Lee Maril

Just two weeks ago the Border Patrol launched its new national strategy in hearings before Congress.  Surprisingly the national media seem less than interested in the BP’s newest national strategy since 2004 which will, according to the Border Patrol, cover years 2012-2016.

Setting aside the national strategy itself for a moment, there is another equally crucial issue here: how does the Border Patrol intend to measure its performance along the border? In other words, how does the Border Patrol plan in its new national strategy to judge its own efficiency in reaching its stated objectives and goals?  And how will the public be able to judge the Border Patrol regardless of who is running it and which political party is in control?

Prior to 9/11 the Border Patrol was a hole-in-the-wall agency of less than 4,000 agents who went about their difficult work with no one looking over their shoulders.  After 9/11 Customs and Border Protection was thrust into the media limelight as the first line of defense against international terrorists along with its previous job of capturing illegal immigrants and illegal drugs. Measurements of Border Patrol performance  were annual rates of apprehension of illegal immigrants and amounts of drugs interdicted.

These measurements were deeply flawed.  Even though the Border Patrol’s baseline data-data against which agency effectiveness and performance can be objectively measured-was at best highly questionable, before 9/11 no one much cared.  After 9/11 these same data were closely examined because national security was determined to be at stake. There were myriad problems not only in the collection of these data, but in the ways in which categories of data were defined and reported.  In short, apprehension rates, agency “outputs”, were a totally inadequate measure of the status of security along our national borders.

In 2004 the Border Patrol declared in its “new” national plan that it would henceforth measure its progress in border security not just in terms of apprehension rates, but by the vaguely defined “operational control” of our borders.

Unfortunately by 2010 the Border Patrol could only claim 13% “operational control” of all our borders.  So what did the Border Patrol do when faced with such a low performance score?  It simply declared that “operational control” was not an adequate measurement and returned to apprehension rates as its “interim” method of measuring both its institutional efficacy and the status of our nation’s borders.

Then on Tuesday, May 8, 2012, the Border Patrol officially revealed to Congress that it was working on a “new” measurement of border security.  This measurement would be the product of a brand new methodology, still in the development stages, that is “quantified”.

Following the Border Patrol’s projected time line, it is a reasonable question to ask why, after more than a decade since 9/11, the Border Patrol has not been able to develop an accurate measurement of its efficiency and progress in border security given its huge increase in budget.

So it is not surprising, given these circumstances, that institutional memory completely failed Border Patrol Chief Agent Michael Fisher at the Tuesday Congressional hearing:  Mr. Fisher forgot to mention his agencies ICAD, ICAD II, ICAD III, ISIS, the American Shield Initiative, The Secure Border Initiative, SBI TI, the SBI Systems Integrator, and Boeing’s contract for a virtual wall, all failed projects in establishing border security. And let’s not forget the most recent boondoggle extravagancy, as did the Border Patrol’s Mr. Fisher, Raytheon’s Advanced Spectroscopic Portal Program.

It is reasonable for the public to demand an accurate measurement of the progress the Border Patrol is making in national security along our borders. Changing measurements from apprehension rates to operational control, then back again to “interim” apprehension rates in lieu of the arrival of a promised new metric smacks of the same historical promises of a Systems Integrator, a virtual border fence, or a phantasmagoric machine that for than $500 million can discover a dirty bomb in an eighteen wheeler.

Yet history reminds us, even if the Border Patrol won’t, that this agency is not in dire need of another new technological fix that has not yet been developed, whether it’s the latest surveillance gidget or now a trendy management strategy accompanied by a theoretical enumeration.  What the Border Patrol vitally needs, along with all our members of Congress, is an adequate measurement of Border Patrol performance which, placed within an historical context, allows anyone to fairly and consistently judge the progress of this vital law enforcement agency regardless of which party holds power.

There’s a lot in CBP’s “2012-2016 Border Patrol National Strategy” to digest.  For starters there are two major goals, the first with five objectives, the second with three.  All this is sandwiched between numerous color photographs reminiscent of university textbooks used in courses on Introductory Policing.

