Patrolled by Predator drones, radar blimps, dogs, and scanners, the U.S./Mexico border is now a state unto itself: Borderworld
Posted 01.17.2012 at 11:15 am
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Scanners: Border Patrol agents employ backscatter x-rays to detect cash, drugs, firearms, humans and other contraband, but nothing is more effective than a dog's nose. John B. Carnett
7. “WE SEE IT”
CBP does not expect, or want, to stop everything that crosses the border. Facilitating the flow of commerce is central to its mission, and as a result Laredo is, on a given day, the busiest commercial “land port” in the U.S. When I visited the World Trade Bridge there, the facility was nearing the end of an expansion project that would double the number of primary lanes used to help process the 1.5 million trucks that pass through the port every year.
The primary question taking shape in my mind was: Where and how would the limits of the border domain be set?Jose Uribe, the port’s amiable and efficient assistant director, described his operation as he drove us across and against oncoming truck traffic, dodging and weaving like a veteran player of Grand Theft Auto. To my inexpert eye, the scene was a chaotic riot of monstrous trucks and looming, barn-like scanners. Five thousand trucks a day on average, laden with every conceivable commodity—blue jeans, auto parts destined for just-in-time delivery to a factory in Tennessee—pass through this facility. “I’ve been in Laredo for 34 years,” Uribe told me. “I can remember back in the late ’70s we had mostly curios, some heavy steel.” Then came Nafta. “Now, you name it and we see it. Everything from laptops to three-piece suits.”
As Uribe’s tour progressed, patterns began to emerge before my untrained eyes, and I could see that the operation here was a miracle of logistics. Each vehicle, as it passed through the layered enforcement process that began with the submission of an electronic manifest at least one hour prior to its actual arrival, was tracked from station to station. At any point, a customs officer could create an “issue”: tagging the shipment for more-intensive scrutiny, which might mean submitting to a higher-resolution x-ray scan or offloading the complete contents of a shipment.
Inspectors at the World Trade Bridge deploy an impressive array of scanning devices, from old-fashioned low-energy x-ray machines to backscatter and high-energy x-ray and gamma-ray scanners. The high-energy x-rays, which inspectors used to scan the most visually challenging commodities, produce marvelous, almost gallery-quality images. One can see the internal structure of a large tractor-trailer rig with hallucinatory clarity—the gears inside a transmission, the pushrods in the engine. Uribe showed me scans of a road roller, the kind used to compress hot asphalt, and inside the large, dense roller wheel were packages of drugs. A load of gypsum board was laden with marijuana, the voids inside the pallets revealed by the scan. Scans of a southbound truck carrying rolls of fabric revealed suspicious areas of density; using software-enhancement tools, the scanning technician was able to detect the presence of $1.2 million in cash, a small fraction of the estimated $18 billion to $39 billion that the cartels smuggle across the border every year (of which $147 million was seized in 2010). Another scan showed packages of cocaine stamped with the logo of the Gulf Cartel.
Smugglers are often stupid, and sometimes they are greedy, as when they attempt to cram one or two more packages into a well-concealed cavity in a vehicle. They are just as frequently ingenious, however, as when they hid a load of drugs inside a large tank of used oil, which scanners can’t penetrate. These smugglers were perfectly aware of the limits of the technology. What they were unable to defeat, in that case, was the power of a dog’s nose.
Dogs, at border checkpoints as well as traffic checkpoints 70 miles from the line, have found people hidden in the engine compartments of trucks, sewn sitting upright into the backseats of cars, and in one case wedged into a modified console such that when customs officers opened the hatch between the front seats, they saw a man’s face staring up.
8. “PASSIVE SECURITY”
At ports serving the general public, such as the much smaller but extremely modern crossing in Del Rio, security measures are directed not only at the endless stream of commodities that pass through these facilities, but at the bodies of the individual people presenting themselves for entry: their facial expressions, postures, affect, clothing and emotional dispositions.
Sharon Ansick, a tactical logistics officer who went to high school with my sister, gave me the grand tour of the Del Rio facility. Video cameras were everywhere, 150 in all. Doors and windows were secured, and passage in and out of facilities, as well as from one area to another within a compound or building, was tightly controlled. Ansick explained that this was called passive security. Everyone who entered this facility, whether they knew it or not, had entered a panopticon. Their every move was registered, recorded, observed, and controlled. No one could leave without permission. Border runners would be met with road spikes that jut up from the pavement at the push of a distress button. Few would ever realize the degree to which their liberty had been constrained.
