The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general has issued a highly critical report on unmanned aircraft, or drones that patrol the country’s borders, principally with Mexico.
Border missions fly out of bases in Sierra Vista, Arizona, southeast of Tucson, and Corpus Christi, Texas.
The report says there is “little or no evidence” the nine Predator-B drones are worth their expensive price tag. Predator-B drones each cost $18 million while the now eight-year-old drone program represents $62 million a year in taxpayer money.
The Office of Inspector General conducts and supervises independent audits and investigations of the programs and operations of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The report has been published as Congress wrestles with a fast approaching deadline to fund Homeland Security.
There are nine Predator-B drones flown by Customs and Border (CBP) along the border. Inspector General John Roth of CBP’s parent agency, the DHS, says the drone program is ”a dubious achiever.”
“They were going to patrol the entire southwest border, the 2,000-mile southwest border," Roth told CSPAN Television.
"As it turns out, they’re only patrolling about 170 miles of that border.”
Roth said that in 2013, drones helped catch a mere two percent of illegal border crossers.
CBP and the Inspector General disagree about the cost to fly the drones.
The agency said it costs $2,500 an hour to fly a drone. Roth said when one adds the salaries of ground-based pilots and the cost of relaying information via satellites, the cost multiplies nearly six-fold to about $12,000 per hour.
He says Congress should ask one question as it wrestles with the February 27, 2015 deadline to craft a DHS funding bill.
“What are the results that you expect to receive as a result of the investment of this taxpayer money? They never established any performance standards. So they can’t tell if the program is a success or not,” said Roth.
Federal agents interviewed for this story reject Roth’s report. One told us “it’s extremely rare for us to disagree with the Inspector General.”
The agent, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said drones should be measured by detections, specifically by the tips they pass on to local law enforcement and not arrest statistics.
We spoke with another agent, the drone program’s Supervisory Air Interdiction Agent Erik Soykan. He works with what’s formally called the Unmanned Aircraft Systems, or UAS.
“We respectfully disagree with OIG’s (Office of the Inspector General's) portrayal of the UAS program," he told us.
"The report shows OIG has a fundamental lack of understanding of our mission and operations,” said Soykan.
Congress and the White House, meanwhile, are squabbling over two increasingly intertwined issues, border security and immigration reform.
The White House said January 12, 2015 that it will veto a DHS funding bill that includes immigration restrictions.
Local law enforcement won’t have a seat at the negotiating table.
But the chair of the Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition, Sheriff Rick McIvor, says taxpayer money would be better spent on smaller, inexpensive drones deployed on specific stretches of the border.
“I don’t understand how much time they can spend over our area," said McIvor. "Are they just going through and then they’re coming back? I mean there’s a lot of country that you miss.”
DHS Inspector General Roth said there’s “no evidence that the drones contribute to a more secure border and there is no reason to invest additional taxpayer funds at this time.”
Homeland Security has signaled its intent to expand the program by adding 14 more drones, which would cost $443 million. But the Office of Inspector General is not convinced that such a move is warranted:
Given the cost of the Unmanned Aircraft System program and its unproven effectiveness, CBP should reconsider its plan to expand the program. The $443 million that CBP plans to spend on program expansion could be put to better use by investing in alternatives, such as manned aircraft and ground surveillance assets.
