newly elected president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, is appealing to Washington for increased cooperation between the two governments over immigration matters. In a meeting August 17 with U.S. president William Clinton and Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien, Fox called for what he described as a "European Union" type arrangement among the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

His plan would formalize and better organize Mexico as a reserve army of labor for U.S. employers as needed, and on their terms. Fox called for increasing the number of Mexican workers allowed to "legally" cross the border to take jobs in exchange for a greater police presence by Mexican authorities in border areas. Within five to 10 years, he claims, this could lead to a border that "begins to open, under regulated conditions."

In an editorial comment, the Financial Times endorsed Fox's proposal as "a sensible one." Saying, "The best way to deal" with labor shortages "is to legitimise labour flows." The British financial daily added, "Such a move might be politically unpopular in parts of the United States. But the U.S. has much to gain from such an approach."