Border technology remains flawed

Arizona Republic June 3, 2013 by Bob Ortega UCSON - A long, sharp, high-pitched beep sounds every 30 or 40 seconds at the Border Patrol’s windowless sector-control room. Agents here monitor a vast array of video screens and sensors linked to cameras, radar and other surveillance equipment along 262 miles of the Arizona-Mexico border — including hundreds of ground sensors that beep loudly whenever one detects something. That something might be a drug smuggler or a migrant — but far, far more often, it’s a cow, or the wind, or some other false alarm, which may be why the agents seem to pay these constant beeps little mind. To complement the 651 miles of barriers along the U.S.-Mexican border, Customs and Border Protection deploys drones, tethered radar blimps, P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft, thermal-imaging devices, towers with day and night video cameras, ground surveillance radar and much more. But, as the ceaseless beeping of the sensor alarms illustrates, many pieces of that technology are flawed: Some produce frequent false alarms, some suffer detection failures or leave gaps in coverage. Then, too, CBP — despite spending more than $106 billion over the past five years militarizing and securing the border — struggles to mesh these pieces smoothly together so it can make good use of the data they provide. The flaws, the gaps and the challenges in analyzing the data have left CBP, of which the Border Patrol is a part, unable to answer such seemingly basic questions as how well all of this technology works and how many of the people and how much of the drugs coming across the border make it through. Many border-security analysts see that lack of answers as problematic, given current plans in Congress. The comprehensive immigration-reform bill being debated in the Senate would boost border-security spending by as much as $6.5 billion over the next five years. That would roughly quadruple the more than $2 billion in Customs and Border Protection’s existing budget plans for more technology and to fix what’s in place. In a nutshell, the bill would require the Border Patrol to build more fencing, more stations and more remote “forward-operating bases” near the border; to increase surveillance to cover the entire border 24 hours a day, seven days a week; to deploy more planes, helicopters and drones; to increase horse patrols; and to improve radio equipment and communication with other federal, state and local law enforcement. The bill also mandates hiring another 3,500 CBP officers (who work at ports of entry, versus Border Patrol agents, who work the rest of the border), a 16-percent increase, among other provisions. And it would require the Border Patrol to apprehend or turn back 90 percent of would-be border crossers. Within Congress, tighter border security has been treated as a precondition for any reform of immigration policy, but many analysts and academics who study the border express doubts about the need for more fences, agents and surveillance. The number of Border Patrol agents nearly doubled over the last seven fiscal years, to 21,394. But over that time period, the number of migrants heading north plunged — mostly because of the U.S. economic downturn, most analysts say, but also in part because of the increasing dangers of going north as more fences and surveillance pushed crossers into more remote areas. Border Patrol apprehensions fell 69 percent over those years, from nearly 1.2 million to fewer than 365,000. In 2005, Border Patrol agents apprehended an average of 106 people a year apiece. Last year, each agent apprehended an average of 17 people, or about one person every three weeks. In the Tucson Sector, each agent averaged 28 apprehensions a year, or about one every 13 days. In Yuma, each agent averaged one every two months. In the El Paso Sector, the least busy, each agent averaged 3.5 apprehensions a year. “On a lot of parts of the border, it’s gotten to the point that every person we put out there makes less and less of an additional difference,” said Eric Olson, associate director of the Latin American program at the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C.-based think tank that seeks to connect academic research to public-policy discussion. Complicating this picture is the fact that over the six months ending in March, Border Patrol apprehensions along the Southwest border climbed 13 percent from a year earlier, to just over 189,000. Most of that increase is happening in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. Even with this rebound, apprehension numbers over that period are still the third lowest since 1972, above only last year and the year before. Looking at the current state of border security, most analysts agree on some needs — such as improving radio communications — but some say CBP really should focus on what it has in hand. “It’s not just putting a surveillance camera somewhere and you’re done; the challenge is integrating the data into Border Patrol operations. ... The Department of Homeland Security (which includes CBP) needs to step back ... and integrate the technology they have now before they get any new technology,” said James Lewis, director of the technology and public-policy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a conservative D.C. foreign-policy think tank focused on political, economic and security issues. Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said what is “really needed is a serious management effort to see what works and what doesn’t.” The lack of such an assessment “is at some level an irresponsible use of taxpayer dollars, given that we spend $18 billion a year on immigration enforcement,” added Alden, one of the authors of a recent study on the effectiveness of border enforcement. U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, one of the “Gang of Eight” promoting immigration reform in Washington along with Arizona’s other Republican senator, John McCain, said Saturday that the issues of added border security and technology snafus have been thoroughly discussed. “We believe the situation clearly is better on the border than in times past; the frustration with all of us is with conflicting information out of DHS. Within the same report, they’ll use increased apprehensions to signal success, and decreased apprehensions to signal success,” Flake said. “We haven’t had a comprehensive plan by the Border Patrol to reach certain metrics of effectiveness. We did come to the conclusion that more barriers in certain places, more manpower where they need it and more technology would help ... but in combination with employer enforcement, and a legal framework for people to come in.” The Republic made several requests to interview Mark Borkowski, the CPB’s assistant commissioner in charge of technology and acquisition. DHS and CPB did not make him or other agency officials available. Faulty ground sensors The ground sensors offer one example of the challenge of making sure technology works properly. About 13,400 have been deployed piecemeal along the border over several decades. They are typically placed along known or suspected migrant or smuggler routes, and may detect vibrations (for foot traffic), metal (for vehicles) or have acoustic or infrared sensors. Sensors from the Vietnam War era remain in use. A possible false alarm from a ground sensor, and faulty radio communications, may have contributed to the death of Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Ivie in a friendly-fire incident Oct. 2. As is often the case with sensor alarms, agents didn’t detect anyone but each other when they arrived. Ivie, responding separately, apparently mistook the other agents for smugglers and opened fire. One of the agents shot and killed him. But false alarms are nothing new. In 2005, Homeland Security’s inspector general reported that only 4 percent of the alarm signals detected migrants or smugglers (34 percent were confirmed false alarms, 62 percent couldn’t be determined). The sensors, which run on batteries, frequently fail because of corrosion or bugs eating through wires. They were supposed to be replaced as part of the $1.1 billion Secure Border Initiative, a massive 2006 effort to boost security at the border. But most of the money was spent on a problematic network of high-tech towers, known as SBInet. The towers, to be equipped with video and infrared cameras and radar, were to cover the whole border. By the time Homeland Security pulled the plug in 2010, after a host of problems, the contractor, Boeing, had completed only 15 towers covering a 72-mile stretch of Arizona’s border. Most of the old ground sensors — with their false-alarm problems — remained. In January 2011, Homeland Security launched another initiative, the Arizona Border Surveillance Technology Plan. That plan called for spending $1.5 billion over 10 years to integrate the SBInet towers, build new camera towers, buy trucks loaded with surveillance gear — and replace 525 ground sensors in Arizona with more sophisticated military models. The military sensors use a combination of technologies that can distinguish more accurately between, say, a four-legged coyote and the two-legged kind, and can even detect the direction of travel. But CBP confirmed this past week that — eight years after the problems were identified — the sensors still had not been replaced. However, under the new technology plan, Arizona agents have received: Twenty-three hand-held thermal-imaging devices (like night-vision binoculars). Two “scope trucks” – modified Ford 150 4x4 trucks with day and night cameras mounted on retractable poles. Twelve “agent portable surveillance systems,” which include radar, video and infrared video sensors and can be carried in a box and set up on tripods. Drone problems Drones, too, have proven problematic. So far, CBP has acquired 10 drones, all versions of the Predator B made by General Atomics, for about $18 million apiece. CBP’s unarmed drones carry radar, video and infrared sensors. Theoretically, the drones can fly for up to 20 hours at a time. But last year, according to CBP, the drones flew an average of 94 minutes a day. The main problem: CBP spent so much of its budget buying the drones that it hadn’t set aside enough to operate them. “They’re on the ground most of the time for lack of funding,” said Adam Isacson, a regional security-policy analyst for the Washington Office on Latin America, a human-rights organization that studies the effects of U.S. policies on Latin America. “They cost $3,234 an hour to operate. They haven’t had the budget for maintenance or crews.” Last year, Homeland Security’s inspector general found that, because of poor planning, CBP not only flew the drones less than one-third the number of planned hours in 2011, but also had to use $25 million from other budgets pay for the hours the drones did fly. CBP also didn’t have enough operational support equipment at the airfields where the drones are based, and didn’t prioritize missions effectively, the inspector general found — all findings with which CBP concurred. Flight hours last year rose 30 percent from the year before, to 5,700, but were still well below half the target hours. Budget cuts this year because of the congressional sequester are likely to further limit flight hours, Isacson said. The drones are sensitive to high winds and thunderstorms. They face Federal Aviation Administration flight restrictions because they are less able than manned aircraft to detect other aircraft and avoid collisions. And their use raises privacy concerns. At a Senate hearing in March, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., cited reports that “DHS has customized its drone fleet to carry out domestic surveillance missions such as identifying civilians carrying guns ...” that fly in the face of civil liberties. “We must ask whether the trade-off in terms of border security is worth the privacy sacrifice.” But CBP officials have said they believe FAA concerns and other issues can be addressed, and that drones can help increase surveillance wherever it’s most needed. More coordination In practice, every piece of technology at the border has limitations: Eight aerostats, or tethered radar blimps, that CBP is taking over from the military, can’t be flown in high winds, and the line-of-sight radar makes them less effective in rugged, mountainous areas, which is much of the Tucson Sector. In May 2011, an aerostat crashed in a Sierra Vista neighborhood after coming loose in 50-mile-an-hour wind gusts. CBP limits the use of its 16 Blackhawk helicopters because the high rate at which they guzzle fuel makes them very expensive to operate, according to pilots; and CBP budget documents confirm plans to temporarily ground nine of the 16 Blackhawks next year pending enough money for renovations. The 16 workhorse P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft are, on average, 42 years old. Refurbishing costs $28 million apiece. But the bigger issue is a lack of coordination in fitting all of the pieces together and making effective use of the data they provide, said Rick Van Schoik, director of the North American Center for Transborder Studies at Arizona State University in Phoenix. “It’s still hard for CBP to figure out what we get out of all these billions that have been spent,” he said, which hampers planning for the future. Others argue that focus now should be on the ports of entry rather than on the vast spaces between them. By some estimates, as many as 40 percent of undocumented migrants are people who entered legally through ports of entry and overstayed their visas, said Eric Olson, at the Wilson Center. And, according to CBP data, most hard drugs are smuggled through the ports. “A strong case can be made now that the biggest risks are at the ports of entry,” Olson said. Olson supports the bill’s call to add 3,500 more CBP officers, which he said also potentially “has a huge benefit, which is making the ports more efficient and reducing wait times for business and for legal travelers between the U.S. and Mexico.” Outside analysts aren’t the only ones suggesting Congress reconsider its focus on more security. A May 3 Congressional Research Service study invited members of Congress to consider that “certain additional investments at the border may be met with diminishing returns.” Some lawmakers, the report said, “may question the concrete benefits of deploying more sophisticated surveillance systems across ... vast regions in which too few personnel are deployed to respond to the occasional illegal entry that may be detected.” For their part, Homeland Security, CBP and Border Patrol officials in recent months reiterated Secretary Janet Napolitano’s insistence that the border is more secure than ever before. And Assistant Commissioner Borkowski earlier this year made it clear CBP learned one lesson from its past struggles with technology: He said CBP won’t even consider buying technology unless it has been proven to work in the field. But Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., sees the push for border security as political. “Without it, you don’t have a path to citizenship or any real compromise” in the immigration bill, he said. “But if we’re going to put more resources on the border, we should modernize the ports of entry, to expedite trade and travel,” Grijalva said. More drones, towers and sensors “may have symbolic value. But it’s fighting a perception, rather than a reality.” http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20130524border-technology-flawed.html

