DHS fails to submit strategic border security plan

The Homeland Security Department has not yet submitted a strategic plan to Congress on how it intends to improve border security and immigration enforcement, prompting House appropriators to cut funding in the department's fiscal 2007 budget.

Although President Bush called on Congress Monday night to provide necessary funding for border security, lawmakers say the administration has not said how the money will be spent or how results will be measured.

"For years we have thrown huge sums of money at border security but the problem has gotten progressively worse," House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., said in a statement Monday. "What we need is a sound, comprehensive strategy that allows us to measure progress. Without a strategic border security plan we are simply planning to fail."

Rogers demanded during a hearing last month that the department submit a plan for its massive, multibillion-dollar Secure Border Initiative, which is intended to crack down on illegal immigration and criminal activity at the borders and inside the country.

"We will have our strategy document outlining the objectives back to the subcommittee by the end of April," SBI program manager Greg Giddens assured Rogers at the time. But the subcommittee confirmed Monday that the strategic plan has not yet been submitted. The department did not reply to written questions for comment Monday.

The department plans to award a contract in September for a prime contractor to develop and implement the first phase of the program, dubbed SBInet, which is focused exclusively on improving security at the nation's borders through a combination of technology, tactical infrastructure and personnel.

The subcommittee's mark of the 2007 Homeland Security Department spending bill provides $115 million for SBInet technology and tactical infrastructure, which is about $97 million less than the administration requested because the strategic plan has not yet been submitted, according to a subcommittee aide.

The mark requires a plan "to ensure that [SBI] has clear goals and a sound strategy for achieving operational control of our borders," and also withholds $25 million from SBInet until an expenditure plan is submitted and approved. The full Appropriations Committee expects to mark up the bill Tuesday.

Despite the cut, the mark drastically increases overall funding for border security and immigration enforcement, compared with current spending, the aide noted. In total, almost $4 billion is approved to support SBI efforts.

The aide said Rogers' panel is worried that SBI might fail like past efforts. The government spent about $430 million from 1998 to 2004 on one program to deploy advanced technology to the borders. But the program was scrapped after investigators found much of the equipment either did not work or was never installed.

Homeland Security officials have said SBInet is drastically different because it focuses on transforming and integrating border control management, systems, operations and processes, as opposed to deploying new technology.

House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Martin Olav Sabo, D-Minn., told Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in a May 1 letter that SBInet does not appear to have proper oversight. "I am deeply concerned that the SBInet solicitation is so broad that the government will, in effect, be turning over its responsibility to secure our borders to the private sector," Sabo wrote.

"The only conclusion that I can reach is that the SBInet solicitation is a public relations document," Sabo noted. "It provides the administration with the cover to say that you are doing something to secure the borders."