TOPICS
TOPICS
Homeland Security reorganizes border bureaus
Officials at the Homeland Security Department announced Tuesday that the Air and Marine Operations division will be moved from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau into the Customs and Border Protection bureau.
The move consolidates the Border and Transportation Security directorate's air and marine resources within a single agency. Officials concluded that AMO's principal focus has been interdiction - mainly that of drug and human smuggling operations - and therefore its "natural location rests more with CBP than with ICE," which is primarily an investigative agency.
The announcement, made jointly by ICE chief Michael Garcia and CBP Commissioner Robert Bonner, stems from a senior review of the integration of air and marine law enforcement assets within the department.
Because interdiction and investigation operations often are closely linked, the division of responsibilities and resources between ICE and CBP within Homeland Security has been contentious, officials from both agencies say. The two agencies comprise elements of the former Customs Service and Immigration and Naturalization Service agencies, which were merged with other agencies in the creation of Homeland Security last year.
Officials at both CBP and AMO declined to comment on the announcement Tuesday.
It is not clear yet how AMO's funding may be affected. Early this month, Garcia froze AMO's budget, along with the budgets of other divisions within ICE, for the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends Thursday. AMO's planning documents call for the establishment of five new offices along the northern U.S. border, but only two of those offices were partially funded in 2004.
Also unclear is whether AMO employees will move to new offices in Washington to be located with their new colleagues at CBP, or where they will fall on the agency's organization chart.
"It will be an evolutionary affair," says one AMO official, who expects it will take several weeks of planning before final decisions are made.
COMMENTS
- For those who point out that ICE is beset with Customs management, I offer some simple math. There are three legacy INS supervisors for each legacy Customs supervisor. "If there is a conflict between the policies of Customs and INS, we will use INS policy" (Asst. Secretary Garcia) I have never met a GS-14 supervisor with a GED in Customs. Every INS agent (remember your agency was abolished for incompetence) received a pay raise of $10,000 minimum for breathing on a particular day. It is slightly hard for those of us from Customs to get used to the INS style of criminal investigations, which mostly come from local police departments; can be solved by sitting at one's desk; and leave us the option of going out for some booze at lunch. The average INS criminal case requires a GS-5 or 7, not a GS-13. It is not the number of arrests that count, otherwise we could all pick up aliens at the local home depot all day and be happy. Remember that ICE only has direct statutory authority over immigration. All things Customs are delegated by the Commissioner of Customs, who happens to be Mr. Bonner over at CBP. The law says nothing about mandating this authority. ICE is INS and the only question is whether we can motivate those from the other side or become them. GovExec.com reader Posted January 31, 2005 10:29 PM
- No, Customs should NEVER have been broken up. Customs had defined mission investigations.... fraud, narcotics, public health and safety, trade investigations, forced labor, etc. which had nothing to do with chasing down illegal aliens. INS "agents" have no idea how to investigate, prepare, present, and testify in REAL CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS. Chasing down illegal immigrants takes no more skill, knowledege, or investigative expertise than driving all over town looking for someone. Customs had a multi-pronged mission, which had NOTHING to do with INS garbage. INS management now thinks it has carte blanche to expand its lame, pointless alien "investigations" (especially in Dallas) with a bunch of lazy, untrained pavement pounder "agents" and even more corrupt, untrained, INS legacy remnant "managers" who know nothing of REAL investigations into the realm of precedence over Customs investigations. Customs should be put back together with its own 1811s and the remnants of the defunct, corrupt, incestuous INS should be left to its own legislative demise in the cesspool known as ICE. GovExec.com reader Posted October 22, 2004 11:26 AM
- You are lucky that you are retired and don't have to deal with this mess any longer. You should be commended for your 30 years of service to our country, but don't belittle those of us who are still on the job, trying to work despite the very real problems this merger, or should I say hostile takeover, has caused. Imagine a psychiatrist, a gynecologist, and a cardiac surgeon coming to work one day, and being told that from now on, they are merged into one practice, and are to do each other's jobs. No problem, because they're all doctors, aren't they?! This analogy applies to ICE, in that different agencies with vastly different jobs were haphazardly thrown together, with no regard for what they were or what they did. In the case of Customs, this meant the end of the oldest federal law enforcement agency, with 214 years of tradition and history thrown away with the stroke of a pen. Are we a little sensitive? Maybe, because we were proud of our agency, its history and accomplishments. Now, administrative systems were an afterthought, and so were budgets, with the result being a huge foul up. Regarding legacy this and that, well what do you expect when the agency hasn't issued new badges and credentials yet, after over a year and a half, because of an inability to decide on its name? We are federal law enforcement officers, who have served and will still serve our country. However, to imply that we are the ones responsible for this fiasco totally misrepresents our comments, and the facts. Maybe if our so called leaders spoke with us beforehand, many of these problems could have been avoided. So sit back and enjoy your retirement, and be thankful you don't have to deal with this disaster anymore, while we who are still here do our best to carry out our jobs, once DHS and ICE figure out what they are! GovExec.com reader Posted October 18, 2004 5:29 PM
