Join the Virtual Border Patrol

Now you can sit at home and patrol the souther border in your pajamas.

From Yahoo! News:

Texas has started broadcasting live images of the U.S. border on the Internet in a security program that asks the public to report signs of illegal immigration or drug crimes.

A test Web site went live Thursday at Texas Virtual Neighborhood Border Watch Program with views from eight cameras and ways for viewers to e-mail reports of suspicious activity. Previously, the images had only been available to law enforcement and landowners where the cameras are located.

[...]

Some civil rights groups have criticized the "virtual border watch," saying it will instill fear in border communities and could lead to fraudulent crime reports and racial profiling.

The cameras will operate at hot spots for illegal activity, such as Amistad Reservoir in Del Rio and Falcon Lake in Zapata, and other active border areas such as highway rest stops and inspection stations, officials said. Information e-mailed by viewers goes to the state's operations center and local law enforcement in that area.

McCraw said the project will eventually grow to include at least 70 cameras throughout South Texas, some with zoom lens and thermal capacity. The state is using $5 million in federal security grants that have been earmarked for the web camera program.

Check it out.

Other illegal immigration news:

Leaders at this weekend's Ibero-American Summit were set to rebuke the United States for its plan to build a fence along the Mexican border to keep out illegal immigrants, an official said on Friday.

[...]

A draft of a final declaration by the leaders of Spain, Portugal and Latin America gathering in Montevideo includes a special statement rejecting the fence plan.

"We express our deep concern over the decision adopted by the government of the United States," it reads, adding regional leaders want to "make a firm call for the United States to reconsider" its decision. Source

Reconsider? No thanks. Let's just build it. And I mean today.

More on the fence:

Both proponents and opponents of 700 miles of fences along the U.S.-Mexico border question whether the Bush administration can deliver the barriers -- whose exact location, price tag and construction start date remain unknown.

The Secure Fence Act, signed yesterday by President Bush, does not require the government to show any results of fence construction until May 2008 and while it does specify where along the 1,951-mile U.S.-Mexico border the barriers should go, there's no guarantee they ever will.

[...]

"Even if Congress funds the construction of 700 miles of border fencing -- and that is a big if -- the fence will do nothing to stem the tide of illegal immigration," said T.J. Bonner, a 28-year U.S. Border Patrol veteran and president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents all 10,000 of the agency's non-supervisory personnel.

The fence act calls for 698 miles of border fences, along with lighting, roads, sensors, cameras and other security devices. A separate $33.8 billion Homeland Security funding bill signed by Mr. Bush on Oct. 10 authorizes $1.2 billion to begin building it.

But fence proponents and opponents agree that the $1.2 billion allocation is far short of the up to $9 billion it will take to build the proposed fencing. Congress has withheld $950 million pending a breakdown of how the money will be spent.

[...]

"If this administration and Congress were truly sincere about securing our borders, they would enact legislation that eliminates the root cause of illegal immigration -- the employment magnet," Mr. Bonner said.

"With today's technology, it would be a simple matter to develop a 'smart' counterfeit-proof employment-verification document for that purpose. The only thing preventing that from happening is a lack of political will on the part of our elected representatives." Source.

Here's more:

Spending aside, Congress still faces the four major immigration questions that it punted on this year -- how to secure the border, how to boost workplace enforcement, whether to create a new program for future foreign workers in addition to the existing work programs that hundreds of thousands of people already use; and what to do about the estimated 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens now in the country.

Mr. Bush, joined by almost all Democrats and some Republicans, wants action on all of those issues, and the Senate passed such a bill this year.

But House Republicans insist that the government must prove it can control the borders and enforce the laws before considering a new worker program, and many Republicans oppose legalization of illegal aliens altogether, arguing that it is amnesty for lawbreakers. Source.

The Escondido, California, policy which prevents landlords from renting to illegal aliens will be (surprise!) challenged in court.

U.S. rights groups filed a federal lawsuit on Friday seeking to overturn an ordinance in the southern California city of Escondido that prevents landlords from renting homes to illegal immigrants.

Yes, it's the ACLU, again.

Councilors passed the law October 18 at a meeting in Escondido City Hall that was interrupted frequently by chants and catcalls. Police ejected two men after an argument but there were no arrests.

Supporters said the city needed to curb illegal immigration. They argued that the federal government had failed to secure the Mexico border or tackle the 10 million to 12 million immigrants living illegally in the United States.

Opponents called the law racist and said it set neighbor against neighbor in the city of 140,000 people.

City lawmakers said they plan to contest the suit against the bylaw, which was to come into effect in mid-November.

"We didn't think it would go unchallenged, and so we are making preparations," said councilor Ed Gallo, one of three who voted for the measure.

Escondido is the largest of several towns and cities from California to Pennsylvania that have passed laws in recent months to deny access to housing or jobs to illegal immigrants in their communities.

The ordinance requires landlords to hand over documentation on their tenants' immigration status to city authorities and evict illegal immigrant tenants or face penalties including suspension of their business licenses and fines.

Whatever the outcome of the lawsuit, residents said Friday the measure had already raised tensions in the city, where an unknown number of illegal Mexican immigrants work as landscapers, domestic cleaners and in restaurants.

"It has just given poor people another thing to worry about, as well as meeting car loans and paying their rent," said window cleaner Juan Carlos Martinez, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Mexico. Source.

Meanwhile, the border is still wide open and the problem is still getting worse.

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Comments

[Faultline USA]

Regarding the Virtual Border Patrol site . . . you have to register and log in and then download a small E-watch application. After that, about 3 cameras appeared to be working and it looked like still photos. Those were only sites with outside lighting. So I'm not sure what suspicious activity you could actually see - especially if there's no lighting at night.

[Mike @ CopTheTruth]

Thanks for the heads-up! The DoHS site says that this is a pilot program, and they plan to expand upon it with more cameras and lights if they get positive feedback. We shall see. Thanks for commenting!