On January 18, a week before Donald Trump issued Wednesday’s executive order decreeing the immediate construction of a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency posted a “Request for Information” to a federal database of government contract opportunities for private businesses. Although released without fanfare, the solicitation appears to be one of the earliest operational glimpses into the federal government’s plans for heightened security along U.S. land borders under the Trump administration.
The request makes clear that in the days preceding Trump’s swearing in, CBP was already taking steps to dramatically scale up its surveillance capabilities along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Because of the often treacherous and desolate terrain along the country’s 1,954-mile southern land border, many have speculated that in such areas Trump’s wall could be more of a digital surveillance shield composed of video camera towers and drones that scan for border crossing activity.
Now, according to the documents, the CBP is “contemplating an expansion” of Remote Video Surveillance System (RVSS) that would deploy the program’s digital watchtowers to some of the border’s most isolated regions.
A document attached to the request for information details CBP’s eventual goal of deploying RVSS towers in every section of its operations along the U.S.-Mexico border. The overhaul, according the CBP’s estimation, would more than double the program’s surveillance towers in six of its nine Mexican border sectors, increasing from 222 towers to 446 towers. The envisioned placement of the requested towers falls in line with Trump’s Mexico-focused anti-immigrant rhetoric: Of the 229 new towers detailed in the request, only 5 would be placed along the Canadian border.
In an apparent nod to Trump’s fixation on Mexico, the document shows that CBP hopes to build its first new RVSS towers in the agency’s Big Bend sector, which covers more than 420 miles of a largely unpopulated and mountainous border region along the Rio Grande. In recent years, the Big Bend sector has seen the lowest rates of migrant apprehension on the Mexican border. The CBP document states that the agency hopes to build eight RVSS structures, including two “relay towers,” in that sector.
Photo: John Moore/Getty Images
In another document attached to the request for information, or RFI, the border protection agency details the RVSS capabilities it expects contractors to build and maintain. The system comprises both fixed and movable watchtowers that would be equipped with video cameras, night vision, and infrared heat-sensing technology to detect and identify people, animals, or vehicles attempting to cross the border in daylight and darkness from up to 7.5 miles away. The agency states that the surveillance systems should have the ability to read facial features, clothing, colors, and license plate numbers, and to attach specific geographic coordinates to each “item of interest.” In addition to the building of 229 new towers along U.S. land borders, the CBP also hopes to upgrade its existing towers, the document states.
The expansion detailed in the RFI excludes three sectors that cover large portions of Arizona and the southeast corner of Texas — high-traffic regions with large stretches of flat land — where CBP already has deployed some of its most advanced camera systems. The RFI is clear that a contractor interested in building in the new regions should be prepared to construct the towers a variety of landscapes. “The RVSS Upgrade surveillance and communications subsystems shall be capable of being installed in all terrain types encountered along the United States Southwest and Northern borders,” one document states, “including urban, desert, plains, mountains, coastal, and forested areas.”
The RVSS program has been active since 1996, but updating and expanding the program gained priority in CBP’s mission after the discontinuation in 2011 of a failed program called SBINet, a wide-ranging attempt to create a “virtual fence” by overhauling border security technology. The program ended up costing more than $1 billion by the time it was cancelled. In addition to the RVSS program, the border control agency is developing a different program of border surveillance towers, under a $145 million contract with the U.S. subsidiary of the Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems, known as the Integrated Fixed Towers system, currently focused on the Arizona border region.
In May 2016, CBP told a House Homeland Security subcommittee that it was interested in moving forward with the acquisition of technology for border security programs. The new request for information makes clear that CBP is in an initial phase of examining the RVSS expansion. An RFI can be a precursor to an official “request for proposals,” which generally means a government agency intends to pursue a plan that might require outside contracting. “This RFI does not commit the Government to contract for any supply or service,” the federal posting states. “The information provided in this RFI is subject to change and is not binding on the Government.”
Among the agency’s recent contractors is Palantir Technologies, a data-mining firm co-founded by billionaire and Trump transition adviser Peter Thiel. Although many of the details relating to the contract remain secret, Palantir has provided assistance to CBP in building a large and powerful intelligence platform called the Analytical Framework for Intelligence, which some privacy advocates believe could be used to facilitate President Trump’s “extreme vetting” of immigrants seeking to enter the country.
In last week’s request, CBP asks companies whether it would be possible for “a single prime contractor” to “handle all potential deployments,” potentially opening the door to a large award for a national security contractor. The RFI also indicates that the information contractors provide can be kept from the public, as is common in federal contracts involving national security.
“Respondents shall mark proprietary information as such to be safeguarded,” the RFI states, “in accordance with applicable Government regulations.”
Customs and Border Protection did not respond to a request for comment.
Top photo: A U.S. Customs and Border Protection air patrol helicopter passes over a pond near the U.S.-Mexico border on Aug. 15, 2016 near Mission, Texas.
The image of the “falcon” is incorrect. That’s a Vulture or Buzzard…NOT A FALCON, little things like these will turn people away from believing your article.
