DHS wasting money on Canadian check points?

Washington Post:

A spokesman for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said a new review by the department's inspector general answers criticism by lawmakers that politics influenced plans to spend $680 million in stimulus funds on border security projects.

A report by DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner, required under the $787 billion relief package approved in February, concluded that U.S. Customs and Border Protection "generally developed practical, thorough, and comprehensive expenditure plans."

The Associated Press reported in August that DHS allowed low-priority projects -- such as a sleepy checkpoint in Whitetail, Mont., that received $15 million but only sees about three travelers a day -- to leap-frog more pressing needs. The AP cited statements by Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) boasting that he and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) successfully pushed for funds.

A border station in Nogales, Ariz., -- Napolitano's home state -- received $199 million, more than any other site, while one of the nation's highest-priority stations at Laredo, Tex., received none, according to the AP, which said DHS allowed it to review but would not publicize a list of most urgently needed repair programs.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), ranking Republican on the House Committee of Oversight and Government Reform, has called on Napolitano to disclose the border agency's selection criteria. Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) wrote Napolitano saying DHS's plan "lacks common sense and would represent a terrible waste of taxpayers' money."

...

Dorgan, in an interview, maintained that the spending was nonsensical, and noted that DHS declined an offer by Skinner to review why it was spending some $220 million on 22 Canadian border checkpoints, which Dorgan said on average saw four cars and one truck each per day.

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The priorities seem out of whack. I think terrorist are more likely to try to sneak across at high traffic checkpoints because the staff will be rushed and more likely to let people cross to keep the traffic flowing. The sites with four or five crossings a day can easily devote more time to checking the people at their check points. The Montana site looks like a scandal pushed by the state's Democrat senators. When you consider it got $15 million and Laredo got nothing, something is very wrong.

Laredo is a central corridor for drug trafficking. The Mexican criminal insurgency has fought bitterly for control of traffic on the I-35 corridor that goes up the central US all the way to Canada. It should be a primary focus of efforts to stop drugs and illegal entry into the US.

Is there any other reason than Napalitano's parochial interest in her home state of Arizona for Nogales to get $199 million? Why is it worth $199 million and Laredo $0?