[Senate Hearing 112-232]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
S. Hrg. 112-232
SECURING THE BORDER--2011
=======================================================================
HEARINGS
before the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
----------
MARCH 30, 2011
BUILDING ON THE PROGRESS MADE
APRIL 7, 2011
PROGRESS AT THE LOCAL LEVEL
MAY 4, 2011
PROGRESS AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL
----------
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov/
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
S. Hrg. 112-232
SECURING THE BORDER--2011
=======================================================================
HEARINGS
before the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 30, 2011
BUILDING ON THE PROGRESS MADE
APRIL 7, 2011
PROGRESS AT THE LOCAL LEVEL
MAY 4, 2011
PROGRESS AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL
__________
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov/
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
----------
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
67-122 PDF WASHINGTON : 2011
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Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware SCOTT P. BROWN, Massachusetts
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada*
JON TESTER, Montana ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
MARK BEGICH, Alaska RAND PAUL, Kentucky
Michael L. Alexander, Staff Director
Holly A. Idelson, Senior Counsel
Blas Nunez-Neto, Professional Staff Member
Nicole M. Martinez, Legislative Aide
Nicholas A. Rossi, Minority Staff Director
Brendan P. Shields, Minority Director of Homeland Security Policy
Christopher J. Burford, Minority CBP Detailee
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
Patricia R. Hogan, Publications Clerk and GPO Detailee
Laura W. Kilbride, Hearing Clerk
* Senator Ensign resigned on May 3, 2011
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Lieberman........................................ 1, 35, 61
Senator McCain........................................... 3, 37, 86
Senator Johnson............................................. 20, 76
Senator Tester.............................................. 22, 73
Senator McCaskill............................................ 26
Senator Coburn............................................... 54
Senator Collins.............................................. 64
Senator Carper............................................... 91
Prepared statements:
Senator Lieberman..................................... 95, 153, 241
Senator McCain............................................. 98, 155
Senator Collins.............................................. 243
WITNESSES
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Hon. Asa Hutchinson, Former Under Secretary for Border and
Transportation Security at the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security....................................................... 5
Hon. Doris Meissner, Former Commissioner of the U.S. Immigration
and Naturalization Service at the U.S. Department of Justice... 9
Richard M. Stana, Director, Homeland Security and Justice Issues,
U.S. Government Accountability Office.......................... 11
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Hon. Veronica Escobar, El Paso County Judge, Texas............... 39
Hon. Raymond Loera, Sheriff of Imperial County, California....... 41
Hon. Raymond Cobos, Sheriff of Luna County, New Mexico........... 43
Hon. Paul Babeu, Sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona................ 45
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Hon. Janet A. Napolitano, Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland
Security....................................................... 66
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Babeu, Hon. Paul:
Testimony.................................................... 45
Prepared statement with attachments.......................... 177
Cobos, Hon. Raymond:
Testimony.................................................... 43
Prepared statement........................................... 170
Escobar, Hon. Veronica:
Testimony with an attachment................................. 39
Prepared statement........................................... 157
Hutchinson, Hon. Asa:
Testimony.................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 100
Loera, Hon. Raymond:
Testimony.................................................... 41
Prepared statement........................................... 166
Meissner, Hon. Doris:
Testimony.................................................... 9
Prepared statement........................................... 105
Napolitano, Hon. Janet A.:
Testimony.................................................... 66
Prepared statement........................................... 246
Stana, Richard M.:
Testimony.................................................... 11
Prepared statement........................................... 115
APPENDIX
Chart submitted by Senator Lieberman on March 30, 2011........... 97
Letter from the Department of the Interior with an attachment,
dated April 1, 2011, submitted by Senator Coburn............... 210
Larry Dever, Sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona, prepared
statement...................................................... 224
GAO report titled ``Overstay Enforcement: Additional Mechanisms
for Collecting, Assessing, and Sharing Data Could Strengthen
DHS's Efforts but Would Have Costs,'' April 2011............... 263
Colleen M. Kelley, National President, National Treasury
Employees Union, prepared statement............................ 339
Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record from:
Mr. Hutchison................................................ 137
Ms. Meissner................................................. 141
Mr. Stana.................................................... 146
Mr. Loera.................................................... 226
Mr. Cobos.................................................... 227
Mr. Babeu.................................................... 228
Secretary Napolitano......................................... 353
SECURING THE BORDER: BUILDING ON THE PROGRESS MADE
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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30, 2011
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:34 p.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I.
Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Lieberman, Landrieu, McCaskill, Tester,
McCain, and Johnson.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN
Chairman Lieberman. The hearing will come to order. I want
to thank our witnesses particularly and everybody else who is
here.
This is part of a continuing series that we have been doing
on this Committee overseeing our border security operations,
and this one is important because of the range of the witnesses
that we have before us and the work Mr. Stana and the
Government Accountability Office (GAO) has done. We are going
to follow this with two more hearings on the Southwest Border
particularly in which we are going to have some State and local
officials and then Secretary Janet Napolitano will be with us
after that.
The question of border security continues to be important
to our country in various ways. This morning, right here in
this room, we began a different series of hearings on taking a
look at the institutions of our government that were created
after September 11, 2001, to better protect our country than we
were able to on September 11, 2001. We had Tom Kean and Lee
Hamilton of the 9/11 Commission testify. And, of course, in
that case we have done an enormous amount to increase border
security in the sense of stopping terrorists and the
instruments of terrorism from coming into our country, and with
some success, I think.
I was struck in the testimony that has been filed for this
Committee hearing about the interest in the question of what is
border security--in other words, to better define it. And one
series of definitions comes from the Secure Fence Act of 2006
in which they list the elements of operational control, and it
is with regard to terrorism and its tools. Narcotics and other
contraband are obviously quite relevant when you think about
the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in
testimony before this Committee a while ago said that the No. 1
organized crime threat in America today is from the Mexican
drug cartels.
Obviously the Mexicans say that we are creating a problem
for them going the other way and that weapons are coming in
from the United States. And, of course, probably the most
politically sensitive and controversial aspect of border
security is quite different, which is the security of knowing
that people are not coming into the country illegally and in
that sense making a mockery of our law.
We have spent a lot of money and a lot of time increasing
the resources that we have devoted to border security. Some
numbers that GAO provided:
In fiscal year 2004, when the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) first existed, at that point we had 10,500
agents to patrol the land borders. In fiscal year 2010, we had
double that, 20,000 agents at the land borders.
In 2004 we had 17,600 agents inspecting travelers at air,
land, and sea ports of entry. That went way up by fiscal year
2010, and the expenditures more than doubled, from $5.9 billion
to $11.9 billion for personnel, infrastructure, and technology.
The question that we constantly ask is: What do we get as a
result of these investments and how do we measure the results?
And this goes back to the first question that I raised.
One of the standards that is used a lot is apprehensions,
and it has an odd and inverse effect as you look at it. That
has always struck me as problematic, but it may be relevant. As
you can see in that chart that we are showing,\1\ as the number
of agents go up, the apprehensions go down. So you would say,
what does that tell us? Well, generally speaking, we have felt
that tells us there are fewer apprehensions because there are
fewer people trying to come over illegally, although, as others
have pointed out, using apprehensions as the metric here is
problematic because the data tracks events rather than people.
So if one person is apprehended more than once a year, it is
counted more than one time.
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\1\ The chart submitted by Senator Lieberman appears in the
Appendix on page 97.
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At different times, in fact, in the past decade, the Border
Patrol has cited both increases and decreases in apprehensions
as a sign that they are being more effective. Either they are
apprehending a higher percentage of those crossing the border
or their operations have reduced flows.
There was a recent RAND report that says, ``commonly
reported Border Patrol measures, such as numbers of illegal
immigrants apprehended or miles of border under effective
control, bear only an indirect and uncertain relationship to
the border control mission, making them unreliable management
tools.'' So that leads me to want to engage you--and some of
you have provided testimony to that effect--in helping us to
see if we can find a better way to measure security at the
border. In terms of illegal immigration, the common sense lay
person's measurement would be how many people are trying to get
over and how many people are actually coming in as undocumented
aliens.
This question of border security continues to be important
to us in all the ways that I stated, in terms of the organized
crime threat represented by the Mexican drug cartels; obviously
in terms of the terrible violence in Mexico, some of which has
threatened border communities within the United States; and
then in terms of illegal immigration, both because when there
is a law, we have a responsibility to enforce it to the best of
our ability, but also in the context of the congressional
environment. Estimates vary but there are never less than 10
million people who are here as undocumented aliens, and I think
there is a widely held conclusion that improving border
security is a precondition to coming back and dealing with
illegal immigration. Ms. Meissner has actually suggested in
prepared testimony an inverse relationship that maybe it should
go the other way--that is to say that fixing the problem of
undocumented aliens may actually help us to better secure the
border or reduce the flow of illegal immigrants, and we welcome
that testimony as well.
But, anyway, it is an important hearing. I thank the
witnesses. You come with extraordinary experience and I look
forward to your testimony.
Senator McCain, welcome. He has been designated as the
Ranking Member by Senator Collins. He obviously has a lot of
both expertise and interest in the subject, and I have always
wanted to work closely with him on something, and this gives me
the opportunity. [Laughter.]
Senator McCain. That is an inside joke.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MCCAIN
Senator McCain. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
your continued interest in this issue, and I know that
Connecticut is a long way from the U.S.-Mexico Southwest
Border, particularly, but you have been good enough to come to
Arizona and hold hearings there, and it is obviously an issue
of great importance to the people that I represent.
I want to thank our witnesses for coming today, and I would
like to mention I recently returned from a visit to the
Arizona-Mexico border last week. And while I was at the Douglas
Port of Entry, I was shown a video taken 3 days earlier of a
cartel-led execution in Agua Prieta. That is across the border
mere yards from the Douglas Port of Entry. In the video, three
trucks of men armed with fully automatic weapons sped down a
busy street flashing police lights. After cordoning off a busy
city block, they began shooting, firing over 400 rounds,
killing an estimated five people and wounding 17. This level of
violence is new to Agua Prieta.
Ten years ago, we could not have anticipated the headlines
that routinely appear in newspapers today throughout the
country, detailing the dangers along our Southern Border. For
example, on March 3, Reuters reported, ``Police link Arizona
beheading to Mexican drug cartel''; and the January 5 headline
in the L.A. Times, ``Mexico's Drug Violence Respects No
Borders.'' It goes on and on.
The extreme levels of violence in Mexico that have resulted
in the killing of 36,000 Mexicans over the past 4 years--and,
by the way, over that past 4 years, 21,000 Afghans have been
killed in Afghanistan, and yet in Mexico there have been 36,000
over the same period of time. It has not spilled over. We have
had a Border Patrol agent killed, we have had a rancher killed,
but it has not spilled over yet, but it is getting closer.
As the witnesses today will testify, we are seeing
progress, and I have witnessed this progress myself,
particularly in the Yuma Sector, which has seen a dramatic
reduction in the number of illegal border crossers. In the
Tucson Sector, it appears illegal traffic has slowed due to the
continuing economic recession, the increased numbers of Border
Patrol agents, the deployment of National Guard troops, and
increased use of consequence programs like Streamline. And I
want to emphasize under Operation Streamline, a repeat crosser
knows that the individual is going to face increased penalties,
it is a strong disincentive for crossing. And also, once they
are done, releasing them at a border crossing far away has also
had a significant effect.
But progress is not success. We are far from success in the
Tucson Sector. Forty percent of the marijuana smuggled across
our Southern Border comes through the Tucson Sector, and there
are now today--I was just briefed--between 75 and 100 guides
sitting on mountaintops in Arizona with sophisticated
communications equipment, food, binoculars, and other equipment
guiding the drug smugglers as they move up through Pinal County
into Phoenix, Arizona, from where drugs are distributed all
over America. Phoenix has become the drug distribution center
for every place in America but southern Texas. And so if we
still have 75 to 100 guides sitting on mountains in Arizona
guiding the drug smugglers, I do not think we could declare
success.
GAO is going to tell us that only 129 of the 873 miles of
the Southwest Border are considered to be under ``operational
control.'' Additionally, the success our law enforcement
agencies achieve at protecting our cities and towns is often
made at the expense of citizens that live in more rural areas.
In other words, as they are driven out into the rural areas,
the enforcement efforts in Douglas, Nogales, and Yuma are
sending the human and drug smugglers across Arizona's ranches
and farmlands, particularly in eastern Arizona.
This is why many people in southern Arizona feel like they
are living in a no-man's-land, abandoned by the Federal
Government and this Administration. It does not help that last
year David Aguilar, Deputy Commissioner for Customs and Border
Protection (CBP), was quoted in The Arizona Republic, saying
that ``the border is not a fence or a line in the dirt, but a
broad and complex corridor.'' It is, Mr. Aguilar explained, ``a
third country that joins Mexico and the United States.''
Citizens should not be required to live in a ``third country.''
By comparison, the improvements made in the Yuma Sector
have been a great accomplishment. Despite some people's
recollections, this progress was neither easy nor a foregone
conclusion. I would like to remind you that 10 years ago the
Yuma Sector was as out of control as the Tucson Sector. Now it
is viewed as a success.
In other words, Mr. Chairman, we know how to succeed. We
have done it in San Diego, in Yuma, and in parts of Texas. It
is not as if this is an impossible task.
By the way, I want to thank Senator Johnson, from
Wisconsin, for coming to visit our border, and I hope he found
it to be an enlightening and enjoyable experience. I know he is
a person of great personal wealth, and I hope you spent a lot
of money while you were there. [Laughter.]
Finally, the National Guard is now going to leave. I have
been told by higher and lower ranking people that have to do
with our border that they are indispensable. So I do not know
how the Administration can say that we still have significant
issues and yet remove the National Guard, who also, by the way,
gain a great deal out of being on the border. So it leaves me
wondering why members of this Administration who claim they
want to make every effort to secure the border insist on taking
another step backwards by removing the National Guard
prematurely.
Again, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the witnesses. I have
probably taken too long in my opening statement, but I know the
Senator from Wisconsin had the same experience that I do. You
meet with the ranchers down there. The people, some of them
have been there four and five generations, and they are afraid
to leave their homes. They literally cannot find a secure
environment to drop their kids off for school. We cannot force
our citizens to live under those kinds of conditions. And I
acknowledge again, Mr. Chairman, there have been improvements
made. But we still have quite a ways to go, particularly in
rural parts of our States, but also this issue of the drug
cartels is something which is going to be with us for quite a
period of time.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator McCain. I think that
strikes the appropriate note. We feel like we are making
progress, as the chart suggests, but obviously we have some
distance to go, and it is very important that we get there for
a host of reasons that I cited in my opening statement.
Let us go right to the witnesses now. I thank my colleague,
Senator Johnson, whose wealth has been celebrated, and I am
very happy for him. And, Senator Tester, I am not going to
comment on your net worth here. This happened before you came
in, Senator Tester, so it was Senator McCain's humor.
Asa Hutchinson has many attributes that I admire, and the
one that brings him here to us is his service as Under
Secretary for Border and Transportation Security at the
Department of Homeland Security in the previous Administration.
Thanks for coming and we welcome your testimony now.
TESTIMONY OF HON. ASA HUTCHINSON,\1\ FORMER UNDER SECRETARY FOR
BORDER AND TRANSPORTATION SECURITY AT THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Hutchinson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the
Committee. It is a pleasure to appear before you again, and I
want to thank you for your leadership on this important issue.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Hutchinson appears in the
Appendix on page 100.
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First, let me make it clear that I agree with the comments
that have been made that significant progress has been made as
a Nation in terms of securing and strengthening our border.
Since I had the honor of serving as the Nation's first and
actually only Under Secretary for Border and Transportation
Security when the Department was first founded, I have a unique
perspective, and I can see the progress that has been
accomplished in terms of human resources, in terms of
technology, intelligence fusion, and State and local
cooperation. We could only dream about the resources that are
available today in terms of the Border Patrol agents. In the
early days of the Department, the number of Border Patrol
agents was 11,000 and now it is 20,700. The number of border
liaison officers who work with Mexican counterparts has
increased 500 percent. And as has been noted, the Border Patrol
apprehensions have decreased by 36 percent in the last 2 years,
which I believe is an indication of growing effectiveness of
our border efforts. Statistics are difficult, but I think that
is the logical interpretation of that statistic whenever you
see the apprehensions going down.
This Committee, I would emphasize, has played a significant
role in this progress. Without a doubt, more needs to be
accomplished, and that is the subject of our remarks today.
And, Senator McCain, I do want to acknowledge that you gave me
my first education on the border with the promise that you
solicited from me that I will appear at the border with you. I
did and it was a great education, as others have received, and
I look forward to the occasion to go back.
We are talking about border security, and I will come back
to that, but I want to mention one other success, which is the
United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology
(US-VISIT) program, which requires a biometric check for our
international visitors from visa countries. It is a success
story. It was implemented under very strict guidelines of
Congress, and it has dramatically improved the security and
integrity of our immigration system. But there remains a gaping
hole in our border security efforts so long as we do not have
the capacity to know when a visitor leaves the country. And I
would emphasize very dramatically, if I could, that we must
adopt an exit system with greater urgency. I urge Congress to
enact firm deadlines for the Department of Homeland Security to
implement an exit system.
Now, in the broader picture, I would emphasize three
priorities that are essential to control our borders:
First, to accelerate the resources necessary to control our
Southern Border. Much of this deals with technology.
Second, we need to monitor and enforce the law on visa
overstays.
And, third, we need to reduce the power and pull of the
marketplace for illegal employment.
All of those three ingredients I believe will serve as a
deterrent and will serve as all of the tools necessary to be
successful in our border efforts.
And despite the fact that we have achieved some success in
border security, the fact is that our government has
operational control of less than half the 2,000-mile Southwest
Border. Now, you can define operational control in different
ways. I do not think it is wise for the government to redefine
operational control so that we can achieve greater success. I
think we ought to have a definition of operational control that
the American people understand and accept, and if we are short
of that, they understand it and they understand the gaps. They
have to understand the resources that are needed to reduce that
gap. But I think we have to have that level of honesty.
I would define operational control as the capability to
detect illegal entry at the border, and the detection part is
important. That is the knowledge of when there is an illegal
intrusion in our border, and then the ability to respond and
stop any border breach. Now, that does not mean you get
everyone, but that means that you have the capability to detect
it and the ability to respond and stop a border breach.
Now, with that measurement, which I think has been accepted
largely, we have control of less than one-half of the Southwest
Border. And while we increase it at the rate of 126 miles per
year, it is still woefully inadequate, and we have to
accelerate the deployment of resources, but it should be done
intelligently. We need not build a fence across every inch of
the Southwest Border. It is an important tool to utilize, but
the fact that you have thousands of fence breaches that have to
be repaired shows that is not the end-all solution. We should
use a combination of physical fences and barriers, human
resources and technology.
Now, if I might move on to the visa overstays that I
addressed, it is estimated that 45 percent of the illegal
immigrants in our country are here because of visa overstays.
They come in legally. They stay illegally. And this is just as
much a part of border security as the Border Patrol agents
along the border. It is a threat to our rule of law and the
integrity of our immigration system, not just the hundreds of
thousands of illegal border crossings, but the hundreds of
thousands who enter lawfully but remain illegally because of
visa overstays.
Our border can be breached even more easily by getting a
lawful visa and remaining in the United States after the visa
expires, than trying to sneak across the Sonora Desert. And
that was evidenced by the September 11, 2001, terrorists who
came in just that way. At the present we have no effective way
to tackle this challenge. On paper the solution is simple, but
it is much more complicated than that.
We must have every visitor who departs the country check
out using biometrics. This is no easy task. While I was Under
Secretary, I worked to develop pilot programs at airports and
land borders on the exit system. It continues to be difficult,
and Secretary Napolitano has retreated from the exit strategy
requiring biometrics. In fact, the Department has announced it
is no longer pursuing the biometric exit system. It is very
clear to me that this solution will never happen without the
leadership, the mandate, and the oversight of Congress.
In 2003, Congress was clear in its direction to the
Department to build the entry system, and you gave strict
deadlines, oversight. You held us accountable, and it was
accomplished on time within those deadlines and within the
budget Congress gave us. I think the same type of intensity has
to be devoted to developing an exit system where the mandate of
Congress is clear and your oversight is ubiquitous.
The third element of border security is interior
enforcement, and while we always need to give Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) the necessary resources to enforce
our immigration laws within our country, it is just as
important to give the tools to the employers so that they know
whether they are hiring somebody who has legal status in this
country, or does not have legal status. Right now we have the
E-Verify program that is a significant success story because
even though it is voluntary, over 250,000 employers are
participating in it. But the fact is it gives the employer
information as to whether that is a valid Social Security
number or whether there is some other indication that the
person is in here illegally. But it is not a real-time system
that provides a level of information needed to assure that the
Social Security number is not being misused in some means and
that program needs to be strengthened.
When this type of capability is deployed, then the magnet
will lose some of its drawing power for those that are trying
to illegally enter the country to obtain employment because
they will not be able to get the employment even if they are
successful in going across the border.
I look forward to the opportunity for questions and answers
to further discuss these particular issues, but let me end with
a comment as a former head of the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA). It is very significant to me as you look
at the increased security and capability at our ports of entry,
and a significant sign of success is that while the
apprehensions of illegal aliens between the ports of entry have
dramatically decreased, the seizure of illegal drugs has
increased, which tells me that the tightening and hardening of
our ports of entry have been successful. It has forced the
cartels to move to a much more difficult route to bring in our
drugs, and, of course, that brings a new level of concern with
our Border Patrol agents meeting very violent drug traffickers
between our ports of entry. And so there is more work to be
done, and I look forward to the leadership of this Committee.
Thank you very much.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much for that testimony.
Very thoughtful, really interesting, and it probably would
shock most people in our country that the statistic you cited,
that as much as 45 percent of the illegal immigrants in our
country are actually visa overstays, people who came in legally
and then stayed illegally. That is not the common perception.
The common perception is that the undocumented immigrants are
all coming in illegally, mostly, in the common view, across the
Southwest Border. I have seen different numbers on that visa
overstay, but never less than 35 percent. So that is quite a
significant number, and I know that the politically
controversial part of this is on the Southwest Border, but if
we are really concerned about making a mockery of our system of
law, then both elements of this have to be dealt with. And the
probability is that we can deal with this element with a better
exit system and make a real difference in it than we can at the
border. But hopefully we can do both. Thank you very much.
Doris Meissner was, during all of the Clinton
Administration, the Commissioner of the Immigration and
Naturalization Service at the Department of Justice and now is
associated with a think tank that works on migration policy. So
we are very grateful you are here and welcome your testimony
now.
TESTIMONY OF HON. DORIS MEISSNER,\1\ FORMER COMMISSIONER OF THE
U.S. IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE AT THE U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Ms. Meissner. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Members of
the Committee, and thank you for the opportunity to be here
today.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Meissner appears in the Appendix
on page 105.
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My core message today is to urge that the Administration
and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, working with
Congress, define what constitutes effective border control and
establish measures of effectiveness for managing and assessing
our border control efforts. Clear definitions and indicators of
what constitutes effective border control are essential as a
basis for promoting a more informed public discussion and
broader consensus about the effectiveness of border
enforcement, especially at the southwest land border.
The need for effective border enforcement and control may
well be the most widely shared point of agreement in the
national immigration debate. For more than 15 years, and
particularly since September 11, 2001, both Democratic and
Republican Administrations and Congresses have allocated
unprecedented levels of resources to strengthen border
enforcement. Yet we have very little basis for assessing the
return on that investment, and it would seem that many
Americans have yet to grasp how much enforcement at the border
has indeed been strengthened.
The build-up began in earnest in the mid-1990s. I remember
well its origins and driving the border enforcement agenda. The
Immigration and Naturalization Service fiscal year 1995 budget
request was the start of more than 15 years of major infusions
of people, equipment, and technology for border enforcement. As
a result, the Southwest Border is today a dramatically
different place.
The two highest crossing corridors that historically had
accounted for almost 60 percent of apprehensions--San Diego and
El Paso--now represent only about 20 percent of apprehension
activity. Apprehension levels that had reached historic highs
of more than 1.6 million in 2000 dipped to below 450,000 last
year. These are lows that have not been experienced since the
1970s. They represent dramatic and positive changes.
At the same time, the changes have brought with them
important lessons and new challenges. By far, the most
important, of course, has been the experience of September 11,
2001, and the imperative for effective border control in the
face of the threat of terrorism.
Today, the Border Patrol employs 20,700 agents, more than
double the numbers just 6 years ago, and a budget that exceeds
$11 billion, an amount that has also grown at a comparably
rapid rate.
But what constitutes effective border control has not been
meaningfully defined or debated. As a result, we have little
basis for assessing the return on the investment of substantial
multi-year border enforcement expenditures or for conducting an
informed debate on the adequacy of today's border enforcement
strategies and results.
In addition, disagreements about border control that are
often based on unexamined assertions about the adequacy or
inadequacy of current efforts have contributed to a continuing
stalemate in Congress over the broader immigration reform
agenda.
Opponents of comprehensive immigration reform legislation
argue that control of the border must be established as a pre-
condition for broader reforms. Reform proponents maintain that
effective border control can only be achieved with broad
immigration reform. In both cases, ``border control'' is
undefined.
Moreover, lawmakers ``keep moving the goalpost,'' as
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has observed.
Secretary Napolitano has also argued that DHS will never be
able to ``seal the border'' in the sense of preventing all
illegal migration.
From a professional law enforcement standpoint, her point
is well taken. Zero tolerance is unrealistic, and it is not a
standard to which we hold law enforcement in other realms.
Instead, overall effectiveness--established through a
combination of metrics and other factors--is the appropriate
goal and assessment for which to strive.
In recent speeches on the Administration's Southwest Border
strategy, Secretary Napolitano has been explaining the ways in
which she argues that today's approach is working. This is an
important step in sparking a responsible debate about border
control. Still, without greater rigor and broader consensus
about what constitutes effectiveness, public confidence and
immigration reform initiatives will remain vulnerable to
assertions of inadequate control.
Historically, apprehension numbers have served as the
Border Patrol's answer to the question of what is effective
control. However, apprehensions are insufficient as the primary
method for assessing enforcement effectiveness, and I have
outlined fuller reasons for that in my full statement.
CBP and DHS collect many other kinds of data. Especially
valuable should be the extensive biometric data that now number
more than 91 million records of fingerprints collected on
persons apprehended since the mid-1990s or coming into contact
with the immigration system in ways that Mr. Hutchinson has
described, such as the US-VISIT program. These data could be
analyzed to better understand crossing patterns, repeat
entries, smuggling activity, and the success of various
enforcement strategies.
Examples of measures of effectiveness that are relevant to
border control and could be systematically tracked and
incorporated into regular assessments would include analyses of
hot spots and responses to them, crime rates, ports of entry
activity as smugglers attempt to compromise legal avenues for
entry, border community confidence and support, and census and
other demographic data.
For example, Mexico's 2010 census shows that the numbers
leaving Mexico have fallen by more than two-thirds since a peak
in the mid-2000s. Mexican analysts attribute that drop both to
the U.S. economic downturn and to stepped-up border
enforcement.
At the present time, available measures point in varying
degrees to meaningful positive progress in securing the
borders. However, the goal should be to systematically track
such measures and allow for open assessment of the substantial
investments that the country has made in border security. Only
then can public debate about border control be honest and
informed. In turn, determining how much and what border
enforcement work to keep us safe is essential for building
public confidence in the government's ability to enforce the
Nation's immigration laws and to manage its immigration system.
Thank you very much, and I am happy to answer your
questions or comments.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you very much. Very important
questions that you raise and we will come back to them.
Mr. Stana, welcome back. Thanks for your work for GAO on
this question, and we look forward to hearing your testimony.
TESTIMONY OF RICHARD M. STANA,\1\ DIRECTOR, HOMELAND SECURITY
AND JUSTICE ISSUES, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Mr. Stana. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and
Members of the Committee. I am pleased to be here today to
discuss the work that we have done over the past two decades on
border security, and my prepared statement summarizes some of
the more recent work that we have done. We have also done work
on some of the areas touched on by Mr. Hutchinson, on E-Verify
and visa overstays. In fact, Chairman Lieberman, if you think
the American public would be shocked to know that 45 percent of
the illegal alien population is here through overstaying a
visa, they might be even more shocked to know that with the
tens of thousands of people that we have put to border security
at the border, the number of people we have in the interior
searching for visa overstays is in the low three digits.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Stana appears in the Appendix on
page 115.
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Chairman Lieberman. Much less than a thousand.
Mr. Stana. Much less than a thousand. A little over a
hundred.
I do not want to repeat some of the statistics that have
already been discussed. The number of staff at the ports have
been increased by 17 percent since former Under Secretary
Hutchinson's tenure, and by five times the amount that former
Commissioner Meissner had when she took over in 1973. In fact,
today there are nearly as many Border Patrol agents in the
Tucson Sector alone as there were guarding all of the Northern
and Southern Borders when former Commissioner Meissner took
office in 1993. So there has been a substantial increase in
personnel.
But the personnel is not the whole story. At the ports, we
have hardened the infrastructure. We have put in a lot of
technology. We have put in portal monitors. We have put in x-
rays. We have put in backscatter machines. We have other
information available at the booth, passcard readers and so on,
that inform the person in the booth whether the person who is
presented to them is at least eligible to enter the country as
far as the background information goes.
Similarly, the number of Border Patrol agents does not tell
the whole story. The equipment that they have is upgraded. The
vehicles are much better. They are heavier duty. They have
night scopes. They have technology. They have radars. They have
sensors that they did not have before. So the job is made much
easier for the Border Patrol agents than it was, maybe 10 or 15
years ago.
But despite all of this investment, this $12 million
investment last year alone, it is still a fact that there are
hundreds of thousands of people entering the country illegally
every year, and there are tons and tons of illegal narcotics
entering the country every year.
