Drones cost $28,000 for one arrest

Sierra Vista, Arizona (CNN)They are sleek, mostly silent converted weapons of war: Drones used by the Border Patrol to scan the skies in the empty deserts of the Southwest to spot illegal immigrants and then, if things work out, have agents arrest them. That's the idea, and the agents who use them say the drones give them a vantage point they never had before.

CNN was inside the control room in Fort Huachuca, Arizona, during a recent mission, when a control team inside a virtual cockpit operated the drones.

Flying at 18,000 feet, the drones view the landscape below, lock onto potential suspects crossing the Arizona desert, and agents on the ground move into make the arrests. But it's outrageously expensive: $28,000 for a single arrest.

That figure comes from doing the math, derived from the most recent Inspector General report on the use of drones for the Department of Homeland Security.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/25/us/drones-border-patrol/index.html