House Bill H.R. 993 Promises Revamped Border Technology To Protect Our Border and Border Patrol Agents

By Kevin Garcia-Galindo, Policy Associate for The LIBRE Initiative

This past week, the House of Representatives voted in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion, 406 to 9 votes, to pass H.R. 993, the Emerging Innovative Border Technologies Act, introduced by Representative Correa (CA-46)  and Representative Luttrell (TX-08). This bill, if enacted, would be an important step in protecting our border by giving our border patrol the tools to safeguard themselves from unnecessary danger while also maximizing the efficiency of their work protecting the border.

 Our southern border with Mexico is the 10^th longest land border in the world while our northern border with Canada is the 1^st longest. Together they impart the U.S. with the duty and responsibility of securing about 6,000 miles of border from being used by criminals, drug smugglers, and human traffickers. At the same time, however, border patrol officers are also tasked with providing compassionate humanitarian care to immigrants seeking refuge status. Together this can create an excess of duty that puts unnecessary strain on both the immigrants and the border patrol tasked with vetting them.

CBP families and officers themselves have all stated that the job’s requirements of long work hours combined with its high stress environment put an overwhelming burden on them, sometimes causing fatal consequences. Finding ways to make their work more efficient by using technology is one clear way that we could lower the stress of their environment.

Every day about 19,400 border patrol agents—over 50% of which are Hispanic—across both borders work tirelessly to protect the country from external threats. Investing in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, machine-learning, and fiber-optic sensing technology would allow officers to rely more on these rather than focusing on spreading out manpower across the border—leaving some officers with little to no support in case of an emergency.

The implementation of this technology would be swift as the Emerging Innovative Border Technologies Act mandates a 180-day limit for the Secretary of Homeland Security to submit a report to Congress outlining how these innovative technologies could be implemented.

This report would not just include how to replace already outdated technology but also a comprehensive strategy on how to use emerging technologies to fill gaps in current tech as well as evaluating what is or is not currently working.

Polling from the LIBRE Institute shows that over 73% of Latinos want more decisive action to address the ongoing humanitarian and security crisis on our borders. By improving the toolbox of technologies available to Border patrol, we won’t just be making their jobs easier, but we will also be one step further from both of those crises occurring on our borders.