I would like to just talk about a couple of areas from my
prepared statement, and then we can go to questions and
answers. First, let us talk about the situation at or near the
border, both at the ports and between the ports.
At the ports there is a rather impressive record: 227,000
travelers were turned away when they attempted to enter
illegally; about 8,400 people were apprehended for a variety of
charges, some serious; $147 million in currency was seized; as
were over 870,000 pounds of illegal drugs and almost 30,000
fraudulent documents, and so on. But beyond these statistics,
again, people are getting in, as are narcotics, and this is
mainly due to a number of factors. First, the staffing levels
are not up to authorized levels. Second, there is a tension
between trying to make the ports easier for commerce and
legitimate travelers to enter into the country while
maintaining a focus and trying to fight back complacency of the
workers at the booth. So that is at the ports.
Also at the ports we have the outbound enforcement program,
which I think Senator McCain may have mentioned, where CBP is
searching for weapons and cash heading south from the sale of
drugs and to promote the sale of drugs.
On the cash side, the program is responsible since its
beginning 2 years ago for seizing about $67 million in cash. It
sounds impressive, but that is out of a total of about $18 to
$39 billion that crosses the Southwest Border each year. Not so
impressive.
Add to that the fact that the stored value cards, which are
extremely difficult to detect, are coming more and more into
the smuggling picture, and that is going to present a real
challenge to law enforcement.
As far as the weapons side goes, no one really knows how
many weapons are going south, but there is a substantial
number. And when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tabacco, Firearms, and
Explosives (ATF) was asked by Mexican authorities to identify
the lineage of the weapons that they seized on their side of
the border, they found that nearly 90 percent of them came from
the United States.
Between the ports, similarly impressive apprehension
statistics in some respects. If you follow the chart there,\1\
you see that in 2001, about 10 years ago, it shows that about
1.3 million people were apprehended. The past year it was about
463,000. The Border Patrol considers this as a success through
deterrence. That is one interpretation. The Federal Reserve
Bank of Dallas had a different interpretation. They overlaid on
that chart available jobs, and it tracked with apprehensions.
In other words, as available jobs dry up with recessions, the
apprehension rate is sensitive to that. Now, neither one of
these is an exclusive interpretation, but it is important to
understand the context of numbers like this and not attribute
it only to the number of Border Patrol agents.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The chart referenced by Mr. Stana appears in the Appendix on
page 97.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Again, many more drugs are getting into the country between
the ports of entry it is mainly marijuana, at the ports maybe
more on the cocaine side.
Traffic checkpoints--and I know you have interest in one in
Arizona. That one was fairly controversial. Actually, one-third
of the seizures of drugs by the Border Patrol are made at those
checkpoints. You would wonder, well, how do drugs get that far
into the country through a port and over a highway? They do.
Regarding the fencing, most of the fence is between
Imperial Beach, California, and El Paso, Texas. It was
constructed at a cost of nearly $3 billion. No one knows the
effectiveness of that fence, but last year alone there were
over 4,000 breaches, and these breaches cost about $7.2 million
to fix, about $1,800 per breach.
I want to talk about performance measures very quickly.
People had mentioned the operational control measure, and 44
percent of the Southwest Border and only 2 percent of the
Northern Border are considered to be under operational control.
It is not a perfect measure, but it is a refined measure. The
Border Patrol has various steps it takes to make sure that it
is not just a scientific guess. It is not perfect, but the
Border Patrol has, at least for public consumption, decided not
to use that, and they are going to a new set, which will be
ready next year, in fiscal year 2012. In the meantime they are
just counting things. They are counting apprehensions; they are
counting joint operations; they are counting cash seizures.
That is the numerator. There is no denominator so you do not
know a batting average, if you will.
There are many other ways to come up with performance
metrics, and we can talk about that in the question and answer
session. But I want to talk about two other issues very
quickly.
The first has to do with information and intelligence
sharing, and here I think there is a much better story. It has
improved, not only between Federal agencies but among Federal,
State, local, tribal, and some of our partners on the Northern
and Southern Borders. Again, it is not perfect. There have been
problems with sharing data in some cases. People can get
parochial with some data, and that should not be. In other
cases, the Fusion Center information that is sent out to the
State and locals may be of questionable value, but they never
really assess the value of these products. And for their part,
the State and locals are not provided guidance as to what the
Federal agents might be interested in as they gather
statistics. So as far as information gathering, there is good
news and there is not so good news.
Finally, technology. As you know, Secretary Napolitano
canceled the SBInet program, and DHS is replacing it with
something called the Alternative (Southwest) Border Technology
program. It will probably use similar towers to those used with
the SBInet program. The first towers are up for funding for
fiscal year 2012. They are asking for about $240-some million
to start that process. We have been tracking the rationale for
the Alternative (Southwest) Border Technology program. We
examined the analysis of alternatives they used. We found that
there are some flaws in it that concern us. We have not yet
been given access to the documents that would allow us to trace
how those analyses made it through technology laydown and
translated into a budget. We are continuing to look at that
program, and we will have more information later in the year.
Finally, with respect to US-VISIT, as Mr. Hutchinson
pointed out, there is some good news and there is some not-so-
good news. The good news is the entry side. Every visitor that
enters the United States through a port of entry is to be
fingerprinted, and their documents are to be swiped, and their
identity is to be confirmed.
The not-so-good news is on the exit side. Not having an
exit capability is not that much of a concern with seaports
because we mostly see cruise ships and that is a closed system.
With airports, it is difficult. Our airports are not really
configured the way they are in foreign countries to gather exit
information, so what they rely on are airline manifests, which
is sort of reliable but not 100 percent. On the land exit side,
it is just a big problem. It is just difficult to do, and
perhaps our Canadian perimeter security negotiations that are
just getting underway may allow for an arrangement where our
exit becomes their entrance and we can exchange information.
That is my oral statement. I would be happy to answer any
questions you may have.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Mr. Stana. That was
very helpful. We will do 7-minute rounds of questions.
I think there is an agreement across the board here that we
have increased our resources, particularly on the Southern
Border where most of the concern has been, and we are doing
better at the reduction of illegal immigration coming over, but
there is not total uniformity of opinion on if the fact that
there are fewer immigrants coming over illegally is the result
of the increase in the resources we are putting there. I am
thinking of the Federal Reserve data that was described. Common
sense would say that it is having that effect, and both Mr.
Hutchinson and Ms. Meissner have said essentially that it is
not possible to achieve 100 percent stoppage of illegal
immigration.
I wonder what our goals should be here. I know we talked
about how do you define border security. The Secure Fence Act
of 2006 that I cited defined it as the ``prevention of all
unlawful entries into the United States, including entries by
terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism,
narcotics, and other contraband.'' It is interesting that not
only Secretary Napolitano but her two predecessors, Secretaries
Michael Chertoff and Thomas Ridge, at a recent colloquium, they
said that they thought that was an unreachable goal.
So let me just begin with you, Mr. Hutchinson, what is a
reasonable goal here by way of defining what we want to achieve
in border security?
Mr. Hutchinson. To me the missing element is the
measurement as to what percent we are able to apprehend that
are coming across. If we are detecting and apprehending
400,000----
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Hutchinson. There used to be the statistic that for
every one you catch, there are three that get through. I have
no clue whether that is accurate or not. Those are just
anecdotal statements. But I think there has to be a greater
measurement of that because if the economy increased right now,
I have no doubt because of the double number of Border Patrol
agents, our apprehensions would dramatically increase.
Chairman Lieberman. Would go up, right.
Mr. Hutchinson. And so the question is not whether we are
apprehending more, but of those that are trying to come across,
what percent are we apprehending? And I think people that are
very smart need to address that issue, and I think that is the
unknown part of the equation.
I think in terms of definitions, I really am disappointed,
quite frankly, in the Border Patrol trying to redefine what is
effective control or operational control. They have a
definition. It is a measuring standard and just because it does
not look good to say we only have half of our sectors that are
under operational control is not a good reason to change the
definition.
Chairman Lieberman. No, I hear you. I want to make explicit
what I think is implicit in how I opened this question, which
is we have made progress both by observation and by the various
metrics that are established, but still, even by the metric
that is on the board based on apprehensions--I think nobody
would disagree that there are hundreds of thousands of people
coming across the border illegally every year, and that is
broadly unacceptable.
Ms. Meissner, what can you say to help us understand better
what our goals should be and how we might best achieve them?
Ms. Meissner. The goal is probably something that is also
subjective and relative. The goal that we thought we ought to
have in the 1990s, when we had a very permissive attitude about
our labor markets and about our economic growth, and the role
of migrants in that setting was a very different sense than we
have had since September 11, 2001, and in a tighter economy. So
this is not entirely science. However, there certainly needs to
be more science in it than has been the case, and I would
subscribe to what Mr. Hutchinson has said here about needing to
know much more fully what percentage or what proportion of the
crossings are actually people that we are able to apprehend.
But I think it is also the case that we have demonstrated--
and Senator McCain made reference to this in his own
experience--with the contrast between Yuma and the Tucson
Sector right now. I made reference to the difference between El
Paso now and 10 years ago, San Diego now and 10 years ago. When
you go to those places--and I spent many an hour in those
counties and in community meetings with local leaders, etc.,
hearing the complaints, talking to them, working inch by inch
with the Border Patrol from the ocean to the Otay Mountains to
really bring that part of the border under control. When you go
there now, it is not that people are not concerned, it is that
they recognize that there is an infrastructure in place in
which they can have confidence. That is not to say that there
are not going to be breaches from time to time. But it is a
question of the sense of chaos versus the sense that somebody
is in charge.
And so that is both science and numbers and knowing the
percentages, but it is also really working on the ground in a
community policing way to deal with the issue of border control
along the Southwest Border.
Chairman Lieberman. I think you were the one who referenced
the Mexico Census of 2010?
Ms. Meissner. Yes.
Chairman Lieberman. Did the U.S. Census of 2010 give us any
guidance as to numbers of undocumented immigrants there are in
the United States now?
Ms. Meissner. Yes, but we do not have that yet. As you
know, the census is----
Chairman Lieberman. We do not have that detail yet?
Ms. Meissner. It is being rolled out in pieces, and we just
have this most recent information about the degree to which our
population has grown based on immigration, which includes
illegal immigration.
Chairman Lieberman. Right. It is very important that
illegal immigrants are counted in our census.
Ms. Meissner. That is correct.
Chairman Lieberman. Mr. Stana.
Mr. Stana. Well, I would agree with everyone's observation
that you have to have a numerator and a denominator, the people
you catch versus how many are out there. It is difficult to do.
The Department is contracting with a firm to try to gather more
information about the flows, where the flows are going, the
numbers of the flows, and so on. And that is supposed to be
incorporated into the 2012 new statistics. So we will wait and
see how well they can do that. It is a difficult task.
But I think there are some things that could be done in the
meantime to better measure success, and I agree with everyone
on the panel about that. I do not think it can be denied that
the border is in better shape today than it was previously. How
much further can we go?
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Stana. And I think taking advantage of some of the
technology that they already have in place to count things
would be advantageous. For example, each and every apprehension
is supposed to be noted by Global Positioning System
coordinates as to where that apprehension took place, and they
have maps to show where the apprehensions took place. Out of
that you could create a measure, like how many apprehensions
did you get within 5 miles of the border. It is Management 101
that you get what you count.
Another thing you could do with the Integrated Automated
Fingerprint Identification System data, the five-print data, is
count the number of recidivists, and that may help you better
understand what the flows are and if you are dealing with the
same numbers of people again and again or if you are dealing
with new people.
And, again, with respect to border violence, it is true
that there is some concern, although it has not spilled over
quite yet in large numbers. But I think we need to get a better
measure and a better handle on that because the uniform crime
reports (UCR) from the FBI do not capture a lot of metrics that
might be useful.
On the other side of the border--and I do not know about
this one incident you talked about across from Douglas, Senator
McCain--but a lot of times the violence is trafficker-on-
trafficker violence that is not captured by the UCR. And maybe
getting a metric on trafficker-on-trafficker violence would be
helpful.
I would like to see a batting average for the Border Patrol
that could better interpret that graph, but as of yet, it does
not exist. It does exist on the Office of Field Operation side,
at the ports of entry where they have a Compex System, where
they measure success scientifically. People who were given
authorization to enter the country are selected through
statistical sampling and instructed to proceed to the secondary
area where they do a more detailed analysis to see whether the
officer in the booth made the right decision. And those
statistics are not very impressive, by the way, but it is a
good measure.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you. My time is up. Senator
McCain.
Senator McCain. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Stana, to
follow up on that, most of the violence is obviously between
the drug cartels. The problem is that violence spreads to
weddings, children, innocent civilians, and an interesting
statistic is that in the time that President Felipe Calderon
has been president, some 21,000 Afghan civilians have been
killed. In that same period of time, some 34,000 Mexican
citizens have been killed. So the level of violence is
something--one of the reasons, frankly, is because the drug
cartels intimidate the media in Mexico as well. There is very
little doubt that, except for the Mexican army, there is very
little reliance that the government can have on any of the
other law enforcement agencies. So if they are having gunfights
on the street next to Douglas, Arizona, in Agua Prieta, to me
it is just a matter of time. And I guess I would ask Mr.
Hutchison and Ms. Meissner, did the cartels have guides on
mountaintops in Arizona when you were in the business?
[No response.]
Senator McCain. No, they did not, and this shows the
penetration of the drug cartels into my State. And they have
weapons, and they have sophisticated communications equipment,
and they have very sophisticated drug transportation
capabilities, as I said in my opening remarks. That is
throughout the country, not just Arizona but throughout the
country. That puts a different aspect of the issue of illegal
immigration.
For example, 10 years ago, Mr. Hutchinson, even when you
and I went to the border, probably the majority of people who
came across came back individually or in small groups. Now they
come across as a result of the drug cartels and human
smugglers, in large groups, in a very highly organized way, and
the only problem with that is the mistreatment of them, as you
know, is horrendous. The drop houses, the rapes--I mean, it is
just terrible.
So I guess my first comment is on yours, Mr. Hutchison,
that if you do not like the statistics, which shows that
operational control is 44 percent of the Southern Border and
then only 15 percent is airtight, then change the definition.
And I guarantee you that changing the definition you will see
better numbers. And I think that is disingenuous on the part of
the Secretary of Homeland Security to change the definition of
operational control. But I can also understand why if you are
interested in giving the impression that things are better
because the Border Patrol under this parameter reported that
873 of the nearly 2,000 Southwest Border miles are under
operational control, and they will improve an average of 126
miles each year. That would take us another 9 years at that
rate.
I guess also this issue of recidivists that you talked
about, we have found in the Yuma Sector and other parts of the
border that not only increase but also when you send them back,
take them all the way over to Texas or vice versa, that has had
a very salutary effect, too. Have you found that out?
Mr. Stana. Yes. In the Mexican Interior Repatriation
Program we have found that has reduced the recidivism rate the
further you bring them into the Mexican territory.
Senator McCain. You mentioned SBInet. According to, I
think, your organization, we wasted about $800 million and got
17 miles of fence under----
Mr. Stana. Well, actually, it is better and worse. It is
about $1 billion and you got 53 miles.
Senator McCain. A billion dollars we spent for 53 miles----
Mr. Stana. Just on the towers and the cameras and the
radars, yes.
Senator McCain. And, as usual, no one was held responsible.
Mr. Stana. Well, they will use that technology. It is
finally getting to the point where it is getting stabilized,
but now the SBInet program has ended, and we are starting anew.
I think some of the risks that are out there are that they are
looking for off-the-shelf technology again and our searches on
the Internet and elsewhere just are not finding a whole lot of
other alternatives that seem to perform much better. But we
hope that they are successful with the new program.
Senator McCain. One of the things that our Attorney General
did, Mr. Hutchinson, was follow the money, and they were able
to have a significant degree of success. It seems to me that is
a good example of another way to counter these people. Are you
familiar with that program?
Mr. Hutchinson. I am, and actually I read that and Mr.
Stana's testimony I think talked about what we can learn, many
of the GAO reports from the Arizona Attorney General's
investigation and following the money, and obviously you have
to do that going after the cartels.
I do think that the exit program where we are looking for
outbound money is a very worthwhile emphasis that we should
have because if they do not have the capability of getting back
the cash, then they are not going to be able to accomplish
their objective. You can sell drugs in the United States. The
second part of it is getting back that cash. And we have never
concentrated on that before in terms of our inspections, and I
think that is something we really should target.
Senator McCain. Ms. Meissner, one of the relatively new
issues associated with this whole problem has been the
southward flow of guns and ammunition. In fact, again, when I
was just down there last week, they apprehended--I believe it
was a vehicle with 6,000 rounds of AK-47 ammunition. I mean,
these are not small. And I wonder if you have any thoughts
about that particular issue. I frankly think the Mexicans have
a very legitimate complaint.
Ms. Meissner. That is not something I have experience with
because it certainly was going on during the time that I was in
the government, but it was not at all the issue that it is
today. Regarding the question of southbound controls, as we
have said here, government agencies are having a difficult
enough time trying to figure out how one would do southbound
controls just in terms of information in the US-VISIT system.
But that further layer of southbound control you are suggesting
is difficult.
I do think that the deeper point you make about being
sympathetic with the Mexican dilemma on this goes to the issue
of border control in general. In fact, we are asking law
enforcement to do the job of responding to fundamental laws of
supply and demand in the economy and problems of human nature
and drugs that they have no role in creating. And so they are
dealing with symptoms of deeper trends and issues in our
societies and that is one of the reasons that we cannot expect
100 percent perfection in this. The underlying causes are not
things that law enforcement is suited to address.
Senator McCain. Mr. Chairman, we have an outstanding U.S.
Attorney in Arizona. His name is Dennis Burke, and just
recently we had a ballot initiative in Arizona which basically
legalized the medical use of marijuana. And I asked him how
that coincides with the fact that we are trying to stop the
Mexican farmer from growing marijuana and sending it to the
United States, but yet it might be okay for a person to grow
some marijuana in their backyard. Frankly, he had no answer to
that dilemma. That is a problem, isn't it, Mr. Stana?
Mr. Stana. Yes, it is a problem. Part of the reason why it
is just tough to get at the southbound cash if we are talking
about that, for example, is in order to run those operations,
they have to take the people and the resources out of inbound
operations. And these are not 24/7 operations. They do not have
a separate area for outbound secondary inspections. You may
have seen that if you visited the ports in Arizona. The
secondary area is just off to the side, and traffic is going
by, and these agents are lying on the ground and cars are
whizzing by just feet from their own feet. So we are really not
structured to do that sort of thing.
As for the question on how much cash and drugs we are going
to get if we substantially increase that investment, that is
unknown. Just like there are spotters on the mountains looking
for drug avenues, there are spotters waiting for the inspection
operations to go down. If there is an operation underway, they
tell the traffickers to go have lunch for a while, come back at
3 o'clock, it will be wide open, you can take the cash or
weapons south.
So, it is a tough problem. I think it would be
extraordinarily expensive to seal the borders, as was suggested
here, and total control is an awfully high bar to achieve. But
there are some things we can do with far less money perhaps
that would improve our success.
Senator McCain. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator McCain.
I will call on other Senators in order of arrival: Senators
Johnson, Tester, Landrieu, and McCaskill. Senator Johnson.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHNSON
Senator Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would like
to thank the witnesses. This has been pretty informative.
I did make a trip last week down to the port of entry in
Nogales, again, to get myself up to speed on this issue. And,
Mr. Stana, I would first of all agree with you. They are
dramatically increasing the infrastructure down at Nogales, but
even as the infrastructure stands now, they are understaffed.
They are not at full capability. In our desire to beef up the
Border Patrol--and I do not want this to be a competition, but
have we concentrated too much on Border Patrol and not enough
on customs agents at those ports of entry?
Mr. Stana. Well, the bigger problem with the agents at the
port of entry is keeping them. They have a much higher
attrition rate than you would think. And, of course, now the
economy is not in as good shape as it was just a couple of
years ago, so attrition is stagnant. But they have an
authorization of about 20,700. They are at about maybe 1,200
short of that. They get close to it, the number falls back,
close to it, it falls back again. They try to staff the bigger
ports like Nogales to the best of their ability, but it is
difficult to get agents to go to places that are not very
attractive or that are very expensive. So they are up against
some real challenges there.
Senator Johnson. I would say, first of all, the level of
the dedication of those individuals was high. It was very
impressive. It seems like they cycle people through. A lot of
military folks go through a training program. Is that pretty
much a standard mode of operation in terms of staffing those?
Mr. Stana. I have not seen too many military people in the
primary booths. I have seen them sometimes assisting in
secondary inspection areas. The military are often used as
spotters, almost like the cartel people on the mountains. They
also are in the mountains looking for people trying to get into
the country and alert the Border Patrol to get there for an
apprehension. I have not seen too many of them at the ports.
Senator Johnson. I would like to turn my attention just in
terms of this definition of a secure border because it is
critical. I mean, if we are going to actually move to the next
stage, I think a lot of people do talk about securing the
border first. And without definition, you never get to that
second stage, which I think we absolutely have to get to.
So what is the stumbling block? Where does the argument
occur? Why can't we come up with a definition?
Ms. Meissner. Well, I am not sure that we have really
forced ourselves to confront that issue. I think that this
hearing and your leadership in identifying progress in border
enforcement is very important. I am glad to hear you say that
it is legitimate to be asking questions about how far border
enforcement has come because the debate basically has been a
debate where border control is bandied about as though we do
not have it and we need it, or we are only going to get it if
we do other legislation. We must go deeper than that.
So if there is a recognition in the Congress and committees
like this to ask questions about border enforcement
effectiveness, I would hope that the Administration and the
Department of Homeland Security are interested in answering
those questions as part of the overall case that they make
about their efforts. Maybe there is a way here to come together
on thinking--having more of a shared view of what we are really
striving for in border enforcement as the basis for having a
more honest debate.
Senator Johnson. Does anybody have a recommendation for a
definition?
Ms. Meissner. Well, I think we could come up with one.
Senator Johnson. Mr. Hutchinson.
Mr. Hutchinson. Well, Senator Johnson, I did recite a
definition that probably is very similar to what the Border
Patrol used before they rejected the definition. But it is to
be able to detect border intrusions and to respond effectively
to those. That is what is expected.
I think the challenge is that there are really two
questions: What is operational control? And then once you
define that, how do you achieve 100 percent operational
control, and how much is it going to cost? And I think that is
the challenge, so that if we have only achieved half, less than
half operational control, the American public is going to say
what is it going to cost to do the whole thing, and that is
their expectation. And that is where we have to be honest with
them. It is going to be a gradual process to get there because
of budgetary constraints.
Senator Johnson. I mean, define ``detection.''
Mr. Hutchinson. Well, detection--and that is where it would
come in helpful to know when there is a border intrusion. That
is where we have to use technology. It is the integrated
towers. It is to be able to know whenever there is an intrusion
and that is the detection part. And if we are not able to
respond, then that gives us the statistics as to what is our
batting average, and it tells us a great deal more information
when we know we have the detection capability, and I think that
is where we have to accelerate the technology side.
You asked about more personnel in the booths and so on.
That is always an issue. We need to continue to do that. But
you can be more flexible in your personnel when you invest in
the technology side.
Mr. Stana. Yes, I would agree with that. Having what they
call situational awareness is key because otherwise you do not
know what you do not know, and it is hard to come up with the
denominator that we have been talking about. What is the number
of people crossing the border?
The new technology, the tower technology, is useful. I do
not know if you have been down on the border and saw the Mobile
Surveillance System truck with the 25-foot boom that comes up
and on top is a camera. They also have a laser pointer on them.
Not only do they detect illegal crossers, but they point out to
the Border Patrol where to go to apprehend them. That would be
a very useful thing. Not only do you have situational
awareness, you have something guiding you to the target. So I
think there are other things along those lines that could be
done.
Senator Johnson. Now, we have achieved some pretty good
successes, like you mentioned in Yuma. We are measuring that in
some way, shape, or form, so why not use that exact same
measurement? How is that occurring?
Ms. Meissner. That is basically apprehensions. I mean, it
is apprehensions and it is as we were talking earlier. It is a
sense in the community, and it is a recognition that there is a
concentration of resources that is actually changing the
circumstances on the ground. People do not feel, experience, or
see the kind of lawlessness and chaotic conditions that they
did a year ago or 2 years ago. But fundamentally the metric is
apprehensions, and what we do not know is what is going to
happen in Yuma two harvests from now when the labor market
perhaps comes back in a different way. There are all kinds of
things that we could project that are likely to change in the
future that will change the apprehensions, and it may not mean
less success or more success. It is just that apprehensions are
relative and they do not fully tell the story. They are a valid
measure, but they cannot be the only measure, and they have
basically been the only measure.
Senator Johnson. Thank you very much.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Johnson. It was
interesting, and, of course, as I said at the beginning, the
odd thing is that when the apprehensions go down, we conclude
that there is less illegal immigration, right?
Mr. Stana. Yes.
Chairman Lieberman. I understand why we do that. We assume
that the increasing number of border agents has meant fewer
people are trying to come over; therefore, there are fewer
apprehensions. But another way to look at this logically would
be, well, that is not the way to measure it; that apprehensions
would somehow be correlated in number to attempts to go over
the border illegally.
Ms. Meissner. Right.
Chairman Lieberman. I know it is very difficult to pin a
lot on a subjective standard. There is something to be said for
the attitude of the neighboring community because they are
there. Senator McCain has told us, if you keep seeing people
crossing your land, well, that is pretty obvious that the
system is not working. If there is an orderly effort to stop
them and the numbers goes down, then you assume it is.
Let me go on. Senator Tester, thank you.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR TESTER
Senator Tester. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. You bring up
a lot of good points and there are more questions that crop
into my head with every word that is spoken, but I will stick
with what I have down here, and then hopefully I will have time
for some other ones.
First of all, thank you all for what you do and I
appreciate you being in front of the Committee. Dr. Stana, I
thank you first. I very much appreciate your work and the
research, findings, and recommendations. Very helpful, I think.
Since I have been on this Committee and since I am from
Montana and we share a 550-mile border with Canada, I have been
concerned about low-flying aircraft. The GAO report that was
set out said that we have about 32 miles that are secure, and
we can get into their definition of secure versus someone
else's definition, but I do not want to do that at this point
in time. But they said about 32 miles are secure.
I live about 80 or 90 miles south of the Canadian Border
myself and have a lot of friends up there, and low-flying
aircraft is something that I think is of concern to me and I
think it is a concern to the people across the country, or it
should be.
Radar seems to be a cost-effective tool to get our arms
around it. We have had our struggles with getting that
implemented, although I talked to Secretary Napolitano and she
seems to be on the same page. Could you just give me your
thoughts about low-level radars, is it a reality, can it
happen, should it happen, or should it not happen?
Mr. Stana. Well, it probably should happen. There is a cost
to it, let me put it that way. I think the areas of Montana you
are referring to are in the Spokane sector with the Border
Patrol.
Senator Tester. No. Actually it is true in eastern
Washington, but it is also true in eastern Montana.
Mr. Stana. OK.
Senator Tester. Eastern being the eastern two-thirds.
Mr. Stana. The reason I bring that up, we did some work on
the Northern Border and I believe you were one of the
requesters of that, Senator.
Senator Tester. I was.
Mr. Stana. And one of the things we found was exactly what
you are saying, is that in that part of the country, the radar
capability is key because the biggest threat is low-flying
aircraft.
Senator Tester. That is correct.
Mr. Stana. In fact, if I remember correctly, there was a
joint Department of Defense (DOD)/DHS exercise in 2008 where
they brought in DOD radars and the DOD radars detected as many
low-flying aircraft in the months that the exercise was in
operation as normally DHS identifies in a year.
Senator Tester. That is right.
Mr. Stana. So it is much more sensitive, although many of
those aircraft were moving east-west rather than north-south.
But still, it had the capability of detection. That is a big
problem and it needs to be addressed, and perhaps we need to
look to the Pentagon for some of these answers. Some of their
equipment would be more expensive at DHS because of economic
order quantities and things like that--but they do have
technology that is more sensitive and would be very useful in
areas like this.
Senator Tester. Without that radar, it is just basically
eyeballs, right?
Mr. Stana. Pretty much and there are not that many Border
Patrol agents up there. There are only about 2,000 agents for
the 4,000 miles between Washington and Maine.
Senator Tester. There is a lot more now than there used to
be, I will tell you that.
Mr. Stana. And there are Forest Service agents and others.
Senator Tester. I would like to get into that, too,
actually. Is there opportunity to maybe reduce some of the
manpower if radar was up there? Could you see that as a
possible cost savings?
Mr. Stana. Well, I think you could study that. The activity
on the Northern Border is not what the activity is on the
Southern Border. It is just two different solutions.
Senator Tester. No doubt about it.
Mr. Stana. I think before I would talk about reducing
manpower, I would like to see how effectively we can integrate
this new technology.
Senator Tester. Right. What I am saying is, if it works as
advertised, there could be some possibility there.
Mr. Stana. Well, anytime you increase situational awareness
and can actually pinpoint incursions, then you can direct your
resources much more effectively, and thereby, perhaps, reduce
the need for agents.
Senator Tester. Very good. Commissioner Meissner, I have
recently called for an investigation into so-called sham
universities, that basically manipulate immigration laws to
offer student visas to allow foreign nationals into the United
States. They abuse the system, they ignore the laws, they
threaten our security, and I think they are opening a back door
to thousands of potential illegals. Are you familiar with these
schools? Are you aware of any effort to rein them in?
Ms. Meissner. No, I am not, but it is not something that I
have looked at. I have been out of government for 10 years, so
it is not something that I am working with at the present time.
Senator Tester. Any of the other folks on the panel? Go
ahead, Mr. Hutchinson.
Mr. Hutchinson. We implemented the International Student
and Exchange Visitor Information System program which is for
the international students, and part of it is the qualification
of the school or the university. And so, you have to be
qualified for that program. I think that is something they have
to look at tightening up, so I am aware of the abuse. But they
do have a program that actually addresses the international
students and the programs that qualify for that.
