By Calvin Biesecker
The nation’s borders will have to rely to an important degree on technology such as the troubled electronic fencing project in the southwestern United States, as part of a system to prevent illegal entries into the country, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (D), the nominee to become the next Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said yesterday.
Any border protection system will have to be composed of “boots on the ground,” technology, physical fencing, and interior enforcement of the country’s immigration laws, namely employer hiring of workers who are in the United States illegally, Napolitano told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee during a hearing to consider her nomination.
Napolitano specifically mentioned the Secure Border Initiative technology program, called SBInet, as being “problematic” yet “could hold great promise and we want to keep pushing the issue of technology because these borders are vast and manpower alone is not going to do it. You need to be able to augment manpower with technology, keep pushing that technology fence as it were.”
The SBInet program is managed by Customs and Border Protection and is under contract to Boeing [BA]. DHS has delayed the deployment of any significant stretch of the electronic fence system until integration challenges are settled (Defense Daily, Sept. 11, 2008). So far the electronic fence project has been centered in Arizona.
As the governor of a border state having to deal on a daily basis with illegal immigrants and the challenges they pose, Napolitano is seen as a good choice to be the chief of Homeland Security to help strike an acceptable balance between the competing needs for security and facilitating travel and trade (Defense Daily, Dec. 2, 2008).
As for boots on the ground, Napolitano said she wants the analysis to go further than just the total numbers of agents deployed to the nation’s Northern and Southern borders and instead focus on how many are working during shift times. She also said she would like to work with Defense Secretary Robert Gates to see if National Guard troops that had been deployed to augment the Border Patrol can have an ongoing role for border security.
Napolitano, who has been critical of relying too heavily on physical fencing along the borders, said fencing would be most useful in urban areas where illegal aliens can cross into the country and quickly blend in with the local population. Napolitano pointed out in her prepared remarks that she has “walked, flown over, and ridden horse back along our southwest border” and then said later in the hearing that “these borders are so vast that the notion of a fence alone is worth the expense to go say from San Diego to Brownsville [Texas], I don’t think I would be giving good advice to the committee if I said that’s the way we’re going to protect the border.”
DHS currently has 578 miles of pedestrian and vehicle fencing constructed along the southwest border and has under contract another 100 miles of fencing in the same area.
No physical or electronic border security will provide 100 percent protection, which is why it is important to go after employers who hire illegal aliens, she said.
Napolitano also said she needs to learn about the issues facing states bordering Canada. This will include having discussions with state and local officials for their input. The governor said she understands the role local law enforcement can play as an extra set of “eyes and ears” on the ground in the nation’s border communities to augment federal officials. She also mentioned Operations Stonegarden, which is a DHS program that assists local law enforcement efforts at the border by helping with operational costs and equipment purchases, as the kind of program that will help.
Napolitano also mentioned that DHS “has a key and central role to play” in cyber security.
“I think this is an area that I’m going to want to plow very deeply, very quickly because I know that President-elect Obama has said several times that this is an area where he wants to get a national strategy and a national coordinated plan going,” she said.
Napolitano, who was Arizona’s Attorney General before becoming governor in 2002, noted she had created a Computer Crimes Unit to train law enforcement personnel in identifying and investigating cyber crimes. As governor she created a statewide information security and privacy office to put controls and safeguards in place for the state’s technology systems.
In other security topics, Napolitano said that transportation remains a focus area, not just aviation but also surface transportation. She said work needs to be ongoing with the private sector on chemical security. Responding to concerns from Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the ranking member on the committee, that security of biological laboratories in the country is lax, Napolitano said it will require work, in part, with the academic sector which doesn’t see itself as a security risk.
Napolitano also highlighted the need to solve the challenge of interoperable communications between state and local emergency officials and operators and also with their federal counterparts. This is more than just a funding issue, she said, but also one where people with technological savvy need to be involved in the decision making process.