Texas Outsourced its Own Border Security Model to Beltway Consultants

Ret. General Abrams in Iraq (right)

(Third in a series of reports on Operation Border Star in Texas by Tom Barry.)


It would be hard to exaggerate the degree to which Governor Perry and DPS Chief McCraw have outsourced state border-security, homeland-security, and public-safety programs to Washington Beltway contractors.

ALIS, according to the August 2010 “emergency contract,” was, among other things, hired to do everything from formulating strategy to running operations to managing public relations – not only for Operation Border Start but also for the Texas Rangers and DPS itself.

The “emergency” contract for $1.5 million ALIS services, which was signed by McCraw and ALIS Chief Operating Officer on August 31, 2010, underscored the central role of ALIS in shaping and directing border security operations in Texas.

Echoing the expansive scope of the language used in earlier contracts, DPS once again hired ALIS to:

Develop and refine border-wide security strategies and plans for seamless integration of interagency law enforcement border security operations in the State of Texas.

With a staff of at least 17 analysts and information specialists -- many with military backgrounds --ALIS was contracted to give provide the vision for and the structural foundation for Operation Border Star.

Initially, Border Star had been little more a commitment by the Perry to support the newly formed Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition and its Operation Linebacker, using federal criminal-justice funds controlled by the governor’s office, along with an occasional show of force by DPS police in Texas border counties.

Over the years, with each successive contract, the extent of responsibility outsourced to ALIS expanded dramatically. One of the first contracts gave ALIS the task of developing a computerized crime-mapping system for the greater Texas border region, which is known as TexMap.

By late 2010, however, DPS was paying ALIS to, among other things:

* “Define and write a Border Security Strategic Vision.”

* “Manage and operate the Border Security Operations Center (BSOC).”

* “Develop border-wide strategies and plans to support interagency effectiveness.”

* “Refine and update Operation Border Star 2012-2013.”

* “Develop plans for border-related Mass Migration contingencies.”

* Develop plans for “Texas Ranger operations,” and develop standard operating procedures for “Ranger Renaissance Teams” (including the new gunboat operations).

* “Facilitate creation of the Border Operations Planning Group.”

* “Develop a Border Security media/public information outreach strategy.”

* “Provide sufficient manpower to provide leadership, subject-matter expertise, and quality assurance/control in areas of border security planning and operations.”

* “Support and sustain the six Joint Operations Intelligence Centers (JOICs),” which are situated along the Texas border and Gulf Coast.

* “Conceptualize a Sensor Master Plan for the border region,” as part of the “web-based” electronic surveillance systems created by the governor’s officer and DPS.

* “Develop and refine DPS Agency Strategic Plans,” including the DPS Strategic Plan 2011-2015.

* “Facilitate development of a DPS policy document outlining roles, responsibilities, and authorities of Regional Commanders, Ranger Captains, DPS Divisions, and JOICs with regard to countering crime and terrorism in the border region.” 

The August 31, 2010 emergency contract with ALIS built on earlier contracts, which steadily reinforced the centrality of the homeland security contractor not only to execute assigned tasks but also to formulate strategy and direct operations.

An earlier contract had empowered ALIS to formulate the drafts of the Texas Border Security Campaign Plan, the governor’s 2010-2015 Homeland Security Strategy Plan, and the DPS Agency Strategy Plan 2010.

That’s worth repeating.

This little-known, upstart consulting agency from the Washington Beltway had been hired by the state’s public safety and homeland security director to: write the campaign plan for the governor’s border security campaign, conceptualize and write the state’s strategy statement for homeland security, and produce the strategy plan for DPS itself.

One of the most striking and disturbing components of the August 2010 contract was the new public relations and outreach role given ALIS contractors. According to the contract, ALIS would assume a new role that would combine public relations, communications, and policy-advocacy functions.

Instead of merely being a hired gun contracted for predetermined border-security operations in Texas, ALIS contractors were expected to develop strategies, gather information to support these strategies, and then work to shape public opinion and public policy about border security threats and responses. The only border experience that ALIS brought to the table when it was hired was that its founder General Abrams had in the late 1980s commanded a regiment that was responsible for protecting the German “inner-border” prior to German reunification.

