Thread: GAO: Are Millions Spent On Military At Border Worth It?

GAO: Are Millions Spent On Military At Border Worth It?
tpr.org
Michel Marizco
Fronteras: The Changing America Desk
September 16, 2011
Audio @ link


An Army National Guard soldier works as a member of an entry identification team watching the U.S.-Mexico border near Nogales, Ariz., during Operation Jump Start on Jan. 17, 2007. (Photo by Sgt. Jim Greenhill, National Guard Bureau).

The investigative arm of Congress has released a report saying that the United States military’s efforts on the Mexican border haven’t been managed efficiently despite the millions of dollars spent. Fronteras Desk correspondent Michel Marizco reports.

It cost a total $1.35 billion dollars the two times the National Guard was sent to the U.S.-Mexico border to help the U.S. Border Patrol. A new audit by the investigative arm of Congress questions whether it’s worth the cost.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a report saying that the United States military’s efforts on the Mexican border haven’t been managed efficiently, despite the millions of dollars spent.

The report comes just days after the Pentagon agreed to extend the Guard’s presence for another three months. There are 1,100 soldiers working on the border.

Davi D’Agostino is a director at the GAO’s Defense capabilities management team and performed the audit. She identified some inefficiencies with the current strategy.

Soldiers have to operate in pairs, and they can only identify people; they cannot make an arrest. That has been the protocol since 2006 when Operation Jump Start began and in 2010 when Operation Phalanx started.

“And so basically, when they’re down there, it takes three people to do the job that normally takes one Border Patrol agent,â€

GAO report reveals a rift over National Guard's role at border

by Daniel González and Dan Nowicki - Sept. 18, 2011 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

For most of the past five years, National Guard troops have patrolled the southwestern border, helping to catch drug smugglers and illegal immigrants.

And political analysts say there is a good chance the troops, scheduled to leave Dec. 31, will remain through the 2012 election because President Barack Obama won't want to risk the political fallout of a move that could be viewed as retreating on border security.

But a new report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, reveals a rift between the military and Homeland Security officials over border strategy and the Guard's role.

Military chiefs have complained about what they see as a lack of a comprehensive administration strategy for securing the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, which has made it hard for the Pentagon to figure out the best way to use Guard troops to prevent drug smugglers and illegal immigrants from entering the country. Pentagon officials say they are also concerned that continued assignments for the 1,200 troops could have long-term implications for Guard forces.

The 35-page GAO report was produced at the request of Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the committee's ranking Republican.

McCain, a frequent critic of the administration's approach to border security, sought the analysis of the Guard's role last year and quickly seized on it to again blast the Obama team's approach.

"It's really hard to understand why, at least in the view of the Department of Defense, that there is no comprehensive border-security strategy by the Department of Homeland Security," he said.

But Homeland Security officials defended their strategy, saying deployment of more personnel and use of advanced technology along the Mexican border is making it more secure than ever.

A department spokesman said the launch of the "Southwest Border Initiative" in 2009 was a long-term strategy that is producing impressive results and that the government will continue to increase the number of agents on the border.

The GAO report comes just days after the Pentagon announced this month that it would keep National Guard troops positioned in Arizona and other border states through the end of December at the request of the Department of Homeland Security.

The report provides the first in-depth study of the costs and benefits of stationing Guard troops on the border.

It also fueled a clash over border security between Republicans and the White House.

Republicans, including McCain and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, have accused the Obama administration of not doing enough to secure the border, while White House officials have repeatedly pointed to record numbers of Border Patrol agents, record deportations and increases in drug seizures, as proof their initiatives were working.

With the presidential race heating up, keeping troops on the border also could have a political payoff for Obama as it makes it tougher for Republicans to portray him as soft on border security.

Under the circumstances, friction between Homeland Security and Defense officials over the border mission is inevitable, one national-security expert said.

"They really, truly can't be fully integrated," said Rick "Ozzie" Nelson, director of the Counterterrorism and Homeland Security Program at the bipartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

While National Guard troops are helpful in a border-support role and the Homeland Security Department in recent years "has evolved to develop a much more robust and comprehensive vision and strategy on what we should be doing on border security," Nelson said ultimately Congress needs to tackle immigration reform in a comprehensive way in order to implement a true national border-security solution.

Customs and Border Protection, part of Homeland Security, really is operating at the tactical level and isn't driving U.S. immigration and border policy, he said.

"At the end of the day, immigration laws come out of Congress," Nelson said. "So we have to have a national-level discussion about what we want our immigration policies to be."

Concerns for long term

This is the second time National Guard troops have been deployed to the southern border in the past five years.

In 2006, then-President George W. Bush sent 6,000 Guard members to build roads and fences in addition to helping to look for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers. The 1,200 troops at the border today are only assisting with the hunt for illegal immigrants and smugglers.

The total cost for both operations so far is nearly $1.4 billion, according to the report and Guard officials. That includes $1.2 billion for Operation Jump Start from June 2006 to July 2008, and $180 million for Operation Phalanx from June 2010 through December of this year.

Over the course of the two operations, Guard members have helped law enforcement to seize more than 350,000 pounds of marijuana and arrest more than 200,000 illegal immigrants. The deployments also provide real-world training for Guard troops.

On the border, Guard troops fall under the command of the Pentagon, not the Department of Homeland Security, which operates the Border Patrol.

