Border securityBorder Patrol to buy two new UAV for U.S.-Mexico border
Just-passed border bill includes $32 million to buy two new Predator B turboprop UAV aircraft from General Atomics, as well as fund operating control stations for them; retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Kostelnik, the assistant Customs and Border Protection commissioner for the Office of Air and Marine, told a House subcommittee that twenty-four UAVs would eventually be needed to cover the entire northern and southern borders and U.S. coastlines
Border patrol UAV // Source: avstop.com
Unmanned aircraft and new agents deployed to Texas and Southwestern states will provide blanket surveillance better to secure the border and clear the way for Congress to tackle immigration reform, DHS secretary Janet Napolitano said.
Additional UAVs were included in a recently passed $600 million border security bill. They will be a “force multiplier” to the ranks of Border Patrol and Customs agents, which also will increase by 1,500 personnel, Napolitano said in an interview with the San Antonio Express-News. “It gives us the capacity to have 24/7 air coverage along the entire Texas border,” she said.
San Antonio News’s Gary Martin writes that the former Arizona governor said bipartisan support for the border security bill also clears the way for Congress to tackle comprehensive immigration reform. “The president thinks it is high time to focus on the immigration system,” Napolitano said.
Opponents have argued that immigration reform should not be addressed until the U.S.-Mexico border is completely secured.
Napolitano said the border security bill will help provide a safe and secure border and allow Congress to complete immigration reform that includes earned citizenship. “It’s time to stop moving the goal posts,” she said.
The border bill includes $32 million to buy two new Predator B turboprop UAV aircraft from General Atomics, as well as fund operating control stations for them. The bill did not specify where the drones will be based, but Texas lawmakers want them in the Lone Star State to beef up surveillance of smugglers of narcotics and immigrants along the Rio Grande.
Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Rep. Henry Cuellar ( D-Laredo) said the UAVs should be housed in Texas, which has 1,200 miles of the 2,000-mile U.S. border with Mexico. “We are going to do everything possible to get them to the state of Texas,” said Cuellar, chairman of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on border, maritime and global counterterrorism.
Cornyn said Texas has a longer “common border with Mexico than any other state, but has not received the federal resources given to other border states. Texas seems to have been shortchanged, relative to places like Arizona, when it comes to equipment, whether it’s helicopters and now drones and Border Patrol,” Cornyn said.
Napolitano said a decision on where to base the new drones, and personnel, would be made on operational need, which currently is the Tucson sector in southern Arizona. The March murder of Arizona border rancher Robert Krentz Jr. has sparked