Specific tasks outsourced to ALIS included producing “reports, briefings, studies, and recommendations” for “Texas leadership.” ALIS was also tasked to “orient senior government leaders on border security issues,” with possible options including “public affairs strategy and plans, fact sheets, talking points, speeches, presentations, and testimony.”

The stipulated goal of the “Border Security media/public information outreach strategy” was, according to the DPS contract, to “build support for border security” among the public, media, and policy community in Texas. As noted in the contract, ALIS would at times also be expected to leverage its BSOC fusion center staff “to surge for 24/7 information operations.”

Rather than gathering intelligence and analyzing information, DPS tasked ALIS to provide DPS and the Texas Rangers with “the necessary information to assist the ongoing operations.” Its BSOC staff were expected to “discipline the information operations process by serving the state information operations ‘net control” station for border security.”

The BSOC and the JOICs would be tasked, according to the contract, to “provide needed information products as required by Texas Rangers” and to produce “effective information products.”

In review, in the interests of border security and homeland security, ALIS was contracted by DPS – with the approval of the Public Safety Commission and the governor – to manufacture “information products.” What is more, DPS wanted ALIS to ensure that the information was “effective” as well as “necessary” for ongoing operations.

There has been absolutely no review by policy makers or by the public of DPS outsourcing of border-security strategy and operations. 

It’s likely, though, that, if there were ever such transparency and accountability, at least a few policymakers and concerned citizens would caution that structuring information as an instrument may replicate the information- and psychological-ops of the military and intelligence agencies but may not be an appropriate way to consider information gathering and dissemination on the home front. The term propaganda might arise in any public review this type of outsourcing.

Similarly, the concept that a private contractor should participate in information surges that would parallel operational surges by law enforcement officers and state troops might also have sparked discussion about the proper use of state and federal funds. 

As is, it seems that the directors Operation Border Star – Governor Perry and DPS Director McCraw – view information and intelligence as fungible commodities that can be created, manipulated, and shaped to serve the greater good of the nation and Texas border security.

Texas Grossly Mismanages Federal Homeland and Border Security Funding

(Second in a new series on the outsourcing of Operation Border Star in Texas.)

The Texas State Auditor recently raised new questions and concerns about the unprofessional DPS management of federal funds and about the agency’s dubious contracting practices under the stewardship of Steven McCraw.

The independent report, which was commissioned by the state auditor and released in February 2012, found, among other violations, cases of stunning material weaknesses in DPS accounting, a pattern of noncompliance in following federal procedures, and an array of alarming deficiencies in reporting and monitoring federal funds.

The report highlights a pervasive and systemic mismanagement of federal funds by DPS, including eight duplicate payments to contractors, sloppy accounting, failure to open contracts to competitive bidding (while in at least one other case bypassing low bidder for a preferred one), routine reliance on emergency contracts to avoid contract renewal and bidding processes, and a persistent failure to communicate accounting and reporting guidelines to subrecipients of more than federal funds managed by DPS. 

(In 2010 DPS administered $397 million in federal revenues for subgrants and contracts.)

The audit reviewed a representative selection of cases among the $265.9 million in federal grants and subgrants to DPS -- in the areas of homeland security, border security, emergency management, and law enforcement interoperability.

Among the findings of negligence and incompetence were these startling instances:

• A draw down of $755,509 in federal funds to issue a duplicate payment to one subgrantee.
• Five of the six procurements (83%) examined by the auditor in the cluster of federal grants for homeland and border security were not bid competitively as required.
• DPS categorized four of the five procurements examined by the auditor as “emergency procurements,” and in three of those four DPS was unable to document why they were processed as “emergency” contracts.
• DPS has no system to track, administer, monitor federal subgrants – as federal guidelines require, leading to routine occurrences of duplicate payments, dipping into one federal fund to pay for unrelated programs, and failure to submit required reports and audits.
• Complete failure to track interest rates on unused federal funds and to remit those funds, as required by federal grant guidelines.
• Access to law-enforcement databases by contract programmers who lacked proper authorization or clearance.

Texas officials – including the governor, DPS chief, attorney general, and agriculture commissioner – frequently charge that the federal government has failed in its responsibility to control the Texas-Mexico border.

It is rarely acknowledged, however, how by these same critics how dependent Texas law enforcement and criminal justice agencies – including state’s homeland security department, DPS, governor’s criminal justice division, border sheriffs, agriculture department, and state prosecutors and courts – are on the continuing flow federal funds into Texas.

