The Border Patrol has had tunnel vision in building President Trump’s border wall, ignoring potentially cheaper options for securing the border and using “outdated” models in a rush to get it built, according to a new inspector general audit released Thursday.
The agency ignored its own priority list in picking which segments of wall to elevate to the top of the construction list, and is also using limited data from just one year to calculate vulnerable sections of the border, the audit said.
That leaves the agency spending billions of dollars on a project it hasn’t fully justified, when solutions such as hiring more agents may be cheaper and more effective, the inspector general said.
“Constructing a border wall may be a viable option for some locations, but in other locations non-construction alternatives may be more feasible, and may best help CBP achieve operational control of the southern border,” the audit concluded.
The report provides a withering critique of the push to accomplish Mr. Trump’s most visible campaign promise of erecting a border wall.
Homeland Security bristled at the report, saying it relied on “significantly flawed and inaccurate” data to reach bogus conclusions.
Jim H. Crumpacker, the department’s liaison to the inspector general, said CBP was directed in one of Mr. Trump’s executive orders to build a wall, so evaluating other alternatives such as hiring agents is irrelevant to the acquisition process.
He said it would have been a violation of the law to study alternatives, given the executive order’s clear instructions.
“This analysis by the OIG seems to overlook repeatedly that DHS, again as part of the Executive Branch, operates under the direction of the president,” Mr. Crumpacker wrote in the department’s official response.
He also said the inspector general confused operational control, which is the overall goal of border control, and “impedance and denial,” which is one facet of it. The wall is about impedance, Mr. Crumpacker said.
He rejected most of the inspector general’s recommendations, saying there’s no need to study alternatives, and insisting they are already updating their priority list correctly.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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