Border Security, Barriers, and Porosity (updated)

George Rebane

No nation-state can long maintain its culture and sovereignty without the ability and will to control its borders.

“Sounds like a lack of technology rather than the porosity of a wall”, replied a commenter who had just finished celebrating the capture of illegals who had tunneled under an old, shallow, and unmanned remote section of our southern border.  He and others like him gleefully pointed that out as evidence supporting the Left’s new narrative that border barriers (walls, fences, …) are “ineffective” and “don’t work”.  And then he posted the above statement which confused (i.e. “rather than”) barrier system design with a metric of its performance.  Such mistakes from the Left abound today in the media and these pages.  We can leave the question of how much these erroneous statements are forged through simple ignorance vs promoting the ‘hate Trump’ agenda.  There is little we can do to heal their TDS, however there is an outside chance that their ignorance can be alleviated (given that there is no stupidity – i.e. processing deficit – at play).

Motivated by the above general principle, border control is defined as the ability to determine the ingress and egress of people and goods across geographical boundaries which delineate the jurisdictional limits of a sovereign nation-state.  Border controls are implemented by many means, depending on the border geography, implemented border security systems, and the cost burden the nation is willing to bear to implement its border security policies which should include one or more publicly known border control performance metrics that are part of the nation’s overall border control (multi-attribute) utility function.  The most meaningful attribute is the border’s overall porosity metric.

Border porosity is a bidirectional measure of the rate of illegal crossings in either the egress or ingress directions across the national boundary.  Today we are overwhelmingly concerned with only the ingress of illegal aliens.  In practice, porosity will vary over a range of values along a long, complex border having varying physical and political attributes that come into play.  Here we have to be careful in how we apply the above definition of porosity.  Specifically, the ingress porosity metric does NOT include the accretion of illegal aliens through non-border means such as overstaying their visa permissions.  Aliens who entered legally under various immigration, tourist, and guest-worker policies, and then ‘went illegal’ are a concern for our internal alien tracking and policing systems.

So when we want to have a meaningful discussion of border security, we must start with at least the statement of an acceptable ‘mean porosity’ level that, if exceeded, alerts us to discover and fix the cause of having violated the policy threshold.  As RR readers may be aware, my own considered border porosity threshold is a quite generous annual entry of 15,000 illegal aliens who are not intercepted/captured at the border, and successfully meld into our population.  These illegals then become fugitives from our laws, and are to be brought back into our legal system by our internal alien tracking and policing systems.

Now regarding physical border barriers (in military jargon known as ‘fixed field fortifications’) – I will not waste readers’ time countering the ignorant and inane critics who suddenly maintain that such barriers are “ineffective” and “don’t work”.  (And to address the question of their ‘morality’ is for me beyond accessible levels of idiocy.)  The main purpose of such physical barriers has always been to reduce the boundary or border manning requirements wherever they are constructed.  As we are taught in the military, all unmanned fixed field fortifications can be penetrated by a determined enemy, and that goes for desperate migrants breaching unguarded segments of our southern border.  The question on what to build where depends strictly on how we must share the ‘hardware’ (walls, fences, surveillance/tracking/penetration detection systems, etc) costs with the costs of staffing our boots-on-the-ground Border Patrol, ICE, and other border interdiction units in order to maintain the acceptable porosity levels along the border.

The Left’s current narrative about whether we need walls, or slats, or fences, or whatever, and that Trump lied if he doesn’t really intend to build some ridiculously high concrete wall from the Pacific to the Gulf, is just unmitigated bullshit that diverts the national attention from border security.  This narrative panders to the nation’s Latinos, and seeks to increase the inflow of future Democrat voters who will join the ranks of those who already are working to bring America to its knees as one more compliant complement that genuflects to the brave new world of one global government.

(Now let’s see what President Trump has to say about this in his imminent speech at noon (PST) from the Oval Office.)

