[wetibbe]

It isn't often, indeed almost never, that I disagree with Glenn Spencer - American Border Patrol. But when he says the Boeing 1 billion dollar virtual, high tech fence was deliberately designed to fail I do have to disagree. The technology was defeated by weather basically. Not because Boeing was deliberately engaged in some conspiracy to ensure it wouldn't work.

However, I do believe that DHS was up to it's armpits engaging in back room, under the table scheming to fool the public. And still are. They put up a front, painting happy faces, and at the same time resort to mischief. The "virtual fence" was not what Congress called for in the secure borders act. It called for a double fence. DHS hasn't built double fence. They install old rail road rails as vehicle barriers which are porous to human traffic and easily bridged over by the traffickers. Then brag about how much fence they built. They just neglect to say that it was out of compliance and wouldn't stop pedestrians.

The DHS digression from plan, virtual fence instead of physical barrier, was a fools errand that resulted in 4 years lost and 1 billion dollars frittered away for nothing. The high tech fence only detected movements. CBP agents still had to be called out on horse back, vehicle or aircraft. The virtual fence didn't have logic. Humans would have been a much better option such as the Minutemen. DHS could have paid border watchers !!!

"Big Sis" is still plodding along down the same dumb path now resorting to "proven" technology such as UAV's. The record of UAV's flights is that in the past they only flew, at best, less than 5% of the time and the record of detections that resulted in apprehensions was minuscule while the cost per apprehension using UAV's versus humans was multiple times more costly.

As regards internal enforcement, it is at best slipshod, shoddy, desultory and checkered. As Mike Cutler pointed out, ICE only has about 6,000 employees to cover 50 stated and 300 million people while New York City has 30,000 police officers to cover 8 million citizens in 5 boroughs which comprise, land wise, a tiny fraction of the areal extent of the Sate of New York. Hundreds of thousands of businesses employ illegal aliens openly and in plain view with complete impunity. Furthermore there are tens of thousands of "organizations" and churches, as well as Villages, Towns and Cities, and private citizens, that promote day laborers openly, aid and abet illegal aliens, hire them, house them, transport them with no repercussions at all in vast areas of the country. In fact there have been many instances of ICE refusing to deal with illegal aliens and in some cases actually encouraging Villages to operate day laborers hiring halls.

For all of the Big Sis bluster, it remains that Federal Law enforcement lacks adequate funds, manpower and resources. And there are many in Government that are quite content with that deficiency as well as very large numbers of the ciitizens. Two of the worst of the worst are New York City and San Francisco. NYC hired 2,000 day laborers, *( illegal aliens ) to shovel snow ! Talk about defiance and chutzpah !!