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 Editorials | Issues | June 2007 
For Residents of Arizona Border Town, Towers Are Unwelcome Eyes in the Sky
 Sylvia Moreno - Washington Post
| | Mary Scott is among many locals opposed to a 98-foot-high tower on the outskirts of Arivaca, Ariz., near the Mexican border. Nine such towers are intended to reduce illegal crossings. "It's like having an unwanted family member in your life all the time," one town resident said. (Sylvia Moreno/Washington Post) |
Arivaca, Ariz. - The document arrived at the library one sleepy Saturday morning, without warning and without explanation. The librarian recalled that the messenger simply said: "This is sensitive."
It turned out to be much more than that to this quirky desert community of 2,500 residents, who learned from an environmental assessment study that they were in the cross hairs of the Bush administration's high-tech plan to use a "virtual fence" to stop illegal immigration.
One of nine 98-foot towers, equipped with long-range cameras, radar and night vision, has been erected on the outskirts of town. And most residents - iconoclasts who prize this unincorporated patch of desert for its isolation and lack of formal government - don't like it one bit.
"It's so close . . . that we feel like we're under the scope of the cameras and the radar units and the night-vision cameras, and that's troubling to the people here," said Roger Beal, owner of Arivaca Mercantile, the town's only grocery store. "It's like having an unwanted family member in your life all the time."
A simplified version of this technology is already in use in places along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico. But for the people of Arivaca, the towers represent one more sign of the militarization of the border, which is 11 miles south of town. Residents share the roads with hundreds of Border Patrol agents in sport-utility vehicles and National Guard troops in Humvees. Buses packed with armed guards and illegal immigrants rumble through. Temporary Border Patrol checkpoints where officers stop vehicles and ask people about their citizenship are often set up on highways outside of town, and a permanent checkpoint is under discussion.
The towers, many Arivaca residents contend, will not solve the economic, social and political problems behind illegal immigration.
"I can't blame the little guys who are coming in. They get taken advantage of. The way I see it, it's another slave trade," said rancher Rob Kasulaitis, who spends hours collecting trash and fixing fences on his property, which is heavily traveled by illegal immigrants. "Congress has to get off its dead end to let these people in, have them checked carefully, work and go home. . . . I want order."
The sensor towers are the stanchions in the Department of Homeland Security's plan to secure the nation's borders with a virtual fence. The department estimated the cost of virtual fencing at $2.5 billion, but a report issued to Congress in November by the agency's inspector general warned that the ambitious plan could cost as much as $30 billion because of poorly defined objectives, vague benchmarks for success and a stretched contracting staff. The U.S.-Mexico border security plan, which includes 370 miles of fencing, 200 miles of vehicle barriers and the hiring of 6,000 more border agents, could cost as much as $7.6 billion and will not be completed until 2011, the report said.
With failed border technology programs having cost taxpayers $429 million since 1998, lawmakers have ordered the department to submit a multiyear strategic plan for the Secure Border Initiative (SBI) and the virtual fence system, called SBINet.
The initial nine towers in SBINet are part of a $70 million contract awarded to Boeing last year. A tower half a mile from Arivaca and eight others south and west of the community were completed a week ago.
The towers will begin operating in the next few days, officials said, in a test to determine whether the sophisticated technology can enhance the work of border agents who patrol a landscape of canyons, ravines and hills.
The towers will be used to monitor a 28-mile stretch southwest of Tucson on the Tohono O'odham reservation. It is a rugged and hazardous spot - and one of the most heavily traveled. The Border Patrol's Tucson sector leads the country in apprehension of illegal immigrants, drug seizures and migrant deaths.
The technology - cameras that can distinguish what a person is wearing or whether the person is armed up to nine miles away; infrared technology for night surveillance; radar; wireless data access points; and communications and computer equipment - will monitor the desert for movement. Border Patrol agents in offices in Tucson and Sells, Ariz., will notify agents in the field when they pick up suspicious activity, then send a map showing the coordinates of the spot to laptops installed in patrol vehicles.
When residents in Arivaca learned in April that a tower would be erected nearby, they had four days to comment on the environmental assessment. But on two of those days, the library was closed and the document was unavailable for viewing. The document did not even mention Arivaca, instead citing the tiny town of Sasabe, a port of entry right on the border, as the only significant community in the area of the nine proposed towers.
The towers, the assessment concluded, would have "no significant impact" on the land, residents, wildlife or vegetation, and "in contrast . . . will increase human safety in the area and as a result, more citizens and businesses may be attracted to the vicinity."
A protest organized by residents of Arivaca prompted two recent meetings with Border Patrol and Boeing officials. Residents expressed concerns about the potential for invasion of their privacy and asked about the effect of the radar on things such as the town's wireless Internet system and the local populations of bats and honeybees.
"Towers will not lead to a viable solution to the problems of illegal immigration and will negatively impact desert life," said local artist C Hues, who helped organize the protest.
Residents asked about the probability that locals using the desert for hunting or recreation might trigger the sensors, prompting false alarms and wasting the time of agents who respond - a problem that has previously plagued high-tech border monitoring systems.
Tom King, an assistant chief patrol agent from Border Patrol headquarters in Washington, told residents that Arivaca was mistakenly excluded from the assessment when the tower sites were chosen. He said a tower was located close to town because of mountainous terrain to the south. King said the sensors are not intended to focus on residents' homes and that the camera's sophisticated optics will be able to distinguish between harmless and illegal activity.
But when asked if he could assure residents that the towers would not be used for "spying" on them in the future, King replied: "I would guess that there's no guarantees. Administration changes, my job changes. That's the way it works, and that's the most honest answer I think I can give you."
King said the tower will not be moved unless "it is proven ineffective."
That, said resident Mary Scott, is what many hope will happen. Scott, a wildlife photographer and avid tower opponent, is organizing residents to increase their activity around the nearby tower.
"We use the area now for bird-watching, hiking, biking, picnicking, hunting . . . rock prayer circles," Scott said. "We're going to be using our recreational space in such a way that a whole lot of resources will have to be spent sending [agents] out to see what we're having for lunch."
Staff writer Dana Hedgpeth in Washington contributed to this report. |
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