[update] President Trump’s short speech was full of compromises that traded multiple tranches of benefits to resident illegal aliens, including extending the DACA stays to three years, in return for the next $5.7B for border security which includes barrier systems.  He also invited the Dems to an accelerated bipartisan program to hammer out a new comprehensive immigration policy and implementing laws. (more here)  The Republican majority Senate will now draft and pass a bill that incorporates the President’s compromise proposal to terminated the partial shutdown and proceed on the road to immigration reform putatively desired by both sides.  It will be up to the Pelosi House to pass and work out with the Senate a compromise bill that the President will sign.  If Team Pelosi continues to tell the President to stuff it where the sun don’t shine, then that should remove the last shreds of doubt as to who has been stonewalling the shutdown from the gitgo.

Comments

[Don Bessee]

Botox lost the rino -

You (Pelosi) and your fellow Democrats have voted for over 600 miles of border fence in the past, why won't you vote for another few miles now?" said Romney, speaking in Ogden, Utah after visiting with officials about the shutdown's impact on the community. "I don't understand their position, I really don't."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/romney-backs-trump-on-partial-shutdown-says-i-dont-understand-pelosis-position

;-)

[Mary Wanna]

Based on the number of miles of border to our south, about 2,000 miles, and the number of border patrol agents, 21,000, most of which are stationed at the southwest border, if each agent were stationed along the southern border, the agents would be responsible for about 500ft. of border. Since not all agents are available for that duty and assuming you only had 50% of the agents availble for actual bordrer wall coverage they would still only have to police 500 feet on either side of each agent..you get the point.
5 Billon would probably put a lot of Americans to work providing border security.

https://www.dhs.gov/border-security-overview

[Mary Wanna]

Trump is talking like he might have grown up and started acting like an adult with his border wall compromises. What next?

[George Rebane]

MaryW 152pm - Well, the hope is that such repeatable cost will be avoided by building barriers and supporting technology for securing borders. Bottom line - walls, fences, and other barrier infrastructures are always much cheaper than positioning humans on such boundaries. That's why they continue to be profitably used from ancient times to the present day.

[L]

Still "only" 500 feet on either side, so "only" 1000 feet. 'Course that agent works 24/7. Well, make it half a mile per guard or actually about twice that and you quickly begin to see why we have fences/walls. Besides, I much rather see that agent employed elsewhere, as opposed to wasting his time ejecting people that would have been deterred by a fence.

Frankly, George. I think stupidity is also very much in play in this discussion, not just ignorance (not to mention intellectual dishonesty). L

[Steven Frisch]

Posted by: L | 19 January 2019 at 03:32 PM

Yet an unmanned wall is useless because anyone would quickly find a way over or under it, so one would need both a wall and personnel to monitor the wall...which could of course be done over large areas electronically...leaving personnel to go interdict transgressors..oh, but if you actually monitored the border with a combination of electronic, and human resources ...you would not need a wall Sure is frustrating isn't it.

[Tricky McClean]

Trump’s toddler speech was yet again another painful reminder that his real world experience is zilch. This border wall is apparently going to end the opioid crisis according to the stupidest president in history. Complete idiocy. Not a word about which sections still need a physical barrier, nor was a single penny offered to perhaps stem the Honduran northerly flow by helping that country become more economically and politically free. This country is being overrun by a collective sociopathy that is probably not recoverable. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

[Robert Cross]

trump's great border wall compromise .... Duh!.. I will give you something you don't want (me blocking DACA) if you give me something you don't want( my stupid wall). What a deal. How can those sleazy democrats refuse such a grand offer.

[Don Bessee]

Not good for team lefties po' ol' fakenews machine -

Latinos are increasingly rallying for President Trump, according to data from a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.
The poll notes that 50 percent of Latinos surveyed approve of the job Trump is doing, a 19-point increase from December of last year.
Republican strategist Gus Portella said Saturday on Fox & Friends that the improvement is "very important."
"This president has done historic strides to help the Latino community," he said, noting the low unemployment of Latinos under Trump.

https://insider.foxnews.com/2019/01/19/poll-donald-trump-gains-approval-latino-voters-government-shutdown

;-)

[Steven Frisch]

Posted by: Robert Cross | 19 January 2019 at 05:17 PM

I know Robert,...."Hey, I am going to give you back two things temporarily that I took away, one of which has already been blocked in federal court, if you give me $5.7 billion to build something that won't work as well as spending the same amount of money on other border security measures."

If you buy that I have a building at 666 5th Avenue, NYC, NY I would like my son in law to to sell you.

[scenes]

"Bottom line - walls, fences, and other barrier infrastructures are always much cheaper than positioning humans on such boundaries."

Get with the program George. If a single person can get through a barrier, there's no point in having one.

It's good to see so many security experts weighing in on why walls simply don't work, except in the scads of countries that have them. No doubt all the existing physical border boundaries should be removed since they simply don't work either.

lol. The great mystery of the age is to understand the collective insanity in the West generally over the welcoming of mass movement of people from the Third World. The same craziness exists in Sweden and Germany as it does here, regardless of the handwaving about Ms. Lazarus, so I don't think that it's confined to a single branch of Western Civilization.

Hang on, I forgot. It's all about the money for barriers, especially in a world of $100B Fresno Flyers. Frankly, it's a little insulting how people pretend that this is about anything besides open borders. Why they're willing to fight a civil war over it is beyond me.

[Walt]

Get with the program George. If a single person can get through a barrier, there's no point in having one.
Apply that same LIB logic to gun control.(just say'n)

[scenes]

"Apply that same LIB logic to gun control."

OK.

If a single person grabs a handgun and shoots some people, then we should reduce magazine size on long guns. In the meantime, we'll invent some rules on flash suppressors and the way that the grip is shaped.

.or.

If a single person will ride a train from Fresno to Bakersfield, we should build a multi-billion dollar line between the two places since we like the idea of how nice Japan is.

[Todd Juvinall]

I heard Trump's speech and if I was a democrat I would get on board and compromise. But as we see the democrats of a couple years ago who screamed for the DACA's were not serious. As I said many times. Those "children" the dems say they care about are just pawns of Nancy and Chuck. My guess is those two will fold loke the new sheets on my bed. Trump will prevail as those fed workers are mostly dems anyway. What a disgrace the dem party is too real American patriots.

[L]

Nice of Frisch at 3:46 to make my point expressed just above. We know from past interaction that unlike many of his political cohort that Steve isn't stupid and for the most part I doubt he is particularly ignorant. That leaves bad faith and intellectual dishonesty. He posits an 'either...or' situation that simply doesn't exist. Of course successful walls need manning, the strength of the wall itself has a major influence on the amount of manpower required.

The real problem for informed collectivists like Mr. Frisch is that walls DO work, not that they don't. If they didn't, the left would wave the green flag so they could flay Trump when the wall failed. It's really not complicated when you look at motive. L

[L]

My bad, I forgot the possibility that he's insane. L

[Bill Tozer]

Well, at least Trump is trying his darnest to keep his campaign promise. If the Lefties would keep their promises, half would be in Canada by now.

The Botox Queen said we have to pass Obamacare to find out what’s in it. Why don’t we build the Wall to see if it works.

https://m.facebook.com/RowdyConservatives/photos/a.217983685002343/1528820693918629/?type=3&source=48

[Brandon Branson]

Very relieved that Trump believes San Antonio is a GREAT example of how effective a wall can be. He may as well have said that because Nevada City didn't get flooded, it's a great example of how well the levees work in Sacramento. You fellows own this intellectual genius.

[Brandon Branson]

Todd- Did you notice both your response to this and the answer have been deleted so as to make you not look like such a fool. Censors altering the narrative. No oppression or fake news on this site!

To paraphrase the censored comments: Todd said that Trump was in El Paso, not in San Antonio so that this report must have been made by fake news source. It was pointed out to Todd, with a link, the source was Fox news.

[L]

BB @11:07: If he was talking about the Alamo, he was right on point. After that battle, lost by the Texans, there were a lot more Mexicans in need of burial than fallen defenders. You can look it up. Walls do work. L

[George Rebane]

BrandonB 1002am - I'm slowly starting a policy of removing topic-irrelevant comments from my commentaries. I removed several from this comment stream, and the exchange between you and ToddJ on Trump was judged not germane here. But please feel free to include all of such corrective dialogues in the current sandbox. (Note that I left your 1107pm that launched the sidetrack exchange.)

