The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Boeing, lead contractor on the SBInet border security program, are in trouble with lawmakers for not keeping them up to date on deployment slips for a virtual fence in Arizona.

SBInet, the network centric portion of the Secure Border Initiative (SBI), was supposed to kick off June 13 at a 28-mile stretch, known as Project 28, along the Mexican border near Sasabe, Ariz. Officials from DHS, Boeing and the SBI made no mention of problems with Project 28 when they testified before the House Homeland Security Committee June 7.

But the next day, DHS officials called the committee staff - not Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) or any other panel members - to say Project 28 would be delayed a week, to June 20, because of problems with its radar system. On June 15, in another call to committee staffers, DHS said the June 20 date was going to slip too, because of problems integrating the project's nine surveillance towers.

"It is difficult to believe that with problems of this magnitude, delays were not foreseeable at the June 7 hearing," Thompson and Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.), the border subcommittee chair, wrote Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

The lawmakers asked Chertoff to clarify the June 7 hearing record because the "failure to be forthcoming and the repeatedly slipping project deadlines" undermine DHS' credibility.

Before DHS awarded a Boeing-led team a $67 million contract in 2006 for SBInet's first phase - a 28-mile virtual fence of networked sensors, cameras and communications equipment (DAILY, Sept. 22, 2006) along the Mexican border - industry leaders speculated the total program could run as high as $2 billion.

DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner last fall estimated the total price tag could range as high as $30 billion because of a lack of controls. But DHS earlier this year estimated the project's total cost at $8 billion (DAILY, Feb. 16).