Technological issues are causing the construction of a virtual border fence to be delayed another month, according to The Congress Daily.  The program, implemented by the Bush Administration was partially outsourced by the Department of Homeland Security to Boeing Corp., who was paid $20 million to develop an SBINet integrated system for 28 miles of Arizona/Mexico border by June.  Technical glitches arose during Boeing’s work, and DHS has refused to accept further work from Boeing on the project.  

"I am not going to buy something with U.S. government money unless I’m satisfied it works in the real world," DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff told lawmakers during a hearing last week.  "We said ‘if this is not going to work, if it’s too complicated, we’re prepared to go back to the drawing board and do something simpler," Chertoff said. "And they assured us that, in fact, it’s not too complicated; this is all proven technology."  

Despite the errors, Chertoff hopes that DHS will begin testing the system in about a month’s time.  A spokesman from DHS later added that it will take four to nine weeks for Boeing to resolve their problems.  

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According to the head from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, it would cost at least $94 billion to find, detain, and detain the estimates 12 million currently living in the United States .  Julie Myers, ICE chief, gave the figure during a Senate hearing earlier this week.  

An ICE spokesman later added that the $94 billion would not include all costs associated with finding undocumented immigrants, and doesn’t even address the court costs.  He said the agency found this amount by multiplying the estimated 12 million people by $97, the average cost of detaining a person per day; this number was then multiplied by the average length of detention, one month.  Also added to the figure were transportation costs, which average $1,000 per person.