U.S. Grows An Industrial Complex Along The Border

National Public Radio September 12, 2012 by Ted Robbins The United States' southern border bristles with technology and manpower designed to catch illegal immigrants and drug smugglers. Since 1986, the government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on fences, aircraft, detention centers and agents. But even as federal budgets shrink and illegal immigration ebbs, experts say that there's no end in sight for the growth of the border-industrial complex. A Growing Investment On The Border Stocked with equipment like Blackhawk helicopters — hundreds of aircraft fly daily missions — much of the southern border has grown into an industrial complex that is fed by the government and supplied by defense contractors and construction companies. The infrastructure includes a border fence that in some places has been built and rebuilt several times. And up to 25 miles north of the border, towers, sensors and permanent checkpoints spread across the landscape. The border-control efforts have spread even farther into the country, into cities where Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pursue illegal immigrants and visa violators. Nationally, it extends to roughly 250 immigrant detention centers. Some of those centers are run by the government, some by private prison corporations. The government spends an estimated $5 million each day to house detainees awaiting deportation. All of this effort takes manpower; roughly 80,000 federal employees work in immigration enforcement. "It is safe to say that there has been more money, manpower, infrastructure, technology, invested in the border-protection mission in the last three years than ever before," says Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Since the last comprehensive immigration reform was passed by Congress in 1986, creating this industrial complex focused on the southern border has been a bipartisan affair. And it really picked up after Sept. 11, 2001: Nearly every piece of security legislation since then has contained add-ons for immigration enforcement. If you add up the budgets of the responsible agencies since 1986, the bill is $219 billion in today's dollars — roughly the entire cost of the space shuttle program. Unlike the space shuttle program, though, there's no end in sight. The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Kentucky Republican Hal Rogers, agrees it's going to be hard to pull back spending. "It is a sort of a mini industrial complex syndrome that has set in there," he says. "And we're going to have to guard against it every step of the way." High-Tech Towers That Cover 53 Miles Arguably, there hasn't been much guarding so far. Take, for example, a tall steel tower teeming with devices in the desert southwest of Tucson. "This has sensor responders on it, as well as a communications package," says Border Patrol Agent Brent Cagen, "which is a radar, day and night cameras, infrared, laser technology." The tower is part of SBI-Net (the SBI stands for Secure Border Initiative), which was supposed to be a high-tech virtual fence across the entire 2,100-mile border with Mexico. Instead, the towers cover just 53 miles. Homeland Security pulled the plug on the project after five years and almost a billion dollars. Mark Borkowski, who's in charge of technology for Customs and Border Protection, started his job during the SBI-Net debacle. "Frankly, in my view it was a disaster," he says. "And I ended up, as it turns out, being the person who ended up having to try to manage our way through that disaster." Boeing Corp. built the towers for SBI-Net, but the system was ineffective. Some components weren't designed to work in the desert. "There were issues with heat," Borkowski says. "Sometimes it was just poor design of cabling." It was actually the third time this had happened with high-tech towers. In 1997, there was ISIS — the Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System. That was scrapped in 2003 because the technology didn't work. Then came America's Shield, also scrapped. The federal government hasn't given up. Right now, it's going over proposals to build hundreds of new towers. Many of the same defense contractors involved before have bid again: Raytheon, Lockheed and Boeing. Despite the problems, members of both parties insist the massive spending on the border buildup is working. "Immigration numbers down to 1971 levels; violent crime either down or flat; seizures of contraband up," says Napolitano, slapping the table in her office. "Those are material elements of proof, to show that we have got our arms around the border issue. And we are sustaining that." Demographics Of Immigration But there are also bigger forces at work: economics and demographics. For the last 30 years, Douglas Massey, a sociologist at Princeton University, has been studying Mexican immigration patterns. He says fewer people are crossing illegally because the American economy collapsed in 2008, taking away the job magnet pulling people here. And those who were already here stayed. "Unauthorized migrants, very rationally, stopped crossing the border," he says. Meanwhile, the economy has been improving in Mexico. And the birthrate there has fallen sharply. Fewer working-age people are available to come here and fewer need to. "Personally I think the big boom in Mexican migration is now over," Massey concludes. If that's true — and a number of experts think it may be — the U.S. is at a crossroads on border spending and strategy. "DHS is now dealing with the same challenge the entire government's facing, and that's the realization that our budget is hemorrhaging from red ink," Rogers says. "And we've got to cut spending before it's too late." For the first time in its history, the Department of Homeland Security will get less money in its upcoming budget than it did the year before. But Arizona Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva says there's a lot of pressure from Congress and lobbyists to maintain, and even move forward, with programs. "There's a mutual dependency that's been created in the industry and Homeland Security," he says. "And that industry ... is starting to become a very, very powerful lobby up here." There are still calls for more infrastructure, more technology and more manpower to feed the border-industrial complex. http://www.npr.org/2012/09/12/160758471/u-s-grows-an-industrial-complex-along-the-border

The battle of the US-Mexico frontier

The Guardian UK
February 20, 2011
by Chris McGreal


Charlie Bruce was a Texas police chief of the old school. In more than four decades on the force he gave homegrown criminals good reason to steer clear of Del Rio, his small town on the United States's southern border, but held no grudge against the steady flow of Mexicans across the frontier in search of opportunity. He admired them for their hard work and the chances they took to better themselves. Besides, some of them built his house.

What happened on the other side of the border, in Mexico, was another matter. There, Bruce unashamedly admits that for years he used his authority as a Texan police officer to run a lucrative smuggling racket. Mostly he dealt in duty-free whisky and cigarettes shipped in to Mexico, bribing officials with tens of thousands of dollars a time to avoid taxes, and then promptly selling the contraband on to Americans who brought it back across the border.

Occasionally Bruce branched out. He laughs when he recalls the handsome profit made from exploiting a sugar shortage in the 70s by paying off an official to illegally sell him a stock of subsidised sugar sitting in a Mexican government warehouse, which he shipped to a pie-maker in Philadelphia.

Now 75 and retired to a new house a stone's throw from the border, he recounts his years as a smuggler with undisguised pride and admits that it was all made possible by being a police officer. "That's exactly why I got by with it, because I was well known over there. My shield was law enforcement. I got by with murder more than other people," he says. "Other people may think it's wrong but the border's its own world."

