THE GREAT BORDER FENCE DEBACLE

President Obama inherited from the Bush administration a border security program "replete with vast technology problems accompanied by outrageous cost overruns and missed deadlines" by the the main contractor, says a report by the Center for American Progress.

CAP charges that the Bush administration "proved it had learned little from earlier failures to control undocumented immigration along the border stretching back more than a decade, and showed it had a poor handle at best on government contracting at the then new Department of Homeland Security.

DHS signaled its discontent with the mismanaged cost-overriden technological component of its border enforcement strategy by freezing work on the "virtual fence" along the U.S.-Mexico border "pending a full assessment of its usefulness," according to the report.

At the same time, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano ordered the redeployment of $50 million of Recovery Act funding to other "tested" commercially available security technology, including mobile surveillance, thermal imaging devices, ultra-light detection, mobile radios, cameras and laptop computers for pursuit vehicles, and remote video surveillance system enhancements.

More than half a dozen critical reports of DHS's Secure Border Initiative, or SBI, a program to control undocumented immigration and major drug trafficking operations primarily along the U.S.-Mexico border, but also across the United States, have been issued.

Between the fiscal years 2005 and 2009, more than $3.7 billion was spent on SBI. The initiative called for:

• More agents for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents under DHS.


• Expanded capacity to detain and remove undocumented immigrants.


• Increased enforcement at worksites, stepping up fugitive operations and updating contracts with state local law agencies.


• Upgrading ports of entry and enhanced spending on steel fencing along the border.


• Building a 'vertical fence' under the so-called SBInet advanced technology program to increase the detection of illegal trafficking of narcotics and people.

SBInet was intended to improve security between ports of entry and where the physical fencing is not in place by installing remote video surveillance camera systems and sensors as well as adding aerial assets such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

Boeing, a major defense contractor and commercial airline manufactuerer, was selected by DHS's Customs and Border Protection in September 20006 to lead SBInet. Boeing beat out three other large contractors -- Lockheed Martin, Northrop Gruman and Raytheon, as well as Ericsson Inc., the Swedish telecommunications giant -- to win the three-year contract with three additional one-year options, despite misgivings about its lack of experience with border conrol issues.

Concerns about Boeing proved prophetic. Just before Napolitano's decision to reassess SBInet, DHS estimated the 'virtual fence' would be fully deployed along the southwest border in 2016 -- more than a decade after it was first announced and seven years after the original contract for the program expired.

The GAO reported last year that SBInet's delays required DHS to rely on existing equipment, rather than using the new technology. The more modern equipment has had numerous problems, among them, poor camera clarity during bad weather and mechanical failure with radar that leave it unable to spot intruders.

Federal auditors followed up with a critical report, observing that from March 2008 to July 2009, more than 1,300 defects were found in the SBInet system, and new problems were being discovered at a faster rate than repairs could be made.

Additionally, about 70 percent of the procedures to test the system were rewritten as they were being executed, prompting a letter from DHS to Boeing asserting that testing changes appeared to be designed to pass the test rather than qualify the system.

While DHS has been challenged to improve its oversight over Boeing, it also has missed some of its own deadlines, particularly those surrounding the troubled SBInet.

Mark Borkowski, the DHS official in charge of the project, acknowledged at the start of 2010 that he would be unable to meet a promised March 2010 deadline to the House Appropriations Committee for turning over an initial portion of the project in Arizona to the Border Patrol.

In its most recent audit in March 2010, GAO stated that the long-delayed first two "blocks" of the system are now scheduled to be handed over to the federal government this fall, if Customs and Border Protection approve the timeline.

"At the current rate of 28 miles of SInet technology every 4. 5 years, it would take 320 years -- or until the year 2330 -- to deploy SBInet technology across the Southwest border," said Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, chairman of the Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism, during a hearing to receive GAO's study. "That statistic would be comical if the subject matter were not so serious."

Other members of Congress and some experts in the field of homeland security and technology are also openly skeptical that a solution is coming soon.

"It is hard to be optimistic," said Rep. Mark Souder, R-Indiana, at a September 2009 hearing. And when Rep. Christopher Carney, D-Pennsylvania, asked at a hearing if the taxpayers have gotten what they paid for, a senior GAO official answered, "No."

Nor are DHS border challenges exclusively technological.

The department also is charged by Congress with building a physical fence covering one-third of the 2,000-mile border with Mexico, an ambitious project the costs of which have risen from $3.5 million a mile to $6.5 million a mile.

Another form of fencing aimed at keeping out vehicles has also risen in cost, from $1 million to $1.8 million per mile, and GAO officials say the impact of both types of fencing has not been adequately measured.

"We have yet to see whether or not this fencing has increased border security and justified its costs," says Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-California, the past chair of the House Homeland Security Committee's panel on border issues.

These concerns have been shared by many members of Congress, as well as by Napolitano, who first opposed the fence while serving as governor of Arizona, a position she held before she was named Secretary of DHS.

Even though the Obama administration has worked around the prominent SBI setbacks and pushed forward with increased staffing, major construction, and revised detection and removal procedures, the focus on the costly border fences and SBInet play into the political hand of opponents of comprehensive immigration reform.

Congress received in February the Obama administration's proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2011, which included a sharp funding cut for SBI, budgeting $574.17 million, down from $800 million it got the previous year.

No one expects the physical fence alone can keep out illegal immigrants, which is why SBInet remained so important despite its numerous failures to meet the benchmarks for success that it promised at its start in 2005. Questions from Congress and government auditors regarding the usefulness of the physical and 'virtual' barriers erected along the southwest border will continue.

This is the challenge facing the Obama administration and DHS. Richard Stana, the top GAO official overseeing border issues, told an El Paso radio station that 2010 is a crucial year for SBInet. "If it doesn't work in 2010," he said, "then there's going to have to be some serious thinking about where to go, and what options exist."

"I hope the department is working on Plan B," Cuellar said as he pushed for some form of technology strategy during the March congressional hearing, "because those of us along the border have waited long enough for a security solution that works."

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