Dems Securing the Border — Intelligently
Biden and Mexican Pres Andrés Manuel López Obrador Reach Historic Deal to Secure the Border Using Smart Tech. Mexico to pay $1.5 Billion
Oh, the border. The GOP loves to scream bloody murder about it but rarely does anything useful to, you know, actually secure it.
We all remember: “The Wall, The Big Beautiful Wall, The Unclimbable Wall” Wait, what? Oh hell.
The wall that went over budget and didn’t really do much of anything.
The projects were slated to be completed in January 2020, the Corps said then. Four months into this year, however, the government increased the value of the contracts by more than $1 billion, without the benefit of competitive bidding designed to keep costs low to taxpayers.
Within a year of the initial award, the value of the two contracts had more than tripled, to over $3 billion, even though the length of the fence the companies were building had only grown by 62%, to 135 miles. The money is coming from military counter-narcotics funding.
Those contract spikes were dramatic, but not isolated. A ProPublica/Texas Tribune review of federal spending data shows more than 200 contract modifications, at times awarded within just weeks or months after the original contracts, have increased the cost of the border wall project by billions of dollars since late 2017.
This is particularly true this year, in the run-up to next week’s election. The cost of supplemental agreements and change orders alone — at least $2.9 billion — represents about a quarter of all the money awarded and more than what Congress originally appropriated for wall construction in each of the last three years.
President Donald Trump made construction of the border wall a signature issue during his 2016 campaign, claiming that his skills as a builder and businessman would allow his administration to build the wall in a more cost-efficient way than his predecessors. “You know the wall is almost finished,” he told a crowd of supporters in Arizona recently, and they weren’t paying a “damn cent” for the border wall. It was “compliments of the federal government.”
Yet an accounting of border wall contracts awarded during his presidency shows that his administration has failed to protect taxpayer interests or contain costs and stifled competition among would-be builders, experts say. In all, Trump’s wall costs about five times more per mile than fencing built under the Bush and Obama administrations.
Yeah, that wall; which, for one, didn’t work and for two Mexico never paid a cent.
UNLIKE the new partnership, yes, PARTNERSHIP, between Mexico and the US that Biden has worked out, which, wait for it, MEXICO ACTUALLY AGREED TO HELP PAY FOR BORDER SECURITY IMPROVEMENTS
Mexico on Tuesday agreed to contribute $1.5 billion to a joint initiative with the U.S. to improve infrastructure along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a person familiar with the commitment.
The agreement came on the same day President Joe Biden hosted his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, for a meeting in the Oval Office.
Part of their discussions were expected to include a commitment from the two countries to carry out “a multi-year, joint, U.S.-Mexico border infrastructure modernization effort for projects along the 2,000 mile border,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters on Monday ahead of the meeting.
The infrastructure project is intended to improve processing and security along the border, the person familiar with the agreement said.
Now, what type of smart tech could they be using to secure a 2000-mile border? Well, things like this.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has deployed about 175 of the towers along the southern border so far, part of a five-year deal with Anduril, a California-based security and defense contractor specializing in artificial intelligence systems. CBP officials say the Anduril system is the most advanced surveillance technology they have ever placed along the border, calling it a “force multiplier” that allows the agency to detect and intercept more illegal entries without increased staffing.
Marsha Espinosa, the top spokesperson at DHS, said border security “requires deploying a variety of resources, infrastructure, technology, and personnel, consistent with the Department’s commitment to privacy and civil liberties.”
“Deployments in new technology over the last 10 years have dramatically increased our ability to interdict narcotics and weapons, disrupt transnational criminal and human smuggling operations, and rescue countless individuals victimized by unscrupulous smugglers,” Espinosa said in a statement. “DHS will continue to invest in technologies that increase its operational advantage at our borders.”
And this, using drones to detect smugglers and people trying to cross the border.
Statistics speak volumes for the sUAS program, with roughly 3,500 individuals detected, resulting in more than 2,700 apprehensions, to date this fiscal year. That amounts to an approximate 80 percent apprehension rate, a testament to both the pilots and the operating systems.
And there are other programs as well. The GOP talking point has always been that Dems are soft on border security, which has historically been proven wrong. The Dems aren’t soft, they just want to use tools that work instead of building ego-stroking walls which harm wildlife, destroy the environment, cost billions, and do little to actually deal with the problem.
It’s called using logic instead of being loudmouthed idiots.
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