Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

AUSTIN -- An outspoken group of border-security advocates called Gov. Rick Perry's Internet surveillance program ineffective Tuesday, and urged him to order the Texas National Guard to the border.

"The cameras, I think, are really just a waste of money," said Rebecca Forest, co-founder of the Immigration Reform Coalition of Texas. "I don't know why he ever thought that would work."

A recent El Paso Times review of the first full year of Perry's Web-based border cameras showed the $2 million program produced just 11 arrests from 17 cameras on the 1,200-mile Texas-Mexico border.

Advocates of intensified border security, like Forest's group, as well as those on the other side of the issue, have called the program ineffective. But Perry's staff has said the cameras are a valuable tool to help prevent border crime, and he plans to seek money to keep the program operating.

Forest said many of Perry's border-security initiatives have been useful because they helped pay for more law enforcement on the border. But the cameras should be ditched, she said, and Perry should send in soldiers to keep violence in Mexico from spilling into the United States. She said she would also like to see the soldiers armed.

"It would just also send a very strong message to bad folks over in Mexico and Latin America that we're getting serious about it," Foster said.

During a February stop in El Paso, Perry said he wanted the federal government to send 1,000 soldiers to the Texas border.

"I don't care if they are military, National Guard or customs agents," Perry said then. "We're very concerned that the federal government is not funding border security adequately."

Perry spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger said he has continued to make pleas to Janet Napolitano, U.S. secretary of homeland security, for more soldiers on the border.

Perry has the authority to assign National Guard soldiers to the border, she said, but he believes that paying the tab should be a federal responsibility.

She said Perry had taken other measures to improve border security, including supporting the border cameras, paying state and local officers overtime to patrol the border and paying for additional equipment.

Foster said Perry should use his authority to put the National Guard soldiers on the border if the federal government didn't.

Border security, she said, is an issue she and other members of the coalition and conservative voters will consider in the March 2010 GOP gubernatorial primary election between Perry and U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

"He's done some good things," Foster said, "but I think he's fallen short on some of his promises."

Brandi Grissom may be reached at bgrissom@elpasotimes.com; 512-479-6606.