[Todd Juvinall]

Brandon Branson | 20 January 2019 at 10:02 AM

I said he was going to go not that he was there. It appears we need to carry on at the Sandbox as per GeorgeR's advice.

[Brandon Branson]

George-
Fair enough. It IS your blog.

[***M***]

,,,Walls do work.,,,This from our resident sage,,, L,,, yes walls work great as a place against which you can bang your head!!!

[Gregory]

"We have to build the wall to see if it works."

Brilliant!

[George Rebane]

M 1135am - It's hard to believe that this is the best you can do to counter the 'walls work' thesis or L's wall apologetics. But do give it a try. Please cite some data that substantiate the thesis you and Nancy promote. Neither of you have provided one iota of substantive evidence to support your strong assertions. To most people, the assertion that 'walls don't work' is completely equivalent to 'the earth is flat', because the evidence to contrary, as pointed out here, is overwhelming and available to all on a daily basis.

[***M***]

,,,George 1211pm,,,again, no one actually believes that don't believe walls don't work...obviously they work...we have walls everywhere, in our homes, businesses, and on our border.

Trump is an illiterate, has no vocabulary and his sound bites just confuse the issues.

Didn't you have some figures based on wall construction costs in Israel??? I seem to remember Israel paid $2 million/ mile...if you figure it will cost us $3 million/mile and we really only need 250 miles of actual wall it will only cost about $750,000,000 not $5.6 Billion. There is no way in hell we need an 1,800 mile wall!!!

,,,This from a Texas Republican Congressman and former CIA operative, Will Hurd.
If you cannot stomach the whole truth listen to the podcast 8 minutes in,,,

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/podcasts/the-daily/will-hurd-border-wall-trump.html

[***M***]

,,no one actually believes that walls don't work,,,

[George Rebane]

M 114pm - OK, you're again going after Trump with no connection as to whether walls work or not. But your "no one actually believes that walls don't work" is disputed by ALL of the Dem leadership, and ALL of the liberal talking heads doing their echo chamber bit on TV and radio. The direct quote "Walls don't work." is available from everyone starting with Pelosi and Schumer, going through the Hoyers and Waters, and continuing on down the line. The question is, why has the Democratic leadership joined together in perpetrating a huge and significant lie on the American public. Such lies to garner public support are material, and don't measure up to the Trump claims of this or that number being off.

Yes, the Israeli experience ($2M/mi) substantiates my own more conservative $3M/mi. But neither includes the cost of additional technologies and ongoing staffing used to deliver the low porosity of such borders. For example, I would also include an array of buried geo-phones on our side of 'the wall' with automated processing to detect and localize the inevitable tunneling efforts. Of course, there will be additional sensor, localization, and command/control systems brought to bear to bring our border up to Israeli porosity standards, but, say, 1,500 miles at $3M/mi will still knock hell out of $4.5B without all the additional stuff. My own back of the envelope calcs come to about $7B for the fixed infrastructure and supporting systems, and somewhere in the $1-2B/yr cost of staffing, operations, and infrastructure systems maintenance/upgrade. Compared to the reported dollar and cultural costs of a porous border like our current one, this cost is cheap. And if its success deters additional migrants, criminals, and narcotics, then the human misery saved will itself be worth it to all concerned (including Mexico). Anyway, that's my elevator speech to describe the way people like me and with my kind of experience with these systems think and present their case. Thanks for getting down to some details.

[L]

M @ 1:14. Thanks for the admission. Unfortunately, Arizona alone needs in excess of 250 miles of wall/fence/barrier. A larger problem lies just west of me where the Mexican border abuts not the U.S. Border but the southern border of the Tohono O'Odham Nation (aka Papago Indian Reservation to the politically incorrect) which is a whole 'nother question. L

[George Rebane]

L 440pm - Why would the feds have a problem securing the border of that reservation, are they not part of the US as far as their 'foreign policy' and our national security goes??

[Don Bessee]

Dr. R that's a subtlety that does not fit their narrative, file it under pesky facts. No buzzfeed does not count as source for facts.

;-)

[l]

I don't really know the situation, except that some neighborhood folks have in the past participated in transporting things across res lands and have the given the impression that presence on the actual border is thin to non-existent. But I don't really know how far that nationhood thing goes; the Pasqua-Yaqui have all sorts of side deals about the border since the res is in both countries.

