Dylan Baddour | March 13, 2015


Photo By Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press


Texas will install 4,000 cameras on its border with Mexico, adding to the more than 1,200 currently in place, according to a Department of Public Safety report declassified in February.

The report details a more-than-$100 million surge of troops and resources to the border since June 2014, when tens of thousands of refugee children began showing up at the edge of Texas, fleeing poverty and organized crime in Central America. Texas lawmakers are deeply concerned with an open border, over which immigrants, drugs, sex slaves and even terrorists could pass, they say.

The report also lists 22 recommended upgrades to border defense, including: hiring more DPS officers, buying more drone aircraft and helicopters, buying more all-terrain patrol vehicles, buying long-range watercraft, providing tens of millions of dollars in grants to local law enforcement, building new training facilities and hiring new intelligence analysts.

That's in addition to Predator Drones, Border Patrol and 650 miles of steel fencing that currently protect this side of the Rio Grande.

The last of the 1,000 Texas National Guard members former Governor Rick Perry sent to the border last summer were supposed to go home this month, but current state executives have said they plan to extend deployments until August. Most of the funding for extra border guards comes from the state's transportation budget.

However, the surge has failed to put a dent in drug trafficking, VICE News reports, as high domestic demand for drugs still bolsters the cartels that move them. Lawmakers' concerns of terrorists at the border are also generally unfounded, although one Somali has been apprehended. Former Lt. Governor David has claimed that Muslim prayer rugs were found on the border, but PolitiFact Texas found that false.

The thousands of cameras will presumably stand in for many of the guards once deployment ends. It could also fulfill Perry's 2006 campaign promise to line the entire 1,200-mile border with cameras, upping the total number of digital observation posts to one per quarter mile of Rio Grande in Texas.

http://www.chron.com/news/article/Te...le-6132930.php