All incoming and outgoing license plates are photographed, and all drivers too. All recently issued passports, green cards and day-entry cards contain radio-frequency ID chips that broadcast the identify of a traveler at the primary checkpoint, and the Del Rio port is the first to deploy a special RFID lane to speed processing. When I was there, traffic was light and lines were short, but there was a sense of high alertness throughout the facility. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents armed with M-4 rifles loitered near the secondary station. Supervisory agents, in a glass-encased control room overlooking the traffic lanes, kept watch over the whole proceeding, monitored the video feeds, and maintained radio contact with personnel all over the port.
The port’s noncommercial traffic—about two million vehicular travelers and 50,000 pedestrians annually—is not routinely scanned. Instead, CBP officers interview drivers in a primary lane and use special angled mirrors to inspect the underside of all vehicles, and if a dog sniffs something suspicious or something about the car seems unusual, or if the driver seems nervous or simply came from an area of interest, the officer will call for a secondary inspection. At that point, density meters, mirrors, x-ray scanners and the whole repertoire of what CBP terms non-intrusive inspection techniques come into play. Nowadays few cars are dismantled or drilled without evidence derived from one of these methods. One recent seizure came about because an officer manning the primary lane noticed that a vehicle, driven by a lone male, was uncommonly clean. A trip to the VACIS x-ray scanner settled the matter. After some probing and chipping, agents discovered several pounds of heroin and methamphetamine.
As we passed through the port, the routine business of inspection and seizure continued all around us, and it was that routine of passive and all-encompassing surveillance that seemed to offer the most plausible model for what Kenneth Knight’s total domain awareness might look like. The primary question taking shape in my mind was: Where and how would the limits of the border domain be set?
As if in answer to my silent wonderment, Ansick pointed out that CBP enforces regulations on behalf of 44 other governmental agencies, including the FDA, the EPA and the USDA. Inspectors go through agricultural loads by hand, searching for tiny insects, egg casings under leaves, and other stowaways on legitimate imports. Palo Verde wood borers show up in stacks of firewood. Cattle must be examined for Rocky Mountain spotted fever ticks. In Del Rio, people arrive with juicy, stinky fermenting cheeses, deer heads, oranges, cowboy boots made from endangered species like sea turtles. The guy with the sea-turtle boots was a recent case, a native of San Luis Potosí, the state where Jaime Zapata was murdered, and the officer interviewing him just happened to notice the boots. The boots went into a freezer, and the poor man, who naively admitted what they were, left in his socks.
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Excellent article Roger! Have you written about operation “Fast and Furious”?
For over 20 years an organization in ohio has been researching and using technology that enables them to see and talk to people from a central location without visible equipment. it was being used before haarp or gwen were finished. This technology has been kept secret from the public, only a small group of people, including police and doctors knew about it. it has grown. as of 2012 nearly all police, firefighters and medical professionals in columbus, ohio are aware of it. most cops in the rest of the state along with indiana are also aware. maybe some doctors and nurses are in fear for their own safety and that of their families while the police and mental health professionals seem to have been advanced to their position because of their willingness to work with this organization. please read dttv.info
Mr. Knight's dream of video fusion is a Big Pipe dream. It is a concept of tomorrow, and always will be.
Mr. Knight killed a competing system (nicknamed Broad Pipe) that was based on the commercial off-the-shelf Inmarsat system.
At a tenth of the size and a tenth of the cost, the system was ready for immediate deployment upon the entire fleet of CBP aircraft. Instead, it was forced out by the big budget Big Pipe program (primarily to justify the expenditure of funds on other components of the Big Pipe system).
The new Multi-role Enforcement Aircraft (MEA) was delivered incomplete because certain Big Pipe technology hadn't yet made it to market.
A bright light needs to be shined on the CBP air program; the taxpayers deserve more.
All this would not be happening if New York or Washington D.C. were where El Paso or Los Angeles is! There would be no debate, and no illegal immigration.
Good point D13.
Sometimes a change in perspective is all that is needed.
Sometimes while finding a solution to a problem it is also use full to identify what is NOT working, and stop wasting energy on that.
How dare a citizen to go out and consume illegal drugs and thus finance the cartels? If us citizens would stop taking drugs there would be no drug problem.
US is the one that needs help to be without drugs and violence.
Plenty of crimes in US every year : 30,000 gunshot fatalities.
