Opportunity awaits at the border
U.S. Customs and Border Protection wants to fill 6,000 jobs.
BOARDMAN — Ah, memories of a job well-done.
Remember the first time you fixed a paper jam in the copier all by yourself?
Yes, well — some of us have more interesting jobs than others.
Ask senior border patrol agent Luis Dominguez for his most outstanding career memory, for example. He’ll tell you: It was his first drug bust.
Oh sure, as a border patrol agent, you’ll arrest a single illegal immigrant trying to cross from Mexico into El Paso, Texas, maybe once a day. It gets to be routine stuff.
Ah, but that drug bust. That got Dominguez’s adrenaline going.
He’d been with U.S. Customs and Border Protection for three years, stationed in the agency’s El Paso sector in West Texas. One day, agents were notified there was a group of illegal immigrants in the drainage tunnels that snake under El Paso to carry rainwater to the Rio Grande.
Agents spread out to various sections of the city, where they listened at manholes for the group. Dominguez heard them first. He called for backup, and they were caught — six men who were smuggling marijuana.
“You’re excited,” he said. “You think, ‘I’m the one who found the group.’”
Dominguez, 37, left his job as a juvenile probation officer in Midland, Texas, seven years ago and went for the border. Now, he’s working to recruit others to the job.
He and several other agents were in Boardman on Saturday at a recruiting drive that brought more than 150 applicants to the Holiday Inn on South Avenue. The drive was in seven metropolitan areas throughout the state for the agency that is, Dominguez said, growing all the time.
There are about 15,000 agents working the southwestern border with Mexico and the northern border with Canada.
The agency plans to hire 6,000 new agents by the end of this year.
Applicants were given an orientation — they learned about a day in the life of a border patrol agent. They took a sample written test, then went online to select a date and location for a larger written test, said Joseph Battaglia, a national recruitment coordinator in the agency’s west region.
Applicants will be tested May 5, 15 and 29 on logical reasoning; on how well they know Spanish, or at least, how easily they could learn it; and on their backgrounds.
If applicants pass the written test, they go before three agents for interviews.
Then, it will be on to a medical exam, physical fitness test and drug test.
The whole process can take from three months to a year, Battaglia said.
If you missed the drive but want to apply, you can still do so, he said. Apply online at www.BorderPatrol.gov, and enter the recruiting code OHIO. You can also call (877) 277-9527 for help.
Once new recruits are accepted, they go to 95 days of training in Artesia, N.M.
All new agents start out in the southwest — in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, said Battaglia, but there are opportunities later to go north to work along the Canadian border.
Since he’s originally from Texas, Dominguez likes it in El Paso. He likes the heat. He has no desire to move north.
He feels lucky enough to be stationed in a metro area, but other agents may find themselves in the desert on ATVs or on horseback. Agents who are recruited from northern states, he said, might feel more at home on the Canadian border.
Josh Cunningham, 24, of New Middletown, knows he would. In the hotel parking lot after leaving the recruiting drive, he talked wistfully of Montana.
“Ever seen pictures of it?” he said. “All the hunting you can handle. All the fishing you can handle. All the nobody-being-around-you you can handle.”
Cunningham, who works in a shop that makes patterns for foundries, said that if there are opportunities in the north, he will apply. “Right now, they all start down south.”
Border patrol agents serve for 20 years before they’re eligible to retire. That’s why the age cutoff for applying is 39, Battaglia said. Retirement is mandatory at 60.
The agency said it pays recruits between $36,000 and $46,000 in their first year. They can earn up to $70,000 a year within three years.
“It’s a big deal, them coming here,” Cunningham said. “There’s so much unemployment out here.”