GovernmentExecutive.com

Several management problems that doomed the former Immigration and Naturalization Service live on in security agencies responsible for enforcing the nation's immigration laws, a top government auditor recently said.

INS was dismantled after the Sept. 11 attacks, when the Homeland Security Department was created and the bureaus of Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement took over enforcing immigration laws. CBP is responsible for inspections and border patrol, while ICE is in charge of investigations, intelligence, and detention and removal operations.

"A number of management challenges similar to those found at INS have continued in the new organizations now responsible for immigration enforcement functions," Richard Stana, director of the Government Accountability Office's Homeland Security and Justice Issues Division, recently told lawmakers.

"These INS management challenges included a lack of clearly defined priorities and goals; difficulty determining whom to coordinate with, when to coordinate and how to communicate; and inadequately defined roles resulting in overlapping responsibilities, inconsistent program implementation and ineffective use of resources," Stana added.

Stana testified May 5 before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims.

Stana said the creation of CBP posed fewer challenges than ICE. While CBP is a combination of programs that largely worked together before the merger, ICE is "a patchwork of agencies and programs," he said.

"The integration of INS and Customs investigators into a single investigative program has involved the blending of two vastly different workforces, each with its own culture, policies, procedures and mission priorities," Stana said about ICE. "Both programs were in agencies with dual missions that prior to the merger had differences in investigative priorities. For example, INS primarily looked for illegal aliens and Customs primarily looked for illegal drugs. In addition, INS investigators typically pursued administrative violations, while Customs investigators typically pursued criminal violations."

Some current and former DHS officials recently told Congress that ICE and CBP should be merged.

Stana did not take a stand on the merger. Instead, he said Congress should consider three main factors in deciding whether to make organizational changes.

"The first factor is whether ICE and CBP currently have good management frameworks in place. Such a management framework, among other items, would include a clear mission, a strategic planning process, good organizational alignment, performance measures, and leadership and accountability mechanisms," he said.

"The second factor is whether ICE and CBP have developed systems and processes to support the management frameworks they may have in place. The third factor is that the management challenges in these two bureaus exist in the larger context of the creation and evolution of DHS."

Transformation and integration activities at DHS, Stana said, could take five to seven years to accomplish and some management challenges with ICE and CBP might be resolved in that process.

COMMENTS

• You guys gotta quit the petty mudslinging. That gets us nowhere. There are serious problems with our agency that need to be addressed NOW! Focus your attention to where it MIGHT do some good. Write to your Congressmen!They know ICE’s budget and infrastructure is a mess. What they don't know is what our Special Agents historically investigated and are doing less efficiently now. Both legacy agency duties are important to Homeland Security & there are enough good & bad agents to go around from both agencies.My complaint is that none of us are being given sufficient tools to effectively carry out what our oath says that we must. To conduct complex investigations concerning Homeland Security. I take my job VERY seriously. What ICE Agents do or do not do can effect the lives of thousands of people. If we do not have the funds nor the mechanism in place to quickly and effectively conduct complex criminal investigations, it will enable the terrorist or agent of a hostile country to purchase WMDs, TOW missiles, military vessels & aircraft and the more serious items as critical and dual use technology to use against our citizens in the U.S. or our military abroad. It will cause counterfeit (sub-standard) parts to be smuggled into this country which can and has caused civilian and/or military aircraft to crash (yes Virginia, there is more to our counterfeit investigations than Gucci purses). It will enable millions of dollars to get into the hands of our enemies to be used as tools against us. It will allow the illegal alien terrorist to wonder our country at will. We cannot stand by & do nothing when we see our historical authorities being slowly eroded to other agencies that do not have a clue on how to conduct these investigations. Nor can we remain silent when we are forced to do the BP and DROs job (apprehensions) that takes time away from these investigations. (Apprehensions are an important job but it is not our job.) I cannot say it better than Former Park Police Chief Chambers, "IF I ALLOW MYSELF TO WALK AWAY AND BE SILENCED FROM DOING WHAT I WAS HIRED TO DO...THEN I HAVE TAKEN MY PATRIOTISM AND THROWN IT IN THE TRASH." You can stand by & say nothing on these issues. My conscience will not allow me to do the same. ICE COULD have been an awesome agency to contend with. But I fear irreparable harm may have been done. RAC NASHVILLE DHS / ICE Angry Patriot Posted June 1, 2005 7:00 PM
• It's really sad. GAO is stating the obvious. Customs might have had its share of problems, but from what I've seen (I've transferred to a legacy Customs Office from a Legacy INS office) morale was good, and there was a clearly defined mission with plenty of funding and support. On the other hand, INS had a politically influenced mission (if it had a mission at all other than just a presence to say the government is doing something about our insecure borders) with bad morale, bad management, and little or no money to say the least. It seems to me that when INS INV and Customs OI was merged, that the smart people up above would have taken from the obvious and did things the Customs way instead of the INS way. From what I see, ICE is nothing but another INS in the making, or already made. The nightmare I thought I was going to be able to leave without changing jobs (as I was getting ready to do prior to the merger and still just might do it) just continues. I'm having flashbacks. Thanks ICE/DHS management. GovExec.com reader Posted May 24, 2005 1:15 PM
• Here's what's amazing to me. This article uses the words dismantle. The language of the bill creating DHS uses the word "abolish". The only thing that was dismantled or abolished was two words "Naturalization Service". No laws, rules, regulations, paperwork was abolished. No official from the former INS was fired or riffed. No administrative systems, budgets were dismantled. The "INS" lives on in this new nightmare called ICE. Clearly something was going wrong at INS, or they would not have "abolished", or "dismantled" it. Why abolish something if its going well? But none of that was done. Everything lives on as it did prior to the merger. We continue on, two years later doing the same thing pretending we are making a difference. Doesn't anyone of us want to know why this was done? If we are doing the same thing as before, and we are, then why is it that we, as taxpayers, are spending billions to create DHS when nothing was changed. Doesn't anyone want to know why Congress is spending billions to "prop" us up, yet we all know that we have nothing to do with anything resembling terrorism investigations? Mark my words, this agency will become the new INS service. This problem is too big for us to do both INS investigations and traditional Customs investigations. Eventually we will see CBP being allowed to hire 1811's to do their investigaitons. More waste of government money. But no-one seems to care. Shame on the former and present Legacy Customs managers who have shown no courage in fighting this farce. Dry Ice Posted May 19, 2005 8:17 PM