In the latest move by the Obama administration to make the border "more secure than ever," a new proposal would allow people to check themselves into the United States through an electronic kiosk on the border, without a Border Patrol or I.C.E. agent physically present.
The bloody drug war in Mexico shows no sign of relenting. Neither do calls for tighter border security amid rising fears of spillover violence. This hardly seems a time the U.S. would be willing to allow people to cross the border legally from Mexico without a customs officer in sight. But in this rugged, remote West Texas terrain where wading across the shallow Rio Grande undetected is all too easy, federal authorities are touting a proposal to open an unmanned port of entry as a security upgrade. By the spring, kiosks could open up in Big Bend National Park allowing people from the tiny Mexican town of Boquillas del Carmen to scan their identity documents and talk to a customs officer in another location, at least 100 miles away.
Talk about a false sense of security and lack of law enforcement. What is the point? Do officials working in the Department of Homeland Security will really check themselves into the United States when it is easier to simply walk across? Not to mention this will have zero impact on drug cartels who are getting increasingly hostile and violent, trafficking children into the U.S. for sexual exploitation and smuggling drug loads daily. Homeland Security would never allow U.S. citizens to check themselves into airports, it makes no sense that they would allow foreigners, some of whom may have bad intentions, check themselves into the U.S. If approved, the project will cost taxpayers $2 million.