There is no measure of effectiveness of border security

Byron York:
If Congress passes comprehensive immigration reform, it will depend on the Obama administration to enforce the law. How might that work?

A glimpse of the future came Wednesday when the House Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security held a little-noticed hearing titled "Measuring Outcomes to Understand the State of Border Security."

Immigration reform depends on a secure border. Nearly every lawmaker pushing reform, and certainly every Republican, stresses that the border must be proven secure before millions of currently illegal immigrants can be placed on a path to citizenship.

But how do you measure border security? For years, the government estimated the number of miles of the border that were under "operational control" and came up with various ways to define what that meant.

Then the Department of Homeland Security threw out the concept of operational control, which Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called "archaic." The administration promised to create something called the Border Condition Index, or BCI, which would be a "holistic," and a far better measure of border security.

Time passed, with no BCI. "Nearly three years later, the department has not produced this measure, so at this hearing, we will be asking for a status of the BCI, what measures it will take into account and when it might be ready," subcommittee Chairwoman Rep. Candice Miller, a Republican, said before Wednesday's testimony. Getting BCI up and running is particularly important now, Miller added, because comprehensive immigration reform cannot happen without a reliable way to assess border security.

So imagine everyone's surprise when Mark Borkowski, a top Homeland Security technology official, told Miller that not only was BCI not ready, but that it won't measure border security and was never meant to.

"I don't believe that we intend, at least at this point, that the BCI would be a tool for the measurement that you're suggesting," Borkowski told Miller. "The BCI is part of a set of information that advises us on where we are and, most importantly, what the trends are ... It is not our intent, at least not immediately, that it would be the measure you are talking about."

Miller appeared stunned and practically begged Borkowski, along with two other Homeland Security officials who were testifying, to tell her what she wanted to hear. "I'm just trying to let this all digest," she said. "We're sort of sitting here, as a Congress ... At what point will you be able to give us something?"

She never got an answer.
... 
They also do not enforces laws dealing with the 40 percent of illegals who overstay a visa.  What is needed is a system that  gives the administration no discretion in the enforcement of overstays.  At the end of their visa period they would be required to check in with ICE and arrange their departure are become subject to prosecution and immediate deportation without hearings.  What we have know is a leadership in DHS who does not want to do their job.

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