Washington, May. 12 (UPI) — The nation's top border official reacted cautiously Thursday to the suggestion that volunteers could help patrol the porous frontier with Mexico.

Robert Bonner, the commissioner of customs and border protection at the Department of Homeland Security testified before a House committee alongside Chris Simcox, the organizer of the self-styled Minutemen protest -- a month long exercise where volunteers patrolled the Arizona border to report illegal crossers to authorities.

"We value citizen help," Bonner told a hearing of the powerful House Government Reform Committee, "we value those eyes and ears."

But he said that the Minutemen patrols might not be the most effective way to use volunteers. "Is there a way to let's say better and more effectively harness (that energy)," he asked.

Earlier this week, Bonner's former boss, ex-Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, expressed similar doubts.

"If they want to volunteer, they should go into offices and do the paperwork and let the professionals do the work at the border," he told United Press International

Simcox -- comparing his group to the Civil Defense movement of the World War II era -- told the committee that 15,000 people had volunteered for future citizen patrols along the Mexican border.

U.S. Border Patrol agents have been ordered not to arrest illegal aliens along the section of the Arizona border where protesters patrolled last month because an increase in apprehensions there would prove the effectiveness of Minuteman volunteers, The Washington Times has learned.

More than a dozen agents, all of whom asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, said orders relayed by Border Patrol supervisors at the Naco, Ariz., station made it clear that arrests were "not to go up" along the 23-mile section of border that the volunteers monitored to protest illegal immigration.

"It was clear to everyone here what was being said and why," said one veteran agent. "The apprehensions were not to increase after the Minuteman volunteers left. It was as simple as that."

Another agent said the Naco supervisors "were clear in their intention" to keep new arrests to an "absolute minimum" to offset the effect of the Minuteman vigil, adding that patrols along the border have been severely limited...

...Area residents, in a half-page ad in the Sunday edition of the Sierra Vista Herald, told the volunteers: "Thanks for doing what our government won't -- close the border to illegal aliens. It was the quietest month we've had in many years ... You made us feel safe because the border was closed."