How the Nation's Border Guardians Got Stuck in a Policy Conundrum, and How They Can Get Out

The U.S. Border Patrol recently released a new strategic plan –
the third in its nine-decade history. Rather than clarifying the agency’s
strategic focus, the new plan underscores the agency’s lack of strategic
direction.

The previous strategic plan, published in 2004, stated ensuring
“operational control” of the U.S. border as its primary objective. “Operational
control” was defined as the ability of the Border Patrol to “detect, identify,
classify, and then respond to and resolve illegal entries.” Facing intense
criticism for their failure to ensure such security measures over large
sections of the southwestern border, the Border Patrol released the 2012 – 2016 Border Patrol Strategic Plan.

The agency issued its latest plan amid mounting criticism of its
billion-dollar high-tech programs, excessive and cross-border violence, and
continuing failure to provide performance and cost-benefit evaluations of its
various new border security initiatives. While intended to put critics’
concerns over these problems to rest, the 2012 – 2016 Strategic Plan instead
ignores them entirely.

Framed as a military-type strategy and replete with references to
border risks and threats, the 2012-2016 plan fails to indicate on what grounds
risks will be assessed, how risks will be evaluated, and how new spending will
be determined. It fails to make even a single reference to its predecessor’s
former goal of operational control or include any performance measures.

Nowhere to be found in the document is even the slightest hint of a
commitment to make border security programs more transparent, accountable, and
cost-effective.  This lack of
transparency and accountability is a mounting problem that the Border Patrol
has continued to ignore.

Criticism on All Sides 

Over the past several years, the U.S. Border Patrol has faced
increasing and widespread criticism from all political factions. Some critics,
particularly on the right, charge that the Border Patrol is not doing enough to
“secure the border,” while those left-of-center lambaste the agency for abusing
immigrants and intensifying a failing drug war. 

Perhaps the harshest criticism has come from the government’s own
auditing agencies. The Government Accountability Office (GOA) has issued a
series of scathing reports faulting the Border Patrol for mismanagement, waste,
and lack of strategic focus. Despite the increasing disapproval, the Border
Patrol has continued to benefit from a bipartisan consensus to “secure the
border,” resulting in a doubling of funding for Border Patrol operations over
the last ten years.

The Border Patrol is a division of Customs and Border Protection
(CBP), the agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) charged with
securing U.S. ports of entry (POEs) and the northern and southwestern land borders.  CBP is the largest DHS agency, receiving 21%
(currently $11.5 billion) of its total funding. Over the last ten years, DHS
has spent over $100 billion on border-security operations, yet the Border
Patrol still struggles to formulate a practical and politically viable strategy
to guide the spending of this new border security bonanza.

The term “border security” largely replaced references to “border
control” in official statements following the creation of the Department of
Homeland Security in March 2003. The 2012 - 2016
Strategic Plan is the latest attempt to define the meaning of
the term while formulating a strategy to guide border security operations.

CBP routinely explains its “border security” mission as
obstructing the entry of “dangerous good and dangerous people,” and stations
customs officers at land and coastal POEs, while Border Patrol agents patrol
the land border between the POEs. However, the new strategy fails to alleviate
any of the persistent concerns about the Border Patrol’s strategic focus and
operational efficiency.

The GAO and leading congressional members concerned with border
policy have expressed skepticism about the Border Patrol’s resolve and capacity
to address concerns about cost-effectiveness and strategic focus, while faulting
the agency for not including performance measures in its new plan. In an
attempt to refute these concerns, acting CBP Commissioner David Aguilar said
“the Strategic Plan sets a firm foundation for the continued evolution of the Border
Patrol as an integral part of CBP’s overall border management and homeland
security enterprise.”

Public Relations, Not Serious
Strategy 

Though claiming to be both “risk-based” and “intelligence-driven,”
the new plan includes no methodology for assessing risks or for leveraging
intelligence to meet identified threats to homeland security. The Border Patrol
also fails to explain – either in the new strategy or elsewhere – how
risk-management will determine the directional focus and budgetary specifics of
border funding.

