IS BORDER AREA BECOMING A POLICE STATE?

The U.S. Border Patrol wants 1,267 miles of roads and 90 miles of fences built along the Texas-Mexico border and wants to outfit the zone with surveillance cameras and enough lights to make South Texas visible from space.

Wait a minute. We've been "getting tough" on drugs and undocumented immigrants and the people who smuggle them since the 1980s.

We have tripled the Border Patrol ranks in the last seven years, and dramatically expanded every other police agency that operates along our southern border.

And it hasn't made a dent in controlling any of these problems.

One nameless border patrol officer confided: "We can catch as many illegals and traffickers as we want, and they just keep on coming."

I remember family trips to border cities fondly. As a kid in Robstown in the 1950s, every few months we would pile into the car and drive to Reynosa or Nuevo Laredo to buy Mexican products not available here.

Crossing back to the U.S. side, agents would check our nationality and purchases. And on the drive back, we would occasionally be flagged over to the shoulder by a couple of green-suited agents who had parked along the highway to make immigration inquiries.

I remember some of the older folks musing about the days prior to 1924 when the only "control" on cross-border trips was the nickel toll charged to cross the bridge.

In 1924, the border was regulated and the first 450 Border Patrol officers were commissioned.

The agency has been growing ever since.

By the 1970s, the Border Patrol's presence was commonplace. And by the 1980s, the occasional temporary checkpoints made way to permanent emplacements -- with sheds to shield the agents from the relentless sun -- on all the major highways.

Since 1993, the Border Patrol has had problems recruiting enough agents to fulfill congressional mandates for expanding this regional police force, and almost all of the new hires have been concentrated on the Mexican border.

On a recent drive through several small border-area towns, it was impossible to ignore the Border Patrol's growth.

Huge buildings have replaced the agents' three- and four-room offices, and alongside the new fortress-like structures are fenced-in parking lots packed with dozens of vehicles at almost any hour.

What is disturbing, though, is that to fight drugs and undocumented immigration, Congress and the federal courts also broadened the agents' latitude for stopping and searching people.

While officers in most places must have consent, a warrant or "reasonable cause" to stop and search someone, officers along the border need only a "reasonable suspicion" to search, a standard that is much more lax with potential for abuse.

And it isn't only undocumented immigrants or dope that is imperiled. Now, any large amounts of cash, regardless of how guiltless the carrier might be, can be seized.

Not surprisingly, complaints are mounting from innocent folks who claim they were stopped by agents who could not articulate reasonable suspicions for their actions.

David Almaraz, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice in Laredo, worries that "the drug war has slowly been eroding the Bill of Rights (and has created) the semi-police state we live in today."