Michael J. Garcia

hen he took charge of the brand-new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Bureau in March 2003, Michael Garcia was no stranger to the war on terrorism. The former federal prosecutor helped convict terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa, and a plot to bomb 12 American airliners in the Far East. He received the Attorney General's Award for Exceptional Service for two of those prosecutions.

As the chief of ICE, Garcia leads the Homeland Security Department's police unit, which is the second-largest enforcement agency in government; only the FBI has more agents. He inherited more than 15,000 employees, including criminal investigators from the old Customs Service, Immigration and Naturalization Service, and Federal Protective Service. In November 2003, ICE took charge of another police unit: the federal air marshals, which had belonged to the Transportation Security Administration.

Garcia has unveiled a number of high-profile programs, including Operation Predator, an effort to round up child pornographers and illegal-immigrant sex offenders. Still, with a bureau comprising so many components, Garcia faces one of the toughest management challenges within the larger homeland-security reorganization, insiders say.

Garcia, 42, came to ICE from the old INS, where he served as acting commissioner from November 2002 until March 2003. He was appointed to the INS post to shepherd the agency's transition into the Homeland Security Department, where its responsibilities were split apart. Garcia has said his prosecuting experience guided his decisions about how to build an effective organization. His top lieutenant is Michael Dougherty, ICE's director of operations, whom he met during the investigation of the first World Trade Center bombing.

A Brooklyn, N.Y., native, Garcia was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1992 until he joined the Commerce Department in 2001 as assistant secretary for export enforcement. He graduated from the State University of New York (Binghamton), received a master's degree from the College of William and Mary, and earned his law degree from the Albany Law School of Union University.