PORT ANGELES — Most people the U.S. Border Patrol pulls over at checkpoints on the North Olympic Peninsula aren’t Hispanic, the head of the agency’s Port Angeles station said Tuesday.
While admitting “racial profiling has always been a big issue,” Agent Christopher Dyer said, only 20 percent of people sent to “secondary inspection” are Hispanic.
Secondary inspection, he said, involves further questions for people agents choose to investigate more closely.
That still is roughly four times the ratio of Hispanics to non-Hispanics in Clallam County, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures released in August, and roughly 10 times the ratio in Jefferson County.
“Let’s face it,” Dyer told members of the Port Angeles Business Association, “the biggest number of our apprehensions [nationwide] are of Hispanic descent.”
In a briefing last week, officials said that since stepping up roadblocks on the North Olympic Peninsula in August, the Border Patrol has made 25 arrests, most for illegal immigration.