The 2012 – 2016 Border
Patrol Strategic Plan is not a serious document.
It includes repeated references to vague tactics such as rapid response,
intelligence, community engagement, whole-of-government approaches, and
inter-governmental integration. Full of platitudes, patriotisms, military
jargon and abstractions, the strategy plan is essentially a public-relations
statement. The “firm foundation” that CBP Chief Aguilar sees is manifestly
flimsy and unprofessional. The Strategic Plan has no real plan, no timelines, no summary of the evolving
geopolitical context for border control, no strategic focus, and no baselines
or metrics to measure the Border Patrol’s progress in securing the border.

The Border Patrol’s Strategic Muddle describes the agency’s policy conundrum and chronicles how the
Border Patrol got stuck in its current strategic mess. The report offers
common-sense prescriptions for extricating the agency from this muddle and
offers recommendations for setting new directions.Key 

Findings

As the nation transitions away from its post-9/11 fears and wars,
U.S. border strategy needs to be overhauled and updated. A new strategy for
border control should be closely linked to a penetrating review of
counterterrorism, the drug war, and immigration policies.

The time is auspicious for such a revision. New budgetary and debt
concerns, escalating critiques of immensely expensive and shamefully
ineffective border security programs, and expanding critiques of the drug war
have opened up new political space.

Recommendations for new strategic directions for the Border Patrol
include the following:

*
DHS must define what it means by “border security,” and the Border Patrol must go back to the drawing board to
formulate a more comprehensive and cogent strategy, along with closely linked
performance measures.

*
The Border Patrol must demonstrate that its “metrics” are indeed based on
closely considered threat assessments and risk-management processes. As part of its strategic plan, the agency must do the following:
categorize risks and threats, prioritize them, justify this prioritization,
mount programs to target these prioritized threats, and establish a methodology
to measure performance.

*
The Border Patrol should immediately desist in making escalated threat assessments
about illegal drugs and drug-smuggling
operations. The crossing of illegal drugs has long characterized the border and
will continue to do so as long as there is a U.S. market for these substances.

*
Administratively, DHS could, and should, mandate that the Border Patrol end
what is, in effect, its strategic focus on the marijuana drug war. Marijuana is not a security threat, and there is mounting
momentum for its legalization or decriminalization on both sides of the border.
Nearly 95% of the Border Patrol’s drug war activities involve marijuana.

*
As part of its stated determination to pursue risk-based border protection, the
Border Patrol should deprioritize immigration enforcement. A credible risk-management process cannot justify operations that
make no distinction between truly dangerous individuals and ordinary immigrants
seeking work and family reunification. The Border Patrol should instead target
border bandits who prey upon vulnerable immigrants and smugglers of truly
dangerous illegal and prescription drugs.

*
The Border Patrol must respond to GAO recommendations that the agency undertake
serious cost-benefit evaluations of each programmatic
component of its border security operations. Congress and the U.S. public
deserve to know in detail the costs and associated benefits of
multimillion-dollar expenditures on each of the various tactical infrastructure
and high-tech projects.

*
The Border Patrol must establish transparent procedures that will allow Congress, government auditors, and the public to
evaluate the effectiveness of its many new operations and initiatives in
successfully targeting the threats to the homeland on what the Border Patrol
calls “America’s frontline.”

To read the complete Border Patrol’s Strategic Muddle report, including references, please visit:
http://www.ciponline.org/research/entry/border-patrol-strategic-muddle

Cabalgando en Chihuahua -- Murder and Water

Just returned from a long day traveling
around Villa Ahumada, about 130 kilometers south of Juarez experiencing the
water/land crisis in this municipio that I was told is the largest in Mexico –
and probably the poorest, said my traveling companion from the municipio’s
water committee. 

I don’t doubt that it is the largest, but certainly not the
poorest – at least in the last decade when the Mennonite communities began
migrating to the intermontane desert plains her from Cuauhtemoc, where the
Mennonites have run out of land for their children and grandchildren. Drilling
to unprecedented depths, the Mennonite colonies have established might
agribusiness enterprises even as the drought intensifies.

Momento. I intended to start this
posting with the link to my new Truthout article on drones. Several folks wrote
me to ask that I include the link as soon as it was published (today). Here it
is:

Predator
Drones Stalk the Border without Budget or Strategy

http://truth-out.org/news/item/14239-predator-drones-stalk-us-borders-without-budget-or-strategy

And then I get several media calls and
queries about my drone research – when all I really want to do is to start
telling the story of climate change, water crisis, and land use patterns in
northern Mexico – which may seem much less important that having more Predators
set to patrol U.S. borders. But I don’t think so. It is my increasing
conviction that we – it is certainly true for me – get caught up in stories and
issues that distract us from the much more important and inevitably more
complex issues.

