Border, Immigration, and Transportation Security Findings. Prior to the creation of DHS, seven agencies (among others) were involved in securing U.S. borders, enforcing immigration laws, and securing the transportation system: the U.S. Customs Service, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Executive Office of Immigration Review, Bureau of Consular Affairs, U.S. Coast Guard, TSA, and Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). Agency missions overlapped to greater or lesser extents, and because the agencies resided in different Cabinet departments, it was difficult to resolve operational and policy conflicts without open turf warfare or resorting to the cumbersome interagency process.
The creation of DHS was supposed to consolidate agencies with overlapping missions and to better integrate our efforts in this area. It has succeeded to some degree. INS has been abolished, and its border inspectors and Border Patrol Agents have been merged with most of U.S. Customs and the border inspectors of APHIS to create U.S. Customs and Border Protection—a single uniformed face at our borders. However, in “consolidating” responsibility for border, immigration, and transportation security, DHS actually increased the number of involved agencies to eight and created additional problems that now need solving. In addition, it has failed to clearly delineate the missions of DHS agencies that also have border, immigration, or transportation security responsibilities.
Additionally, the split of responsibilities between the CBP and ICE was done without a compelling reason— other than the vague (and ultimately incorrect) descriptive notion that the Customs and Border Protection would handle “border enforcement” and ICE would handle “interior enforcement.” Indeed, in various interviews, not one person has been able to coherently argue why the CBP and ICE were created as separate operational agencies. Indeed, some have compared it to deciding to break up the New York Police Department into two separate agencies —one housing the uniformed “beat cops” (analogous to the CBP’s uniformed officers) and the other housing the detectives (analogous to ICE’s plain-clothes investigators).
Recommendations. • Rationalize border security and immigration enforcement by merging the CBP and ICE, eliminating the Directorate of Border and Transportation Security. BTS has neither the staff nor the infrastructure to integrate the operations of the CBP and ICE on a consistent basis outside of the occasional task force, such as the Arizona Border Control Initiative. Nor does it have a policy operation with sufficient influence with the secretary to resolve policy conflicts.
Merging the CBP and ICE will bring together under one roof all of the tools of effective border and immigration enforcement—Inspectors, Border Patrol Agents, Special Agents, Detention and Removal Officers, and Intelligence Analysts—and realize the objective of creating a single border and immigration enforcement agency. This reform could be accomplished by executive decision, without the need for legislative action.
• Eliminate the BTS. With the merger of the CBP and ICE into a single agency, there is no need for the BTS middle-management layer. All operational agencies should have a direct reporting relationship to the secretary via the deputy secretary. This will allow for a better, DHS-wide (including the Coast Guard) policy and operational strategic approach to border security matters.
So you see his job is being eliminated anyway.
Can you provide a link, please.
Thanks.