Leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told an upstate New York newspaper that he wants unmanned and unarmed drones to help patrol U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico night and day.
“They would work in conjunction with the Border Patrol, who are fantastic people who want to do their job,” Trump told Syracuse.
But, in January of 2015, an Inspector General audit claimed that drones were inefficient, barely did anything to stop illegal border crossers, and were too costly.
“The unmanned aircraft are not meeting flight hour goals,” the audit claimed, saying that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency “cannot demonstrate how much the program has improved border security,” the Washington Post reported.