Congressman: Time to go high-tech to secure borders
Chief Inspector Dreyfus
Rep. Tancredo wants to use military personnel, surveillance technology
along perimeter of U.S.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: August 24, 2002
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Jon Dougherty
© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
A GOP lawmaker is advocating the extensive use of high-tech military
surveillance tools to secure the borders with Canada and Mexico after
witnessing the technology in action first-hand.
Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., just returned from a three-day
fact-finding trip near Bonner's Ferry, Idaho, where he observed a
border-control exercise involving the use of about 100 Marines and
"first-generation" aerial surveillance technology used by the United
States during the 1991 Gulf War.
"We were using the military to conduct border surveillance," Tancredo
said, describing the activity that involved the Marines working in
tandem with Forest Service, Border Patrol and U.S. Customs Service
personnel.
The "relatively high-tech" surveillance equipment included UAVs –
unmanned aerial vehicles – along with radars, which were set up on
mountaintops "to determine to what extent we could actually apply
technology and human resources" to enhance border security.
"I saw it, and it works," Tancredo insisted. "It's a very good way to
do it. There is no excuse now for not employing the military in
support of our border security forces."
Tancredo told WorldNetDaily that the "most common theme" regarding
security along the nation's southern and northern borders "is the real
frustration and low morale" of Border Patrol, Immigration and
Naturalization Service and U.S. Forest Service personnel.
"They're there, and they know the job they have to do is important,"
he said, "but they also know that they are being overrun by drug
smugglers, people smugglers, gun smugglers – you name it."
Tancredo, an advocate of using U.S. troops to augment federal
border-control personnel, says increased manpower and use of
technology is the only way to "get serious" about securing the
nation's boundaries in the new post-Sept. 11 terror environment.
The Bush administration, however, is opposed to deploying the military
along the border.
Tancredo says "Vietnam syndrome" is preventing Congress from
adequately protecting the nation's borders, which, he says, are just
as porous in the north as in the south.
"We send people to fight, but we really don't have the will to win,"
said Tancredo, head of the House Immigration Reform Caucus.
In terms of public-policy debate, border-control issues generally
elicit visions of mass mobs of illegal immigrants being led across the
desert plains or drug smugglers and Mexican soldiers firing upon
Border Patrol agents in the American southwest.
But Tancredo said many of the same problems associated with the
southwest border also plague the U.S.-Canada border. And neither
Ottawa nor Mexico City seems eager to help Washington curb the
problems.
"We have no friends on either end of our borders," Tancredo told WND.
The Colorado lawmaker mentioned Canada's large and growing Muslim
population, some of which he says is raising money for terror groups
by running drugs across the border into the U.S.
"I don't know if many people really realize this, but this group is
involved in a lot of the drug trafficking," he said, citing Canadian
sources. He added, however, that Canadian law enforcement does not
adequately monitor the activities of some of these groups.
"They couldn't care less," he said. "Canada looks the other way when
it comes to drug possession and manufacture."
Reform opponents, however, counter that America was founded as a
nation of immigrants. Critics of Tancredo and his backers say reform
efforts smack of discrimination – mostly against Hispanic and Muslim
immigrants in the same way Irish Catholics were discriminated against
in the late 1800s to early 1920s, a tide that was stemmed by law in
1924.
They also say three-quarters of all immigrants enter the United States
legally, and that they are, on average, better-educated and more
highly skilled than the average citizens of the countries they leave.
And they say many immigrants – legal or otherwise – fill menial labor
and other jobs unwanted by Americans.
But Tancredo says his immigration-reform caucus is not about shutting
down legal immigration. He says it's mostly about protecting all
Americans from threats that endanger citizens only because illegals
are able to get into the country so easily – a feat that runs
counterproductive to calls by Congress and the administration for
tighter security after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Technology works
To accomplish that goal, Tancredo said technology coupled with
manpower are the answers. The operation in Idaho proved that "we can
keep the border under surveillance using high-tech gadgetry and
relatively few people," he said.
"What you need is something that actually keeps the border under
surveillance, identifies the intruders, and personnel available to
move rapidly to pick them up," he said, adding that "miles and miles"
of southwest border could be put under surveillance with much less
technology.
