[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
NEW ``DUAL MISSIONS'' OF THE IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION,
BORDER SECURITY, AND CLAIMS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 5, 2005
__________
Serial No. 109-32
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/judiciary
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
21-026 WASHINGTON : 2005
_____________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr., Wisconsin, Chairman
HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois JOHN CONYERS, Jr., Michigan
HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
LAMAR SMITH, Texas RICK BOUCHER, Virginia
ELTON GALLEGLY, California JERROLD NADLER, New York
BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia ROBERT C. SCOTT, Virginia
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina
DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California ZOE LOFGREN, California
WILLIAM L. JENKINS, Tennessee SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
CHRIS CANNON, Utah MAXINE WATERS, California
SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts
BOB INGLIS, South Carolina WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana ROBERT WEXLER, Florida
MARK GREEN, Wisconsin ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York
RIC KELLER, Florida ADAM B. SCHIFF, California
DARRELL ISSA, California LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona ADAM SMITH, Washington
MIKE PENCE, Indiana CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
STEVE KING, Iowa
TOM FEENEY, Florida
TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas
Philip G. Kiko, Chief of Staff-General Counsel
Perry H. Apelbaum, Minority Chief Counsel
------
Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana, Chairman
STEVE KING, Iowa SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
LAMAR SMITH, Texas ZOE LOFGREN, California
ELTON GALLEGLY, California LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia MAXINE WATERS, California
DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
DARRELL ISSA, California
George Fishman, Chief Counsel
Art Arthur, Counsel
Luke Bellocchi, Full Committee Counsel
Cindy Blackston, Professional Staff
Nolan Rappaport, Minority Counsel
C O N T E N T S
----------
MAY 5, 2005
OPENING STATEMENT
Page
The Honorable John N. Hostettler, a Representative in Congress
from the State of Indiana, and Chairman, Subcommittee on
Immigration, Border Security, and Claims....................... 1
The Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, a Representative in Congress
from the State of Texas........................................ 51
The Honorable Steve King, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Iowa.................................................. 57
The Honorable Bob Goodlatte, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Virginia.......................................... 64
The Honorable Dan Lungren, a Representative in Congress from the
State of California............................................ 66
WITNESSES
Mr. Michael Cutler, former INS Senior Special Agent
Oral Testimony................................................. 3
Prepared Statement............................................. 6
Mr. T.J. Bonner, President, National Border Patrol Council
Oral Testimony................................................. 7
Prepared Statement............................................. 10
Ms. Janice Kephart, former September 11 Commission Staff Counsel
Oral Testimony................................................. 15
Prepared Statement............................................. 16
Mr. Richard Stana, Director of Homeland Security and Justice
Issues, U.S. Government Accountability Office
Oral Testimony................................................. 23
Prepared Statement............................................. 26
APPENDIX
Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
Prepared Statement and biography of Eugene R. Davis, Retired
Deputy Chief Border Patrol Agent, U.S. Immigration and
Naturalization Service......................................... 71
Prepared Statement of the Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, a
Representative in Congress from the State of Texas............. 73
Prepared Statement of the Honorable Elton Gallegly, a
Representative in Congress from the State of California........ 74
Map of ``9/11/2001 Deaths by State of Residence,'' submitted by
Mr. Michael Cutler............................................. 75
NEW ``DUAL MISSIONS'' OF THE IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES
----------
THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2005
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Immigration,
Border Security, and Claims,
Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:35 p.m., in
Room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable John
Hostettler (Chair of the Subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Hostettler. The Subcommittee will come to order.
The first two Subcommittee hearings of the year examined in
detail how the immigration enforcement agencies have inadequate
resources and too few personnel to carry out their mission. The
witnesses mentioned the lack of uniforms, badges, detention
space, and the inevitable low morale of frontline agents who
are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of incoming illegal aliens.
If this were not enough, these ``immigration enforcement''
agencies also face internal confusion resulting from dual or
multiple missions in which immigration has all too often taken
a back seat. Sadly, contrary to Congress' expectations,
immigration enforcement has not been the primary focus of
either of these agencies, and that is the subject of today's
hearing.
The Homeland Security Act, enacted in November 2002, split
the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, into
separate immigration service and enforcement agencies, both
within the Department of Homeland Security. This split had been
pursued by Chairman Sensenbrenner based on testimony and
evidence that the dual missions of INS had resulted in poor
performance.
There was a constant tug-of-war between providing good
service to law-abiding aliens and enforcing the law against
law-breakers. The plain language of the Homeland Security Act,
Title D, creates a ``Bureau of Border Security,'' and
specifically transfers all immigration enforcement functions of
INS into it. Yet when it came down to actually creating the
two: new agencies, the Administration veered off course.
Although the service functions of INS were transferred to
USCIS, the enforcement side of INS was split in two, what is
now Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to handle
interior enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
to guard our borders.
ICE was given all Customs agents, investigators,
intelligence and analysis-from the Treasury Department, as well
as the Federal Protective Service to guard Federal buildings,
and the Federal Air Marshals to protect our airplanes, and
finally the INS investigators.
CBP was given all Treasury Customs inspectors at the ports-
of-entry, Agriculture Inspector from the Department Of
Agriculture, and INS inspectors.
At no time during the reorganization planning was it
anticipated by the Committee that an immigration enforcement
agency would share its role with other enforcement
functions,such as enforcement of our customs laws. This simply
results in the creation of dual or multiple missions that the
act sought to avoid in the first place.
Failure to adhere to the statutory framework established by
HSA has produced immigration enforcement incoherence that
undermines the immigration enforcement mission central to DHS,
and undermines the security of our Nation's borders and
citizens.
It is not certain on what basis it was determined that
customs and agriculture enforcement should become part of the
immigration enforcement agency, except to require Federal
agents at the border to have more expertise and more functions.
It is also unknown on what basis the Federal Air Marshals
should become part of this agency, especially since it has been
revealed that the policy is not to apprehend out-of-immigration
status aliens when discovered on flights. If the mission of the
Department of Homeland Security is to protect the homeland, it
cannot effect its mission by compromising or neglecting
immigration enforcement for customs enforcement.
The 9/11 terrorists all came to the United States without
weapons or contraband--Added customs enforcement would not have
stopped 9/11 from happening. What might have foiled al Qaeda's
plan was additional immigration focus, vetting and enforcement.
And so what is needed is recognition that, one, immigration is
a very important national security issue that cannot take a
back seat to customs or agriculture. Two, immigration is a very
complex issue, and immigration enforcement agencies need
experts in immigration enforcement. And three, the leadership
of our immigration agencies should be shielded from political
pressures to act in a way which could compromise the Nation's
security.
While I am grateful for the service and good work of the
heads of our immigration agencies--some of whom are leaving
presently for other experiences in Government--I would urge the
Administration in the future to place the leadership of the
immigration agencies in the hands of those experienced in
immigration matters.
Mr. Hostettler. At this point, I will turn to other Members
of the Subcommittee for opening statements.
Mr. King, no statement at this time?
At this time I would like to turn to members of our panel
and introduce them.
Michael Cutler began working for the former Immigration and
Naturalization Service in 1971 as an immigration inspector
assigned to JFK National Airport in New York. Throughout his
career, he has been an immigration inspector, an immigration
adjudicator, and became a special agent in 1975. He has been
invited to testify before Congress and the 9/11 Commission on
many occasions by both the Majority and Minority because of his
broad experience in immigration enforcement over several
decades. He is also a frequent commentator on immigration
matters in such programs as Lou Dobbs, Fox News, numerous radio
programs and regularly appears on Radio WIBA in Madison,
Wisconsin, on Up Front with Vicki McKenna. Michael Cutler
graduated from Brooklyn College of the City University of New
York in 1971 with a B.A. In communications arts and science.
Our second witness will be Mr. T.J. Bonner, head of the
National Border Patrol Council, which represents more than
10,000 frontline Border Patrol employees. Mr. Bonner, a 27-year
veteran Border Patrol agent, is in a unique position to tell us
today about the current state of our immigration enforcement
agencies, the effect that policies have on morale, and Border
Patrol's ability to accomplish the immigration enforcement
mission, and employees' assessment of whether they have been
given proper mission direction and priorities.
Ms. Janice Kephart was counsel to the immigration team of
the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United
States, or the 9/11 Commission. Prior to that she served as
counsel to Senate Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and
Government Information, chaired by Senator John Kyl. Ms.
Kephart has been the author of numerous articles on immigration
and terrorism, and of a book entitled, The Enterprise of
Terror: The Structure of al-Qaeda and Radical Islamic Groups in
the United States. She also has been a guest on major media
shows such as Lou Dobbs.
Richard M. Stana is Director of Homeland Security and
Justice Issues at the Government Accountability Office. During
his 29-year career with GAO, he has directed reviews on a wide
variety of complex military and civilian management issues. Mr.
Stana earned a master's degree in business administration with
a concentration in financial management from Kent State
University. He is also a graduate of Cornell University's
Johnson School of Management Program on Strategic Decision
Making, and Harvard University's JFK School of Government
Program on Leadership and Performance.
If the witnesses would please rise to take the oath, and
raise your right hand.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Hostettler. Let the record reflect that all witnesses
answered in the affirmative.
Without objection, all of your written testimony will be
made a part of the record. If you could summarize that within 5
minutes. We have a series of lights, no bells, no whistles, but
lights to inform you of the time that you have left in your
testimony.
Once again, thank you for being here today.
Mr. Cutler, you are recognized.
TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL CUTLER, FORMER INS SENIOR SPECIAL AGENT
Mr. Cutler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Hostettler, Ranking Member Jackson Lee,
distinguished Members of Congress, members of the panel, ladies
and gentlemen, I welcome this opportunity to provide testimony
today on the critical issue of the dual missions of the
immigration enforcement agencies.
While my prepared testimony will focus on ICE, it's my
understanding that the inspections program of CBP is similarly
hobbled in its ability to enforce the immigration laws.
For decades our Nation has had the reputation of being the
can-do Nation; if we could dream it, we could accomplish it.
Our Nation's entry into both world wars ended with victory.
When President John F. Kennedy challenged our scientists and
engineers to land men on the moon and return them safely to the
Earth, in less than a decade we again rose to the challenge.
Today our Nation is challenged by many problems, and the
one issue that impacts so many of these other issues, the
enforcement and the administration of the immigration laws,
eludes our purported efforts at solving it.
For decades the immigration crisis--and it is, indeed, a
crisis--has grown more significant, and its repercussions have
increased exponentially. We are waging a war on terror and a
war on drugs. The immigration component of this battle, of
which not only the lives of our citizens, but the survival of
our Nation itself is on the line, appears to be insoluble. I am
here today to tell you that we can control our Nation's
borders, and we can effectively administer and enforce the
immigration laws from within the interior of the United States.
In order to gain control of our borders and our immigration
programs, we need to see it as a system; we also need to
understand that the interior enforcement program is critical to
gaining control over our Nation's borders.
Nearly half of the illegal aliens do not enter the country
by running the border, but rather by being admitted through a
port-of-entry and then subsequently violating their terms of
admission. Special agents are desperately needed to not only
seek to arrest illegal aliens, but to conduct field
investigations to uncover immigration fraud to restore
integrity to the benefits program which has been historically
plagued with high fraud rates. This is especially troubling as
we wage a war on terror. The 9/11 staff report on terrorist
travel made it clear that this dysfunction of bureaucracy aided
the terrorists who wrought so much damage upon our Nation.
The fact is that many of the managers of ICE appear more
focused on traditional Customs-oriented investigations than
they are on enforcing the Immigration and Nationality Act to
safeguard our Nation from terrorists and criminals who have
become adept at hiding in plain sight by making use of gaping
loopholes and deficiencies in the immigration bureaucracy that
go undetected by the law enforcement agency that is supposed to
enforce these laws.
Since the merger of legacy INS and legacy Customs into ICE,
the new ICE special agents are no longer even being given
Spanish language training, even though it's been estimated that
some 80 percent of the illegal alien population is, in fact,
Spanish-speaking. It is impossible to investigate individuals
you are unable to communicate with, yet this critical language
training program has been eliminated from the curriculum of new
ICE agents. I have to believe that this represents more than a
simple oversight on the part of the leaders at the Academy; it
underscores an absolute lack of desire to enforce the critical
immigration laws.
If anything, our agents should be getting additional
language training as we seek to uncover aliens operating within
our Nation's borders who are a threat to our well-being.
Strategic languages such as Arabic, Farsi and Urdu should be
added to the curriculum, along with Chinese, Korean and other
such languages; yet at present the curriculum not only fails to
mandate any foreign language training, it doesn't even offer
any foreign language training.
Identity documents are the lynchpins that hold the
immigration program together, yet incredibly, while other law
enforcement agencies provide in-service document training to
their personnel to help them recognize altered or counterfeited
identity documents, ICE does not. Immigration law training is
not as effective as it needs to be.
Besides the extreme lack of resources that have been the
focus at previous hearings, we need to make certain that the
people in charge of enforcing the immigration laws have a true
understanding of the laws and have a clear sense of mission
that many key managers appear to lack. At present, nearly every
field office of ICE is headed by a Special Agent-in-Charge who
came from the U.S. Customs Service and not from the former INS.
The immigration laws are highly complex and require that the
executives who are charged with leading the enforcement effort
have a thorough understanding of the laws that they are
responsible for enforcing. They should have real-world
experience at investigating and aiding in the prosecution of
criminal organizations that produce fraudulent documents,
promote fraud schemes to circumvent the immigration laws,
engage in large-scale human trafficking or the smuggling of
criminal or terrorist aliens into the United States. They
should also have real-world experience and understanding of the
ways in which proper enforcement of the immigration laws can
synergistically act as a force multiplier when ICE agents team
up with law enforcement officers from other law enforcement
agencies.
The effective enforcement of immigration laws can also help
to cultivate informants to facilitate not only investigations
into immigration law violations, but into other areas of
concern, including narcotics investigations, gang
investigations and terrorism investigations.
The current lack of leadership that is experienced in
immigration law enforcement, the lack of effective training and
the previously examined lack of resources have been disastrous
for the enforcement of the immigration laws, thereby imperiling
our Nation and our people.
It is vital that there be real accountability and real
leadership where immigration is concerned. While Customs and
Immigration were both border enforcement agencies, the border
is where their similarities begin and end. I would, therefore,
strongly recommend that the law enforcement officers charged
with enforcing the immigration laws have a dedicated chain of
command with a budget and training program that focuses on
immigration. Certainly they can and should work cooperatively
with the former Customs enforcement agents, but they need a
separate identity in order to make certain that the current
``Customization'' of immigration law enforcement stops
immediately for the security of our Nation. The enforcement of
our immigration statutes needs to be the priority, and not an
afterthought.
I look forward to your questions.
Mr. Hostettler. Thank you, Mr. Cutler.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cutler follows:]
Prepared Statement of Michael W. Cutler
Chairman Hostettler, Ranking member Jackson Lee, distinguished
members of Congress, members of the panel, ladies and gentlemen. I
welcome this opportunity to provide testimony today on the critical
issue of the dual missions of the immigration enforcement agencies.
While my prepared testimony will focus on ICE, It is my understanding
that the inspections program of CBP is similarly hobbled in its ability
to enforce the immigration laws.
For decades our nation had the reputation of being the ``can do''
nation. If we could dream it, we could accomplish it. Our nation's
entry into both World Wars ended with victory. When President John F.
Kennedy challenged our scientists and engineers to land men on the moon
and return them safely to the earth within less than a decade, we again
rose to the challenge. Today, our nation is challenged by many
problems. The one issue that impacts so many of these other issues, the
enforcement and administration of the immigration laws, eludes our
purported efforts at solving it. For decades, the immigration crisis,
and it is, indeed, a crisis; has grown more significant and its
repercussions have increased exponentially. We are waging a war on
terror and a war on drugs. The immigration component of this battle, in
which the lives of not only our citizens, but the survival of our
nation itself is on the line, appears to be insoluble. I am here today
to tell you that we can control our nation's borders and we can
effectively administer and enforce the immigration laws from within the
interior of the United States.
In order to gain control of our borders and our immigration
program, we need to see it as a system. We also need to understand that
the interior enforcement program is critical to gaining control of our
nation's borders. Nearly half of the illegal aliens did not enter the
country by running the border, but rather by being admitted through a
port of entry and then subsequently violating the terms of their
admission. They stay longer than the period of time for which they were
admitted, they seek unauthorized employment or they commit felonies.
Special agents are desperately needed to not only seek to arrest
illegal aliens, but to conduct field investigations to uncover
immigration fraud to restore integrity to the benefits program which
has been historically plagued with high fraud rates. This is especially
troubling as we wage a war on terror. The 911 Staff Report on Terrorist
Travel made it clear that this dysfunctional bureaucracy aided the
terrorists who wrought so much destruction upon our nation. The fact is
that many of the managers of ICE appear more focused on traditional
Customs-oriented investigations than they are on enforcing the
Immigration and Nationality Act to safeguard our nation from terrorists
and criminals who have become adept at hiding in plain sight by making
use of gaping loop-holes and deficiencies in the immigration
bureaucracy that go undetected by the law enforcement agency that is
supposed to enforce these laws.
Since the merger of Legacy INS and Legacy Customs into ICE, the new
ICE special agents are no longer being given Spanish language training
even though it has been estimated that some 80% of the illegal alien
population is, in fact, Spanish speaking. It is impossible to
investigate individuals you are unable to communicate with. Yet, this
critical language-training program has been eliminated from the
curriculum of the new ICE agents. I have to believe that this
represents more than a simple oversight on the part of the leaders at
the academy. It underscores an absolute lack of desire to enforce the
critical immigration laws. If anything, our agents should be getting
additional language training as we seek to uncover aliens operating
within our nation's borders who are a threat to our well being.
Strategic languages such as Arabic, Farsi and Urdu should be added to
the curriculum along with Chinese, Korean and other such critical
languages. Yet at present, the curriculum not only fails to mandate any
foreign language training, it doesn't even offer any foreign language
training.
Identity documents are the lynchpins that hold the immigration
program together, yet incredibly, while other law enforcement agencies
provide in-service document training to their personnel to help them
recognize altered or counterfeit identity documents, ICE does not.
Immigration law training is similarly not as effective as it needs
to be.
Besides the extreme lack of resources that has been focused on at
previous hearings, we need to make certain that the people in charge of
the enforcement of the immigration laws have a true understanding of
the laws and have a clear sense of mission that many key managers
appear to lack. At present, nearly every field office of ICE is headed
by a Special Agent-in-Charge who came from the United States Customs
Service and not from the former Immigration and Naturalization Service.
The immigration laws are highly complex and require that the executives
who are charged with leading the enforcement effort have a thorough
understanding of the laws that they are responsible for enforcing. They
should have real-world experience in investigating and aiding in the
prosecution of criminal organizations that produce fraudulent
documents, promote fraud schemes to circumvent the immigration laws,
engage in large-scale human trafficking or the smuggling of criminal or
terrorist aliens into the United States. They should also have real-
world experience and understanding of the ways in which proper
enforcement of the immigration laws can synergistically act as a force
multiplier when ICE agents team up with law enforcement officers from
other federal agencies as well as local and state police departments.
The effective enforcement of immigration laws can help to cultivate
informants to facilitate not only investigations into immigration law
violations, but violations of laws in many other areas of concern
including narcotics investigations, gang investigations and terrorism
investigations.
The current lack of leadership that is experienced in immigration
law enforcement, the lack of effective training and the previously
examined, lack of resources have been disastrous for the enforcement of
the immigration laws, thereby imperiling our nation and our people.
It is vital that there be real accountability and real leadership
where immigration is concerned. While Customs and Immigration were both
border enforcement agencies, the border is where their similarities
begin and end. I would therefore strongly recommend that the law
enforcement officers who are charged with enforcing the immigration
laws have a dedicated chain of command with a budget and training
program that focuses on immigration. Certainly they can and should work
cooperatively with the former Customs enforcement agents, but they need
a separate identity in order to make certain that the current
``Customization of immigration law enforcement'' stops immediately for
the security of our nation. The enforcement of the immigration statutes
needs to be the priority and not an after-thought.
I look forward to your questions.
Mr. Hostettler. Agent Bonner.
TESTIMONY OF T.J. BONNER, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL BORDER PATROL
COUNCIL
Mr. Bonner. Thank you, Chairman Hostettler and other
distinguished Members of the Subcommittee.
On behalf of the 10,000 frontline Border Patrol employees
that I represent, I would like to present some of the concerns
that we have about the dual enforcement mission of the Border
Patrol and the other immigration agencies.
Long before the passage of the Homeland Security Act, or
even the debate over that, this Subcommittee and other Members
of Congress were talking about the problems in the former
Immigration and Naturalization Service and the dual mission
that it had, a mission of service and enforcement. And, in
fact, about 6 years ago I testified in front of this
Subcommittee supporting a bill that would have separated
enforcement from service within what was then the Immigration
and Naturalization Service.
The Homeland Security Act achieved that goal. It split
enforcement from service, and, as you noted, Mr. Chairman, it
called for the creation of a bureau of border security.
Unfortunately the Administration took it one step further and
split the enforcement bureaucracy into two different bureaus,
the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection and the Bureau of
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This, in our view, was a
serious mistake. It created the One Face at the Border
Initiative where we expected employees to be experts in two or
even three disciplines, immigration and customs in all cases,
and in some cases agriculture.
If there were truth in advertising in some of these
Government initiatives, this one should have been called One
Hand Tied Behind Our Back, because it minimized our
effectiveness by at least 50 percent, and this affects the
Border Patrol just as much as it does the other agencies. While
on its face it may seem that the Border Patrol is the least
affected, we are very dependent on ICE for our detention needs.
The mess that we have down in south Texas right now, where
I was speaking to one of our agents down there, is at any given
time in south Texas 80 percent of our resources are tied up in
processing people from countries other than Mexico. While we
have 20 percent of our resources out on the line, 80 percent of
them are in the office processing people just to give them a
piece of paper that allows them to go wherever they want in the
United States, with a promise to show up within about 6 months.
And, of course, over 90 percent of these people never do show
up. This is simply unacceptable.
The other part that we rely upon ICE for are interior
enforcement and work site enforcement. We are not authorized--
although we are authorized by law to deal with these issues, we
are not authorized by policy to deal with these issues. This
results in millions of people coming to the United States
looking for and getting jobs. If we are serious about
controlling illegal immigration, we need to crack down on the
root cause of people coming to this country, and that root
cause is employment. We have to turn off the employment magnet.
H.R. 98 would do that, and I would urge this Committee to look
carefully at that legislation or ideas similar to it so that we
can discourage people from coming into this country in search
of employment. We need to get the word out to illegal aliens
that it does them no good to come in. Whether they come in
illegally, or come in legally and overstay their welcome, it
will do them no good because no one will offer them a job
because they are afraid of the consequences, the employers are
afraid of the consequences. We need to take that step if we
want to control illegal immigration.
Mr. Cutler brought out the fact that the former Immigration
and Naturalization Service enforcement entities have been
``customized.'' That's a word that you hear when you talk to
any Border Patrol agent, or any former INS person. You have
Customs managers who are trying to fit round pegs into square
holes and make everything work in the old Customs way. This is
not sound public policy. As Ralph Waldo Emerson sagely noted in
1841, ``A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.'' In
essence, what they are trying to do is make everything the same
when, in fact, there are major differences between immigration
and customs enforcement.
And my recommendation is that we fix this problem. This can
be undone the same way that it was done, through the
administrative reorganization authority granted within the
Homeland Security Act. What needs to happen is a separate
organization that would handle all of the immigration
enforcement, and within that you would have the Border Patrol,
immigration inspections, detention and removal, immigration
investigations, and a separate organizations for customs. This
would allow these officers to specialize. There was an old
advertising slogan, I believe, from Kentucky Fried Chicken: We
do one thing right. And if you allow these agents to
specialize, they can do it right, they want to do it right, but
they need the tools to do it right, they need the resources to
do it right, they need the policies that enable them to do it
right, and they need the laws that are enforceable to go out
and to do it right.
I would welcome your questions, and thank you for your
time.
Mr. Hostettler. Thank you, Mr. Bonner.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bonner follows:]
Prepared Statement of T.J. Bonner
Mr. Hostettler. And as an aside, I want to thank you for
agreeing to come and testify for this Subcommittee on such
short notice. Just to inform the panel and the record, we had a
witness that had to back out at the last minute because of
certain personal concerns, and you, Agent Bonner, were willing
to step forward. Thank you for doing that.
Mr. Bonner. I am happy to do so.
Mr. Hostettler. Ms. Kephart.
TESTIMONY OF JANICE KEPHART, FORMER SEPTEMBER 11 COMMISSION
STAFF COUNSEL
Ms. Kephart. Thank you, Chairman Hostettler, and Ranking
Member Jackson Lee and Mr. King, for holding this hearing and
giving me the opportunity today to discuss with you DHS border
enforcement functions in light of my 9/11 Commission work on
terrorist travel.
We are all here today because September 11th taught us that
all elements of our complicated border apparatus must be
brought to bear if we truly seek to stop foreign terrorists
from entering and staying in the U.S.
From my vantage point of spending 15 months devoted to
figuring out how the 9/11 terrorists conducted their travel
operation into the U.S. so easily, it is clear to me that we
must put old thinking aside when it comes to immigration issues
if our ultimate goal is truly effective border security. We
must seek a long-term plan that incorporates all we know about
terrorist travel. We must start from the fact that foreign
terrorists carefully plan their attempts to enter and stay in
the U.S. based on a relatively sophisticated understanding of
our border security.
Terrorists will use any infiltration tactic if it will
work, from hiding in a ship's hull, or car trunk, to
fraudulently seeking legitimate U.S. visas or passports. These
terrorists do not just represent al Qaeda; Hamas, and Hezbollah
and lesser-known terrorist organization operatives also engage
in all varieties of immigration fraud.
Once in the United States, terrorists seek legal status.
They resist removal through sham marriages, claims of political
asylum, and applications for naturalization. In one case a
terrorist even managed to stay in the U.S. when his spouse won
the visa lottery. They seek U.S. and State-issued
identifications to establish themselves in communities and
travel more easily. And wherever a vulnerability exists, from
visa issuances to admission standards at our ports-of-entry, to
our physical borders, to our immigration benefits adjudication
system, a terrorist will take advantage of it.
Terrorists move throughout our border system in a
continuum, taking advantage of every legal and illegal means
possible. However, our current border system is less reflective
of that continuum now than it was prior to 9/11. Prior to 9/11,
the seven elements of our immigration system were split amongst
three departments and three agencies. Today those same elements
are split amongst three departments and six agencies. To add to
the confusion, immigration enforcement and Customs were merged
together and then split in a manner that made little sense in
practical application. And while it made some sense to merge
custom and immigration functions at ports-of-entry, that merger
does not necessarily transfer to the interior.
Why did all this happen? After 9/11, lawmakers and the
Administration hurried with the solution, applying pre-9/11
solutions, where economic security was a priority, to a post-9/
11 world, where national security is the priority. We also
failed to deal with the underlying problems that have
traditionally plagued our immigration system, and those
failures still exist today. They include, first, a lack of
commitment to enforcing immigration law. Not only do the
complexities and gray areas of immigration law make it
difficult to enforce, but also enforcing the law is nearly
impossible where strong special interests with diametrically
opposed viewpoints prevent forward momentum. We must rise above
special interests and provide Americans with the security that
they deserve.
Second, critical intelligence on terrorist travel
indicators still is not being declassified and distributed to
our frontline officers 3\1/2\ years after 9/11. One specific
indicator present on five passports used by three 9/11
hijackers remains unknown today to immigration personnel. To
make matters worse, very few in the ranks of immigration have
security clearances necessary to acquire critical classified
information now being collected on terrorist travel.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, we lack an overarching
policy where rules, guidelines and resources are allocated in a
manner that encourages legal immigration to this country and
discourages illegal immigration. We have also failed to give
our border system the clout it deserves and desperately needs
to be effective. Expertise in policymaking, with access to
tough decisionmakers has also been lacking.
In today's world, every element of the border system must
be viewed primarily for its enforcement function and
application of the rule of law. Only then will we begin to
infuse the integrity into the system to deter terrorists in
illegal entry and encourage legal entry.
In conclusion, we all know that terrorists are creative,
and they are adaptable, yet we have the ability to counter them
by being adaptable in our thinking ourselves and provide our
frontline officers with a job that they are all eager to do and
capable of doing. My written testimony lays out a series of
recommendations which I believe can help us go further in
taking border security out of rhetoric and into reality.
Thank you.
Mr. Hostettler. Thank you, Ms. Kephart.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Kephart follows:]
Prepared Statement of Janice L. Kephart
INTRODUCTION
Good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity to discuss
terrorist travel and immigration enforcement with you today. My
testimony is based on my work as a counsel on the 9/11 Commission
``border security team,'' as an author of the 9/11 staff report, 9/11
and Terrorist Travel, and a 380 page report on the current state of
terrorist activity in the United States I conducted as a consultant. At
the Commission, I was responsible for the investigation and analysis of
the INS and current DHS border functions as pertaining to
counterterrorism, including the 9/11 hijackers' entry and acquisition
of identifications in the United States. My current work includes a
study of terrorist travel tactics in the United States, specifically
focusing on the abuse of our immigration system by 118 indicted and
convicted terrorists.
Please note that the views I present here today are my own, and do
not necessarily reflect those of the 9/11 Commission. I want to thank
both Chairman Hostettler and Ranking Member Jackson Lee for holding
this important hearing. I also wish to applaud Congress for passing the
National Intelligence Reform Act of 2004. That Act contained many
valuable terrorist travel provisions born of the 9/11 Commission's
recommendations. I look forward to seeing the national terrorist travel
strategy and the implementation of the new passport rules for all
visitors come to fruition as required by the Act. It is the hope of
many of us who are working on this important topic that this
Subcommittee and Congress as a whole will continue to exercise their
oversight authority on the important issue of terrorist travel and
overall border security, ensuring that our Government continues to
implement the lessons learned as a result of the tragic events of
September 11, 2001.
From the outset, let me make it clear that I, like many, consider
the benefits and wealth of human potential that immigration brings to
this country to be one of our greatest strengths as a nation. However,
I also believe that we owe it to all Americans to maintain the
integrity of our borders. To do so, we must scrutinize effectively
those who seek to come here. September 11 has taught us that secure
borders are a matter of national security.
We will not have secure borders until we enforce the laws already
in place; until we properly train, equip and support our first line of
defense; and until we are prepared to share more information with
frontline personnel. Nor will we have full immigration reform until we
understand the extent of our vulnerabilities and devise a long term
plan to fix the border system, so that policy priorities can be set and
executed with political credibility; clarify and streamline our complex
immigration laws where necessary; and allocate and account for funds
and other resources appropriately; and restructure our border system to
reflect the importance and mission of our immigration apparatus.
Today I plan to discuss with you whether the current structure of
our border security system accomplishes its most important
responsibility: to provide security for U.S. citizens and legal
residents of the United States from foreign visitors who seek to do us
harm. To understand why structure matters, we must first gain an
understanding of how foreign terrorists are exploiting the
vulnerabilities in our border system, why these vulnerabilities exist,
and then why the structure of the border system matters. Based upon
these findings and analysis, recommendations follow.
U.S. BORDER SYSTEM VULNERABILITIES
Despite good initiatives by the administration, such as the
deployment of U.S. VISIT to international airports, weaknesses in the
U.S. border system still exist. Terrorists will continue to
successfully enter the United States because we still lack adequate
technologies; integrated information systems that house biometric
travel histories of visitors and immigrants; and specialized training
in terrorist travel tactics. As noted in 9/11 and Terrorist Travel,
front line immigration officers are not adequately trained to detect
fraudulent travel stamps in passports, terrorist indicators in
passports, or behavioral cues. Indeed, as a staff member for the 9/11
Commission I had access to more information about the techniques that
terrorists use to gain unlawful entry in the United States than
frontline officers.
Without repeating the content and findings of 9/11 and Terrorist
Travel, terrorists will use any infiltration tactic if it works, from
hiding in a ship's hull or car trunk, to seeking legitimate visas, to
entering into a sham marriage that will gain them access to either a
visa waiver, or, better yet, a U.S. passport. These terrorists do not
just represent Al Qaeda; Hamas and Hizballah and lesser-known terrorist
organization operatives also engage in all varieties of immigration
fraud.
Once in the United States, they seek legal status and resist
removal through sham marriages, claims of political asylum, and
applications for naturalization. They seek U.S. and state issued
identifications to establish themselves in the community and travel
more easily. They take advantage of amnesty and temporary worker
programs, and in one case even managed to stay in the United States
when a spouse won the visa lottery.
Terrorists move through our border system in a continuum. However,
our current border system is even less reflective of that continuum
than it was prior to 9/11.
To understand where we are today and why, we need to look back at
our border system prior to 9/11 and the creation of DHS. We must
understand why our border system failed prior to 9/11, and why it is
still struggling today. We must first take a look at the variety of
operational border missions that will likely always make up the U.S.
immigration system.
THE U.S. IMMIGRATION SYSTEM PRIOR TO THE CREATION OF DHS
Even prior to 9/11, our immigration system was failing to provide
the basic requirement of good government-value. The result was a
constant chorus that our immigration system was ``broken'' and
``laughable''. Value was measured in the level of security we perceived
the immigration system to provide. However, security was defined as one
of economic, not national, security. The debate raged over the economic
value of illegal workers to our system while it was widely recognized
the Citizenship USA program put in place to facilitate legal
immigration was an embarrassing failure. There was also increasing
concern that illegal populations worsened drug and crime problems. The
inability of the government as a whole to address these issues resulted
in a freezing of resources to address the problem. A mere 2,000
interior enforcement agents had the impossible job of dealing with an
estimated 6 million illegal aliens. Our immigration system was failing
to provide even economic security.
No role in counterterrorism prior to 9/11. I know from personal
experience as a counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee in the late
1990s that before 9/11 INS employees considered their agency to have no
role in counterterrorism. When posed the question, I was simply told,
``That's the FBI's job.'' I responded: ``Well then who is to keep
terrorists from entering the country?'' I was given no answer.
Only after public hearings on foreign terrorist activity in the
United States on the five year anniversary of the first World Trade
Center bombing and insisting that the INS take part in those hearings,
did the INS set up a National Security Unit. That unit never had more
than a half dozen full time employees. They worked in a virtual
information vacuum, seeking information from the FBI and field where
they could. The INS' intelligence unit was considered of so little
value that the INS Commissioner had decided years prior that daily
briefings were a waste of time. This failure was just one manifestation
of a woefully inadequate border system.
Overly complex immigration laws. Another way in which our
immigration system was failing to provide value was that immigration
rules were immensely complex, hard to understand, and even harder to
apply. Inspectors at ports of entry, border patrol agents, immigration
agents, immigration benefits adjudicators, and immigration attorneys
and judges were all stymied by rules that were fuzzy and time-consuming
to implement. Why? For decades, immigration rules were constantly built
upon the latest crisis. Wholesale review of the efficiency, fairness,
and functionality of these laws never took place. Concern over reprisal
often led to more lax enforcement--both for those inspecting visitors
coming into the country and in our immigration courts. All of this
contributed to poor morale and a burgeoning immigration problem: those
seeking to come here and stay knew there were plenty of legal and
illegal loopholes to facilitate remaining in the United States
indefinitely. Those working in immigration were demoralized. The
problem worsened.
Lack of effective policies. We also failed to be holistic and
proactive in our immigration policies. Where policies existed, they
were divergent: at the ports of entry and in immigration benefits, it
was all about customer service. However, interior enforcement was about
rounding up illegal aliens, sanctioning employers not playing by the
rules, and issuing removal orders to criminal aliens. The conflict
between enforcement and customer service once more resulted in a
constant push me--pull you policy-making. No real forward momentum was
created. There was another problem as well: a lack of efficiency in
supervision at ports of entry, where duplicative hierarchies existed
for both customs and immigration inspectors. Many sought a combined
force.
Poor use of funding. The immigration system also failed to provide
value in its use of appropriated funds. Congress became so frustrated
with ad hoc technologies and no real movement towards completion of new
immigration benefits technologies that in the late 1990s Congress
chastised the INS in its conference reports, denying needed resources
until the INS could show accountability for monies previously provided.
During this time, the student tracking and entry-exit systems were
started and, for different reasons, never came to fruition. Any money
that was appropriated went disproportionately to the Border Patrol, but
the problems of illegal immigration seemed to ebb and flow depending
upon where resources were physically allocated on the border.
Meanwhile, the State Department's Consular Affairs was suffering near
annual cutbacks. Immigration agent resources remained level despite a
growing illegal population, and the immigration inspector workforce
grew slightly, but not in proportion to the burgeoning number of
foreign visitors.
Throughout the 1990s, hearings were held constantly on Capitol
Hill. Topics included the porous southwest border, the slow processing
of naturalization applications, and the inadequacy of immigration law
enforcement. The debate raged: maybe the structure isn't right. For
years, two sets of solutions were proposed: (1) break up INS into its
enforcement functions and benefits functions and/or (2) merge Customs
and INS together.
In testimony before the 9/11 Commission in January 2003, former INS
Commissioner Jim Ziglar told us in lengthy testimony about the severe
challenges he faced when he was asked by newly elected President Bush
to restructure the INS and reduce immigration benefits backlogs. In
early August 2001, Commissioner Ziglar took office. On September 10,
2001, he had a business plan for restructuring the INS ready for
review, in part based on the work of the prior INS Commissioner, Doris
Meissner. In early 2002, as Commissioner Ziglar still attempted to move
forward with restructuring, especially in light of the events of 9/11
(as he told me during interviews), he undertook to determine what it
would take for the INS to actually fulfill its mandate. He provided the
following testimony:
We concluded that the INS annual budget would have to grow from
$6.2 billion in FY 2002 to approximately $46 billion by FY 2010
. . . assuming Congress and the administration actually desired
that the mandates be fulfilled. It was also assumed immigration
laws would remain static. . . . It was concluded that in order
to carry out the enforcement mandates of the Congress and
administration, past and present, the INS would need
approximately the following:
27,960 Investigators/Special Agents (compared to
the 2,000 employed at the time of the study), a 14-fold
increase
31,700 Border Patrol Agents (compared to 10,000)
21,500 Immigration Inspectors (compared to 5,000)
15,600 Deportation Officers (compared 650)
1,440 Attorneys (compared to 770)
110,000 detention beds (compared to 21,107)
and a vast increase in office space, support
staff, vehicles, computer equipment, etc.
These numbers speak for themselves.
THE IMMIGRATION SYSTEM MOVES TO DHS
Prior to 9/11 and the creation of DHS, the seven elements of our
immigration system were buried in bureaucracy at two main locations:
the INS at DOJ and Consular Affairs at the State Department. The U.S.
Coast Guard supported the INS at sea. After 9/11, the dismantlement of
the INS became inevitable--the years of discussion about its break-up
finally seemed to be grounded in something real, as if the wholesale
splitting up of functions into completely separate bureaus would have
increased our national security prior to 9/11. Of course it would not
have, as the INS was not considered to have a role in national security
prior to 9/11.
Today, we have severe fragmentation, with those seven elements
split between three departments (DOJ, State, and DHS) and within DHS,
in four different agencies: CBP, ICE, USCIS, and the Coast Guard. There
is no policy shop under the Secretary to pull disjointed elements
together. If Secretary Chertoff creates such a policy shop, that alone
will significantly upgrade policy cohesion throughout DHS border
functions.
The current DHS structure has combined pre 9/11 solutions to a post
9/11 world. Border functions now at DHS represent acceptance of pre 9/
11 views: that enforcement and customer service missions require
wholesale bifurcation, and government efficiency requires the combined
forces of the INS and Customs Service.
These presumptions are inaccurate; they fail to reflect current
national security realities.
First, in a post 9/11 world, all immigration functions have at
their foundation national security. The top priority of the immigration
system therefore must be enforcement of the law and assuring adequate
but efficient security vetting of applicants throughout all facets of
our immigration system. Until we accept that all elements of our
immigration system have a significant role to play in the war on
terror, our immigration system will not optimize the value--that of
security--it must provide to Americans.
Second, while a good argument remains that ports of entry have both
an immigration and customs mission, it does not necessarily translate
that interior enforcement of immigration and customs laws achieves
maximum effectiveness by a joining of those law enforcement functions.
While there is limited and justified overlap of some immigration and
customs enforcement operations, especially where aliens are committing
crimes over which customs personnel would traditionally have
jurisdiction (and vice versa). However, there is nothing preventing
joint task forces for such operations from being equally efficient.
Moreover, traditional immigration investigations against employers
violating immigration law, immigration benefits fraud, SEVIS and,
eventually, U.S. VISIT violators, need to remain a priority. They
should find equal weight with traditional Customs investigations, and
not be subsumed.
Perhaps most importantly, what seems to be lacking in our analyses
of providing a border system with value is new thinking. We must
consider that immigration activities--whether enforcing the law or
providing a benefit at or within our borders--all require overarching
cohesive policies, resources and interconnected information resources
to make it work. However, that does not mean that we should wait to
shore up our immigration system while we tackle the complex and
difficult policy, budgetary and legal questions that have traditionally
burdened our immigration system. We can, and should, begin redressing
some of its severe deficiencies in interior enforcement now. I believe
we can do so without negatively impacting long range planning of our
immigration system.
STRENGTHENING IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
To rebuild public confidence, our nation must create a strong and
intelligent border screening system that is effective both at keeping
terrorists out of the United States and in facilitating legitimate
travel and immigration services. The system will never provide a
perfect result. Some terrorists will get through, despite our best
national effort. In that case, the public needs to know that border
authorities investigate the reasons for the infiltration and make
necessary changes to further strengthen the system.
In pursuit of this objective, the rule of law matters. The process
of intercepting terrorists and detecting them through their violations
of immigration law is properly a domain of national security and
demands highly focused law enforcement efforts by trained, dedicated
professionals. Terrorists represent a lethal threat. But a border and
immigration system with consistent and systematic enforcement is much
harder for terrorists to penetrate. A United States whose borders and
immigration system are governed by the rule of law, moreover, sends a
message of justice that is itself a deterrent to terrorists.
To promote public confidence in the rule of law, it is critical to
reform our immigration system. We cannot afford the vulnerability of
the borders, the lack of internal regulation, the gaps in our
enforcement system, and the continued corrosion of the rule of law
caused by the presence of 10 million illegal aliens. The underlying
condition of our immigration system is that there is a dearth of
predictable and consistent enforcement.
We must insist upon people entering lawfully and abiding by the
terms of their admission as a fundamental basis of our immigration
system, and desist from viewing immigration violations as mere
technicalities. On the other hand, demands for ``catch-up'' enforcement
of immigration law, while appealing to some, threaten the availability
of resources to develop and sustain a significant, dedicated, and
targeted counterterrorism effort at the borders. Quite simply, there
will not be a sound and secure border security system or an optimal
deterrent policy against terrorists until we have an immigration policy
and system that operates more realistically, efficiently, and according
to the rule of law.
First, reform should include simplifying the law and standardizing
its application in the field. Our 9/11 investigation showed that
mistakes by inspectors at the ports of entry resulted in part from the
inordinate complexity of immigration laws. While the standard of
decision-making at the ports of entry, in enforcement, and in
immigration benefits proceedings can be enhanced by national standard
operating procedures and specialization, Congress and the President
also hold responsibility for simplifying the laws.
Second, the U.S. government should adopt a counterterrorism
immigration enforcement strategy that brings all relevant federal,
state and local entities to the table. All of our law enforcement
agencies have a role to play in denying terrorists the ability to enter
and remain in the United States. These efforts need to be coordinated,
robust and matched to the expertise of each agency. To be successful,
such a strategy should include comprehensive training in the nuances of
immigration law and the resources to implement the law equitably and
fully. It also requires intelligence (and training) on terrorist travel
methods and watchlisting that is available to our border officials in a
timely manner.
Specifically, DHS should invest in the ability of state and local
law enforcement to detect terrorists among immigrant communities by
providing training, real-time access to federal expertise, the
necessary security clearances, and other resources as needed.
Currently, only two states, Alabama and Florida, have or are receiving
training from federal immigration authorities on immigration
enforcement relevant to their jurisdictions. I welcome the news that
more states and communities are recognizing the value they can provide
to this effort. They can help find terrorists and criminals in the
United States when they examine travel documents in the normal course
of their duties. State and local law enforcement should be encouraged
to use the DHS Law Enforcement Support Center (LESC) to access
databases and experts on travel documents.
Third, DHS and the Justice Department should propose adoption of
tougher anti-fraud laws in the United States, where document and other
forms of illicit travel facilitation are linked to terrorists and
punishments and sentences do not fit the crimes.
Fourth, special consideration must also be given to the consular
officers and immigration inspectors, agents, and benefits adjudicators
who have the opportunities to detect and intercept terrorists as
discussed above. Up to now, they have not been considered critical
assets in the war against terrorism even though they are responsible
for determining who enters and who remains in the United States. They
need to be given an enhanced role in any counterterrorism immigration
strategy. This includes providing appropriate security clearances for
certain personnel at ports of entry and elsewhere as needed.
Fifth, all these reforms must be adopted under an overarching
policy that encourages legal immigration and discourages illegal
immigration. We are capable of maximizing security and efficiency
throughout the immigration system while minimizing privacy intrusions.
As we build efficient security at the perimeter of our borders by
facilitating entry of those we deem legitimate and denying entry to
those we do not, pressure on interior enforcement will eventually
become more manageable.
CREATING A DEPARTMENT OF IMMIGRATION AND BORDER PROTECTION
One potential way to provide the immigration system with the
political backbone it deserves is to consider a long-term plan of
providing the immigration system with its own structure. By creating a
Department of Immigration and Border Protection, fragmentation is
minimized and enforcement and benefits operations act to support each
other. If we consider that we, as a country, can adopt policies and
laws that encourage legal immigration and discourage illegal
immigration all upon a foundation of biometrically based travel
histories and secure background checks, then we divest ourselves of the
notion that we have to fragment our operations into boxes that only
incite unnecessary turf and resource allocation wars. CBP and ICE are
remnants of old thinking. We need immigration enforcement functions to
stay together where it makes sense, and that is the case where
detention and removal, anti-smuggling, and overall immigration
enforcement is merely an extension of border inspection and patrol
functions.
The bureaucracy that houses the U.S. border system should be the
Department of Immigration and Border Protection. Right now, immigration
services, (CIS) immigration enforcement (CBP and ICE), and border
policy (BTS) are all co-located at DHS. Visa issuance remains at the
State Department. It is not the fragmentation of these agencies that is
the entire problem, however. Instead, the main problem is one of
accountability and access to information. There is no one who answers
directly to the President solely on border issues, nor has direct
access to the top tiers of intelligence.
Instead, the creation of DHS has replicated one of the problems of
legacy INS: too many layers of bureaucracy between the president and
those on the front lines of immigration policy-making and information
gathering. This problem is documented in 9/11 and Terrorist Travel.
Today's DHS Secretary not only has to deal with an overly complex
set of border, immigration and customs enforcement, and immigration
benefit issues, but wholly new arenas for the government such as
information assurance and infrastructure protection. This inevitably
means that the DHS Secretary (like all previous parent organizations of
immigration agencies) has a multitude of responsibilities, only a
handful of which are critical to border security. No one thoroughly
knowledgeable or directly responsible for the border system is
available to answer questions at a cabinet meeting or listen to
critical intelligence briefings. Consider the following factors:
Accountability and access to the President are keys
to having the right information from the right people to make
border security effective. Border security never has been
effective in this country.
U.S. immigration policies inform our foreign policy
and affect the world's view of the United States. Immigration
has always been central to shaping our identity as a nation. A
Department of Immigration and Border Protection would reflect
that importance.
Immigration issues and laws are immensely complex,
politically and legally, and require a tremendous amount of
expertise to deal with them effectively.
Well-honed border policies have become a top priority
for national security.
About 40 percent of DHS employees, or about 40,000
personnel, are in a border-related agency or directorate. That
is more than the year 2000 Congressional Budget Office numbers
for the Department of State (27,000); the Department of Labor
(16,000); Department of Education (5,000); Department of Energy
(16,000); and the Department of Housing and Urban Development
(10,000).\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Congressional Budget Office. ``A CBO Paper: Changes in Federal
Civilian Employment: An Update.'' May 2001.
As described in 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, ever since their
inception, immigration services have been treated poorly in the
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
hierarchy of government bureaucracies:
Although the nation's growth depended on successive waves of
immigrants, the Bureau of Immigration never seemed quite
important enough to become its own department, with its own
secretary reporting directly to the president of the United
States. In fact the bureau was something of an administrative
orphan. Over the century its name and bureaucratic home changed
repeatedly, and increasing numbers of confusing statutes
created conflicting jurisdictions in both immigration services
and enforcement.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, p. 90.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The endnote to that paragraph reads:
In 1895, the Bureau of Immigration was created and placed under
the Secretary of the Treasury. In 1903, the bureau moved to the
newly created Department of Commerce and Labor, taking the name
the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization in 1906. When the
Department of Labor was created in 1913, the bureau moved with
it. In 1933, these functions were consolidated to form the
Immigration and Naturalization Service under a commissioner. In
1940, the Service was transferred to the Department of Justice
where it remained until March 2003. See ``History of
Immigration and Naturalization Agencies,'' 8 U.S.C. 'Sec. 1551.
In addition, there are at least 150 statutes providing the
legislative history of immigration.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, Chapter 4, endnote 126, at pp. 238-
239.
With rumors that CBP seeks to absorb ICE, interest in shifting the
BTS policy shop into the office of the DHS Secretary, and infighting
between CIS and ICE, and ICE and CBP, many bureaucratic issues remain
to be resolved. Perhaps placing these border functions in a standalone
department would allow desperately needed reforms to be put in place,
including strategic planning for budgets and resources that could
finally make the U.S. border system enforceable and effective.
CONCLUSION
Terrorists are creative and adaptable enemies. The 9/11 hijackers
probed our defenses, found our weakest points, and ruthlessly exploited
them. To counter the threat, we must be aware of new trends in
terrorist travel. We must be more flexible in our efforts to counter
them.
We must upgrade our border system now. Our current system sets the
bar far too low for terrorists trying to enter the United States.
Fortunately, our frontline officers are extremely dedicated, talented,
and eager to do everything they can to protect this country. Now they
need the tools and the authority to do their job. Better training,
government-wide integrated databases, standardized procedures,
biometrics, the latest technology, and the authority to trust their
hard-earned instincts, will empower these dedicated officers to keep
our country safe.
The thousands of dedicated officers responsible for visa issuance,
entry, and immigration adjudications have an overwhelming task: to
identify, out of the millions who seek entry into this country each
year, the few who represent a danger to the United States. Keeping our
borders open to well-meaning legal immigrants, who contribute to our
economy and society, while keeping out and removing terrorists and
others seeking to harm us, should be a top priority. The
recommendations in this testimony can make our borders more secure by
ensuring that policy decisions have the support from the President and
key issues of enforcement are not mired in unnecessary turf and
resource battles.
Mr. Hostettler. Mr. Stana.
TESTIMONY OF RICHARD STANA, DIRECTOR OF HOMELAND SECURITY AND
JUSTICE ISSUES, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Mr. Stana. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, Ms. Jackson Lee, and Members of the
Subcommittee, I am pleased to be here today to share our views
on management challenges relating to immigration enforcement
activities at ICE and CBP as this Subcommittee considers
potential structural changes in these bureaus to address dual-
mission issues. GAO has conducted numerous reviews of both
specific programs and overall management in these bureaus, and
at INS which proceeded them. I would like to make a few points
that may provide the Subcommittee with insights as potential
changes to the structure of ICE and CBP are considered.
First, ICE and CBP face a number of management challenges
similar to the ones that existed in INS. The challenges at INS
included a lack of clearly defined priorities and goals;
difficulty in determining who to coordinate with, when to
coordinate and how to communicate; and inadequately defined
roles which resulted in overlapping responsibilities,
inconsistent program implementation, and ineffective uses of
resources. In 1999 and 2001, I testified on these management
issues before this Subcommittee when consideration was being
given to restructuring INS as a way of addressing these
challenges. My 2001 testimony in particular concluded that
while restructuring may help address some of these issues, the
new organization would still need to address the management
issues head on. I concluded that unless this was done,
enforcing our immigration laws, providing services to eligible
aliens and effectively participating in government-wide efforts
to combat terrorism would be problematic regardless of how the
immigration function was organized. In March 2003, the
enforcement functions of the INS were transferred to the new
DHS and placed in ICE and CBP. In 2004, we reported that many
of the same management challenges we found in INS still existed
in the new bureaus, but mostly in ICE.
My second point is in evaluating solutions to ICE and CBP
challenges, including potential structural changes,
policymakers should ask several key questions. The first
question is whether ICE and CBP have an effective management
framework in place. This includes considering whether the
mission is clearly defined and articulated, the strategic
planning process is comprehensive and focused on the mission,
the organization structure supports the mission and strategy,
performance measures are suitable for gauging progress, and
leadership and accountability mechanisms are in place. Our work
showed that ICE and CBP have made some progress, but much
confusion still exists about roles, mission, responsibilities,
performance measures and accountability. Reorganizing the
bureaus now before the mission and strategic plans are fully
developed and operational could further disrupt the mission and
operation of these bureaus. More needs to be done to ensure
that each element of the framework is put in place. If it isn't
done in proper sequence, mission, then planning, then
structure, this could result in a case of ready, shoot, aim.
The second question is whether the processes and systems
are in place to support the framework and to resolve problems
as they arise. As I alluded to in my 2001 testimony, moving
boxes around an organizational chart alone cannot be expected
to resolve problems without policy, guidance, communication and
information sharing. These are management problems, not
necessarily structure problems, and the solutions lie mainly in
work processes that are clearly understood and followed,
communication channels and organizational crosswalks that link
related activities, and information systems that accurately
report on program status and results. Again, some progress is
being made, but many problems persist, and they continue to
affect mission performance.
The third question is what effect are the transformation
and integration activities at DHS having on ICE and CBP? It is
important to recognize that the management challenges in these
two bureaus exist in the larger context of the creation and
evolution of DHS, which is the largest reorganization of the
Federal Government in over 50 years. Despite real and hard-
earned progress, DHS still has significant challenges to
overcome in all of the management areas, including providing
focus for management efforts, including strategic planning, and
managing its human capital. Resolving these challenges at the
top levels might help address similar challenges in ICE and
CBP, or it might not. Given that it can take 5 to 7 years until
change initiatives are fully implemented and cultures are
substantially transformed, it is an open question whether this
is the right time for a major restructuring of ICE and CBP.
In closing, the proposals to merge certain ICE and CBP
functions to resolve dual-mission issues are well-intentioned
and are gaining some momentum, but I would like to inject a
word of caution here. Let's look before we leap. Exactly what
problem are we trying to fix? Reorganizing an agency or
function to better align it with its mission and strategic plan
is desirable and should be done. However, reorganizing mainly
to address underlying weaknesses in supporting processes and
systems, such as a lack of coordination and cooperation among
units, or a lack of guidance relating to operational
activities, might not be productive. As we have seen, mainly
reorganizing these immigration and Customs functions at DHS
without fixing the underlying processes and systems has not
resolved the long-standing management challenges we saw in INS.
At the same time, ICE and CBP may not be able to resolve some
of these challenges on their own if they are affected by a
higher level of DHS-wide management problems.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement. And I would be
pleased to respond to any questions that you or other Members
of the Subcommittee may have.
Mr. Hostettler. Thank you, Mr. Stana.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Stana follows:]
Prepared Statement of Richard M. Stana
Mr. Hostettler. At this point the two of us may engage in a
rather lengthy set of questions.
First of all, Mr. Stana, your final point begs the
question, when you talk about management versus structure and
ask us to go slowly with regard to restructuring these
organizations--which is not exactly something we are talking
about this time, merely investigating the problems that we have
as a result of these two structures--but when you say
management versus structure, and you talk about management, is
that a diplomatic way of talking about policy with regard to
policy and the aggressive nature or lack of aggressive nature
in enforcing our immigration laws? Because it seems like if
your mission was to enforce the immigration laws, then your
management policy would be such that you would structure an
organization to meet that mission. And I guess it's a question
of is it the chicken or the egg. So is it an issue of policy
and our desire or lack of desire to enforce the immigration
laws?
Mr. Stana. I would put it this way: I think it is more of a
matter of what is the mission of ICE and CBP. Being in DHS,
whose mission is to enhance national security and to fight
terrorism, they are taking their cues from the broader
organization. So when we talk about ICE not doing some things
now in the interior enforcement of immigration policies, it's
understandable. The ICE mission is now national security and
antiterrorism. So what's happening is, at ICE and CBP, they are
fulfilling that mission by, for example, in work site
enforcement, by targeting their efforts to trophy targets,
whether they be nuclear power plants, airplane tarmacs and so
on. They are not going to the food processing plants like they
used to because the mission of DHS is national security and
antiterrorism. If we wanted a fundamental shift to bring the
mission back to what it was in INS, and that is to enforce
immigration law and to provide benefits to eligible aliens,
then that would require a fundamental shift of structure. But
that is not what the DHS mission is right now. That is number
one.
Number two, when I talk about management challenges, I
guess a shorthand way of looking at it is problem areas,
problem areas that are not directly linked to how the
organization is structured. Whether or not, for example, the
Air Marine Unit that was in ICE was transferred over to CBP to
line up the mission and the structure to better accomplish that
mission.
It's an open question whether putting ICE and CBP
together--or the interior enforcement people together with the
Border Patrol is going to fix the bed space problem, because
ICE can't even get bed space. That is a whole different issue.
What we are talking about with management is the organizational
crosswalks so that when ICE calls Border Patrol and says, I
need bed space, is there someone who answers the phone who
understands what their role is in helping out in the total
mission of the agency? Is it clearly communicated who is
supposed to do what, what their particular mission is down in
the working levels? Is it understood that when you pick up a
report that's generated by a financial system or a human
capital system that says, I spent this many hours on this
function, that it is accurate and reliable and can be used to
spot problem areas? Those are management functions and
management challenges.
Mr. Hostettler. But if our desire is to foil illegal
immigration, for example, doesn't that establish a management
model? And I am asking that rhetorically because I want to go
to Ms. Kephart and say, in your experience with the 9/11
Commission--is the Customs function, would that have helped us
to foil what happened on 9/11? Putting Customs into the mix
with immigration, would that have helped us?
Ms. Kephart. Well, I have, perhaps, a slightly interesting
answer to that question.
First of all, one of the reasons you see Customs only in
one page of this staff report called 9/11 and Terrorist Travel
is because there was so little information that I was able to
uncover from the Customs agency about their contact with the
hijackers that I had very little to say.
That being said, let me comment on that. All the hijackers
came in. They needed to have Customs declarations, and let me
make a comment about that. We only were able to get a handful
of those Customs declarations because Customs only kept them
for 6 months, and they are only on paper; otherwise they are
destroyed. I believe that is still the case today. It is not an
electronic information system the way the INS entry records
are, however poor that system with the immigration service was.
Second of all, only a few of them filled out those Customs
declarations, so once more we had very little information to go
on because immigration inspectors weren't required to check the
Customs records coming through because that is a Customs
function. But remember, at airports of entry, prior to 9/11,
you had passengers from airplanes being checked 100 percent by
INS, and 5 percent were being checked by Customs Service. So
nobody was really looking at those Customs declarations, so I
couldn't really draw any conclusions from those.
The one thing I will say in thinking about the Customs
function is that if you all will recall, Mohammed al-Qahtani
from August 4, 2001, was the so-called 20th--one of the 20
terrorists that tried to get in in Orlando, Florida. The
inspector who stopped him was featured at our hearing on the 9/
11 Commission, et cetera. When I interviewed that inspector in
depth, one of the things that I asked him about was, he did
everything you could possibly do to determine that the behavior
of this person was not right and that he should not be let in,
but the one thing he did not do was check the man's luggage.
Now we know that because that was a customs function, he really
wasn't permitted to do that. But goodness knows, if on August
4, 2001, he had checked his luggage and we knew that Mohammad
Atta was waiting upstairs for him, and there was contact
information in that luggage--perhaps--perhaps that information
would have been passed on. We don't know, but at that time,
immigration service would not have passed that information to
the FBI, but who knows what was in that luggage? And we will
never know because he voluntarily removed himself that day at
the great request of that inspector.
So I can say that Customs would not have stopped it, but
their reporting was so poor. The one other comment I will make
is there were 6 secondary inspections of the hijackers. Two of
those were Customs. The reporting on those inspections was so
poor that I was unable to really draw any conclusions. So that
is about what I can say about Customs. I don't think it would
have stopped it. In the end, they are passengers, they are
people, they were not cargo, so that is the bottom line for 9/
11.
Mr. Hostettler. Thank you.
The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Texas for
purposes of an opening statement and for questions.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Chairman, I will yield to Mr. King and
take my questions following him. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Hostettler. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Iowa, Mr. King.
Mr. King. I thank the gentleman, and the gentlelady from
Texas as well. And I appreciate the testimony of the witnesses
here today, those on short notice and those on longer notice.
Curiosity arises. First, Ms. Kephart, the situation that we
have today with ICE on duty at airports, access now to the
entry documents as well as the luggage, do you consider that
resolved?
Ms. Kephart. Ooh. I hope it's resolved. I haven't been out
to an airport recently to see how things are working. When I
was on the Commission, there was much resistance at the few
airports I was able to go to for Customs agents to actually
work and do immigration-related work.
To the extent that they are still doing their old Customs
work, I think that they are. To the extent that they are
actually checking luggage to a greater extent, I don't know
that they are. I didn't check on that, so I can't relate.
Mr. King. And Mr. Stana, you referenced in your testimony
that the mission for ICE is national security and not
immigration enforcement. And can you reference a policy
statement that establishes that?
Mr. Stana. I wouldn't say it is either/or. What I would say
would be immigration in the context of national security. I
would just reference that to the DHS strategic plans and then
the ICE--well, ICE doesn't have a strategic plan in final form
yet, but in their interim plans and CBP plans, they mention the
nexus to national security. It doesn't preclude immigration
efforts.
Mr. King. And is there any directive on the part of
Congress that you know of that DHS would be reacting to in
order to promote that kind of a policy, or do you believe that
is an internal conclusion?
Mr. Stana. I think what they are doing is taking the
mission that was given to them statutorily and interpreting it
in that way. I would point out, though, that of all the
agencies that are mentioned in the homeland security
legislation in 2002, only one was abolished, and that was INS,
for whatever reason. And I know some of us have been in
hearings for years and years and years, it goes back past the
Jordan Commission--talking about how to deal with INS, and
apparently one solution was just to dissolve it.
Mr. King. And certainly that is the case. But back to this
point again. If I'm going to track this down to find out where
the divergence in the philosophy that I have versus the one
that's being implemented, I probably can't go to a statute and
identify that.
Mr. Stana. Well, what you would find is the Department of
Homeland Security has a mission, to protect the Nation from
terrorism and so on. And as any agency would do, they would
further define that in a mission statement and in a strategic
plan. And in the mission statements and strategic plans, the
national security and antiterror missions are emphasized
throughout. It doesn't preclude them from working on
immigration programs and immigration enforcement certainly,
it's just that they try to do that in the context of national
security and antiterrorism.
Mr. King. One would draw from this that the mindset is more
toward national security than toward immigration enforcement?
Mr. Stana. Well, where the two interests intersect, I don't
know if there would be a competing priority, but I think the
top priority of the agency is going to be homeland security,
national security and antiterrorism.
Mr. King. Thank you, Mr. Stana.
And, Mr. Cutler, in your background on these issues, could
you talk a little bit about--and you would have, I would think,
relationships with a lot of active agents out today. Could you
talk about the legacy agents, and let us know--have a lot of
them--have they left enforcement and found other endeavors, and
do you have any idea what is left from those legacy agents?
Mr. Cutler. Well, the problem you're addressing is a
critical one, it's institutional memory, and there is very
little left in the way of institutional memory.
Forgive me, I wanted just to clear one point that--when I
was listening to that prior question.
Mr. King. Please do.
Mr. Cutler. We can't look at immigration enforcement and
say, well, we're just going to go after illegal aliens, or
we're just going to go after terrorists. Sleepers, which, as
you know, Robert Mueller, the head of the FBI, talked to the
Senate Intelligence Committee at a hearing back in February,
talked about his concerns about sleeper agents. Sleeper agents
aren't people that just simply come into the country and dig a
hole in the ground like a cicada and hide there for a year or
two waiting for a phone call; they are people that hide in
plain sight.
If it's employment that draws the bulk of the illegal
aliens across the border; it's immigration fraud that enables
them to stay here and hide in plain sight. And if we don't
address that issue, and if we are told that there's still no
real mission statement 3\1/2\ years into what's been billed as
a war on terror, it gives me cause for pause.
And if you go to the ICE website, the Homeland Security
website, what is amazing to me--because I just checked it
yesterday, because you would think that the home page of any
organization would be where you set forth your number one,
number two, number three priority. Well, there wasn't a single
thing on that Website that related back to the enforcement of
immigration law other than an I-9 and the fact that they've
gone to electronic I-9s. Now, if this is supposed to be
homeland security, I have yet another reason not to go to sleep
this evening.
And I think you're trying to do the right thing, I think
you all are, but so many of your colleagues--I have to tell you
as a New Yorker, as someone who has been working closely with
the 9/11 Families For a Secure America, it leaves me shaking my
head. New York has 40,000 cops and enough jail space that if
they find somebody breaking the law, they find a place to lodge
them. We have 2,000 special agents to cover the entire United
States of America; we sit here quibbling over 143 new agents or
500 new agents. We have no jail space. We have a catch and
release program, but we want more technology on the border. The
technology is great, but if the Border Patrol responds to the
alert, and they have a warm body in custody they can't hold on
to, why do we bother in the first place?
You know, as an agent I've had the occasion where I've
chased somebody five or six blocks, dodged garbage cans that
the guy was hurling at me as he was trying to get away from me,
tackled him, rolled around on the ground, tore up my clothes,
got bruised and the whole 9 yards, and the guy lied for a half
hour about who he was, and then in the end my boss said, Mike,
I'm sorry to tell you this, but there is no room at the inn. So
that guy went home that day; not home to his home country, but
home to his apartment in Queens.
Now, we sit here talking about mission statements, we sit
here talking about fighting a war on terror. You know, if you
go into neighborhoods that have large numbers of illegal
aliens, there is an infrastructure that springs up to support
those folks. It's mail drops, it's money wire services, it's
document vendors. We've shortened the investigations of
terrorists--I have arrested terrorists in my career, and they
make use of these facilities. These are the facilities that
people who are trying to hide in plain sight make use of. These
are the facilities that are used by dish washers, drug
traffickers and terrorists.
And if we look at this and say, well, we're going to ignore
the enforcement of the immigration laws unless we have a bona
fide terrorist, that we come back to the madness that we saw 3
weeks or 4 weeks, or whatever it was, after 9/11 when a van
with 8 Pakistani nationals was pulled over by the Triborough
Bridge and Tunnel Authority police officers in New York. These
guys had fake ID, and yet immigration didn't want to respond
because the FBI came out and said, well, their names don't show
up on a watch list. What names? They had false identification.
If you don't go after illegal aliens, people who come here
proffering false identity documents, and if we don't train the
agents, as I alluded to in my testimony, so they can detect
fraudulent identity documents, then, goodness gracious, how do
we plan to protect America? Because the terrorists who attacked
us on 9/11, Congressman, didn't come here on 9/10, they were
here for months, and they were hiding in plain sight. And if we
allow a situation where we fail to address immigration
enforcement in general terms--you know, the only analogy I can
make, and I'll be brief because I know I'm past my time, but if
you have a problem with mildew in your bathroom, it's okay to
wipe the walls down, but the better thing to do is to get to
that leaky pipe that's creating that environment that's
conducive to the growth of mildew.
If you want to get to illegal aliens who are involved with
crime and who are involved with terrorism, then you need to get
to the ability that they have to hide in plain sight, and that
means you need a vibrant, effective, robust interior
enforcement mission, plus good Border Patrol people on the
border helping us from all aspects. You can't stop a boat from
sinking if you just go after two of the holes in the boat and
allow the other five to keep leaking.
We've got to see this as a system, and we need mission
statements. And we're 3\1/2\ years into a war on terror, and I
don't go to sleep feeling any safer from the immigration
perspective whatsoever, to be perfectly honest with you.
I know I went off the question a bit, but I feel these are
points that are really vital to make. And the people that still
work there--last thing, I have to say it before I forget this.
I spoke to an inspector who said to me right now they are only
getting about a quarter of the number of referrals to secondary
for fraudulent documents, because the way they're evaluated, no
one cares what they do with these folks. The only way you can
get fired at the airport is to let somebody in who's on the
watch list; then you're probably going to lose your job. So if
someone comes in with an altered passport or a phony passport
and succeeds in getting over, so to speak, they're in, and all
they want is to be here. They want a 5-minute head start on the
other side of the door so they can then blend into our society,
and with no special agents backing up the inspectors at the
airports, we've got a precarious situation.
So now with this multipurpose agent, multipurpose inspector
out there, they're not going after the fraud the way they used
to, they're not going after interior enforcement, how is that
protecting the homeland?
Mr. King. Mr. Cutler, I'm glad I asked you that question.
And I would yield back----
Mr. Cutler. I'm sorry.
Mr. Hostettler. The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady
from Texas.
Ms. Jackson Lee. I thank the Chairman very much.
Mr. Stana, I think you've been on this issue for some time
now. And I would ask in my remarks--Mr. Chairman, first of all,
I'm going to ask unanimous consent to submit my statement in
its entirety into the record, and I will comment very briefly
from my statement, and then pose some questions.
Ms. Jackson Lee. But I did want to acknowledge that Mr.
Stana has been on this issue.
It's interesting, when you think of yourself as a new
Member of Congress, when you authored a report in 1997, and I
was already here. So obviously it's in my own mind.
But 1997 was far ahead of 2001 in terms of the new focus on
terrorism. And I think, Mr. Chairman, what I'm going to
suggest, it might be unique if this Subcommittee and this
Congress, chaired by the distinguished gentleman from Indiana
and, more humbly, the lady from Texas, would be able to finally
give some guidance, some legislative guidance, some collective
guidance to this question of dealing with the management
problems. In 1997, Mr. Stana, GAO, offered the light that INS
itself was confused or management problems were severe, I don't
want to mischaracterize the report, way before the
establishment of the Department of Homeland Security. So in
essence, the Department of Homeland Security was burdened
further by the lack of the fix for the INS at that time.
I think the question would be how we approach it, but I do
believe a thorough study--and I am going to ask you questions
where that report is, is it dusted off, is it the same report
from 1997, are you in the midst of a new report--to share with
the Chairman and myself that we might be able to--because, Mr.
Chairman, frankly, dumping a new order, if you will, so that
dumping the entities back together, I think our witnesses, Mr.
Bonner, who lives this every day and represents thousands of
hard-working Border Patrol agents and others who are working
every day to do their job, and Mr. Cutler, injured on the job,
knows firsthand the difficulty of doing the job.
And I will raise some questions with the other witnesses.
But the management problem is so non-partisan, apolitical, that
frankly, I believe that would be one of the more starry moments
of this Subcommittee if we could work on this question, even
though our jurisdiction of course--there is Homeland Security,
but I would venture to say--I serve on the Subcommittee on
Management on the Homeland Security Committee and I would
venture to say we might welcome that kind of collaborative
effort to deal with that.
Let me just recount, since I am on my statement, that in
2003 the DHS split up the U.S. Customs Service and border
security and reconfigured them into two bureaus, the Bureau of
Customs and Border Protection and the Bureau of Immigration and
Customs Enforcement. The basic responsibility of CBP is to
prevent illegal persons and goods from crossing the border. ICE
is responsible for tracking down these persons and goods if
they get past CBP. But the reorganization has resulted in some
coordination problems; for instance, the training for daily
border security operations is not working well. Supervisors
from one legacy agency at a port-of-entry have not received the
training to answer technical questions of inspectors from
another legacy agency. Inspectors often are told just to do
things the way they used to do them. I think we had a
representative here a couple of weeks ago that said that even
with supplies or equipment-there were no badges-and there are a
number of other issues.
Today on the floor of the House, we made some attempt to
give you some relief, Mr. Bonner. You know, I want 2,000
individuals ready for you and 800 for ICE. And we were able to
give you 500 and that is not what I thought we should be
focusing on, but I think the main issue is that GAO reported
that INS lacked clearly-defined priorities and goals and that
its organizational structure was fragmented, both
programmatically and geographically.
Many of you know--and I will put the entire statement into
the record, but I think it is important to note, let me finally
say on the statement--additionally, field managers had
difficulty determining whom to coordinate with, when to
coordinate, how to communicate with one another because they
were unclear about headquarters officers' responsibilities and
authority.
Mr. Cutler, I want to acknowledge as well the very
important point in your statement about the idea to expand the
Case Act to include fraudulent document operations, because
fraud is a major problem, but I also want personnel to be
staffed. And since I have just introduced the Save America
comprehensive immigration reform bill, I would like to be able
to include that language in that.
I am not posing a question for you just yet, but I want to
thank you for your services, Mr. Bonner, and Ms. Kephart for
her work on the 9/11 Commission.
Let me go to Mr. Stana because I will say as I have always
said, the backdrop of my offer to the Chair to work on this
management, that means we have to put our heads together with
our staff and either work with--look at what you have developed
over the time. But I always say, Mr. Chairman, as you know,
that immigration does not equate to terrorism and I continue to
say that. It is even more emphasized since these problems arose
in terms of management issues before 9/11.
Maybe if we had begun to look holistically at immigration
and enforcement, we would have had maybe some opportunity at
prevention. I am not second guessing. The 9/11 tragedy stands
on its own. But I think we have the responsibility to be able
to separate the two and understand that immigration enforcement
doesn't always equal to catching terrorists, but it is
something important to do, and that the enforcement issues, I
think, would be strengthened by an immigration policy that all
of our law enforcement can frankly understand.
My bill, of course, that I have just introduced tries to
order those who are here undocumented and tries to ferret out
those individuals that are criminals and doing criminal acts,
doing any number of things, but it does the good stuff that we
do in immigration, reuniting families and otherwise.
Mr. Stana, help us out, if you would, and I want to ask Mr.
Bonner and Mr. Cutler a question, but tell us from the '97
report where we are today. Have we acted on what GAO has
suggested that we need to do?
Mr. Stana. Well, you're raising some very good points. As
you know over the years, we have reported on all kinds of
problems at the former INS and now with ICE and CBP, and I
don't want my remarks to be considered as an endorsement of the
status quo, because the status quo has its problems. When INS
was dissolved, as you know and you just pointed out again,
without dealing with the management problems that underlay a
lot of the other issues, it just made it all the more difficult
for ICE and CBP to get on top of these things. It has been
about 3 years since ICE and CBP have been around and frankly
they have made some progress.
I wouldn't give them a grade, but there is so much more
that has to be done. These problems are persisting. Agents in
the field don't know exactly what they are supposed to do with
whom. There was an issue not all that long ago where CBP was
preventing controlled deliveries across the border, drug cases
that ICE was setting up because CBP thought it was their duty
to stop drugs from getting into the country. The ICE agents
wanted to see where the drug buys were going and to what
organization in order to take down the bigger fish. ICE and CBP
weren't coordinating.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Say this again, because this is not a
negative comment on people who are on doing their job. At the
border illegal entities were coming across or attempting to
come across and ICE had an operation inside?
Mr. Stana. ICE wanted CBP to let those shipments go through
because ICE wanted to follow the shipments to the larger
organization in the country, and take down the organization
rather than one individual. The Border Patrol felt it was their
duty to stop the drugs at the border, and so it was just a case
where the two weren't aligned.
When I speak about management challenges, it sounds wonky,
but here is a live example. I sympathize with what Mr. Cutler
was saying. The fact is that interior enforcement was never
fully funded. I think everybody knew that. If you put the
organizations back together, there would be resource fights
again. And you recall in the old days with work site
enforcement, I think maybe INS put a couple hundred agents on
that per year to go after the millions of illegal aliens
unauthorized to work who somehow found employment.
So simply putting the organization back together again and
dealing with some of the higher level issues is not going to
solve the kinds of problems that we are discussing today. You
have to get down into the weeds and understand how people are
doing the work, where their problems are, put the right number
of resources to it, come to a national commitment to deal with
these programs and go forward.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Let me get Mr. Cutler and Mr. Bonner
quickly. Mr. Bonner, management problems. I understand from
your testimony you are talking about--I think you are talking
about leaving them as they are, but correct me if I am wrong,
but tell me what your focus is, but more importantly this whole
question of management and coordination. And Mr. Cutler, could
you follow? Mr. Bonner, thank you for your service.
Mr. Bonner. Thank you. Actually I'm suggesting that you
blow up CBP and ICE and start over and have a separate entity
for immigration, call it what you will, pick a name,
Immigration Enforcement Agency, I don't care, as long as all
the immigration people are in that same chain of command so you
don't have----
Ms. Jackson Lee. So you don't have external and internal?
Mr. Bonner. Your enforcement people, whether it's in Peoria
or in San Diego or in Maine, they're all on the same page under
the same chain of command and they have the same mission and
the resources can be allocated within there to make sure you
don't have these disconnects like we have in south Texas where
thousands of people every month are let go into the country
because they happen to be from countries other than Mexico and
there is no funding to hang on to these people.
I think that it's more than just a management problem. It
is a structure problem. We can't rely on having King Solomon to
head up this agency and to manage something that really can't
be managed, but that he can somehow get it to work because of
his extraordinary wisdom. We have to rely on a good structure
in order to make it happen and we don't have that structure.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Cutler, are you going to give me a
brief answer?
Mr. Cutler. I used to call the ideal situation the Bureau
of Immigration Enforcement because the inspectors at the border
along with the Border Patrol, interior enforcement working as
Janice Kephart, said, is a continuum, understanding there is no
clear line where the interior ends and the border begins and
vice versa. But we need to make management accountable for
attrition rates. Even before this happened, we had a horrific
problem in many offices and nobody at headquarters said, from
what I understand there is $200,000 to recruit and train each
new agent and it is a major expense not only in money but time
and effort to bring people up to speed and then they left. So
management felt they weren't being made accountable because
this was the hot potato that nobody on the political side
wanted to address.
That's why I'm gratified to be here because we have to
address this issue. Making it--closing our eyes won't make it
go away and I'm glad that you folks are taking it on head on,
and I appreciate what you're doing with the fraud program that
you are putting forward.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Would you echo or support my offer to my
Chairman that this Committee might be able to shine the light
of day giving some guidance as to how this can be fixed?
Mr. Cutler. I think it's fixable. I appreciate that you
folks want to work together to see that done. The bottom line,
I tell people when I come here I testify as an American and not
as a Republican or Democrat, and that's why I have been called
by both sides.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Hostettler. We will move to a second round of
questions. And Mr. Stana, I think you have, to a certain
extent, hit the nail on the head with what we are discussing
today when you gave the account of what happened at the border
with regard to Customs. If you have an entity such as CBP,
Customs and Border Protection and another entity, Immigration
and Customs Enforcement, you have a customs function at two
various locations and the agents are multi-tasking. Why would--
if you had an entity that is purely concerned with immigration
law enforcement, such as border protection and interior
enforcement in one entity, then they would be concerned at the
border with enforcing the immigration laws with no
consideration whatsoever or concern at the border with regard
to customs enforcement. And so there would not have been any--
because you would have had an immigration entity and you would
have had a customs entity and there would have been no
misunderstanding about what they were supposed to be doing at
the border vis-a-vis the interior of the country. It seems to
me they worked perfectly. It just so happens that because they
have different missions within Customs and they are separated
from each other as a result of the Administration's plan, that
that is what caused the problem. The structural problem gave
birth to the management problem, that if we in fact had an
immigration enforcement entity, once again not concerned with
customs, and a customs entity that could coordinate everything
from overseas to the border to the interior of the United
States, that we wouldn't have had that problem whatsoever.
Mr. Stana. Let me clarify, the individual who was trying to
stop the drugs at the border was a Border Patrol agent who came
from legacy INS and immigration. This particular example
wouldn't be the best case of that. It might be useful to talk
about----
Mr. Hostettler. Border Patrol or ICE? They both have
customs.
Mr. Stana. Oh, no. In the mid to late 1990's, I remember
being on night operations outside of El Paso and the Border
Patrol there was routinely picking up people with packages of
drugs. It's not that that is just a Customs function. It was
also an immigration/Border Patrol function to interdict drugs
in that manner.
Mr. Hostettler. But because they were violating immigration
laws, correct?
Mr. Stana. They were crossing the borders and violating
immigration laws but also happened to be carrying a package.
Mr. Hostettler. I will grant you that when you are
enforcing immigration law and there is a weapon of mass
destruction you won't turn your head to that, or drugs or
whatever, but that was ancillary to the enforcement of the
immigration laws. And I don't--I can't see how it can be
suggested that with dual missions, that an agent is going to
say okay, today do I enforce the customs law with regard to
this particular sting operation, I'm not sure.
And I'll turn to Mr. Bonner and Mr. Cutler. Am I thinking
too simply about this situation where if we call on individuals
to enforce the immigration law that there will not be this
confusion as to what hat the agent should be wearing or the
inspector or agent should be wearing with regard to what law to
enforce and what mission to fulfill? Am I right or am I wrong
on that?
Mr. Bonner. Beyond that, Mr. Chairman, what happens when
you have a single entity where the Border Patrol used to have
its own investigative branch called the anti-smuggling unit. We
would work hand and glove with those agents, and when they had
a controlled load that they did not want us to intercept at the
border or at one of our traffic checkpoints they would clearly
communicate that to us and say ``let this one go. You are going
to see this type of car coming through, just wave it on
through,'' and we would do that and they would be able to
follow through. But that level of cooperation and coordination
just does not exist any more because ICE and CBP are in
different chains of command. So when you go and say, ``we need
some help here,'' they say ``what's in it for me?'' And you
have nothing to offer them.
Mr. Cutler. Mr. Chairman, a couple of weeks ago I testified
before the Homeland Security Committee about the issue of
separate CBP and separate ICE, and what I said then is what
I'll say today. We have created a bureaucratic boundary between
the two agencies that are supposed to reinforce our Nation's
border. They need to work under one roof with coordination so
there is no foul-up where one hand doesn't know what the other
hand is doing.
And I want to make reference to something. I have asked
that your folks prepare a map. It's back up with additional
fatalities that we didn't list the last time. That's the map of
all the people who perished on 9/11, including the people
killed at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. My request to you
as I had mentioned last time, I would greatly appreciate it. I
believe the folks that have been working with it, the 9/11
Families for a Secure America, would appreciate having it put
on permanent display as a memorial to the people who were
killed and as a reminder to our elected representatives that it
was the entire Nation that was attacked on that day.
The other visual that I wanted you to have is a stack of
books and it not nearly a complete law library. These are all
the books or part of the books that constitute the laws being
enforced by Customs as well as Immigration, and we can add to
that court decisions. And if we did all of that, you would need
a bookcase. There are far too many laws with far too much
complexity and far too much writing on the proper adjudication,
Administration and enforcement of those laws to allow one
person to try to become the expert on all of this.
Representative Jackson Lee alluded to the fact that I was
injured in the line of duty. I wound up needing knee surgery.
Today it is not enough you go to a surgeon, you go to an
orthopedic surgeon. And it's not enough you go to an orthopedic
surgeon, you go to an orthopedic surgeon who is experienced in
knee surgery. If it works in the medical field, I think we need
to see it the same way in law enforcement.
We need to know that the people who take the lead in doing
immigration law enforcement are people who are oriented to
doing a thorough, effective job where they can stay up to speed
on everything from documents, if we get the training that they
desperately, desperately need; that they understand the impact
of what they're doing. They can work in conjunction with other
people.
I was part of the Drug Task Force for about a decade. We
worked closely with the FBI, DEA and ATF. It was a team effort.
We all went out on the same surveillances. But as soon as we
did our dynamic entry, as soon as the door came down and we did
the arrests, DEA was concerned with seizing the narcotics, I
was concerned with seizing documents and so forth.
We need to work that way today. We have to have
specialists. This isn't the one-size-fits-all that's going to
work. We need people that really and truly are kept up to speed
on immigration law. You know as Chairman of the Subcommittee,
this law evolves on a continuous basis. The only way to have
people who are well versed and understand the implications of
what they're doing is to have people dedicated to immigration
enforcement, and I can't emphasize that enough. It would be a
tremendous asset for the entire law enforcement community if it
was done that way.
Mr. Hostettler. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Iowa, Mr. King.
Mr. King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sitting here listening
to this testimony, I began to cast my mind across this country
and think what it must have been like when we enforced our
immigration laws, when there wasn't a safe harbor neighborhood
and an enclave for an immigrant to go to and how difficult it
might have been to plan to go to a nation where you didn't have
somebody open the door for you at the border, at the enclave
all the way through the pipeline. And maybe we have 8 million,
10 million, 12 million. I, in fact, believe there are more than
12 million illegals in this country today. We are talking about
OTMs as part of this equation and trying to focus more on OTMs
than Ms. We are talking about how ICE has a conflicting mission
and the price of that has been the ``I'' so that we can focus
our resources from immigration enforcement to customs
enforcement; how it is a split duty on our borders as well with
our Border Patrol.
I look at this thing from this broad perspective and it
would be this, that--and I'm going to direct my first question
to Mr. Bonner, but if we could somehow wave this magic wand,
and I don't mean back up to where we were before, but if we
could enforce effectively our immigration laws successfully at
our borders and domestically, internally, if we could somehow
get to this point where we could approach 100 percent
effectiveness in our enforcing immigration, how much easier
then might it be to address the customs issue and the terrorist
issue? And in fact, I would make it more specific and that
would be of the terrorists that we know in this country and we
have some history with. If we had been successful in enforcing
our immigration laws would any of those terrorists be in our
country today and, if so, under what circumstances? Mr. Bonner
first.
Mr. Bonner. I believe that if we were able to effectively
deter people from coming into the country, those who are coming
for economic reasons, otherwise law abiding, which isn't to say
that breaking our immigration laws is some peccadillo, it is a
violation, but leaving that aside, taking those people out of
the equation would allow Border Patrol, immigration inspectors,
and criminal investigators to focus on the criminals and the
terrorists, who are a very small percentage and would make it
very easy to identify those people coming across the border, my
guess is they would stop trying, by and large, coming in
illegally because they would stick out like a sore thumb. And
they would try to blend into the ports-of-entry where with
increased resources I believe that we could be very successful
in keeping those people out of the country. And as we go along,
we are taking steps, the Congress is taking steps to crack down
on document fraud so that it is harder to get a visa to come
into the country. And we need to continue those efforts, but I
believe working synergistically between all of these elements,
we actually could not only control illegal immigration, but we
could make this country much, much safer.
Just look at it now. With millions of people coming across
the border illegally every year, even if it is a one in a
million shot, you have to figure three or four terrorists come
in every year just from the sheer numbers of people coming in,
and that is a scary thought because it only took 19 people to
carry out the attacks of 9/11.
Mr. King. I have made the statement in the past that I
believe the effect of our policy results in a catch and release
program of maybe as many as six times or even more times before
we adjudicate for deportation. Those are resources of officers
that are doing what I call in my business the equivalent of
digging a hole and filling it back up again with the level of
productivity that we get out of that. So maybe we are using
one-sixth of our enforcement officers or one-seventh of our
enforcement officers, their time, their money, taxpayers' money
and the resources.
How much more effective could we be if we could adjudicate
and had the ability to process it first time as opposed to the
sixth or seventh time that we pick them up?
Mr. Bonner. That is part of the solution. I think the
single most important thing we can do is to turn off the jobs
magnet because that is why most of the people are coming in
here in the first place, and the employers are the only ones
who have anything to lose in this whole equation. A person who
is making $4 a day, even if you had the bed space and money to
incarcerate them, you would be doing them a favor because they
are not getting three square meals a day now and in some cases
they don't have a warm place to sleep at night and you would be
providing that for them.
I think a much more effective use of the resources is to go
after the employers. Make it simple for them to figure out who
has a right to work in this country, and if they choose to
ignore that law take out a big club and hit them hard with it.
Mr. King. What do you think about the effect of eliminating
the Federal deductibility for wages and benefits paid to
illegals if we have a safe harbor for the instant check program
on the I-9 information and sent the IRS in to do an audit and
be able to collect the taxes that would be due on that Schedule
C line item as well as the interest and the penalty?
Mr. Bonner. I think that is an interesting concept. I think
H.R. 98, I think that is the real solution of saying look, it
is illegal. We have given you a way to figure out if this
person is in this country legally or not and send out
enforcement officers to enforce that law and put those
companies out of business, $50,000 fine per illegal alien per
violation. That is a strong message and needs to be sent to the
employers and you would get compliance much the same way as we
have compliance with the Tax Code now. People are honest on
their taxes because they fear the negative consequences of
cheating on their taxes. A few high profile cases every year
causes the rest of the country to fall into line, and that is
how you could enforce employer sanctions.
Mr. King. Could I ask unanimous consent to allow Mr. Cutler
to answer that question?
Mr. Hostettler. Without objection.
Mr. Cutler. I agree with what you want to do with the tax
law. I think it's a great idea. Again, and I hate to keep
harping on it, that is why fraud is so critical because the
Gordian knot that would enable an alien to circumvent all of
this is to get a green card based on a fraudulent marriage, for
argument's sake. Then he could work and the employer doesn't
have a problem and he is here and hiding in plain sight. That
is why we need to see all of these issues addressed properly.
I never heard anyone talk much about immigration benefit
fraud. The GAO in 2002, February, 2002 issued a report that
said it was rampant and pervasive, and that is how the bad guys
get to hide in plain sight. There are simple solutions to some
of these problems. I don't know if you realize this, but when
an alien naturalizes he or she can take any name on the day of
naturalization that he wants.
If we didn't know that, for example, Osama bin Laden was a
terrorist, he could naturalize and say, you know, John Smith is
a great American name. I want to be known as John Smith. From
that day forward he becomes John Smith and his U.S. passport
will only have the name John Smith on it. If he is wanted in
Germany for mass murder or France for mass murder, he walks in
with a U.S. passport that says he is John Smith, he will be
able to slip right through.
We need to look at that and say if we naturalize somebody
we need to put all of the names that that person was known by
on their passport. If an alien applies for a benefit from
Immigration, they should fill out a questionnaire just like
they do when they become a resident. Have you ever been
arrested or have you ever committed a crime, have you ever
trafficked in drugs, have you ever contributed money to a
terrorist organization? If they say yes, they are deportable.
If they say no and it can be proved they have lied, you can
prosecute them.
This doesn't cost anything. We need to get smart in what we
are doing. Not only a matter of money, but a matter of
strategy. Strategy will take leadership and take people at the
top who understand how the law can be used effectively and then
we can really help to make America a much safer country.
