SIERRA VISTA,
Ariz. (AP) -- The U.S. government now patrols nearly half the
Mexican border by drones alone in a largely unheralded shift to control
desolate stretches where there are no agents, camera towers, ground
sensors or fences, and it plans to expand the strategy to the Canadian
border.
It represents a significant departure
from a decades-old approach that emphasizes boots on the ground and
fences. Since 2000, the number of Border Patrol agents on the 1,954-mile
border more than doubled to surpass 18,000 and fencing multiplied nine
times to 700 miles.
Under the new approach,
Predator Bs sweep remote mountains, canyons and rivers with a
high-resolution video camera and return within three days for another
video in the same spot, according to two officials with direct knowledge
of the effort on condition of anonymity because details have not been
made public.
The two videos are then overlaid
for analysts who use sophisticated software to identify tiny changes -
perhaps the tracks of a farmer or cows, perhaps those of immigrants who
entered the country illegally or a drug-laden Hummer, they said.
About
92 percent of drone missions have shown no change in terrain, but the
others raised enough questions to dispatch agents to determine if
someone got away, sometimes by helicopter because the area is so remote.
The agents look for any sign of human activity - footprints, broken
twigs, trash.
About 4 percent of missions have
been false alarms, like tracks of livestock or farmers, and about 2
percent are inconclusive. The remaining 2 percent offer evidence of
illegal crossings from Mexico, which typically results in ground sensors
being planted for closer monitoring.
The
government has operated about 10,000 drone flights under the strategy,
known internally as "change detection," since it began in March 2013.
The flights currently cover about 900 miles, much of it in Texas, and
are expected to expand to the Canadian border by the end of 2015.
The
purpose is to assign agents where illegal activity is highest, said R.
Gil Kerlikowske, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, the
Border Patrol's parent agency, which operates nine unmanned aircraft
across the country.
"You have finite
resources," he said in an interview. "If you can look at some very
rugged terrain (and) you can see there's not traffic, whether it's tire
tracks or clothing being abandoned or anything else, you want to deploy
your resources to where you have a greater risk, a greater threat."
If
the video shows the terrain unchanged, Border Patrol Chief Michael
Fisher calls it "proving the negative" - showing there isn't anything
illegal happening there and therefore no need for agents and fences.
The
strategy was launched without fanfare and expanded at a time when
President Barack Obama prepares to issue an executive order by the end
of this year to reduce deportations and enhance border security.
Rep.
Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who chairs the House Homeland
Security Committee, applauded the approach while saying that
surveillance gaps still remain. "We can no longer focus only on static
defenses such as fences and fixed (camera) towers," he said.
Sen.
Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican who co-authored legislation last
year to add 20,000 Border Patrol agents and 350 miles of fencing to the
southwest border, said, "If there are better ways of ensuring the border
is secure, I am certainly open to considering those options."
Border
missions fly out of Sierra Vista, home of the U.S. Army Intelligence
Center at Fort Huachuca, or Corpus Christi, Texas. They patrol at
altitudes between 19,000 at 28,000 feet and between 25 and 60 miles of
the border.
The first step is for Border
Patrol sector chiefs to identify areas that are least likely to attract
smugglers, typically far from towns and roads. Analysts scour the drone
videos at operations centers in Grand Forks, North Dakota; Riverside,
California; and Sierra Vista. After an initial survey, the drones return
within a week for another sweep.
Privacy
advocates have raised concerns about drones since Customs and Border
Protection introduced them in 2006, saying there is potential to monitor
innocent people under no suspicion. Lothar Eckardt, the agency's
executive director of national air security operations, said law-abiding
people shouldn't worry and that cameras are unable to capture details
like license plate numbers and faces on the ground.
Eckardt
looked on one September morning as a drone taxied down a runway in
Sierra Vista, lifted off with a muffled buzz, and disappeared over a
rocky mountain range into a blue Arizona sky. About a dozen computer
screens line the wall of their trailer, showing the weather, maps and
real-time images of the ground below.
Eckardt
said there is "no silver bullet" to border security but that using
drones in highly remote areas is part of the overall effort. If there's
nothing there, he said, "Let's not waste the manpower here. Let's focus
our efforts someplace else, where they're needed."