Key lawmaker emphasizes need for new border security technology

The Homeland Security Department plans to seek out new technologies and rely more heavily on state and local government resources to better secure the Southwest border, the head of a House subcommittee said on Wednesday.

This is an improvement over current tactics, which rely too heavily on sensors and cameras to detect illegal immigrants entering the United States from Mexico, said Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism, during an interview with Nextgov.

"The bottom line is that for the border, we need the right mixture of personnel, technology and operational procedures -- which has to include cooperation with local law enforcement both here and in Mexico," said Cuellar, whose brother is sheriff of Webb County, along the southwest border of Texas.

DHS is ramping up a program that will explore new public and private sector technologies that could be deployed along the border. Though important, sensors and cameras alone won't solve the problem, Cuellar said, emphasizing the need for more unmanned aerial vehicles, to monitor for suspicious activity.

On June 23, the Federal Aviation Administration approved the flight of a UAV over 1,200 miles of the Texas-Mexico border, which allowed DHS' Customs and Border Protection bureau to move forward with plans to permanently station one in the state.

In reevaluating border security initiatives, DHS needs to recognize that different segments of the border face different challenges, Cuellar said.

"In Arizona, you step a foot one way and you're in Mexico, while in Texas, you have a river that acts as a natural boundary," he noted. "Cookie-cutter technology won't work. [DHS] needs to rely on information from the local [communities] to better understand what they're dealing with."

The chairman pointed to the Secure Communities initiative, run by DHS' Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau, as a good model of collaboration among federal, state and local entities. The program compares fingerprints local law enforcement officials collect during the booking process against those saved in FBI and DHS databases to confirm immigration status.

"State and local governments are willing to participate in federal efforts, and have been doing so for years," Cuellar said. "The federal government has done more than they've done in the past [to encourage collaboration], but is it enough? No. These communities are at the front line, and we're the one who need assistance."

Following a number of hints from Homeland Security Department officials that the widely criticized virtual border fence project known as SBInet will be canceled, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano announced last week new measures to protect border communities. They include plans to develop a system that will link information systems of state, local and tribal law enforcement entities along the border with those at DHS and the Justice Department; enhance analytic capabilities of fusion centers to receive and share information about border threats; and establish a suspicious activities reporting program that will help officers recognize and track criminal activity along the Southwest border.

The new measures were announced while Napolitano's review of SBInet is still under way.

"Utilizing technology on the border is critical, but continued and repeated delays in SBInet raise fundamental questions about [the program's] viability," a CBP spokeswoman said. "This type of comprehensive analysis of alternatives should have been undertaken years ago. Americans need proven, cost-effective border security solutions now -- not 10 years down the road."

Actually, SBInet would take 323 years to deploy across the 2,000-mile Southwest border if DHS kept the current pace, Cuellar said.

"Of course, we can't wait that long, so if we need to adjust -- let's go ahead and do it," he said

When asked if DHS was working closely enough with Congress while moving forward on border security efforts, he said communication was improving.

"My experience has been that it doesn't matter whether it's a Democratic or Republican administration, the executive branch has the tendency to move their own way," Cuellar said. "But certainly, as a member of Congress and chairman of a committee that has oversight, I can say that Napolitano really gets it."