The Arizona Republic is Wrong About the Border
Glenn Spencer, American Border Patrol -- June 20, 2010
On June 20, the Arizona Republic (AR) ran a story about securing the border. I was interviewed for this story, but Dennis Wagner used not a word of what I said. In fact, he made no mention of my organization, American Border Patrol, or me. I will admit that Wagner did want to send a photographer down to fly along with me, but his editor killed that. Apparently Wagner wanted to do a story about ABP, but the editors didn’t.
The Republic thought
highly enough of ABP’s work, however, to use its aerial survey data
to produce a map of the border, but not highly enough to use other
information it had.
AR asks the question: “Is
a border secure only when no one crosses illegally and when no
contraband slips through?”
The answer can be found in the Secure Fence Act of 2006.
(b) OPERATIONAL CONTROL DEFINED.--
In this section, the term
"operational
control" means
the prevention of all unlawful entries into the United States,
including entries by terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments
of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband.
The Republic then says: “There is no way to conclude success because authorities have no idea how many undocumented immigrants are getting through.”
The Arizona Republic is wrong.
In a recent test of
the
virtual fence system, it was reported that system performance
“will be deemed acceptable if it identifies less than 50 percent of
items of interest that cross the border.” How would DHS know this if
it didn’t know how to count items of interest crossing the border?
I have proposed an approach to counting people crossing the border in a plan I call Arizona Border Certification. It involves digging two trenches along the border – one on the border and another 60 feet to the north. Fiber optic cables would be laid in these trenches with seismic sensors placed every ten feet to detect border crossers.
Counting the number of people who cross a line is a completely different problem than tracking those people and directing agents to intercept them. Seismic ground sensors have been used for years to do this and the technology is well established. In fact, ABP developed its own ground sensors that reliably counted the number of people walking past.
Moreover I recently discussed my
idea of the sensor line to people who develop ground sensors for the
U.S. Border Patrol and they said my approach is quite feasible.
The seismic border counting system would be
backed up with Internet-based cameras that look up and down the
border. These cameras would be placed temporarily to verify that
the sensor line is doing its job.
The entire border system would be backed-up using passive trail cameras and thermal aerial surveillance to further check on the accuracy of the seismic line count.
The Arizona Republic goes on to say: “Such unavoidable uncertainty prevents any absolute assurances that no one is sneaking over, making declarations of victory impossible.” This is making perfect the enemy of the good.
The question is: What is an acceptable level of illegal border crossers? I have developed a rationale for arguing that no more than 20,000 illegal crossers per years as an acceptable level.
The concept is fleshed out in Hidden In Plain Sight.
It is possible to count the number of people and things that cross the border with a high degree of confidence. It is also possible to set an acceptable level of border protection that is also achievable. But this would be poison for the open-borders crowd.
When the Secure Border Initiative virtual fence was first announced I predicted it would fail because it included no measure of effectiveness. Now the Governmental Accountability Office agrees.
Apprehensions – the only measure
DHS reports apprehensions by U.S. Border Patrol Sector. Data exist that show apprehensions by individual stations, but they are not available to the public. If they were we could better evaluate the impact of different types of border infrastructures.
In one report by the
Congressional
Research Service individual station data were used to assess the
impact of border fencing. It showed that apprehensions at the
Imperial Beech and Chula Vista stations dropped by more than 95%
after the double-layered fence was built.
In some cases Sector data are sufficient to look at the impact of the fence. New fencing covers a significant part of the Yuma Sector and there we see a reduction in apprehensions by more than 95%.
At El Paso fencing covers much of the Sector, but not as much as Yuma. Here we see an 85% reduction in apprehensions.
The Tucson Sector is much more problematic since very little has been fenced and the sector is so large.
Avoiding Assessment
For eight years I have worked on
the border and watched failed efforts at controlling it. At the
heart of the problem has always been the absence of any way of
scoring the work of the U.S. Border Patrol. Where data are available
they show that fencing is the only thing that really works.
Open borders advocates, and that includes most of the top management
of the U.S. Border Patrol, know that if a realistic assessment were
made it would mean they would have to build fences to stop illegal
immigration and drug smuggling, and they don’t really want to do
that.
Shameful Reporting
There is a saying that if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. I have long argued that the open borders crowd has reversed engineered this concept – to wit – if you can’t measure it you can’t improve it. This has been the driving philosophy of the power-elite in Washington for decades and the Arizona Republic is more than happy to go along with the idea. They should be ashamed of themselves for working so hard to deceive the American people.