Bruce laughs derisively at Washington's grand scheme to change that world. In the coming weeks, the US department of homeland security expects to complete the final parts of a nearly 700 mile (1,100km) fence and wall along the Mexican border intended to curb the perpetual flow of Latin Americans in search of work, and to block the ceaseless caravan of drugs feeding a very demanding American habit. The spur, though, was 9/11 and the ever-present fear of terrorist infiltrators.

The barrier covers one-third of the US's entire southern frontier with Mexico. In parts it is a fence about 5 metres (17ft) high built of a strong steel mesh and painted the same rust colour as the surrounding earth. In some places it is topped by coils of barbed wire; in others it is a solid steel wall. The fence cuts through towns and divides the desert. Its length is patrolled by thousands of armed border, drug enforcement and FBI agents. In Arizona they are complemented by an armed vigilante militia, the Minutemen.

The remaining 1,300 miles of border will be protected by a "virtual fence" – a network of electronic sensors, cameras, towers and high-flying drones that can see for more than 300 miles – that's already in place along parts of the frontier, setting off border patrols in pursuit of figures seen scurrying across screens or picked up by the motion detectors. The whole project is costing more than $4bn (£2.6bn), with the border fence alone working out at about $5m a mile.

The barrier's supporters say it is good value for money in the face of what they portray as an onslaught of illegal immigrants – increasingly scapegoats for economic blight and unemployment as they are accused of "stealing our jobs" – drug traffickers and the threat of terrorism. Others back the fence as a means to discourage what they describe as a flood of Mexican women pouring in to the US to have "anchor babies" – children who automatically gain American citizenship by being born inside the country.

Arizona's governor, Jan Brewer, has backed the fence because, she says, her state has become "the gateway to America for drug trafficking, extortion, kidnapping and crime". Fear in the state was stoked by the death in March last year of an Arizona rancher who authorities believe was shot on his farm by a drug-smuggling scout. In December, a border patrol agent was murdered by smugglers.

The barrier is a popular backdrop for political campaign adverts: John McCain was pictured driving along it demanding that the government "finish the dang fence". But for many who live on the border, particularly in Texas, alarm at the prospect of a fence dividing communities has turned to derision at what is shaping up to be a spectacular – and expensive – failure.

"The only thing it's deterred is a few wetbacks [Mexicans illegal immigrants] coming in and out," said Bruce. "And it's only slowed them down because the economy's so bad there's no jobs on this side of the border. You get back to a hot economy, here they come. Goddamn you'd better get your horses out because there are going to be lots of them coming and no fence is going to stop them or anyone else."


Eagle Pass was the first US settlement on the Rio Grande. A narrow stretch of the river divides it from Piedras Negras in Mexico, whose singular claim to recognition is as the birthplace of the nacho. Residents of the two towns mostly regard them as one. For years, Eagle Pass had almost no restaurants because its population strolled across the border to eat in the cheaper establishments on the other side. Almost everyone in the town is of Mexican origin and families straddle the border, which was what made estate agent Chad Foster so unusual when he was elected the first non-Hispanic mayor of Eagle Pass in more than four decades.

"They couldn't find anyone else so they came to me," he jokes. He proved a shrewd choice in 2004 when there was a Texan in the White House, George Bush, and Eagle Pass had caught Washington's eye as a gaping hole in border security.

Foster is the kind of Texan – an imposing, hunting, bull-wrestling Republican who is rarely seen in public without his cowboy hat – who was not easily ignored in Bush-era Washington. But he didn't have anything to say that the administration wanted to hear. The department of homeland security was still planning the fence in 2006 and had latched on to Eagle Pass as a major problem. It wasn't hard to see why. The town's municipal golf course runs right up to the Rio Grande. Mexico is so close that players have little difficulty in whacking balls across the border. As it was, the real problem for golfers was to avoid hitting illegal immigrants who swam the river and scurried across the course every few minutes. "There were 200-a-day coming across," says Foster. "The Mexicans liked to cross there because they could disappear in to the town within minutes."

Washington told Eagle Pass and other towns strung along the Texas border that it intended to build a barrier on the frontier. Mayors of the towns, grouped under the Texas Border Coalition (TBC), collectively renounced any physical barrier. Officials from Washington arrived to talk to Eagle Pass's council, where opposition hardened as they were told that the fence would run through the golf course. "The number that David Aguilar, the head of border patrol, came up with is that the fence would slow down an illegal entry by three to four minutes," says Foster. "To save three to four minutes and negatively impact our community and relations with our neighbours, you erect a wall between neighbours for no real purpose?"

So far as Foster and much of Eagle Pass was concerned the illegal immigrants weren't a problem. Most got through the town as fast as they could and kept going. Others provided the agricultural and construction labour that the local residents were not prepared to do. But the US's drug tsar, Gil Kerlikowske, has said the Texas border is his greatest concern because of the level of narcotraficante, or drug trafficker, violence on the other side. The Council on Foreign Relations says that Mexico is now more violent than Afghanistan or Iraq with its 20,000-plus deaths in the government's five-year war with the drug traffickers.

Nowhere has been hit worse than Ciudad Juárez, sitting just across the river from the US town of El Paso. Juárez is arguably the most dangerous city in the western hemisphere, with about 3,000 killings there by narcotraficantes last year alone.

"It is more dangerous to walk the streets of Juárez, a few blocks from El Paso, than it is to walk the streets of Baghdad," the attorney general of Texas, Greg Abbott, told Fox News. "There is a very serious problem that is beginning to bulge at our borders and put American lives at risk."

What Abbot did not say was that whatever may be happening in Juárez, El Paso is statistically among the very safest cities in the US. There were just five murders there last year. In 2009 there were 12, still far below other US cities of a similar size.

But then there was the ace up Washington's sleeve: terrorism. When the Border Patrol moved to persuade frontier communities of the need for the fence, the first slide in the presentation was an image of the Twin Towers burning on 11 September 2001. It's an emotional and persuasive argument for many Americans. If Mexicans can breeze across the border, why can't al-Qaida? Never mind that the perpetrators of all the terrorist attacks on the US over the past 20 years have arrived by plane on student or tourist visas. Or in the case of homegrown terrorists, such as Timothy McVeigh, who murdered 168 people by blowing up a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, via the local maternity ward.

The government pressed ahead with its plan for the fence, regardless. Bush's homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, overrode dozens of federal statutes, and all state, city and tribal legislation governing everything from the environment, to property rights and historic preservation.

As the fence went up through Eagle Pass, across the river in Piedras Negras the local state government was building a "green wall" of trees on the edge of the Rio Grande in repudiation. Residents such as Guillermo Berchelmann, who used to nip across the border to buy cigarettes because they were cheaper in the US, have seen the frontier solidify with closer immigration checks, delays and an erosion of the idea of two towns united by a common border.

"I'm no homeland security strategist but in our view the fence is offensive," says Berchelmann, who runs restaurants in both towns. "People don't understand it. Eagle Pass and Piedras are one community. We intermarry. We have family there. Students from Eagle Pass come to school in Piedras Negras. We cross every day. We used to cross several times a day."

Berchelmann says he is also upset at the rhetoric echoing across the US. "I find it very disturbing. The language is offensive when they talk about anchor babies. It's their country, but are Mexicans taking away jobs from Americans? No. Those jobs were always done by Mexican immigrant workers. If you take those immigrants out, you stop agriculture cold. Corn production, wheat production, apples, oranges, you name it. That's the reality."

But residents of Eagle Pass are increasingly fearful of crossing the border as drug gang violence in its twin has risen sharply. The town's police chief was murdered last April. He had been appointed just three weeks earlier to purge the force of corrupt links to the traffickers. In the following months, the deputy police chief and three other officers were abducted.

Foster and other border mayors came to the view that the fence wasn't being built because of a serious threat to national security but to provide middle America with an illusion. "This fence is a placebo. It gives somebody in mid-America a fluffy warm feeling. It really provides no real deterrent. Look at the wonderfully engineered tunnels under the physical barriers that have been constructed in California, Arizona and New Mexico. They're backing up vehicles and climbing over. It's a very expensive joke," says Foster.

Efrain Valdez, the mayor of Del Rio and chairman of the TBC until last July, has also lashed out at supporters of the fence. "Beginning in the early 20th century, the US government has financed the construction of border fences in El Paso. In 1925, a 'hog-tight, horse-high and bootlegger-proof' barbed-wire fence was built in El Paso. Observation towers were added in 1937," he wrote last year. "As is true of the modern-day fence, the impact was minimal. The observation towers were removed under President Eisenhower, in part because of their resemblance to towers in East Berlin. In 1978, the fence between El Paso and Juárez was replaced with new "impregnable" 12ft-high metal barriers topped with barbed concertina wire. The new fence's manufacturer claimed that the wire strands of which they were made would be so sharp that anyone who tried to scale them might lose his fingers and toes. Within a week after the fences were finished, they were full of holes, some large enough to drive a truck through.

"In the past few years, the US department of homeland security has spent hundreds of millions of dollars constructing new and 'improved' fencing between El Paso and Juárez, obviously with the same ineffective results that have been evident for 85 years."