Senator Tester. There has been some talk about the US-VISIT
Program and how, in fact, it is good at getting the folks
coming in, but it is not so good getting the folks going out,
and I do not know how you solve that problem myself, and
hopefully there are some minds that can talk about that. But
how effective is that program if you cannot determine exits?
Mr. Hutchinson. It is not. And that is the challenge. That
is why we have the visa overstays.
Senator Tester. Right.
Mr. Hutchinson. There is a lot of simple things that can be
done. I was very impressed with Dr. Stana saying that such a
small percent of resources are devoted to 45 percent of the
problem. That is a significant challenge and it needs to be
addressed.
Mr. Stana. And I would add to that, Senator, that whatever
hits they get on US-VISIT, they send them to ICE, but then you
have a limited number of people to react to it. So this is one
of those things where you have to right-size your total
response. If you have the best US-VISIT system in the world but
you do not have anybody to chase the people that you
identified, it is not useful.
Senator Tester. Yes, but we make folks run through a pretty
rigorous routine to acquire a visa to get into this country, do
we not?
Mr. Stana. That is correct. Unless you are in a visa waiver
country. There are about 28 or 29 countries where you do not
need a visa.
Senator Tester. So why is there not that same rigorous work
done when the visas run out? We know when they run out.
Mr. Stana. That is absolutely correct, and when they run
out, they do check whatever information they have from I-94s
past or through airport manifests, but it is not perfect.
Senator Tester. I did not hear Senator McCain's statement
early on, it was before I came here, and I wished I would have.
But we will read that in the record. You did touch on something
about people crossing land, and I can tell you that on the
Northern Border, there is a tremendous resource out there
called local police, county police, farmers and ranchers, that
know this land like the back of their hand.
Is there a concerted effort to get those folks involved or
are we dealing with so much secrecy here that we cannot get
them involved?
Mr. Stana. No, they do get them involved through the task
forces called Integrated Border Enforcement Teams and Border
Enforcement Security Task Forces. They do try to get the local,
State, tribal, and of course, Canadian Mounted Police, in your
case, involved in these task teams to share information,
resources, and occasionally do joint operations. It is working
OK. In fact, if there is a limitation there, there is a
proliferation of these task forces and the locals say they just
cannot go to every task force meeting. They do not have enough
people.
Senator Tester. And there is no need to have meetings for
the sake of meetings. The real question is, in this country you
have the highway patrol, you have the county police, and you
have the city police.
Mr. Stana. Right.
Senator Tester. Outside the task forces, is there an
outreach to those folks saying, ``We want you to be a part of
this equation.'' If we work as a team, we get more stuff done.
And we are going to share information with you and, by the way,
some of it is pretty sensitive, but you are in law enforcement
and so am I.
Mr. Stana. A lot of that is supposed to be happening, but
it all boils down to that special agent in charge, whether it
is ICE or whether it is the Border Patrol or whoever, making
those kinds of agreements work. Sometimes they work great and
you get kudos for our people; other times it does not.
Senator Tester. Just one more question and then we will
make this very quick. In Great Falls, Montana, we have an
international airport where airplanes fly in and oftentimes, it
being fairly close to the Northern Border, there is some port
security that takes place there. There is a rule on the books
that says you have to take them to an international airport,
which are in Spokane, Seattle, Minneapolis, Denver, or Salt
Lake.
We are working with CBP on this, but recently, planes have
been turned away. They have been turned out of Montana, we have
done it before, and they have been shipped somewhere else. I
have to tell you, it is somewhat disconcerting to me that we
are going to ship a potential plane that has some issues
revolving around terrorism to Salt Lake, which is halfway
across the country, from a north-south standpoint, instead of
dealing with them more locally.
Now, I know there are bigger planes, bigger numbers, that
is the story, but smaller planes, smaller numbers, there is no
reason why those cannot be done here. Could you give me your
thoughts on that?
Mr. Stana. Well, I think it would probably depend on what
agents and resources are available at the airports.
Senator Tester. That is the problem. It used to be done. We
have different agents now and it is not being done.
Mr. Stana. Right. And so, you would have to get on the list
of locations that are authorized to have the appropriate agent.
Senator Tester. I do not want to hang you gentlemen out on
this, but it seems a bit crazy to me. I mean, if they could do
it with the previous agent, why can they not do it with the
next one? Especially if there has not been any incidents and
they have caught them.
Anyway, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Appreciate the hearing.
Thank you, gentlemen, for testifying.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you very much, Senator Tester.
Senator McCaskill, welcome.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MCCASKILL
Senator McCaskill. Thank you, Senator Lieberman, and I
thank all of the witnesses for being here. I think as we
struggle with how we define success or failure along the
border, it gets back to the old prosecutor's dilemma. How do
you prove what you have prevented?
And that is where the apprehension figure is difficult
because it could be that we are apprehending less because we
are doing a terrible job, or it could be we are apprehending
less because we are doing a really good job and fewer people
are trying to cross the border because we are doing a good job.
It reminds me of that which is live by the sword, die by
the sword, when I was a prosecutor, the crime statistics. It
was the very same problem. When crime went down, nobody was
anxious to say the prosecutor had done a great job by
preventing crime. But when crime went up, it was a real
problem. I am glad we are trying to tackle it because I think
it is very easy to say over and over again, ``Secure the
border.'' It is much harder to define in objective terms what
that really looks like.
As we say over and over again, ``Secure the border,'' I was
proud to co-sponsor, along with Senator McCain, a bill fully
paid for last year that added $600 million to border security,
including drones for realtime surveillance. I am assuming that
there is no one on the panel that disagrees that this
technology, in terms of realtime camera surveillance, unmanned,
could be extremely effective along the border as it relates to
criminal activity.
Mr. Hutchinson. And it gives us the detection capability.
Senator McCaskill. Right. And so, imagine my surprise when
we put $600 million in, fully paid for, that is part of what
was cut in the Continuing Resolution (CR) that was passed by
the House of Representatives. So I am willing to bet that most
of the folks that were excited about passing that CR in the
House of Representatives, I bet they said, ``Secure the
border,'' a few times during their campaigns. So I was
surprised when we got a bill that basically took some of the
money that were paying for this $600 million and used it for
something else, rather than the $600 million that we need to,
in fact, secure the border.
I would like to spend my remaining time on employer
enforcement. I am a big believer that one of the problems we
have had is a failure to be aggressive about employer
enforcement. One of my first hearings in this Committee, I was
shocked when the woman that was in front of us for confirmation
to head ICE, when I asked, ``Could you tell me how many
employer criminal prosecutions there have been in the last
year?'' She had been running the program for awhile, and she
said, ``We do not keep that number.''
Then they tried to tell me at the time that not only do
they not keep that number, they could not even get it for me.
So I had my intern sit down with Google and go through and try
to figure out, over the course of years, how many workplace
enforcements had been brought against the employer. It was a
shockingly low number, Mr. Hutchinson.
Now, the audits and fines are up the last couple of years,
and I would like all of you to comment on how fundamental
employer enforcement is because these folks are not coming
across the border for vacation. They are coming for a job. And
the reason they know they have come for a job is because up
until fairly recently, I do not even think we were doing that
good a job on employer enforcement. I think we are doing
better.
But I just think it is a real opportunity for deterrent if
these employers think something serious is going to happen to
them. I know you mentioned E-Verify. I am a big supporter of E-
Verify. But I would like you all to speak to that.
Mr. Hutchinson. I agree 100 percent with you and it is my
understanding, I think it is fairly evident from the
statistics, that for various reasons, there has been a shift
away from employer enforcement in the last couple of years by
ICE. And they are doing audits, they are doing intelligence-
based investigations, but they have diminished from what they
were doing 2 and 3 years ago. I think that is a concern. You
have E-Verify, you have a lot of reputable employers, but you
always have those that want to skirt the law and take advantage
of illegal employment.
So you have to have that capacity because you have to pull
down the strength of the magnet. So I think that has to be re-
invigorated and I hope that ICE will maintain a vigorous
approach to employer enforcement.
Senator McCaskill. Well, now maybe the statistics I have
been given are wrong. Is it the audits are up and the civil
fines are way up in the last 2 years?
Ms. Meissner. Right.
Mr. Stana. Well, there is a difference between an audit and
a work-site raid, and work-site raids are down and the audits
are up.
Mr. Hutchinson. Yes.
Senator McCaskill. Well, the work-site raids that used to
happen, they would happen, but all they did was round up the
immigrants. They never did anything with the employers. I mean,
nothing happened to the employers after a work-site raid. So, I
mean, I am pretty confident that in the last 10 years, there
was nothing in that record to brag about in terms of employer
enforcement, in terms of holding people accountable.
In fact, I raised a fit about a workplace raid in Missouri.
This was a renowned employer of illegal immigrants. Everybody
in town knew it, everybody in the community knew it, and they
did a workplace enforcement, rounded up the illegal immigrants,
detained them, but did not do anything to the employer until I
raised a fit, and then finally the U.S. Attorney did something.
So I am confused as to whether or not you think we used to
do more workplace enforcement than we are doing now in terms of
employers being held accountable?
Mr. Hutchinson. That is my understanding. I hope Mr. Stana
can comment on this. I will tell you that whenever I was
Undersecretary of Homeland Security, we were not doing very
well on employer enforcement. So we are starting at that low
level, and that was post-September 11, 2001, because our
resources were going to critical infrastructure like the Sears
Tower and doing audits of those.
Senator McCaskill. Right.
Mr. Hutchinson. So we were focused on that. And we realized
the tremendous gap because we were not doing sufficient work-
site enforcement and so ICE picked up the ball and invigorated
that. They got a lot of criticism because it did include what
you mentioned as some random enforcement and inspections. I do
believe that it led to employer investigations. You can quibble
about that, but I think those are the facts.
But there is a deterrent effect in there as well. There is
a concentration on audits and they have the civil fines, but I
believe the comprehensive enforcement policy against employers
has changed and diminished.
Mr. Stana. You know, this is not one Administration versus
another. This goes all the way back to the Immigration Act of
1986 when we first started getting into this. We gave amnesty,
we created an I-94 system, which I think you know what that
means, and then we promised enforcement. Well, two of the three
legs of that stool were stood up. We never put the enforcement
in place.
Senator McCaskill. Right.
Mr. Stana. I think on average, we spend maybe 300 staff on
work-site enforcement. When you compared that to the 20-some-
thousand Border Patrol agents and to the 20-some-thousand
people at the ports and whatever else is going on, having 300
people dealing with the magnet, just does not add up.
Senator McCaskill. I am a big believer that if we start
putting a few of these employers in handcuffs and you actually
prosecuted them, when they have done this over and over again
and you can prove they knowingly had seven or eight people
working at their place with the same Social Security number,
give me a jury. I can prove they knowingly broke the law, and I
will bet you could too, Mr. Hutchinson, knowing your
background. I bet you could, too.
So I do not condone illegal immigration and I do not think
it is a good thing, but the notion that we have done high
profile efforts against illegal immigrants in the workplace,
while we had the thing in Iowa that got a lot of press, there
have been very few incidences where I think employers have been
held accountable for knowingly and repeatedly violating the law
when it comes to illegal immigration. I would like to continue
to work on that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the
witnesses.
Ms. Meissner. Can I just interupt?
Senator McCaskill. Sure.
Chairman Lieberman. Commissioner, go ahead.
Ms. Meissner. Because I think it is such a core point. I
mean, we would all agree, I certainly agree, that employer
enforcement is essential to the equation here. I also think
that the element about employer enforcement that keeps getting
overlooked is that it is, in my view, the best response to the
overstay problem and the people who overstay their visas that
we have.
Senator McCaskill. Right.
Ms. Meissner. All the talk about Southwest Border
enforcement we know is not going to get there. I appreciate the
issue of exit controls where US-VISIT is concerned, but that is
not the way to deal with overstays. It is important to do that,
but the idea that once somebody has not left, you would then
try to send ICE agents around the country to try to find them
is not an effective use of resources, particularly for people
who have been visitors, which largely is who they are, who have
left the name of a hotel in a particular city on their I-94 and
that is all you have.
What you have is the job. That is what they are doing. They
are staying here to work. And so, if you have a viable employer
verification requirement in the enforcement system, you address
the overstay part of this and you get a much more balanced,
integrated, effective, across-the-board deterrent.
Senator McCaskill. Absolutely. I could not agree with you
more and I thank all three of you very much for your testimony
today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator McCaskill, and I would
be glad to work with you on this. I think it is very important.
I have a few more questions. I just want to focus on the visa
overstay problem because the testimony has been very helpful
and I think informative about the extent to which visa
overstays constitute the illegal immigration problem in our
country.
Just as a factual basis--I will start with you, Mr. Stana,
but welcome others to testify--what do we know about the visa
overstay population? In other words, I presume intuitively that
they are different from the illegal immigrant population in
terms of where they come from. Also, perhaps because we at
least have the information that they came in legally, I presume
we have a better idea of who they are. Am I right?
Mr. Stana. Well, we know who they are. We know what address
they left with the inspector at the port which may or may not
have lasted more than a day.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Stana. But they have been very effective in blending
into the society.
Chairman Lieberman. I guess when I say we know who they
are, I really mean we know where they came from.
Mr. Stana. Yes.
Chairman Lieberman. We know which country they came from.
Mr. Stana. Yes. And that is an issue with the visa waiver
program. Visa waiver status is only to be given to certain
countries that do not have a large overstay population.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Stana. And sometimes those two statistics are not
matched very well.
Chairman Lieberman. My presumption is that most of the
illegal immigration is coming over the Southwest Border, and
therefore, it is probably Mexican nationals and Central or
Latin American nationals. Whereas--and I ask if I am correct--
the visa overstay population coming in legally and then staying
illegally is from elsewhere in the world.
Mr. Stana. Could be from Asia, could be from Europe, or
Africa.
Mr. Hutchinson. Mostly flying in.
Chairman Lieberman. Mostly flying in, right.
Ms. Meissner. Right.
Chairman Lieberman. And obviously mostly not, therefore,
coming at a land border.
Mr. Stana. Coming through airports of entry.
Chairman Lieberman. Exactly. And can we draw any
conclusions, anything we know about why they are overstaying?
Are they overstaying and becoming illegal immigrants for the
same reasons that those who come in illegally are?
Mr. Hutchinson. They are doing it because they can. They
could have a 2-year visa, it could be a 3-month visitor visa,
or a student visa, and they just stay.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Hutchinson. They know that we do not have the capacity,
they do not have to check out, they can circumvent the system,
and so, it is hit and miss as to any follow-up, if any at all.
We cannot track them.
Ms. Meissner. But fundamentally, it is a jobs issue.
Chairman Lieberman. That is what I was going to ask. So in
that sense, they are coming for the same reason that we think
most of the immigrants come for.
Ms. Meissner. And they may have come completely
legitimately to visit for awhile and then they change their
view.
Mr. Stana. Or they work on an H1-B.
