While the Department of Homeland Security conducts a program review of its troubled border fence program, Customs and Border Protection has not stopped deploying new sensors in the Southwest, said a senior DHS official.
The Secure Border Initiative’s technology piece, known as SBInet, was designed to create “virtual fences” along remote parts of the northern and southern borders. The program suffered delays, setbacks and cost overruns for years, but the Obama administration signaled its intent to proceed with the plan and field a second version of the system of sensors, cameras and a communications backbone that would tie them all together. That was before the airing of a 60 Minutes report that repeated the conclusions of several Government Accountability Office and DHS inspector general investigations that said the system did not work as envisioned. Two days before the broadcast, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that SBInet was on hold and that there would be a sweeping review that would look for possible alternatives to the program.
Nevertheless, the department is continuing to spend money on border technology, CBP Commissioner Alan Bersen told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The agency has spent $50 million of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money to deploy proven surveillance systems along the border. The bulk of that, $37 million, has been used to purchase several mobile surveillance systems — a suite of sensors mounted on a rugged truck that can be driven to hotspots along the border. The Border Patrol has also received $12.3 million to spend on thermal and backscatter imagers. CBP’s Air and Marine division has received $4.5 million to buy thermal imaging and other cameras for its boats and aircraft.
The key difference is that these are “commercially available, stand-alone” technologies, Bersen testified. No money has been allocated for networking the sensors into a larger communications system.