In fiscal year 2011 Texas received $57.5 billion in federal funding. That same year DPS relied on federal funding for approximately half its annual budget -- down from the 60% funding in 2010 when federal stimulus funds were still flowing.

The audit did not include the names of the private and local government recipients of DPS contracting and subgranting funds that were reviewed in the audit.

However, DHS and DOJ funding for homeland security, border security, and law enforcement interoperability have all been used to prop up the Texas model of border security – and to pay for the outsourcing of the building of the model and its implementation. It’s likely that the DPS contracts with ALIS, being one of the top-ranking DPS contractors, came under the scrutiny of the auditor.

The audit, which occurred during 2010, underscored problems with the type of DPS emergency contracting that benefited ALIS. The audit and its alarming findings have contributed to mounting cynicism and criticism about the Texas border security model and its outsourcing.

The audit raises fresh questions about McCraw’s ability to manage the large state agency. The shocking findings of DPS management of DHS and DOJ funding to support Texas homeland and border security programs also underscores rising skepticism about the “go-it-alone” and “can-do” boasting of the Texas border hawks critical of the Obama administration.

Outsourced Border Security in Perry's Texas

(First in a new series on Operation Border Star in Texas.)

Roy “Mac” Sikes wasn’t wearing a white ten-gallon like the other top Texas Rangers attending the 2010 Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition meeting in El Paso.

DPS Director Steven McCraw and Governor Rick Perry

Mac, as the Texas Rangers and Sheriffs call him, was going hatless. But that may have been because it’s not entirely clear exactly which hat Mac should have been wearing – ranger, cop, or consultant? 

Since 2006 many of the key figures in state-led border security operations and information campaigns have identified themselves as DPS employees or part of the Texas Rangers to the public, policy community, and the media, disguising their true identities.

The business card he handed me during the sheriffs meeting identified Sikes as the director of the Border Security Operations Center (BSOC) – which is a type of fusion center for border-security operations in Texas. It’s a project of the Texas Rangers Division, which in turn is a branch of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS).

However, Mac Sikes is neither a Texas Ranger nor a DPS employee. Like most of the other key figures behind the Lone Star State’s border security campaign, Sikes is a contract employee.

A “senior operational analyst” at Abrams Learning & Information Systems (ALIS), Sikes became director of BSOC as part of the firm’s $3-5 million annual contracts with DPS since 2006. The recent DPS decision -- in response to a public records request -- to release the ALIS contract revealed the true identity of Sikes.  

The Border Security Operations Center is the nexus of the Texas’ own border security initiatives, collectively known as Operation Border Star. ALIS, a homeland-security consulting firm with offices in Arlington, Virginia, was founded in 2004 by Ret. Army Gen. John Abrams to cash in on the billions of dollars in new government contracting funds that started to flow after the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003.

Since 2006 ALIS functioned as the hidden force behind virtually all non-federal border-security operations in Texas. Whether it’s strategy formulation, border crime-mapping, operations management, or public relations, ALIS and its team of consultants have been closely involved in creating what Governor Rick Perry calls the “Texas model of border security.”

Part of power point presentation on Operation Border Star prepared by ALIS.

ALIS, which has received $22.7 million from DPS and the Governor’s Office for border-security operations in FY 2007-FY 2011, describes its mission in Texas as follows:

ALIS was commissioned to improve border security strategy and operations along the U.S. – Mexico border through the development of an epicenter for security operations. The objective of the operational center is to plan, coordinate, implement, and evaluate interagency border security operations to counter the threat of organized crime, terrorism, and the flow of contraband and human trafficking to foster a secure border region. 

Gov. Rick Perry has boasted to both President Obama and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano that Texas has created a new model for border security. In a letter to the president, Perry hailed his state’s “proven and successful multi-agency border security strategy,” while the governor invited Napolitano to visit the Texas border to see the “Texas model of border security.” DPS Director Steven McCraw, who was appointed by Perry and also served as the governor’s homeland security director from 2003 to early 2012, says that Texas is creating its own “paradigm” of border security.

Perry and McCraw support an aggressive, militarized border security strategy. They claim that Operation Border Star – their name for Texas model or paradigm – is succeeding in securing the Texas border whereas the Obama administration’s border-security operations are, they charge, a manifest failure.

