A US-based producer of high-end computing and industrial products that provides Mobile Video Surveillance Systems (MVSS) to US immigration authorities for monitoring the US–Mexico border.
Benchmark Electronics, Inc., headquartered in Tempe, Ariz., is a manufacturing, engineering, and information technology (IT) company that serves the military, aerospace, medical, telecommunications, and computing industries. The company has subsidiaries in the U.S., Brazil, China, Ireland, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Romania, Singapore, and Thailand.
Benchmark Electronics has manufactured Mobile Video Surveillance Systems (MVSS) for CBP through its subsidiary Tactical Micro. MSVV units consist of “day and night camera systems fitted on telescopic poles mounted on Border Patrol 4 x 4 vehicles.” The systems are installed on Ford F-150 pickup trucks used for monitoring the U.S.–Mexico border.
As of July 2024, Tactical Micro has been awarded just over $73 million to provide U.S. immigration authority Customs and Border Protection (CBP) with MVSS. CBP awarded Tactical Micro the MVSS contract in October 2015, the same week that Benchmark Electronics announced it would acquire Tactical Micro’s parent company. The acquisition was finalized a month later.
As of November 2023, the agency continues to use the surveillance vehicles. In a 2023 advertisement video, Tactical Micro promoted the use of its MVSS units for “crowd control, crowd safety, border control, search and rescue, and facility security.” Units may be linked to communications systems using Wi-Fi, cellular network, satellite, and other antennas. In 2022, AT&T was awarded a contract worth up to $155,958 for providing network services for MVSS under the company’s FirstNet communications network, used by first responders and law enforcement.
MVSS are intended to “augment fixed surveillance systems that have line-of-sight coverage gaps caused by existing infrastructure, terrain or vegetation.” It is a component of CBP’s Border Surveillance Systems (BSS), which includes Elbit Systems Integrated Fixed Towers (IFT), General Dynamics Remote Video Surveillance System (RVSS), drones, and underground sensors.
In an FY2021 budget document, the Department of Homeland Security stated that it was planning to deploy an additional 165 MVSS along the U.S.–Mexico border. As of 2022, CBP stated that all funding prior to 2022 would be used to acquire and deploy the 165 units along the U.S.–Mexico border in Texas. The last contract awarded to Tactical Micro regarding MVSS expired in 2021. In 2020, CBP began upgrading MVSS with Elbit’s Modular Mobile Surveillance System (M2S2), which includes radar capabilities used to target and detect moving objects in low-visibility conditions.