Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will conduct “a comprehensive review” of the Homeland Security Advisory Council to see how it “can be best leveraged to advise the department and advance its broad mission,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson says. Mayorkas has disbanded the independent council although he left its top three officials in place. The HSAC will continue to be bipartisan but when it returns in full, it will have a “diverse membership representative of America and the communities DHS serves,” the spokesperson says. “Adding and removing members isn’t new and the move was made “in consultation with HSAC leadership.” On the HSAC’s website, the only members still listed are Obama era appointees William Bratton and Karen Tandy, the chair and vice chair respectively, and William Webster, chair emeritus, who was appointed during the administration of George W. Bush.
Smiths Detection
has completed delivery and installation of a HCVM XT mobile high-energy inspection system at the NATO Support and Procurement Agency in Luxembourg. The agency’s site requires all external construction vehicles and other equipment providers to be scanned for potential threats that enter the site. The HCVM XT X-Ray screening system has a throughput of up to 25 vehicles per hour in mobile scanning mode and up to 100 trucks an hour in pass-through mode. The system can penetrate up to 320mm of steel.
Customs and Border Protection has introduced and expanded its facial comparison technology-based Simplified Arrival processing at a number of locations, including Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, the pedestrian border crossing of Lukeville and Sasabe in Arizona, all pedestrian border crossings in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas ports of entry, at Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Philadelphia International Airport With Simplified Arrival, CBP is automating the manual document checks required for admission into the U.S., providing travelers with a touchless travel experience. CBP says that more than 66 million travelers have participated in the biometric facial comparison process at air, land and seaports of entry and since Sept. 2018 has prevented more than 500 imposters from illegally entering the U.S.by using authentic travel documents that were issued to other people.
DroneShield says it and its partner Trakka Systems successfully demonstrated an integrated counter-drone solution for the Air Force at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. The solution consisted of Trakka’s TIPS-C—which is mounted on a mobile platform and provide early detection, identification and neutralization of unmanned aircraft systems—and DroneShield’s DroneSentry-C2 command and control software that provides a common operating picture for drone detection and tracking in the local airspace.
Border Patrol Agents in the Yuma Sector, Ariz., spotted a small drone entering the U.S. from Mexico one night in March. The agents observed the unmanned aircraft system hovering over a field before returning to Mexico. When agents arrived at the field, they discovered a taped package that contained 1.27-pounds of methamphetamine with an estimated street value of $2,000. The drone was spotted by the agents with the “naked eye,” a Customs and Border Protection spokesman tells HSR.