By Calvin Biesecker
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano yesterday outlined a number of new steps aimed at bolstering border security along the United States’ border with Mexico, all of them in line with previous enhancements to border security.
Despite negative news reports and political slogans to the contrary, border security along the southwest continues to improve and the statistical evidences backs that up, Napolitano said at a forum sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Ongoing efforts “have produced results,” Napolitano said. “Apprehensions of illegal crossers, the best indication of how many are crossing, are at a fraction of their all time high. They were down 23 percent last year from the year before.”
Moreover, she said, the capture of various drug cartel contraband rose last year, including seizures of 14 percent more illegal bulk cash, 29 percent more illegal weapons and 15 percent more illegal drugs.
The new border security measures include a Southwest Border Law Enforcement Compact, which is a partnership between DHS and the Major Cities Chiefs Association to enable non- border state and local law enforcement agencies to detail officers to state and local law enforcement agencies on the border.
Another step calls for DHS and the Justice Department to establish a new system to link their information systems with those of all state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies along the southwest border. Moreover, Napolitano says that DHS is “strengthening the analytic capability” of fusion centers at the southwest border states “so that they are better able to receive and share threat information, improving our ability to recognize and mitigate emerging threats.”
DHS also plans to make greater use of license plate reader (LPR) technology. The department and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy are implementing Project Roadrunner whereby the drug policy office will provide DHS previously purchased fixed and mobile LPR systems to expand existing uses of the technology to target north and southbound drug trafficking.
Napolitano also mentioned the previously announced expansion of unmanned aircraft flights along a portion of the West Texas border with Mexico.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement also will expand its Joint Criminal Alien Removal Task Forces by nine officers and form two additional teams with local law enforcement agents to identify and arrest convicted criminal aliens in U.S. communities. The agency is also deploying 40 officers to work with state and local jails located within 100 miles of the southwest border to ensure the identification of all removable convicted criminal aliens detained in those jails.