Tear down ALL of that fucking WALL separating USA from Mexico! It is a symbol of all that is evil in the world: segregation, imperialism, exploitation, and oppression. The USA/Mexico wall is even worse than the Israel/Palestine Wall, or the Berlin Wall. All of these walls are walls to oppress a target group, to fuck them over.
Egypt does actually wants the wall though, US doesn’t need a wall cameras are fine.
At many places we will not build the wall but just construct a moat and fill it up with lots of hungry crocodiles imported from Kenya.
One suspects that a major reason for the Big Bend sector having a low rate of apprehensions is that a large percentage of migrants are smart enough not to try to cross into the US there. As Fred says, below, it’s a gorgeous place to die.
BTW, I’d be willing to bet that “falcon” is a turkey vulture.
A hard-to-fake national ID card, combined with harsh criminal penalties for hiring illegals would solve the problem. Without jobs, illegals would return to their country of origin.
“CBP hopes to build its first new RVSS towers in the agency’s Big Bend sector”
Big Bend sector thought about living there when I was much younger. Definitively ” No country for old men” or anyone not hard and well prepared. We should stop illegal immigration and have a generous legal immigration and worker program. The way it is, is dangerous for our Nation and those crossing.
Even nearly fifty years ago things when bump in the night out there that you would not wish to meet in the daylight. Just the terrain and weather has killed many Gringos and Latinos . Beautiful country, horizon to horizon stars but damn unforgiving ground.
The most effective way to stop Mexicans from crossing the border is to make Mexico a nicer place. The most effective way to do that is to decrease the money and power of the cartels. The most effective way to do that is to legalize drugs in America, or if not legalizing them, change the focus of prohibition from maximizing street price — which directly maximizes cartel profits — to reducing drug demand, which can be done by means malign or benevolent, it doesn’t matter where the Mexicans are concerned. When the price of drugs north of the Rio Grande is the same as the price south, the cartels are deprived of most of their income; then, fight back against them hard, to liberate the Mexican people, and as that proceeds you could end their human smuggling revenue too, their protection money, everything. The main leftover bit is to legalize well-regulated prostitution while biting down hard on the creeps who molest underage slaves at cantinas.
They could do this, but they won’t; alas, the cartels are the best-run businesses and we now have the worst-run government, and as a result my guess is the leader of the more brutal of the two cartels gets coronated in Washington in 2032. But though the Scourge of God is the will of God, it is by the grace of God that the good people resist.
Good grasps of this part of the puzzle. Although their was a better class of criminal decades ago in the old days when it was a drug startup business.
The most effective way to stop Mexicans from crossing the border is to make Mexico a nicer place.
making drugs even near free, a good idea, will also break mexico.
i tell you the truth. Some people are born to worship the earth, the ground to walk on and the soil and without ambition, especially in hot climates. Others are born to make the earth more perfect. Having mexico be like the US wont play well. We have what they dont have. They have what we dont have. Perhaps it is a separation that will not mix, intermingle from time to time, a marriage of common interests, but not a cultural mix.
but not a cultural mix.but never a cultural mix.
A chilling discussion on the Holocaust last night enlightened me to just how CHEAP it was to pull off – the Nazis could pack quite a lot of people into just 2 train cars per day – and the pesticide they used for gas was dirt-cheap. The dark sites and private prisons could easily, and cheaply mass-execute people – consider that “undocumented” means, on paper, you don’t really exist at all.
Building a wall is the ultimate honor to chant “”and the land of the free” while subverting it’s values at every turn. It follows then that diversity assimilation and integration is a farce just as John f Kennedy exposed the clandestine secret establishment that while cloaked in an open society, they are the very ones subverting it.
torture is officially prohibited by the Geneva Conventions, was rebranded repugnantly as “enhanced interrogation.” Sending American captives off to prisons in allied nations where there were no limits on torture became to be known (was called a) “rendition.” If a document was censored, that was now termed by the dead mainstream kosher media “redacted.” As the Russian statesman Vladimir putin brilliantly coined it “”why don’t you call things by its own name.”
What the usa_naziland government doesn’t accutely release is that its dealing with other nations will be considered an example of how other nations will be dealt with. The business of america is going to quickly see itself imprisoned by invisible sanctions. Thankfully TTIP & all that other legal crap americunts where trying to force upon other nations if its corporations were removed or stopped from making slaves out of people abroad. Will not be suing for imagined loss of earning from those same nations turns their backs upon this hitler-esque protectionism & isolation. But hopefully trump will send the bulk of his death-culture soldiers back home to protect the society from false-flag events Christians-in-action (cia-scum) & the fbi-create to forment hatred of some fictious enemy newly created & funded by this despot nation of eejits.
I am all for sensors and cameras. They are far more effective than any fence or wall. They just don’t make a big political statement.
If this doesn’t work out, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog has some great ideas like building an invisible electric fence and placing shock collars on all 150 million Mexicans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MubunsD-7g
Hell, I’m convinced that half the people in this fake focus group are now persistent TI commenters.
I believe tigers love Mexican cuisine. We can get WWF to participate in this circus.