Tomorrow morning I will be joining a
five-day cabalgata, starting at the Benito Juarez ejido in Buenaventura and
ending at the Palacio de Gobierno in Chihuahua. Not one of those traditional
cabalgatas celebrating Pancho Villa and beer. Leading this march a caballo to
Chihuahua will be some of the family members of the middle-aged activist couple
that were shot a quemaropa last
October.

Ismael
Solorio and Manuelita Solís were the local leaders of the el Barzon network of
small farmers in Chihuahua. I didn’t know them but I participated in a Barzon
action on July 2, when they and more than three hundred farmers from the
Namiquipa, Flores Magon, Buenaventura and Villa Ahumada municipios met to
peaceably and successfully obligate a group of Mennonites to shut down a well
drilling operation. I was there to report and chronicle this action, which
because of the armed intervention of two rogue police (armed with Ar-14s)
marked the literal start of the water border war in northern Mexico. I
participated only I the sense that the shooting began when these officer
criminals rushed into to attempt to grab my camera, which I held on at they
pulled the camera strap and was only able to retain the camera when the Barzon
men and women (none of whom were armed or even aggressive) surrounded me and
pulled me away – which so angered these ruffians that they began shooting in
the air and at our feet.

You
may begin to understand why I am not so dedicated to my drone research – even
if they are named Predators.

The
murdered activists were involved in the campaign to close illegal wells that
are threatening the livelihoods, indeed the survival of the communities of
small farmers and ejidatarios in the Carmen water basin. But they were mostly
active in opposing the drilling operations (more than four hundred exploratory
drilling operations of Cascabel, part of the Canadian mining company MAGSILVER.

Molly
Molloy posted a piece on the La Frontera Google Group immediately after the
assassination last October, referencing a 2009 murder of the widely respected
Barzon and Agrodinamica Nacional leader Armando Villareal Martha in March 2008:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/frontera-list/OkqLEe2bKP0/jHaGEZOjwI0J

While
I am linking, if you want to see more about the state-Barzon tensions as this
cabalgata sets out to set forth their demands regarding the water crisis, you
can check out these Youtube news links;

Denuncia Barzón tortura a dirigente de
Benito Juárez

http://youtu.be/1CJMF7bHRBI

Amenazan y golpean a dos barzonistas policías
estatales

http://youtu.be/v6rtqp63gGY

I well know that we can’t be involved in
all the important issues of the day, especially when they don’t directly
concern U.S. policy. But I believe the water tensions in Chihuahua underscore
social-justice issues that do deserve the close attention of those of us
concerned with border and U.S.-Mexico relations. What is more, it is my sense
that the incipient water wars south of the border should alert us to the kind
of social, economic, cultural, and political tensions we will be seeing on our
side of the border before too long.

Predator Drones Stalk US Borders Without Budget or Strategy

Published by Truthout, at:http://truth-out.org/news/item/14239-predator-drones-stalk-us-borders-without-budget-or-strategy

US
Customs and Border Protection has launched its drone program without
undertaking a cost-benefit strategy that includes a specific role for Unmanned
Aerial Vehicles. The agency continues to buy drones without planning for their
support, maintenance or strategic value.

The Department of Homeland
Security's drone program isn't classified, unlike the highly secretive CIA and
military drone programs outside the United States.

Nonetheless, information
about the DHS program to "secure the borders" with unmanned aerial
systems is guarded, except for the self-serving press releases occasionally
issued by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the DHS agency that includes the
Border Patrol.

CBP has kept a tight lid on
its drone program since 2004, when the agency decided to launch the unmanned
aircraft as the homeland counterpart to the foreign "war on
terrorism" -- where drone strikes have come to play a central role.

Media inquiries and freedom
of information requests by groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation have
been met largely by DHS stonewalling. For their part, Congressional oversight
committees function almost exclusively as drone booster clubs. However, a
trickle of reviews by government entities such as the Congressional Research
Service, Government Accountability Office and the DHS Inspector General's
Office have begun to shed some light on the secretive homeland security drone
program.

