by Stefan Stanford, All News Pipeline:

I entered duty with the U.S. Border Patrol in 1995, back when there were only 5,000 people (Agents and support personnel) in all of the USBP. I was the Director of the Aircraft Maintenance Facility in Del Rio, Texas in the Del Rio Border Patrol Sector.

My guys maintained Piper Super Cubs and Aerospatiale A-Star AS-350 helicopters for our cadre of pilots. Back then, the Chief Pilot and I collected daily Air Operations performance data. The pilots annotated (after flight) on their flight logs how many aerial-assisted apprehensions (APPs) they performed as well as the number of GOT AWAYs pilots counted from the air. Such as, Border Patrol Agents performing flying duties would detect and follow tracks in the desert, (called “cutting sign”) and when those tracks stopped or disappeared, such as at a paved road where a groups of illegal aliens were picked up, those tracks left in the desert were counted as GOT AWAYs.