The Other Mega-Merger

ICE doesn't have a monopoly on mega-mergers. The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, ICE's sister agency, is involved in its own reorganization, which also happens to be the largest worker retraining effort in government. Over the next year, the agency plans to merge three inspection jobs-currently performed by former Customs, INS, and Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service inspectors-into two positions: CBP officer and agriculture specialist. All told, 18,000 inspectors will be trained.

"It's a huge process," says Andrew Maner, director of the agency's Transition Management Office. Maner led a working group that developed the two new positions after studying the inspection process. Officials decided that a single CBP officer could inspect both people and goods, duties currently split between former INS and Customs inspectors, as well as handle basic plant and animal inspections. Busy ports will have agriculture specialists on hand to conduct more rigorous checks of plants.

Inspectors will get three months of training, which will take place in the field. Federal employee unions did not participate in Maner's group, and some union leaders have questioned whether a single inspector can handle the complexity of the inspections previously carried out by INS and Customs agents. But Maner, who crisscrossed the country to discuss the plan with inspectors at nine ports, believes most inspectors will accept the proposal. "I think it was received very, very well," he says.

One question Maner couldn't answer involved grooming standards. Before the merger, Customs inspectors could wear beards, but INS inspectors had to be clean-shaven. "We're looking at a policy for CBP officers now," he says. Maner has convened a working group to create "unifying symbols" for CBP, and he is quick to note that the CBP patch is modeled after the old patch worn by INS inspectors. "I am highly resistant to the notion that [CBP] is a Customs takeover."

Like his counterparts at ICE, Maner believes reorganization will improve operations in the field. Inspectors already are sharing high-tech detection equipment with the Border Patrol, another component of CBP, and officials in Washington are closely monitoring daily reports of activity at the border.