Like the government's
highly controversial foreign program of hunter-killer drones, it is becoming
apparent that the DHS drone operations also deserve urgent public and
congressional scrutiny. But not so much because national or international laws
are being violated, US citizens targeted, or anyone is being hunted down and
killed by these drones - at least thus far. Mostly the DHS drone program needs
to be subjected to full transparency and accountability because it's been such
a bust - an enormous waste of money.

Although the drone program
started in 2004, the first hard information provided by DHS about its drone
program came in May 2012 in the form of a brief report by the DHS Office of
Inspector General: CBP's Use
of Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the Nation's Border Security, DHS Office of
Inspector General, issued in May 2012.

This report, while limited
to the shocking management failures of CBP, hints at the more serious
underlying problems, like the lack of strategic directions and the dubious
achievements of the drone operations of agency's Office of Air and Marine
(OAM).

Predators
Quickly Adapted for Border Security

The homeland security drone
program, directed by a retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Kostelnik (who
played a key role in developing the armed Predator drone used for so-called
"hunter-killer" missions overseas, deploys a fleet of highly expensive
Predators on the nation's borders. The unarmed Predators, produced for border
duty by General Atomics, cost $18.5 million to $20.5 million apiece, not
counting the hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts for General Atomics
to operate and maintain the homeland drones.

Flush with billions of
dollars in post-9/11 funding for "border security," DHS hurriedly
launched the campaign to patrol the borders - north and south - with these
Predators. In the rush to secure the homeland, DHS trampled over due-diligence
standards to speed through orders for the drones, pilots and crews supplied by
General Atomics.

CBP started deploying
drones along the Arizona border without a plan for how they would be deployed,
without a strategy defining their role in border security and without any
cost-benefit evaluations, which would determine how effective and
cost-efficient drones are compared to other instruments of border control -
like agents on the ground, light manned aircraft or less-expensive, smaller
drones.

The border agency claimed
that the Predator drones would function as a "force multiplier." Yet
CBP offered no research indicating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) would indeed
increase the efficiency of Border Patrol agents or result in higher rates of
drug seizures and apprehensions.

Even accepting the notion
that arrests of unauthorized immigrants and seizures of marijuana backpackers
illegally crossing the border with their bundles of Mexican-grown weed
contribute to homeland security, the numbers of immigrant apprehensions and
drug seizures (almost exclusively marijuana) are low for these high-tech,
high-budget drone operations.

CBP boasted in December
20111 that drone operations contributed to 7,500 apprehensions of illegal
border crossers and 46,600 pounds of marijuana.

The 7,500 "criminal
aliens" that the Border Patrol detained are small potatoes when compared
to CBP's overall number of detentions since 2005 - 5.7 million immigrants,
including the 327,000 detained in 2011. Expressed as a percentage, this amounts
to only .001 percent of those detained during that period.

While categorized by CBP as
"dangerous people" because they have crossed the border illegally,
mostly they are simply unauthorized immigrants, although a small number are
marijuana backpackers.

To give some perspective to
the drug haul attributed to UAV surveillance over six years - 46,600 pounds of
marijuana - CBP on average seizes 3,500 pounds of marijuana every day in
Arizona, making a seizure every 1.7 hours. Drones had a role in the seizure of
less than one percent of the Border Patrol's total marijuana in the past six
years - only .003 percent to be precise.

Then, there is the matter
of drones as counterterrorism instruments: how these unmanned remotely piloted
vehicles can be used to identify, track and apprehend terrorists and terrorist
weapons of mass destruction.

The drone program,
according to CBP, focuses operations on the CBP priority mission of
anti-terrorism by helping "to identify and intercept potential terrorists
and illegal cross-border activity." Yet, neither as part of its decision
to launch the drone program nor in any subsequent pronouncements, releases,
strategy statements or descriptions of drone accomplishments has CBP ever
supported its assertion that drones are effective counterterrorist instruments.

The failure to link actual
drone operations to the agency's "priority mission of anti-terrorism"
is not surprising or unexpected. CBP makes the same claim about all its border
security operations without ever attempting to detail how these operations are
shaped or evaluated by its anti-terrorism mission.

Over the past eight years,
CBP has steadily expanded its drone program without providing any detailed
information about the program's functionality and total costs. Instead, to keep
its expensive UAV program moving forward, CBP has relied on hugely supportive
congressional oversight committees and on the widespread belief among
politicians and the public in the efficiency of high-tech solutions.

