Border Patrol Love SBI But Not Allowed to Show It

 

Texas Insider Report: Washington D.C.  Late Friday night with information only briefed to a few key figures on Capitol Hill and the littlest fanfare possible the Obama administration deleted more security from our southwest border by canceling the Security Border Initiative (SBI) commonly referred to as the virtual fence. The smugglers lost alot of loads early last year and then the traffic stopped. Why? SBI worked.  Known as situational awareness SBI for the past year was providing just that with Border Patrol agents in the Tucson sector reduced from 24 in the field at a time to four with 80 of the covered area covered by a combination of towers sensors radars & other devices.

 Relying on year old information from a faulty prototype developed by SBIs contractor Boeing the administration dissed SBI stating that it is fails to support a one size fits all border security measure.

 

SBI was never developed to be a one size fits all anything but rather the eyes of the Border Patrol enabling them to use a control room to see the all the landscape they patrol in one place the illegal activity on it and decide when and how to interdict that activity.

Perhaps most important to the agents still reeling from the death of their fellow office Brian Terry in Peak Canyon Arizona a few weeks ago  just east of where SBI existed was the unprecedented officer safety that SBI provided. Officers were no longer coming up on smugglers alone or in dangerous places not knowing how big the groups were or whether they were carrying guns or drugs. They knew ahead of time and planned for each interdiction in areas they could achieve the most success. Heres my discussion on the topic on FOX News Sunday Morning: The Border Patrol loved SBI  but none of them were allowed to show it or talk about it. I spoke to one extremely senior federal law enforcement agent very familiar with SBI about a week ago before it was cancelled. He could not have raved about SBI more. I spoke to the one person who had been allowed to see it Nelson Balido President of the Border Trade Alliance at length before it was cancelled. He raved about it. But now the Border Patrol is going just about back to square one as the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano (who never saw SBI at work) hasnt said a peep about providing some other means of situational awareness to the men and women of the Border Patrol. Was SBI expensive? Yes. Had the contractor made right and now had deployable technology for areas of the border where SBI would be appropriate-- areas most trampled today by alien smugglers and drug cartels? Yes. Was anyone allowed to tell that story? No. So what exactly is this administration doing? Insecuring our borders it seems. Janice Kephart a former counsel for the Sept. 11 Commission who is now with the Center for Immigration Studies.