Immigration Law

Mom Patrols U.S. Border From Her Den

By Robert Kraft

A story on CNN describes a woman in Rochester, New York, who patrols the Texas-Mexico border from her home. She does this virtually, by using cameras she can view over the Internet. Here is the beginning of the article:

When her baby girl takes an afternoon nap, or on those nights when she just can't sleep, Sarah Andrews, 32, tosses off her identity as a suburban stay-at-home mom and becomes something more exotic: a "virtual deputy" patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border.

From her house in a suburb of Rochester, New York, Andrews spends at least four hours a day watching a site called BlueServo.net.

There, because of a $2 million grant from the state of Texas, anyone in the world can watch grainy live video scenes of cactuses, desert mountains and the Rio Grande along Texas' portion of the international border.

When Andrews spots something she deems suspicious -- perhaps a fuzzy character moving from right to left across the screen or people wading through the river with what appear to be trash bags atop their heads -- she and the site's 43,000 registered users can send e-mail messages straight to local law enforcement, who then decide whether to act.

Full post as published by Immigration Law Answers Blog on March 12, 2009 (boomark / email).