Border security More money, different approach offer opportunities to border security tech companies
The number of border agents has reached roughly 21,000, up from 5,000 two decades ago. In fiscal year 2012, spending for border and immigration enforcement totaled almost $18 billion — 24 percent more than the combined budgets of the FBI, the DEA, the Secret Service, the U.S. Marshals, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (total: $14.4 billion). One major trend driving the border security industry is the government’s shift from large-scale border security infrastructure projects to small unit security systems.
Senior officials from ten federal agencies and organizations joined private sector firms to address border security challenges and opportunities at last week’s border security exposition in Phoenix, Arizona.
The number of border agents has reached roughly 21,000, up from 5,000 two decades ago, according to the Guardian. In fiscal year 2012, spending for border and immigration enforcement totaled almost $18 billion, 24 percent more than the combined budgets of the FBI, the DEA, the Secret Service, the U.S. Marshals, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ($14.4 billion).
As the U.S. government continues to face increasing illegal immigration and drug trafficking along the southern border, law enforcement agencies, including police departments of border towns and DHS’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP), are adopting new technology to help track and apprehend suspects.
One major trend driving the border security industry is the government’s shift from large-scale border security infrastructure projects to small unit security systems like iPhones, which are able to scan the fingerprints of migrants as soon as they are stopped rather than waiting to check out prints at distant processing centers.
In 2011 the federal government canceled the Secure Border Initiative, a program launched in 2005 to use cameras and sensors to build a “virtual fence.” By the time of its cancellation, the program — contracted to Boeing — had cost about $1 billion to cover a fifty-three mile stretch of the southern border. To avoid future spending wastes, border security professionals are taking their time to examine security solutions from new and smaller firms.
Mark Borkowski, CBP assistant technology commissioner, said attendees of the exposition are there to research what the market has to offer. “I don’t believe that too many people have gone into that hall and said: ‘Ooh, that widget I want to buy right now.’ But what we do do when we go into the hall is go: ‘Oh, that’s available, or you have that kind of a capacity?’” he said. “It’s a homework kind of thing.”
Other trending border security solutions involve drones; devices to better scan train cargos crossing the border; and maritime surveillance solutions — particularly for the Great Lakes region. Public safety officials in Texas, as part of Operation Drawbridge, are using at least 1,500 cameras along the state’s 1,200 mile border with Mexico to track illegal migrants and drug traffickers.
State and local law enforcement agencies which do not have border protection responsibilities also attended the exposition to seek out technology which may be adapted for their use. “We’ve found situations where we went out and got technologies that we thought were useful on the border, then the people who produced those have gone out and created markets for state and local law enforcement,” Borkowski said. “It’s a two-way street. Sometimes it starts with a market with state and local and comes to us.”
