Border fence puzzles Price

Security weighed against cost

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. David Price is trying to figure out if a fence makes sense.

Price, a Chapel Hill Democrat, has begun raising questions about 300 new miles of pedestrian fencing the Department of Homeland Security wants to build along the country's border with Mexico.

The fence would cost an average of $3 million a mile. Over the most difficult terrain, the fence could cost 10 times that. Much of the fence would go to rural or even remote areas.

"Is this the best possible use of these funds? That's the bottom line," Price said last week during a hearing of the Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security. Price is chairman of the subcommittee, which funds the program.

The 300 new miles are part of a larger program, called the Secure Border Initiative, that aims to control the entire U.S. border in the coming years.

This year, the subcommittee has the authority to release $970 million for the program.

The Department of Homeland Security also wants the money to pay for 200 miles of barriers against vehicles and more than 400 miles of border protected with technologies such as ground sensors and ground radar.

'What people will do'

Price spent three days last month flying above the nation's southwestern border in Black Hawk helicopters to see the human side of the border debate.

He saw discarded clothes and backpacks littering the Arizona desert. He talked with dusty migrants detained in jail. And, at the busy border crossing south of San Diego, he watched as six people unstuffed themselves from the trunk of a compact car.

"It's amazing what people will go through to get into this country," Price said in an interview. "But it's also amazing what we must do to secure our borders."

Price's trip and last fall's political debate about a new border fence have him skeptical of plans to erect barriers in remote areas that, he says, might be better served with new technologies.

Last fall, he derided the Secure Fence Act, which authorized the 800-mile fence, as "bumper-sticker legislation." Last week, he questioned why fencing is needed in rural areas.

"You're obviously going way beyond the urban strategy," Price said at the hearing. "Way, way beyond that."

Border Patrol officials estimate they have 345 miles of the 2,000-mile southwest border under "operational control," meaning agents prevent nearly all incursions in that area.

Still, thousands of migrants get through every day.

David Aguilar, director of Customs and Border Patrol, testified that the agency doesn't expect to fence the entire border. He said his agency has different ideas about where to put a fence than those outlined in the fence act.

"Do we need a fence along the entire southwest border? No," Aguilar testified.

But he said the fence is needed as an "immediate fix" in some areas.