The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced that it will contract Boeing Co. to create a high-tech border surveillance system across the U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada borders. The project, expected to cost more than $2 billion over the next three to six years, will integrate motion sensors, cameras, and an estimated 1,800 high-tech towers to feed live information to Border Patrol agents.
Called the Secure Border Initiative Network (SBInet), the project "will integrate the latest technology and infrastructure to interdict illegal immigration and stop threats attempting to cross borders," said DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff in a press release.
The project will focus on the north and south U.S. borders, attempting to keep out both illegal immigrants and terrorists. Yet not every expert thinks that, at a potential cost of over a billion dollars, the U.S.-Canada border is worth focusing on.
"Trying to secure the American-Canadian border is ridiculous. It's security against a threat that doesn't exist," said Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation Jim Carafano. "The way to keep out terrorists and criminals that come from Canada to the United States is to keep terrorists and criminals out of Canada."
Terrorism vs. Illegal Immigration
As far as preventing illegal immigration is concerned, approximately one million people are apprehended every year trying to illegally cross the Mexican border, but only about ten thousand, or one percent as many, are apprehended at the Canadian border. Some experts say this should lead the U.S. to focus the vast majority of its efforts down south.
"Spending money on the northern border is just the dumbest thing ever ... It's all about politics; it's nothing about real security needs," said Carafano, noting that Congressional elections are coming up in November, and border security is a popular political issue.
He says he doesn't think that border security and terrorism are strongly related, either, since most terrorists caught in the U.S. came in through legal points of entry. In fact, about half of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. came in legally, too, simply using fraudulent documents or overstaying visas.
Many Democrats in Congress have expressed concern about the plan from another angle.
"The DHS has already had two of these similar electronic surveillance types of programs that have been miserable failures," said Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) spokesman Drew Hammill.
Since 1998, the DHS and the Immigration and Naturalization Service have spent $429 million on cameras and remote surveillance at the border. But, reported the Inspector General last December, almost half of the cameras were never installed and the vast majority of sensor alerts were false alarms, with only one percent leading to actual arrests.
"The issue really is," said Hammill, "does DHS have the acquisition ability, the strategic planning, and the ability to implement these kinds of security initiatives? Because we've seen from them on these other projects, poor strategic planning, inappropriate acquisitions, and spotty implementation."
Promises from Higher Ups
Boeing, the largest manufacturer of commercial jetliners and military aircraft, beat out several other contractors in a final bid last month, where companies such as Northrop Grumman Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp. each came up with their own ideas on how to secure the 6,000 miles of borders.
Boeing had said that, if selected, they would be able to install sensors and radar along the borders within three years; the DHS had stated they wanted to keep the timeline under four years.
Boeing's proposal focuses on adapting currently existing military technology that has been used successfully on the battlefield. For instance, they suggest a series of tower-mounted heat and motion detectors, as well as ground-based sensors that have been used in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Boeing has been initially awarded a three-year contract with up to three possible one-year extensions. The DHS has not revealed the total cost of the project (estimated by industry officials at $2.5 billion, according to CanWest News Service), nor precisely where and when each border security installment will take place. In a press release issued last week, however, it said that the first piece of the contract will grant Boeing $67 million for a pilot project along a 28-mile stretch of the border near Tucson, AZ.
From there, the project is set to expand along other parts of the southwest border, then possibly to the borders with British Columbia and Ontario, and eventually along the entire land borders between the U.S. and its two neighbors.
It does not address protecting the thousands of miles of coastal borders or the dozens of ports of entry.
The program has so far received no official protest from the Canadian government, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were not able to give comment on the issue at the time of interview, as they said they had not been working with the Department of Homeland Security on it, anyway.
DHS Secretary Chertoff has promised to keep a close eye on the project and monitor Boeing Co.'s progress.
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