Friday, June 18th, 2010
The nation’s infrastructure may be crumbling, but U.S. taxpayers can be thankful that the Department of Homeland Security paid top dollar for a 52-mile electronic fence to keep illegal immigrants on the right side of the Mexican border, to the tune of $800 million, or roughly $15 million per mile.
The problem: it might not even work.
That’s the most recent assessment of the so-called SBInet or Secure Border Initiative by federal technology expert Randolph Hite, who testified before a House of Representatives subcommittee Thursday.
The string of surveillance cameras, unattended ground sensors, and guarded towers heavily touted by the Bush Administration was supposed to usher in a future of border security.
But the much-scaled-down project has not met lowered expectations and has been plagued by cost overruns, Hite said.
“Let me emphasize our long-held position that SBInet is a risky program,” Hite said according to a written statement released after the hearing.
“DHS has yet to identify expected quantifiable or qualitative benefits from this block,” Hite said of the project’s current phase.
The project was billed as the technological answer to the nation’s border security needs by former President George W. Bush in a May 2006 national radio address.
“We are launching the most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history. We will construct high-tech fences in urban corridors, and build new patrol roads and barriers in rural areas. America has the best technology in the world, and we will ensure that the Border Patrol has the technology they need to do their job and secure our border."But cost delays and poor planning have prompted Homeland Security to halt construction on the project which now covers a 53-mile stretch of land along the Arizona border, far short of planned 2,000-mile electronic net running from Arizona to Texas in 2006.
Worse yet, Hite said that DHS has lowered performance expectations so that the system must detect less than half of anything that crosses the net.