Chertoff seeks unified DHS, sets 2008 priorities

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff highlighted the department's 2007 achievements Wednesday, also naming four key areas that he plans to focus on in the coming year: border security and immigration, secure identity, cybersecurity, and operations.

Chertoff also said the department will spend the next year looking internally to improve the way it functions as a single, unified institution. He said one of the obstacles is excessive congressional oversight. While insisting that he believes monitoring is good for the department, he said DHS is dealing with "oversight run amok." In 2007, DHS officials testified before Congress 224 times. In the five-year history of the agency, officials have provided 7,800 written reports and answered 13,000 questions for the record.

Chertoff said while this is a drain on time and resources, his primary problem is that the 86 committees or subcommittees with jurisdiction over DHS have an excessively narrow view of the department. "My plea to Congress is … please give us a reasonable number of points of contact so we can engage in a dialogue that is disciplined and helps us pursue, in an organized fashion, the type of overall assessment of what is important and how to manage this department that only those who have the big picture have the ability to assess for us."

While praising the department for its successes across component agencies, from requiring passports for air travel in the Western Hemisphere to screening cargo entering the United States by land and sea for radiation to responding quickly to almost 60 national disasters, Chertoff identified areas of focus that will "demand our sustained attention in 2008 and likely beyond."

Border security and immigration will continue to be the center of attention going into the new year, he said. While emphasizing the ongoing need for comprehensive immigration reform, Chertoff said DHS must continue to take steps to show it is responding to the problem in the interim.

"There is a profound skepticism about the government's willingness and ability to control illegal immigration," he said. "I recognize the government needs to make a down payment on credibility to the American people to show that we have the willingness to enforce the laws the way they are and that we have all the tools available at our disposal to get the job done."

DHS plans to build almost 400 miles of fence along the southern border in 2008, which, according to Chertoff, would mean that almost the entire expanse of land from the Pacific Ocean to the New Mexico-Texas border would be fortified by either a natural or DHS-installed barrier. The department also will continue to beef up the Border Patrol to meet President Bush's goal of doubling the law enforcement agency before the end of his administration.

Chertoff continues to push improved standards for identification documents through the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative and the REAL ID program. The initiative, which requires travelers within North and South America to present passports, will expand from its air-only phase to include land in 2008. He said the department is working toward implementing REAL ID, which establishes national standards for state-issued driver's licenses and identification cards despite some reluctance at the state level, and will issue new regulations for the program in the next few weeks.

"Some people have an ideological discomfort with having REAL ID driver's licenses, and I think we ought to have this debate," Chertoff said. "I have yet to have someone explain to me why I'm better off as a citizen if a 16-year-old kid in a college town can take my identity, phony up a driver's license and pretend to be me."

DHS is working with Congress to address emerging cybersecurity threats. The department already has in place systems to detect threatening patterns of network traffic and alert the necessary agencies. Chertoff said the 2008 plans may provide a template for how the government handles cybersecurity threats over the next decade.