After eight years,
information about the homeland security drones has been limited to a handful of
CBP announcements about new drone purchases, a series of unverifiable CBP
statistics about drone-related drug seizures and immigrant arrests, and
congressional presentations by OAM's chief, Kostelnik, that have been replete
with anecdotes and assertions but short on facts.

The DHS internal review of
the report of OAM and its drone operations didn't examine the accomplishments
or the worth of the UAV program. The limited focus of the report was even more
basic, namely, CBP's failure to have a budgetary plan for its UAVs. According
to the OIG report, CBP has kept acquiring new drones, even though it doesn't
have the staff or infrastructure to support its expanding fleet of Predator and
Guardian (a marine variant) drones.

The OIG report's
conclusions point to an utter lack of strategic, operational and financial
planning by CBP. According to DHS report, "CBP had not adequately planned
resources needed to support its current unmanned aircraft inventory."

Although CBP's annual
budget and the supplementary authorizations for border security did cover the
basic purchase price of new drones, the agency kept purchasing Predator and
later Guardian drones even though OAM didn't have the personnel, budget or
infrastructure to operate the drones. According to the department's inspector
general, CBP lacked even the most elementary plan to "ensure that required
equipment, such as ground control stations and ground support equipment, is
provided."

The OIG also found that OAM
didn't have procedures to bill other federal agencies like FEMA and the US
Forest Service when CBP responded to requests for drone deployment away from
the border. During his tenure as OAM chief, Kostelnik has repeatedly and
increasingly boasted that his division's drones are serving a wide range of
missions not related to border security, such as providing aerial images of
forest fires.

Although Kostelnik
frequently has attempted to explain the worth of the drone program by referring
to such non-mission-related operations, not once did the OAM chief explain who
paid for such operations and not once did congressional members query Kostelnik
about the financing of these non-border operations.

There is no public record
of where and when DHS drones have been deployed. One of the mysteries of the
program over the past eight years is how CBP has been able to reconcile its
seemingly contradictory statements about drone deployment. On the one hand, CBP
routinely insists that drones perform a critical role in securing the border
against an array of threats. On the other hand, however, CBP has increasingly
described the value of its drones in terms of their use by other federal
agencies.

What is more, OAM has made
its drones available to assist local law enforcement agencies in operations
unrelated to border security and has regularly shipped its drones to air shows
around the nation and even outside the country, notably appearances at the
Paris Air Show. At a June 12, 2011 congressional hearing, Kostelnik mentioned
that OAM took a
Guardian Predator to the 2011 Paris Air Show where it was on
display at the DOD pavilion.

"That was the first time
ever a Reaper Class Predator B aircraft was ever on display at the Paris Air
Show," said Kostelnik, noting that it created a "good deal of
interest with our partnership nations." Seemingly unable to justify OAM's
deployment of drones for effective border control, Kostelnik noted OAM's role
in getting other nations interested in buying Predators. "So in that arena
we're on the leading edge of that policy," observed Kostelnik.

One explanation of the use
of CBP drones for non-border objectives, including promoting Predator purchases
abroad, is what the OIG describes as the lack of OAM planning processes that
would "determine how mission requests are prioritized." OIG wasn't
able to find any evidence of a CBP/OAM strategy that guided drone deployments.

According to OIG, "CBP
has procured unmanned aircraft before implementing adequate plans to: achieve
the desired level of operation; acquire sufficient funding to provide necessary
operations, maintenance and equipment; and coordinate and support stakeholder
needs."

Concerning the actual
operations of the border security UAVs, OIG found that:

• Drone usage fell
drastically short of OAM's own "mission availability threshold"
(minimum capability) and its mission availability objective - 37 percent and 29
percent.

• Because of budget
shortfalls for UAV maintenance, CBP in 2010 alone had to transfer $25 million
from other CBP programs to maintain its UAV fleet even at a usage level that
fell far short of the planned minimum.

• CPB has run its drone
program in violation of its own operational standards and lacks the required
"mobile backup ground control stations" at three of the four drone
bases.

The OIG observed that despite
this history of low usage and the lack of operational budget for its UAV fleet,
OAM had ordered three additional drones from General Atomics.

In its understated
conclusion, the OIG stated that CBP is "at risk of having invested
substantial resources in a program that underutilizes resources and limits its ability
to achieve OAM mission goals." Therefore, "CBP needs to improve
planning of its unmanned aircraft system program to address its level of
operation, program funding and resource requirements, along with stakeholder
needs."