Ms. Meissner. Exactly.
Mr. Stana. High tech and they just stay.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes. Did you want to add something, Mr.
Meissner?
Ms. Meissner. Well, I would just add that this number--Mr.
Hutchinson used 45 percent--sometimes the number has been that
high. I think the recent estimates are more in the 35 to 40
percent neighborhood. I feel a particular kinship to it because
when I was Commissioner, we put out the first numbers on that
dimension of the unauthorized immigration problem.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
Ms. Meissner. It was an incredible eye-opener.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
Ms. Meissner. And it continues to be overlooked as an
element of this phenomenon.
Chairman Lieberman. Absolutely.
Ms. Meissner. I would add it to the list of analytics that
I think that the government should be reporting on, on a
regular basis, and analyzing, because not only is it an
important part of the issue, but there is some reason to
believe that perhaps it is going down to some extent because of
the controls that have been put in place in the 2000s through
US-VISIT and through the consular and visa-issuing programs
which, in fact, have been effective. But again, we do not know.
Chairman Lieberman. That was my next question about whether
there are any trends and numbers of visa----
Ms. Meissner. We think that there is a trend and the best
information on this at this point is available through the Pew
Hispanic Center. The government is not regularly reporting on
those kinds of things, and I believe it should be doing so. We
think that perhaps the trend of overstays is coming down to an
extent.
Chairman Lieberman. Down.
Ms. Meissner. But again, we do not know whether that is----
Chairman Lieberman. Because of the economy? Because of the
fact that there are less jobs?
Ms. Meissner. Right now, it is always going to be a
commingling of the economy and of enforcement. It is difficult
to know.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
Mr. Hutchinson. I agree totally. We need more analytics and
these are numbers we should be able to achieve. You think about
the illegal crossings. We do not know who is coming across a
land border illegally, but we know who is coming in, the
starting point, with the visas.
Ms. Meissner. Exactly.
Mr. Hutchinson. And so, all it takes is an audit sample
where because we have their home address in the foreign
country, we have where they are supposed to stay here in the
United States. You have an audit team that audits a certain
percent, extrapolate from that. I would think you would be able
to get a good analysis.
Mr. Stana. Yes. We have a report coming out next month on
the visa overstay issue. I cannot really talk too much about it
now because it is not yet public and we do not have all the
agency comments, but all of these things are issues that my co-
panelists here have talked about.
Chairman Lieberman. So you are answering some of the kinds
of questions we have addressed here?
Mr. Stana. Some of these kinds of questions. As far as how
many there are, I have seen estimates as high as 57 percent
recently, but I think the point still remains, who knows?
Because you do not know what you do not know.
And the other thing is, some of these overstays are kids,
the kind who used to backpack through Europe for 2 weeks and
now are backpacking through the United States for 2 weeks.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Stana. And the duration of overstay might be for 6
months, a year or something. It is not always a hard core
population of 45 percent who are working at a multinational
firm in Denver. Many of them just overstay for brief periods,
but a lot of them do come to stay and they come with the
intention of staying. I think it is fair to say that the word
is known in other countries that, based on relatives or others
they have seen come here, overstaying a visa is a loophole, it
is a way to get in. It is much easier than crossing the
Southwest Border.
Chairman Lieberman. Right. I presume that once you get a
visa--now, that may be difficult, but if you get a visa to come
here in one of these other categories, if you decide to
overstay, the odds of apprehension are very low.
Mr. Stana. Well, I would extend that. No matter how you get
into the United States, once you are in you are in unless you
misbehave.
Chairman Lieberman. Well, that is true. I guess I was
thinking that anybody who comes over illegally is putting
themselves at some risk, sometimes physically or at a cost, but
if you are able to get on an airplane legally and come into
this country and you decide you want to stay, the odds you are
going to be caught are very low right now.
Mr. Stana. Well, I think that gets to former Commissioner
Meissner's point, that an effective way to do this is through
work authorization permits. It certainly neutralizes that
magnet.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes. Let me ask you a final question on
the nexus between border security and immigration reform. The
premise we have been operating on--part of why we are doing
this series of hearings--is to see if we can agree on a common
ground on what we are striving for in terms of border security.
What is achievable? What the problem is? How much of the
problem is illegal entry?
And if we can do that, then to have that be a premise for
dealing with the undocumented alien population of the country.
I know some people say actually that is not all bad, but maybe
if you look at it the other way around, too, that if we deal
with the illegal immigrant population, that will contribute to
effective control over our borders. Anybody want to comment on
that, either Commissioner Meissner or Secretary Hutchinson?
Ms. Meissner. I am happy to comment on it. I do think that
we obviously have been talking about border enforcement. It is
an essential part of the equation, but there is an equation
here. And that is that we rationalize our immigration system in
a way that is suited to today's economy and to, more
importantly, what we think the economy and needs of the country
for the future are going to be.
Those needs, I think, certainly by many measures that I
know, need to include immigration and they need to include
better avenues for people to come to the country legally for
work purposes across the spectrum. And we do not have a system
in place that does that and we need to put that into place.
Were we able to do that, it would be easier to enforce the laws
because there would be laws that are more aligned with reality
on the ground, economic, social, and labor market driven.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
Mr. Hutchinson. The fundamental foundation is the
confidence in the immigration system as a whole. That starts
with border security. You pointed that out, Senator, and once
you have that and the people have confidence that the
immigration system has regained its footing, then I think they
are willing to look at what else we need to do. But it starts
with that.
Because immigrants do provide the energy in our society,
such a great part of our fabric, we want to make sure they are
a part of that, and the legal path here is very important to
meet the needs of our economy and to make sure they do not go
by some other means.
Chairman Lieberman. I agree. Thank you very much. I think
it has been a very informative and helpful hearing, which will
be a good preface for the subject matter hearings that follow.
We are going to leave the record of the hearing open for 15
days for additional questions and statements, but for now,
again, I thank you very much for your testimony today.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:20 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
SECURING THE BORDER: PROGRESS AT THE LOCAL LEVEL
----------
THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 2011
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:36 p.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I.
Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Lieberman, Pryor, McCain, and Coburn.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN
Chairman Lieberman. I think we will begin the hearing. I
will begin my opening statement and hope, with the inherent
ability I have as a U.S. Senator to continue talking for long
periods of time, that I will be able to fill the space between
now and when Senator McCain arrives.
I thank the witnesses for being here. I appreciate it very
much.
Today's hearing is the second in a series that the
Committee is holding to examine the progress made over the past
decade as a result of the infusion of substantial Federal
support to secure our borders--particularly our border with
Mexico--and how we can build on the current level of border
control.
At our first hearing, the panel of experts outlined the
significant increases in manpower and resources that have been
sent to the border over the past decade, and they all agreed
that progress has been made toward securing the border but
that, of course, much more still needs to be done before we can
say we have done everything we can do.
Last week's hearing also raised, I think, some important
questions about how we define and gauge border control and
about the inadequacy of our current measurements of what is
inherently a difficult question, which is to gauge how many
people are coming over illegally. If we knew that they were all
coming over and when they were coming over, presumably we would
apprehend them all. So we understand it is a difficult
challenge. Our witnesses agreed that the metrics collected and
disseminated about border security must be improved to provide
us with the best possible understanding about how well the
border is being secured.
Right now, for example, apprehensions of illegal border
crossers are at their lowest levels since the early 1970s--with
465,000 people apprehended last year compared to 1.6 million in
2000. Now, this is interpreted by many as a clear sign of
progress--and these are people who believe that the
substantially decreased number of apprehensions means that
border control operations are deterring people from crossing
illegally. I guess it also assumes the same basic percentage of
apprehensions as compared to the total number of people
attempting to go over. But that is an interesting question.
Nonetheless, at various times in the last decade, the
Border Patrol itself has turned this formula upside down and
pointed to increases in apprehensions of illegal crossers as
evidence of progress, in that case arguing that the increasing
apprehensions meant that agents were targeting their efforts
better. So, in my opinion, apprehensions are obviously one
indicator of border security, but we have to see if we can find
a better, more direct way to conclude how many people are
actually trying to enter the country illegally and how many
people actually succeed in doing so.
I realize, again, that this is not an easy undertaking, but
some Border Patrol sectors--including the Tucson Sector--are
already using cameras, sensors, and footprint analysis to
conclude how many illegal entries are occurring. It gives them
a little more data to make a conclusion that, in the end, is an
estimate, but we are trying to make it as educated an estimate
as possible. I think we have to expand this across the entire
border in order to give us a better idea about whether our
border security strategies are succeeding and to help the
Border Patrol marshal its resources more effectively.
The panel we heard last week also agreed that the
apprehension rate of illegal border crossers cannot be the only
way we measure border security. Other factors, they said, must
be considered as well, including a subjective factor but one
that presumably is based on objective experience, which is
public perceptions. That is, can we measure and consider how
secure people in border communities believe they are as one
indication of how secure they actually are.
In confronting the problem of illegal immigration, I think
we have also got to take into consideration a statistic that
was testified to last week that would probably surprise most
people, which is that, depending on who you talk to, between 35
and 45 percent of the people now in this country illegally
originally entered the United States on valid visas that
subsequently expired.
Welcome, Senator McCain. I saved you from hearing half of
my opening remarks, understanding that you were on your way.
So, in other words, what I am talking about is that these
are people who were legal immigrants who became illegal because
they overstayed the period of time in which they were legally
authorized to be here. And most of these people did not enter
the United States across our border with Mexico. So that is a
separate category of this problem of illegal immigration and
one that I think people have to understand as we deal with the
problem.
To help us get beyond the statistics and understand the
situation on the ground--because last week we really heard from
Washington-based administrators and experts--we have called a
panel of witnesses that we are privileged to have before us
today, people with real firsthand experience along our entire
Southern Border from Texas to California. You are the people
who confront this problem of illegal immigration and border-
related crime every single day in your positions as sheriffs
and judges.
I think the Committee is very interested in your views on
the status of our control of the border closest to you right
now, on what we can do to improve that control, and on how much
the terrible drug-related violence in Mexico has spilled over
into your jurisdictions.
I would also like to know, and I will ask about whether the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) statistics which reflect
decreased rates of violence in a lot of the border communities
reflect your experience within your own communities.
Last week, we heard testimony that border security cannot
be achieved in isolation from our immigration system of laws
and that hundreds of thousands of people will continue to risk
their lives to illegally cross our borders unless and until we
reform our immigration laws, and presumably what was meant here
is to create a system that allows immigrants to enter legally
for temporary periods of time for work and then to return. So,
assuming we have time, I am going to ask our witnesses to
address the relationship between immigration reform and border
security because the ultimate aim of these hearings is, one, to
do oversight on what we are getting in return for the
considerable Federal investment in border security; two,
obviously what we can do to improve it; and, three, there is a
political equation here which has to do with the relationship
between border security and our current immigration system,
which just about everyone agrees is broken.
So, with that, I thank the witnesses very much for being
here, and I call on the Ranking Member, Senator McCain.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MCCAIN
Senator McCain. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I apologize
for being a few minutes late, and I want to thank our
witnesses. And, Mr. Chairman, if I could, I would like to
submit for the record testimony by Larry Dever, who is the
sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Dever appears in the Appendix on
page 229.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chairman Lieberman. Without objection.
Senator McCain. I thank the witnesses for being here and
taking the time from their important duties.
The deadly violence in Mexico has fundamentally changed the
jobs of law enforcement along the border. They are now asked
not only to serve eviction notices, assist courthouses with the
transport of prisoners, and execute and service process of
civil litigation matter, but you are also now our Nation's
first line of defense in defending our homeland, and for that
we are very grateful. The job of sheriff or sheriff's deputy is
more difficult, more challenging, and more dangerous than ever
before.
Mr. Chairman, I have a prepared statement that I will
submit for the record.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ The prepared statement of Senator McCain appears in the
Appendix on page 155.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I do not think there is any doubt that there have been
improvements in border security or a dramatic increase in
violence on the other side of the border.
I was recently down in Douglas, Arizona. Agua Prieta is the
town on the other side of the border. Three nights before I was
there, three sport utility vehicles (SUVs), blue lights
flashing, blocked off the traffic on the street right on the
other side of the border, took a left turn, half a block down
from the border crossing, individuals jumped out and a
fusillade of automatic weapons fire kills five people and
wounds 14 others. That is in the block next to our border. And
I appreciate the fact that our border towns are safe on our
side of the border, but it is not logical to assume that will
be the case when the level of violence on the other side of the
border continues to escalate. It just cannot happen.
I just saw it on the TV: 59 more bodies were found in the
same place where 70 bodies have been found recently. Cities
like Monterrey and others where we never expected this kind of
violence to take place are happening. And I think that Sheriff
Paul Babeu will tell you, and I believe the other sheriffs
will, the level of sophistication of the drug dealers has
dramatically increased.
We now have, according to the High Intensity Drug
Trafficing Areas (HIDTA) in Arizona, between 75 and 100 guides
sitting on mountaintops in Arizona--not on the other side of
the border, but on mountaintops. They are armed. They have
sophisticated communications equipment, food, and they stay for
a long period of time. They guide the drug smugglers up to
Phoenix which has become the drug distribution center for
America with the exception of parts of Texas.
Then you couple that with the lifestyle of the ranchers and
the residents of the southern part of my State who are not in a
secure environment. That is why the Federal Government has put
up signs that say, ``Warning: You are in an area of drug
smugglers and human smugglers.'' They would not be putting up
those warning signs if there was not a reason to warn our
residents. They are afraid to leave their homes because of home
violations.
Now, there are not many citizens in the southern part of my
State, but they should have the right to live in a secure
environment. They should have the right to drop their kids off
at a bus stop without fear of them being endangered.
So we have a lot of issues, as you pointed out. One of them
is that we have not had a national conversation about--and we
have to--the demand issue. What is the situation also with a
State like mine and California where medical marijuana is
allowed? We are going to try to stop that farmer in southern
Mexico from growing marijuana, but we are going to allow
someone in Phoenix, Arizona, to grow marijuana for ``medical
purposes?'' I am not sure that has a lot of logic associated
with it.
And I asked our U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, who is a great
man, and he said he did not know how he was going to handle
this issue either now that it is going to be quasi-legal in my
State of Arizona for marijuana usage. But at the same time,
right now at least, the cash crop is marijuana, more than
cocaine or any of the others. And last year, in the Southwest
Border, just in the Southwest Border States, seizure of
marijuana was 1.7 million pounds, and 1.2 million of these
pounds were seized in the Tucson Sector.
So I acknowledge that there has been improvement. I
acknowledge that our sheriffs on our side of the border are
doing a great job in keeping our communities safe. I do not
acknowledge that when you see the level of violence continue to
escalate on the southern side of the border, we are somehow
immune from that spilling over to our side of the border. There
is no logic associated with that. And I think that Sheriff
Babeu and I believe our other sheriffs may tell you that it
used to be when you saw a drug smuggler, they dropped their
product and ran. Now many of them are armed and ready to fight.
That is a very different situation and a very different
challenge to our sheriffs and their deputies.
