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U.S. Tightens Control of Mexico Border
NewsMax.com Wires
Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2006NACO, Ariz. -- "The United States has begun to apply tactics perfected in the war in Afghanistan to tighten control of the border with Mexico, using a mix of age-old hunting techniques and high-tech spy-in-the-sky surveillance."
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"In the air, a civilian version of the Predator drone that made its battlefield debut in Afghanistan, trains sophisticated electro-optical infrared cameras on the border."
"The Border Patrol first started using an unmanned surveillance aircraft last year but the first Predator crashed in April near here."
"Its $7.5 million successor began flying early in November, the first of 18 unmanned aerial vehicles the Border Patrol hopes to roll out by 2012 to tighten both the southern border with Mexico and the border with Canada, more than twice as long and thinly patrolled. No more than 300 Border Patrol agents are on duty on the northern border at any one time."
AMERICAN BORDER PATROL RESPONDS
American Border Patrol reports that the Reuters story about the Naco Border Patrol station posted on NewsMax.com is incorrect as it pertains to the Predator UAV. Following successful demonstration of the utility of a UAV on the border, the DHS purchased a Predator B and started operating it in September, 2005 .
The Predator crashed on April 25, 2006. A new Predator B was delivered to DHS at Libby Field in November, however flights have bee restricted to military airspace above Fort Huachuca and it has not been supporting the Border Patrol, as far as ABP can learn. The Predator ran off the runway at Libby about ten days ago and is not operational at present. (Note: ABP did observe what it believed to be the Predator B flying along the Mexican border in Southeastern Arizona, but it was in Mexican airspace.)
"The low-tech, high-tech interaction of men on the ground with pilot-less aircraft is a concept developed by the military in the mid-1990s and employed extensively in Afghanistan.
"There, aerial surveillance in combination with Global Satellite Positioning devices used by Special Forces soldiers on horseback played a decisive role in the war against the Taliban.
"A similar interaction is now playing out along one of the most heavily-crossed - and most hazardous stretches - of the 2,000-mile border. In 2006, almost half the 441 people who died trying to cross between Mexico and the United States died along the border with Arizona."
AMERICAN BORDER PATROL RESPONDS
The Border Patrol does not use Global Satellite Positioning devices as a matter of policy. Some agents have GPS, some do not. American Border Patrol offered to donate six test units for the Border Patrol to use but they declined the offer. It is malfeasance of duty.
"There are heat-sensing cameras atop tall poles, agents with night-vision goggles, and in the Naco area a 12-foot metal wall. Border patrol agents catch an average of 100 illegal crossers a day on this stretch of the frontier in Arizona alone."
AMERICAN BORDER PATROL RESPONDS
The twelve-foot wall runs about a mile east and west of the Naco Port of Entry. What is the reporter referring when he says this stretch of the frontier? The Border Patrol catches about 100 a day just climbing over the wall!
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