That’s a claim that was highlighted in a September 2011 report on border security commissioned by the Texas Department of Agriculture. The report, Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment, was written by Gen. Robert Scales (ret.) and Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who have their own Washington Beltway consulting firms, Colgen and BR McCaffrey Associates.

In their highly alarmist and unabashedly militaristic report, the retired generals describe the border as a “war zone” and contend that purported success of Operation Border Star and the Texas Rangers “should serve as a template for the future” of border security operations nationwide.  Such a model they argued should be “based on proven joint military operations” and the type of “layered ‘defense-in-depth’” strategies employed by the Rangers and Operation Border Star.  

But the generals failed to offer any evidence, other than anecdotal testimonies collected the Texas Commission of Agriculture Todd Staples to document the achievements of the Texas model. That's not surprising, given that after nearly seven years Perry and McCraw have also failed to offer any substantial documentation to back their claims about the succes of the Texas model of border security.

The “made-in-Texas” boasts about the state’s model of border security and the “can-do” braggadocio about “Texans protecting Texans” don’t stand up to close scrutiny.

Border Star operations and programs are funded by a combination of DHS grants, Justice Department criminal-justice assistance and economic-stimulus funding, and Texas general revenues.

The first funding for Operation Border Star came from the Obama administration’s border-security programs to aid local and state law enforcement. Although the state legislature, starting in 2007, started appropriating about $100 million annually for BSOC and other Border Star operations, federal funding has been the main stay of the Texas model. It’s also an operation that has been almost wholly outsourced to Washington Beltway consultants.

Outsourcing Texas Border Security

The Public Safety Commission has repeatedly approved DPS contracts with ALIS without any public discussion and without any evaluation. The commission, whose director is a major donor to Perry’s election campaigns, have allowed Perry and McCraw to run Operation Border Star without any oversight or review. ALIS contracts – including emergency contracts – have been routinely approved without any evaluation of its cost and impact.

With no discussion, the Texas Public Safety Commission at its August 12, 2010 meeting in Austin approved an “emergency contract for providing strategies and plans to support the management of the Texas Border Security Operations Center (Abrams Learning & Information Systems).”  

The commission also extended another DPS outsourcing contract held by APPRISS for another information and technology-driven project called the Texas Data Exchange (TDEx). DPS has paid APPRISS $30.9 million in FYs 2008-2012 for information systems of dubious worth.

Meanwhile, DPS in 2010-2011 repeatedly rejected requests by the Center for International Policy for the various strategy statements, operations plans, and performance reports that ALIS was contracted to produce, arguing that the information was “law enforcement sensitive.” DPS has contended that the release of the classified documents to a nonprofit education organization would place law enforcement officials at risk. 

However, these same documents that were denied CIP were apparently accessed by the for-profit security consultants contracted by Texas Ag Commissioner Staples.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has upheld the DPS rejection of the public records requests for documents that would shed light on the structure, operations, and achievements of Operation Border Star and the role of ALIS.

The only documents that DPS did release to the Center for International Policy were the ALIS contracts themselves.

The DPS contract with ALIS, which was signed August 31, 2010, delegated not only the inner-workings of Operation Border Star to the Beltway contractor but also gave the contractor the responsibility for formulating border-security and homeland-security strategy statements, running public-relations operations, and directing law-enforcement operations.

Questions about the value of Operation Border Star and about its political character have been repeatedly raised over the past few years by several Texas media outlets and by the Texas American Civil Liberties Union. 

Texas border communities that have been adversely affected by the redirection of state and local law-enforcement agencies into border-security campaigns and away from public-safety missions have also criticized the cost and focus of the Perry administration’s border-security programs.

Immigrant Crackdown Joins Failed Wars on Drugs and Crime

(The following is an excerpt from an International Policy Report of the Center for International Policy, which is titled Immigrant Crackdown Joins Failed Crime and Drug Wars. The report, published in April 2009 and written by Tom Barry, is once again available online -- at a time when the Obama administration faces increasing questions about its immigration and drug prohibition policies, as well its practice of criminalizing immigrants, both legal and illegal ones.)

