Border Patrol agents and a legislator whose district sits along the U.S.-Canadian border told the Washington Examiner this week that technological improvements would help maintain security more than a physical wall along the northern border.
Multiple personnel from U.S. Customs and Border Protection told the Examiner during a tour of the border in Upstate New York that technological improvements, specifically the use of drones, ground sensors, and cameras, are more useful for border protection than a physical barrier would be.
The 1,950-mile southern border is partially covered by 750 miles of wall, but the northern border is roughly twice that size and has thousands fewer personnel assigned to maintain security in addition to the geographical issues with building physical barriers, which Republicans reportedly discussed constructing last year.
"There are parts where, look, a wall isn't going to stop people," said Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., told the Examiner. "What it does is slows them down so that the Border Protection can get time to get to people and find people that might actually be committing crimes or trafficking either people. It's a little trickier with the weather conditions and also with these waterways."
Scott Good, the chief of Border Patrol's Law Enforcement Operations Directorate in Washington, told the Examiner that some technology used by agency personnel along the southern border doesn't adapt well to the north.
"This technology also has to be developed in a way that they can withstand the harsh temperatures and the harsh environments that we see on the northern border," Good said. "You get out to these remote places in these large expanses on the northern border — there is no electricity."
He added, "It's really not a big deal for us to use solar power for that, right? But you start getting these areas where the snow falls onto the solar panels, or it's just cloudy for long periods of time and you don't see the sunshine for a long time. That's another thing that we have to look at. How do we extend battery life in cold weather?"
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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