Our Division of Smoke-and-Mirrors has just sent us a late-breaking article about a new U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposal to post an unmanned border crossing kiosk in the Big Bend National Park. The park is home to some of the most rugged terrain on our shared border with Mexico and is a notorious drug- and alien-smuggling venue.
And, just to add icing to the cake, DHS is suggesting that any needed human responses to this remote checkpoint would be undertaken by a skeletal cadre of DHS officers to live in the park, along with the already-undermanned (and probably minimally trained for immigration enforcement purposes) federal park rangers.
Don't believe it? Check out the Associated Press article from this week, in which the plan is revealed in all its glory. Of course, administrative flacks for both Customs and Border Protection (CBP, the DHS agency responsible for border inspections), and the National Park Service have chosen to take the party line and talk about what a great idea this is, even going so far as to suggest that the kiosk will even "make security better." Right.
So if that's the case, then in place of large border checkpoints surrounded by major population centers, like San Ysidro or El Paso, maybe we should just pink-slip all of the CBP staff and rely on this fabulous new technology to take the place of good old common sense and intelligent police work. Sure would save the taxpayers a bundle.