Sharp drop in illegal crossers notwithstanding, “border industrial complex” keeps growing

2,100 mile border with Mexico. Instead, the project covers just 53 miles of that stretch. Last year DHS ended the program after five years, endless delays, ineffective technology, and almost a billion dollars spent.

Mark Borkowski, the leader of technology for Customs and Border Protection (CBP), did not mince words. “Frankly, in my view it was a disaster,” he told North County Public Radio. “And I ended up, as it turns out, being the person who ended up having to try to manage our way through that disaster.”

Boeing, the main contractor for the project, had problems with components of the towers dealing with the southern desert heat. “There were issues with heat,” Borkowski said. “Sometimes it was just poor design of cabling.”

The federal government has not given up on border security technologies, though. DHS is going over proposals to build hundreds of new towers.

Many argue that the massive spending on border security technology is necessary.

“Immigration numbers down to 1971 levels; violent crime either down or flat; seizures of contraband up,” Napolitano said, slapping the table in her office. “Those are material elements of proof, to show that we have got our arms around the border issue. And we are sustaining that.”

Douglas Massey, a sociologist at Princeton University, who has been studying immigration patterns, says that fewer people are sneaking into the country because the U.S. economic slow down, which began in 2008, and which took away the jobs that were pulling people into the United States.

“Unauthorized migrants, very rationally, stopped crossing the border.” Massey told North County Public Radio.

As the American economy is still trying to work its way back, things have been improving in Mexico. Also, the birthrate has fallen sharply, leading to fewer working age people coming to the United States.

“Personally I think the big boom in Mexican migration is now over,” Massey concludes.

Other experts agree. It if is, there may be a justification for rethinking  massive investment in technologies for border security.

“DHS is now dealing with the same challenge the entire government’s facing, and that’s the realization that our budget is hemorrhaging from red ink,” Rogers told North County Public Radio. “And we’ve got to cut spending before it’s too late.”

For the first time since its inception in 2003, DHS will receive less money in its upcoming budget than the year before, but according to Representative Raul Grijalva (D-Arizona), that has not stopped pressure from congress and lobbyists to continue increasing large allocations for border protection. “There’s a mutual dependency that’s been created in the industry and Homeland Security,” he says. “And that industry … is starting to become a very, very powerful lobby up here.”