While Mexicans who cross illegally are eligible for so-called voluntary departure -- where they agree to avoid deportation by leaving the United States without asserting any right to stay -- citizens of other countries must be granted an immigration hearing within 90 days before they can be deported.

With only 2,500 detention spaces available, the Department of Homeland Security's Border Patrol is forced to release most non-Mexicans pending their deportation hearings. Approximately 70 percent of the 94,000 non-Mexicans caught in the first eight months of this year failed to appear for their deportation hearing, said Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar before a Senate hearing Tuesday.

"It is not something that we prefer to do," Aguilar said. "The reason these people are released on their own recognizance is because we have nowhere to put them."

"Our immigration and border security system is badly broken and has suffered from years of neglect," said Arizona Republican Sen. John Kyl, chairman of the Senate immigration subcommittee. "This leaves our borders unprotected, threatens our national security, and makes a mockery of the rule of law. We cannot continue to ignore our border security in a post-9/11 world."

FBI Director Robert Mueller recently told a House Appropriations Committee hearing he was aware that individuals from countries where al-Qaeda was known to operate had entered the United States under false identities.

"Many of these aliens, incidentally, are not from Mexico, but they come from countries all over the world, usually flying into Mexico and then sneaking across the border on foot," said Kyl. "We do not even know who many of them are. We do not know whether they intend to simply find work or whether they plan to engage in acts of terror in the United States or are here to commit crimes in our society."

Of particular concern are the non-Mexicans from "countries of interest," where al-Qaida or other terrorists are thought active such as Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia.

To help streamline the process, the Department of Homeland Security is expanding the use of so-called expedited removal proceedings for non-Mexicans in the only two border sectors of out twenty which offer such proceedings: Tucson and Laredo.

Under the process, illegal entrants not from Mexico or Canada caught within 100 miles of the border who have been in the United States less than 14 days are flown home without first appearing before a judge.

Wesley Lee, the acting director of detention and removal for the department's Immigration and Customs Enforcement directorate, wants to expand expedited removal to all sectors along the Mexican border as a short term solution.

U.S. authorities announced yesterday the revival of the so-called interior repatriation program that will fly as many as 300 Mexican illegals per day to Mexico City -- as opposed to bussing them over the border where they can immediately try against to cross.

Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn and Kyl are co-sponsoring a bill mandating a five billion dollar program that would double the size of the Border Patrol over the next five years, adding 10,000 agents.

Another $500 million would be spent annually by the Department of Homeland Security to improve security along Mexico and Canada's borders under the proposal.

The Kyl-Cornyn bill is more conservative than another plan put forward by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz. and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., which includes a guest worker program and a path to legality for illegals already in the United States