"From day one I said that I was going to build a great wall on the SOUTHERN BORDER, and much more. Stop illegal immigration."
-- President Donald Trump
The debate about security on the
southern border of this country is raging. President Trump now wants
$5.7 billion for a physical wall (concrete or steel slats) on the
U.S.-Mexico border. Meanwhile, other estimates for such a significant
barrier range from $22 billion (Department of Homeland Security) to
$70 billion (House Democrats).
Many feel a wall will do little to stop
illegals, drugs, and terrorists from entering along the 1,954 miles
border. Now, about 700 of those miles have some sort of barricade or
fence. The rest of the border is rugged landscapes and natural
barriers like the Rio Grande River.
What, exactly, is Trump's
proposed “wall”? No one is certain. Even Trump’s visions for
his proposed wall have changed over time – from the monolithic
concrete vision for which he commissioned prototypes to “a
see-through wall made out of steel.” In October 2018, Customs and
Border Protection unveiled eight prototypes on for President Donald
Trump's long-promised wall. What is the plan for his proposed $5.7
billion? Nothing is definite.
Here is what we do know about the wall
straight from the mouth of the president. Trump said …
"A wall is better than fencing and
it's much more powerful. It’s more secure.”The plans have evolved
slightly. He admitted after his election in November that it may in
fact be part wall and part fence. “I’m very good at this, it’s
called construction,” he said at the time.
What else might the United States
consider on the southern border for an as effective solution
or for a more effective solution? What else can be done for as
much or less money? Shouldn't other solutions be
explored? Of course they should.
It should be noted that fewer Mexicans
are being arrested at the U.S. border than any time in the recent
past. The total number of people apprehended for illegally crossing
the southern U.S. border has been steadily falling for almost two
decades. In fiscal 2017, the Border Patrol made 130,454 apprehensions
of Mexicans, a sharp drop from a peak of 1.6 million apprehensions in
2000. The decline in apprehensions reflects the decrease in the
number of unauthorized Mexican immigrants coming to the U.S.
Studies confirm that today, the
strongest pull for people crossing the border without authorization
is the desire to be with family in the U.S. Stepped-up border
security may make it more difficult and dangerous for people to
successfully cross the border, but research has found that
criminalizing unauthorized entry into the U.S. does not deter those
fleeing violence
The reality is that Mexico already
stops thousands of people from ever entering the U.S. by stopping
them at its southern border. Since the Southern Border Plan launched,
Mexico has deported more than half a million Central Americans,
including almost 82,000 in 2017, according to data from Mexico's
Interior Department. Since 2015, Mexico has deported more Central
Americans annually than U.S. authorities have, in some years more
than twice as many.
It is also true that Mexican law
enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol coordinate interdiction efforts,
perform joint patrols, respond to border violence and pursue
prosecution of criminals of transnational criminal organizations.
However, experts warn that significant migration flows will continue
until policymakers in the countries of origin and the international
community address the poor socioeconomic and security conditions
driving Central Americans to leave their homes.
It stands to reason that we will never
realize a secure border with Mexico without investing in our border
security technology and personnel, and extending our border security
outward so American borders are the last line of defense, not
the first. “Outward” means cooperating with the Mexican
government to strengthen its own security deep within Mexico.
A physical wall of separation does
nothing to better our relationship with Mexico. It does nothing to
solve the problems of mass immigration. It does nothing to defend
America beyond its own structural width, height, and length. The
United States should capitalize on the fact that Mexico and the
United States are great neighbors and trade partners, not quarreling
neighbors, and certainly not enemies.
Do Nothing More
There are at least two major reasons
for not adding substantial new resources. First, some experts believe
an expanded temporary worker program (of the kind anticipated by S.
744) is a more cost-effective way to reduce attempted entries than
increased border enforcement. As temporary workers arrive legally
through the ports-of-entry, illegal entries will drop even more. The
Border Patrol, in turn, will be able to focus more of its resources
on stopping criminals and potential security threats and on
interdicting the flow of illegal drugs across the border.
Every increase in border enforcement
has made it more difficult for unauthorized seasonal workers to
return to their jobs in the United States after going home for visits
or holidays. So increasingly, these workers have remained in the
United States. According to an INS study in the late 1990s, as many
as half of those apprehended trying to enter the United States
illegally were not new migrants – they were just trying to return
to their residences in the United States.
