Border Patrol Memo Reveals Nearly A Third Of Its Border Cameras Don’t Actually Work

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the ALMOST-ASSEMBLE-THAT-WALL! dept

According to some people (you know the people I mean…), our biggest “crisis” is border security. This one guy — a supposed billionaire with multiple bankruptcies under his belt — claimed he could solve the problem if he ever got elected. He would “build the wall” and make Mexico pay for it. This is stuff that actually fell out of a presidential candidate’s mouth. And YET! he got elected anyway.

He held office for four years but still failed to (1) build the wall, or (2) make Mexico pay for it. (He did try to buy Greenland, for what it’s worth.) However, he did succeed in stoking hatred against any and all immigrants crossing the southern border and allowed ICE, CBP, and the Border Patrol to indulge in any and all excesses, so long as it led to an incremental increase in deportations.

Somehow, this issue is still the focus of Donald Trump and his supporters. And his supporters still believe this man has the answer for an imagined “border crisis,” even if he didn’t actually provide any solutions the last time around. The wall remains un-built. And the Border Patrol has now inadvertently embarrassed itself via a leaked memo, which shows it’s not even capable of maintaining a surveillance system most Ring owners would have had dialed in shortly after purchase.

Nearly one-third of the cameras in the Border Patrol’s primary surveillance system along the southern U.S. border are not working, according to an internal agency memo sent in early October, depriving border agents of a crucial tool in combating illegal migrant crossings.

[…]

The large-scale outage affects roughly 150 of the 500 cameras perched on surveillance towers along the U.S.-Mexico border. It was due to “several technical problems,” according to the memo. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue, blamed outdated equipment and outstanding repair issues.

Granted, most Ring owners aren’t operating a network of 500 cameras. But a network of 500 cameras expected to cover 1,954 miles isn’t that much different than a network of 8 cameras expected to cover a 1,900 sq. ft. home. That’s not that many cameras per mile and that’s not that many cameras in terms of border security, which is something this country has thrown massive amounts of money at over the past several decades, and even more so following the 9/11 attacks.

The problem here might be bureaucracy, rather than funding. Certainly, none of the DHS subordinates deployed to handle border security are suffering from underfunding. It could just be that contract service personnel and/or updating systems haven’t been prioritized, despite pretty much everyone in government agreeing border security should be a priority.

It also could be that funds designated for upkeep were misspent or misused, resulting in the eventual entropy that affects everything living or dead. And, like everything else that involves large bureaucracies, the border security bureaucracy has decided to blame another bureaucracy for its current camera outages.

The internal Border Patrol memo obtained by NBC News blames a different federal agency for the problem — the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA, which services the systems and repairs the cameras, has had internal problems meeting the needs of the Border Patrol, the memo says, without elaborating on what those problems are. The FAA will send personnel to the southern border to work on the cameras, the memo says. 

This is… um… extremely weird. I can’t imagine why the FAA would be expected to maintain a network of border security cameras for the Border Patrol, but that’s what the memo says. Because the FAA has (logically) prioritized its aviation regulation activities, the Border Patrol’s cameras are now almost one-third useless. The Border Patrol suggests it will be moving on to another contractor since the FAA has failed (I guess?) to maintain a camera system owned and operated by DHS components tasked with border security.

Equally ridiculous is this fact:

House Republicans blocked a bipartisan bill this year that would have significantly improved surveillance systems, hired additional Border Patrol agents and resumed border wall construction.

That’s right: the same crisis actors that chant “BUILD THE WALL!” and claim Kamala Harris is allowing undocumented immigrants to enter this country at unprecedented rates to commit unprecedented amounts of violent crimes refused to strengthen border security, repair cameras, or BUILD THE WALL simply because it was a bipartisan bill. These absolute mooks have no one to blame but themselves for any perceived border security issues because they actively chose to block border funding in favor of owning the libs.

There’s obviously no fix on the way. The FAA seems, at best, ill-equipped to serve as tech support for the Border Patrol’s cameras. The biggest supporters of stemming the flow of immigrants in the country decided they’d rather score political points than actually deliver on some of the more disturbing promises they’ve made to their constituents (you know, always-on border oppression). And whatever contractor gets stuck with the unenviable task of updating the camera system is going to face an uphill battle against multiple bureaucracies, politicians who are less interested in border security than securing their own congressional seats, and a bunch of interlopers — ranging from local militia-esque groups to National Guardsmen sent from Midwestern states — who will be more than willing to interrupt the repair work if they feel the “wrong” party is in power.

Filed Under: border patrol, border security, dhs, faa, failure, surveillance