But critics saw the deployment of Blackwater’s forces domestically as a dangerous precedent that could undermine U.S. democracy. “Their actions may not be subject to constitutional limitations that apply to both federal and state officials and employees—including First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights to be free from illegal searches and seizures. Unlike police officers, they are not trained in protecting constitutional rights,” said CCR’s Ratner. “These kind of paramilitary groups bring to mind Nazi Party brownshirts, functioning as an extrajudicial enforcement mechanism that can and does operate outside the law. The use of these paramilitary groups is an extremely dangerous threat to our rights.”
Blackwater and the Border
One quality Blackwater USA has consistently put on display is its uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right moment—especially when it comes to scooping up lucrative government contracts. Far from being a matter of simple luck, the company has dedicated substantial resources to monitoring trends in the world of law enforcement and military actions and has hired many well-connected ex-spooks, former federal officials, and military brass. Like the best entrepreneurs, Blackwater is always looking to provide what it refers to as “turnkey” solutions for problems ailing the government bureaucracy or to fill the seemingly endless “national security” holes appearing in the wake of the “war on terror.” In the years following 9/11, Blackwater proved remarkably adept at placing itself in the middle of many of the prized battles the administration (and the right in general) was waging: rapid privatization of government, the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and bolstering Christian/Republican friendly businesses.
While the hurricanes expedited Blackwater’s domestic program, it was by no means the first time the company had considered the major profits to be made on the home front. In fact, in mid-2005, three months before Katrina hit—and with its forces firmly entrenched in Iraq and a taxpayer-funded I.V. running directly from Washington, D.C., to Moyock—Blackwater quietly threw its hat into the ring of another major front: immigration and “border security.” After the launch of the “war on terror,” anti-immigrant groups used the fear of further attacks to push for greater militarization of the U.S. borders—with some calling for a massive fence stretching hundreds of miles along the U.S./Mexico border—and to “crack down” on people they characterized as “illegal aliens.”
In April 2005, the anti-immigrant/pro-militarized-border cause got a huge boost as the Minuteman Project Civil Defense Corps exploded onto the scene. The overwhelmingly white movement organized anti-immigrant militias to patrol the U.S. border with Mexico. The Minutemen, named after the militias that fought in the American Revolution, billed themselves as “Americans doing the jobs our Government won’t do.” They claimed to have hundreds of volunteers from thirty-seven states, among them many former military and law enforcement officers as well as pilots who would do aerial surveillance.
One of Blackwater’s key Congressional allies, Representative Duncan Hunter, began stepping up his campaign for a massive “border fence,”49 while Erik Prince’s old boss, Representative Dana Rohrabacher endorsed the Minutemen, saying the militias “demonstrated the positive effects of an increased presence on the southwest border. There’s no denying that more border patrol agents would help create a stronger border and decrease illegal crossings that may include international terrorists.”50 T. J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council—a lobbying organization—echoed those sentiments, invoking the 9/11 attacks. “Even if a terrorist is a one-in-a-million occurrence, with several million people coming into the country every year, very soon they reach that critical mass necessary to carry out another attack on the magnitude of September 11,” he said. “This is totally unacceptable from the standpoint of homeland security and national security. We have to gain control of our borders.”51
On Capitol Hill, Republican operatives seized the opportunity to escalate their anti-immigrant, proprivatization, promilitarization campaign and push forward with an agenda that would have been difficult to popularize before 9/11. Now, the new national hysteria provided the ideal turf to wage the battle. In the midst of this, on May 18, 2005, the House of Representatives passed the first Department of Homeland Security Authorization Bill, which approved the hiring of some two thousand new border patrol agents. On May 24, the House Homeland Security Committee’s management integration and oversight subcommittee held a hearing on the training of these new agents. One of the central purposes of the hearing seemed to be to promote outsourcing the border-training program to the private sector.
The first panel of the hearings consisted of two U.S. government immigration officials. The second panel represented the private industry. For this panel, there were just two speakers: T. J. Bonner and Gary Jackson.52 “We need reinforcements desperately, and we need them yesterday,” Bonner told the hearing. “There’s a crying need for agents clearly, which is borne out by the call for citizen patrol groups, military on the border. Clearly we’re not doing our job. But the reason we need more border patrol agents is to secure our borders. We need to spend whatever it takes, not try and do it on the cheap, not try and figure out how we can cut corners to hire as many border patrol agents as possible, but to spend whatever it takes to support these men and women so that they can go out there.”53 Jackson began his testimony by running through a brief, selective history of Blackwater. The company, he said, was founded “from a clear vision of the need for innovative, flexible training and security solutions in support of national and global security challenges. Both the military and law enforcement agencies needed additional capacity to fully train their personnel to the standards required to keep our country secure. Because these constraints on training venues continued to increase, Blackwater believed that the U.S. government would embrace outsourcing of quality training. We built Blackwater’s facility in North Carolina to provide the capacity that we thought our government would need to meet its future training requirements. Over the years, Blackwater has not only become an industry leader in training but at the cutting edge.” Jackson said that as the company grew, “We quickly realized the value to the government of one-stop shopping. While there were other companies who offered one or two distinct training services, none of them offer all of our services and certainly not at one location.” The importance of this, Jackson said, “cannot be overstated. Being able to conduct training at a centralized locality is the most cost-effective, efficient way of ensuring that new federal law enforcement agents are trained to the level demanded by today’s national and homeland security challenges.”54
Alabama Republican Mike Rogers, who chaired the Congressional hearing, blasted the costs of government training programs for border agents, saying, “It’s going to cost more to train a border patrol officer in a ten-month program than it is to get a four-year degree at Harvard University.” Rogers asked: if Blackwater was given $100,000 per agent, did Jackson believe the company “would give them equal or better training than they’re receiving” from the federal government’s training program? “I could assure you of that,” Jackson shot back. He told the lawmakers that Blackwater could train all two thousand new border patrol agents in one year. “Blackwater successfully conducts a similar public-private partnership with the Department of State to recruit, train, deploy, and manage diplomatic security specialists in Iraq and other areas of interest. Securing our borders will continue to be a challenge for our nation,” Jackson said. “The urgency is clear. History repeatedly demonstrates that innovation and efficiency are what alter the strategic balance, and Blackwater offers both in support of training new border patrol agents. Just as the private sector has responded in moving mail and packages around the world in a more efficient manner, so too can Blackwater respond to the CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) emerging and compelling training needs.”