Before 1968, there was no numerical
limit on immigration from Mexico (or the Western Hemisphere).
Limiting legal migration from Mexico – while failing to establish a
large-scale temporary worker program – changed a circular, mostly
temporary, migration pattern into a flow that was north-bound and
relatively more permanent. The unauthorized resident population from
Mexico increased sharply after 1968 because the United States made it
harder for migrants to circulate legally.
Previous estimates also raise the
possibility that overstays from Mexico increase as border enforcement
increases. In annual estimates derived by the INS from 1985 to 1992,
Mexico was by far the leading country for overstays. From 1985 to
1992, total overstays in the United States were estimated to be about
269,000 per year. Of those, about 48,000 per year, or 18 percent,
were from Mexico. Although no similar estimates have been made since
1992, the continuing buildup of border enforcement over the past two
decades might have increased the annual number of overstays from
Mexico. Additional increases in border enforcement are likely to
yield diminishing returns at an increasing cost.
(Robert Warren, (Retired)
Director, Statistics Division, Immigration and Naturalization Service
and Donald Kerwin, Executive Director, Center for Migration Studies.)
Money For Mexico
We should also look for ways to make the money sent home by immigrants a transformative force for sustainable local development. Mexicans living abroad sent cash home in record numbers last year – $26.1 billion from January to November 2017, according to figures released by the central bank of Mexico. That's the most ever recorded and better than the $24.1 billion sent in 2016 over the same period.
Two main forces drove the trend: Mexico's weak currency, the peso, and President Trump's threat to slap a tax on cash shipments, known as remittances, sent from the U.S. to Mexico. Remittances are one of Mexico's top sources of foreign income, outpacing oil exports, which totaled $18.5 billion between January and October, according to the most recent figures available at the Bank of Mexico. Manufacturing exports are the top source of foreign income for Mexico. Remittances make up nearly 20 percent of GDP for Honduras and El Salvador, for instance. And in the case of Haiti they account for one-fourth.
In 2018, the United States pledged $5.8
billion in aid and investment for strengthening government and
economic development in Central America, and another $4.8 billion in
development aid for southern Mexico. The U.S. State Departments said
the money was used for the sake of “enhancing security, governance,
and economic prosperity that can create greater opportunities and
benefits for the people of the region” and help “jointly address
the shared challenges of migration, narcotics trafficking, and the
activities of trans-national criminal organizations.”
Newly inaugurated Mexican President
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said, “I have a dream that I want to
see become a reality ... that nobody will want to go work in the
United States anymore.”
Also, safety is enhanced when Mexico’s
priorities are considered. Mexico’s state public-safety
departments, Seguridad Publica, have preventive priorities and
standards in place that add key perspective to the overall security
challenge. The U.S. and Mexico’s bi-national definition of 21st
century border management calls for upgraded communications
equipment.
One of the recent shifts of the Merida
initiative – a multinational effort led by the U.S. and Mexico to
combat drug trafficking, money laundering and other types of
organized crime – is a re-emphasis on the co-responsibility that
both countries share in improving communications along the border.
Ports of Entry
The vast majority of heroin, fentanyl,
methamphetamine, and cocaine that crosses the U.S.-Mexico border does
so at “ports of entry,” the 48 official land crossings through
which millions of people, vehicles, and cargo pass every day. The
port of entry infrastructure is dilapidated: the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) has identified about $5 billion in
construction and renovation needs (a figure that includes some
non-U.S.-Mexico border ports).
The White House border security
proposals going through Congress seek to hire 500 Border Patrol
agents and 1,605 ICE personnel in 2018. However, they suggest no
increase for personnel at the ports of entry. Why? It seems funds
should be allocated to construct, renovate, and better man these
critical ports of entry.
Container Security Initiative
As terrorist organizations have
increasingly turned to destroying economic infrastructure to make an
impact on nations, the vulnerability of international shipping has
come under scrutiny. Under the Container Security Initiative program,
the screening of containers that pose a risk for terrorism is
accomplished by teams of Customs and Border Protection officials
deployed to work in concert with their host nation counterparts. The
CSI was launched in 2002 by the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border
Protection (CBP), an agency of the Department of Homeland Security.
It is imperative that we spend more
money to strengthen the US Customs and Border Protection's Container
Security Initiative to mitigate illicit trafficking. Ninety percent
of the world’s freight now moves in a container. Developing
enhanced container security standards will require actively enlisting
the support of U.S. trade partners. The government must make trade
security a global priority; the system for moving goods affordably
and reliably around the world is ripe for exploitation and vulnerable
to mass disruption by terrorists.
