New Border Patrol chief to meet with rights advocates

Chief Robert W. Gilbert, who officially took the reins on March 29, planned the meeting to learn about the organizations and hear any concerns they have with the agency. Gilbert said he expects about a dozen people at the Tucson Sector headquarters building for the 9 a.m. meeting.

"I thought it would be best if everybody gets together, we sit at a table, look at each other in the eye and say what can we do to make this border safer," said Gilbert, who formerly served as El Paso Sector chief. "I think anybody who is out there trying to save a human life, I think that is a great thing."

The invitees say the meeting is a good first step toward establishing a positive relationship.

"He's the new guy on the block and he comes to Tucson and he says to the humanitarian community, 'I'd like to get to know you,' " said Margo Cowan, legal counsel for the faith-based No More Deaths. "I think it's great. I applaud him."

Rev. Robin Hoover, founder of Humane Borders, is looking forward to establishing an open line of communication with Gilbert, something he said he lacked with Gilbert's predeces-sor, Michael Nicley. He said he'll push for information on deaths and apprehensions that Humane Borders used to get and ask that the agency's public-information officers stop degrading his organization.

"Chief Nicley, for whatever reasons, felt like he was in conflict with various community groups and basically isolated himself on an island and let everybody throw rocks at him," he said.

Border Action Network will present Gilbert with a study it conducted on human- and civil-rights violations by Border Patrol agents that includes recommendations to prevent them in the future, said the group's director, Jennifer Allen. She'll also give him the group's guidelines to alternative border-enforcement policies and practices. The opportunity to meet and talk with Gilbert is a great sign, she said.

"If we want to see changes in the agency, we have to be able to talk with them," Allen said.

Both Allen and Isabel Garcia, co-chair of the Coalicion de Derechos Humanos and a longtime local activist, said they'll encourage Gilbert to increase accountability among his agents. They say the process for receiving and responding to complaints from community members and migrants is in dire need of improvement.

"The migrant and immigrant community is suffering," Garcia said. "We need to open up a real avenue for Border Patrol to really accept responsibility, to have accountability."

Gilbert thinks the agency and the groups have more in common than they might realize.

"My job is operational control of the border; basically border security," Gilbert said. "I work closely with the Mexican consular's office, humanitarian groups; they want a safer border. You can't have one without the other. If the border is secure, it will be safe. If the border is safe, it will be secure."