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Napolitano: 'Virtual fence' virtually missing

By HOWARD FISCHER
Capitol Media Services
Thursday, September 27, 2007

PHOENIX -- Gov. Janet Napolitano said she intends to grill the nation's homeland security chief about delays in erecting a "virtual fence" along the state's southern border.

Napolitano noted that Michael Chertoff will be at a meeting this week in Puerto Penasco of governors from both sides of the border. And she said Wednesday that he needs to explain to her the delays in improving security. Some of that, said Napolitano, relates to the withdrawal of National Guard troops from along the border.

The governor said she understands that Operation Jump Start was designed only to be a temporary measure while the Border Patrol hired more officers. But she said that hiring has not kept pace with the decline in troops.

But Napolitano said she is unwilling to use her power to replace the soldiers from around the nation with Arizona National Guard troops, if for no other reason than doing that would mean Arizona taxpayers would have to pick up the tab.

Napolitano complained Wednesday that the "virtual fence" promised by the federal government "seems to be virtually missing."

"When is it going to be up and running?" she asked.

Plans had been to have a 28-mile stretch of this electronic barrier up and running in Southern Arizona this past summer.

The idea is to have something other than a physical barrier in parts of the state where construction of a fence is impractical. It is supposed to include ground radar and cameras to spot border crossers so that Border Patrol agents can intercept them.

But there have been reports of various problems, including questions of whether the devices can differentiate among people, vehicles and cows.

But the governor's questions for Chertoff are not limited to technology.

Napolitano is miffed that the approximately 6,000 National Guard soldiers who originally were put on the border last year -- about 2,400 of these in Arizona -- already has been cut in half. And the schedule calls for withdrawing the rest of them by the end of next summer.

"It was designed to be temporary because they were supposed to be hiring Border Patrol agents and putting them down there," she said. But the governor said that so far the number of additional agents hasn't matched the number of soldiers being taken out.

"And so they haven't met that part of the equation," Napolitano said.

The governor acknowledged that she has the power to replace those troops from around the nation with Arizona National Guard soldiers. But she said that would not be fair financially to the state.

"The first option ought to be that they keep the Guard there and pay for it," she said of the federal government.

"Our budget is already stretched thin," the governor continued. "And we're already paying a lot for illegal immigration just in terms of things like incarceration costs."

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