Outgoing Homeland Security official cautions against citizen border guards

Outgoing Homeland Security undersecretary Asa Hutchinson cited a number of border and immigration challenges the country faces in his final speech Monday before leaving government, including words of caution against a citizen effort to help guard the southern borders.

"If a president ever comes to you and asks you to set up a new department, come see me first," Hutchinson told an audience of mostly Washington interns and college students during his last speech as the Homeland Security Department's undersecretary for border and transportation security.

In order to control the country's borders, Hutchinson said, the government needs strong law enforcement and a means by which noncitizens can legally come into the country to work.

Hutchinson was critical, however, of the Minuteman Project, which calls for U.S. citizens to converge in Tombstone, Ariz., in April "to assist the U. S. Department of Homeland Security by observing and reporting illegal activity on and around the southern border of the United States."

According to James Gilchrist, an organizer of the grassroots effort, the project is all-volunteer and especially seeks current and former members of any law enforcement organization, as well as military veterans or people with intelligence-gathering experience. The project says it is not a call to arms, but a call for citizens to peacefully assemble at the Arizona-Mexico border. As of Monday, 531 volunteers from 47 states had signed up, including pilots with aircraft.

"Our policy of passive activity will be to observe with the aid of binoculars-telescopes-night vision scopes, and inform the U.S. Border Patrol of the location of illegal activity so that border patrol agents can investigate," Gilchrist wrote in a call to action on the Minuteman Project's Web site.

"I hope to bring serious media and political attention to this event," Gilchrist added. "It will tune the American people into the shameful fact that 21st Century minutemen/women have to help secure U.S. borders because the U.S. government REFUSES to provide our dutiful U.S. Border Patrol and Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement with the manpower and funding required to do so."

Hutchinson expressed concern that the volunteers do not have adequate training for the work.

"I'm very concerned that you're going to have people shot, people hurt," Hutchinson said.

With regard to DHS programs, Hutchinson said the department plans to deploy visa security experts to Indonesia and Pakistan this year to help U.S. consulates process visa applications.

Hutchinson said the department might also have to request an additional one-year extension for countries that are part of the U.S. Visa Waiver Program to comply with a new regulation that they issue machine-readable passports with biometric identifiers. Countries that are part of the Visa Waiver Program have said they need more time to meet the deadline, which is this October.

Hutchinson said the United States needs to remain open to immigrants-whether they are business people, students or tourists-while respecting the rule of law. He also said that the United States should "enlist" Canada and Mexico to create a "North American security perimeter" to protect borders.

"The worst thing that could happen to our country," he said, "is if we seal off our borders and isolate the United States from international commerce."