National Security Commission receives updates during national convention in Tampa.
This year, the United States has seen a reduction of 96 percent across the board in illegal immigration. That number was shared directly with The American Legion during the organization’s national convention in Tampa, Fla.
Chief of U.S Border Patrol Michael Banks addressed members of The American Legion National Security Commission on Aug. 23. The commission also received briefings on the U.S. Space Force, and the recovery efforts for prisoners of wars and those U.S. servicemembers missing in action from the Vietnam War.
Banks noted that last month, 4,731 people entered the United States a year ago. “We were averaging 10,000 a day the same time last year,” he said. “In one month, we apprehended less people than we apprehended day on the Mexico-U.S. border. The other number I love to use the most is zero. The U.S. Border Patrol has released zero people into this country for the last three months straight. And we’re working on zero again this month.”
Enforcement is what has driven numbers down, Banks explained. “If you know the probability of being apprehended for committing a crime is high, the probability of being prosecuted and then deported after that prosecution … that is what has driven our numbers down,” he said. “Not just that we’re there. It’s that we’re there and we’re actually going to enforce the law.”
Banks said that the United State is a nation of immigrants. “Immigrants built this country. We will only survive with immigrants in this country,” he said. “But you’ve got to come to the front door, knock on the door and be invited in so we can vet you and know who you are and why you’re coming to this country.”
The Far-Reaching Impact of Space. The commission also received a briefing from U.S. Space Command Brig. Gen. Brian Sidari, Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Intelligence. He said some don’t realize how much activity in space impacts daily lives.
“Many consider space as this far-off, untouchable area. But the reality is space underpins nearly aspect of our modern lives,” he said. “More than half of the U.S. sectors … depend on space. Every day, if you check the weather, make a purchase with a credit card, send a text … you’re calling upon a satellite to make it happen. Activity in space continues to increase rapidly, as has our dependence and reliance on it.”
Sidari shared examples of that increased activity. “In 2011, the Department of Defense tracked about 1,000 active satellites and approximately 17,000 man-made objects in space,” he said. “When the U.S. Space Force was established in 2019, those numbers had grown to more than 2,000 and 25,000, respectively.
“As the Space Force approaches its sixth birthday this coming December, we’re tracking over 9,000 active satellites and almost 45,000 objects. In just over a decade, from 1,000 to 9,000 satellites. In 2022 and 2023, the world launched more satellites into orbit than all previous years combined – almost 65 years of launches.”
Sidari also noted how Space Force and efforts focused on space have impacted other branches of the U.S. military. “The ability to integrate space-based capabilities over many decades has even allowed us to shrink the overall size of the military force structure,” he said. “Over the last three decades the number of U.S. military personnel and equipment, including ships and aircraft, has decreased in size on average by 40 percent. And yet, we have increased our military’s effectiveness, efficiency and projection of power. By integrating space into all levels of the military, we have made each one of our soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen, Guardians and Coast Guardsmen more effective.”
But the United States’ dominance in space now is threatened.
“Our military force design was and is predicated a key assumption: that we could use space at the time and place of our choosing … unchallenged. This assumption is no longer valid,” Sidari said. “While we learned how to leverage space for better warfighting, the world and our adversaries watched and learned. And global challengers learned to understand our capabilities. Our adversaries have worked overtime to invest heavily across the broad portfolio of space weapons. Those weapons come in many forms. Some are obvious … meant to destroy our satellites. Others are directed energy weapons, like lasers meant to dazzle sensitive satellite sensors and optics. Adversaries’ jamming weapons are designed to enter fear with their use of the electromagnetic spectrum.
“These threats are not isolated. They’re part of a concerted effort by our adversaries to challenge our use of space and undermine our national security. They have the capability, and more importantly, they have the capacity. Moreover, these adversaries do not share our vision of a free and open society. The threats are real. They are growing. And they demand our constant vigilance.”
To combat, the United States needs “to invest in new technologies, develop innovative operation concepts, and recruit and train the best and brightest minds to ensure that we maintain our competitive advantage in space,” Sidari said. “The challenges we face in the domain are significant, but so are the opportunities.”
Sidari said the goal of the Space Force is to deter conflict from extending into space. “But should the deterrence fail, set the conditions to win,” he said. “Setting the conditions to win means achieving superiority over a challenger. In space, it means having the ability to control the domain at a time and place of our choosing, while preventing an adversary from doing the same.”
A Focus on the Vietnam War. The commission also received an update on the U.S. prisoner of war and missing in action recovery effort in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia from Bradley Taylor, STONY BEACH’s program director. STONY BEACH falls under the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and is the only U.S. government entity focused solely on Vietnam War POW/MIA accounting.
Taylor said STONY BEACH is a “gather-and-report mission. We’re not archeologists. We’re not anthropologists. Our expertise is in finding information and recording. So that’s our focus. And another reason this is our focus – and it saddens me to say this – but not everybody, not all the families, will receive the remains of their loved one. It’s just not a reality. But we believe that through information, we can still help provide answers to families by filling information gaps, so they can get a fuller picture on what happened to their loved one.”
STONY BEACH’s work includes independent research and activities, as well as collaborations with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) and others through Joint Field Activities (JFAs).
“(JFAs) are official bilateral missions. We work with our counterparts directly when we conduct these investigations,” said Taylor, an Army National Guard veteran. “These are the most significant and important part of the whole investigation and excavation process. DPAA manages the relationship with our counterparts, and they do a great job of that. But there are limitations to the JFA investigations, and some of those include the fact they’re very resource-intensive. They require a lot of money and a lot of personnel.”
Those activities, Taylor said, are controlled by the host nation where the investigation is taking place. “The main reason why this is a problem is because there are a lot of people – in Vietnam and Laos, specifically, and some in Cambodia – that do not want to burden their own government. Some of them don’t want to work with us. So, they don’t come forward in that environment.
“That’s why it’s important for STONY BEACH to have another capability to conduct our own independent research and our independent activities to address the limitations of that Joint Field Activity process. So that’s how we primarily conduct our mission.”
Taylor also briefly talked about how STONY BEACH addresses reports of U.S. POWs who are still alive. “This is not to say that we believe anybody is alive being held against their will. We don’t have any evidence of that,” he said. “However, it is still incumbent on us to take all of these reports of live POWs seriously. Oftentimes, we know right off the bat it’s a fraudulent claim. That it’s a scam. That it’s bogus.
“But for those reports where we can definitively say t’s bogus, we have run it into the ground. This is still our No. 1 priority. This is why we were established in 1987, and we continue to do that today – albeit not nearly as often.”
- Convention