Since I’ve been in Congress—it’s going on four years—I’ve had the opportunity to question Secretary Chertoff, not only in this committee, but in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.  Each time he has appeared, he’s always been very forthright in the information he’s provided.  What I’ve seen is a great improvement in some of the projects that we were all concerned about in the beginning.  There has been an increase in Border Patrol—they’re graduating 100 Border Patrol Officers a week now from the Academy, and before they were struggling to find a place to even train them.  Project 28, the virtual fencing technology that Boeing and Border Patrol worked together on, had its slow starts, which caused both sides great consternation, but Boeing has made progress, and I think they will continue to make progress now as they work toward implementing the next phase of the virtual fence.  So on the northern border of Washington state and Canada, we’re looking forward to added border patrol, added technology, and unmanned aircraft.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 3:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized .