Surveillance Towers Sprout Along the US-Mexico Border in Updated Security Plan Nancy Montoya - Arizona Public Media
go to original February 2, 2016

Arizona Week (ArizonaPublicMedia)

Securing the border is part of every presidential candidate’s game plan for winning the election. But can the border be secured – and at what cost?

Listen: What tech secures the border?

A decade ago, a multi-billion dollar plan failed. Now federal agents use technology tested by the department of defense, modified for use on the U.S.- Mexico border.

In 2005 Under the Bush Administration, Homeland Security launched the SBInet, the Secure Border Initiative. It was supposed to be the Holy Grail of border protection, intended to build a technology-based "virtual fence" across the U.S.-Mexico border.

What looked good on paper, say border patrol officials was a disaster, in great part because Customs and Border Protection had little input and were being forced to use technology that didn’t serve their needs.

...Turns out what border officials needed, all along, they all ready had. It is tried and true technology currently in use by the U.S. Department of Defense. It relies on off the shelf equipment that doesn’t need to be engineered from the ground up like the failed SBInet system.

“So we scaled down our ambitions somewhat and selected a much more modest portfolio of systems that the Border Patrol selected and tailored to each area of the Border," Mark Borkowski, the head of Customs and Border Protection told an October 2015 congressional hearing. "We focused it on Arizona because that’s where the action was at the time. We are in the throws of completing that plan which we call the Arizona Technology plan.”

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