WASHINGTON, D.C. – This week, House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark E. Green, MD (R-TN) sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, demanding documents and information regarding the status of Remote Video Surveillance System (RVSS) towers deployed along the Southwest border in support of the U.S. Border Patrol’s (USBP) border security mission.

The Committee recently spoke to sources within DHS who flagged multiple pressing concerns regarding these systems. According to these sources, the USBP relies on more than 200 RVSS towers to “enable the Border Patrol to survey large areas without having to commit hundreds of agents in vehicles to perform the same function.” However, since June 2023, roughly two-thirds of those cameras have gone completely off-line and not been repaired, preventing Border Patrol agents from making use of these important capabilities, limiting agents’ ability to detect and respond to illegal entries, and likely contributing to an undercounting of known gotaways. 

Additionally, these sources informed the Committee that per an interagency memorandum of understanding between Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the FAA is responsible for maintaining these RVSS cameras, and those who work on the system must abide by specific security protocols, such as the equivalent of a background check. However, according to one internal source, a review conducted by CBP discovered that dozens of contractors who were working on these cameras were not even in CBP’s system, and were thus not cleared to work on these law-enforcement sensitive assets. Even more shockingly, CBP was unable to verify that several workers, in particular, were even U.S. citizens.  

The Committee has therefore requested a variety of documents and records from DHS, including daily availability reports for these systems and communications regarding concerns over potentially unvetted or unqualified individuals working on them.   

In the letter, Chairman Green states, “Surveillance tools, such as remote video towers, are a force multiplier which enables ‘Border Patrol to survey large areas without having to commit hundreds of agents in vehicles to perform the same function, thus improving the safety of agents as they detect, identify, and classify incursions at the border . . . .’”

Chairman Green continues, “Disturbingly, multiple sources revealed to the Committee last week that more than 66 percent of the cameras in the remote video surveillance systems upgrade (RVSS-U) program are inoperable. According to these sources, some of the busiest Southwest border sectors have nearly 50 or more cameras offline with multiple towers that have been out of service for more than a year. Committee sources also divulged that the Federal Aviation Administration, the vendor responsible for the repair of these cameras, contracts to companies employing non-U.S. citizens who may be physically manipulating the equipment on the camera towers.”

Chairman Green concludes, “Employment of such individuals appears to violate the CBP’s Information Systems Security Policies and Procedures Handbook, which states that “CBP policy requires that only Government and contractor personnel who are U.S. citizens shall be granted access to CBP systems processing sensitive information.”

The Committee has requested these documents be delivered no later than 5pm Wednesday, October 23. 

###