The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has awarded a hefty contract on border protection to the Israeli defence electronics company Elbit Systems’ US subsidiary, Israel’s Globes reports.
The newspaper quoted Elbit Systems of America President and CEO Ranaan Horowitz as saying that the company is “honoured to have been selected by the CBP and the Tohono O’odham Nation to provide a solution to suit the needs of those living and working along the border in the Casa Grande Area of Responsibility”.
“This project clearly demonstrates our company’s mission to provide innovative solutions that protect and save lives”, Horowitz pointed out.
Under the $26 million contract, the company will specifically deal with installing the Integrated Fixed Tower system in Arizona in the next 12 months to help CBP better monitor portions of the US southern border with Mexico.
The system will include a command and control centre as well as a networked multi-tower and multi-sensor system that will provide patrolling agents with intelligence.
Security of the US-Mexico border remains an issue for President Donald Trump who recently rebuked the Democrats for doing little to contribute to safety of the US southern border.
“Sad when you think about it, but Mexico right now is doing more for the United States at the border than the Democrats in Congress!” Trump tweeted earlier this month.
Mexican Defence Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval, for his part, told reporters on Monday that nearly 15,000 troops would be sent to the country’s northern border with the US in a bid to stem the flow of migrants into America.
“Given that migration is not a crime but rather an administrative violation, we simply detain them and turn them over to the authorities” at Mexico’s National Migration Institute, Sandoval said.
This comes in line with a bilateral declaration on measures to reduce the flow of illegal migrants through the US-Mexican border that Washington and Mexico clinched in early June. The document stipulates the US returning asylum seekers to Mexico, where they will remain as their cases are dealt with.
Trump declared a national emergency over the migrant situation after the so-called “migrant caravan” from Central America began making its way to the US through Mexico in the autumn of 2018.
The Democrats have repeatedly criticised Trump’s push for raising about $8 billion in federal funds for the construction of his controversial border wall.
