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Return to Article: Agency turf battles thwart efforts to combat arms trafficking

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  Jimbo1105, that's correct, and very well put. Also, Customs and ATF (as well as the Secret Service and IRS) were all under the Treasury Under Secretary for Enforcement, which helped with coordination between agencies, as well as turf battles.

  ICEd Posted July 1, 2009 4:59 PM
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  Does anyone remember when both Customs and ATF were under Treasury??? Cooperation was only marginally better then, but at least both agencies operated more efficiently and effectively then, than either does independently or jointly today under DHS and Justice! Perhaps, yet again, this is another example of why raiding multiple government agencies and departments to create DHS was and always will be, an asinine idea.

  Jimbo1105 Posted July 1, 2009 9:42 AM
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  Again, some liberal wrote this article throwing out that fictious figure of "90% of all illegal guns come from the US". As mentioned in one of the other comments, I don't think I have walked into any gun store in the US and have been able to purchase rocket launchers, grenade launchers, heavy machine guns, explosives. This is a fallicy being perpetrated by the left to further disarm this country and acheive their left wing utopia.

  Defender of the Free Wrold Posted June 29, 2009 4:19 PM
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  Does anyone really even care?? this is just another canard thrown up by Mexico so they don't police their borders. Its amazing that they gave us 8,000 guns to trace out of 100,000's of thousands. In mining parlance its called salting

  dan m ketter Posted June 25, 2009 11:29 AM
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  no NCIS involvement???

  P Posted June 25, 2009 9:06 AM
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  Has there been a study of how many of these weapons were originally delivered to the Mexican Army? The corruption of that country is starting to match Panama. Stop blaming "smuggled gun", I don't see too many M203s on sale in Rio Grande gun stores.

  L2 Posted June 25, 2009 7:58 AM
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  OK I was in the US Atty's office for years and on the drug unit in a border city and DEA / FBI / ATF were always at war over one thing or another and nobody, nobody, could ever get along with Customs. And you agents out there don't forget how well you get along with the US Marshals on any given day! I'll say this, though -- if the USG combined all federal law enforcement into one agency it would be just like the Gestapo and we would be living like we were in Nazi Germany. Thank God things are the way they are. Thank God.

  Liz Posted June 24, 2009 6:33 PM
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  Cicero: What's the matter, did you get turned down for employment at ICE? Bet you think you are pretty clever by citing the W&IC? Maybe you have personal experience with that section? Maybe that's why ICE rejected you!

  Getting back to the subject at hand: The turf battles have been going on for longer than the 5 years that DHS has been in existence. The problem isn't the agents - in either agency! - the problem is that DHS was cobbled together quickly in the bowels of Congress by a bunch of staffers. There was no thought about clarity of mission or jurisdictional issues, it was a knee jerk (although well intended) reaction to the breakdown of communication that was exposed by 9/11. It was not properly thought through. The Secretaries of DHS and DOJ need to sit down and work all of this out, the way they did regarding jurisdiction on border nexus drug investigations.

  Proud, not cocky ICE Agent Posted June 24, 2009 3:38 PM
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  Cicero, most of the Customs Agents you so fondly spoke of are the same ICE Agents you now speak ill of.

  I noticed how you side stepped the issue of ATF not notifying CPB or ICE before the attempted border pass thru as the MOU spells out. Which is a failure on the supervisor and the SAC/ASAC who approved the pass thru without it. Like I said that pre-dates ICE back to the Customs days.

  Also the failure to call and deconflict at the gun show. Yet you go on to blame ICE for the problems.

  As for your ego inflation assessment you could easily look up the ratings to find that to the contrary moral in ICE is at an all time low. Not really conducive to and inflated ego.

  What may be the inlying problem is your attitude and perceived wrong. You seem to have alot of bottled up anger or some sort of inferior complex towards ICE that comes out as hatred and aggression. Why don't you just put on a happy face, a positive attitude toward your fellow LEAs and get over yourself.

  Rooster5150 Posted June 24, 2009 12:12 PM
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  Rooster, I have a couple of observations for you:

  First, section 5150 of the California welfare and institutions code speaks to an involuntary (72 hour) hold_ danger to self or others. I would, therefore, stipulate that your (apparently) eponymous Identity precludes you from speaking to The relative childishness of any post.

  Second, there is every reason to believe That these problems did not predate the Creation of ICE. Indeed, there is every Reason to believe that atf and customs worked Well together BEFORE the egos became inflated By the creation of DHS.

  Third, I have met several egos, erm, I mean agents from ICE. You would have to go a long Way to convince me that their (unfounded and Overinflated) sense of self importance does Not pervade that agency.

