U.S. Customs Service offices on the West coast are not receiving resources relative to the threats facing the area, agency officials acknowledged at a House hearing last week in Los Angeles.
Robert S. Trotter, Customs' assistant commissioner for field operations, told members of the House Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology that the agency has historically allotted more resources to the east coast, and has been slow to reassign investigators to "new frontiers of criminal activity."
The Customs Service was reorganized in 1995 into Customs Management Centers, the largest of which is in southern California. The southern California region contains two primary ports: Los Angeles International Airport and the Los Angeles/Long Beach Seaport. Together, they process more than $180 billion in two-way trade per year and 7.3 million international passengers.
Subcommittee Chairman Stephen Horn, R-Calif., expressed concern that the understaffing leaves Customs vulnerable to illegal activity.
"Southern California has not received resources on a par with the challenges, and definitely not in comparison to other Customs regions," Horn said at the hearing. "It is as if the resources given to the Customs Service were frozen at the ratios of the 1950s, when Los Angeles was a small city."
Data provided to the committee by the Customs Service indicates that the average agent in Los Angeles is responsible for more drug seizures and more inspections of aircraft and passenger traffic than agents at New York ports of entry. But the data also show that the agency has placed about twice as many special agents in its New York office as it has in Los Angeles.
"Customs officers in California are forced to do more with less, to inspect less, to let some suspicious small infractions go uninvestigated because of limited resources," Horn said.
Norman J. Rabkin, director of administration of justice issues for the General Accounting Office, attributed Custom's difficulty in allocating resources to problems with its Government Performance and Results Act strategic plan.
"In GAO's opinion, the plan does not adequately recognize Customs' need to improve its management practices," Rabkin said.
However, Rabkin noted that Customs officials told GAO that in preparation for its fiscal 1998 budget request, Customs conducted a formal needs assessment based on the number of drug seizures at ports, the increased smuggling threat through railway ports of entry and the threat of internal conspiracies at certain ports.
Rabkin said GAO is currently reviewing the documentation for the needs assessment as well as the process by which Customs officials determined the number of new inspectors to be assigned to each Customs Management Center. GAO expects to report the results of the review next spring.
Horn said Congress would continue to look at the situation because "without examination a move toward results-based government will fail."
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