Memorial for dead immigrant next to internnational boundary marker
in Agua Prieta, Sonora/Photo by Tom Barry

Breaking the Connections, Ending the Wars

The traditional frameworks for viewing the immigration issue—from the "nation of immigrants" history to demands for "comprehensive immigration reform"—treat immigration as a distinct issue in U.S. society and politics. In public and policy discourse, we regard immigration policy as the special way we deal with outsiders—the regulations and laws we institute to determine who can come inside and remain in our society.

But as the crackdown on immigrants evolves, the old frameworks for understanding the plight of immigrants and for advancing policy solutions fall increasingly short. That's largely because the federal government, in concert with local and state governments, has stopped treating immigrants as a special case.

The way we have decided to deal with these outsiders—the 30 million illegal and legal immigrants who live among us—is how we already decided to deal with ourselves.
In the early 1970s America began a new experiment in social engineering and control. It rejected the liberal, democratic, and humanitarian impulses that had previously played such an important role in defining U.S. identity.

Instead of hope, fear increasingly defined governance in social policy. Increasing drug use and rising urban crime were met with reactionary policies rather than problem solving—the get-tough wars on crime and drugs. We began "governing through crime," as criminal justice scholar Jonathan Simon has observed.

Millions of Americans began to be imprisoned for victim- less drug-possession crimes. To enforce the social order and uphold the rule of law, the drug and crime wars filled America's expanding prison complex with petty criminals and illegal drug users.

While liberal programs—drug treatment, Head Start and other education programs, social services, etc.—persisted, the newly dominant response was to isolate our social problems rather than address them. Mass imprisonment became our prevailing risk-management strategy.

Similarly, rather than fixing a dysfunctional immigration system, government has since the mid-1990s moved to manage the immigration crisis through a strategy that stresses deterrence and exclusion. The immigration system has been shifted to the criminal justice system.

Immigration increasingly has been criminalized—a process some legal scholars have called "crimmigration." Federal courts are clogged with immigrants. Ever larger numbers of immigrants, legal and illegal, are regarded as "fugitive aliens" or "criminal aliens." Shifting immigrants to the U.S. system of crime and punishment has obligated ICE, U.S. Marshals Service, and Bureau of Prisons to greatly expand their network of prisons. Immigrant prisons operated by private prison firms have popped up all across the nation but especially in Texas and other border states.

This immigrant crime/prison complex overlaps with the citizen crime/prison complex. But there are important differences. While state and local governments in the face of budgetary and economic crises are starting to question the sustainability of the crime and punishment system as the costs of maintaining the penal system mount, DHS and DOJ are the beneficiaries of generous congressional funding increases for the immigrant crackdown. ICE alone spends $1.7 billion a year for immigrant detention.

While DHS officials routinely say that immigration law enforcement aims to uphold the "rule of law," it's a rule of law for citizens alone that is being enforced. A far inferior and ever-more degraded set of laws and regulations rules the immigrant world.

Legal or illegal, they aren't protected by the same constitutional guarantees as citizens. While immigrants have the right to counsel in immigration court, they don't have the right to a government-provided attorney if they can't afford to hire an attorney. When in the immigration system, criminal aliens are protected by the Fifth Amendment's due process clause, but they aren't protected by the criminal process rights in the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. As aliens, they are defined and treated as outsiders with few of the rights and guarantees of citizens.

Policy Recommendations

The economic crisis has preempted any immigration reform that expands work visa programs or regularizes the status of unauthorized immigrants. Even if the Democratic majority expands in Congress, such liberal immigration reforms will likely remain politically dead until the economy stabilizes and revives.

This gives immigration advocates a few years or more to sharpen their arguments and broaden the support for liber- al immigration reform. Not constrained by the exigencies and demands of a lobbying campaign for comprehensive reform, as they have been for the past several years, immigrant advocates and others have the opportunity to address the way immigration has become governed by crime. While the Obama administration continues to insist that immigration reform is a priority, it's unlikely that it will use its diminishing political capital to exercise the strong and visionary leadership that this issue demands.

Americans are rightfully proud that the country we have created respects the "rule of law." But, while important, respect for law and for the order that it provides never has been and never should be the animating principle of the United States. Our founders believed, as we do, that when rules or laws do not serve the interests of justice, they need to be changed.

