Feds Probe University’s Device To Help Illegal Border Crossers


Last Updated: Wed, 04/07/2010 - 12:21pm



Nearly half a year after a professor at a public university spent taxpayer dollars to create a tool that helps Mexicans enter the United States illegally, the area’s congressional delegation has finally decided to investigate the matter.

The activist Chicano professor (Ricardo Dominguez) at the University of California San Diego, a major public institution not far from the Mexican border, proudly announced his new invention—Transborder Immigrant Tool—in November without scrutiny from university officials or the feds. The idea is to help Mexicans enter the U.S. illegally by mapping the safest routes through the notoriously rigorous southern border desert.

The innovative technology is a simple mobile application —inserted into the cheapest available cell phone on the market—which guides illegal aliens through the least dangerous routes, areas with shelter, food, water and so-called Quaker help centers that provide medical attention and directions to the nearest major U.S. highway. The mobile program is touted as an “intelligent agent algorithmâ€