PHOENIX — Gov. Janet Napolitano said she intends to grill the nation's homeland security chief about delays in erecting a "virtual fence" along the state's southern border.
Napolitano noted Michael Chertoff will be at a meeting this week in Puerto Peñasco of governors from both sides of the border. She said Wednesday he needs to explain the delays in improving security.
Some of that, said Napolitano, relates to the withdrawal of National Guard troops from along the border.
The governor said she understands Operation Jump Start was designed only to be a temporary measure while the Border Patrol hired more officers. But she said hiring has not kept pace with the decline in troops.
Napolitano said she is unwilling, however, to use her power to replace the soldiers from around the nation with Arizona National Guard troops, if for no other reason than it would mean Arizona taxpayers would have to pick up the tab.
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Napolitano complained Wednesday the "virtual fence" promised by the federal government "seems to be virtually missing."
"When is it going to be up and running?" she asked.
Plans were to have a 28-mile stretch of this electronic barrier operating in Southern Arizona this past summer.
The idea is to have something other than a physical barrier in parts of the state where construction of a fence is impractical. It is supposed to include ground radar and cameras to spot border crossers so that Border Patrol agents can intercept them.
But there have been reports of problems, including questions whether the devices can differentiate among people, vehicles and cows.
The governor's questions for Chertoff are not limited to technology.
Napolitano is miffed that the approximately 6,000 National Guard soldiers who originally were put on the border last year — about 2,400 of these in Arizona — already has been cut in half. And the schedule calls for withdrawing the rest of them by the end of next summer.
"It was designed to be temporary because they were supposed to be hiring Border Patrol agents and putting them down there," she said. But the governor said so far the number of additional agents hasn't matched the number of soldiers being taken out.
"And so they haven't met that part of the equation," Napolitano said.
She said replacing troops from around the nation with Arizona National Guard soldiers isn't a viable option because "Our budget is already stretched thin, and we're already paying a lot for illegal immigration just in terms of things like incarceration costs."
