Research Universities Team Up on Border Issues

By Karl Hill

If a major incident occurs on the U.S.- Mexico border, will first-responder agencies be able to communicate with each other?

If the U.S. Congress passes a guestworker program, what will it take to implement it?

These are among the first issues New Mexico State University researchers expect to take on in collaboration with other members of the newly created Southwest Border Security Consortium.

The SBSC is an alliance of nine research universities created to develop and promote scientific and policy solutions to issues affecting the U.S.-Mexico border region. The consortium was announced last November at ComDef Tucson 2006, an international conference in Tucson, Ariz., on technologies for border security, defense and commerce.

“Right after the press conference, we had an SBSC meeting, because we knew we needed to start collaborating immediately,” said Sudha Murthy of NMSU’s Physical Science Laboratory, who, among others at NMSU, was instrumental in organizing the alliance. “We identified four pilot areas to pursue: border and transborder policy, transborder health, data fusion, and communications interoperability.”

SBSC institutions will create working groups in each area, she said, and collaborative projects will draw on the relevant strengths of the nine universities.

NMSU is taking a lead role in analyzing one of the more pressing border and transborder policy issues facing the nation at the moment – how to implement a temporary guest worker program if Congress approves one.

“Given the changes in Congress and the President’s interest, the common wisdom is we’ll see something coming out of Congress by late summer or early fall, to be implemented perhaps as early as 2008,” said Jason Ackleson, assistant professor of government. “So what that means for the federal government is they’ve got to figure out a way to deal with 10 million or potentially 12 million people who want to become guest workers and possibly get in line for citizenship.”

Ackleson, whose expertise is in the areas of border security and immigration, is helping prepare a grant proposal to the Department of Homeland Security for analyzing the implications of a new immigration policy.

“There are a number of areas we may look at, including the impacts on border economics and agricultural economics, since this is going to affect the agricultural sector pretty heavily,” he said. “DHS may also be interested in the technological dimensions – are there biometrics or other methods that might be introduced to make the system more efficient in terms of determining who a person is and matching them up with the database? Another aspect is the legal side – what are the legal bases for immigrants to claim benefits from the program – for example, how long have they been here, and how do we determine that?”

NMSU has connections with Mexico that might be tapped to integrate the Mexican point of view on the issue, he added.

As the SBSC explores potential collaborations, NMSU is taking the lead on another important initiative – assuring communications interoperability along the border.

“If there is an incident on the border, whether it’s health related or agrosecurity or a WMD, first responders and multiple agencies on both sides of the border would respond,” Murthy said. “They can’t all talk to each other. They need situational awareness in any emergency. Connectivity is an important capability for local, state and federal agencies.”

Eric Johnson of NMSU’s Klipsch School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, with input from other SBSC universities and from affected agencies, will examine critical communications challenges on the border and develop solutions to these challenges.

NMSU brings an array of capabilities to the SBSC, most of which can be clustered in five broad areas:

• Detection and surveillance. PSL’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems and Operations Validation Program focuses on ways in which U.S. borders may be made more secure by developing the processes and procedures for flying surveillance UAVs in civil airspace.
• Test and evaluation. For the past two years, NMSU has conducted field tests of video, radar, and ground surveillance systems at the university’s 64,000-acre Chihuahuan Desert Rangeland Research Center. In addition, NMSU has test bed rights on the border at the Santa Teresa International Port of Entry.
• Agrosecurity. NMSU’s Southwest Border Center for Food Safety and Defense sets and coordinates bio-security response activities for the state of New Mexico, while its Food Safety Technologies Laboratory evaluates commercially available rapid test kits for potential use in FDA import operations.
• Transborder policy. Funded by NSF, the New Mexico-Chihuahua Partnership for Innovation is developing technological solutions to border-related problems such as water issues, food security, job creation, and multicultural education.
• Information analysis and visualization. NMSU researchers have completed the first phase of what will be the most detailed transportation map ever produced of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border and its 39 crossings.