This keeps the police and feds plenty busy.
Nothing was stated in this article that isn't common sense or could be found with a simple Google search. Motion detectors and cameras are pretty standard kit. Drones are becoming ubiquitous, soon they will monitor your daily commute to work. As the various agencies that patrol our boarders are extensions of our government I am sure there are protocols in place that prevent too much information being given to a blogger. We lost our chance to "help" Mexico when gave tax breaks to Corporate America to outsource and they went to India instead of heading south. I am curious though, with all the tech at the border, why do we continue to fail to find the underground highways the cartels keep building.
Good article. I was happy to read Mark Borkowski's observation, because it's something I've been saying for quite awhile. Borkowski said that a large part of the problem is artificially created by our Congress and its irrational and arbitrary immigration and guest-worker policies.
People unthinkingly paint everyone who crosses the border illegally with the same brush, but there is a huge difference between drug traffickers and people who simply want to work here to have a better life. If Congress just changed the guest-worker laws so we could hand everyone a green card at the border--fingerprint, ID, and register them--and welcome them to work in the U.S., it would solve a lot of problems at once. One of which would be, as Borkowski said, that it "would cut off a lot of the traffic BETWEEN the points of entry. In fact, at a certain point, you would only have the really bad people left, the drug smugglers and the terrorists." It's not amnesty or citizenship, but a very simple way to allow people who want to work here to do so legally and to increase the pool of hard working, inexpensive labor (and increase tax revenue...are you listening politicians?). It would also end the tragic human trafficking trade and the coyotes who profit by it.
Then CBP could focus on the real criminals instead of being overwhelmed with weeding out good people whose only crime is wanting to work here so badly that they are willing to circumvent the inexcusably stupid guest-worker (and immigration) system governed by INS...which is arguably the most ridiculous bureaucracy in the federal government.
I grew up on the border of mexico/new mexico. Nobody really cares a whole lot that Mexican illegals are coming here to do landscaping and crop harvesting, its the drug cartels and human slave traffickers who are the problem. You run into a pack of illegal's in the desert and it's not a problem. Run into drug cartel members and your gonna get your throat slit. If everyone knew how dangerous these cartels are then there would be no argument about taking harsher measures against them.
Popular science makes for so much innocent fun. But what you've written here is a thoroughly depressing view of a thoroughly depressing piece of human culture. You've written a tech view of a human story.
There's no indication anywhere in your piece that people living the other side of this man-made border are human beings with god-given inalienable rights. They're just aliens, stupid greedy, blips on a screen who try to cross walls and fall off. They're bad guys tainted by involvement in drugs.
Meanwhile the good guys have lots of popular tech - blimps and computers and CCTV. Plus they can even read tracks from a galloping horse; they're almost John Wayne!
As someone who grew up there you hint at the real place that lies behind all the concrete and tech. But there's a great deal more to be said about the human stories and reasons behind economic migration. And evidence of what's going on in the war on drugs. Why do individual Americans want to consume so many drugs. Why does the state choose to persist in a war on drugs which creates a vast unregulated business in criminal hands just like alcohol prohibition did before it?
Dark-skinned people are responding in a normal and predictable way to economic opportunity. They're supplying produce that Americans want. What you describe is a state-sponsored attempt to resist market forces, to solve an essentially human problem with technology deployed with a military mindset.
The US will spend a lot of money. It won't solve the problem. No-one will be happy.
And in writing this story the way you have you show no sign of empathy with the key players involved. From the perspective of liberty, justice, and loving thy neighbour this story has lost the plot. Don't close yourself off to the human aspect; I bet the more you look into it the more compelling it will get...
It is in USA tolerance of the companies that hire illegal aliens that inspire illegal people to enter out country. A poor person, with no education and no opportunity, living in an unsafe environment wants to escape his local situation for a poor job in the USA and a government that protects the people, even the illegal peoples. How can you blame an illegal alien from leaving his bad situation for a better one?
Even those caught enter the USA illegally, are given food, a bed, clothing if needed, medical attention for a short time. This is a step up from the nothing they have from where they come from. Imagine if you are poor and without a job, home and food and one day as you sit on a pile of dirt you see some cancerous bump, broken arm, a bullet hole, skin disease or just any other health problem on your body and you do not feel that well, too. In your country there is no help. So just enter good old USA and we are obligated by law to help the sick illegal alien, prior to returning him back to his country.
