Napolitano freezes spending for high-tech border security project

The Homeland Security Department announced on Tuesday that it will reallocate funds for its massive and troubled project to deploy sensors and cameras along the U.S. southwest border to other, more proven surveillance technologies and any future funding for the project will be frozen until a full assessment of the program is completed.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said the freeze affects SBInet, the technology component of the department's Secure Border Initiative, which includes security fencing that eventually would run along the U.S. southern and northwestern borders, and a network of sensors, cameras and control towers to identify anyone illegally crossing into the United States. Boeing Co. is the prime contractor for SBInet.

"Not only do we have an obligation to secure our borders, we have a responsibility to do so in the most cost-effective way possible," she said. "The system of sensors and cameras along the southwest border known as SBInet has been plagued with cost overruns and missed deadlines."

Effective immediately, DHS will move $50 million of Recovery Act funding for the first phase of SBInet in the Tucson and Ajo, Ariz., areas to technologies that are more proven to work in the field. The first phase includes the construction of towers that have a suite of integrated day and night cameras, radars, ground sensors and a communications relay. DHS also had planned to link towers and sensors within a defined area and feed information to a display in a Border Patrol command center.

The funds will be reallocated to other "tested, commercially available security technology along the southwest border," including mobile surveillance, thermal imaging devices, ultralight detection, backscatter units, mobile radios, cameras and vehicle laptops, and remote video surveillance system enhancements, according to Napolitano. DHS also plans to freeze SBInet funding beyond the initial deployment until an assessment that she ordered in January is completed.

The announcement comes two days before a joint Thursday hearing before the House subcommittees on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism; and Management, Investigations and Oversight. The Government Accountability Office is expected to release a report at the hearing that criticizes the program's progress.

President Obama also proposed in the fiscal 2011 budget cutting SBI funding to $574.2 million, which is 28 percent less than the $800 million allocated in the fiscal 2010 budget.