‘Surplus’ agents should staff kiosks at border

Re “San Diego’s new Border Patrol chief says agents will work more in county’s interior” (Dec. 5): I see that the new Border Patrol chief, Justin De La Torre, is planning to move agents inland. His reason is that immigrant crossings are now relatively low.

I suggest that he also put some of his surplus agents in the mostly vacant kiosks where agents check border crossers. Each kiosk cost well over $1 million to construct and contains expensive, high-tech equipment. There can now be no logical reason not to staff them all, 24/7, to greatly speed up the unnecessarily long wait at our border, which every day wastes thousands of hours of honest people’s time and pollutes the environment.

— Hal Valderhaug, La Mesa