The ways around the fence have not changed much. In California, pickup trucks pull up, lean a ladder from the back to the top of the wire and the migrants are over in a minute. In the Arizona desert, smugglers have dug short tunnels under the fence. If the border patrol, farmers or Minutemen stumble on them, a new tunnel appears a few miles away. Other smugglers cut through the fence with hacksaws and blowtorches. Some have even built ramps to drive vehicles to the top of the wire and then lower immigrants down the other side.

But the fence has not been without impact. The barrier may deter some immigrants but for others it has added to the physical dangers of seeking a better life. Some now cross deeper into the desert, to remote areas away from assistance, and pay with their lives. They take to backtrails, attempt to head through mountains. Often they are ill-prepared with insufficient water or protection from the relentless sun. Their corpses are increasingly found in Arizona, where the morgue in Tucson is now overflowing with unidentified bodies. Some areas are so isolated that by the time they are found the bodies are little more than skin on bone. Some immigrants, lost and knowing what awaits them, have hanged themselves from trees.

Last year, the bodies of more than 400 suspected illegal immigrants were found in the desert, mostly in Arizona. Governor Brewer misused the rising number of such deaths to justify her popular but constitutionally questionable law requiring the police to detain anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant. She claimed that some of the corpses were headless, murder victims of drug cartels. But when the police said no headless corpses had been found, Brewer declined to discuss her evidence and ran away from reporters pressing the question.


Foster says Americans look to the fence because they lack the will to do what really has to be done to curb the flow of drugs – reduce the market and end the sale of weapons to the Mexican cartels. "We're funding and arming the narcotraficantes, and then we blame the Mexicans," he says. "Billions of dollars Americans have spent on drugs go back to Mexico. Ninety per cent of the guns the narcos use come from the US. And our government does almost nothing about it."

The Obama administration appears to be recognising the futility of the barrier. Already it is backing away from the "virtual fence" after the US government has spent close to $1bn on the 53-mile network. An investigation by the GAO found that the electronic sensors could not tell the difference between people and small animals or large vehicles. The radar wasn't much better. It would have cost at least another $8bn to fill in the rest of the gaps.

But now the US is left with a fence and wall full of holes. Charlie Bruce, the former sheriff, smiles at the absurdity of it all. And what he sees as the hypocrisy of his fellow Americans who vilify illegal immigrants and then hire them to clean their houses, tend their gardens and build their swimming pools. Americans such as Meg Whitman, the billionaire Republican contender to be governor of California who supports the border fence and opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants, and who was exposed as employing a housekeeper working illegally in the US for nearly a decade.

"A lot of these guys from Mexico, you've heard about them being lazy. They're definitely not lazy people. They're hard-working folks. I wonder in San Antonio and Dallas and Fort Worth and Austin how they'd ever build a goddamn house without Mexicans. They built this house here. I don't know where I would be without them Mexicans helping me," says Bruce.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/20/us-mexico-border-fence-immigration

Border 101

Arizona Daily Star
October 24, 2010
by Brady McCombs

From congressional races to the gubernatorial showdown, border issues have taken center stage in many campaigns this election season.

If you are dizzy from all the talk and rhetoric, you're not alone. So today, we sort out some of the most popular election-season facts, myths and half-truths:

Is the border more dangerous than ever?

Answer: For people illegally crossing it, yes. For people living near it in Mexico, probably. For people living on the U.S. side of the border, probably not.

Some will vehemently disagree with that last statement, pointing to the March killing of Cochise County rancher Robert Krentz and an increase in burglaries in the Portal area as evidence that the level of danger on the U.S. side of the border has increased. But while Cochise County investigators say they tracked footprints back to Mexico, the Krentz crime is unsolved.

The FBI's uniform crime reports show violent crime is no more prevalent in border cities than in nonborder cities.

Since 2001, the average violent-crime rate in eight border cities declined, and it has remained below the national violent-crime rate since 2005, said an August 2010 report by the Congressional Research Center, which reviewed FBI crime reports from 1998 to 2008.

In Tucson and Phoenix - the two largest cities on the smuggling route through Arizona - murder and violent crime decreased from 2005 to 2009, FBI data show.

The ratio of assaults on Border Patrol agents dipped 36 percent across the Southwest border from 2007 to 2010. But that ratio increased by 70 percent in the Tucson Sector over the same period. Most of the reported assaults are when rocks are thrown at agents.

The danger of crossing the border illegally has increased, though. Illegal immigrants are dying at greater rates than ever in Arizona, likely because the border buildup has prompted smugglers to lead crossers into more remote and dangerous areas.

The 252 illegal border crossers found dead along Arizona's stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border excluding Yuma in fiscal 2010 broke the previous record of 234, set in 2007.

Is Arizona the epicenter for illegal immigration?

Answer: Yes and no.

Arizona's stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border is the busiest for illegal immigration, drug smuggling and border deaths, accounting for more than half of all arrests and marijuana seizures. But the state is more of a transit point than a destination.

The estimate of 375,000 illegal immigrants living in Arizona puts the state eighth in the U.S. behind California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, New Jersey and Georgia, a September report from the Pew Hispanic Center found.

And the number of illegal immigrants living in Arizona dropped from an estimated 475,000 in 2008, the Pew report found.

But Arizona has thrust itself into the national spotlight on this issue due to the numerous immigration-enforcement laws passed by the state, including SB 1070.

Has the federal government really done nothing to secure the border?

Answer: You can question the effectiveness of the billions spent, but there's no denying the massive buildup of border enforcement over the last five to 10 years:

• The budget for Customs and Border Protection - the Department of Homeland Security agency responsible for border security - soared to $11.4 billion in fiscal 2010, up 90 percent from $6 billion in fiscal year 2004. That's nearly twice the growth of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) budget, which increased 54 percent to $5.7 billion in fiscal 2010, up from $3.7 billion in 2004. ICE is responsible for immigration enforcement at worksites and across the interior of the country.

• The number of Border Patrol agents on the U.S.-Mexico border has increased to 17,500, up from 9,700 in 2004. The Tucson Sector, which stretches from New Mexico to Yuma County, now has 3,300 agents, up from 2,100 in 2004 and 1,500 in 2000.

• The miles of fencing along the border have grown exponentially. There are now 350 miles of pedestrian fence and 299 miles of vehicle barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border, for a total of 649 miles of barriers. That's up from 143 miles of barriers in 2006.

The Tucson Sector has 71 miles of pedestrian fences and 139 miles of vehicle barriers. In 2000, it had 11 miles of pedestrian fences and two miles of vehicle barriers.

Pedestrian fences are 12- to 18-foot-high barriers designed to stop, or at least slow down, people. Vehicle barriers are waist- to chest-high and are designed to stop cars.

• The agency has spent more than $1 billion since 2006 developing the SBInet "virtual fence," which tracks movement using a network of towers mounted with cameras, sensors and radar. But the program has been plagued by delays and glitches.

• In the past five years, the feds have twice sent the National Guard to the border to assist the Border Patrol. In Operation Jump Start, from 2006 to 2008, the government spent $1.2 billion to send 6,000 National Guard troops. In the current Operation Copper Cactus, the government is spending $135 million to send 1,200 troops.

• Homeland Security has devoted $225 million to border law enforcement agencies through Operation Stonegarden, including about $51 million to Arizona agencies. The program gives agencies money to pay officers who work overtime shifts aimed at securing the border. The money also buys four-wheel-drive trucks, radios and night-vision goggles.

Has the buildup of agents, fences and technology made the border more secure?

Answer: Probably, but to what degree is uncertain.

Fewer illegal immigrants are crossing the Southwest border, but it's difficult to determine how much of that is attributed to the buildup, because the decrease has coincided with the worst U.S. recession since the Depression.

The number of apprehensions by Border Patrol agents on the U.S.-Mexico border plummeted to 447,500 in fiscal year 2010, down from 1.1 million in fiscal year 2004.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano acknowledges that the weak economy helps explain why fewer people are getting caught crossing the border illegally, and she also credited crackdowns on employers who hire illegal workers. But she said a big reason is enforcement.

"The manpower, the technology, the infrastructure all has enabled us to be able to really slow that flow of illegal-immigrant traffic," she said at a news conference last week near San Diego.

Citing the seizures of more drugs, weapons and illicit cash along the Mexican border, Napolitano said: "We now have a border more secure than ever before."

But using the same rationale the feds apply to apprehensions - the lower the better - the buildup has not slowed the smuggling of drugs. Marijuana seizures along the U.S.-Mexico border by Border Patrol agents have increased to 2.5 million pounds in fiscal year 2009, up from 1.3 million in 2004.

So many people say, 'Build more fence.' Does it work?

Answer: Nobody knows for sure.

A 2009 report from the Government Accountability Office found that "despite a $2.4 billion investment to build 264 miles of fencing and 226 miles of vehicle barriers in the last five years, the impact of these barriers on border security is unknown because it has not been measured."

Proponents of border fencing point to double-layer fencing in San Diego and Yuma as proof that barriers work. Apprehensions dipped there after the fences went up, but the smugglers simply moved their routes.

The Border Patrol's 262-mile-long Tucson Sector has 71 miles of fencing, but it remains the busiest people- and drug-smuggling route on the border, accounting for nearly half of all arrests and marijuana seizures.

