The President hath spoken: Let there be border security. At those words, hundreds of people in Washington jumped up and began preparing to do their part to stage what will become at best border security theater, and at worst a border security nightmare.

The Department of Homeland Security is running around without purpose or direction, like chickens with their heads cut off. It’s failed to develop a strategic border security plan, which has pissed off Congress. And the reason, of course, is that DHS really has no idea what to do to secure the border, aside from throw money at it.

“And so we began the process of looking at this issue in a comprehensive fashion,” said DHS secretary Michael Chertoff, “basically trying to understand the whole system of what fuels the illegal migration business model so we could figure out what our best approach would be to deter it and to really dismantle it.”

And of course they came up with the wrong answer, because they asked the wrong question.

“First of all, we needed to add more people,” he said. And you’ve got to add more government contracts for “things like fences, vehicle barriers and roads — and as important, next generation technology,” he said, in order to “arrest a million people.” But not just arrest them. “We have to actually remove them.”

And in order to do so, DHS is going to have to do a lot more work, and get a lot more money, at least $2 billion for fancy gadgets alone, and another $1.95 billion for border patrol agents. “We’re trying to come up with cost estimates now,” said Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense Paul McHale. Yes, that’s really his title. “DoD and DHS will use civilian contractors when appropriate,” he said.

The department will be arresting a lot more people, so they will need to make more creative use of existing detention space, and may actually have to build new detention facilities. Good thing they already have a Halliburton contract for that.

But wait, what about this so-called illegal migration business model? Let’s let Chertoff speak again: “if we look at the business model for the illegal migrant, we have to consider the tremendous economic pressure that is driving people into this country.”

So what’s the plan? “If you build a dam and you don’t have a spillway to drain off some of the excess water in a way that’s productive, you will eventually have to either keep building the dam higher and higher or the dam will break. We have to have a spillway for some of this economic pressure, and that’s a temporary worker program,” he said. “And in order to make that work we also have to have a stick, and that’s tough interior enforcement.”

Hm, I must have missed the carrot somewhere.

The Senate has approved 370 miles of border fence plus 500 more miles of vehicle barriers. And so the dam building picks up speed. Guess who’s going to pay for it.

But the proposal to create a temporary guest worker program is stalling out. If it fails to pass, we’re going to have a fence and thousands of troops on the border, and then we’ll go the way of all societies which have built fences to keep people out — or in, for that matter.

Meanwhile, back in D.C., Alberto Gonzales revealed on CNN that his own grandparents might have been illegal immigrants. While there’s nothing wrong with that — the whole idea of coming here in the first place is to gain an opportunity for a better life for one’s self and one’s progeny — it is kind of embarrassing for him. Under existing policies, and even under the new policies which will probably come about, he would have to deport his own grandparents, were they still living.

This fiasco would be quite fun to watch unfold, if only it weren’t blowing billions of dollars on the impossible.