Rick’s Border Peepers
November 19th, 2007 at 6:24 am
While the border fence was hogging headlines, another item slipped over the wire. It turns out Gov. Rick Perry “has found $3 million dollars in federal grants to install about 200 mobile cameras along the Texas-Mexico border.” We are still tracking down where the money comes from and if it can be spent in more useful ways.
Perry has been vocal against an actual fence… when he was in Mexico. “It absolutely would not work,” he said on a recent trade trip to our neighbor to the south. One has to wonder if the governor is saying the same thing to the GOP base in New Hampshire and Iowa as he stumps for Rudy Giuliani. Many of Texas’ politicians have a tendency to talk out of both sides of their mouth on this issue.
Perry’s plan would allegedly allow Internet users to monitor the border in a sort of armchair vigilante system that made even the Texas Legislature balk. Texas lawmakers wisely refused Perry’s request for $5 million for the program. A test run in January cost $200,000 and “led authorities to ten undocumented immigrants, one drug deal, and one human smuggling route.” Full implementation is set to begin in early 2008. One wonders if the results of the new system will be available before the 2008 election.
