Border "security"

August 25 2019, 10:00 a.m. ON THE SOUTHWESTERN END of the Tohono O’odham Nation’s reservation, roughly 1 mile from a barbed-wire barricade marking Arizona’s border with the Mexican state of Sonora, Ofelia Rivas leads me to the base of a hill overlooking her home. A U.S. Border Patrol truck is parked roughly 200 yards upslope. A small black mast mounted with cameras and sensors is positioned on a trailer hitched to the truck. For Rivas, the Border Patrol’s monitoring of the reservation has been a grim aspect of everyday life. And that surveillance is about to become far more intrusive.

[...]

U.S. Customs and Border Protection will soon construct a 160-foot surveillance tower capable of continuously monitoring every person and vehicle within a radius of up to 7.5 miles. The tower will be outfitted with high-definition cameras with night vision, thermal sensors, and ground-sweeping radar, all of which will feed real-time data to Border Patrol agents at a central operating station in Ajo, Arizona. The system will store an archive with the ability to rewind and track individuals’ movements across time — an ability known as “wide-area persistent surveillance.”

[...]

CBP plans 10 of these towers across the Tohono O’odham reservation, which spans an area roughly the size of Connecticut. Two will be located near residential areas, including Rivas’s neighborhood, which is home to about 50 people.

[...]

“Now we won’t be able to go anywhere near here without the big U.S.-Israeli eyes monitoring us, watching our every move,” [Rivas] says.

[...]

The towers on Tohono O’odham land are part of a surge in wide-area persistent surveillance systems across the borderlands. Elbit Systems of America has already built 55 integrated fixed towers in southern Arizona, which company executives say cover 200 linear miles. According to information provided by a CBP spokesperson, the agency has also deployed 368 smaller surveillance towers, known as RVSS towers, in areas ranging from south of San Diego to the Rio Grande Valley, as well as along parts of the U.S.-Canadian border.

  The Intercept

In the land of the free.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It pays to pack the courts

President Donald Trump scored a major victory at the Supreme Court on Friday, as the justices lifted a lower court order blocking a key part of his plan to expand the border wall with Mexico.

[...]

All the Republican-appointed justices voted in favor of allowing Trump to proceed with that aspect of his plan while litigation over the issue continues. All the Democratic-appointed justices dissented, except for Justice Stephen Breyer who said he would have allowed the contracting process to move forward but blocked actual construction.

[...]

The Supreme Court rarely explains its reasons for granting or denying a stay, but the order Friday declared that “the Government has made a sufficient showing at this stage that the plaintiffs have no cause of action to obtain review” of the decision to transfer the funds from a Pentagon account.

The statement suggested that the five justices in the majority agreed with the Trump administration’s arguments that the groups who obtained the injunction, the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition, lacked a valid legal mechanism to enforce the budget rider Trump officials were allegedly violating.

That may not rule out the possibility that others who have sued over the same policy, including 20 states and the House of Representatives, might have stronger claims.

[...]

A judge dismissed the House’s suit last month but that ruling is on appeal.

[...]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted later Friday: "This evening’s Supreme Court ruling allowing @realDonaldTrump to steal military funds to spend on a wasteful, ineffective border wall rejected by Congress is deeply flawed. Our Founders designed a democracy governed by the people — not a monarchy."

  Politico

Makes no sense, Nancy. Is the Supreme Court your monarchy?

“Troubling development in the Supreme Court. We remain focused on arguments in our lawsuit currently in the Ninth Circuit. Bottom line: this fight isn’t over, and we have lots of fight in us. Our democratic institutions and core constitutional principles depend on it,” [California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who's leading the 20-state coalition suing over the wall] said.

[...]

Rulings from the district court in Oakland and from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals portrayed Trump’s move as an illegal end-run around Congress’s authority to control federal spending.

Certainly, it was that.



Smug bastard.  You know what that "smile" of his always makes me think of?

Whatever pops into his head

Trump first suggested Tuesday he'd like to deploy troops to the southern border to secure the area until his proposed wall can be built.

[...]

Trump on Wednesday signed a proclamation ordering National Guard troops to be sent to the U.S.-Mexico border to address a "surge of illegal activity."

[...]

"If @realDonaldTrump asks me to deploy Oregon Guard troops to the Mexico border, I’ll say no," [Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D)] tweeted.

"As Commander of Oregon’s Guard, I’m deeply troubled by Trump’s plan to militarize our border."

She added: "There’s been no outreach by the President or federal officials, and I have no intention of allowing Oregon’s guard troops to be used to distract from his troubles in Washington."

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What Would It Cost?

Since "the wall" is estimated to cost over $20 billion dollars, I'm wondering if it wouldn't be cheaper to choose one or two states - Arizona? North Carolina? Wyoming? - and put up a guarded, razor wire fence around them and then move everybody inside who is afraid of terrorists and Mexicans.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.