I could go on for a long time, Mr. Chairman, but the
purpose of this hearing is to hear from our distinguished
witnesses, and I want to thank them again for their outstanding
service on the front lines. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator McCain.
We will go first to the Hon. Veronica Escobar, County Judge
for El Paso, Texas. Thanks for being here, Judge.
TESTIMONY OF HON. VERONICA ESCOBAR,\1\ EL PASO COUNTY JUDGE,
TEXAS
Judge Escobar. It is my honor. Thank you very much for the
opportunity.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Judge Escobar appears in the Appendix
on page 157.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have the honor of being the County Judge for El Paso,
Texas, the greatest city in the United States. In Texas, the
County Judge is the chief executive of the county. I preside
over a five-member commissioners court, which has budgetary and
administrative authority over county government operations.
The County Judge is elected county-wide. That means, as of
the 2010 census, I now represent 800,000 people in the world's
largest bi-national metropolitan community.
El Paso also happens to be the safest city of our size in
America, and we have consistently been ranked among the top
three safest communities in the United States for well over a
decade. Not only do we have some of the lowest crime rates in
the Nation, but a recent poll of our citizens shows that we
know we are safe and we feel safe.
Residents who live on the U.S.-Mexico Border have seen
their communities used as a convenient backdrop to heated
debates and political posturing about immigration and drug
policies. Incredibly, it has been said by some elected
officials, two from my own State, that there are bombs going
off in El Paso, and that is absolutely untrue. As a border
community, we have challenges, no doubt, but exploding bombs
are not among them.
What happens when the rhetoric escalates and the facts get
lost? It hurts my local economy. It hurts our ability to
recruit talent. It negatively affects our convention business,
and it does not address the real problems.
We are all concerned about and devastated by the tragedies
occurring every day on the other side of our river. The drug
war is raging just across from where I live in the streets of
Ciudad Juarez. I am glad for the assistance being given Mexico,
and I hope there is more to come, including discussions about
our own contributions to the drug war that is devastating
Juarez and El Paso families.
In the meantime, illegal drugs continue to flow north to
feed Americans' insatiable appetite for them. U.S. guns used in
that bloodshed continue to move south, and El Paso, like other
border cities, is a corridor caught in the middle of that
north-south activity as well as the rhetoric that emanates from
our State's and Nation's capitals.
My local law enforcement agents are dealing with
transnational gang activity. My jail houses them. Our
prosecutors are pursuing charges against them in court. And my
local property tax base is shouldering much of that burden. The
Federal Government has been aware of the costs associated with
the challenges we face on the border, and we appreciate your
support through the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program
(SCAAP) and through HIDTA funds. But, unfortunately, they have
not grown as the need has grown, and so my local property tax
base then shoulders whatever is not shouldered by the Federal
Government.
Grants offer an important supplement, but sometimes they
can be inflexible, not allowing my sheriff's office to purchase
vehicles, for example, through Operation Stonegarden.
We need investments that supplement our ability to recruit
and hire more officers. Office of Community Oriented Policing
Services (COPS) grants, for example, flowed into Texas, but the
El Paso County Sheriff's Department and the El Paso Police
Department, law enforcement agencies on the border, we did not
receive any of that funding.
We become more concerned with the talk of slashing budgets
and cutting support to our communities, and we believe it will
erode the gains we have made in getting the Federal Government
to assist us as we assist you.
When the war between the cartels began to reach a critical
level in Ciudad Juarez, we saw a pattern emerge that we never
predicted and that has not stopped. Our county hospital
district, which houses the only Level I trauma facility in the
region--the next closest is 275 miles away--began seeing
victims of violence who were rushed through our ports of entry
and into our emergency room. Since 2008, we have spent $4.9
million in trauma care for the victims of Mexican violence. To
date, we have been compensated for only $1.2 million, leaving
local property taxpayers to pick up the $3.7 million in
uncompensated costs.
We have repeatedly requested funding from the Merida
Initiative to help offset those costs borne by our local
property tax base because we just do not see that financial
burden diminishing unless the United States changes its drug
policies or the cartels suddenly declare a ceasefire.
Where has some of the funding gone if not to my trauma
facility or increasing my law enforcement capacity? It has gone
to a wall. While Federal law enforcement has gone on the record
to praise the wall, it is to me and others an example of
considerable Federal dollars being spent on a rusting monument
that makes my community look like a junkyard.
The vast majority of border crossers are not criminals but
economic migrants, and as you know, a significant amount of
illegal drugs are funneled through our ports of entry. A true
fix to undocumented immigration would come from comprehensive
immigration reform, and, frankly, it would take away the
platform by so many State leaders who want our local law
enforcement agents to enforce Federal immigration laws. And for
the record, all of my local elected officials oppose using
local law enforcement to enforce Federal immigration laws.
Community policing is what keeps us safe, and having my local
law enforcement become de facto immigration agents would erode
that trust.
Another facet of an overall fix should be our border ports,
which lack significant investment in our infrastructure and
personnel. We have $70 billion of commerce that comes across my
ports of entry, and we need more modern ports.
I live in a thriving, safe, and wonderful border community.
I am fiercely loyal to and very proud of El Paso. While some
politicians like to use caricatures of the border for purposes
of political rhetoric, rhetoric that portrays my community as
dangerous, volatile, and unsafe, the reality for me in El Paso,
for those of us who live there, could not be more different.
Do not get me wrong. We have challenges. But those
challenges can be addressed much more effectively by more
responsible burden sharing by the Federal Government, whose
mission it is to secure our borders and, by extension, our
public safety, our commerce, and our immigrant population. We
are indeed on the front lines, and a safe border means a safe
Nation. But vilifying immigrants, building expensive, ugly
walls, and encouraging hysteria and xenophobia only hurts our
border communities, my economy, our commerce, and the economy
of the Nation. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Judge.
Next we will go to Sheriff Raymond Loera, who is the
sheriff of Imperial County in California, which has an 84-mile
border with Mexico. Sheriff, thanks for coming all the way
across the country.
TESTIMONY OF HON. RAYMOND LOERA,\1\ SHERIFF OF IMPERIAL COUNTY,
CALIFORNIA
Mr. Loera. Well, thank you very much. It was a pleasant
trip. I was sitting the whole way.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Loera appears in the Appendix on
page 166.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you very much for the invitation to speak before this
Committee. It allows me the opportunity to bring to your
attention the significant and important work being done in a
small but very important corner of the United States. This work
is being done in an area already hit hard by economic pressures
and diminishing resources. Even with these significant
handicaps, law enforcement in the Imperial Valley is making
significant headway in making the entire United States a safer
place.
The Imperial County Sheriff's Office is responsible for law
enforcement and detention in the county of Imperial in
California. Imperial County extends 4,597 square miles,
bordering Baja California, Mexico, to the south, Yuma to the
east, San Diego to the west, and Riverside County to the north.
The county contains seven incorporated cities and 10
unincorporated cities. The estimated population is 172,672.
There are three ports of entry in the county. Two of the ports
of entry are in Calexico and the third one is in Andrade, close
to the Yuma, Arizona, border.
Imperial County is a rural and agricultural community.
Clean energy, wind, geothermal, and solar are emerging, and
Imperial Valley could be a significant player in these fields
in the very near future. However, currently the unemployment
rate is consistently, and has been for many years, 24 to 25
percent.
The Mexicali-Imperial Valley corridor is a significant,
lucrative drug-smuggling corridor. Customs and Border
Protection (CBP) reports that during fiscal year 2010, the
Calexico ports of entry led with the most cocaine seized, as
compared to seizures at other ports of entry along the
Southwest Border. For fiscal year 2011 this trend continues,
and for fiscal year 2011, the Calexico ports of entry also lead
in crystal methamphetamine seizures along the Southwest Border.
Mexicali, Baja California, which borders the city of
Calexico, has a population of 936,826. Mexicali has not
experienced the degree of violence reported in other areas
along the border, such as Juarez and Tijuana.
Intelligence has indicated for some time that Mexicali is a
neutral zone, a safe haven, due to the plaza having been
controlled for many years by the Joaquin ``Chapo'' Guzman drug-
trafficking organization. Recently, there are indications that
this is changing. This is evidenced by the killing of five
individuals on January 24, 2011, at a bar in Mexicali, Mexico.
Intelligence reflects that the Beltran-Leyva organization may
be vying for control of the Mexicali Plaza.
The Imperial County Sheriff's Office is part of the
Imperial Valley Drug Coalition, comprised of 20 participating
law enforcement agencies. This is a High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Area initiative. This HIDTA is administered by the
Southern California HIDTA, the California Border Alliance
Group.
The Imperial Valley Law Enforcement Coordination Center
houses the following initiatives: The Imperial County Narcotics
Task Force, Major Mexican Traffickers, and the California
Department of Justice's Major Narcotics and Violence Team.
Although not currently housed at the Imperial Valley Law
Enforcement Coodination Center (IVLECC), it supports the Border
Enforcement Security Team and the FBI Safe Street Task Force,
which are also HIDTA initiatives. These task forces and the
Intelligence Support Unit are made up of various State, local,
and Federal agents, officers, and analysts, to include deputies
from the Imperial County Sheriff's Office.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives
(ATF) established an office within Imperial County in 2009. The
domestic component, Project Gunrunner, is the primary focus of
ATF El Centro's efforts within Imperial County. ATF El Centro
partnered with the California Department of Justice Bureau of
Firearms in 2010, as members of a Firearms Trafficking Task
Force to implement the domestic component.
In summary, Imperial County is a significant drug-smuggling
corridor and poses a potential security threat not only to
Imperial County, but also the rest of the United States. As
rival drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) seek to take over
the Mexicali Plaza, violence is expected to escalate in
Mexicali. The Mexican DTOs have adjusted their smuggling
methods to counteract law enforcement efforts, such as the
utilization of tunnels and ultralights. The sharing of
intelligence between agencies is critical in order to plan for
and tackle these challenges. Imperial Valley law enforcement,
working with all available partners at the IVLECC is an example
of what can and must be done to counter these public safety
threats by working together and putting turf issues aside to
accomplish this mission.
Also, just between the time that you contacted me and this
meeting, there was a finding--and I will pass it around for you
to look at, but there is a picture on April 2--I believe they
caught the people that may have been responsible for or at
least partly responsible for that shooting where five people
were killed, and you would be amazed at the amount of military-
type arms that they located. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Sheriff. Thanks very much.
Next we have Sheriff Raymond Cobos, who is the Sheriff of
Luna County, New Mexico, which has a 54-mile border with Mexico
and is directly across from the State of Chihuahua, Mexico,
which has unfortunately, sadly, been experiencing a lot of
violence lately.
Sheriff, thank you for being here, and we welcome your
testimony now.
TESTIMONY OF HON. RAYMOND COBOS,\1\ SHERIFF OF LUNA COUNTY, NEW
MEXICO
Mr. Cobos. Thank you, Senator. It is an honor and a
privilege to testify before this Committee.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Cobos appears in the Appendix on
page 170.
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Let me start by saying that I just want to enumerate some
changes in the last 10 years, some of these specific to Luna
County.
We experienced a doubling of the number of Border Patrol
agents in the Deming Station, from around 250 to a little over
500.
We have increased the technological infrastructure along
the border to include additional sensors, cameras, fencing,
border vehicle barriers, and the construction and completion of
the Forward Operating Base along Border Highway State Road 9.
This is supplemented by the incorporation of National Guard
personnel that monitor these systems and free Border Patrol
agents for the field.
The Border Patrol has partnered with local law enforcement
in all-terrain vehicle (ATV) operations. We coordinate
checkpoint operations with the Border Patrol. They do theirs
and then we do our traffic enforcement program in close
proximity.
We have noted that the citizen complaints about Border
Patrol activity has changed from ``very few Border Patrol
agents'' to ``too many'' in many instances. That strongly
indicates the effectiveness of the Border Patrol strategy. The
presence of Border Patrol agents is the most visible sign of
the Federal Government's efforts at practical control of the
border, at least in my area.
Luna County crime statistics have plunged along with the
apparent numbers of apprehensions of undocumented persons in
the El Paso Sector, which includes Luna County. And you have
many of those instances along with narcotics seizures.
There are many factors affecting the decline in numbers of
persons crossing illegally into the United States, at least in
the Luna County area. We attribute that to the state of our
economy, the social stress in Mexican society, particularly the
increased Federal, State, and local enforcement on the U.S.
side, and possibly cooperation from law enforcement
counterparts in Mexico in some instances.
We have greater unity among the levels of government
agencies outside of law enforcement. That has increased. We get
notified by the Department of Housing and Urban Development
(HUD) and the FBI on local residents in HUD housing with
outstanding warrants, and we act upon those immediately.
In Luna County's case, one cannot overlook the quality of
leadership of the Federal law enforcement agencies. I simply
would have to credit the close support from El Paso Sector
chiefs, patrol agents in charge, in particular in my area,
Daniel Serrato, former patrol agent in charge Rick Moody--who
is now, I think, the assistant in the Tucson Sector--and Chris
Mangusing, who moved over next door to the Lordsburg Station.
And it seems every time we form a particular close relationship
with one of these supervisors, they move them on to somewhere
else. But that simply increases our ability to network.
The one thing I want to emphasize here is that we are the
recipients of the Operation Stonegarden program. Through that
program we have been able to put officers out in the field,
work very closely with the Border Patrol and other agencies. We
have gone ahead and initiated a five-county memorandum of
understanding (MOU) where we establish a MOU with four other
sheriffs, sheriffs of neighboring counties of Hidalgo, Grant,
Otero, Dona Ana, and my county, Luna. We cross-commission
deputies, so it is a force multiplier. But we have gone ahead
and done this on our own in response to the increased violence,
and so that way we can trade resources.
We did this well ahead of Operation Stonegarden. But
Operation Stonegarden allows us to give our residents services
that we could only dream of about 10 years ago.
We are blessed in Luna County with relatively flat terrain,
a few mountains. We cannot say the same thing about our
neighboring county, which is Hidalgo County. They have a
thousand square miles more than we do. We have approximately
3,000; they have about 4,200 square miles. We have 54 miles of
border; they have about at least twice that. We have a
population of a little over 27,000 with 33 sworn officers; they
have a population of about 5,000 with 8 officers. They try to
address the problems coming in through their area.
What we have done very successfully is moved the activity
out of our area in conjunction with the Border Patrol and
pushed it into the Hidalgo County side, which adjoins Cochise
County. There is no question about it. We address the issue of
feeling safe along the border. The statistics indicate that
there is very little of that activity. However, the one thing
that we do know--and that is one of my agreements with Sheriff
Dever in Cochise County--the character of the people that are
coming across now, particularly in the drugs, is much more
hostile. They are much more willing to defend their product;
they are much more willing to carry arms and use them. And,
yes, in our areas we do have lookouts that are stationed on
mountaintops--not so many in our county because, like I said,
we shut down that activity pretty much for practical purposes.
But I know in neighboring counties we do have evidence of
people that are stationed on the top of mountains guiding
people across. That is why the Border Patrol uses our deputies
to patrol the highways so they can get into the mountains and
counteract that ability.
