House Republicans who sit on the Homeland Security Committee said this week that whistleblowers have come forward to claim that “some of the busiest Southwest border sectors have nearly 50 or more cameras offline, with multiple towers that have been out of service for more than a year.”
This follows reporting that Fox News correspondents Griff Jenkins and Bill Melguin have been doing, which followed complaints that sources within Border Patrol made regarding these important remote surveillance cameras.
The House committee sent a letter Wednesday to Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which said that the whistleblowers provided them this information last week.
In their letter, the Republican representatives demanded that answers be given to them about the situation.
The committee also said that their sources alleged that the Federal Aviation Administration is the agency responsible for making necessary repairs to the equipment. They said the agency has been contracting the work to companies that employ people who aren’t U.S. citizens.
That’s against a policy that Customs and Border Protection has. The sources also say those people “may be physically manipulating the equipment on the camera towers.”
Border Patrol views these cameras as essential to their operations. That’s because they help them track large groups of people who are able to enter the U.S. illegally. Not having these cameras in operation is a major issue that Border Patrol is having to deal with, the sources said.
The committee’s letter read:
“Multiple sources revealed to the Committee last week that more than 66% of the cameras in the remote video surveillance systems upgrade (RVSS-U) program are inoperable. According to these sources, some of the busiest Southwest border sectors have nearly 50 or more cameras offline with multiple towers that have been out of service for more than a year.”
NBC News recently reported that a memo sent in October revealed that about one-third of all these cameras — or about 150 of the 500 total cameras that are installed on various surveillance towers — were not working because of technical issues.
The issue, which is happening across the country “is having significant impacts” on the operations of Border Patrol, the memo said.
It’s something that the National Border Patrol Council’s vice president, Art Del Cueto, railed against. In a statement issued to Fox News, he said:
“Once again, we have another situation of ineptness from this administration, and it continues to show how out of touch DHS leadership is. Not only does this have an impact on the country by not knowing who or what is coming in, it also impacts the safety of the agents working the front lines.”
These cameras are about 15 years old, and are just one part of the tools that border agents use to monitor the different regions of the southern border without having to have ground patrols always on scene.
Agents also use helicopters, the border wall, K-9s and towers that are powered by artificial intelligence technology to monitor activities at the border.