The Secure Border Initiative, First Strike ~ Towers, Traffic and a Town
On a 28 mile stretch of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, the Boeing Corporation is implementing Project 28, a test of its Strategic Border Initiative (SBInet). There’s a lot on the line for Boeing ~ the value of the contract with Homeland Security to secure all land borders of the United States with a virtual fence is now estimated at $30 billion. SBInet is a multiyear program that will use the latest in technology to create the virtual fence, and Project 28 is a test of the functionality of SBInet on one the most challenging stretches of the southern border. It parallels 28 miles of border from a western end in the Tohono O’Odham nation to an eastern end east of the Point of Entry at Sasabe and immediately southwest of the community of Arivaca, Arizona.
Project 28 includes 9 redeployable sensor towers, a Command, Control & Communications center in Tucson, a Forward Operating Base in Sells, 50 technology retrofitted Border Patrol vehicles and new transport vans. The sensor towers are at the core of the project – and the controversy in the town of Arivaca. They are 98 feet high and are mounted with cameras, radar, communications equipment and a loud-hailer horn. Each tower is installed inside a fenced area along with a satellite dish, a continuously running generator and a propane tank. The tower that now lords over Arivaca, like the others, has high tech cameras that can read a license plate at 5 miles. That means that Arivaca is now under surveillance 24/7. In addition to looking for illegal migrants, the cameras are capable of seeing our homes, yards, windows, community buildings, main street; that’s right, everything. Some distressed residents have likened the Tower’s presence to the towers that guard prison yards.
Following the expected success of Project 28, DHS and Boeing plan to have the entire southern border secured by mid-2008. They hope that SBInet will enhance detection and apprehension of illegal border entrants and effectively halt the illegal entry of people and contraband and the loss of life that results from the border struggle. They further hope that people and communities along the border will realize immediate benefit from the program as the destructive impact of entrants, drug smugglers, and Border Patrol activity is minimized.
Arivaca is a beleaguered town that struggles daily with border problems and would be the first to welcome a real solution. But misgivings and frustrations among its inhabitants are many and wide-ranging. There are concerns about the violation of our beautiful and quiet desert, the loss of our privacy, and the impact of the radar on bats, bees, cell phones and internet networks. There are concerns about the use of a 130 decibel hailer-horn in the near vicinity of a horse camp for children and a labyrinth used by the community for meditation, prayer, and public services. There are concerns about the militarization of a community fully 12 miles north of the actual border with Mexico. There are concerns that the placement of the Tower was done without so much as a site visit, by Boeing teams who did not even take the knowledge of the local Border Patrol into consideration. They wonder why the best views from the chosen tower site are to the north, and Arivaca, rather than to the southern border, so many miles away.
There was an extremely brief and poorly executed period for public comment prior to implementation of Project 28. The Draft Environmental Assessment was delivered to the Arivaca Library Saturday, April 14th. Despite the fact that the library would not reopen until Tuesday, the deadline for comment was Wednesday, April 18th. The concerns addressed in the few email messages that were sent before the April 18th deadline were dismissed in a document delivered to the Library the following Tuesday. It was obvious to all that this was not a real effort to address community concerns, but rather window-dressing on a done-deal. Boeing actually left Arivaca off the map and out of the discussion of the deployment of Project 28, even though the easternmost tower was less than 2 miles from the Main Street of the town. The community requested meetings with Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS), Border Patrol and Boeing officials. Two meetings were held, but it was also obvious that the meetings were public relations efforts that would in no way impact the swift roll-out of Project 28. This much was readily admitted by the DHS representatives.
The coming months will be very revealing as border entrants confront cutting-edge technology and military strategies on this most difficult 28 miles of the nearly 6000 miles of America’s land border. Will they merely use topography to travel the canyons and washes outside of the watchful eyes of the towers, or will they flow around the east end of the 28 mile line to the corridors that will bring them through the larger towns of Tubac and Green Valley? Project 28 cannot test the effectiveness of the SBInet “virtual fence”. As has always been the case, illegal crossers and drug smugglers will simply find and use an area of less-intense enforcement. They will come around the ends of the line. But, the “test” will be considered a success, and full deployment initiated, if the equipment involved does its job ~ relaying images to command stations who relay directives to field agents in specially equipped vehicles. Until the entire border is similarly secured there will be no test of the well-funded responses of sophisticated drug smugglers or the ingenuity and will of impoverished people seeking a better life.
The other test at hand is the test of the people of Arivaca, as representatives of the hundreds of American communities within 30 miles of an international border, north and south. What degree of intrusion will we accept without complaint? When militarization is seen as a viable alternative to effective and humane immigration and global economic policies, the results are painfully apparent. And the chimera of terrorism still dances . . .one Border Patrol official stated at an Arivaca community meeting that our loss of privacy was a sacrifice we had to make because of 9/11, even though since 2001, only six individuals “suspected” of terrorist connections have been detained at our land borders.
This is a wake-up call to America from a small vibrant community at its southern edge. You could be next.
by Mary Scott
