Border Patrol Seeks to Add Digital Eyes to Its Ranks

JULIA PRESTON

nytimes.com

PHOENIX — Among the federal officials who gathered here this week for a conclave on border security, there was little talk of building a fence along the 2,000-mile Mexican border. Instead, the chatter was all about technology: about concentrating Border Patrol agents, equipped with late-model surveillance tools, in areas of frequent illegal traffic, while using aerial drones to monitor remote, lightly trafficked spots.

The chief of the Border Patrol, Michael J. Fisher, said the goal of the strategy, begun a year ago, was to “shrink the border,” allowing agents to focus on areas where criminal smugglers of migrants and drugs were most likely to travel.

The plan is to cover 900 miles, or 45 percent of the border, by 2016 with a “dense” array of agents and technology, and to monitor 1,092 miles, the other 55 percent, with “persistent surveillance” informed by drones, Mr. Fisher said.

The report from Mr. Fisher and other top Homeland Security officials was eagerly received by hundreds of merchants who brought their wares to the Border Security Expo, a technology bazaar in the convention center here filled with darting robots, winged drones, high-powered microwave radios and video cameras that can peer over fences and through walls, day or night.

to read more: nytimes.com