Luke X. Martin/MNS
Michael Kostelnik, assistant commissioner for the Office of Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine, spoke with House subcommittee members in Washington about the drone program Thursday morning.
WASHINGTON — Two new unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly referred to as drones, will soon be patrolling the U.S. border with Mexico.
“Communities along our borders and coastal waters face a unique exposure to threats,” said Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar at a Homeland Security subcommittee hearing Thursday on the use of drones along the border.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, will operate the aircraft, also known as UAVs.
According to CBP authorities, a new certificate of authority from the Federal Aviation Administration, which goes into effect on September 1, will allow them to fly the UAVs from Port Arthur, Texas, to Yuma, where Arizona meets California.
Customs does not currently have permission to fly in California airspace, but the Department of Homeland Security has announced a plan to deploy 1,200 National Guard troops throughout the four border states by September.
“In remote sections of our borders, these aircraft give us a window we don’t otherwise have with ground patrol alone,” Cuellar said during last week’s hearing.
Chris Calabrese, legislative council for the American Civil Liberties Union, though, said the increase in the use of “flying video cameras” poses an enormous privacy issue for U.S. citizens.
“It’s really a question of whether people’s Fourth Amendment privacy rights are going to be protected and respected,” he said in a phone interview last week.
Michael C. Kostelnik, assistant commissioner for CBP Office of Air & Marine, said his organization operates three Predator B UAVs out of Sierra Vista, Ariz. The commissioner said he expects two more, based in Corpus Christi, Texas, by the fall.
The drones “can’t see into windows, you don’t see people in cars,” he said. “It’s not as if it’s the perfect spy platform.”
Kostelnik also said that the CBP avoids flying UAVs in heavily populated areas. “We purposely pick areas where, if you see somebody out there, I think they’re up to no good — there’s no other reason to be where these things are,” he said.
While he acknowledged that peoples’ privacy concerns were credible, Kostelnik said that the increased security the drones provide is worth the trade off.
Bob Killebrew, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a retired Army colonel, agreed. “What the drones will be used for is for seeing infiltration across the border,” he said. “This response to the [illegal] crossing of the American border is not just because we’re concerned about illegal aliens, but also because drug cartels are committing terrorism.”
Killebrew added that he does not believe the drones significantly increase the threat to peoples’ privacy. “We’ve had stationary balloons monitoring the border regions for years,” he said.
Kostelnik, who played a large part in developing the unmanned aircraft program, made the same argument. The aircraft’s main advantage is that they can fly for up to 20 hours at a time, he said
“There’s nothing new on the UAVs that we don’t already do on manned platforms,” Kostelnik said.
Read the story at the Imperial Valley Press.