Australian Strategic Policy Institute

Report Part Title: The future of US border security

Report Title: America’s ‘Maginot Line’
Report Subtitle: A study of static border security in an age of agile and innovative
threats
Report Author(s): Steven Bucci and John Coyne
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (2016)

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CHAPTER 9

The future of US border security

America’s current economic, security and social contexts ensure that immigration and border security policy
challenges will continue to be both vexing and politicised. An increasing number of long-term economically
disenfranchised working class Americans will ensure that Democrats and Republicans alike will be pressured to
reduce immigration and strengthen border control. Whether there’s any truth in the claim that illegal immigrants
are causing America’s economic heartaches is irrelevant for policymakers when an increasing percentage of the US
electorate appears to believe that claim.

There should be little doubt that the US will continue to experience increasingly complex border security threats.
But it’s not necessarily the threat or risk level that will most significantly affect border security and migration.

For US border security, domestic politics rather than threat or risk remains the major strategic driver for public
policy. Fear of crime and terrorism among US voters is likely to ensure that the current public support for a secure
American border—which deports illegal immigrants and builds walls—will prevail. The policy challenge for those in
Washington will continue to be that the fear that’s driving the border security dialogue might not be proportionate
to the threat.

Arguably, the likelihood that any single American citizen will be affected negatively by border security or migration
is much lower than their fear of being a victim. This underpinning fear will ensure that for the foreseeable future
the public debate on US border security and immigration will have negative undertones, dislocated from the
reality of risk and threat. Under these conditions, political necessity will probably ensure that the ‘getting tough’
pro-border-security dialogue will continue.

These conditions are likely to prevent US authorities from making any substantive practical improvements in border
security for the foreseeable future. The same fear is likely to ensure that policy measures are focused on public
displays that reassure the public but don’t necessarily offer substantive improvements. It’s highly possible that at
least some future US border-security policy decisions, such as the building of a wall along the southern border, may
have an overall negative impact.

It seems unlikely that any key border-security threat or risk drivers will change over the next five years. Instead,
there’s likely to be a continuation of existing threats and risks, accentuated by short- to medium-term crises driven
by international and domestic interpretations of changes to US border or migration policy.

One particular exception to this could involve increased pressure on the maritime surveillance and response
capabilities of the USCG. Over the next five years, the demands placed on the Coast Guard are likely to increase
significantly. Protecting the sovereignty of US waters and their natural resources will possibly prove to be
increasingly challenging. Such issues as global food protein shortages and dwindling fish stocks will result in the
expansion of some maritime threats. Similarly, the use of maritime militias by countries such as Russia and China
may give the US few options other than to project the USCG further afield.

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42 America’s ‘Maginot Line’: A study of static border security in an age of agile and innovative threats

While operational coordination and intelligence sharing between Canada and the US will continue to improve, more
dramatic US–Canadian border security developments are unlikely. Any efforts to implement US border security
measures at all Canadian borders are likely to be hampered by issues of sovereignty. That said, the mature nature of
cross-border trade and travel between the two states raises hopes for further risk-based facilitation improvements
over the next five years.

On the US–Mexican border, continued militarisation now seems inevitable. The southern border is a key route for a
range of illicit commodities and is viewed culturally by Americans as something to be feared. The costs of continued
militarisation, whether to pay for walls or for more technical surveillance, are likely to be significant. Increasingly,
the US land border will be replaced by a highly surveilled and expensive frontier ‘no man’s land’.

Immigration reform could move forward by focusing on commonsense initiatives that begin to address the practical
challenges of immigration and border security. The key is to begin by working on bipartisan solutions, rather than
insisting on a comprehensive approach that divides Americans. Also, Washington must implement the mandates
already on the books, follow through on existing initiatives and employ the authorities that Congress has already
granted before taking on new obligations. What’s needed is a piece-by-piece legislative agenda—implemented
step by step—that allows transparency, careful deliberation and thoughtful implementation within responsible
federal budgets.

A secure US–Mexico border could be an engine for economic growth, facilitating the legitimate exchange of people,
goods and services. Moreover, it could be an obstacle to transnational crime and human trafficking. It could be
a place in which both nations can accurately and rapidly target national security threats. This could be achieved
within the existing legislative framework if policy mandates are appropriately funded and implemented.

The larger challenge of integrating and synchronising the multiple layers of bureaucracy and technology in DHS
is likely to be a major stumbling block for US policymakers. Of course, there’s no shortage of new ideas and
cutting-edge border security technology—from biometrics to ground surveillance radars, new ideas abound in DHS.
The department is likely to find the challenge of creating a cohesive system of systems to provide greater overall
security than its component parts difficult for some time to come.

The US border-security policy response remains fixed and flatfooted,

while the threat continuously innovates.

Neither walls nor technology is likely to be able to permanently disrupt illicit trafficking or irregular migration. The
US border-security policy response remains fixed and flatfooted, while the threat continuously innovates. Similarly,
isolationist trends in US political and policy circles are likely to continue to focus border security agencies on walls
and barriers rather than on facilitation.

While biometrics and other identification technologies will be of increasing importance for the border agencies,
they are likely to have little impact on the permeability of borders for travellers. Even the application of biometric
technologies is likely to be prioritised to international airports, given their symbolic value. The success of such
measures will be predicated on DHS’s ability to develop sufficient computing capacity for real or near real-time
data collation.

One area of particular policy interest and growth in US border security policy work will be the development of
meaningful organisational performance measures. For policymakers, defining what success looks like in a practical
sense will be difficult. While numbers of deportations or border detections and seizures have political value, they
aren’t proxies for successful threat disruption or risk mitigation.

ASPI STRATEGY
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 The future of US border security 43

Overall, it appears that US authorities, and their policymakers, are unlikely to achieve any substantive
improvements in border security for the foreseeable future. There are likely to be continued piecemeal advances in
such areas as intelligence collation, intelligence sharing and remote surveillance, but they are unlikely to result in
serious risk mitigation or threat disruption without a clear strategy that engages the necessary system-of-systems
thinking. If US border security strategy doesn’t move policy thinking towards a facilitation-focused, risk-based
model, effectiveness could decline substantially.

Regardless of who wins the 2016 US presidential election, migration and border security will continue to be central
policy issues. For those on both sides of US politics, working out what policy success looks like will be central to any
meaningful change in meeting both border security and migration challenges.

ASPI STRATEGY
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