Border securityLawmakers question Napolitano on border-security measurement methods

Senators Tuesday grilled DHS secretary Janet Napolitano on what methods her department will use to provide a “meaningful” border-security measurement, which is a key condition for an immigration reform legislation.

Cronkite Newsreports that a bipartisan immigration reform bill unveiled last week stipulates that  a path to citizenship for the eleven million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States would be implemented  once DHS certifies that 90 percent of  border crossers in high-risk areas have been apprehended or forced back.

This certification is referred to as the “trigger”: the certification by DHS that the border is secure would trigger the implementation of the immigration reform bill.

The lawmakers’ comments came on the third day of hearings on the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act. The bill calls for funding  enhanced border security, a revamping of the nation’s visa system, requiring the use of the E-verify system to stop businesses from hiring illegal immigrants; and a decade-long path to legal residence for some of the nation’s estimated eleven million illegal immigrants.

The bill also calls for  $3 billion for additional Border Patrol officers as well as  drones and other surveillance systems on the border. The legislation would also add $1.5 billion toward the southern border fence.

Opponents of the bill question whether the department can provide an honest measure of border security. If the determination of border security is a subjective measurement by the department, the trigger does not mean that much said Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

“If a trigger is certain to occur, then I would suggest it is not a meaningful trigger,” Cruz said.

Napolitano told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the department has multiple measures which will give a clear indication of border security, and that a single number is inferior to a multiple approach which would include data such as apprehension rate, crime rates, and reports from agents along the border as well as examining trends along the border.

“No one number captures the evolving and extensive nature of the border,” Napolitano said. “That’s why I keep saying there’s no one metric that’s your magic number 42 or something of that sort.”

Senator Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) is confident that data on border security will become more efficient as new resources are created and deployed.

“With better technology, particularly surveillance, we’ll be able to get a better figure there,” Flake, one of the authors of the immigration-reform bill, told reporters.

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked Napolitano if she believed that basing border security on high-risk sectors alone and ignoring large sections of the border was “high-risk.”

Napolitano responded that much of the border is not close to populated centers and only certain sections are crossed on a regular basis. The department wants to focus its resources in areas where there is more traffic, Napolitano told Grassley.