As a prelude to the White House's legislative impetus to completely bypass any type of strengthened security of America's porous border with Mexico, the Obama Regime has discontinued a program considered integral to maintaining US border security, which has been in place since the 1980's.
The system, identified by the acronym TARS was designed to identify low-flying airborne contacts attempting to evade US border security and air radar. These types of contacts could range from low-flying airplanes, helo's and military jets, to even terrorist fired missiles which could threaten mainland America, and especially citizens, who live within most US border States.
In response to what many deem a severe lapse of domestic security, a petition was filed at the White House's "We The People" website, which beseeched Obama to provide funding for the continuance of the US-Mexico border security program. So far, the petition has recorded only 1,195 signatures of the 100,000 needed to effect an administration response.
The defense program, identified as TARS, which stands for tethered aerostat systems, is a relatively low-cost stationary radar system providing real-time low level radar identification of any and all low-flying traffic. The system provides radar coverage to the entire US border along Mexico, the Florida straits, and even a section of the Caribbean sea, which also provides drug-trafficking surveillance for the US DOD counter-drug programs. In addition, TARS is also considered a segment of protection for the North American Aerospace Defense Command with regard to their air sovereignty mission for the continental US.
On January 17th, Exelis Systems Corporation sent out an email to its employees informing them that the border radar detection program would be shutdown and permanently ceased on March 15th of 2013. When Exelis had earlier learned that its operations were being discontinued, the Department of Homeland Security was contacted to apprise them of the gap in border security, but to no avail, DHS appeared not to be interested in maintaining such a security system, despite its operational budget of nearly $ 40 billion dollars for fiscal year 2013.
The cost of the TARS progam, in 2007, was a mere $ 3.5 million dollars, which is the approximate cost of flying Air Force One on a single round trip to Hawaii.
At a time when gun violence from drug cartel incursions along the border have increased in conjunction with congressional action on reforming US illegal immigration policy, many have questioned the administrations increasingly lackadaisical approach to US border security, which has often been referred to as Obama's 'Open Borders program.'
On August 24th of 2012, ten ICE agents sued the Obama administration over its unwillingness to deport certain illegal immigrants.
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