The intent of Container Security
Initiative is to extend the zone of security outward so that American
borders are the last line of defense, not the first. The Container
Security Initiative (CSI) was launched in 2002 by the U.S. Bureau of
Customs and Border Protection (CBP), an agency of the Department of
Homeland Security. Its purpose was to increase security for container
cargo shipped to the United States. CSI is now operational at ports
in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin
and Central America. CBP's 58 operational CSI ports now prescreen
over 80 percent of all maritime containerized cargo imported into the
United States.
The rule of thumb in the inspection
business is that it takes five agents three hours to conduct a
thorough physical examination of a single full intermodal container.
Last year nearly 20 million containers washed across America’s
borders via a ship, train, and truck. Frontline agencies had only
enough inspectors and equipment to examine between 1-2 percent of
that cargo. The need for expansion of the initiative is obvious.
Spending more money is a great investment.
Medicare Benefits in Mexico
One thing that would benefit both
countries would be if U.S. retirees could use their Medicare benefits
in Mexico. There is a lack of hard data on the exact number of
Medicare-eligible retirees residing in Mexico, but it is at least in
the tens of thousands and is certainly rising as the baby boom
generation reaches retirement.
American taxpayers would likely benefit
from a reduced total cost of Medicare: To the extent that extending
Medicare to Mexico induces Medicare beneficiaries to substitute
higher-cost U.S. health care services with lower-cost Mexican
services, overall Medicare expenditures would be reduced.
Although such a proposal would meet
with resistance from U.S. medical providers who fear the prospect of
foreign competition and resistance from their political allies would
surely denounce it as part of a larger plot to export aging Americans
en masse, U.S. retirees are growing more diverse, and a large and
growing number of them have origins in Mexico.
Many of these retirees would welcome
the opportunity to reconnect with their ancestral homeland, provided
that they wouldn't have to surrender the promise of high-quality
medical care in their twilight years in the process. Of course, the
benefits for Mexico would be immeasurable.
Taken together, Remain in Mexico and
Medicare-in-Mexico would bind the U.S. and Mexico in a mutually
beneficial relationship around immigration. Mexico would help the
U.S. exert greater control over migration flows, and in exchange, the
U.S. would make a serious commitment to fostering economic
opportunity for Mexicans and Central Americans closer to home,
thereby helping to keep families and communities intact. The presence
of large numbers of older Americans in the region, meanwhile, will
give the U.S. an even greater stake in helping maintain its security
and prosperity.
“Alternative-To-Wall” Border
Security
Tech companies are looking to cash in
on border security. Companies like Quanergy and Anduril are working
on electronic border solutions that would be more effective and
cheaper for taxpayers than building a physical wall. Even many locals
support electronic surveillance over a physical barrier. These
state-of-the-art detection technologies
Electronic surveillance is more
cost-effective despite concerns for the civil liberties of people
living within its range. The new budget is allotting about $400
million for border technology, including about $50 million for new
towers and $20 million for more ground sensors.
Already, aerostats (a kind of tethered
blimp) used to guard forward operating bases in Afghanistan are
watching remote sections of desert, and wheeled “MARCbots,”
tested on the battlefield in Iraq, are scouring smuggler tunnels.
In recent years, Customs and Border
Protection has been deploying an array of tools and technologies the
Border Patrol believes is helping to solve its most difficult
challenges. The most recent innovation, linking advanced cameras to
high powered radar, is providing a new awareness of threats in this
vast territory.
1. Border Crossings –
Biometrics are noe incorporated into passports, making inspections by
our CBP officers faster and more accurate. Automated Passport Control
kiosks and the Mobile Passport Control smartphone app are also
reducing wait times for busy travelers.
While cameras are already used in much
of CBP’s day-to-day operations, CBP was the first federal agency to
conduct a large scale feasibility study to evaluate the use of
body-worn cameras. Used properly, camera technology can support CBP’s
mission and enhance transparency – establishing the facts
surrounding a law enforcement encounter with the public, providing
evidence of criminal activity, and even documenting excellent
professional performance by law enforcement officers
2.. Sensor Towers – A
technology already being utilized are sensor towers. Radar, infrared
cameras, heat, and motion detection give border patrol agents an
edge. These towers work together in a network, each within
line-of-sight of at least one other. When people cross through their
web of detection, the border patrol is alerted and real-time video is
available. The radar and cameras transmit data over microwave link to
the stations where agents determine an appropriate course of action.
These new fixed towers, powered by solar panels and providing
instantaneous integration of images and alerts to the control center,
help close the final gaps for those trying a challenging end-around
over and through the roughest terrain.
This solution is not without its
challenges. Boeing won the contract in 2006, and the system was
initiated across 53 miles of Arizona's Mexico border. But, early
rollouts of the technology proved expensive and inaccurate. A test of
SBInet, the early precursor to today’s technologies, exceeded its
budget projections many times over.
So, a new approach, announced in 2011,
combines proven mobile surveillance, thermal imaging, and
tower-mounted video technology. The request for IFT proposals called
for sensors able to detect "a single, walking, average-sized
adult" and provide sufficiently high-resolution video of that
adult at a range of up to 7.5 miles in daylight and darkness.
The $145 million contract was awarded
to Elbit Systems of America, the Fort Worth, Texas–based subsidiary
of Israel's Elbit Systems. Elbit has deployed hundreds of miles of
border-monitoring systems between Israel and Palestine and also
provided multisensor surveillance systems along Israel's border with
Gaza and Egypt.
Now that the IFT has proved itself
worthy, a second installation on the Arizona border is underway, with
the ultimate plan of safeguarding the entire Mexico-facing stretch of
Arizona's perimeter, pending congressional approval.
The IFT is only one part of the border
patrol's effort to use technology to enhance security. The Arizona
Border Surveillance Technology Plan, which includes the IFT, also
uses remote video surveillance – day and night cameras for
cluttered urban environments where radar is not as effective – and
truck-mounted mobile sensors that can be moved when needed.
Another favorite Border Patrol phrase
is “force multiplier,” a designation for any capability that
increases the effectiveness of agents in the field. This may seem a
simple change but it has been very effective. So the enthusiasm for
the Arizona technology efforts is related to innovations that enable
agents to do more while relieving them from time consuming and often
fruitless work they had been doing.
“Before the deployment of the
advanced technologies, agents could literally spend hours, if not
shifts or days, tracking illegal border crossers or narcotics
traffickers,” Division Chief Raleigh Leonard said. “Now time on
task has been significantly reduced. With the benefit of these
surveillance tools, an interdiction now typically takes an hour or
less, when in the past it would take up to 8-10 hours.”
The result is that agents are spending
less time tracking and watching and more time on other law
enforcement activities.
Leonard says, “We are seeing a safer
border environment, with far less activity related to narcotic
trafficking and migrant crossings. I believe this can be attributed
to hard-working agents supported by advanced detection technology and
also supported by collaboration from a multitude of other agencies.”
And deeper into the future, Leonard
said, he hopes that facial recognition technology can be adapted for
border use to allow faster determination of threat levels. Knowing an
individual in a remote area is a landowner can save time, but more
critical would be to make an early determination that the camera is
seeing a known smuggler with a violent criminal record. This would
help determine how best to respond and better safeguard agents.
3. Drones – Drones have been
used to provide a bird's-eye view of vast stretches of border, and in
2012, the agency deployed a military wide-area camera attached to an
aerostat, an airship tethered up to 5,000 feet off the ground.
Originally used in Afghanistan, these cameras are capable of
capturing miles of terrain in a single hi-res image.
Flying at altitudes of 100 feet and far
higher, the UAVs, or drones, can cover broad swaths of land and
quickly detect activities that might be missed by fixed or mobile
ground sensors, particularly in remote or mountainous areas.
A
drone crew consisting of a pilot, a sensor operator, and a radar
operator controls the aircraft and relays information about suspected
crossings to the U.S. Border Patrol. In September 2017, CBP began
testing smaller hand-launched drones, including AeroVironment’s
Raven and Puma small unmanned aircraft systems. In the summer of
2016, the agency solicited offers for small drones with facial
recognition capability. The agency will finish its review of the
hand-launched systems in spring 2018.5
With
some unmanned aerial vehicles at the border starting at $18 million
apiece, their performance has implications for taxpayers as well as
national security. First results of drone use are less than promising
– from 2013 to 2016, the U.S. Border Patrol attributed fewer than
8,000 of its 1.7 million apprehensions to drones. Reports show that
$5,878 per flight hour was spent to operate Predator-Bs in fiscal
2015.