The problem with fences is that motivated smugglers and border crossers find ways over, through and around them. Critics call them nothing more than a speed bump. And the international border's diverse terrain, which includes mountains, canyons and rivers, makes a 2,000-mile fence impossible.

Border Patrol officials acknowledge that the barriers are not a panacea. But they say they deter, slow and funnel traffic, helping agents gain the upper hand in the ongoing cat-and-mouse game with smugglers.

The government has spent $2.4 billion on new fences, and the GAO estimates the life-cycle cost of all the barriers to be $6.5 billion.

The buildup of fences and roads along the border could have environmental consequences, too. Fencing has caused flooding and erosion, and it could be fragmenting wildlife habitat.

Virtual fences are better for the environment, but despite more than $1 billion spent over five years, the SBInet program has been plagued by glitches and major delays, and has yet to produce a working system. The GAO has questioned whether the time and money spent are a prudent use of limited resources.

Has violence from Mexico's raging drug wars spilled over the border?

Answer: It's not entirely clear, but most indicators say no.

The public shootouts, beheadings and killings that are part of life in northern Mexico due to the ongoing turf battles between drug cartels do not occur in Arizona. But some violence in Arizona may be associated with the illegal smuggling of people and drugs.

And there's no way to say spillover violence won't happen.

"Currently, U.S. federal officials deny that the recent increase in drug-trafficking-related violence in Mexico has resulted in a spillover into the United States," said an August 2010 report from the Congressional Research Center. "But they acknowledge that the prospect is a serious concern."

Is it possible to seal the border?

Answer: Probably not.

There are some who believe it's possible, such as the Border Patrol agents' union. But even the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection says the focus should be on controlling the border, not sealing it.

"This is not about sealing the border," Commissioner Alan Bersin said in September while in Tucson. "Until we have a legitimate labor market between Mexico and the United States, people will attempt to come here to work."

History shows that as long as better-paying jobs await in the U.S., people from Mexico and Latin America will continue to find a way around, through, under and over the gantlet of enforcement.

Not even the worst U.S. recession since the Depression has stopped the stream of illegal immigrants.

On StarNet: Find extensive coverage of immigration issues at azstarnet.com/border

http://azstarnet.com/news/local/border/article_dc909571-05b9-5f70-be39-bfa148091380.html

Costly virtual border fence in tatters

Los Angeles Times
October 22, 2010
by Brian Bennett

Reporting from Washington — The Department of Homeland Security, positioning itself to cut its losses on a so-called invisible fence along the U.S.- Mexico border, has decided not to exercise a one-year option for Boeing to continue work on the troubled multibillion-dollar project involving high-tech cameras, radar and vibration sensors.

The result, after an investment of more than $1 billion, may be a system with only 53 miles of unreliable coverage along the nearly 2,000-mile border.

The virtual fence was intended to link advanced monitoring technologies to command centers for Border Patrol to identify and thwart human trafficking and drug smuggling. But from the beginning, the program has been plagued by missed deadlines and the limitations of existing electronics in rugged, unpredictable wilderness where high winds and a tumbleweed can be enough to trigger an alarm.

Homeland Security officials decided on Sept. 21 not to invoke the department's option with Boeing, the principle contractor on the project, and instead extended the deal only to mid-November, Boeing officials confirmed this week. Boeing has charged the department more than $850 million since the project began in 2006.

The government has not released an independent assessment of the program completed in July, but with the two-month Boeing extension about to run out, several members of Congress expect the Homeland Security Department to rule soon on the fate of the invisible fence, the high-tech portion of the $4.4-billion Secure Border Initiative.

Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler would only say that a new way forward for the program "is expected shortly."

But given that the virtual fence has yet to pass muster even in the 53-mile test area — two sections in Arizona that officials acknowledge won't be fully operational until 2013 — and the government's lack of interest in extending Boeing's contract, most do not expect the department to invest billions more in a project that has continually disappointed.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he hoped Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano would act soon. "The program is headed in the wrong direction," Thompson said.

"It would be a great shame to scrap SBInet," said Rep. Michael McCaul (R- Texas), who has encouraged the department to bring to the Southwest the technology the U.S. military is using on the Afghanistan- Pakistan border. "Technology is key to solving these border issues."

Even as scrutiny of the program has increased in the last year, Boeing has not provided accurate information on the progress of the program, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report released Oct. 18. The study found an unusually high number of errors in the data Boeing gave to the Homeland Security Department.

A spokeswoman for Boeing said the company had "worked closely with Customs and Border Protection to overcome past performance and management challenges." She added that Boeing was committed to completing the testing and delivery of the system at the Tucson and Ajo, Ariz., stations, which comprise the 53-mile test zones.

Some of the technology, such as remote cameras, night-vision video and mobile surveillance, is being used by agents in the Arizona test areas, which see a high level of cross-border traffic. But the effectiveness is far from what was requested by Homeland Security officials and promised by Boeing when the project began.

Daytime cameras are able to monitor only half of the distance expected. Ground sensors can identify off-road vehicles, but not humans, as initially envisioned by the government.

"It turned out to be a harder technological problem than we ever anticipated," said Mark Borkowski, executive director of the electronic fence program at the Homeland Security Department, earlier this year. "We thought it would be very easy, and it wasn't."

Congress was sold on the initiative as a way to combine newfangled gadgetry with old-fashioned fences to secure the entire expanse of the U.S. border with Mexico. Physical fencing has been installed over 600 miles of terrain under the program. But the technological portion, called SBInet, has languished.

Randolph C. Hite, who monitors the program as GAO director for information technology architecture systems, praised Homeland Security officials' decision to extend Boeing's contract on a short-term basis while it takes a close look at the program's worthiness.

"I think it is a prudent step," Hite said.

In the meantime, Homeland Security spokesman Chandler said Customs and Border Protection would determine "if there are alternatives that may more efficiently, effectively and economically meet our nation's border security needs."

Trouble with the invisible fence began in the design phase, when the Homeland Security Department set demands for the technology that surpassed what was available at the time. The department required, for example, that the system help Border Patrol agents be in position to apprehend 90% of the incursions over the border, but the technology has achieved only a fraction of that goal. Citing problems with the program, Napolitano announced in March that she was freezing funding to the initiative outside of Arizona.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-invisible-fence-20101022,0,5546525.story

Senators: DHS isn't improving management fast enough

Government Executive
September 30, 2010
by Katherine McIntire Peters

While Homeland Security Department officials have improved the way they buy technology and manage money and staff, DHS continues to confront major management problems and is unlikely to be removed from the Government Accountability Office's high-risk list anytime soon.

"Unfortunately, progress has been slower than many expected and than any of us would like to see," said Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's panel on oversight of government management.

At a hearing Thursday he acknowledged improvements in leadership and management, but doubted they would be enough to warrant taking the department off GAO's list of agencies most at risk for waste, fraud and abuse.

"Many high-cost projects have been initiated with too little analysis, planning and follow-up, costing millions of taxpayer dollars and impacting the agency's mission," he said, singling out for specific criticism the Secure Border Initiative's electronic fence, known as SBInet. The program has experienced multiple setbacks, including cost overruns and schedule delays, and has failed to perform as expected.

In addition, Homeland Security has struggled to integrate the finance and accounting systems of its component agencies since it was formed in 2003.

Cathleen Berrick, GAO's managing director for homeland security and justice issues, said the management shortfalls have had a significant effect on missions. A number of major programs the department has tried to deploy, including SBInet and the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program known as US VISIT, have failed to meet performance and cost and schedule expectations.

"They were either delayed or never deployed to the field, so there's a direct correlation between how the department is managed and how successful [it is] in implementing the mission," Berrick said.

Deputy Secretary Jane Hall Lute said DHS has undertaken a number of significant actions to improve management across the department. Lute earlier this year initiated a strategic management approach focused on enhancing the people, structures and processes necessary to meet mission goals.

That initiative was centered on improving the acquisition process, financial management and personnel reform -- making sure the right people were in the right positions with a proper balance between civil servants and contract employees.

To that end, DHS has aligned account structures to better compare personnel costs and other factors across the department. "It's hard to talk about an integrated department if we don't count personnel or acquisition and investment or [operation and maintenance] costs in the same way," Lute said.

"In addition, we have reevaluated every single performance measure guiding the department. We've looked at all 180-odd performance measures, and we have recast them in ways that are plain language indicators of what the value proposition is in the department for money that's being allocated. We think this will be a much more sensible approach to performance metrics," Lute said.

Berrick said the new and revised performance measures have been a key improvement.

"I do think DHS is laying the groundwork [for improving management]. They do have good plans in place in many of these areas," Berrick said. The key will be implementing those plans, she added.

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0910/093010kp1.htm

Costly efforts to secure border not paying off

Brownsville Herald
June 19, 2010
by Emma Perez Trevino

From the construction of the border fence to the deployment of unmanned aerial drones, federal initiatives have cost billions of dollars to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and have been mired in challenges and setbacks, public records show.

Audits by U.S. Congress’ investigative arm, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), also reflect that numerous initiatives have been stymied and plagued by mismanagement, lack of coordination and no oversight.

And in the case of aerial drones, the rush to deploy new units to secure the border could compromise safety and more.

