Posted on 06/10/2003 5:44:05 PM PDT by JackelopeBreeder
WASHINGTON – Unmanned spy planes, or drones, could be flying over the U.S.-Mexico border by year's end, said Homeland Security Department Secretary Tom Ridge.
While some advocates for looser border controls, including California Rural Legal Assistance, oppose the move, a group that seeks tighter controls already is testing its own drones along the border.
Glenn Spencer, 65, owns three drones ranging in cost from $12,000 to $21,000. The planes, equipped with four-ounce internal electronic guidance systems and camera transmitters the size of a thumb, operate on two "AA" batteries and could monitor illegal crossing along the 350-mile Arizona-Mexico border, he said.
"Here is the law, there is the line, what is the problem?" said Spencer, an ex-San Diego businessman.
Spencer's group, American Border Patrol (ABP) out of Sierra Vista, Ariz., is a non-profit organization unrelated to the U.S. Border Patrol. It pushes for tighter border controls.
The group launched its first drone April 27. With a wingspan of six feet, it transmitted high-resolution images in the Arizona desert that were broadcast live over the Internet and MSNBC. Drones are known technically as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs.
When a ground sensor is tripped, a drone is launched and flies to the tripped sensor to transmit images of the area.
"If it's 15 or 20 people marching through the desert, that's one thing," said Spencer. "If it's antelope, that's another thing."
The ABP, sometimes called a vigilante group for its efforts to police the border, is hoping to have the planes in full use by July.
Spencer, former president of the Los Angeles immigration-control group Voices of Citizens Together, was a supporter of California's 1994 Proposition 187, which sought to cut off undocumented immigrants from federal benefits.
Spencer has taken his crusade against illegal immigration to Arizona.
Homeland security officials have been quick to embrace the use of drones.
On Capitol Hill in May, Robert Bonner, the commissioner of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, endorsed the use of drones. Ridge, Bonner's boss, said the planes might be patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border by year's end.
Despite Ridge's statement that drones might be in use before year's end, the government has taken no steps to purchase any, according to Mario Villareal, a spokesman for the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection. But, he added, it did experiment with drones in the late 1990s, said Villareal.
Spencer denied any link between ABP's efforts and the government's recent endorsement of drones.
ABP is "quite independent and keeps an arm-length's distance" from the government, he said.
The successful use of drones in the war in Iraq contributed to, but has not rushed discussions, regarding the use of drones according to Villareal. The drones were used in the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch and to prevent Iraqi ambushes of U.S. and British troops.
"The technology is better. The costs are better. The product is better. These vehicles have come a long way," said Villareal.
Spencer denies Anti-Defamation League accusations that the group is "anti-Mexican" or that it promotes armed vigilantism.
Instead, he said, the group is trying to increase border safety.
Last year, 320 people died trying to illegally enter the United States, according to the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection. Twenty-four of the deaths in 2002 were in San Diego County.
"There is no reason for people to be dying in the desert," said Spencer. "There's just no reason for that."
Spencer said the drones would help locate people before they die from exposure in the desert.
Claudia Smith, a lawyer for California Rural Legal Assistance, said regardless of the group's motives, the drones would simply shift migrants to more remote areas.
"It builds what I call the 'border of hypocrisy,'" said Smith. "It intensifies people seeking the most remote routes but it does nothing to counteract the employer magnet."
Smith is a sharp critic of Operation Gatekeeper, the border crackdown that began in San Diego in October 1994.
"If the government chooses to seal the entire border, they are within their rights to do so," said Smith. "What they cannot do is channel migrants do their deaths by diverting them away from populated urban areas."
Last week, the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection announced another plan for increasing safety along the Arizona-Mexico border.
Operation Desert Safeguard focuses primarily on the Arizona border and Sonora Desert.
The operation will include 150 more border patrol officers, concentrated in Tucson and in remote desert areas. It also increases aerial patrols, with more frequent helicopter flights over the border. In addition, 20 search and rescue posts will be stationed in the remote desert areas where the highest concentration of migrant deaths occurred last year.
Pena is an intern in Copley News Service's Washington bureau.
I'll be looking forward to it.
If they really want to make a dent on the problem though, they're going to have to do serious interior enforcement. As Eisenhower proved, that by itself can be worth 100,000 border patrol guards. It stopped illegal immigration for years.
You know they will. They will give us another meaningless dog, and pony show to decieve us into believing they are doing something.
More remote than here? Good grief, woman, get a new argument!
More remote than here? Good grief, woman, get a new argument!
Oh, I don't know about that. I hope she's right.
Mexico's southern border would be a good place for them to cross....
-archy-/-y
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.