With respect to immigration and immigrants, over the past two decades we have changed our rules and laws, but not to serve justice. Rather the new "rule of law" in immigration matters has been legislated and applied in fits of politi- cal opportunism and backlash. The criminal justice and penal systems, already weighed down and distorted by the wars on crime and drugs, have been tapped to provide order to immigration. Justice and reason are nowhere in sight.

In this political interim, Congress, President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano should begin to bring justice and reason back into immigration enforcement. A combination of congressional and administrative actions could go a long way toward making the rule of law in immigration matters that deserves our respect.
Both at the state and federal levels, there are new signs that the logic, rationale, and methods of the wars on crime and drugs are coming under hard review. This reconsideration of the "severity revolution" is largely a product of the economic crisis. Current patterns of law enforcement, sentencing, and imprisonment are at long last recognized as being unsustainable and counterproductive.

As lawmakers move to roll back drug laws and downsize the crime/prison complex, they would do well also to con- sider the costs of criminalizing and imprisoning immigrants. On the federal level, Congress should question whether the nation can afford the billions of dollars allocated annually for arresting and imprisoning immigrants.

The Department of Homeland Security's immigration agencies should not get a free pass in a budget review of pork- barrel and unnecessary funding. Specifically, Congress should tell the president, Napolitano, and Holder that ICE's criminal alien programs are unfocused and as such do little to improve community security and public safety, as they claim.
Secretary Napolitano has given signals that she will halt her predecessor's support for worksite raids that send hard- working immigrants to prison. She has promised to focus more on charging employers that exploit immigrant labor.

But neither she nor Attorney General Holder has thus far challenged the array of DHS and DOJ programs that as part of a "deterrence" strategy have employed the heavy hand of the law to make life in the United States increasingly unbearable for immigrants—a strategy that immigration restrictionists accurately describe as "attrition through enforcement." Law and justice operate at cross-purposes in such a criminalizing strategy, and it's the responsibility of Holder and Napolitano to recognize this and correct it.

Congress should also move to reinstall the separation of immigration and criminal law through legislative amendments that roll back the 1996 and other laws that have established the legal foundation for the current regime of governing immigration through crime. The executive branch is free to distance itself from this regime by dismantling its array of programs that unproductively categorize and treat an ever-growing number of immigrants as criminals and fugitives. Current funding for these programs can be used to target the immigrants who truly represent a threat to "national security and public safety."

Mexican children play at Zaragosa elementary school next to border fence
in Palomas, Chihuahua/ Photo by Tom Barry

Solutions Not Crackdowns

There is no doubt that the United States has the right to control who enters its borders and who becomes a citizen. It's just as clear that our immigration system is badly bro- ken and that there are valid citizen concerns about illegal immigration, immigrant crime, and border security.

But instead of dealing proactively with the complexity of the problem, the United States has reacted to the immigration issue chiefly with the "get tough" strategies employed in the crime and drug wars for so long, for so much money, with so little result, and with so much tragedy. As U.S. society begins to reconsider its prohibitive and punitive response to the immigration crisis, it also would do well to declare an end to the crime and drug wars that are now so closely linked.

It's time to start solving these problems, not just "cracking down."

Tom Barry directs the TransBorder Project at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC. He blogs at http://borderlinesblog.blogspot.com/.

Economic Stimulus Scandal at Remote Border Port: Where Waste and Security are Border Partners

Antelope Wells is the place to go if you want to see the Obama administration’s economic stimulus package at work.

Three years after the administration launched the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), the stimulus funds committed to Hidalgo County are still working. But some may question whether the investment in this tiny, unincorporated dot on the map—where the population apparently totals two people living in trailers—is the best use of tax dollars.

 Despite the $12.2 million construction project to build a high-tech and well-fortified port-of-entry on the US-Mexico border here, over the past three years fewer people are passing through. Also underway is another ARRA project—the construction of the first “Forward Operating Base” of the Border Patrol in New Mexico.

 (By the way, there are neither antelopes nor wells in Antelope Wells, which was named after a distant ranch.)

 To see your tax dollars at work and in the process see a bit of New Mexico, including the Big and Little Hatchet Mountains (which gave the town of Hachita its name), driving from Silver City, you head south by southeast about 140 miles. You’ll pass into Hidalgo County, back into Grant County, and then to the southern edge of Hidalgo County—and then on, if you dare, to the Sierra Occidental in Mexico.

