Hearing on border officer training may focus on staffing issues

A hearing next Tuesday on border security prompted by a Government Accountability Office report on problems with Customs and Border Protection training released this week may focus as much on the bureau's staffing needs as on the implementation of training under CBP's One Face at the Border initiative.

"I don't think training is the answer to their problems," said Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union. "Staffing is the answer."

In its report (GAO-08-219), GAO said CBP had developed 37 training modules for current officers and an on-the-job training program for new officers, but had difficulty delivering that training and no centralized method for tracking officers and the training they received.

One of the primary challenges to delivering training, GAO found, was that a shortage of personnel made it difficult for staff at ports of entry to fulfill inspection responsibilities and at the same time to train former Immigration and Naturalization Service officers, Customs officers and agricultural inspectors to perform their combined duties as CBP officers.

"On occasion, officers said they are called upon to work 16-hour shifts, spending long stints in the primary passenger lane in order to keep lanes open, in part to minimize passenger wait times," GAO said. CBP officers told GAO that some of their colleagues "call in sick due to exhaustion, in part to avoid mandatory overtime, which in turn exacerbates the staffing challenges faced by the ports."

"I am disturbed that Customs and Border Patrol officers are working extensive overtime, including double shifts, and that they are not receiving all the training they need to do their jobs properly," Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, said in a statement announcing the hearing, which he will hold as chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal workforce and the District of Columbia.

GAO noted that in response to legislative requirements in the fiscal 2007 Homeland Security Department appropriations bill and the 2006 SAFE Port Act, CBP developed a staffing model that would incorporate traffic, processing times, the introduction of new equipment and new requirements, and would be updated regularly. The model was not finished before CBP's fiscal 2008 budget request had to be submitted, GAO said, and as a result was not implemented.

But Kelley, who said she planned to push for higher CBP staffing levels at the hearing on Tuesday, saw the model as a step forward.

"Based on what the GAO report says, CBP recognizes they may need thousands of officers," She said. "I think it's significant that's being acknowledged, because it's the first time they've done that. They have held fast to not needing more than the president's budget provides."

Kelley said a staffing model presented by the Customs commissioner before Sept. 11 and the creation of DHS had stressed the need for more officers at the border, but that recommendation did not become a reality.

"Before Sept. 11, there was a recognition that they needed serious additional staffing," she said. "But then to assume just because there's a department everything will be safer was really inappropriate."

The report noted that CBP had some contingency plans for increasing staff.

"On a case-by-case basis, CBP has allowed five field offices to hire above their budgeted staffing levels in order to account for the expected attrition before the next hiring cycle," GAO noted. "For example, one field office was allowed to hire over its budgeted staffing level by 100 staff in anticipation of expected officer attrition. The use of this option is limited, and port managers stated that attrition still outpaces hiring at such locations."

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said budgetary concerns should not be a barrier to providing appropriate CBP staffing: "While this administration pumps millions of dollars into hundreds of miles of real and virtual fences, it must not ignore critical vulnerabilities at our ports of entry," he said.

CBP could not be reached for comment on staffing issues Thursday, but bureau officials said in their response to the GAO report that they concurred with the recommendations that they needed to improve delivery and tracking of training to both new and veteran officers.

The training modules themselves are under review and will be ready in January 2008, according to CBP.

"Once the new training is in place, [the Office of Field Operations] will be in a better position to accurately measure whether an officer who needed the training received it," CBP wrote.

The bureau also plans to conduct focus groups on best practices for training delivery and work on the development of a new tool to track training that should also be ready in January, CBP told GAO.

"OFO will compare the staffing assignments of officers assigned to work in a particular environment to the officers' training records," CBP stated. "This assessment will allow CBP managers to ensure that the necessary cross-training courses have been completed before an officer is assigned to work in a different environment."