Mr. Hostettler. The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from
Texas, Ms. Jackson Lee.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you. Mr. Bonner, we posed a line of
questioning to Mr. Stana who focused, without giving a grade to
the DHS and without critiquing staff and your offices that work
hard every day, this whole idea of management problems. If we
were to begin to focus hearing after hearing, it doesn't answer
the concern. And I still have in the backdrop of this problem,
the lack of management definitions, if you will, the
overlapping responsibilities, inconsistent program
implementation, and I don't know whether it is ineffective use
of resources, but I think you noted not enough funding to allow
a number of functions to occur, detention, number of beds. By
the way, I'm not sure if you are aware of the legislation on
the floor that added 1,000 beds. I can't tell you what the
distribution is, but 1,000 beds are supposed to be added
shortly to detention facilities around the Nation. What do you
say about focusing on trying to get the definitions defined,
get management's responsibilities defined, get management's
training, if you will, more efficient and more effective to
begin, then for it to trickle down to those who are actually
implementing those tasks?
Mr. Bonner. I think the biggest part of the problem is you
get managers at the highest levels who are just going to go
along with whatever the Administration requests. So if the
Administration says, ``we know that the law says 2,000 Border
Patrol agents for the upcoming year but this is going to be our
request and you are going to defend that,'' and they do defend
it. We need to have managers who will stand up and say, ``If
you want the job done this is what it's going to take. It's
going to take 10,000 this year, not 200. And if you want to
just pretend that we can make do with 200, fine, but I'm not
your person.'' That is the type of leadership we need in this
department, and we don't see it in the Department of Homeland
Security, which is not unique within the Federal Government.
It's very much the norm that these managers say ``okay, this is
how it's going to be.''
One of the most frustrating things for the rank and file is
when Members of Congress go down to tour the border and
managers will put extra officers on duty and have the best
vehicles out there. I say show it to them the way it is so they
can see what a shamble the infrastructure is and how few people
are out there at any given time so they can say, ``my gosh,
what is going on here? We need reenforcements down here,'' not,
``everything looks pretty good. Everything is covered and you
have the latest equipment.'' What they have done is they
amassed everything in that one area where Members of Congress
were going to be.
That really does not benefit the American public. The
American public deserves to be protected. They deserve the very
best protection that we can afford and that requires the
honest, unvarnished truth being told to those who are making
these decisions in the halls of Congress.
Ms. Jackson Lee. I hope that when I visited they didn't put
too many overlapping good equipment in front of my eyes. And
you are absolutely right. And I assume you're right, because we
wouldn't have minutemen at the borders in Arizona getting ready
to move to California and New Mexico and Texas.
Mr. Bonner. It's what the rank and file call a ``dog and
pony'' show and you saw a dog and pony show.
Ms. Jackson Lee. You highlighted the problem with the chain
of command, and at the same time the chain of command has to be
sufficiently trained separate and apart from whether they adopt
the Administration's position. Maybe that is where Congress
comes in to realize that where the rubber hits the road, you
have to go for the 2,000 or 10,000.
I'm trying to focus in on the management training or trying
to give at least some definition. Let me use some action item
that occurred. I understand that there was a watch list of
about 200 or 300 Muslims that someone devised that are utilized
at the border and it's supposed to help make us secure. I mean
is that some decision that came because the boots on the ground
said this was a good thing to do? Did it come from management?
Can you utilize that? Is it an effective system? These are
management decisions that the question is whether or not it
translates. Is that an effective use of your time? Maybe your
time should be drawn elsewhere as opposed to a list that just
sits there that may not be accurate.
And as you answer that question, let me pose a question to
Mr. Cutler, Mr. Chairman, and ask him--I am going to ask Mr.
Bonner to answer that, but I'm going to ask him to hit it on
the nail. Would a restructuring of ICE and the Border Patrol
put in a separate enforcement agency work from that
perspective? The watch list that was devised, I think you
utilize a number of Muslim men on the list. Where did that
decision come from? And I pointed out as an example of how is
management working to give you your assignments and do we need
to go where Mr. Stana is focusing? Can we get some order and
defined responsibilities and defined tasks that will be a
guiding mark for you?
Mr. Bonner. Well, the watch list is fairly useless because
it is just a name, and unless the terrorist is going to give
you their true name or be carrying a passport, which neither
one of those is true, they are just going to make up a name and
you look at the list and say, ``well, this name is not on it.''
It is a waste of time. There has to be a better way, some type
of biometric. And I realize that most of these terrorists do
not have criminal records, but there must be some way.
As Mr. Cutler said, if we can put a man on the moon, we can
devise technologies to help us out and give us a little bit of
an edge against the bad guys.
Ms. Jackson Lee. That helps you get the bad guys versus the
names on the list that are just ordinary Joes that get their
names on the list or have the same name that tie up your time
and of course offend, embarrass or put in a terrible position
those who have nothing to do with terrorism. So you are not
given the tools necessary, a management decision to have the
list but not the tools.
Mr. Cutler.
Mr. Cutler. Well, I know you asked me about management.
This is why I would like to see biometrics linked to driver's
licenses so people don't have multiple driver's licenses and
multiple names. I've often said that when a good guy gets up in
the morning, he goes through his stuff to see what he wants to
wear. When a bad guy goes through his stuff, he figures out who
he wants to be. Very often they can get past no-fly lists and
everything else.
It is a real problem of identifying people, and it is an
issue that I raised when I did my first congressional hearing
back in 1997.
As far as the question you asked me about putting everyone
under one roof, I think it would be much more effective. I
think you will have a clearer focus. You have clear
accountability. It wouldn't be as diffused as it is. I would
certainly come down on the side of one law enforcement agency
that focuses on immigration. They should work closely with
Customs. They should work closely with DEA.
I have done this as a member of the task force. I had a
desk at the FBI for a year and-a-half and had a desk at DEA for
about 7 or 8 years. It was easy to work with each other. We
brought to bear our particular authorities and our resources
and our orientation and expertise. I would look at somebody
from an immigration perspective that DEA was looking at from a
drug perspective. This helped us out during a terrorist
investigation. We found a vehicle, actually DEA did. They were
doing a drug case called Polar Cap. They found a car with bomb
detonators in it. When I went to interview these folks, the
Immigration angle never occurred to DEA. And I turned to the
head of DEA in New York and said, ``Bob, these people are lying
about the fact that they're house painters and construction
workers.'' He said why? I said did you shake that man's hand.
It's a smooth hand. He has manicured fingernails. My dad was a
construction worker. He would crush your hand with his. Bob
knew a lot more about drugs than I can ever learn. But as an
Immigration agent, my first thought was this guy has manicured
fingernails and no muscles in his hands. This guy was running
the drug organization.
So the point of it is we bring expertise to the table and
Immigration needs to retain its expertise. It needs desperately
to retain its institutional memory and we have to make the
people in that business accountable and not diffuse their
responsibilities so they can say gee, someone else came up with
this. No, if you make a decision, you need to be held
accountable.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Would you lodge that unified entity inside
the Department of Homeland Security?
Mr. Cutler. That is a rough call. As long as it was an
entity that was clearly definable as the Immigration
Enforcement Bureau, it wouldn't matter if it was under the
Department of Justice or Homeland Security, that's fine. I want
to see an entity that is dedicated to the enforcement and
administration of the immigration laws so we know that there is
accountability, continuity.
Training is an ongoing process. Since they moved these
folks out of the INS, as I mentioned during my testimony, they
are not getting language training. How do you investigate
people that you can't communicate with? Right now, if you want
to make an Immigration agent go away, the magic words aren't
``abracadabra,'' it is ``No hablo Ingles.''
Eighty percent of the illegal alien population speaks
Spanish. How can they conduct an investigation when all the guy
has to do is say ``No hablo Ingles?'' I will tell you my own
experience is that people will say to you and then you look at
the guy and ``No hablo Ingles? Espanol, senor?'' and the guy
did speak English after all. If you have the idea by saying
that you can make that guy go away, I guess you are going to
have people who don't even speak Spanish saying, ``No hablo
Ingles.'' It is not a good situation. It's a matter of
training, accountability, and we need a strategy.
I'm alarmed that 3\1/2\ years after 9/11, there still is no
clear strategy or idea of mission to protect the United States.
Imagine, if we fought World War II this way there would be a
different flag flying over the Capitol today. It worries me,
and I think it should worry all of us. We needed to hit the
ground running and we are not moving at all. We are stuck in
wet cement, and that is not a good situation.
Ms. Jackson Lee. I will conclude simply by saying this, a
couple of weeks ago we were having a hearing in Homeland
Security and I made the point--I continue to make the point of
whether or not we have created too large an entity in the
Department of Homeland Security with 180,000 employees, not in
any way to disregard the hard service, dedication and
commitment of these employees, from TSA to any number of
entities, but there lies--I think partly beyond the 1997 report
with INS, but there lies part of the difficulty in having clear
lines of responsibility, knowing what you are supposed to be
doing, having an integrated system, and I think there are some
alarms being set off today, some red flags that have been set
off hearing after hearing after hearing, and there is going to
be a moment where we have to turn inward and address these
questions because some would say, without overly creating a
great deal of hysteria, that we are on borrowed time, and I
think it's crucial we get our house in order and these
gentlemen and lady have allowed us to do so.
Are you leaving in or taking out Customs?
Mr. Cutler. I would have Customs separate and apart from
that immigration chain. They can work together as a task force.
Maybe it would be useful to share their legal authority, but
you want core people that do immigration, that are experts in
immigration, that this is their day-to-day job, and Customs
could do their own thing. You know, I want you to know, the
biggest threat we have are people coming into the country more
than things coming into the country. For a terrorist to bring a
weapon into the United States, it is a real concern and we
should be screening the containers. But it is kind of like
bringing sand to a beach. If we look at the prior attacks, we
have never seen an attack committed on our soil that involved a
device brought into our country from overseas. God forbid, it
could happen tomorrow. I'm not saying that it's foolproof that
won't.
But the interesting thing for me was that Richard Reid had
a shoe bomb. Now we go on board the airplanes and we wear
loafers because we know we have to take our shoes off, but no
one looked at the fact and nobody has done anything about the
fact that he was eligible to enter under the visa waiver
program.
We have to look at the areas of vulnerability, assess the
areas of vulnerability and lead the target. We can't keep
playing catchup with the bad guys. I gave you some suggestions
about the use of passports and showing all the identities on
passports. We need to be at least as creative as they are.
Please remember one thing, we have to be right 100 percent
of the time, they only have to get it right once to do a hell
of a job on us, and that is why this is so critical.
Mr. Hostettler. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Virginia, Mr. Goodlatte.
Mr. Goodlatte. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for
holding this hearing. I find this topic of great interest. I
appreciate the gentlewoman from Texas' questions and sorry I
missed the testimony of the panel because I was elsewhere
earlier, but it's a matter of grave concern to me and I want to
add an additional complicating factor to this.
I'm the Chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture and
this is not a dual mission that has been put under the one face
at the border program. It is a--I don't know what you call it--
a triple mission because you have also taken over the
responsibility for the Plant and Health Inspection Service.
This is a role that has been supervised by the Department of
Agriculture for a great many years. It is a serious problem for
our country.
I agree with Mr. Cutler that somebody coming in and doing
damages are our highest level of concern, but we do billions
and billions of dollars a year worth of damage in this country
not from, usually, intentionally bringing things into the
country but the unintentional admission into the country of
various pests, animal, plants, various diseases, fungicides.
That requires an extraordinary level of expertise to spot. And
we are just not talking about looking at agricultural products
coming into the country, but talking about all kinds of other
containers that an insect or hoof and mouth disease may have
gotten into.
And the Department over many, many years built up a very,
very strong force of expertise with veterinarians and people
with advanced degrees in biological sciences and so on. These
people can play a very important role in keeping out a
deliberate attempt to bring some kind of a bioterrorism type of
attack. But most of the work they have always done, an
overwhelming portion, is making sure things don't accidentally
enter the country and cause huge amounts of damage.
We know all types of invasive types of species we have in
the country as a result of our not being able to do this very
effectively. My concern is it has gotten a whole lot worse,
because no longer do you have this separate identity, this
cadre of people with a pride in what they are doing and
utilizing their specific background, but now we are asking
people who have responsibilities for immigration work, or who
have responsibilities for other types of Customs work to also
have some at least rudimentary knowledge of what to be looking
for when some handicraft comes into the country and it might be
a banned species or might contain something that is a problem.
I'm concerned we are losing that expertise by combining
these functions. The plan was to have more people with
expertise at more ports around the country, and maybe that
indeed is the case. But what I'm hearing is that we're losing
that expertise and people no longer feel that they have that
independence and the desire to have that expertise inspecting
it.
And I would like you to comment on this area and whether
you know enough about it to make an observation, what you have
seen at the border with regard to this responsibility.
Mr. Stana. Can I start? I think it's a cause for concern. I
think the way that concern is being addressed right now is that
as long as the legacy individual has that expertise, whether
it's Immigration, or whether it's Customs or whether it's food
and agriculture enforcement, those people are being used in the
primary and secondary areas of airports and land ports to take
advantage of that expertise. So as long as those people are
there and maintain the expertise from their old agencies, it's
not as much of a problem. The worry is as those people retire
or get shifted to other duties, they lose their edge.
Mr. Goodlatte. Is there an ongoing effort being made to
hire people of this caliber to replace them with these
backgrounds in sciences and biological sciences and so on?
Mr. Stana. I'm not sure of that. I'm sure that at the
ports, what the port director has tried to do is to take
advantage of what expertise is available. For example, in
secondary for immigration issues, they will put people from
legacy INS because they know the law well enough. Similarly in
secondary where they may pull a car over at a land port and
tear it apart looking for contraband, it tends to be legacy
Customs people and that's because they know the business. The
concern is how much longer are those people who know that
business going to be around and are the training courses at
FLETC suitable to get people up to speed in the variety of
areas that they have to make our one face at the border work.
Other members of the panel and I would echo that and point
out that learning immigration law, let alone customs law and
the knowledge of thousands of plants and food stuffs, and
understanding the nuances and the different turns that each
would take--to understand those three areas, for one
individual, it would be a formidable task.
Mr. Goodlatte. Thank you. Ms. Kephart.
Ms. Kephart. I think this plays into Ranking Member Jackson
Lee's question about is the DHS too large, because I think we
are losing questions like this because DHS is so big and there
are so many questions. The merger--I want to clarify something
I said earlier about the merger of Customs and Immigration and
Agriculture at the ports-of-entry. I think for supervisory
purposes there needs to be efficiency there and there needs to
be cross training for management purposes. However, it's always
been my feeling that the expertise that is required for
Agriculture and Customs and Immigration is so detailed, there
is so much to know in such a short amount of time for such
short inspections that you must absolutely maintain that
expertise. And while I was on the Commission, the last inklings
I was hearing from CBP and from FLETC that there was complete
homogenation taking place at CBP in terms of that training, and
that to me was a great concern.
Mr. Goodlatte. I share that concern. Mr. Bonner.
Mr. Bonner. I think you touched upon a real area of
concern. These agriculture inspectors used to require degrees
and immigration inspectors would receive 16 weeks of training.
