Under the Obama administration, the focus of the Merida Initiative is shifting away from high-priced helicopters and airplanes and toward reforming Mexico’s corrupt law enforcement, courts and other government institutions

The U.K. hits out at Raytheon, removing the company from the £1.2 billion e-Borders program; the immigration minister Damian Green said earlier today that the program was running at least twelve months late and that Raytheon had been in breach of contract since July last year; Home Office says it has “no confidence” in the company; Raytheon was the lead contractor of the Trusted Borders consortium, which won a £650 million deal in 2007 to build the e-Borders system; other members of the consortium, including Serco, Detica, Accenture, and Qinetiq will keep their contracts; Raytheon was responsible for systems integration, travel services, and overall project management

The EU’s e-passports were supposed to be fool-proof, even impossible to counterfeit; Europol has warned, though, that despite the biometric changes to passports, counterfeiting still remains a major problem for criminals or others “who are determined to do so,” with the provision of documents for irregular immigrants being the main driver of the activity

South Korea has began to install unmanned guard towers, equipped with sensors and machine-guns, along the DMZ; The South Korean military is emulating the system Israel has built around the Gaza Strip — a system of unmanned, armored towers, about five meters (sixteen feet) tall and two meters (six feet) in diameter; at the top of the tower is an armored shelter that conceals a remotely controlled machine-gun; operators control the surveillance and weapon systems atop these towers from a remote central command-and-control location

Various volunteer-based groups patrol the Arizona desert and report suspicious activity to the Border Patrol, and generally they have not caused problems; Arizona law enforcement authorities are worried about the latest addition: a local neo-Nazi militia; members of the militia are outfitted with military fatigues, body armor, and assault rifles — and openly proclaim that only non-Jewish, white heterosexual people should be American citizens and that everyone who is not white should leave the country — “peacefully or by force”

Environmental concerns and border security clash along the U.S.-Mexico border; the wild Sonoran Pronghorn numbers are down to about 80 in Arizona and they occupy less than 10 percent of their original range — but what is left of their range straddles the border; environmentalists and government stewards of the environment object to the erection of a fence or watch towers, saying they would drive the antelope-like creature to extinction

As hopes that SBInet, the ambitious virtual fence project along the U.S.-Mexico border, will ever live up to its promise recede, DHS has increased the role of UAVs in border monitoring; UAVs require pilots to fly them remotely, though, and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has had trouble finding trained pilots remotely to fly the aircraft; Maj. Gen. Michael Kostelnik, assistant commissioner of CBP’s Air and Marine Office: “The greatest near-term challenge faced is a shortage of pilots and sensor operators, specifically pilots certified to launch and land the aircraft”

DHS’s inspector general says the trouble-plagued SBInet program rested on faulty assumptions about technology — assumptions which led both to technology failures and inadequate monitoring by DHS; the SBI program officials stated that the initial assumption that commercial off-the-shelf technology would be available to cover SBInet needs, serving as a basis for determining staffing requirements, ultimately proved to be wrong”; also, officials failed to ensure that one milestone was properly completed before progressing to the next phase, increasing the risk of significant rework and associated project delays; the future of SBInet is unclear, as earlier this year DHS secretary Janet Napolitano froze spending and ordered an assessment of the program to determine if it should continue

An anonymous group circulated a list containing the names and personal information of 1,300 people, whom the anonymous group contends are illegal immigrants, to government agencies and news outlets in Utah; most of the names on the list are of Hispanic origin; the list contains highly detailed personal information such as Social Security numbers, birth dates, workplaces, addresses, and phone numbers; names of children are included, along with due dates of pregnant women on the list; the group demands that the people on the list be deported immediately; Governor Gary Herbert ordered an investigation; Utah’s Hispanic community terrified