New GPS tool helping illegal aliens cross the border

There seems to be a mobile phone application for just about everything these days -- even illegal border crossing.

An application still in the testing stages is designed to point border-crossers to nearby water, show them safer routes and provide them with a series of poems to make them feel welcome along their way.

Individuals trekking north may soon be able to download the program into an inexpensive web-enabled cellular phone that is supposed to help them safely navigate the treacherous desert crossing between Mexico and the United States, known as the Devil's Highway.

"The point of the project is to offer multiple spaces of sustenance," said Ricardo Dominguez, who led the creation of the tool. Dominguez, an associate professor of visual arts at UC San Diego, leads a team at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology where he is a principal investigator.

The team -- which involved a collection of researchers from different disciplines of study -- is hoping to have the application, called a Transborder Immigrant Tool, officially up and running by mid-2010 after a series of test runs in the desert to adjust the kinks and make necessary tweaks. For now, the invention is in its beta stage.

While U.S. Border Patrol officials say they are not worried by the invention, which they see as more of a nuisance, the news has already made its way into anti-illegal immigration Web chat rooms, enraging members of that movement.

"He is aiding and abetting criminal activity," said Barbara Coe, founder of Huntington Beach-based California Coalition for Immigration Reform. "He should be arrested and prosecuted."

Dominguez, who calls himself an Artivist -- a cross between an artist and activist -- said he's expecting a flurry of criticism from what he calls the "hard-core conservative Lou Dobbs community." He claims that he isn't bothered by it.

"We're not trying to resolve the border issues...," Dominguez said. "We're just trying to create a poetic safety tool. Anyone can agree on safety as a far as a core human right."

The idea for the tool began with a Virtual Hiker Tool, developed by a university colleague with an impaired sense of direction who favored desert hikes.

"Then we began to speak about another possibility It was kind of a non-event," Dominguez said. "Here we are in the border. We know people are dying crossing. To us it was obvious...It was 'how can we tweak this GPS algorithm and develop it for another concern -- the question of people dying on the border.' "

The tool pairs cheap cell phone technology with a global-positioning system and consistently updated online data to guide individuals who are trying to cross international borders. The GPS system, however, doesn't contact all three satellites so authorities would not be able to triangulate where the person is, unless he or she used the phone to make a call.

Border Patrol officials said the device won't stop them from nabbing border-crossers.
"The technology is not new...," said U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Mark Qualia. He added that he's seen these sort of tools used before. "That's the nature of our job. We have to learn to overcome and to adapt."

While he said the tool may provide border-crossers with a slight advantage, he said the agency has a variety of detection tools at their disposal.
"We have ground radar. We have cameras. Our enforcement and technology that we are using is not onefold," Qualia said. "But once there is detection if they cross and hit a sensor the GPS is not going to help them."

As for whether the government would go after someone like Dominguez, Qualia said he could not answer and that it would be up to the U.S. Attorney's Office to prosecute, if they deem appropriate.

Dominguez said he's not worried about the government cracking down on his project.
"If we were the kind to sit around and be concerned about that, the last 20 years of my research would never have gotten done," he said. "We're not hiding. We're not anonymous. We're not sneaking around. We're willing to have a discussion on multiple levels."

Dominguez said he is in contact with non-governmental organizations on the border and churches that already help individuals with safe passage north, hoping to ultimately form a partnership for free distribution and training of the devices.
Some immigrant rights activists are already praising his work.

Enrique Morones, founder of Border Angels in San Diego, said the device would help save lives in the desert.

"Ricardo just wants to save people's lives. He's not encouraging people to cross," Morones said.

His group is known for setting water out in the middle of the desert for border-crossers.

"I get calls every week about a person lost out there," he said. "If he could save the life of one person with that device, all of that work would be worth it. You can't put a price on someone's life."

Others, however, are skeptical of the device's effectiveness.

Jorge-Mario Cabrera, spokesman for Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said the device won't solve what he called the real problem.

"We have pushed migrants to go into remote areas such as the Arizona desert," Cabrera said. "This is more of an issue of policy, not the lack of technology that is producing these deaths."

Minuteman Britt Craig, who splits his time between the Campo border and his home in Mission Viejo, said he understands Dominguez' invention on a humanitarian level.
"I'm sure his intentions are good. He doesn't want people to die in the desert. I don't want people to die in the desert either," said Craig, 60.

Still, he said, the device won't do the border-crosser or the American people any favors.

"As soon as they get over here the problem hasn't ended, it's just begun," he said. "They are in an immediate state between a slave and a legal free man laborer. They are totally at the mercy of the people who hire them and they just begin ruining the economy for the people who are legal to work here."

Craig said he doesn't believe the device will keep people from dying in the desert. He said he fears that it may have an opposite affect of emboldening some to make the journey on their own with the device.

"It may give people the confidence to go out and not be able to physically cross it and die," he said. "He may actually lead someone to their doom with the device... an unintended consequence. If they think a cell phone is going to get them through 80 miles of desert, south of Yuma. They are mistaken."

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/border-220422-people-desert.html