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Israeli High-Tech Firm Up-Armors the U.S.-Mexican Border
(TomDispatch.com) Todd Miller and Gabriel M. Schivone - In February 2014, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agency in charge of policing U.S. borders, contracted with Israel's Elbit Systems to build a "virtual wall," a technological barrier set back from the international divide in the Arizona desert. CBP has tasked Elbit with creating a "wall" of "integrated fixed towers" containing the latest in cameras, radar, motion sensors, and control rooms. This is not the first time Israeli companies have been involved in a U.S. border build-up. In 2004, Elbit's Hermes drones were the first unmanned aerial vehicles to take to the skies to patrol the southern border. In 2007, the Golan Group, an Israeli consulting company made up of former IDF Special Forces officers, provided an intensive eight-day course for DHS immigration agents covering everything from hand-to-hand combat to target practice to getting proactive with their SUV.