PORT ANGELES — Plans for a new Border Patrol headquarters on the North Olympic Peninsula will be delayed for the foreseeable future and could inhibit further efforts at expanding enforcement of immigration laws, Border Patrol and General Services Administration officials said this week.
“It’s on hold because of budgetary issues,” said Ross Buffington, a spokesman for the General Services Administration’s Seattle office.
The agency is in charge of buying, leasing and managing property for federal agencies.
“The bottom line on the project is it’s on hold,” Border Patrol spokesman Doy Noblitt said Tuesday.
The Border Patrol headquarters would be wholly distinct from the Office of Air and Marine Operations, which is leasing a 6,028-square-foot Port of Port Angeles building in the Airport Industrial Park near William R. Fairchild International Airport. Port commissioners approved the lease June 22.
The Border Patrol and Office of Air and Marine Operations are separately managed but operate under the aegis of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which in turn is overseen by the federal Department of Homeland Security.
Border Patrol headquarters
The General Services Administration had intended to lease property in the Port Angeles area for a Border Patrol headquarters for Clallam and Jefferson counties to accommodate the agency’s stepped-up enforcement of immigration laws.
Enforcement activities have increased over the last 10 months, while the number of Border Patrol agents has expanded from four to the current 24 over the last two years.
“We haven’t been able to find space to meet our requirements,” Buffington said.
“In this case, what happened was that we have not been able to find a market solution that will fit the requirements. We are looking at the budget, and that’s where we are.
“We are waiting for further direction at the national level at the General Services Administration and Customs and Border Protection. We’ll have to go back to the drawing board and come up with another plan.”
Buffington said GSA will seek an arrangement under which the agency would lease land and have a facility built with a lease option on the building.
He would not say how much is budgeted for the project.
“GSA would not release information about how much it’s planning to spend on a lease action in advance of going on the market and finding what is available on the market,” Buffington said.
“We don’t want to give out information that might tell prospective lessors what we intend to spend.”
More like a police station
Border Patrol officials liken the planned facility to a police station more than a detention center.
It would include offices, a processing room and holding cells for suspects who would be transferred to a detention center in Tacoma after being processed.
The new facility also would include security fencing and an enclosed sally port for safely transferring suspects from agency vehicles to inside the headquarters. Ideally, it would be in a more remote area than downtown Port Angeles, said Jason Carroll, assistant Border Patrol agent in charge in Port Angeles.
The Border Patrol headquarters is housed on the second floor and basement of the Richard B. Anderson Federal Building at 138 W. First St. in downtown Port Angeles.
Cells at headquarters
It includes two adjacent open-air grated cells in a room next to the processing area.
They measure 6-by-8-feet each and could hold up to six people for up to 72 hours, although it would be unusual for the cells to house that many suspects and to hold anyone that long, Carroll said Tuesday during a tour of the Border Patrol facilities.
“If they were in here more than 12 hours, I would be standing here saying, get them out of here,” Carroll said as he stood next to the cells.
Unrelated men, women and children are separated, and if men are in one cell and women are in the other, an unrelated juvenile “would probably be in my office on my computer,” Carroll said.
“That’s the depth of our detention capability,” he said.
Carroll said the delay in getting a new headquarters may affect further growth in Border Patrol staff, contrary to a sign on the building’s first floor that urged applicants to apply for Border Patrol jobs.
“When you look at it, you can throw overtime at the problem, do things like that,” Carroll said.
“That’s how you deal with [the delay] as far as impact.”
Colin Sheldon, legislative assistant to U.S. Rep Norm Dicks, D-Belfair, who represents Clallam and Jefferson counties, said Tuesday that the Border Patrol “remains committed to a facility in the Port Angeles area.”
The GSA and Customs and Border Patrol “indicated they still intend to move forward; they just have to look at the money available and what other options are available,” Sheldon said.
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Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
