Border Patrol Update

Campus Report ^ | August 3, 2009 | Anthony Kang

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Border Patrol Update

by: Anthony Kang, August 03, 2009

The fact that U.S. government officials have successfully been able to deter another terrorist attack on U.S. soil for almost eight years has made the public altogether forgetful or indifferent to the issue of border and national security. But every day members of the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) have been working tirelessly just as hard as they were on the morning of September 11, 2001 as they are presented with the daunting task of keeping terrorists and their weapons outside of our nation’s borders (in addition to enforcing hundreds of other U.S. regulations).

Over 56,000 workers work under the umbrella of CBP, and with a budget of approximately $11.5 billion, they are responsible for monitoring 1,900 miles of the Mexican border, 5,000 miles of the Canadian border and regulating 327 ports of entry. The Heritage Foundation recently featured guest-speaker Jayson P. Ahern, Acting Commissioner of the U.S. CBP, for the “Priorities To Securing the U.S. Border” event to assess the CBP’s current state of operations and discuss the progress and future agenda on the national security front.

Ahern recognized the exceedingly and inherently difficult quandary of maintaining and maximizing national security without severely impacting trade regulations and the economic well-being of numerous parties and populations involved. “We can all agree the wait-times on the borders is unacceptable—there are major capacity problems as many of the facilities and equipment on the border are more than 40-years old,” Ahern said.

“The CBP has been implementing a strategy and term many military personnel are familiar with—the ‘defense in depth’ concept,” Ahern said....

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