Posted on 08/15/2004 9:41:32 PM PDT by Marine Inspector
Yes it is.
It depends on what your definition of 'is' is.
"I'm a CBP Officer."
Is this information officially classified in some way? Are you taking a risk by posting it here, or violating any regulations?
No, Probably, Not that I know of.
Considering that the BP only catches 1 in 5, then yes the border-wedgies are correct.
In this FY alone, close to 2.5 million folks crossed the border undetected.
It only took 19 to bring down the World Trade Center.
Good to hear. I was a little concerned for you, there.
Please read following suggestion on our Borders, it makes sense:
SECURING OUR BORDERS
By Dan Bear, American Daily, September 19, 2003
...The land borders between Canada, Mexico and the United States amount to 5317 miles in total length excluding the Alaska/Canada border. The land border between Canada and the lower 48 United States is 3987 miles in length and the border between Mexico and the U.S. is 1330 miles in length. For discussion purposes, let's use 4000 miles as the length of the U.S./Canada border and 1500 miles as the length of the U.S./Mexico border, 5500 miles total.
Why not use electronic sensors, of various types as needs and conditions dictate, like those already in use at thousands of secured locations worldwide, to build an invisible, impenetrable without detection, environmentally friendly barrier, that will alert us to all intruders...
With the electronic fence in place we can task the response teams, American soldiers one and all, to deal with intruder border crossing alerts and then station those response teams with helicopters every ten miles along the border. That's 550 choppers to cover the entire length of the 5500 miles of land border. Toss in 250 more helos as backups and that brings the total helicopters needed to secure our lower 48 land borders to 800.
Let's figure ten soldiers to every mile, 100 for every ten mile zone(TMZ). That's 55000 men needed to secure our land borders with Mexico and Canada compared to the more than 35000 servicemen we have stationed in the tiny Republic of Korea. On duty in each TMZ, 24/7, would be a 10 man response team plus a three man flight crew, three support personnel and an officer in charge. That amounts to 17 men per shift. Figure three shifts a day, seven days a week and we need at least four shifts minimum but we will allow for five shifts. 5 times 17 is 85 which is less than the 100 men we have allocated and lowers the nationwide manpower commitment to 46750 from 55000 based on ten mile zones and 5500 miles of border.
To get the border security system up and running, let's start with the shorter border, the less than 1500 miles of land bordering with Mexico. Now we need less than 15000 men and say one helicopter in reserve for every two choppers online, based on ten mile zones. That is 225 helicopters and less than half the men we have in Korea. The electronic fence can be built using off the shelf components in a very, very short time, less than six months, without invoking a National Security priority. Even if the fence cost was a million dollars per mile we'd only be talking about 15 billion in cost, the same amount we are giving to Africa to fight AIDS. This fence technology is not star wars stuff...
So, to secure our southern border against intrusion we need 15000 soldiers, 225 helicopters and an off the shelf electronic fence...
Why hasn't it been done?
THE END
I THINK THAT IS GREAT SUGGESTION, and we need to do something, although I believe Bush's advisors are keeping him from addressing this until after the election.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.