But this report seems most adamant in its attempt to reframe the Border Patrol’s own history since 9/11.  The reader is informed that from 2004 to the present, the time period covered by the last Border Patrol “national strategy”, the emphasis has been on “organization and resources”.  In contrast, the new Border Patrol strategy is “a risk-based Border Patrol national strategy” in which the border will be secured by, “…using Information, Integration, and Rapid Response in a risk-based manner”.

Further, “new tools and approaches” will help the Border Patrol “…grow, mature and strengthen.”  Well, I guess we can all agree on that objective.

We also are told that the change from the most recent “national strategy” to the newest “national strategy” “…represents a natural evolution.”  Once this “new national strategy” is in place, “…unprecedented levels of border security are within reach…”.

That’s good to know, too, but totally misleading.  Here’s the major problem with this Border Patrol report: history.

Is the public supposed to forget about the history of the Border Patrol’s various “strategies” along the border, from the bizarre frontal deployment of more than 95% of its resources as initiated by now Congressperson Silvestre Reyes, but then Border Patrol Sector Chief Reyes, to Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff’s “one-sized fits all” border fence?  And what about the billions wasted along the way by Boeing, Inc., L-3 Communications, and Raytheon, among others?

Not to mention most recently the tragic case of Anastasio Hernandez-Rojas?  Then of course there are the tremendous amounts of illegal drugs smuggled into our country every day, plus guns going south.  In fact, it’s a long list that is verified by that mean old skeptic by the name of history.

Now the report tells us that the public is supposed to trust something called a “risk-based approach”.  Where was this porcine approach after 9/11 and why didn’t we use it?

Here we go again with another silver bullet, this time a shift away from technology (remember the “virtual fence”?) to a trendy management strategy favored by our military.

There is no doubt that the Border Patrol is moving towards becoming a law enforcement agency we can trust and be proud of-and for this it should be commended-but declaring that a “risk management approach” is the new answer to what was once referred to as “gaining operational control” of the border, is a big step in the wrong direction.

What is the right direction and how objectively can we measure the Border Patrols accomplishments including these newest goals and objectives?  Oddly in this Border Patrol report on its “new national strategy” the answers to these vital questions are nowhere to be found.

First the good news.  At least I think it’s good, but it’s hard to say.  The Border Patrol has, at least sort of, announced a “new” National Strategy, it’s first since 2004.  That may mean it is discarding some of its disproven concepts, tactics, and policies along our borders for better, field-tested ways to perform its vital and difficult job. Or not.

But since it’s the Border Patrol, they did not really announce or unveil their new strategy so much as transmit it, sort of, to Homeland Security Today.

The Border Patrol also published a document targeted at their own employees which was released to the public, sort of, last Fall. Then two months ago in a report that the media mostly ignored the Border Patrol published “A New Strategy on the Border”.   Filled with beltway jargon, wannabe military terminology, and stilted, rhetorical language that my High School English teacher Ms. Margret Tuck would have blistered with her red pencil, “A New Strategy on the Border” is virtually incomprehensible to most Americans.

It’s not just that the Border Patrol seems reluctant to reveal their “new” National Strategy, it’s also that their own reports appear at best manufactured by a committee of illiterate tax accountants enthralled by cursory readings in a required high school ROTC program.  So along with the Washington circumlocutions, there is an ever increasing military jargon mired in bad grammar and intentional obfuscation.

On Tuesday Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security that one of the primary concerns of the Border Patrol’s new national strategy is, “Increasing and sustaining the certainty of apprehension for illegal crossings between the POEs by expanding Border Patrol’s situational awareness and employing a comprehensive and integrated whole-of-government approach”.

Well, that certainly makes it clear what the Border Patrol has in mind for the next five years, doesn’t it?

What in fact does the Border Patrol’s “new” National Strategy for 2012 to 2017 really say and mean?  That will take some time, given an apparent reluctance by the Border Patrol to say what it means and mean what it says, to figure out.