TYSONS CORNER, Va.–As the U.S. begins to deploy new and replacement physical structures along portions of the southwest border, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will be looking to harness technology to give its agents situational awareness before illegal activity gets to the wall, according to the agency’s top acquisition official.
As plans for a border wall system are being developed, the technology component will be brought closer to the wall to help keep it “strong,” Mark Borkowski, assistant commissioner for Office of Acquisition and CBP’s Chief Acquisition Officer, said May 25 at a Department of Homeland Security Industry Day hosted by Washington Technology. By strong, he said this means that technology will help prevent people from crossing the border where there are wall structures.
After his presentation, Borkowski told Defense Daily that technology that is part of the wall system, along with the related infrastructure that includes roads, will enable Border Patrol agents to get to the point along the border wall where illegal activity is coming and help stop it there.
Current fence structures and barriers that were deployed during the previous two presidential administrations, were largely aimed at delaying illegal border crossers so that agents would have more time to intercept them.
Borkowksi said that technology often now helps the Border Patrol identify and predict and track places where illegal activity is moving and then provide options where it can be intercepted.
“Now the standard is not to delay people, it’s to stop people,” Borkowski said.
Borkowski’s presentation was titled CBP: Modernizing Under Rapidly Changing Requirements, which he said is a “politically correct” title. The requirements aren’t operational or technical but instead represent the “political demands on CBP these days,” Borkowski said.
Various types of technology that includes radars, cameras, and unattended ground sensors, that are deployed in combinations of fixed and mobile applications, currently exist along certain portions of the southern border and more is being deployed. Borkowski seemed to suggest that going forward some future technology deployments may change based on where walls will be located and how cameras and radars can best complement the physical structures.
The current technology deployments are proving very effective in helping the Border Patrol do its job, Borkowski told Defense Daily.
President Trump campaigned on a promise to build a concrete wall along the nearly 2,000-mile length of the southern U.S. land border. The cost estimates for just the physical wall and related infrastructure range from $25 billion and higher, although administration officials have said that wall is unlikely to be used everywhere along the southern border.
Before Trump was elected, Borkowski said that the approach to border security was risk-based with the focus on understanding who and what was coming to the border so that the biggest threats could be tackled.
“There’s a big difference between somebody who’s crossing the border to commit a terrorist act and somebody who crosses the border to find a job picking lettuce,” Borkowski said. “And we’re really more concerned if we have limited resources about making sure we find the terrorist first. But the president came in and said, ‘I want to stop everything. I want to stop everybody.’” That’s why he thought a “concrete wall might be the approach,” Borkowski said.
As far as technology itself, Borkowski said that the Border Patrol now wants more integration among its various surveillance systems for a more consolidated common operating picture. For example, he told Defense Daily, rather than have a separate workstation that monitors hits on unattended ground sensors, the Border Patrol would like those sensor hits to be tracked on the same workstation that brings sensor feeds in for its fixed camera and radar technology.
The Border Patrol is driving the requirements for these integrated solutions and doesn’t’ want extras that it isn’t interested in, he said. CBP has already done some simulations of more integrated operating pictures and Borkowski said that the Border Patrol has “taken stuff off” that it doesn’t want during these tests.
The Border Patrol also wants more mobile and relocatable surveillance and tracking systems that move as the threat moves, Borkowski said.