Border Wall Out of Time, Out of Money
September 10th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Officials from the Department of Homeland Security appeared before a congressional committee today to explain their controversial and costly progress on the virtual fence and the border wall.
DHS asked Boeing Co. to cease work on the virtual fence in August. The virtual fence has been plagued by spiraling costs and numerous technological problems. The agency says it will now divert the virtual fence funding to build the border wall, which is over budget and needs an additional $400 million.
Boeing Co., which won the federal contract to secure the southern and northern borders, has already been paid $933 million in public funds. (Most of that money was intended for the virtual fence that, it appears, the company may never finish.)
Democratic Congressman Bennie Thompson, chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, tried to pin down the agency on when it expected to complete the border wall and what the project would cost taxpayers.
Ralph Basham, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, and Jayson Ahern, deputy commissioner, gave their prepared testimonies. The commissioners oversee the Secure Border Initiative office (a division of DHS) that is in charge of building the wall and the virtual fence.
Both commissioners did their best to avoid giving Thompson and the committee any specifics.
While DHS was stonewalling, the most revealing testimony came from Richard Stana and Randolph Hite of the Government Accountability Office. The committee had asked the auditing agency to take a close look at the border wall and virtual fence projects.
The GAO found that the cost of constructing the border wall is now $7.5 million per mile — almost double what DHS estimated back in February 2008. The high price tag stems from the expedited construction schedule and from high costs for fuel, steel and labor (read: no undocumented workers). DHS is also being hampered by the number of landowner lawsuits and eminent domain cases still pending in court in Texas.
Stana testified that as of August 26, DHS has yet to acquire 320 properties from landowners. Of the 122 landowners who have refused to sell, 97 are in the Rio Grande Valley. DHS has 20 eminent domain lawsuits pending in court and it plans to file 77 more condemnation lawsuits.
If a segment of border fence is not under construction by September 30, it will not be completed by DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff’s December 31st deadline. DHS also will have to resolve the remaining litigation by September 30 to meet the deadline, Stana said.
Ahern told the committee that DHS had sent a request to Congress September 9 asking lawmakers to reallocate the virtual fence money to border wall construction.
Ahern also told the committee that the agency was running out of money. (Maybe they should ask Boeing for a loan.) He said the agency would be unable to finish the fence unless the Homeland Security appropriations bill was passed before December 31, 2008.
People familiar with the request say it is unlikely that an appropriations bill will pass before the next presidential administration takes office. They also stated it’s unlikely that the reallocation of virtual fence money to build the border wall will happen any time soon.
By the end of the hearing, it was increasingly clear — even to Congress — that George W. will not get his 670 miles of fence before he leaves the White House. Democratic Vice Chair of the committee Loretta Sanchez asked what Homeland Security had planned for the transition to a new administration.
Predictably, Homeland Security didn’t answer the question.
