PORT ANGELES — Border Patrol Agent Christian Sanchez, who created a national stir by criticizing the agency that employs him, is still waiting on his request to be transferred from Port Angeles back to the U.S.-Mexico border, he said Thursday.
“I haven’t heard anything yet,” he told the Peninsula Daily News in his first interview since he spoke to a government watchdog group in Washington, D.C., on July 29.
Sanchez told the not-for-profit Sunlight Foundation Advisory Committee on Transparency in July that the Port Angeles Border Patrol station where he works is an overstaffed “black hole” with “no purpose, no mission.”
On Labor Day, CNN reported Sanchez’s attorney, Tom Devine of the Government Accountability Project, said his client had requested a transfer back to the southern border.
Sanchez had been living with his family in the San Diego area before his transfer to Port Angeles in 2009.
Monitoring ferry traffic
Sanchez on Thursday was monitoring the MV Coho ferry traffic line at the Black Ball Ferry Line terminal in downtown Port Angeles.
He was, watching for illegal immigrants, terrorists and suspicious cars and drivers bound for Victoria across the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the 12:45 p.m. sailing.
“I’m just doing my job,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez said he could not comment further on his job status.
He was on duty at the ferry terminal with the Border Patrol’s Office of Field Operations.
The agency is responsible with guarding points of entry into the United States.
In his July 29 testimony the watchdog agency, Sanchez said that after he told supervisors there was little for him to do and that “our station was misusing federal funds,” he and his family, including his two daughters, were subjected to “ugly harassment” by federal officers.
Sanchez said the undercover officers followed him and his family to and from destinations when he wasn’t working.
Border Patrol presence
Sanchez’s testimony this summer added fuel to opposition among some on the North Olympic Peninsula toward the increased presence of the Border Patrol in Clallam and Jefferson counties, the territory covered by the Port Angeles Border Patrol station.
Agent staffing has increased from four in 2006 to the present level of 36 agents, with Sanchez arriving from the southern border in September 2009, where he “was very busy, doing the real, important work . . . to protect our country,” he said in July.
By contrast, in Port Angeles, “there was never really much work to do,” Sanchez testified.
The Border Patrol’s new $5.7 million North Olympic Peninsula headquarters, under construction at 110 S. Penn St. in Port Angeles, also has been the site of picketing.
It will replace the Border Patrol’s far smaller headquarters at the Richard B. Anderson Federal Building in downtown Port Angeles.
Wednesday meeting
To address concerns raised on the Peninsula and in Whatcom County near the U.S.-Canada border, staff members from the offices of U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell joined staff members from the offices of U.S. Reps. Rick Larsen of the 2nd District (Whatcom) and Norm Dicks of the 6th Congressional District (Clallam and Jefferson counties) in a two-hour, closed-door meeting Wednesday with Blaine Sector Chief Jon Bates.
As a result, the Border Patrol will “definitely” intensify its community outreach to explain the agency’s mission, Blaine Sector Border Patrol spokesman Richard Sinks said Thursday.
“Obviously, that’s not working for certain members of the community out there,” Sinks said of current public relations efforts.
“We are looking for all different types of avenues through which we can reach out,” he said, including a “citizen academy” planned for later this year.
“We’re looking to citizen academies, which will educate the public on what we do and kind of walk them through the job of a Border Patrol agent,” Sinks said.
The Border Patrol “is more than happy to meet with the different groups that want to meet with us and sit down and talk with them,” he added.
Sinks would not comment on what specific questions were asked and answers given at the meeting.
Dicks’ spokesman, George Behan, who set up the meeting, did not return telephoned requests for comment on the meeting.
Relevant mission?
The agency’s “mission” and how “relevant” that mission is on the North Olympic Peninsula were to be the main topics of the Wednesday meeting with Bates, Dicks said in an interview Saturday.
Cantwell spokesman Jared Leopold, who did not attend the session, said Thursday that Cantwell’s staff considered the get-together “productive.”
Murray spokesman Matt McAlvannah, who also did not attend, said Wednesday that Murray’s staffers there said the meeting was “informative and instructive.”
Sinks said one topic was not addressed — the number of arrests made by the Border Patrol on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Last week, the Border Patrol began releasing to the Peninsula Daily News a one-sheet report with two-sentence descriptions of arrests from the previous week in Whatcom, Clallam and Jefferson counties that the Border Patrol has chosen to publicize.
Arrests that lead to ongoing investigations also are not publicized, Sinks said.
The Border Patrol has refused a Peninsula Daily News Freedom of Information Act request for Border Patrol arrest totals for the North Olympic Peninsula and the identities of those arrested, citing national security concerns.
The Border Patrol also rejected the newspaper’s appeal of that decision.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