  Cicero Posted June 22, 2009 2:37 PM
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  Another mountain out of a mole hill. The few guns reaching mexico is a drop in the bucket compared to those their own military is losing. Let Mexico start controlling their borders and stopping the flow of illegals and then congress could then offer assistance. The fact we are sending them $1.2Billion is utter nonsense. To fund it all they have to do is sell a little more oil and get out of OPEC

  dan m ketter Posted June 22, 2009 1:10 PM
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  I being a federal law enforcement official for almost 20 years am so tired of this turf battle thing. It never seems to be decided upon what is rational, but what is political. First was the battle between DEA and ICE, now the battle between ATF and ICE. ICE is set up to be the main investigative agency for TRANSBORDER crime. PERIOD. ATF and DEA are domestic law enforcement agencies responsible for investigating domestic Firearms and drug investigaitons respectively. The SIMPLE solution for this is that ANY issues involving a border nexus go to ICE as the lead and any domestic issues that do not have a border NEXUS go to ATF or DEA. We all spend too much time trying to increase out jurisdiction when we should be concentrating on our mandates. If the mandates are confusing, then Congress needs to re-write the laws to provide more clear guidance as to the statutory limitations on each agency. Since this country is too paranoid to have a national police force, this is the only way to keep things civil. ATF and DEA need to concentrate on the domestic problem they were created to address and let ICE and CBP worry about the border. We can all then share information and know who is in charge when and where....

  JoeVangogh Posted June 22, 2009 12:26 PM
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  This could all easily be avoided. The gun show incident could be avoided with a little deconfliction call. The controlled delivery could have been avoided with advanced notification of ICE. Heck that isn't anything new. Any time you do a controlled delivery crossing interstate lines you must notify ICE and CBP for that matter. That's been goin of for well over a decade.

  ICE can't even do it without CBP approval and if it's narcotics they must notify DEA.

  The dude blaming ICE doesn't know what he is talking about. First anything crossing intl borders fall under Customs jurisdiction. Always has been. How would he like it if ICE walking into his office and just started doin whatever they wanted. Taking his cases and walking all over his authority without even asking it he wanted to participate? I'm sure he'd be upset too.

  Not only was the ATF Agent at fault but his supervisor and anyone else above him that gave the blessing without notifying at the very least CBP. It appears to have been done on purpose.

  Like one guy said LEA turf battles have been goin on forever. Talk to the locals they say all feds are prima donas so there ya have it. It was to long ago I read that the ATF and FBI were squabbling of bombing cases. The FBI was trying to label everything terrorist related so they could get in on it. Arguing in front of civilians at a crime scene. What was the comment denominator with the ICE cases? The ATF. If we go by Cicero's reasoning then it looks like ATF may be the problem. See how childish your statement looks now Cicero.

  Rooster5150 Posted June 22, 2009 11:38 AM
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  Every gun show I have attended the seller must check your ID then call in with social security numbers to Office of Public Safety and they run a check. If Office of Public Safety gives ok you can purchase the gun. This is in Iowa.

  Larry L. Johnson Posted June 22, 2009 8:43 AM
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  1. ATF and legacy US Customs were all part of the Treasury Department prior to 3/2003, and worked very well together, under the Treasury UnderSecretary for Enforcement (position was abolished when all of the Treasury enforcement agencies went to DHS or Justice). 2. In March 2003, ATF went to the Justice Department, and US Customs went into DHS and was shotgun wedded/merged with the dysfunctional I&NS and became ICE (acronym stands for IN CHAPTER ELEVEN.) 3. Now 6+ years later everyone seems amazed that this exercize in stupidity isn't working! DUH! If anyone bothered to research some of the articles and congressional testimony from 2002-2005, this result was articulated back then and very predictable. Wake up and fix it!

  Matt Issman Posted June 22, 2009 7:15 AM
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  Let's see now: ICE fights with ATF. ICE fights with DEA. Call me a cynic, but it seems to me that there is a common denominator here... and if anything substantive is going to come out of these efforts- then the problem child (ICE) will need to be spanked and told to stop acting like a prima donna.

  Cicero Posted June 21, 2009 7:27 PM
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  If ATF agents sent guns to Mexico without notifying ICE or CBP, why weren't they arrested and charged with illegal smuggling of firearms? ATF has no enforcement authority at the border, the last time I checked. The same goes for DEA, which has imported illegal narcotics into the US during undercover operations without notifying Customs, and now CBP and ICE (I know, because when I was a Customs inspector in NY, we seized a shipment of 4 kilos of heroin that DEA tried to slip past us!).

  Just Saying Posted June 21, 2009 5:46 PM
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  Has anyone ever heard of the RCMP!!!! It has and does work fine for Canada. I have worked with them multiple times and I can tell you first hand they have none of the problems on the scale we do here in the U.S. In fact my counterparts have asked me on more then once how we Americans get anything doe. FBI, DEA, ATF, ICE, USSS, IRS/CID, US Marshals, etc. All this is under one roof called RCMP. They have a drug division, white collar, Protection, Counter-Intel and it all works. Why? Because there is none of the stupid competition that we have among agencies to show Congress what has been done for them lately! If we want proper federal law enforcement we just need to look to our neighbors to the North.

  Deacon Posted June 21, 2009 5:04 PM
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  So what's new?

  Turf battles among LE agencies are as old as a rock and many of the leaders are not much smarter than a rock either.

  I used to work for one of these agencies and I watched the LE types jerrymander things so that sll of its field managers became SESers much to the detriment of others within the organization. Vision is one of the the leaderships skills for the SES yet most of these people didn't have the vision to see across the street.

  I suppose that is the root cause of the problem addressed in the article.

  I am glad to have been able to retire!

  Potato Man Posted June 21, 2009 2:46 PM