A senior Border Patrol official testified Tuesday a physical structure or wall is necessary for high-traffic, urban areas of the southwestern border, but technology would suffice for rural regions.
“In the urban areas, we want to have something that slows down the volume — the traffic flow so we want to have a persistent impedance or an impedance and denial system, such as a physical barrier,” Border Patrol Acting Deputy Chief Scott Luck told House Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security member Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas.
“But that in itself doesn’t work on its own. It’s part of a package that we are concentrating on as part of our new strategy as it relates to the executive order,” Luck added.
President Trump signed two executive orders on immigration in January that mandated all immigration policies be carried out to their full extent and called for the Department of Homeland Security’s relevant agencies to look into how best to secure the nation, specifically the U.S.-Mexico border.
Luck said preventing illegal entrants depends on the terrain and level of threat.
“So in California, as you mentioned, the physical barrier helps stop the flow, helps displace the traffic so that we can use technology assets, situational awareness to help detect [people],” Luck said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials at the hearing on technology’s role in securing the border said they do not have estimates for how much of the southern border wall it plans to be able to fund beyond 2018.
