Robert C. Bonner

hen Congress was debating the creation of the Homeland Security Department, Robert Bonner strongly endorsed the notion of merging the duplicative functions of the Customs Service, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the Border Patrol. "The authority to streamline overlapping border functions is absolutely essential to achieving greater efficiency and effectiveness," he said in an August 2002 speech before the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. "It's not enough for all organizations with border responsibilities to simply be moved into the new department. There must be authority to consolidate where that is appropriate."

Now the former Customs Service commissioner has his wish. As chief of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, Bonner supervises 35,000 employees in an increasingly unified inspection force examining people and goods moving across U.S. borders and through ports of entry. The bureau not only has homeland-security responsibilities but also enforces a host of laws and regulations governing immigration, import-export activities, and health and safety. It collects nearly $24 billion in U.S. revenues annually.

In an October 2003 appearance before a House Homeland Security subcommittee, Bonner ticked off improvements made in border security since September 2001. But he acknowledged that full workforce integration would come gradually.

Bonner, 62, was born in Wichita, Kan. He graduated from the University of Maryland, earned a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center and then did a three-year stint in the U.S. Navy. He served as U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, as a U.S. district judge, and as administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration.