New DHS policy shop will tackle border security, illegal immigration

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Monday that the department's newly proposed policy office would develop a comprehensive strategy for improving the nation's border security and addressing illegal immigration.

Chertoff proposed creating a departmentwide policy directorate, headed by an undersecretary, as part of several organizational changes announced two weeks ago. Since then, Chertoff has said the department is mapping out changes across the nation's border and immigration system, and plans to hire a program manager to execute more reforms in the coming months.

"Obviously we know there's a huge issue with the border," Chertoff told government officials Monday during a keynote speech at the Excellence in Government conference in Washington, which is co-sponsored by Government Executive. "The appropriate way to address this, I think, is strategic."

"Our philosophy with respect to the border -- and with respect to other things, as well -- is we want to look at the whole system," he said. "We want to analyze it strategically. We want to make sure that when we're adjusting in one area, we are taking account of that throughout the entire system. And it's that kind of capability that we're looking to develop in the department with this unified policy and planning function."

Chertoff equated changes in border security to building a pipeline. If more illegal aliens are apprehended, for example, more detention beds and faster adjudication processes are needed.

"When you look at the problem of illegal migration, it is not really a question of how many boots you have on the ground at the border," he said. "It's how those boots interact with your technology and your infrastructure to give you the maximum efficiency in terms of intercepting and deterring illegal border crossings."

"It's like when you make a pipeline," he added. "If you expand one part of the pipeline, you better make sure the whole pipeline is scaled up; otherwise, you get a bottleneck and you break the pipeline."

Some critics, however, say the Bush administration and DHS are not doing enough to address border security gaps, even with the proposed changes.

T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council - which represents 10,000 Border Patrol employees - called the reorganization plan "little more than a bureaucratic reshuffling and perpetuation of failed policies that needlessly compromise homeland security."

Bonner said an effective program is needed to sanction employers who hire illegal immigrants.

Michael Cutler, who worked at the former Immigration and Naturalization Service for 30 years, said the reorganization plan falls short because it does not merge the Customs and Border Protection bureau and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The border security system should be viewed as a tripod, he said, with enforcement at ports of entry, between ports of entry, and in the interior of the country integrated and seamless.

"I was very disappointed to see that they have not merged CBP and ICE. That to me is a major concern," Cutler told Government Executive. "We're supposed to all be working for a common goal, and a two-legged tripod falls over."

Under the proposed restructuring, ICE and CBP would be stand-alone agencies that report directly to Chertoff rather than an undersecretary.

Some lawmakers also have been skeptical about how the proposed reorganization would improve border security.

"It appears to me that you're going in exactly the opposite direction by moving CBP and ICE out from under a common directorate … and have them reporting to you directly," Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, told Chertoff during a recent hearing. Collins heads the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

"If anything, you're further separating the entities," she said. "We know that a lot of law enforcement officials believe that it would be better instead to bring them together."

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., asked Chertoff to better define the department's priorities.

"I want to make sure you understand that the consensus in the country, even though we have to have some immigration reform, is to secure our borders, northern and southern," he said. "What is the priority? Is it to change immigration policies, or is it to secure the border? I understand that they all are interdependent, but which is the greatest priority?"

Chertoff told the lawmakers he was "acutely aware of how troubled people are" about border security. "What we're doing now is, we're going to have a program manager who is going to build an entire system, and make sure that all the pieces are properly scaled so that we actually increase efficiency," he said.

"One of the main reasons I am arguing for a policy and a planning director is to give us the people who can take these policies and now really literally grind out the instructions very specifically about how we get there," he said. "I'm convinced we can do it."