WASHINGTON – Two congressional committees – one in the House and the other in the Senate – met Tuesday to tackle border security, which continues to be a pivot point for both sides of the immigration reform debate.
For opponents, it is a precursor to discussing reform.
For supporters, it is the direct result of comprehensive immigration reform.
Yet, what either side means by border security is unclear, said Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
“What constitutes effective border control has not been meaningfully defined or debated,” Meissner said before a Senate committee last week.
Failure to reach an agreed-upon definition heightens public perception of inadequacy in the system, Meissner said.
That perception that is already strong for many border town residents.
“The border wall, it’s just a waste of money,” said Ana Ruiz, 45, from Brownsville, Texas. “They build a wall 20-feet tall. There’s a joke that there is a store on the other side selling ladders for 22.”
Using troops to keep drugs and violence from crossing the river into Brownsville would secure the border, Ruiz said.
For Ruiz’s mother, Concepcion, 73, a secure border is one that keeps the insecurity in Mexico out of the United States.
While Ana and Concepcion Ruiz define border security in terms of drugs and violence, the Homeland Security Department until recently defined it as “operational control.”
Implemented in 2004, operational control referred to Border Patrol agents’ ability to “detect, identify, classify, and then respond to and resolve illegal entries,” said Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher in his testimony to a House committee in February.
Using that definition, 44 percent of the U.S.– Mexico border was considered secure, despite what the agency called “historic levels” of manpower and technological resources, and a price tag of nearly $12 billion last year.
But Homeland Security wants to swap out operational control for a new definition.
“The Border Patrol is currently taking steps to replace this outdated measure with performance metrics that more accurately depict the state of border security,” Fisher said at the February hearing.
Critics of the change said the agency is trying to improve their statistics by redefining the goal.
“Just because it doesn’t look good to say we only have one half of our sectors under operational control is not a good reason to change the definition,” said Asa Hutchinson, the department’s former under-secretary for border and transportation security.
Hutchinson offered his own definition for border security .
“The capability to detect border intrusions and be able to respond effectively to those,” Hutchinson said. “Detection…that’s where we have to use technology.”
Whatever the new definition of border security, Meissner said it needs to be attainable.
“Zero tolerance is unrealistic,” she said.
But some in Congress continue to push that point. Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., said in a February meeting of the House Homeland Security Committee that anything less than zero tolerance is unacceptable.
“I think the acceptable level of the American citizen is total control.”