Immigration Politics and the Border Crackdown: US border spiraling out of control? Hardly, top border official says.

US border spiraling out of control? Hardly, top border official says. - CSMonitor.com: "The Obama administration is going on the offensive to counter public perception that the Southwest border is out of control.

By several important measures, the US-Mexico border is becoming significantly more secure, not less, said US Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Alan Bersin at a news conference here Tuesday.

Border patrol arrests dropped from 616,000 to 212,000 between 2000 and 2010, and the number of border patrol agents on the Southwest frontier– 20,700 – is more than double what it was in 2004, he said. Moreover, Phoenix, San Diego, and El Paso, Texas, are among the safest cities in the country, he added.

The event marked an attempt to recast the narrative that dominates discussions about the border here, where fears about rampant illegal immigration and Mexico's drug war spilling into the US loom large....

On Tuesday, Mr. Bersin was essentially trying to offer the Obama administration's version of setting the record straight – a difficult proposition, experts say.

“Impressions are often not founded in fact, so I’m not sure that just with facts the federal government can make change,” says David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. “I think it’s going to come down to changing the discourse on all sides of this debate.”"