THE BORDER FENCE AND VIRTUAL FENCE
In November 2005, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security implemented its most expensive and challenging initiatives under U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Secure Border Initiative (SBI).

The components of SBI included the construction of about $2.6 billion worth of fencing and a $1.6 billion virtual fence.

“It has been an utter failure,” Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos, a Republican, said of SBI, which began under Republican President George W. Bush and has continued under Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration.

GAO reported that as of April, CBP had completed 646 of the 652 miles of fencing and that it plans to have the remaining six miles completed by December. CBP also plans to construct 14 more miles of fencing in the Rio Grande Valley Sector by September.

“CBP reported that tactical infrastructure (fencing), coupled with additional trained agents had increased the miles of the southwest border under control, but despite a $2.6 billion investment, it cannot account separately for the impact of tactical infrastructure,” GAO found.

“I don’t believe that it is doing what they thought, what I thought it was going to do,” Cascos said. The fence is still being constructed in the county, and Cascos said that it has numerous gaps that are being lit by floodlights. “The initiative is not working, not in our part of the country; not based on what I see.”

Meanwhile, the $1.6 billion virtual fence, initiated in 2006 and known as SBInet, covers 53 miles in the Yuma and Tucson sectors. But GAO reported that as of April, Border Patrol agents continued to rely on existing technology rather than SBInet.

“According to my calculations, (the cost of the virtual fence) equals nearly $20 million per mile,” U. S. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Mississippi, chairman of the U. S. House

of Representatives’ Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement issued June 17, when a hearing was held on the initiative in Washington, D.C.

The plan was to have SBInet in place throughout the 1,989-mile U.S.-Mexico border by 2009.

The virtual fence is composed of a network of sensors, cameras, towers and radars that are supposed to detect and track movement on the border, and transmit the data to video terminals at command centers and agents’ vehicles to assist in identifying illegal activity.

GAO found that sensors can’t differentiate between vehicles, humans and animals — although the ability had been a requirement of the system. The radar also couldn’t differentiate between humans and vehicles.

But those in charge of the project decided to waive these and other significant requirements. “The system is now only required to achieve a 49 percent probability of identifying items of interest that cross the border,” GAO found.

“As even my two daughters know, 49 percent is not even close to a passing grade,” U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Border, Maritime,and Global Counterterrorism, said June 17 in a written statement.

“I think the big issue is the way border security has been handled by the past and present administration,” Cascos said. “There is divisiveness and partisanship and a lot of animosity. I believe that it is affecting some of the decision making process. They all work for the same people — the taxpayer — but yet they are also so protective of their own department that they don’t speak to each other, costing time and money.”

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano in March froze funding for SBInet and reallocated $50 million to other available technologies, such as mobile radios, according to GAO.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, also isn’t satisfied with SBInet, but, “while the implementation of SBInet has been unacceptable, the last thing we need to do is cut border security funding,” Cornyn told The Brownsville Herald in a written statement Friday.

Cornyn said that Obama’s budget request for fiscal year 2011 would cut SBI by more than 25 percent and the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program by more than 12 percent.

“The White House even wanted to cut the Border Patrol by 181 agents — before Congress made clear that wasn’t going to fly,” Cornyn said.

Cornyn said that he introduced legislation that would have reallocated $2 billionin unspent stimulus funds toward much needed personnel, equipment and resources to southwest border communities.

“Unfortunately, it was defeated because Democrats and the president continue to underestimate the gravity of the situation and pay lip service to our citizens who are demanding that their government act,” Cornyn said.

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, did not return a request for comment.

U.S. Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas, said that, “a border wall running through our South Texas land is not the answer to our nation’s security,” adding that alternatives and new tools must first be assessed for their viability and efficiency.

MERIDA INITIATIVE
The Merida Initiative is a three-year plan initiated in 2007 for $1.4 billion in U.S. assistance to Mexico and Central America to fight criminal organizations and disrupt drug and weapons trafficking, illicit financial activities, currency smuggling and human trafficking, the Congressional Research Service noted in a report to Congress in May 2009.

At a May congressional hearing, Thompson said that records showed Mexico has received only $161 million since the plan was implemented.

GAO noted in December 2009 that factors affecting the timing of the Merida funding process included statutory condition of the funds, challenges in fulfilling administrative procedures, and the need to enhance the ability in the U.S., Mexico,and Central America to implement the assistance.

The spokesman for U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz, D-Texas, said in a statement Friday that Congress and the administration are working with counterparts in Mexico to develop the next phase of the initiative.

According to information from Cornyn’s office, major Mexican drug cartels have 100,000 members, rivaling the size of Mexico’s military.

Cornyn’s office also noted that:

22,700 lives were lost since Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon launched the offensive against drug cartels in December 2006.

9,635 people were killed in Mexican gang or cartel-related violence in 2009, more than triple 2007.

4,324 people were murdered in Cuidad Juarez since 2006.

3,365 lives were lost in the first three months of 2010 as a result of drug-related violence in Mexico.

522 Mexican military and law enforcement officials were killed in 2008.

$25 billion in estimated annual sales of Mexican drugs to the U.S.

“By many accounts, Mexico now ranks as more violent than Iraq or Afghanistan,” Shannon O’Neil, with the Council on Foreign Relations, said in a statement May 27 before congressional committee and subcommittee hearing in Washington D.C. on the future of the Merida Initiative.

O’Neil elaborated that the initiative does not take into account that the U.S. must do its part.

“The Merida Initiative overlooks three U.S.-based factors that perpetuate the drug trade and drug violence: guns, money, and demand,” O’Neil said, noting that all serious studies show that the vast majority of the guns used by the drug trafficking organizations come from the U.S. “As the United States asks Mexico to uphold its laws at great monetary and human cost, it should enforce its own laws.”

Hinojosa said that the Merida Initiative is a crucial strategy that unites the U.S. and Mexico in a commitment to secure the border.

“Both countries are committed to stopping the violence, cracking down on the flow of drugs and weapons that cross our border every day,” he said in a statement to the Herald on Friday. “By helping Mexico in its fight against crime, we are also helping the United States.”

WEAPONS INTERDICTION
A GAO review found in June 2009 significant challenges to the country’s efforts to combat firearm sales in the U. S. and the flow of weapons into Mexico, but the agency noted that evidence indicates that a large proportion of the firearms fueling Mexican drug violence originate in the U.S.

GAO said that according to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) officials, U.S. efforts are hampered by laws relating to restrictions on collecting and reporting information on purchases, a lack of required background checks for private firearms sales, and limitations on reporting requirements for multiple sales.

GAO also documented another problem: ATF and DHS’” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), do not consistently coordinate efforts because the agencies partly lack clear roles and responsibilities, resulting sometimes in duplicate initiatives and confusion during operations.

GAO said that law enforcement agencies and the U.S. Department of State have provided some assistance to Mexican counterparts in combating arms trafficking, but that it has been limited and has not targeted arms trafficking needs.

UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS OR VEHICLES
The Federal Aviation Administration is being bombarded.

State and federal elected officials and private enterprise have been pressuring FAA to issue waivers and exemptions, allowing for unmanned aircraft, also referred to as drones, on the National Airspace System throughout the country and Texas where they would operate together with commercial and private aircraft.

FAA recently approved DHS’s request to allow CBP to operate a drone in West Texas for border security, but a problem occurred in the first flight June 1 into Texas. Although not all details are known, it was serious enough to bring a temporary halt to CBP’s operations to provide personnel with further training.

A request to FAA to allow a drone along the border from West Texas to Brownsville and to the Texas coast is pending.

Ortiz’s spokesman said that the congressman supports the use of unmanned aerial vehicles amid other security initiatives.

In a speech on Nov. 18, 2009 in Arizona, regarding the future of UASs in the national airspace, FAA Administrator J. Randolph Babbitt noted that, “While the UAS is undoubtedly the way of the future, my concern must be on today, and right now, the era of the unmanned aircraft system in civilian airspace is just not here yet. Much as we’d all wish the case were different, the level of technical maturity isn’t where it needs to be for full operation in the National Airspace System.”

Noting that standards need to be developed, Babbitt said that everyone must move in the same direction before it happens. “Those safety standards must be the same for everyone, even if no one’s in the cockpit.”

In the event that FAA approves drone flights into Cameron County, Cascos’ hope is that personnel who operate the drones are well trained and that the aircraft be fully tested “and tested and tested” in a barren area.

“You don’t test it up and down the Rio Grande among urbanized areas. They are a lot larger than kites, and weigh more than kites,” the county judge said.

Brownsville Mayor Pat M. Ahumada Jr. said drones in Cameron County would be fine, “if we were at war with Mexico. But we are not at war. I’m very concerned,” the mayor said about the possible advent of drones in the community.

Ahumada said that the drones, the border fence and virtual fence are “very expensive initiatives with very poor returns.”

“We have gone to extremes. It has caused division in our country,” he said, suggesting that the billions of dollars should instead be spent on combating the demand for drugs in the U.S. and the exportation of firearms, while reinforcing the Border Patrol with more officers.

“Let (the officers) do their job,” he said.

