Costly border cameras had little effect
By Brandi Grissom / Austin Bureau
Article Launched: 01/07/2007 12:00:00 AM MST


AUSTIN -- Millions logged on, hundreds of thousands watched live border footage and thousands sent e-mails to Texas law enforcement -- and it all led to the apprehension of 10 undocumented immigrants, one drug bust and one interrupted smuggling route.
The El Paso Times obtained state reports about the results of the November trial of Gov. Rick Perry's Texas Border Watch online camera program. The Times also received, through the Public Information Act, a sampling of the 14,800 e-mails viewers sent through the Web site.

Those e-mails led U.S. Border Patrol to 10 of the more than 12,000 undocumented immigrants officials said agents caught in November on the Texas-Mexico border.

State officials said making apprehensions wasn't the goal of the $200,000 border camera test. They wanted to see whether the idea was feasible and whether the software and technology worked, Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw said.

"This wasn't designed to tee-up and support (law enforcement) operationally. It never was," McCraw said. "It was designed specifically just to see the technology."
Some border lawmakers, though, said the reports made them doubt the efficiency of Perry's plan to put $5 million worth of cameras on the border. He is set to ask lawmakers to approve the money during the legislative session that will start Tuesday.

"It seems to me that $20,000 per undocumented worker is a lot of money," said state Rep. Norma Chávez, D-El Paso.

The e-mails

Perry announced that he would invest $5 million in an Internet-based neighborhood watch program for the border last summer. After months of starts and stops and technical glitches, the site went public for a test run Nov. 3 through Nov. 30.

According to information compiled by the Texas Homeland Security Department, more than one-third, 5,534, of the e-mails viewers sent through the Web site were reports of possible suspicious activity along the border.

The remaining two-thirds were comments (some obscene), reports of technical problems and suggestions for improvement. More than 2,200 were blank e-mails.

One viewer suggested that law enforcement officials post lights, speakers and sirens on the cameras so that online users could shine the lights on suspicious activity and speak directly to the "illegals."

"You could easily turn it into a real-life video game," the viewer wrote.

Another online border patroller had an idea for Texas to find more border watchers: "Recruit senior citizens. We have a lot of time for this."

Many complained they weren't sure what they were looking at on the video or what they were supposed to be looking for.

"It is extremely difficult to determine race, sex or gender of people on most of the cameras," one person wrote. "É It will not be easy to determine who is or isn't an illegal immigrant."

According to one of the state reports, a spider that crawled across a camera generated 65 e-mails.

E-mail from the site became so voluminous that McCraw said officials brought in Texas National Guard troops to assist state staffers reading e-mails and directing them to the appropriate agencies.

State reports show that the first few days the camera footage was online, viewers reported far more problems with the Web site and suggestions for improvement than questionable activity sightings.

On the second day the site was up, three-quarters of the nearly 1,700 e-mails reported technical problems or offered suggestions.

As the test continued, McCraw said, state officials incorporated some of the e-mailed suggestions into the Web site. One of the best ideas from viewers, he said, was to include details about what kind of activity would be suspicious in the areas where the cameras were recording.

"The final Web site as you saw it was a product of the public's feedback," McCraw said.

In the second half of the test period, most of the e-mails that came from viewers reported suspicious activity, but far fewer e-mails were received each day.

The number of e-mails dropped from an average of about 1,100 a day the first week to about 150 a day in the final week.

The two Web sightings that led U.S. Border Patrol to catch 10 undocumented immigrants came in the middle of the month, according to a report homeland security officials prepared to show the results from Texas Border Watch.

On Nov. 15, e-mail reports helped Border Patrol agents find six undocumented immigrants shuttled across the border by a coyote, a human smuggler.

On Nov. 20, e-mailers reported a group crossing illegally. Border Patrol officers were able to track down four of the undocumented immigrants.

McCraw said that though those were the only two occasions on which immigrants were arrested, e-mail reports helped law enforcement officers chase back others who were trying to cross illegally.

The drug bust, in which the Val Verde County Sheriffs Office netted 325 pounds of marijuana, happened on Nov. 28, after e-mail reports about a rallying point behind a school, according to the report.

The report also describes a Nov. 17 incident in which e-mails from border-camera monitors led sheriff's deputies and Border Patrol agents to a smuggling team they chased back across the border.

Val Verde County Sheriff D'Wayne Jernigan said the online viewers did surveillance work he can't afford to have his deputies do.

"Without (the Web cameras) there's literally hundreds of miles of our county, our border, you don't have access to, you can't see," he said.

Test lessons

McCraw said the test results prompted state officials to revamp their plan for the border cameras to focus more on the public and less on having law enforcement officials watch the cameras.

"The public really took an interest, which the challenge for us, of course, was keeping up with the public," McCraw said.

During the 27-day test, the site received nearly 28 million hits. About 220,000 registered on the site, and, according to homeland security reports, users logged on for more than 1 million video sessions.

The site got so much attention, McCraw said, that a private company offered to buy it for $2 million. State officials passed on the offer.

McCraw said that during the test, eight to 12 cameras along Texas' 1,200-mile border with Mexico were operating in four counties -- El Paso, Val Verde, Hidalgo and Cameron.

Vendors provided cameras and equipment for the program for free, he said.

The state paid for Web servers to handle traffic on the site. The price escalated from an expected $100,000 to $200,000 because of the crush of traffic on the site after it was launched, McCraw said.

Because of the public response, McCraw said his department is redesigning the proposal for Perry's border Web camera program.

At first, the idea was to have law enforcement officials watching high-quality cameras to gather intelligence, while public viewers would act as a second set of eyes.

After the test, McCraw said, officials decided instead they would buy more cameras that are less expensive and mobile. And officials decided that rather than have officers spend hours watching video footage, they would leave that responsibility to online viewers who seem eager to help secure the border.

"We know exactly what we want, how we want it -- we even know the locations we want them placed," he said.

Homeland security officials are working on the proposal for the border cameras, and Perry spokesman Robert Black said a request for bids to operate the program should go out early this year.

Black said Perry would ask lawmakers for the $5 million to operate the cameras as part of his $100 million border security package that includes money for border county sheriffs and state law enforcement officials.

"If we can get this much help and feedback from a handful of cameras, we're going to get a lot more participation the more cameras we put up," Black said.

Lawmaker concerns

Black said the 220,000 users who registered and the millions of hits on the Texas Border Watch Web site proved the program was a success.

"The more eyes we can put on the border to help us secure our southern border is a good thing," he said.

Results from the border camera test, though, didn't have many border lawmakers convinced the program would be worth $5 million.

"To spend $200,000 for 10 apprehensions is not cost effective," said state Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa, D-McAllen. "We need to give that money to local law enforcement that will be more effective in catching people who commit crimes."

State Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, said the Border Patrol might be a good example of how Texas could better use its resources.

That agency has cameras surveying the border, he said, but it is now focused on increasing manpower rather than video coverage.

"We'd probably be better served with fewer cameras and more live bodies," he said.

El Paso state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, a Democrat, said Perry's border watch program was designed to grab conservative voters, not to catch border criminals.

Perry announced his plans for the border Web cameras the day before the Texas Republican Party convention in June. The Web site went live to the public just four days before the Nov. 7 election.

"Immigration is a federal responsibility," Shapleigh said. "É It's time to say bluntly that the state should get out of immigration enforcement."