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« on: July 18, 2008, 06:12:04 PM » |
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Pima County seeks 911 capability for 23 border towers
By Brady McCombs
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 07.18.2008
Surveillance towers planned for Arizona's border region might be equipped to receive emergency cell-phone calls as a result of a request made by the Pima County supervisors.
The supervisors unanimously voted recently to require that the Department of Homeland Security outfit all 23 towers planned in Pima County with emergency response systems in exchange for allowing the placement of one of the towers on county-owned land near Sasabe, said County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry.
A decision on whether to allow 911 service on the towers has not been made by Homeland Security.
Homeland Security is conducting a feasibility study to determine the cost and possible interference with other technology on the tower, said Barry Morrissey, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Washington, D.C.
Federal officials also will consider if the technology would assist smugglers, although that's not a primary concern, he said.
Pima County's request has set up a test project: If the technology is deemed feasible, the 911 feature could be added to additional towers, Morrissey said.
Homeland Security has plans to put up 45 new surveillance towers and upgrade 12 existing ones targeting 81 miles of border between Sasabe and Sierra Vista in a project scheduled to start later this month. A separate project calls for 11 towers in and around the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southwestern Arizona.
The number of 911 calls made by illegal immigrants in distress has been steadily increasing since 2000 and has skyrocketed this year as more people carry phones, said Mario Agundez a member of the Border Patrol's search, rescue and trauma team, Borstar.
The number of rescues initiated by cell-phone calls this year wasn't available Thursday from the Border Patrol. In the past, they've accounted for as many as half of the rescues.
The calls are patched through to Borstar agents. They can triangulate the location of the call based on the cell-phone towers the call hits or, in the case of some calls, get exact GPS coordinates, Agundez said.
Both options allow agents to narrow the search area from the other option: a report from somebody in custody that someone was left behind near a cactus and a mountain, he said.
"That's the difference between life and death," said Agundez, a paramedic.
Putting emergency response capability on the towers would be a tremendous benefit for Borstar by increasing the likelihood of rescues, Agundez said.
He doesn't think the technology would aid the smugglers at all. "Unless those cell-phone towers start teleporting people from the border to Phoenix, that person still has to walk through all the desert," he said.
But some Border Patrol officials say it's at least something worth evaluating. The Tucson Sector is the busiest along the nearly 2,000-mile Southwest border, accounting for nearly half of all apprehensions and more than half of all the pounds of marijuana seized.
"Would it benefit the smugglers? That's a legitimate concern," said Rob Daniels, Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokesman. "But whether or not that would be outweighed by keeping somebody alive, that's a real good question."
The plan has an unlikely proponent: a staunch anti-illegal immigration politician — Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif. In a letter dated July 9 addressed to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Hunter says adding emergency communication systems on the towers would help save lives and enhance border security.
A pair of Southern Arizona humanitarian groups dedicated to helping illegal immigrants, however, criticized the plan.
The Samaritan Patrol — a Tucson-based group whose volunteers patrol remote areas near the border carrying food, water and emergency medical supplies — said the 911 reception capability shouldn't be placed on enforcement towers because it could lure people into being apprehended by the Border Patrol, said Kathryn Ferguson, media coordinator. The government can afford to erect separate 911 towers, she said.
"The most important thing in the whole world would be to have 911 reception out there, but we don't want it to be on these towers," Ferguson said. "The towers are not about safety, in any stretch of the imagination."
No More Deaths, which provides food, water and medical care to illegal immigrants in the desert and in border towns in Mexico, issued a statement that called the towers part of the problem, not the solution.
"If the U.S. government is looking to do something helpful for migrants crossing the desert, it would cease spending money on these policies of deterrence and begin looking at comprehensive immigration reform, along with a re-negotiation of detrimental trade policies like NAFTA," the statement read.
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