Virtual is not Real

The first 28 miles of “virtual fencing” being deployed along our Southern border have failed to meet expectations, according to last month’s congressional testimony by Richard Stana, director of Homeland Security for the Government Accounting Office (GAO). Stana’s indictment of the hugely expensive, over-complicated and so far unworkable alternative to physical fencing should cause at least a pause for re-evaluation in moving forward with this “solution” to illegal immigration. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security continues to stand behind the virtual fence as a good substitute for the less artistic but repeatedly proven effective reinforced physical fencing.

In light of news that the "virtual" fence along Arizona's southern border won't be operational until 2011, Gov. Janet Napolitano has asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to deploy National Guard troops there in the meantime. Those troops, stationed along the border since June 2006 as part of Operation Jump Start, are being drawn down as the operation nears its expiration July 15. At its peak, the operation brought 6,000 troops to the border states, including 2,400 to Arizona. That has been reduced by half, with roughly 1,200 troops now stationed along the Arizona border. "Now that promised improvements in border-security measures will not come to pass any time soon, the federal government has no excuse to scale back the program. Common sense dictates that the drawdown should stop and that a continued high National Guard presence should be maintained," Napolitano wrote Tuesday in a two-page letter to Chertoff.

• JJ Commentary: Yet another governmental boondoggle.