Detroit and Buffalo to get video surveillance towers

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Border Patrol is erecting 16 more video surveillance towers in Michigan and New York to help secure parts of the U.S.-Canadian border, awarding the contract to a company criticized for faulty technology with its so-called "virtual fence" along the U.S.-Mexico boundary.

The government awarded the $20 million project to Boeing, for the towers designed to assist agents stationed along the 4,000-mile northern stretch. Eleven of the towers are being installed in Detroit and five in Buffalo, N.Y., to help monitor water traffic between Canada and the United States along Lake St. Clair and the Niagara River.

At present, Border Patrol agents are posted along the river to keep an eye on water traffic.

The cameras will be used to zoom in on a boat that left Canada, for instance, and watch where it goes and what it does, said Mark Borkowski, executive director of the Secure Border Initiative at Customs and Border Protection.

"So the idea is to have cameras watch, and then agents are freed up to respond," Borkowski said in an interview with The Associated Press. The cameras will cut down the agent's response time by minutes, he said.

Four similar video towers have already been erected in Buffalo. Security operations along the northern border include the use of unmanned aerial vehicles and coordination and intelligence sharing with local law enforcement.

Boeing is the firm responsible for a 28-mile stretch of technology erected along the U.S.-Mexico border near Tucson, Ariz., as part of the government's Secure Border Initiative.

The company was widely criticized for delivering an inferior product.

Last year the government withheld some of the payment to Boeing because technology used in the test project near Tucson did not work properly. Boeing also was late in delivering the final product.

Borkowski said he is confident the Homeland Security Department, which oversees the Secure Border Initiative, will not run in to the same problems it had with Boeing in the past.

Boeing spokeswoman Jenna K. McMullin said the company has "learned quite a bit from our previous SBInet experience and demonstrated how to implement lessons learned."

The Border Patrol says its 1,500 agents along the northern border were involved in the arrests of 7,925 individuals last year.