Border Crossing Rules To Tighten

Americans Will Be Required To Show Passports To Re-Enter U.S.

(CBS/AP) 
Americans returning from Mexico, Panama or Bermuda currently need only a government-issued photo identification card plus proof of U.S. citizenship like an original birth or naturalization certificate, according to the State Department's Web site.

A State Department official said the implementation of the law will be done in three phases, beginning the end of this year, reports CBS News' Charles Wolfson. The new rules, to be completed by Jan. 1, 2008, were called for in intelligence legislation approved last year by Congress.

Safeguarding U.S. borders are a top concern of U.S. intelligence and security officials. The concern increased after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon.

The travel industry has raised concerns that the changes might hamper tourism, one official said.

The announcement follows a three-way summit last month that President Bush held with Prime Minister Paul Martin of Canada and President Vicente Fox of Mexico.

Speaking at Baylor University at Waco, Tex., Mr. Bush said border controls with Mexico had to be tightened to make sure that terrorists, drug runners, gun runners and smugglers do not enter the United States.

Besides a passport, re-entering Americans could use another approved travel document like frequent travel cards, which are issued to some people who travel often between the U.S. and Mexico. These cards typically are used to avoid long border-crossing lines.

But in most cases, only passports will do, another U.S. official said.

The new system will deal first with the Caribbean, then Mexico and Canada. It will start at airports and subsequently spread to land crossings, said an official speaking on condition of anonymity.

U.S. inspectors will bear less of a burden with the changes because they won't have to sift through different kinds of travel documents, the officials said.

Volunteers for the Minuteman Project had spent Monday expanding their line southeast of this border community. They gathered in groups of three or four spaced out about every quarter-mile. Some sat in lawn chairs, others stood scanning the desert with binoculars.

Alma Barth, a spokeswoman for the Cochise County sheriff's department, where the volunteers are focusing their efforts, said it had been "very quiet, which is a good thing for us."

Dave Carpinello, a Denver investment banker who had a pistol on his hip and wore a T-shirt reading "I defended the border," said he was here out of concern that potential terrorists could penetrate the border.

"For me, it's not so much concern for the illegal immigration," said Carpinello, who spent part of the weekend in the desert. "Anyone and their mother could fly to Mexico and walk right over here. That's a scary thought."

"Alongside the citizen action on the Arizona border, the new enforcement policies will require the administration to refocus on Mexico because of the strategic petroleum and financial ties that bind the U.S. and Mexico, in order to fully regain control of an area that is becoming a war zone," says Falk.

Border patrol officials said the volunteers have been peaceful but have still been disrupting U.S. Border Patrol operations by unwittingly tripping sensors that alert agents to possible intruders. Agents have to respond to the false alarms, which pulls them off their normal patrols, said Andy Adame, a patrol spokesman.

Organizers said they had 200 volunteers out Monday. There was no way to verify the count independently since authorities aren't keeping track of the numbers.

The idea, according to project organizers, is partly to draw attention to problems on the Arizona-Mexico border, considered the most vulnerable stretch of the 2,000-mile southern border. Of the 1.1 million illegal immigrants caught by the Border Patrol last year, 51 percent crossed into the country at Arizona.

Things were quiet where Carpinello was stationed. He saw a few people across the border, but no one came where he was located on Monday.

"No one's crossing and that was the goal, to show the government that if we have people out here no one's going to cross," said Chris Simcox, Minuteman field operations director.