On Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security Inspector General John Roth released a scathing audit of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s use of unmanned aerial vehicles to patrol the United States’ land and sea borders since 2007. Relying on documents, flight and incident reports and interviews with personnel, the inspector general concluded that there was no evidence that the agency's 10 unarmed Predator B drones had improved border security or aided in apprehensions or drug interdictions.
Furthermore, the inspector general’s report claims the border agency drastically underreported the cost of its drone program, finding the Predator B’s cost $12,255 per flight hour to operate, as opposed to the federal agency’s own calculation of $2,468 per hour. The program’s net cost for fiscal year 2013, according to the inspector general, was $62.5 million, as opposed to Customs and Border Protection’s calculation of $12 million – the inspector general found the $50 million difference alarming.
“Unless CBP fully discloses all operating costs, Congress and the public are unaware of all the resources committed to the Unmanned Aircraft System program,” the report states. “As a result, CBP has invested significant funds in a program that has not achieved the expected results, and it cannot demonstrate how much the program has improved border security.”
The critical report comes at a time when domestic law enforcement agencies are deepening their interest in unmanned aerial vehicles. Police departments around the country, including in Los Angeles, have purchased drones, though the Federal Aviation Administration has not yet granted them clearance to fly the vehicles. Customs and Border Protection’s Predator drones already have been used for domestic policing operations by federal agencies, including the FBI; state agencies such as the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Texas Department of Public Safety; and even local police in North Dakota. In some places, the pushback by civil libertarians has been fierce: The Seattle Police Department was forced to scrap its drone program in 2013 after sustained pushback from activists. The department’s two Draganflyer X6 drones later were donated to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Funding for drone purchases has come through state and federal homeland security grants, continuing a pattern of military-grade equipment getting into the hands of local law enforcement. The Center for Investigative Reporting first reported on the federal government’s role in facilitating the flow of such technology to police departments in 2012.
One argument law enforcement agencies have made for using drones is that the unmanned vehicles will improve their operational ability and save money that would instead be spent on costly helicopters. But Customs and Border Protection’s experience over the past eight years presents a cautionary tale: The inspector general’s audit found that the Predator B flights had minimal impact on migrant apprehensions and drug interdictions. Furthermore, the drones did not respond to ground sensors triggered by passing people or vehicles in heavy crossing areas, and the advanced radar system mounted on the drones was not used efficiently, nor did the border agency have adequate metrics to evaluate the use of such technology.
Customs and Border Protection is planning to spend $443 million to expand its unmanned aerial vehicle program and purchase 14 more Predator B vehicles. San Diego-based defense contractor General Atomics, which manufactures the Predator B vehicles, has benefited greatly from the program and is heavily involved in lobbying, spending more than $2.4 million on Capitol Hill in 2014 and over $3 million in 2013, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
This story was edited by Fernando Diaz and copy edited by Nikki Frick.
Ali Winston can be reached at awinston@cironline.org. Follow him on Twitter: @awinston.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Republish Our Content
Thanks for your interest in republishing a story from Reveal. As a nonprofit newsroom, we want to share our work with as many people as possible. You are free to embed our audio and video content and republish any written story for free under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license and will indemnify our content as long as you strictly follow these guidelines:
-
Do not change the story. Do not edit our material, except only to reflect changes in time and location. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)
-
Please credit us early in the coverage. Our reporter(s) must be bylined. We prefer the following format: By Will Evans, Reveal.
-
If republishing our stories, please also include this language at the end of the story: “This story was produced by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization. Learn more at revealnews.org and subscribe to the Reveal podcast, produced with PRX, at revealnews.org/podcast.”
-
Include all links from the story, and please link to us at https://www.revealnews.org.
PHOTOS
-
You can republish Reveal photos only if you run them in or alongside the stories with which they originally appeared and do not change them.
-
If you want to run a photo apart from that story, please request specific permission to license by contacting Digital Engagement Producer Sarah Mirk, smirk@revealnews.org. Reveal often uses photos we purchase from Getty and The Associated Press; those are not available for republication.
DATA
-
If you want to republish Reveal graphics or data, please contact Data Editor Soo Oh, soh@revealnews.org.
IN GENERAL
-
We do not compensate anyone who republishes our work. You also cannot sell our material separately or syndicate it.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, please contact Sarah Mirk, smirk@revealnews.org.
-
If you plan to republish our content, you must notify us republish@revealnews.org or email Sarah Mirk, smirk@revealnews.org.
-
If we send you a request to remove our content from your website, you must agree to do so immediately.
-
Please note, we will not provide indemnification if you are located or publishing outside the United States, but you may contact us to obtain a license and indemnification on a case-by-case basis.
If you have any other questions, please contact us at republish@revealnews.org.