Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Tuesday that she will freeze all funds to expand the virtual fence program along the U.S. border with Mexico.<\/p>\n
While not dead, SBInet – also known as the \u2018virtual fence,’ is on hanging by a thread. After a two hour hearing before the House Committee on Homeland Security, Republicans and Democrats were willing to give the billion-dollar-program one more chance to prove itself. But Congressman Henry Cueller (TX-R) warned Department of Homeland officials: “You better be working on a Plan B.”<\/p>\n
A Government Accounting Report on the virtual fence, the fifth such report, showed DHS did a lousy job overseeing the project and Congressman from New Jersey suggested the agency ‘doctored”\u00a0 70% of the tests so Boeing could pass.<\/p>\n
Two years behind schedule and millions over budget, right now Boeing is still trying to complete coverage of the first 28 mile stretch of border outside Tucson. It just began erecting towers for Stage Two, outside Ajo, Arizona. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano has frozen funding for the $6 billion plus Secure Border Initiative.<\/p>\n
While no decision has been made pending a review, it looks more likely DHS will terminate the program but continue to employ SBInet technology where appropriate.<\/p>\n
But the promise of “comprehensive situational awareness” from Brownsville to San Ysidro looks doubtful.<\/p>\n
Politically, neither Republicans nor Democrats took ownership of this white elephant. Both wanted to make it clear they did not want to “spend good money after bad.”<\/p>\n
But Randolph Hite, Director of IT architecture at the GAO seemed to give them cover when he said: “I think this program was underestimated in its complexity, I think it was driven by a schedule rather than what needed to be in place. I see that changing now. It\u2019s not going to happen overnight, but progress is being made in that direction.”<\/p>\n
Why does SBInet matter now? Technically, it doesn’t. The agency can get by with existing technology and manpower. That changes the moment the White House announces it is pursuing so called ‘comprehensive immigration reform,\u2019 which is code for legalizing the 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants now living in the U.S.<\/p>\n
Then ‘operational control’ of the border becomes a huge political issue. Both parties want to avoid another 1986, when Washington approved amnesty for 3 million immigrants, without securing the border.<\/p>\n
Republicans will insist on a nearly airtight border, in exchange for their support of a bill. Border security has steadily improved, but some GOP members claim ‘operational control’ has flat lined since Democrats took the White House.<\/p>\n
So the ‘virtual fence’ stays alive as Democrats prefer this alternative to new demands for a longer physical fence, which has no chance of going anywhere, with the current Administration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Tuesday that she will freeze all funds to expand the virtual fence program along the U.S. border with Mexico. While not dead, SBInet – also known as the \u2018virtual fence,’ is on hanging by a thread. After a two hour hearing before the House Committee on Homeland Security, Republicans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5027,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-443889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5027"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}