Troops have not been allowed, during either mission, to perform law-enforcement duties, such as arresting drug smugglers or illegal immigrants.

The temporary deployment of Guard troops is intended to help the government gain control of the southwestern border, the GAO report noted. They are helping to beef up border security while the Border Patrol trains and hires more agents, and adds more technology and other measures.

But according to the report, Defense officials say that because there has been no long-term strategic planning by the DHS, the Pentagon has been "hampered in identifying its role and planning for that role" and fears that "mission creep" away from military duties could change the Guard's fundamental role.

They are concerned that Guard troops might eventually be deployed on the border long-term instead of temporarily, and that instead of the currently voluntary assignments, they could become mandatory, the report said. That could make it harder to recruit and retain Guard members in the future, the report added.

Pentagon officials say they are also concerned that deploying Guard troops on the border could reduce their availability for emergencies or disasters.

Cost is also an issue. The Pentagon is paying for the $35 million, three-month deployment extension announced this month, while at the same time facing billions of dollars in budget cuts as part of efforts to reduce overall spending by the federal government.

"They have some concerns about what additional costs they may incur," McCain said. "I understand that."

In response to the report, Matthew Chandler, a DHS spokesman in Washington, D.C., defended the Obama administration's record on border security and said DHS had implemented a comprehensive border-security strategy. He pointed out that in March 2009, the administration launched the "Southwest Border Initiative," under which the government has "deployed unprecedented levels of personnel, technology, and resources to the Southwest border."

That includes 18,152 Border Patrol agents now assigned to the southwestern border, up from about 9,100 in 2001.

"While this work is not done, every key metric currently available shows that these border-security efforts are producing significant results," Chandler said. "Illegal immigration attempts, as measured by Border Patrol apprehensions, have decreased 36 percent in the past two years, and are less than one-third of what they were at their peak. Seizures of drugs, weapons and currency have increased across the board."

Rick Van Schoik, director of Arizona State University's North American Center for Transborder Studies, said he believes the Southwest Border Initiative has been effective. But the Obama administration has yet to produce a comprehensive border-security strategy. Such a strategy would go beyond operations and initiatives to clearly articulate overall goals and measures for achieving border security. The strategy also would describe the roles of various U.S. agencies, including DHS, the military, the State Department, the Department of Justice, as well as the Mexican government, he said.

"We've waited one year, we waited two years, we've waited three years," Van Schoik said.

Angry exchanges

Last week, during a Senate hearing into whether the United States is safer 10 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, differences over the government's border strategy led to testy exchanges between McCain and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Asked if she was aware of concerns raised by the Pentagon in the GAO report, Napolitano told McCain she was unaware of the report, released Monday, but had spoken with both Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and his predecessor, Robert Gates, "about the fact that we do have a comprehensive border strategy" and what "roles the Department of Defense can do to assist us there."

"So you disagree with (Pentagon) officials' expressed concerns about the absence of a comprehensive strategy for the Southwest border?" McCain asked.

"Vehemently," Napolitano said in a sharp, single-word response.

"Well, I would be glad to hear about your strategy because I've failed to see one yet, nor have the residents of my state," McCain said.

The report also outlined concerns raised by other agencies. Department of State officials worry that placing troops on the border creates the perception that the border has been "militarized" at a time when the United States is providing support to Mexican law-enforcement agencies in the battle against drug-cartel violence, the report said.

"I sympathize with the State Department, but when you look at things that are going on south of the border, I think it is pretty clear that militarization on the part of the cartels has been pretty significant," McCain told The Arizona Republic.

According to the GAO, Department of Defense officials want a better idea of how long troops will remain on the border so they can better plan for their role.

Lt. Col. Robert Ditchey, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment on the report, but said there is no connection between the report and the latest extension. He said the extra three-month deployment will give DHS time to continue beefing up the border. It will also give the Department of Defense time to gain consensus on the future role of the Guard and to find alternatives to using the Guard, "which was always viewed as a temporary."

It "reflects the original intent of using the Guard as a temporary bridge ... until newly hired Border Patrol agents are trained and deployed to the border," he said.

At the end of August, there were 21,083 Border Patrol agents, including 18,152 on the southwestern border and 2,229 on the northern border, according to DHS. The department's 2012 budget calls for 21,370 total Border Patrol agents, which includes 1,000 additional agents authorized by Congress in 2010.

Ditchey said the Defense Department agreed to fund the 90-day extension in part because deploying troops on the border provides a "tangible training benefit" to the Guard personnel.

The money will come from Army and Air National Guard military personnel and operational accounts, which will be reimbursed later, he said.

McCain said he believes the cost of deploying the Guard troops on the border is justified.

"The fact that the Department of Defense decided to extend their presence there - I think their actions indicate that it's not only worth it, but important," he said.

Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said Guard troops should remain on the border despite the costs because border security is primarily the job of the federal government. He, along with McCain and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., has introduced a 10-point border-security plan that includes funding to keep the Guard on the border.

"It's critical that National Guard troops maintain their presence at the border," Flake said in a written statement.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepubli ... puted.html

We absolutely should continue Guard presence on the border and 1200 troops primarily doing construction work isn't enough. I for one have no problem at all with the international "perception" that the US has a "militarized border", so long as it's guarding against those coming in, not those going out.

But I also support a Wall of Americans as I've posted many times before. 20 guards for every mile of border, working 6 member teams, 24/7/365 with 2 floaters to cover vacations and sick leave.