The USA tolerance of companies that support illegal aliens is the problem. Remove the rainbow and its pot of gold. And the wall is a good idea too. But in reality, the flow of illegal aliens will never stop and long as the poor are poor and are being helped in the USA. At best at times, we only slow it down.
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See life in all its beautiful colors, and
from different perspectives too!
Great article, very insightful and helpful in understanding more so what is happening with the power that our government wields.
At the same time I also find my self considering what will happen if this Big Pipe were to be turned against the american people?
I am in China at the moment and I am sure that in this nation the Big Pipe would be easily integrated into the systems of control... but then again this is China, not the USA. We must understand that different systems need different rules and measures. But what works for China will not work for the US.
China is a nation that still follows the Emperors way of rule (the rulers are above the law - so who you know determines what freedoms and influence you have). But the US is a nation of Laws where every one including the president is bound to the law and all are accountable to the law.
So if we, in our wisdom, should elect a government of people who are so corrupt that they have no frills about using their power to stay in power, how much would the Big Pipe help them in that endeavor? I think of the Born Ultimatum movies and that's what I see.
Correct me if I am wrong.
D13 01/17/12 at 11:16 am
What do you think Mexico is - a medieval dungeon, a Russian gulag? Mexico is one of the richest countries in the world. The richest man in the world lives in Mexico City. Mexico is loaded with natural resources. Mexico’s economy is better than ours. Mexico has a lower unemployment rate than we do. Mexico has a much lower deficit than we do. We owe them NOTHING. We are always on the short end of the trade stick. This is the United States of America … NOT the United Nations …. NOT the Mexican Dept of Welfare.
If a tomato can cross the border into the US from Mexico, I don't see why a person can't cross the border. Oh I forgot, we have laws. Its our law against other people. Only we are allowed to be where we our, except for famous people, rich people and fast runners having the ability to jump high fences.
Not to be a cynic, but something doesn't make sense? With all that technology and surveillance, mega quantities of illicit drugs are still flowing across the border like the Mississippi River? I wonder how that is possible without collusion between entities on both sides of the border?
The cartels are making billions in illicit drug sales and I would wager that there are both Mexican and American officials making lots of money in bribes and payoffs?
I have been on both sides of the border off and on for almost 20 years now and have gone through the Border Patrol checkpoints many, many times, both Mexican and American, and they don't seem like they would miss much, with all the technology, scanners, K9 units etc etc?
One time I got a 'red light' going into Mexico at Nogales, I was packed for an extended stay in Magdalena de Kino, Sonora, a little town about 50 miles South of the border, working as a bio-medical engineer on a project for the company I was at the time employed. Anyway, the Mexican border agents had me open the trunk on my midsize rental car and they pulled out my clothes and laptop and whatnot, then they asked why I had so many pairs of jeans? I explained in Spanish that I was going to be staying in Mexico for a couple of months, so I needed to have some clothes to wear?
I guess they have had a problem with Mexicans buying jeans in the US, then selling them on the Mexican side? They somehow were avoiding some type of tariff by doing this?
So, if they are that ticky-tack, then how in the heck are the cartels moving mega quantities of coke, heroin, methamphetamine and pot across the border into this country every day of the week?
Like I said, somebody has got to be cooperating on this side of the border? Unfortunately, it wouldn't be a surprise to me if the corruption ended up being at the higher levels of the political spectrum, rather than just among the peons?
A sad situation all around............
d13 said:
"Besides giving terrorists and drug cartels enought details on our border technology to effectively make it useless, was the goal of this article to get POPSCI readers to post ways to cirumvent these "kool" technologies?"
Apparently d13 does not realize that the information found in the article is neither classified, difficult to find on the Internet nor hard to figure out given time and observation.
I feel we are turning america into a guilded cage, crusted with invisible, razor sharp barb wire. I do not welcome this change in the least. The creator of the Big Pipe said himself, the older program failed because people tried solving various human, sopcial, political problems with technology. And they didnt know what problem they were trying to solve with what tech. I think his argument is easily turned back in his face to show something he didnt intend. People are trying to meet these issues with technology, trying to pound all the square pegs into round holes with brute force instead of actually solving the problems themselves.
I especially object to broadening the border patrols inlfuence and power beyond the border with all the instances of items being 'confiscated' and never returned. Such items as cameras, computers, laptops, these items are expensive and while a few might be honestly being lost under the current ridiculous system in place, I feel alot are also outright theft. We have too many instances of abuse/theft at the border and in our airports to justify giving these people more power.