More illegal immigrants were apprehended in Arizona during the fiscal year than were caught in California, New Mexico and Texas combined, according to the latest statistics released by the U.S. Border Patrol.

While that distinction is a first for the state, the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector has led the nation in apprehensions for the past seven years.

Since 1994, the share of apprehensions along the Mexican border reported in the Tucson sector has grown from 14 per cent to more than 43 per cent, garnering national attention for rising death tolls, volunteer civilian border patrols and a recent ballot initiative aimed at illegal immigrants.

Along the entire Arizona border, the share has grown from 16 per cent to 52 per cent.

While the Border Patrol says it has taken the same approach in Arizona as in California and Texas, the results have been markedly different. In the years since the agency launched operations around San Diego and El Paso and in southern Texas, apprehensions in those sectors have fallen a combined 64 per cent.

The agency believes proof of success lies in fewer apprehensions, which indicates fewer people are trying to cross the border.

The newly released figures have prompted some who worked for a more secure border to ask why strategies that are successful elsewhere have not worked along Arizona’s border.

“It’s time they got that job done,” said Johnny Williams, a longtime Border Patrol agent who oversaw the Western region of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1998 to 2002.

Andy Adame, spokesman for the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, points to several geographical obstacles in Arizona that aren’t necessarily found in other places.

Nearly 75 per cent of land abutting the border in the Tucson sector has access restrictions. Some areas — the Tohono O’odham Nation, and park and wildlife refuges — can only be reached by foot or horseback.

And an extensive road network in northern Mexico and southern Arizona provide relatively easy paths to and away from the border. Immigration authorities also say Phoenix, Tucson and even Las Vegas serve as convenient transportation hubs for sending migrants around the country.

Mr. Adame said the Tucson sector has indefinitely extended an initiative started last June that added Black Hawk helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles and increased the number of agents to more than 2,000.

“Although we don’t have control of it yet,” he said, “we’re definitely moving toward that goal.” —