A real worry Americans have about
unmanned aircraft systems is that their use effectively puts anyone
living near the border under a state of perpetual surveillance for no
reason other than their geographical location – a clear violation
of their 4th Amendment rights?
4. Smart Wall – Based on this
administration’s budget, each mile of physical border wall would
cost $24.5 million. According to leading technology entrepreneurs,
utilizing off-the-shelf technology to build a Smart Wall would bring
the cost-per-mile down to less than $500,000.
The device, called an expendable
unattended ground sensor (E-UGS), will automatically alert a
workstation or mobile phone when a human walks within 30 meters of
it. The UGS can act as an invisible trip wire, or a surreptitious
doorbell, and can be linked to trigger cameras, drones, or
remote-controlled weapons. This technology has been proven in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
Some of these surveillance tools could
be buried in the ground, all-but-unnoticeable by passersby. Others
might be disguised as rocks, with wafer-sized, solar-rechargeable
batteries that could enable the sensors' operation for perhaps as
long as two decades, if their makers are to be believed. The target
would never know how he or she was discovered.
Robert Jones, chief of the counter
threat technology operations at Applied Research Associates, a major
defense contractor, says that ARA could be in for a windfall in
government contracts.
Pathfinders can either be scattered,
like a minefield, or used in a targeted area – say a fork in the
road. As a person walks down the path, the sensors go off like a game
of connect-the-dots. When the path splits, the Pathfinder on the
right detects movement, which lets observers know which direction the
target is going and, over time, could reveal large travel patterns.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol today
employs more than 7,500 UGSs on the Mexican border to spot illegal
migrants. The “Pathfinder” is a device that’s inexpensive
enough to deploy and forget about. Where early generations cost
thousands of dollars a pop, the Pathfinder retails for $499, or $549
for a slightly larger version about the size of a thermos.
Conclusion
A wall is not the only answer or even the
best answer to increasing border security. Lest we forget –
Congress set aside $1.2 billion for a 700-mile border fence in 2006.
It ended up spending $3.5 billion for construction of the current
combination of pedestrian fences and vehicle impediments. In 2009,
the Border Patrol estimated it would need to spend an average of $325
million per year for 20 years to maintain these barriers. The
Congressional Research Service found that by 2015, Congress had
already spent $7 billion on the project, more than $11.3 million per
mile per decade.
The fence is routinely climbed or
otherwise circumvented. The GAO reported in 2017 that both pedestrian
and vehicle barriers have been defeated by various methods, including
using ramps to drive vehicles "up and over" vehicle fencing
in the sector; scaling, jumping over, or breaching pedestrian
fencing; burrowing or tunneling underground; and even using small
aircraft.
A report in May 2008 by the
Congressional Research Service found "strong indication"
that illegal border-crossers had simply found new routes. A 2017
Government Accountability Office(GAO) report, citing U.S. Customs and
Border Protection (CBP) data, found that from fiscal year 2010
through fiscal year 2015, the U.S.-Mexico border fence had been
breached 9,287 times, at an average cost of $784 per breach to
repair.
After promising voters that Mexico
would pay for the border wall, the president has sought $25 billion
from Congress to fund the project. And, a 14-mile "border wall
construction project" along the border in San Diego was
announced in June 2018. The project actually will replace an
"eight-to-10 foot high scrap metal wall with an 18-to-30 foot
bollard-style wall topped off with an anti-climbing plate." The
cost will be $147 million for 15 miles of construction. That is $9.8
million a mile. The total length of the U.S.–Mexico border is 1,954
miles. Go figure the real cost of construction, then add maintenance
and security.
There must be definite, detailed plans
for border security. Instead of just accepting the notion that more
walls will be effective, Congress should study all possible solutions
that could improve security, and they should spend money wisely with
an eye on the future.
Trump has approached the argument with blinders
– he wishes to fulfill a campaign promise. He says, “This is a
choice between right and wrong, justice and injustice. This is about
whether we fulfill our sacred duty to the American citizens we
serve.” If you stubbornly accept that the border wall is “right”
without examining reasons why so many believe it is “wrong,” you
simply ignore the common good of human beings. It is imperative to
understand the welfare of two countries ... one very rich and one
pitifully poor … one bent on fearful nationalism and one
desperately seeking to fulfill a dream of prosperity.
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