"We're fighting a war on our borders," he said. "We're fighting
against people coming in here with narcotics, people coming in with
illegal immigrants, and – for all we know – weapons of mass
destruction, or at least the components thereof."
And the war's getting more dangerous, too, he said, citing the killing
of a 28-year-old U.S. Park Service ranger by two Mexican gunmen in
Arizona last week.
The ranger, Kris Eggle, was gunned down in the Organ Pipe Cactus
National Monument near Tucson by a man suspected of having ties to
Mexican drug lords – something Tancredo has been warning for months
would happen.
"I went down to the funeral, the only member of Congress to do so,"
Tancredo said. "Besides WorldNetDaily, we couldn't get anyone else
interested in the story, even though he died for his country."
He said the "face" of immigration on the border is different than that
of Middle America.
"It's murder, drugs, it's infiltration into the country for the
purpose of doing us great harm," he said. "And yet, we do not have the
will or intestinal fortitude to actually commit to defending the
border."
After the Idaho trip, Tancredo says he knows the U.S. has the
technology to get the job done.
"Maybe we can't make it completely secure, but we can make it at least
90 percent, and I'll take that," he said.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28716
Hawkeye
Chief Inspector Dreyfus wrote:
> Congressman: Time to go high-tech to secure borders
> Rep. Tancredo wants to use military personnel, surveillance technology
> along perimeter of U.S.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Posted: August 24, 2002
> 1:00 a.m. Eastern
>
> By Jon Dougherty
> © 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
>
> A GOP lawmaker is advocating the extensive use of high-tech military
> surveillance tools to secure the borders with Canada and Mexico after
> witnessing the technology in action first-hand.
>
Aren't Republican conservatards supposed to be in favor of *smaller* government?
Hawkeye
johnny
You didn't read the article, did you?
"What you need is something that actually keeps the border under
surveillance, identifies the intruders, and personnel available to
move rapidly to pick them up," he said, adding that "miles and miles"
of southwest border could be put under surveillance with much less
technology.
--
"It's the damnedest, depressing thing, to see people crossing like a
bunch of hyenas."
Joe Sweeney
Dissident
>
> Chief Inspector Dreyfus wrote:
>
>
>>Congressman: Time to go high-tech to secure borders
>>Rep. Tancredo wants to use military personnel, surveillance technology
>>along perimeter of U.S.
>>
>>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>Posted: August 24, 2002
>>1:00 a.m. Eastern
>>
>>By Jon Dougherty
>>Š 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
>>
>>A GOP lawmaker is advocating the extensive use of high-tech military
>>surveillance tools to secure the borders with Canada and Mexico after
>>witnessing the technology in action first-hand.
>>
>>
>
> Aren't Republican conservatards supposed to be in favor of *smaller* government?
Both sides (liberals and conservatives) have code words they
use for their agendas. "Smaller government" is the conservative
code word for not enforcing laws against corporations, leaving
them unfettered to do as they please (leading to Enrons), while
focussing law-enforcement on individuals only, especially the
actions of individuals in their bedrooms. Didn't you know
this?
-B
Tiny Human Ferret
who needs the government to be larger?
Just give the tools to those who need them:
http://www.ranchrescue.com/
--
Be kind to your neighbors, even though they be transgenic chimerae.
Whom thou'st vex'd waxeth wroth: Meow. <-----> http://earthops.net/klaatu/
Eddie
military except the National Guard and they can only be used in their home state
except in the case of natural disasters). Untill that law is changed the only thing
the military can be used for is to aid in training border patrol agents and not
being on patrol with them.
Iconoclast
Eddie wrote:
The troops could be put on the Mexican side of the border to keep out the millions of
illegal border crossers, people smugglers, drug traffickers, and terrorists without
violating our constitution. We did it in the past -- but now we are too pussified as a
nation to stop a Third World country from sending it's excess population into our
country. We have a huge nuclear arsenal and a large navy and act completely powerless
to defend our sovereignty against a poor, fourth-rate military "power."
Tiny Human Ferret
The law in question is the "Posse Comitatus" law, and it was enacted some 20
years after the first Civil War, to prevent the use of Federal Troops in the
capacity of domestic law-enforcement.
There is no law against using Federal Troops to defend the borders, and
there is a Constitutional requirement to Repel Invasion.