Border agency plans to hire more than 2,000 new employees

The Homeland Security Department will hire more than 2,000 new employees to protect U.S. borders this year, including 1,700 new inspectors at ports of entry, Secretary Tom Ridge said Monday.

The new hires, which include 570 Border Patrol agents, will be folded into the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, the new border security agency headed by former Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner. The agency plans to put 615 additional inspectors at airports and 460 inspectors at key land ports such as the Ambassador Bridge/Detroit Tunnel port-of-entry along the U.S.-Canada border. Funds in the fiscal 2003 appropriations law will pay for the new staff.

The hiring campaign is part of a broader administration effort to improve the screening of people and goods at U.S. ports through better management and technology, Ridge said in a speech Monday to the National Association of Counties in Washington.

"We see down the road in the future a combination of not only additional people, but more technology, as we seal our borders and at the same time facilitate the legitimate flow of people and legitimate goods," he said.

Some changes were visible when the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection opened for business on Saturday. At ports of entry, inspectors began using pocket-sized radiation detectors to screen people coming into the country. Customs inspectors have used such detectors for years, but they were not widely used by inspectors with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The bureau plans to give detectors to 15,000 inspectors at the border, Ridge said.

With about 30,000 employees, the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection is the third- largest entity with the Homeland Security Department, trailing only the Transportation Security Administration and Coast Guard in size. It includes 9,000 former Customs Service inspectors, 6,000 former INS inspectors, 3,000 former Agriculture Department inspectors and 10,000 personnel from the former Border Patrol.