With billions of dollars up for grabs last week’s Border Security Expo was buzzing with activity.
The annual trade show for the border-military-industrial complex brings together companies hoping to sell their services to the federal government with some of the Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection executives who might oversee their contracts. Representatives of defense contractors paid $1,395 apiece just to get in the door, and many times as much if they wanted to show off their wares in the Exhibit Hall.
Scott NicolCompany reps crowded into conference rooms to hear federal employees and industry figures talk about the future of border security. With the new Administration’s emphasis on border enforcement, and the $21 billion price tag that has been floated for Trump’s “great, great border wall,” they were looking for insight into just what the Department of Homeland Security was interested in buying.
David Aguilar, the former Chief of the Border Patrol who is now a well-paid Principal at the consulting firm Global Security and Innovative Strategies (GSIS), repeatedly sought to reassure the sea of suits that even though “at the forefront of border security today is walls,” these would not just be “dumb walls,” they would be “smart walls,” draped in high-tech cameras and electronics and surrounded by a network of lights and sensors – the very things that many in the room were selling.
Speaker after speaker reiterated the point that such walls are coming, and that, as Randolph Alles, Customs and Border Protection’s Acting Deputy Commissioner, said, “RGV would be one of our focal point areas.” Asked point blank where the Rio Grande Valley’s initial border walls would go, Border Patrol Chief Ron Vitiello acknowledged the widely-reported numbers – 28 miles of new levee-border wall, and six miles of other border wall – but would not say where exactly those would be built.
The locations of the levee-border walls are already known because when Hidalgo County Judge Ramon Garcia sent his letter to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly suggesting that 28 miles of levee-border wall be built in Hidalgo County he helpfully included a map that was prepared by Dannenbaum Engineering, the same company that received millions of dollars for their work on levee-border walls in 2009. The new walls would fill in the spaces between existing levee-border walls, walling off the entire county and slicing through private property and the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge alike.
The remaining six miles planned for the first phase of construction would likely go through Roma, Rio Grande City, and/or Los Ebanos, towns where most of the needed property has already been condemned. But with the Administration thus far refusing to consult with affected communities, or even release basic information, the exact location of that section is uncertain.
The most enlightening Expo speaker was Mark Borkowski, Customs and Border Protection’s Assistant Commissioner in the Office of Technology Innovation and Acquisition. Borkowski reminisced about the good old days of a decade ago when Border Patrol Chief Aguilar brought him on because “the wall was in trouble.” Once the wall was up, according to his telling, there was much discussion within Customs and Border Protection as to what more, if anything, was needed at the border to achieve “operational control,” and what that term even meant.
Then Trump was elected, and they received a new mandate. As Borkowski told it:
“The Secretary [of Homeland Security] shall immediately take the following step: the wall. Go get a wall. Now look, if we took a poll here I think each of us would have an opinion of if that’s a good idea or not. Each of us would have an opinion as to whether or not that is the way this country should project itself to the world or not. And there are pretty good arguments either way, right? I am a career civil servant, you know who my boss is? The President. I didn’t get elected, he did. That’s his orders. We’re followin’ ‘em.”
Mark Borkowski is tasked with building the border walls that will plow through the RGV. And by his own admission those walls are not being built because Border Patrol agents along the line requested them, or because Customs and Border Protection thought they were necessary to bring about “operational control.”
If Congress gives Trump the billions of dollars that he is asking for, if Senators Cornyn and Cruz and their colleagues write the President a multi-billion dollar blank check, “career civil servants” like Mr. Borkowski will salute their boss and get to work.
They will build border walls for no other reason than because Donald Trump is the President.
They’re just following orders.
Billions of taxpayer dollars will be doled out to contractors like those that packed the Border Security Expo - a great return on their investment.
Hundreds of landowners, including many whose property has been passed down for generations, will have their homes and farms condemned.
The Lower Rio Grande Valley and Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuges will be torn apart, pushing endangered ocelots closer to extinction in the U.S.
Just because Trump wants a border wall, contractors want to make a buck, and bureaucrats just follow orders.
Editor's Note: The main image accompanying this guest column shows attendees at a previous Border Security Expo.
