Virtual border system ineffective, out of cash

word of warning: A moment ago I saw a spider crawl across the top of the camera. You might want to try and prevent any webs from being spun across the lens area by treating with repellent or take other measures.” Some wondered if their border watching could pay off in dollars. “Say if we do actualy (sic) catch someone do we get e (sic) reward or something ..?” one watcher asked.

A few indicated their personal views of undocumented immigrants. “Two wetbacks and a dog walking across screen,” one watcher reported. At least one person seemed to find humor in the border camera project. “There are some men crossing the water. They have a bottle of tequila and a big hat with them,” read one of the activity reports, presumably not a serious one.

Reay said reports from the camera watchers were directed to local law enforcement.

Chris Acosta, an El Paso County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, said the department never responded to any alerts from the cameras.

Waller, the border camera watcher in Oklahoma, said she spends about an hour each evening after work during the week and a little more time during the weekend patrolling the border online. Her other Internet pastime, she said, is watching a site that tracks bald eagles. “I watch eagles and illegals. That’s a fun thing to do,” she said.  She said she didn’t know whether the hours she logged assisted law enforcement, but she hoped her reports were helpful.

“I’m interested in decreasing the number of illegals,” she said. “I don’t care if they come over as long as they do it legally. I don’t like the drugs, I don’t like the crime.”

Lubbock retiree Lee Bowden said he logged onto the site a few times each week to watch the border. Like Waller, he hoped his work would help curb illegal immigration. “I think a lot of our problem here in the states concerning drug trafficking is originating from these illegals that’s coming in,” Bowden said.

He said he only reported suspicious activity a couple of times in the several months he had watched the cameras. Watching is not very exciting, he said. The most interesting thing he saw was a bird that perched near one of the cameras and peered directly into the lens. He said, though, that the program seemed to be a worthwhile venture and he hoped funding for it would continue. “Most of the time it’s looking at bare ground. it’s not very interesting, but you’re always hopeful you’ll see something that can do some good,” Bowden said.

Another try?
Experts on both sides of the immigration issue, those who want tighter security and those who want comprehensive reform of U.S. policy, said Perry’s border camera experiment was ineffective.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which promotes immigration restrictions, said the camera program was worth a shot. “Maybe it isn’t worth spending another 2 million bucks on it, but I would have to say it certainly was worth spending the first $2 million,” Krikorian said. Texas, he said, could do more to curb illegal immigration by using that $2 million to crack down on employers who hire undocumented workers.

University of Texas at El Paso anthropology Professor Josiah Heyman, a border expert, called the Texas Border Watch program “expensive and dumb.” Seventeen cameras on the vast expanse of borderland between Mexico and Texas, he said, would do little to stop the illegal flow of drugs and people into the United States. “The cameras out in open country are just completely a distraction from the elephant in the room,” Heyman said.

Most contraband that enters the country, he said, comes through the ports of entry. The backpacks and Hummers full of drugs that come through the brush country between the ports are small potatoes compared with the

semi-trucks and train cars loaded down with drugs and people that often make it through the complex and overloaded land port security system. “Two million dollars would be a drop in the bucket, but it would be an a lot more effective drop in the bucket if it was focused on ports of entry instead of wide-open spaces,” Heyman said.

Shapleigh said money that has been spent on cameras would be better used to fund investigative work by the Texas Department of Public Safety to stop drug cartels that are fueling violence on both sides of the border. “Border cameras,” he said, “are about political pandering, not real border security.”