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Aug 3, 2006 9:51 pm US/Central

Air Guard Cameras Help Catch Illegal Immigrants
CBS 11’s Robert Riggs is the first reporter given access to border air mission

Robert Riggs
Reporting

(CBS 11 News) OVER DEL RIO An eye-in-the-sky, much like the powerful military cameras used to spot insurgents in Iraq, scans the porous Texas-Mexico border for human smuggling rings and drug traffickers.

After lifting off from Del Rio’s small municipal airport at nightfall, a Texas Air National Guard RC-26B reconnaissance aircraft heads east down the winding Rio Grande River towards Eagle Pass.

Major Kurt Wankowski, a former B-52 navigator, operates the night vision camera at a TV console. He sits in a fuselage tightly packed with sophisticated electronic gear. U.S. Border Patrol agent Chris Bean sits beside Wankowski where he coordinates the chase by radio to officers on the ground. Both men chuckle when this reporter asks if the human and drug smuggling rings on the border are innovative businessmen. Wankowski replies, “Yeah, they are very good. They certainly are.” And Bean chips in, “every advantage that money can buy.”

The air crew from the 147th Fighter Wing based in Houston provides assistance to Texas’ Governor Rick Perry’s “Operation Rio Grande” which aims to curb violence along the border. Last May President Bush deployed six thousand members of the National Guard to the two thousand mile long border with Mexico to assist the Border Patrol.

On this week night, the two-and-a-half hour flight focuses on a 210-mile stretch of the Rio Grande in the Border Patrols’ Del Rio sector. The Air Guard flies eleven sophisticated aircraft for surveillance in drug investigations. CBS 11 News reporter, Robert Riggs, is the first reporter allowed to fly on the Air Guard’s border patrol mission.

In the pitch black night, the aircraft’s infrared video camera detects heat given off by a lit cigarette. A white plume from the cigarette and the smoker’s body clearly appears on the TV screen, “sometimes when you are searching the shoreline you will see tire inner tubes. It looks like piles of donuts on the Mexican side where illegal immigrants float across on the inner tubes” says Wankowski.

The pilots make sure to keep the aircraft on course over the U.S. side of the border while keeping its camera in the best position to spot their prey. The aircraft’s twin turboprop engines quietly cruise thousands of feet above the action while the subjects below have no hint that their every move is being recorded.

The aircraft launches a search near Eagle Pass in response to a signal from a network of sensors buried on the Texas’ side of the border. Vibrations from foot steps on a popular smuggling root set off the silent alarm. The aircrew guides three Border Patrol vehicles to the area.

Wankowski zooms the camera in on a line of illegal immigrants snaking their way through a muddy pecan tree orchard. Wankowski turns to Agent Bean and points to the screen, “that’s your agent there. They are walking up on him”. Wankowski says he often literally walks ground agents to within an arm’s reach of illegal immigrants who are hiding in the dark.

Border Patrol Agent Bean appreciates the added measure of security that the Air Guard’s surveillance provides for his fellow agents. In turn, Wankowski marvels at the guts of the ground agents who sprint after the illegal immigrants across rough terrain, “I admire these guys for running around out there in the dark, not knowing exactly what you are going to run up on.”

The camera system’s computer software helps pinpoint targets by overlapping the video image with a highly detailed street map. It displays the cross hairs of camera’s focal point on the screen as well as shows other reference points that visually aid in the pursuit. ATK Mission Research based at Meachum Field in Fort Worth, Texas outfitted the aircraft.

Suddenly, in front of the approaching ground agent, the white hot human figures on the screen bolt back toward the river, “There they go! They are running!” exclaims Wankowski. Four illegal immigrants split-up into different directions with a lone agent in pursuit. One illegal immigrant grows tired and finally gives up.

Wankowski says the heavy flow of illegal immigrants along the border makes it difficult to spot drug traffickers, “the smugglers will use a large group of illegal immigrants as decoys. While we chase a group of forty to fifty people the smugglers will be moving drugs or high value human cargo such as Chinese nationals across the border a few miles away.”

A member of the aircrew estimates that it would take at least fifty reconnaissance aircraft to monitor the U.S.-Mexico border around the clock. It would also require more helicopters and ground agents which would likely cost billions of dollars.

As the President and Congress prepare to spend more than two billion dollars to modernize surveillance equipment along the border, it’s apparent that securing the border is a difficult challenge even armed with the best military technology.

During this mission, the Air Guard’s night vision camera helped catch four illegal immigrants but three others escaped back across the border.