Janet Napolitano Says Keep Things Status Quo with Illegal Immigration than using Bush's Virtual Fence Program

Director of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano is scrapping George W. Bush "Virtual Fence" program. She is stating that $1 billion is a tough price to burden the American people. Instead, she want to continue the same status quo to detect illegal aliens. In other word, DHS is planning to turn a blind eye, which has been the standard norm.

(ABC News) The Department of Homeland Security today officially scrapped a Bush-era program designed to use radar technology to detect illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a DHS official and a congressional source.

The project, called "Virtual Fence," was rolled out under the Bush administration in 2006 with much fanfare about how technology could help secure the border. Illegal immigrants crossing the border would be detected by a radar and picked up by remote cameras, which were monitored by border patrol agents.

But numerous internal and Congressional reviews found consistent performance problems with the project's systems, which only spanned 53 miles of the vast U.S.-Mexico border.

DHS will utilize some of the existing technologies that were found to be useful in what the agency is calling a southwest border security technology plan.

....Janet Napalitano's plan.....


DHS will utilize some of the existing technologies that were found to be useful in what the agency is calling a southwest border security technology plan.

The new plan "will utilize existing, proven technology tailored to the distinct terrain and population density of each border region, including commercially available Mobile Surveillance Systems, Unmanned Aircraft Systems, thermal imaging devices, and tower-based Remote Video Surveillance Systems." Napolitano added.

The issues that the program encountered were wide ranging: cameras often provided blurry images, the radar system performed poorly in bad weather, and it often displayed false detections that were unable to distinguish between humans, cars and animals.

There were also cost overruns and the primary contractor, Boeing, repeatedly missed deadlines, officials said.