Customs inspectors, I believe it was about 14 weeks of
training. They have condensed all of that down to 11 weeks of
training. And you are simply not going to hit on anything but
the real high points. So what happens is these newly trained
inspectors are keying in on indicators of nervousness. Well, if
you don't know that you are bringing something into the country
that is harmful, such as the wrong type of fruit, you are not
going to be nervous at all.
I can recall pulling up to the California State agriculture
inspection one time and they asked me, ``are you bringing in
any fruits or vegetables?'' and I said ``no.'' ``What's that
under the seat next to you?'' And it was an orange and I said
``oops, I didn't think of it.'' I wasn't nervous because it was
an orange to me and did not equate. But that's the type of
thing that you are dealing with. You need those specialized
degrees in order to know what you're doing when you are dealing
with agriculture, and that has gone by the wayside, which is a
very big concern.
Mr. Cutler. I think you have hit on a real critical issue
adding agriculture to the mix. Again, we are spending less time
training these people trying to give them greater knowledge and
it's not working. I think this is a prescription for disaster.
I'm fearful of where this is going to lead us ultimately.
Mr. Goodlatte. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
letting me run over time.
Mr. Hostettler. I recognize the gentleman from California,
Mr. Lungren.
Mr. Lungren. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'm sorry I
was not here for the prepared testimony, but I will look that
over.
I don't know where to start. I want to make sure this is
not the concern that any legacy agency would have when we try
to bring them together. If I believed that we had done a super
job before we brought DHS together, I would be far more
convinced by what I hear here today, but I don't know anyone
who says we did a bang-up job beforehand. And is it really the
problem that we have this consolidation and are asking people
to do too much? Or is it that we don't have enough people,
period, or don't have enough commitment, period? I mean, I'm
happy to look at everything. For us to go off chasing the idea
that the real problem is that we have--look, while I respect
what they have to do, this is not rocket science. You can train
people in various capacities if you put the effort in, if you
get the qualified people and if we really put the money behind
it. And my concern is that we may think that is the problem as
we try to consolidate these various operations, when the
problem is we haven't put enough money and manpower behind it--
that we just haven't made a large enough commitment.
So, Mr. Bonner, are you suggesting to me that really if we
went back to the old days when we were separated out and put
more bodies there then that would have a significant impact?
Mr. Bonner. I think it would have a significant impact if
you allowed these agents to specialize in one field, such as
immigration. I think it's a mistake to expect so much of people
and you're probably right. You could probably intercept 98
percent of what's coming across if you train people very well,
but 98 percent is not good enough when you are dealing with
terrorism because, as Mr. Cutler pointed out, they only have to
be right once in order to inflict incredible damage and we have
to be right 100 percent of the time to screen the people out of
this country who should not be getting into this country.
Mr. Lungren. We also want to screen out things that we
don't want in this country as well.
Mr. Bonner. Absolutely, and expecting one person to be an
expert in all of these fields is asking too much. What you are
going to end up with are jacks of all trades, but masters of
none.
Mr. Lungren. Is it more important that we enforce employer
sanctions or that we be concerned with dividing up these
responsibilities?
Mr. Bonner. I don't think you are going to look at it as
either/or, I think you have to do both. I think employer
sanctions is a very key part of enforcing the immigration laws.
Mr. Lungren. What would have a greater impact?
Mr. Bonner. I think the greater impact would be if you
could honestly enforce employer sanctions. If you could remove
98 percent of the people from the equation who are coming
across our borders illegally, I think that would have a huge
impact, but I think the other is also important.
Mr. Lungren. And I have always been concerned that we
haven't focused on that part, that 98 percent or whatever the
percent of people coming here seeking jobs. The magnet is jobs.
How do you affect that? You go to where the jobs are, which is
employer sanctions. I'm convinced we are never going to have an
employer sanction program that people will support unless we
have a workable guest worker program. That is just my thought,
and I think we need to focus on that. We make the job that much
more difficult for people at the border to the extent that we
have not controlled the tremendous magnet that attracts people
here, which is jobs. And to the extent that we don't do that,
we just make the haystack bigger. If you are looking for the
needle in the haystack, we have created larger haystacks and a
greater number of haystacks, which makes the job difficult if
not impossible.
Mr. Bonner. No argument from me on that point.
Mr. Lungren. I heard some people suggest that we have made
DHS too big. Do you really think that's the problem?
Mr. Bonner. I don't know that it's the size of the agency
as much as it is the mission and how we have broken it up; the
structure that allows people to go out and do the job that they
were hired to do.
Mr. Lungren. Let me ask another way. It was my observation
10 years ago here and while I was Attorney General of the State
of California that the INS, while it was in the Justice
Department, never was looked upon as the gifted child.
Mr. Bonner. Being with the INS for the better part of my
adult life, I concur with that. We were the red headed
stepchild.
Mr. Lungren. So I am not willing at this point to say that
it's because it's over there at DHS and they are too large,
that that's what the problem is. Unless we focus on the mission
of immigration, unless we focus on the mission of protecting
our borders, unless we make that a priority, it doesn't matter
where it sits, the job is not going to get done.
Mr. Hostettler. I thank the gentlemen. At this time, the
questions from the panel have concluded. I want to thank the
witnesses for your appearance here, your contribution to the
record as we deal with this and many other very important
issues.
All Members are reminded that they have 5 legislative days
to add to the record and that if there are any questions for
Members, additional questions for members of the panel, that we
would ask members of the panel to return a response within 3
weeks.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Would the gentleman yield? I thank the
Chairman very much. As the DHS has a multiple number of
jurisdictions and responsibilities, so does Congress, and the
Homeland Security Committee has the greater jurisdiction on the
question of management and change. However, I'm going to speak
with our Chairman at least to possibly draft a letter, since I
sit on both Committees, to be able to put this hearing in focus
because I think what we were able to learn today is very
helpful, and the more voices that can be raised about the
concerns expressed by Mr. Stana, Mr. Bonner, Mr. Cutler and to
a certain extent Ms. Kephart and her work on the 9/11
Commission, the more closely we will get in solving the problem
in securing America, but more importantly understanding
immigration and its functions or at least the need to
distinguish the responsibilities of enforcing immigration laws
from, of course, the responsibility of making sure that we
collectively fight the war on terror.
So, Mr. Chairman, I hope that we will have an opportunity
to at least put this hearing in focus and to share it so that
this problem can be involved.
Mr. Hostettler. Look forward to working with the
gentlelady, and with regard to those priorities, I can tell you
that it is the desire of this Subcommittee that we prioritize
the enforcement of our immigration laws. And I understand that
Homeland Security Committee has a lot of priorities and that
may be a different issue for you and on that Committee and the
Chairman of that Committee, but I look forward to working with
you on this because I think we have learned today that a whole
host of issues are contributing to the fact that we are not
adequately enforcing our immigration laws. That goes without
saying in my 2\1/4\ years of my being Chairman of this
Subcommittee, but there seems to be a host of issues conspiring
for that to happen, and to the extent that this Subcommittee
can be helpful in ironing out those differences and reiterating
the priority of immigration enforcement, I look forward to
working with the gentlelady.
The work before this Subcommittee having been completed, we
are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:35 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
Prepared Statement of Eugene R. Davis, Retired Deputy Chief Patrol
Agent, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, U.S. Border Patrol
Agent, Blaine Sector, Blaine, Washington
REGARDING ``THE NEW DUAL MISSIONS OF THE IMMIGRATION ENFORCMENT
AGENCIES"
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee my name is Eugene R.
Davis. I am retired Deputy Chief Border Patrol Agent. I retired in
January of 2000 after having spent 29 years with legacy INS. I spent 23
years on my career along the northern border in Northwest Washington
State. During those years Agents operating in the Blaine Sector under
my jurisdiction were successful in arresting two known terrorists that
entered the United States from Canada. Abu Mezer was arrested on
multiple times in 1996 and 1997 and Ahmed Ressam was arrested in 1999.
In April of 1999 I testified before your subcommittee and as part of
that testimony I warned members of the terrorist threat that existed in
Canada.
In 1996 I was one of local management officials that helped pioneer
the concept of the Integrated Border Enforcement Teams (IBET). This
innovative program established international cooperation between
agencies along both sides of our international border with Canada.
After the attacks of 9/11 multiple IBET teams were established along
the entire U.S./Canada border based on the Blaine model.
Since my retirement in 2000 I have remained very active in the area
of border security and training. I am self employed as a private
contractor. Over the last several years I have taught numerous courses
to law enforcement personnel from both sides of the local border. The
main emphasis of this training has had the goal of encouraging
interagency and international cooperation.
In addition to teaching local courses I have also traveled and
taught courses on border security in foreign countries. My travels have
taken me to West Africa and Central America. Most recently I spent a
month in the fall of 2004 in Pakistan working with Pakistani Military
Officers close to the Afghanistan Border. During this training mission
I helped set up a training program to train new recruits in the
Pakistan Frontier Corp.
I feel that these experiences have given me a unique perspective. I
have used this perspective as I have taught courses in Anti-terrorism
to local senior border inspectors with DHS since my return from
Pakistan.
I am submitting this statement before your important committee to
express grave concerns that I have about the present enforcement
structure within the Department of Homeland Security.
During the last decade that I worked for Legacy INS I became a
strong advocate that the enforcement elements with the agency should be
combined and split off of the service elements. I felt that there was a
direct conflict of one agency trying to administer benefits and
enforcement at the same time. I expressed this believe in written and
spoken testimony before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on
Investigations in November of 2001.
It was my hope that when the Department of Homeland Security was
organized that the enforcement divisions of INS which included the
Border Patrol, Investigations, and Detention and Deportation would be
combined. I felt that would form the nucleus from which a more
effective enforcement platform could be established. Within this
structure the Country would have benefited from the years of experience
that each of these components would have brought to the mix.
Congress chose not to pursue this course. Instead they completely
dismantled the legacy INS enforcement structure and placed them into
two separate entities. The Border Patrol was placed into the Bureau of
Customs and Border Protection. Investigations and the Detention and
Deportation section were made part of the Bureau of Immigration and
Customs enforcement.
This change has not only created havoc between the two agencies but
competition as well. Removing the investigations element from the
border patrol has the same effect that going to a major police
department and taking away their detective force would have.
You now have two major agencies within an agency operating close to
the border that are enforcing immigration laws. It is almost impossible
to determine who is in charge and who is responsible. When outside law
enforcement agencies have a question they often get the run around.
I believe that along the border there is less cooperation taking
place and more confusion now between agencies than there was prior to
9/11.
Interior enforcement has also been adversely effected by this
organization. The former Customs Service was already overwhelmed with
enforcement missions prior to the re-organization. Adding Immigration
enforcement to their responsibility is tasking them with an impossible
mission.
Interior Immigration enforcement prior to the re-organization was
an impossible task for the old INS because of lack of resources and
effective laws. It is my understanding that many of the present
supervisors and upper management people under BICE are legacy Customs
officers. They do not have the years of experience that it takes to
understand the complexities of Immigration law. Many of them view
immigration enforcement as a thankless and impossible mission.
I would suggest in the strongest language that I can muster that
this present organizational structure be re-examined. I would recommend
that the Legacy INS enforcement components be brought back together
under DHS. I believe if they are given the proper manpower, technology,
most importantly new laws with strong enforcement provisions that they
can accomplish their mission.
Thank you for allowing me to submit this written statement to your
important committee.
----------
Prepared Statement of Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee
When the Bush Administration established the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) in 2003, it split up the U.S. Customs Service and the
Bureau of Border Security and reconfigured them into two bureaus, the
Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Bureau of
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The basic responsibility of
CBP is to prevent illegal persons and goods from crossing the border.
ICE is responsible for tracking down these persons and goods if they
get past CBP.
This reorganization has resulted in some coordination problems. For
instance, the training for daily border security operations is not
working well. Supervisors from one legacy agency at a port-of-entry
have not received the training to answer technical questions of
inspectors from another legacy agency. Inspectors often are told just
to do things the way they used to do them.
Much of the information sharing that is occurring at the border is
due to existing personal relationships among employees, not to formal
systems for exchanging information. For example, legacy Customs
employees still cannot access immigration databases. This means a
legacy Customs inspector cannot work at an immigration secondary
inspection point, which reduces the overall flexibility of the
workforce the Department is striving for.
Sometimes, to facilitate an investigation, ICE investigators want
contraband to be allowed to pass through the border. This is known as,
``a controlled delivery.'' While this is a legitimate investigatory
method, it is contrary to CBP's mission, which is to prevent contraband
from passing through the border. Consequently, ICE's use of controlled
deliveries has created difficulties with CBP. ICE and CBP have formed a
working group to develop a protocol for controlled deliveries that will
resolve this conflict.
Alien smuggling investigations have suffered too. In INS, alien
smuggling cases traditionally arose from inspectors, border patrol
agents, or adjudicators noticing patterns or trends. The dissolution of
INS has cut the connections between the agents who investigate alien
smuggling and the front line personnel. Also, fewer Customs
investigations have been generated by leads from inspectors.
To a great extent, however, CBP and ICE are suffering from the same
management problems that INS had before DHS was created and the
immigration enforcement functions were separated. In 1997, GAO reported
that INS lacked clearly defined priorities and goals and that its
organizational structure was fragmented both programmatically and
geographically. Additionally, field managers had difficulty determining
whom to coordinate with, when to coordinate, and how to communicate
with one another because they were unclear about headquarters offices'
responsibilities and authority. GAO also reported that INS had not
adequately defined the roles of its two key enforcement programs,
Border Patrol and investigations, which resulted in overlapping
responsibilities, inconsistent program implementation, and ineffective
use of resources. INS's poor communications led to weaknesses in
policies and procedures.
In 2004, GAO reported that CBP and ICE have many of the same
management challenges that INS had. For example, in some areas related
to investigative techniques and other operations, unresolved issues
regarding roles and responsibilities give rise to disagreements and
confusion. While initial steps have been taken to integrate the former
immigration and customs investigators, such as establishing cross-
training and pay parity, additional important steps remained to be
completed to fully integrate investigators.
INS was a dysfunctional agency. When its enforcement
responsibilities were taken over by DHS, they were divided between two
new bureaus. The purpose of today's hearing is to decide whether the
enforcement functions should be consolidated again. If the problem were
just structural in nature, consolidation might make sense; but the
problem is not just structural in nature. The bureaus still have
serious management difficulties that need to be addressed. Our witness,
Rich Stana, from GAO, will elaborate on the nature of these problems.
Thank you.
----------
Prepared Statement of Congressman Elton Gallegly
Thank you for holding this hearing, Mr. Chairman.
The dual mission of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is
troubling to me. It is troubling to me because I spent years, next to
many who still sit on this subcommittee today, aggravated by the dual
mission of the former INS. At the former INS, the ``service'' mission
of the organization continually conflicted with the ``enforcement''
mission.
Now, again, we find the immigration enforcement authority in the
same pickle. Lumped into a dual mission organization with customs
enforcement, interior enforcement is still lacking. If management is
any indication, priority has been given to the customs functions.
Increasingly large numbers of illegal immigrants are entering the
country. By some estimates, they number more than a million a year. Why
are they coming here? Many come for jobs. If there is no meaningful
enforcement in the interior, the illegal immigration problem in this
country will never get better, and may continue to get worse.
I am interested to hear from the witnesses about the dual missions
of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and about how these missions
impede the effective enforcement of the law.
I yield back my time.
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Map of ``9/11/2001 Deaths by State of Residence,'' submitted by Mr.
Michael Cutler