On the way you will pass through Hachita, the southernmost “designated census location” in Grant County, and then pass nothing else for 45 more miles until you see the signs for the two stimulus projects at the border: the “ARRA Forward Operating Base” and the “ARRA Point of Entry.”

 Nonpartisan economists almost uniformly agree that Obama administration’s economic stimulus package helped the nation from falling deeper into the “Great Recession.” Many say, however, that much more federal spending—and more funding directly tied to employment creation and infrastructure improvement—is still needed to stimulate the nation out of its economic doldrums.

 It’s been three years since the administration launched ARRA, and many of us may have forgotten its specific goals, which, according to the government’s Recovery.gov website, are: 1. Create new jobs and save existing ones; 2. Spur economic activity and invest in long-term growth; and 3. Foster unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in government spending.

 Considering that the total ARRA stimulus package was $429 billion, the $17.5 million in ARRA assistance slated for Hidalgo County may not seem like much. Yet at a per capita level, the county—which has received $3,466 in per capita ARRA stimulus assistance—has made out much better than the national average ($1,400) or the New Mexico average ($1,826).

 No doubt that Hidalgo County needs recovery and investment—with a steadily declining population (dropping about 18% from 2000 to 2010), the high poverty rate (27%), the closing of the Playas smelter, and the array of ghost towns all underscoring the need.

But ARRA may not have been the county’s ticket to recovery.

Of the $17.5 million slated for the county, Antelope Wells has been the beneficiary of $13.5 million of this spending in the form of US Army Corps of Engineers projects for the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency of the Department of Homeland Security.

Roads are important in this sparsely populated county—about 1.5 residents per square mile—so it may make good economic sense that the second-largest ($2.2 million) recipient of ARRA funds for Hidalgo County was the New Mexico Department of Transportation.

Ranking third was Hidalgo Medical Services, which received $752,000. That grant included funding for the purchase of 30 computers and the training of staff to operate the computers.

Hachita isn’t in Hidalgo County, but it may as well be given how far it is from the county seat in Silver City. I had hoped to get gas and a Diet Coke there before heading the 45 miles south through the beautiful nothingness of the Hachita Valley to Antelope Wells. I knew that Hachita still had a post office (although that’s on the Postal Service’s short list of planned closures), so assumed optimistically that there would also be other services.

At first glance, though, Hachita seems a ghost town. 

 The old bar, store and gas station are boarded up, and the lovely stone Catholic church, St. Catherine’s, looks long-abandoned and is badly battered.

 The rusting hulk of the town’s original water tank stands on the town’s north side. I did find one resident—a self-identified retired Marine named Mike—sitting in front of his trailer. Looking around 360 degrees at the high desert framed by beckoning mountain ranges, he explained that only a few dozen people remained in Hachita, many having left, according to Mike, because of the dubious water quality of the old privately built water system.

 What keeps the town alive is the hope that the upgraded port of entry will mean more traffic, including an increased cattle trade, to and from Mexico, and the promise that the town will someday get a new water system as a result of a USDA grant, which is bogged down in the bureaucratic process.

Sandra Alarcon, the USDA officer in Las Cruces who is in charge of the project, acknowledged that the grant was authorized “some years ago” (she couldn’t remember when) and that the water in Hachita had “arsenic and other issues.” But she assured me that the grant to the Hachita Mutual Domestic Water Consumers Association, created in 2005, while still going through bureaucratic hurdles, would soon be underway.

Lyndon Sims, who directs the water association, says that getting the project going has been like “pushing on rope” but he too is hopeful that the requests for bids on the project would go out soon. When asked about concerns of “spillover violence” and crime associated with illegal border crossings, he was dismissive, saying that there was “very, very, very, very, very [I counted them] little crime” in Hachita, although some outlying ranches may occasionally experience break-ins by migrants looking for food or water.

Is there much hope for Hachita’s revival? Even with all the border-security funding, Sims said that “there are no jobs in the area, and I don’t see any coming our way.”

But construction is certainly booming in Antelope Wells. Border security is clearly a higher priority than human development in New Mexico’s Bootheel.

There was no southbound or northbound traffic during my visit, and the CBP agent at the old station estimated that they inspect about four cars a day coming from Mexico.
 No doubt these ARRA projects are creating new jobs and saving old ones—the first goal of the economic stimulus bill.

