President highlights reforms that his budget underfunded

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Ending the catch-and-release policy for illegal aliens, as President Bush called for yesterday, will take years and far more than the current number of detention beds -- something Mr. Bush himself underfunded in his most recent budget to Congress.

The president, speaking in Tucson, Ariz., followed the lead of congressional Republicans who have told him that border security must be part of any immigration bill.

Mr. Bush also took credit for increases in border and interior enforcement spending, pitched his plan for future foreign workers and endorsed changing laws to allow for quicker deportation of some illegal aliens.

"I think the White House's view on this rhetorically at least has evolved," said Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who has introduced a comprehensive immigration bill that resembles Mr. Bush's principles. "He brought all the components together, but the most important thing is they were built on the cornerstone of security, which is the message they've been receiving and we've all been receiving around the country."

But critics of Mr. Bush's immigration policy said he hasn't put any muscle behind the initiatives he touted.

"Why now? We've had five years," said Steven A. Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies. "Why has it taken so long to get to an issue like this? And when he addresses it, he talks about things he himself doesn't support. He talks in vague generalities."

Mr. Bush said his administration has boosted U.S. Border Patrol agents and detention beds, which puts them on the way to ending the "catch-and-release" policy under which non-Mexican illegal aliens are processed and released into U.S. society on the usually false hope that they will return to be deported.

But Mr. Bush's budget submission in February called for just 210 more agents and fewer than 2,000 new detention beds -- each amount less than a quarter of the totals that Congress and Mr. Bush agreed to just two months earlier.

Congress was able to find money in two spending bills for 1,500 agents this fiscal year, bringing the total authorized to about 12,500, but was only able to fund 2,000 more detention beds, bringing the number to 20,000.

"He can't claim credit for increasing the number of Border Patrol agents," said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council. "This administration resisted it at every bend in the road and then finally went along with it when Congress passed it."