Government Malpractice -- DHS Evades the Question

Government Malpractice
DHS Evades the Question

American Patrol Report -- October 28

"I cannot count something that I do not see."

    "I cannot count something that I do not see." So said Mario Escalante, U.S. Border Patrol spokesman in response to American Border Patrol's plan to use cameras to count illegal aliens.
    Glenn Spencer, head of ABP said this is a silly statement. "The U.S. Border Patrol has hundreds, if not thousands of underground seismic sensors that count people crossing the border every day," Spencer said, "They can't see them, but they can count them and Escalante knows this."
    Spencer said Escalante was doing what he was told – obfuscating the border situation by lying. "The Department of Homeland Security knows that the issue of measuring border control effectiveness is becoming very important and they are very afraid of it," he added.
    On Sept. 9, the Government Accountability Office released a report that had one and only one recommendation: Customs and Border Protection (CBP) should evaluate its performance and compare that to the cost of the border fence and other systems used to control illegal immigration.
    In other words, CBP should figure out what impact fencing and other systems are having on stopping illegal border crossings and compare that to the cost.
    "Janet Napolitano, head of DHS, and in turn CBP, knows that if a real evaluation was done it would probably show that properly designed border fencing is the cheapest way to protect against unlawful entry, but she doesn't like the fence," Spencer said.
    Spencer said as the nation's attention is focused on health care, open borders advocates in Congress quietly shelved plans to complete the border fence. "The least they could do is follow GAO's recommendation and see what works," Spencer added. He said anything less is "government malpractice."