Secure Border Initiative : observations on the importance of applying lessons learned to future projects : testimony before the Subcommittees on Management, Investigations, and Oversight, and Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism, Committee on Homeland Security, House of Representatives

In November 2005, the Dept. of Homeland Security announced the launch of the Secure Border Initiative (SBI), a multiyear, multibillion dollar program aimed at securing U.S. borders and reducing illegal immigration. The U.S. Custom and Border Protection's (CBP) SBI program is responsible for developing a comprehensive border protection system using technology, known as SBInet, and tactical infrastructure -- fencing, roads, and lighting. This report addresses: (1) the extent to which CBP has implemented SBInet and the impact of delays that have occurred; and (2) the extent to which CBP has deployed tactical infrastructure and assessed its results. Includes recommendations. Charts and tables.

The Dept. of Homeland Security¿s (DHS) Secure Border Initiative (SBI) is a multiyear, multibillion-dollar program to secure the nation¿s borders through, among other things, new tech., increased staffing, and new fencing and barriers. The tech. component of SBI, which is known as SBInet, involves the acquisition, dev¿t., integration, and deployment of surveillance systems and command, control, communications, and intelligence technologies. This report determines whether DHS: (1) has defined the scope and timing of SBInet capabilities and how these capabilities will be developed and deployed; (2) is effectively defining and managing SBInet requirements; and (3) is effectively managing SBInet testing. Includes recommend. Illus.

Undertakes a wide-ranging examination of the US-Mexico border as it functions in the rhetorical production of civic unity in the United States A “border” is a powerful and versatile concept, variously invoked as the delineation of geographical territories, as a judicial marker of citizenship, and as an ideological trope for defining inclusion and exclusion. It has implications for both the empowerment and subjugation of any given populace. Both real and imagined, the border separates a zone of physical and symbolic exchange whose geographical, political, economic, and cultural interactions bear profoundly on popular understandings and experiences of citizenship and identity. The border’s rhetorical significance is nowhere more apparent, nor its effects more concentrated, than on the frontier between the United States and Mexico. Often understood as an unruly boundary in dire need of containment from the ravages of criminals, illegal aliens, and other undesirable threats to the national body, this geopolitical locus exemplifies how normative constructions of “proper”; border relations reinforce definitions of US citizenship, which in turn can lead to anxiety, unrest, and violence centered around the struggle to define what it means to be a member of a national political community.