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/border-113498-secure-initiatives.html

Obama courts GOP on immigration

The Hill
May 24, 2010
by Alexander Bolton

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama will ask Senate Republicans to set aside their objections to his broad immigration goals.

The lunchtime meeting with the GOP conference comes as Senate Democrats and Republicans gird for a battle over immigration during debate on a $58.8 billion emergency supplemental bill.

Republicans such as Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas) and Jim DeMint (S.C.) may offer amendments to crack down on illegal border crossings by completing a fencing project, or sending aerial drones or National Guard troops to the border.


“We understand there are a handful of amendments planned by Republicans on border security,” said one Democratic aide, who added that the measures would be hard for Democratic senators to vote against.


Tuesday’s meeting provides Obama with an opportunity to both engage with Republicans and ask them to work with him. Senate Republicans have told pro-immigration advocates for weeks that they would not support a comprehensive reform measure until Obama engaged them in a serious way.


“The president is coming up here to talk to Republicans about immigration and to get them on board with moving forward on comprehensive immigration reform,” said a senior Senate Democratic aide.


Even if Obama makes an impassioned call for comprehensive reform, Senate aides doubt it would persuade Republicans to pull back border-security amendments to the supplemental spending bill.


An amendment filed by DeMint would require the administration to complete 700 miles of special double-layer fencing.


An amendment by Hutchison would send unmanned aerial surveillance vehicles to the border.


Democratic leaders are less concerned about the substance of the amendments than about how they might weaken support for passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill.


Strategists worry if the Senate passes stringent border security measures as part of the supplemental, it would weaken the rationale for passing comprehensive reform.


The Democratic aide said Obama could make the case to Republicans that a broad reform bill would address their concerns over border security.


Some pro-immigration activists warn that passage of the border-security amendments by a Democratic-controlled Senate would also send the wrong message to Hispanic voters.


“There’s definitely concern about what kind of amendments may be offered considering the rhetoric surrounding border issues,” said a pro-immigration activist. “There’s a concern over how much people will buy into that rhetoric.”


Democratic Party strategists have long thought that jobs and the economy would be the two biggest issues of the midterm election.


But polling shows that immigration reform could make a difference in battleground states such as Nevada and Colorado.


A new Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey shows that embattled Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) has opened a three-point lead on his Republican challenger because of a shift in Hispanic voters.


The poll attributed the movement to a large shift of Hispanic voters to Bennet since passage of an Arizona law empowering law enforcement to conduct on-the-spot identity checks of suspected illegal immigrants.


“Hispanics in the Mountain West are leaning much more strongly toward the Democrats since the Arizona law was passed,” stated a PPP analysis of the survey.


A White House aide said Obama plans to discuss his agenda, of which energy and climate change legislation and immigration reform have been two of the highest priorities.


“The president expects to have an open exchange about his legislative priorities for the rest of the year,” said the aide.


Obama pursued a similar tactical strategy prior to final passage of sweeping healthcare reform legislation earlier this spring.


The president held a healthcare summit with Republican leaders at the White House in February to discuss their ideas for improving the nation’s healthcare laws.


Pro-immigration activists have been calling on Obama to become more engaged on the issue.


“The only way that we’re going to move forward is if the president leans into this in such a way that Republicans feel the heat,” said Frank Sharry, founder of America’s Voices, a group that supports comprehensive reform.

“The president has not demonstrated the same kind of commitment to this issue that he has shown on other issues,” Sharry said.


Angela Kelley, vice president of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, said: “I have a hard time seeing this issue move forward without substantial White House leadership.”


Kelley said if Obama only mentions immigration briefly, like he did at the State of the Union address earlier this year, “there will be a lot of disappointed people.”


“If this is a meaty conversation and the president shows ownership of the issue, it could provide considerable momentum, which is needed very badly,” Kelley said.


A Democratic aide said that White House officials initially told Democratic leaders that immigration reform would be the purpose of Tuesday’s meeting. They have since retrenched that expectation.


“The administration is now suggesting it will be one of several topics,” said the aide.


Proponents of comprehensive immigration reform say they hope that Obama will make a concerted push for broad reform at Tuesday’s meeting.


A senior GOP aide said the White House has not identified immigration reform as its No.1 priority for discussion Tuesday.


“It will be a wide-ranging discussion,” said the GOP aide. “The president can talk about anything he wants — it’s supposed to be on a wide range of topics.


“They said it would focus on a number of issues,” said the aide.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/99635-immigration-has-president-courting-gop

Senators call for scrapping 'virtual fence'

Associated Press
April 20, 2010

WASHINGTON — Two senators said Tuesday it's time to consider ending a contract for a "virtual fence" along the U.S.-Mexico border, contending it doesn't stop illegal immigration.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., even suggested an old-fashioned, real fence may work better than the electronic one designed by Boeing Co.

"We're counting on you to give us a direct assessment and take action to either terminate the contract or take from it what may work," Lieberman told Border Protection Commissioner Alan Bersin.

Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said at a hearing on border security: "The best answer to this continuing crisis and continued flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. is to go back to the old-style fences, double- and triple-tiered, and layered."

Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., asked Bersin whether the contract could be canceled. Bersin said he was not able to render a judgment on a legal issue.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in March that she was halting funding to expand the virtual fence that originally was supposed to monitor most of the 2,000-mile southern U.S. border by 2011. It now covers only a portion of Arizona's boundary with Mexico.

The virtual fence is a network of cameras, ground sensors and radars designed to let a small number of dispatchers watch the border on a computer monitor, zoom in with cameras to see people crossing, and decide whether to send Border Patrol agents to the scene.

The fence was part of President George W. Bush's security plan.

Bersin said that the contractor has been unable to integrate the system to allow central monitoring of the border.

"In the near term, the secretary (Napolitano) concluded the wholesale integration is not a goal that is practicable or would produce the kind of results we want to see," Bersin said.

After the shooting death of a rancher, Republican Sens. Jon Kyl and John McCain of Arizona asked Monday for National Guard troops to be deployed along Arizona's border.

The request for 3,000 troops was part of a 10-point plan that includes hiring 3,000 more Customs and Border Protection agents for Arizona, building new fences and increasing aerial surveillance.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5geK4Z-mAv8z970IvhGuDRlj21QzgD9F71S980

We All Fight the Wall

San Diego Reader
March 21, 2010
by Carolyn Grace Matteo

U.S./Mexico border problems and their effect on the Tijuana Estuary was the focus of the March 19 Sierra Club’s meeting in Hillcrest.

According to a Sierra Club press release, laws protecting the environment, archaeological sites, religious freedom, and cultural concerns were waived so border-wall construction could proceed.

“Our committee has been fighting the border wall for a long time,” said Jean Costa, international committee representative. “The Sierra Club supports HR4321 because it prohibits construction of more border walls and the breaking of environmental and community protection laws....

“In Texas, it went right through people’s land. But, you won’t find the wall in any fancy resorts. They build the wall where they think people don’t have the power to fight it. This bill is the beginning of solving a very complicated problem, the roots of which aren’t being addressed. I urge you to support it.”

Dr. Mike McCoy said, “The [construction of] border fence between the U.S. and Mexico called Operation Gatekeeper began in 1994. There were no permits. They just built it. The big problem with these fences is that the animals that migrate north — jaguar, deer, reptiles, and other mammals — separate gene pools on both sides. You decrease the biological capability of that organism to survive; this especially impacts bighorn sheep."

McCoy considers the border wall a tribute to the politics of fear. “Injustice, economic disparity, and the inability to distribute wealth and opportunity equitably are at the root of the wall.”

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2010/mar/21/we-all-fight-wall/

At Homeland Security, contractors outnumber federal workers

February 25, 2010
Washington Post
by Ed O'Keefe

The Department of Homeland Security said this week that it employs more private contractors than federal employees, an admission that officials blamed on the department's quick establishment seven years ago and the federal government's burdensome hiring process.

DHS officials informed Senate staffers this month that it employs roughly 200,000 contractors and about 188,000 federal employees. The figure does not include uniformed members of the Coast Guard, which is one of the department's 22 agencies.

"That raises a question of whether it's the most efficient use of taxpayer money, but also the question of who's making critical decisions at the department," Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Wednesday during a hearing of the homeland security committee on the department's annual budget requests. "Is it private contractors, or is it full-time federal employees?" He called the figures "shocking and unacceptable."

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called the estimates "a high number" but would not say, when asked by Lieberman, whether she thought the figure was too high.

"I think the number illustrates a problem, or an issue we have to work on," Napolitano told senators. "The department was stood up quickly, and in order to accomplish the many missions that it has, contracting was a mechanism to be used."

Paul Light, a Brookings Institution scholar on the federal government, disputed the DHS estimates, and said the number of contractors is likely to be much higher.

"I think it's a larger number, particularly when you start counting the subcontractors and the state and local employees who are working under grants and contracts," Light said. He authored a 2006 study that estimated that DHS created 140,000 contracting positions from 2002 to 2005, most for operations related to the Bush administration's response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

DHS agencies are reviewing the balance of government and contracting positions to determine which jobs should be "insourced," or converted to the federal payroll, Napolitano said. Her own office hopes to cut contractor support by 40 percent, according to the department's 2011 budget requests.

Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, applauded Napolitano's review but said DHS should focus less on the number of contractors and more on the skills they provide.

"I could have 100,000 federal employees, but if I don't have 100,000 federal employees with the right skills, that doesn't necessarily solve the challenge," Soloway said. His group is a national trade association for contracting firms, some of which will probably be hurt by the Obama administration's contracting reforms.

In addition to the contract review, the DHS is revisiting agreements exceeding $1 million as part of the Obama administration's contracting reforms. The Office of Management and Budget plans to provide more guidance to federal agencies next month on government functions that contractors can no longer conduct, an OMB spokesman said Wednesday.

Despite the planned contracting cuts, Napolitano also cited the government's lengthy hiring process as a motivation for the department's previous reliance on contractors.

Federal labor unions that have long fought DHS's use of contractors applauded congressional attention on the issue.

"We have been and continue to be concerned that the money spent on these spurious contracting-out initiatives could have been more wisely spent on equipment, training and right-sizing staffing at a number of airports," said John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents DHS workers.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/24/AR2010022405433.html

Unusually wet Arizona winter leads to more illegal immigrant border deaths

February 13, 2010
Associated Press / Los Angeles Times

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — An unusually wet winter in Arizona this year has been lethal for illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico into the United States, with nine people dying from hypothermia since November.

The same number of immigrants died of hypothermia during the previous three winters combined.

"When you are wet, your risk is a lot higher," said Dr. Bruce Parks, chief medical examiner at the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office. "Wet clothing takes the heat away from the body. You've lost that insulation — your body can't react."

The 2.1 inches of rain that fell in Tucson in January made it the eighth-wettest January in Arizona's recorded history, and the wettest since 1993, according to the National Weather Service. And the 0.6 inches of rainfall through the first 10 days of February is nearly double the average for those days, said Ken Drozd of the National Weather Service.

During one particularly wet week in January, the bodies of three illegal immigrants who died of hypothermia were found.

Among them was Enrique Zapata Senduo, a 47-year-old Mexican who died in a pool of muddy water under a cottonwood tree in the desert southwest of Picacho Peak, about 75 miles southeast of Phoenix.

A rancher discovered his soaking-wet body in the late morning on Jan. 26. Zapata left his hometown of Mazatlan, Sinaloa, on Jan. 13 and planned to cross the border near Sasabe illegally, meaning he was likely out in the desert during the rainy days of Jan. 20-23, when nearly 2 inches fell in southern Arizona.

It's possible other illegal border crossers also have died from the cold this year or past years, but the cause of death often can't be determined due to the conditions of the bodies.

This winter, for instance, the cause of death of 32 of the first 57 bodies was undetermined, according to the Arizona Daily Star's border-death database. The database is compiled using information from the Pima and Cochise County medical examiners' offices.

Despite an estimated slowdown in illegal crossings, the number of bodies found continues at the same or higher levels. The 60 bodies found from Nov. 1-Feb. 12 mark a 58 percent increase from the same period last year and are more than in any of the previous five years.

Border authorities and humanitarian groups attribute the increase in deaths to the buildup of agents and border fences, which cause immigrants to walk longer distances in more treacherous terrain.

"They are staying up in the mountains longer than they ever have before," said Gene Lefebvre, a member of No More Deaths, a humanitarian group. "That means they are more likely to get injured or exhausted."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-immigration-winter,0,2799004.story

Too many dying along the border

Arizona Republic
January 6, 2010

Death still gallops along Arizona's southern border.

The Border Patrol's Tucson Sector reports that the bodies of 208 border crossers were found in fiscal 2009. That was up from 171 in fiscal 2008.

It happened at a time when the overall number of people crossing the border was thought to be down - something experts gleaned from the fact that apprehensions in the Tucson Sector were at a 10-year low of 241,600 in 2009. (The Tucson Sector includes all of Arizona except a small area near Yuma).

Fewer crossings and more deaths testify to the continued failure of border policies.

Those strategies, heavy on enforcement, have failed for years to impose order on the border. Arizona became the hot spot for illegal immigration after enhanced enforcement in Texas and California funneled smuggling activity into our state. Enhanced enforcement in Nogales and other cities along our border drove illegal immigration into remote and rugged deserts, where people perish on their way to reach jobs or families in the United States.

Since 2006, 46 tunnels have been discovered in the Tucson Sector, including a 36-foot smuggling tunnel snaking 25 feet into Nogales, Ariz. It was discovered in late December after illicit burrowing created a sinkhole in the street. And long treks through harsh desert continue to claim lives.

This is a human-rights crisis at America's southern border. It got worse despite barriers and increased numbers of Border Patrol boots on the ground. In fiscal 2004, for example, the death toll was 142, according to the patrol.

Ironically, agents of the Border Patrol, whose job description is enforcement, have become a significant lifesaving force. Their search-and-rescue team, Borstar, saved 586 people who were in distress in the Tucson Sector in fiscal 2009. The previous year, Borstar prevented 443 people from becoming statistics in the deadly saga of this nation's failed immigration policies.

Those policies are not rational or enforceable. Congress needs to enact immigration reform
that creates a legal mechanism for temporary workers to meet labor demands, status adjustment for workers who are here, an effective system to check a worker's status and tough sanctions for those who hire illegal immigrants.

With the Obama administration offering assurances that immigration reform remains a priority, many are sizing up the political realities of doing this in an election year. But with deaths mounting under the current failed system, there is a moral imperative that should drive reform this year.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/2010/01/06/20100106wed1-06.html

Reflecting on the Wall: Barriers threaten environmental protection in the Southwest

Harvard Crimson
November 12, 2009
by Patrick Behrer

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. As we recognize the historic occasion of East Germany’s opening, America quietly completes construction of its own wall. The southern border barrier between the United States and Mexico covers 670 miles of southwestern desert between Mexico and the four states it borders. Like the Berlin Wall, the border wall is emblematic of much more than just a boundary between countries. Cutting indiscriminately across ecologically-priceless land, it has become a symbol of governmental disregard for environmental protection.

The Bush Administration began the project in 2006 as the most recent attempt to stem the tide of illegal immigration, and it now nears completion; at 630 of 670 miles completed, Obama shows no signs that he intends to halt construction of the final portions. Humanitarians and budget hawks have blasted the wall as ineffective and enormously costly. With a final price tag of more than $4 billion and $6.5 billion in estimated maintenance expenses over the next 20 years, the direct, measured costs alone are immense. However, to discuss the project’s environmental impact, one must recognize the systematic neglect of environmental laws that occurred during its construction.

The Real ID Act of 2005 allowed the Department of Homeland Security to construct infrastructure along our nation’s borders with immunity from all government laws and regulations. Using the power granted under this act, the Secretary waived the impact assessment requirements of both the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Protection Act. Thus, the border wall’s construction—which took place on some of the most ecologically valuable land in the country—went ahead without any consideration of its impact on the native species that call this area home.

Not surprisingly, this wall has wreaked havoc on the ecosystems of the area. It cuts off migration routes for species such as the Sonoma Pronghorn, already endangered, whose population has crashed to as few as 31 individuals. If congress had not exempted the border patrol from the ESA, this damage would have been sufficient to stop or dramatically alter the construction plans. Instead, building the wall has categorically ignored environmental damage and, as a result, threatened the survival of the only known pair of breeding jaguars in the United States.

Are environmental concerns sufficient reasons to stop this construction? Perhaps not. There are severe economic and social costs to unchecked illegal immigration. However, the wall should not have received blanket exemption from environmental regulation. The Obama administration claims it will step up to the plate to combat global climate change, yet their silent acquiescence to the destruction of the southwestern desert throws this commitment into question.

These may seem unrelated and, thus, some might understand how the Administration can separate climate change policy from broader environmental concerns. Their logic: Climate change is a global threat while the wall only damages a small section of desert. However, this view ignores the reality that the southwestern desert is a globally unique and important biosphere recognized by both The Nature Conservancy and the United Nations. Indeed, the wall threatens the San Pedro River, one of TNC’s eight “Last Great Places” in the world. Climate change is an issue so large that addressing it will entail broad behavioral changes—this, in turn, requires a new environmental consciousness. We cannot flip a switch and fix climate change, as it remains too pervasive for easy solutions. Only by considering the environmental impacts associated with all of our actions can we to truly address this global crisis.

Endeavors like the border wall demonstrate very clearly that this new consciousness does not yet exist. Unfortunately, this project has not occurred in isolation. The U.S. Navy conducts sonar testing that has little practical benefit but inflicts proven, lethal affects on marine mammals. Until the government shows a willingness to seriously consider environmental costs in all its decisions, the commitment to fight climate change is little more than empty words.
The fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago signaled a sea change in international policy and kick started a period of unprecedented global openness. While the border wall does not have this same public resonance, stopping its construction would be a first step toward creating a new environmental consciousness within the U.S. government. This sea change would prove no less significant than that which occurred after the fall in Germany. The last 20 years have seen international barriers shrink on an unprecedented scale; the next 20 must see environmental consciousness of the same scale.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2009/11/12/wall-environmental-change-climate/?dsq=22863606#comment-22863606