(NewsNation) — The Department of Homeland Security is shutting down a program that used surveillance blimps at the border amid objections from lawmakers and border agents.
The agency announced it was decreasing the number of blimps from 12 to four last year and promised the program would be a thing of the past by the end of fiscal year 2023. Nearly a year later, the tactical Aerostat surveillance program is finally shutting down as funding has dried up.
More than two dozen people are out of a job thanks to the program’s end, according to DHS sources.
The program used tethered aerial surveillance blimps that fly at an altitude that provides border patrol agents the ability to maintain visual awareness of illegal border activity around the clock.
Agents say it’s a major tool when it comes to tracking so-called “gotaways,” people who are trying to evade detection after crossing the border between ports of entry.
Just two years ago, DHS tethered one blimp in Nogales, Arizona, where the majority of fentanyl has been seized. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., pushed back on the decision to remove what he called “critical security technology” from the U.S. border.
He said the system is incredibly beneficial and should be used to its full capability to combat trafficking and smuggling. DHS moved forward with the closure anyway, and sources told NewsNation that lawmakers came down to the border in a last-ditch effort to preserve the tactical Aerostats but were unsuccessful.
The remaining four Aersotats were tethered in Nogales, Arizona; Deming, New Mexico; El Indio, Texas; and McAllen, Texas.
Maverick County, Texas, Sheriff Tom Schmerber said the Aerostats were valuable in the area, and he is disappointed to see them go.
“Now we’re blind, not knowing what’s coming in. It’s a lot of help for us to have info,” he said. “Not just [on] immigrants that come looking for work, that come through here, terrorists will be coming through here, drugs and so forth, because they know we don’t have the technology.”
The crews tasked with operating the systems were told they would be called back up if funds became available in the next fiscal year, sources said.
So far, there don’t seem to be plans to replace the Aerostats with another aerial system.
In the meantime, Customs and Border Protection has deployed 195 autonomous surveillance towers and 256 remote video surveillance upgrades along the southern border, creating a “virtual wall” from the California coast to the southern tip of Texas.
Despite that, Schmerber said the solution doesn’t rest with technology but for whoever is in power to work with the countries people are fleeing from to try to stem the immigration crisis where it starts.
