High Tech Equipment Used on US Mexican Border

The Department of Homeland Security's Secretary Michael Chertoff and Boeing Corporation simultaneously but separately announced the acceptance of P28 technology last week - without a single reference to what that technology is.

P28 is not a technology so much as an integrated bundle of technologies involving communications equipment, surveillance cameras, radar, heat and motion sensors, ground sensors, unmanned towers, and specially-equipped ATVs and other vehicles, all designed to work together to monitor the United States' southern border. It is named P28 because the first test of the integrated technologies was installed along a 28 mile stretch of the United States-Mexico border near Sasabe, Arizona.

Project 28 of the SBInet (Secure Borders Initiative) was still under fire as of January 31 by the U.S. Senate.

A letter from the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee from Chairman Joe Lieberman, (ID-Connecticutt), Ranking Member Susan Collins, (R-Maine), Senator Daniel Akaka, (D-Hawaii)., and Senator George Voinovich, (R-Ohio) asked Secretary Chertoff to explain how DHC could even conditionally accept the P28 project as successful, when the underlying guidelines were not handed over to Boeing until roughly midway through the test.

"We are troubled that DHS initiated the P28 project without first having CBP develop a set of firm operational requirements," said that letter to Secretary Chertoff, referencing DHS's conditional acceptance of the project on December 7, 2007. CBP stands for Customs and Border Patrol.

One of the unfortunate consequences of stepped-up security along the Mexican border has been an increasing number of gun battles that border patrol agents are engaging in. Secretary Chertoff says in his press release dated February 22 that CBP agents have been subjected to a 31% increase in violence, which he pointed to as a measure of success in the program.

"As I have reluctantly, but consistently predicted, as we strike at criminal businesses they are going to strike back. They are going to fight with us to preserve their illegal activities, and they are going to fight with each other in order to carve up a shrinking pie of ill-gotten gains," Chertoff's statement says.

With the acceptance of the initial test, Boeing is going to be expanding the system throughout the Tucson area, installing more permanent towers and upgrading surveillance cameras. The extent of the expansion was not disclosed, but the next phase is expected to be completed by the end of 2008, along with an additional 350 miles of border fences and walls.