WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is preparing to scrap Bush-era plans to gradually extend a high-tech “virtual” border fence along vast stretches of the 1,969-mile U.S.-Mexico border, ending a troubled security measure inaugurated in 2006 by then-President George W. Bush.
The decision, expected to be announced shortly by the Department of Homeland Security, comes after federal authorities poured nearly $1 billion into a post-Sept. 11, 53-mile demonstration project to evaluate whether a network of state-of-the-art remote cameras and ground sensors could help U.S. Border Patrol agents intercept undocumented immigrants, drug smugglers or potential terrorists surreptitiously crossing the border into the United States.
The Obama administration decision would end the original Bush administration plan to extend the virtual fence along most of the U.S.-Mexico border by 2017 at an estimated cost of $8 billion.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, a former governor of Arizona keenly familiar with the technical problems afflicting the demonstration project that was constructed in her state, signaled plans to kill any extension of the “invisible fence” with a series of internal decisions in recent weeks that shifted the year-to-year contract with the prime contractor to a month-to-month contract that is due to expire Nov. 21.
The project initially was designed to be completed by 2011 — a timetable that has slipped to at least 2014.
The virtual fence is located at only two sites in Arizona, near Tucson and Ajo.
The project is being killed because of cost overruns, missed deadlines and continued difficulties with technology that does not detect intruders as promised.
Technical problems doomed the fence from the start, as well as disputes between Boeing Co., the contractor, and the government, and political second-guessing on Capitol Hill.
The project has been afflicted with management problems repeatedly spotlighted by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. The agency recently concluded that Boeing had not provided accurate updates on progress and that the Department of Homeland Security had provided inadequate oversight of Boeing, leading to “costly rework” efforts on the project.
The 53 miles of high-tech surveillance equipment along the border at two locations in Arizona was designed to augment nearly 700 miles of pedestrian fencing and vehicle barriers built by the Bush administration and finished by the Obama administration along the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.