[Bill Tozer]

Interesting take. The Wall is meaningless if the doors are wide open.

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/depose-deep-state-or-wall-meaningless

[scenes]

re: BillT@10:59PM

I've always felt that Paul's BFF, the 17 intelligence agencies, have run their own foreign and domestic policy. Given the growth of the surveillance state, their ability to install or blackmail (or investigate to death) a politician has ramped up in just the last few years.

What I'm lacking here is a better insight into the structure of the system. I can't believe that the FBI, NRO, and the military all share completely common goals. Like any humans, they're four square in favor of acruing power and the iron rice bowl, but a giant chart showing interrelationships and beliefs would be useful.

It's enough that we threw a bull into the chinashop of nation building in Iraq and sodomizing the leader of Libya to death with a broomstick, but some clarity would be nice. At least everyone is getting a lesson in the difficulties in installing a third party President.

[Bill Tozer]

“What I'm lacking here is a better insight into the structure of the system. I can't believe that the FBI, NRO, and the military all share completely common goals. Like any humans, they're four square in favor of acruing power and the iron rice bowl, but a giant chart showing interrelationships and beliefs would be useful.” Scenes

Me too, brother. A nice chart would be helpful. What the top echelon of DOJ, FBI, CIA, Clapper, and that lying scum former American Communist Party voter Brennan all have in common is to protect their agencies and their asses at all costs. The notable exception is/was Mike Rodgers who put the DOJ-National Security Division in a race against time as Rodgers’s audit of them showed extreme and troubling violations of law and standards in the DOJ counter-intelligence National Security Division.
It was Rodgers who informed Trump that he was being spied on and the audit Rogers was preforming on abuses (irregularities) was being stalled, delayed by John B. Carlin, Meullers former chief of staff when Meuller was FBI Director.
Rodgers was on his way to see Carlin when they hit the panic button. Never forget the name John Carlin. There are some FISA warrants so sensitive that they cannot be processed without the DOJ-National Security Division’s signature. Corbin signed the FISA warrant on Sept. 27-29th, 2016, and abruptly quit (bailed) office by Oct. 15, 2016...just as Rodgers (NSA) was closing in on Carlin and his division in October, 2016...just before the election. Remember, Smirking Peter was the FBI’s top “spy catcher” for counter intelligence. Kelley was on to hanky panky as well as DOD found irregulaties coming from the Deep State, but that’s another story for another day. Goodbye ‘Pink Tie’ Ashley Carter. :)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice_National_Security_Division

Back to the Wall

In the 1975 book “Conservative Votes, Liberal Victories: Why the Right Has Failed,” this writer sought to explore and explain the forces that so often deny the right the policy fruits of its political victories.

“The essence of press power lies in the authority to select, elevate and promote one set of ideas, issues, and personalities and to ignore others,” this writer wrote. “The press determines what ‘people will talk and think about’ because of the monopoly it holds over the news and information flowing out of Washington.”

https://buchanan.org/blog/when-democracy-fails-to-deliver-135759

[Bill Tozer]

Because the border is too porous, I am glad this illegal alien will never get deported. Because our border is too porous, I am also glad that piece of shit El Salvadoran in Nevada will never be deported and will spend the rest of his pathetic life behind bars.

“Cerda was deported but returned five months later to commit these crimes, according to the Tulare County District Attorney’s Office.

The youngest victim bravely spoke out at Cerda's sentencing and pleaded with the judge to not deport him as she feared he would return once again.

The Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward said in a statement: ‘[The victim] cautioned the judge to “never grant him any possibility at being deported because he has crawled his way back into the States illegally way too many times.”’

He added: ‘This family will never have to live in fear of Cerda returning to terrorize them again. He will be serving his remaining days in a California prison.’

The District Attorney continued: ‘Criminals can, and will, find their way back to hurt the vulnerable. The courage of these women to stand up and rally back against this heartless predator is what gives all of us strength to battle for justice. This time, he is not coming back.”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6622647/Illegal-immigrant-terrorized-family-sentenced-401-YEARS-prison-raping-youngsters.html