Bush turns border over to big military contractors

The quick fix may involve sending in the National Guard. But to really patch up the broken border, President Bush is preparing to turn to a familiar administration partner: giant military contractors. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, three of the largest, are among the companies that said they would submit bids within weeks for a multibillion-dollar contract to build what the administration calls a "virtual fence" along the US borders. Using some of the same high-priced, high-tech tools these companies have already put to work in Iraq and Afghanistan–like unmanned aerial vehicles, ground surveillance satellites and motion-detection video equipment–the defense contractors are zeroing in on the long borders that separate Mexico and Canada from the United States. The Bush administration intends to not simply buy high-tech equipment to help it patrol the borders–a tactic it has also already tried, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, with extremely limited success. It is also asking the contractors to devise and build a whole new border strategy. "This is an unusual invitation," Michael Jackson, the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, told contractors this year at an industry briefing, just before the bidding period for this new contract started. "We're asking you to come back and tell us how to do our business." The equipment border patrol agents use, how and when they are dispatched to spots along the border, where the agents assemble the captured immigrants, how they process them and transport them–all of these steps will now be scripted by the winning contractor. The winner could earn an estimated $2 billion over the next three to six years.