Mexico’s border with the United States is the most visible symbol in the war against illegal immigration. Radical and moderate politicians in the Republican Party, and some Democrats, agree that the area needs to be fortified despite the fact that the number of undocumented individuals crossing the border has diminished. They do differ as to the magnitude of the project. The most ambitious proposal, advocated by Donald Trump, consists of building a concrete wall along a distance of almost 2,000 miles. In any case, the border is once again a business opportunity for security and defense companies. In addition to the physical barriers already installed, the federal government is betting on a technology that already failed. In 2011, the Department of Homeland Security saw it necessary to cancel the SBInet Program, a virtual border surveillance project that had been assigned to the Boeing Company. Up to that moment it had cost $1.1 billion and covered only 53 miles in the state of Arizona. “The technology they used did not work at all. Because it was in the desert and the sand was a problem for the cameras. When there was a wind, the cameras wouldn’t work. Nor could they distinguish between immigrants and animals crossing the desert,” explained Marc Rosenblum, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. A report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an arm of the U.S. Congress, detected 1,300 defects in the equipment. Among these defects it cited failed tests and systematic shortcomings. The virtual wall has been put up again. The government awarded a contract for the acquisition of an integrated fixed tower to...