For the most part, these jobs have gone to MCC/Catamount, a Colorado design and construction firm created in 2008 to “provide comprehensive and diverse services to federal clients.” The ARRA Antelope Wells project has created 24 jobs, according to the government’s Recovery.gov.

With respect to “saving” jobs, the multimillion-dollar modernization of the most remote land port of entry on the southwestern border saved the Antelope Wells port from being considered for mothballing, given the low and declining crossing statistics.

The Antelope Wells land port project is part of a $420 million port-of-entry “modernization” undertaken by Customs and Border Protection after the ARRA funds became available.

The upsurge in border-security funding had already modernized and fortified most of the main CBP ports of entry, so the agency directed the stimulus funds toward modernizing 33 minor ports, mostly on the northern border and including three little-used ports of entry on the southwestern border. Many of the ports undergoing modernization averaged one to two arrests per year, and six were scheduled for closure before ARRA money appeared in the CBP account.

The initial ARRA allocation specified $9.6 million for the Antelope Wells port project, but that rose to $12.2 million by last September. 

The costs of the port of entry are rising, yet the traffic passing through this remote border crossing is declining—down 29% in 2011. Unlike the Santa Teresa and Columbus ports of entry, Antelope Wells registers no commercial or pedestrian traffic. According to the New Mexico Border Authority, 241 private vehicles crossed into New Mexico at Antelope Wells in November. 

Rumors in Hachita and among the construction crew in Antelope Wells have it that as soon as the new ARRA port of entry is open, traffic from El Paso and Santa Teresa will be diverted to Antelope Wells. But Marco Herrera of the state’s Border Authority doesn’t think that likely. “That would be three hours’ extra driving,” he says, noting too that Antelope Wells isn’t authorized to process commercial traffic.

 The low crossing numbers raise questions about the need for such an expensive modernization project, while other low numbers—the totals of apprehensions of illegal border crossers and drug seizures—along the New Mexico-Chihuahua border raise questions about the need for the ARRA Forward Operating Base in Antelope Wells.

No statistics are publicly available for CBP and Border Patrol arrests and seizures in the state’s Bootheel. Yet overall, the number of border arrests has plummeted over the past several years—even as the Border Patrol is set to expand its presence. 

 Immigrant arrests in the Border Patrol’s El Paso sector (which includes New Mexico) have dropped to near historic lows—about 20-30 a day, according to the Border Patrol. Seven years ago the Border Patrol arrested 76,000 along the New Mexico border—a figure that was down to 6,910 in 2011.

Border Patrol agents also seized 55,264 pounds of marijuana in New Mexico. To put that in perspective, overall marijuana seizures across the southwestern border were over 2 million pounds.

 Despite the sharply diminishing pressure on the New Mexico border—in the form of illegal immigrants and illegal drugs—the Border Patrol is beefing up its presence and infrastructure, especially in the Bootheel. A new Border Patrol district station is being built in Lordsburg to handle the quintupling of agents over the past several years. And, responding to public and political pressure to have the Border Patrol stationed closer to the border, the agency is replicating military strategy and terminology by establishing, for the first time, what it calls Forward Operating Bases or FOBs.

The $1.2 million FOB in Antelope Wells, which reportedly includes a heliport and horse corral, is well underway. The location of the second New Mexico FOB in the Animas Valley is still under dispute. 

The border security buildup—rising to nearly $11 billion spending annually—can also be seen closer to home in form of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Department of Homeland Security for border patrolling and equipment purchases by the Grant County Sheriff’s Office.

Reaching Antelope Wells, not having seen another vehicle in the 45-mile stretch from Hachita, I was greeted by two Grant County patrol cars. The deputies explained that they were on border-security duty in partnership with the Border Patrol and the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office.

Anyone traveling the Bootheel or along the Chiricahuas down to Douglas, Ariz., will see first hand the proliferation of the Border Patrol. In Douglas, residents say that you can now find a Border Patrol agent (or sheriff’s deputy) hiding behind every cactus and mesquite bush. But actual recovery and reinvestment are harder to find.

(Article and photos by Tom Barry, originally published in Desert Exposure, at: 

http://www.desertexposure.com/201202/prt_201202_border_bonanza.php) 


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