The US government - and particularly
DHS - also needs to take more seriously its responsibility to not waste public
revenues on high-tech border security programs that are dysfunctional and lack
strategic focus. In the case of the UAV program and other high-tech ventures of
the Border Patrol, the inflated and alarmist rhetoric about homeland security
has covered up an endemic pattern of mismanagement.

Without a better match
between mission and programming at DHS, its surveillance - whether by agents
with binoculars, or cameras, towers, aerostats or drones - will remain
unfocused. There may be mission-appropriate and helpful uses for drones by
federal agencies. But it would appear to be a waste and a perversion of
priorities to have Predator drones patrolling the skies on the hunt for
immigrants and marijuana.

Copyright,
Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

Drones for Immigration Reform

Customs and Border Protection, the Department
of Homeland Security agency, that is in charge of the air and marine assets
used for border control, has over the past several years been pushed by
Congress to deploy more drones, along both the northern and southern border.

One problem is that CBP’s Office of Air and
Marine doesn’t have enough remote-control pilots or maintenance teams to keep
its fleet of ten drones in the air.

Another problem is that CBP doesn’t have a
strategy that includes a plan about how these unmanned aerial systems can
complement existing border operations. In other words, how can these expensive
pieces of high-tech aviation be best used in coordination with existing
technology, infrastructure, and agents? Elementary, yes, but within CBP such a
strategy or plan simply doesn’t exist.

Then, there is the sorry record of what CBP/OAM
claims border drones have accomplished (see below).

One might expect that CBP would have attempted
to evaluate the costs and benefits of its various instruments and operations
used to “secure the border.” Nope. No such cost-benefit evaluations exist.

Now comes a bipartisan group of senators
insisting that DHS/CBP should have more border drones as a precondition for
immigration reform. No doubt their staff have seen (or at least know about) the
series of recent reports by the Congressional Research Service, Government
Accountability Office, and the DHS Inspector General that have started to peel
open the lack of transparency and accountability that have characterized the
border drone program, revealing what a chaotic, ineffective mess it is.

Nonetheless, Republicans and Democrats say that
more drones are needed to secure the border as part of a new immigration
policy.  Here’s what they say:

Additionally, our legislation will increase the
number of unmanned aerial vehicles and surveillance equipment, improve radio
interoperability and increase the number of agents at and between ports of
entry. The purpose is to substantially lower the number of successful illegal
border crossings while continuing to facilitate commerce.

Basically,
there is a broadening political consensus that we need to “fix our broken
immigration policy,” as is commonly said. Yet, paralleling this immigration
reform consensus is a much stronger bipartisan consensus around border security
– despite the monumental waste, lack of focus, 
high-tech boondoggles, and absence of any cost-benefit evaluations that
assess how effective the various border security programs are. And when border
security involves high-tech systems (even unproven or failed ones),  border hawks and immigration reformers in
Congress want more and more – in part because of this nation’s faith in
high-tech solutions.

How
effective are border drones?

Even
accepting the notion that arrests of unauthorized immigrants and seizures of
marijuana backpackers illegally crossing the border with their bundles of
Mexican-grown weed contribute to homeland security, the numbers of immigrant
apprehensions and drug seizures (almost exclusively marijuana) are low for
these high-tech, high-budget drone operations.

CBP boasted in December 20111
that drone operations contributed to 7,500 apprehensions of illegal border
crossers and 46,600 pounds of marijuana.

The 7,500 “criminal aliens” that
the Border Patrol detained constitute small potatoes when compared to CBP’s overall number of detentions since 2005 – 5.7 million immigrants, including the 327,000
detained in 2011. Expressed as a percentage, amounts to only 0.001 percent –
and while categorized by CBP as “dangerous people” because they have crossed
the border illegally.

Mostly they are simply
unauthorized immigrants, although a small number are marijuana backpackers. To
give some perspective to the drug haul attributed to UAV surveillance over six
years – 46,600 pounds of marijuana – CBP on average 3,500 pounds of marijuana every day in Arizona – making a marijuana seizure every 1.7 hours. Drones
had a role in the seizure of less than one percent of the Border Patrol’s total
marijuana in the past six years – to be exact only 0.003 percent.

To say nothing about the total
disconnect between border security and the animating mission to protect the
homeland against terrorism.

- Tom Barry