Border patrol needs better training, diversity, and resources
the current fifty-five days, an improved and relevant curriculum, and on-going training throughout an agent’s career. At present we only require BP agents to have a high school degree and we never ask them to pass a physical fitness test after they have graduated from their initial training.
Another way, that I have discussed in depth elsewhere, is to eliminate discrimination within the Border Patrol of female agents, currently only at 5 percent of the total labor force. More female agents in this law enforcement agency can improve the quality of these law enforcers at the same time it brings vital perspectives to this agency that have, since its inception in 1924, been absent. The token symbolic hiring of females, including the recent hiring of a competent female law enforcer to head the BP at Nogales, Arizona, does not in itself bring about permanent and substantive change within the BP.
HSNW: In the procurement guidelines for the latest iteration of the virtual fence, DHS officials say they are only seeking to procure mature technologies that have been fully developed and are ready to be implemented along the border. Do you believe that DHS’s new procurement strategy will be effective in producing a viable virtual fence that meets its budget and timeline?
LM: My hope is that DHS has learned from both Boeing’s costly and complete failure to develop a virtual fence along with Raytheon’s recent waste of taxpayer money in ASP, the Advanced Spectroscopic Portal System, to completely divorce itself from funding so-called “developing” technologies in favor of existing and proven technologies, especially those already successfully employed by our own military. DHS’ strategy not only cost taxpayers billions, but it failed to resolve specific security issues at our borders and ports of entry that still remain. Oddly enough, not one individual has been identified in DHS or the private sector as responsible for the waste of billions of government dollars.
HSNW: What are the broader effects of the push by private citizens in Arizona to build a private fence along the U.S.-Mexico border? Do you think citizens in other states will begin advocating for similar initiatives? In other words is this indicative of a larger trend? If so, what are the farther reaching consequences of such a plan?
LM: Private citizens should not have to erect their own border fences. That is the legal right and obligation of our federal government. It is also their job to decide if a border fence is necessary in certain locations or a waste of fiscal resources. But until our federal government takes action and makes these kinds of decisions, efforts like those in Arizona will continue to pop up. This administration, with the support of Congress, must provide solutions that make Arizona’s border fence effort unnecessary. In my opinion, it is a total waste of its resources, time, and energy and the end result could be counter-productive.
HSNW: Finally, it seems that of late many lawmakers and citizens have been staunch advocates of building a fence along the border. What is driving this most recent push?
LM: Continued construction of the Mexican border fence should be driven and guided only by scientific analysis and findings that demonstrate additional border fencing is in fact necessary. At the present time we have the two national parties, along with all of the presidential candidates, trying to demonstrate they are “stronger” on national security issues than their opponents and thus more worthy of support and election. In my mind national security and immigration are not the same thing, rather they are the result of a blatant political expediency that fused these two issues together purely for presidential party platforms prior to the 2008 presidential elections.
We sorely need a scientific analysis of the effectiveness of the border fence to date, along with a detailed accounting of the money spent for all security projects. We’ve already seen that national and local politics, when combined with our defense industry, can seriously harm our national security. Since 9/11, DHS has as yet to develop a comprehensive Mexican border plan which sets standards that can be objectively tested. In the meantime, we have not reformed our national immigration policy since the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. There is still much to do at a variety of different levels to improve our security along the Mexican border.