So, anyway, the one thing I do want to do is make sure that
you understand that, particularly with Operation Stonegarden,
we want to make sure those things continue because it has been
pretty much of a success story in our county, and you cannot
walk away from success, because it is a recurring issue.
Thank you very much.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Sheriff. I appreciate the
reference to Operation Stonegarden, which this Committee has
supported over the years.
And the final witness, Sheriff Paul Babeu, Sheriff of Pinal
County in Arizona, which is in the Tucson Sector for the Border
Patrol, located between the cities of Tucson and Phoenix and,
therefore, in a major drug- and human-smuggling corridor.
Sheriff, thanks for coming here, and we look forward to
your testimony now.
TESTIMONY OF HON. PAUL BABEU,\1\ SHERIFF OF PINAL COUNTY,
ARIZONA
Mr. Babeu. Thank you. Mr. Chairman and Senators, I
appreciate the opportunity, not just as the Sheriff of Pinal
County--I happen to be Arizona's youngest sheriff. I like to
remind my fellow sheriffs of that in Arizona. And I have also
served as the president of the Arizona Sheriffs Association for
the past 2 years, and I bring a message from Arizona: Mexico is
not our enemy. President Calderon and the leaders of Mexico are
not our enemy. The people, the citizens of Mexico, are not our
enemy. It is the drug cartels of Mexico that have destabilized
Mexico, nearly toppling their government, that are the enemy of
Mexico, are the enemy of America. And that violence is not
coming here. It is here.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Babeu appears in the Appendix on
page 177.
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Pinal County is the fastest growing county after the
decennial census, growing 109 percent in population this past
decade. We also have another title. We are the No. 1 pass-
through county for drug and human smuggling in all of America.
And people would say, ``Well, you have got Santa Cruz County,
you have got Cochise County, you have got Pima County to your
south.'' And I will use the words of the Border Patrol, saying,
``Sheriff, all roads from these three counties go to Pinal
County.'' And so we are the No. 1 pass-through county on their
way to metro Phoenix, as our Senator, John McCain, pointed out.
So what is going on? And is the border more secure than
ever before? And when I share that with my citizens and the
families of Pinal County and throughout Arizona, I can tell
you, they laugh, because we know the reality on the ground. The
Tucson Sector is overwhelmed. And you can add all the resources
that you would like, in terms of staffing and manpower, but
they forget key elements. And I have told Customs and Border
Protection, Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) Director John Morton and Commissioners Alan Bersin and
David Aguilar, all the leaders, that they are forgetting key
elements that will bring the solution to a secure border.
Because as you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, earlier on, what is the
end state? Where are we going here? And what do we want to get
to? And you are looking at numbers over the past decade.
Well, the end state a lot of folks want to talk about is
immigration reform. Well, I can tell you, myself and the
majority of people in Arizona, I think throughout America, are
saying absolutely not, until this border is secured, like it is
in the Yuma Sector, that discussion does not have legs. And we
are not talking about back in 1986 when amnesty was provided to
approximately 2 million people. We are talking 12 or 13
million-plus individuals. And are we in the business of having
that conversation now? Absolutely not, because the border is
not secured.
If we had the Border Patrol's estimate, 219,300 illegals in
the Tucson Sector were apprehended alone last year, and they
say to me in briefings--these are people who work for Secretary
Napolitano--that reflects 1 out of every 2.6 that come into the
Tucson Sector. That is--do the math--385,000, approximately
400,000. I do not know how you figure out if there are 400,000
people that got away, we do not know where they are from, where
they are going, and who they are. That is a problem for us in
law enforcement because close to 17-plus percent have a
criminal record already established in the United States. Some
of these people are wonderful, good people who want a better
life, albeit it illegally. And then you have other than
Mexicans (OTMs), and you have people from countries of
interest.
I can tell you, when I served as the commanding officer of
Task Force Yuma--I have completed 20 years in the Army National
Guard, proudly served our country in Iraq. Down in Yuma, I was
the task force commander commanding 400, 700, at times up to
over 1,000 active duty soldiers and airmen in Operation Jump
Start, and this is the basis for what the solution is. And you
do not have to look anywhere closer than to your right.
Senator John McCain and Senator Jon Kyl have the solution
to secure the border so we can get to this point that we all
want to get to. We know we need to. We as a republic have
allowed us to get to this point--Democrats, Republicans, all of
us. This is our government, and the solution is the 10-point
border security plan that needs to be brought to bear. Three of
the key elements are 6,000 armed soldiers deployed to the
border, 3,000 of those in Arizona, 1,000 each to the other
three border States--3,000 is not because it is Arizona and I
want more support. It is where nearly half of the illegals are
coming in. And you have the OTMs and people from countries of
interest, and this is where it is a national security threat.
And then while they are deployed for that up-to-2-year period,
you build the necessary infrastructure.
I served as a combat engineer. You point out the path of
least resistance. Back about 15 years ago, as a young
lieutenant, I brought combat engineers to north of Tijuana,
south of San Diego. We built 14-foot, corrugated steel, no-
climb fence with steel 6 feet under the ground, and it works,
because there are proven historical paths where there is built-
up urban centers north and south of the border. What you want
to do is deny immediate assimilation. The Secretary often
quotes that ``Show me a 50-foot fence, I will show you a 51-
foot ladder,'' and she thinks she has won the argument.
Well, the key here is you have to have enforcement, you
have to have surveillance, you have to have infrared cameras,
you have to have lighting, and we even built roads that
traverse east and west north of those barriers so Border Patrol
can rapidly deploy to intercept, to make that apprehension.
And that brings us to the third point. You need to have the
deployment of soldiers and to build the necessary
infrastructure, and then you go to this novel concept of
enforcing the law. And when that happened in the Yuma Sector,
you have seen, as we sit here today, a 96-percent reduction in
illegal entries. That is what a secure border looks like. The
rest of America deserves it and is demanding it. And then we
can get to this reasonable discussion dispassionately.
I have other information I would like to present in the
record.\1\ I am running short on time. But that violence that
we have had, the cartel hits have actually arrived in America.
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\1\ The exhibits referenced by Mr. Babeu appear in the Appendix on
page 180.
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Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Sheriff.
We will do 7-minute rounds for the Members of the
Committee. You have all been very helpful in testifying.
Let me begin with you, Sheriff Babeu. I know you mentioned
law enforcement. What is the key factor that has made the
border in the Yuma Sector so much more secure?
Mr. Babeu. During Operation Jump Start we have seen one of
the high watermarks. In 2005, there were 134,000 illegals
apprehended that year. Now you are looking at 7,100,
thereabouts. And how did we get there? There is not one soldier
there. So we have to have these components that I shared
earlier. We had armed soldiers. We deployed four or five at one
position north of the border; to the right limit, the same
number; to the left limit; and virtually along the Colorado
River we formed a human curtain, and in other areas along the
border.
Now, I have soldiers, airmen from the Midwest, from back
East, and they say to me as I troop the line, ``Sir, we have
not seen anybody in 4 days. Are we really making a
difference?'' And I chuckled and said, ``That is exactly what
we want to see.''
Eventually it grew to a 74-percent sustained effort. And
then the Border Patrol and their leaders--and there are heroes
in the Border Patrol--could focus on other criminal elements
and to reinforce. Then they started to go zone by zone within
the sector--what is called streamline. No longer is there a
diversion program. The slang is ``catch and release.''
Everybody is prosecuted, and that immediately was found out
south of the border and said, hey, you cannot go through here
because you are not detained for a short period of time, less
than a week. Now it is 14 to 21 days, up to 60 days, to go
through that process. So that alone is a deterrent. And then
you are formally deported. So this needs to be brought
uniformly across the border.
Chairman Lieberman. So you would say if we took some of
those practices to, for instance, the Tucson Sector, there
would be a significant decrease in illegal crossings?
Mr. Babeu. Absolutely, Senator.
Chairman Lieberman. Let me ask the panel just to briefly
get into the question of how, from the point of view of judging
the results we are getting from the Federal investment, to
better judge border security and what border control we are
getting in return. You heard me talk about the number of
apprehensions being used. Judge Escobar, any other thoughts
about how we might do that?
Judge Escobar. Well, I think the way that we are ranked the
safest city in the United States is through FBI statistics on
criminal activity happening in my community.
And as I mentioned at the beginning of my comments, we are
the safest city of our size in the Nation, and that is going
back 11 or 12 years. We have been in the top three----
Chairman Lieberman. Has there been any alteration in those
crime statistics in the years since violence has so
dramatically gone up across the border in Mexico?
Judge Escobar. We achieved the status of being the safest
city in the Nation last year, and before then we had been No. 2
or No. 3 consistently.
And so last year was when we finally peaked at No. 1. I
would be vehemently opposed to militarizing my border. What
keeps us safe is a great relationship and community policing
between our local law enforcement and our neighborhoods. And
if, for example, law enforcement, as I mentioned before,
becomes an immigration officer or if you have military
patrolling the streets, that changes the dynamic and that
changes the trust and a neighborhood's ability to report crime.
And we depend on that relationship and that communication to
keep us safe.
Now, what has been extremely helpful, Operation
Stonegarden, any Federal funding that has come through HIDTA
and SCAAP, it helps offset the burden carried on the shoulders
of my local property tax base, and it helps us use our
resources more effectively. But as we have been growing and we
have not seen the investment continue, that is where I have
really a tremendous concern because we either have to scale
back operations or the burden on the local property tax base
grows more significantly.
Chairman Lieberman. Am I correct that El Paso is not a
major smuggling corridor?
Judge Escobar. It is.
Chairman Lieberman. It is. So even though it is, your crime
statistics are as low as they are.
Judge Escobar. Right. And we have achieved that
designation, even though we live across what is called by some
the most dangerous city in the world, Ciudad Juarez.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Judge Escobar. And, again, we have not done that by
militarizing our border. We have not done that by having local
law enforcement enforce Federal immigration laws. We have done
that by smart community policing, trying to be strategic about
how we invest our money, but really the Federal funds that come
to my community are critical, and they are not enough.
Chairman Lieberman. You know, it is interesting. You have
two different models. Sheriff Babeu, you talked about in Yuma
more of a law enforcement model that has worked. And you have
one which is quite different. It is law enforcement but it is
more community policing, community involvement.
Sheriff Loera, any thoughts about how folks within your
jurisdiction feel about their safety and how we might better
measure border security and border control?
Mr. Loera. It is interesting that you put it that way, that
you have two different models here. Yuma Sector goes into
Imperial County. Part of that issue is that we have one of the
largest or most active recreational areas, the Glamis Sand
Dunes, which can at times bring up from 150,000 to 160,000
people in one area.
Prior to the fence being put up, we had several problems.
One was that when these large groups of people are there, the
cartels or the smugglers would just jump on their ATVs and mix
with the crowd, and we had a real difficult time in controlling
any traffic coming north.
Before the fence came up, people would drive straight
across into Imperial County, get on the highway, I-8, which
runs east and west, and their favorite tactic was to drive
against traffic because they knew that the law enforcement were
not going to get involved in that or would call off a pursuit
so that they would not harm any other people.
When the fence came up, that almost came to a standstill.
There are no more pursuits, at least of that magnitude. The
fence came up and now the crowds do not mingle as much as they
did. The problem now is that, as Clint Eastwood said, they
adapt and overcome. We are now seeing an increase in tunnels.
Tunnels are going through from Mexicali to the city of
Calexico. We found probably four or five in the last few
months, and they are getting more and more sophisticated.
We have gotten the ultralights which are now flying over
the fence. My understanding is that the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) task force has 20 or 25 ultralights in
stores that they have found. No drugs, but the assumption is
that they were used for drugs, the drugs were successfully
flown over and picked up, and the ultralight is a minimal loss
to them.
In Imperial County, we have a strong community policing
ethic that we really push. I will tell you on my behalf as a
sheriff that I do not want to be involved in enforcing
immigration laws. But I think the community supports us in
doing the job that we need to do. And it has been built up over
many years.
Chairman Lieberman. Right. Thank you. My time is up.
Sheriff Cobos, do you want to answer that?
Mr. Cobos. As far as measuring the statistics, obviously
one of the things that we use is our local statistics. Back in
2005, we were catching vehicles on the road just by being out
there on traffic checkpoints and doing saturation patrols
simply for traffic enforcement. We were picking up vehicle
after vehicle. Mind you, there were four or five people on the
shift at a good time, but they would be picking up three, four,
five vehicles a day. Now I do not think we would get that many
in 6 months. An obvious change. So our statistics bear out that
it has been effective.
What happens, of course, is that we see our neighboring
county, especially Hidalgo County to the west bordering
Arizona, so it appears to me that we have pushed that activity.
So there is no question about it in our mind. And in terms of
how the people feel for the most part, we initiated a number of
activities, including our farm and ranch patrol where a deputy
goes to each ranch along the border and talks to the ranchers,
and he does that about three, four times a week. Not so much
that we expect that will do much more than show the flag. Our
presence along the border at regular intervals indicates to
them that we are always ready to respond.
We also have a community patrol which goes along each
little unincorporated area that knocks on doors and asks the
people how they feel about things. But, again, the main,
consistent feeling that we get is that they realize--because
they see in the news media the terrible tragedy that is
occurring in Mexico. And let me point out it does not
necessarily have to be a violent attack on the United States.
In my county we had a mayor of a small town, the police chief,
and a member of the governing board of trustees arrested by ATF
and about five or six other individuals for illegally
purchasing firearms and then sending a number of them into
Mexico.
Chairman Lieberman. So, in other words, it was not
violence, but they were corrupted by what is going on.
Mr. Cobos. Exactly so. That is a subtle way of introducing
violence. So to me that was a very black stain on law
enforcement. I hate to get emotional about it, but I was
outraged, and so were a number of other heads of agencies in
that area. But that is one of the things that--you do not have
to introduce a platoon of AK-47-carrying people to come across
the border and do violence. You can do this through the
almighty dollar.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Sheriff. Senator McCain.
Senator McCain. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank
the witnesses. Thank you, Sheriff Babeu, for your continued
service to the country. I noted with some interest that both
Sheriff Loera and Sheriff Cobos are Vietnam veterans. Thank you
for serving.
Mr. Loera. I have to clarify. That is the Vietnam-era for
me. I did not serve----
Senator McCain. Vietnam and Vietnam-era veterans, thank you
for serving. And, Judge, congratulations on your outstanding
record of service.
Do you recall, Sheriff Babeu, how many bodies we have found
in the desert around Tucson? I think it is around 200.
Mr. Babeu. Yes. There was a large article looking at
illegals, Senator, who are being brought up, and we often ask
where is the human rights outrage for the lack of care or
concern for human life.
Senator McCain. And I believe that number continues to go
up, the number of bodies we find in the desert of individuals,
either because the coyotes have abandoned them or for various
reasons. And, of course, another human rights issue is the
unspeakable things that are perpetrated on these illegal
immigrants by the coyotes, especially young women. They are
horrifying stories.
Did I hear you correctly, Sheriff, when you said that the
building of the fence was a very important step forward in your
ability to control the border?
Mr. Babeu. I think it was. I will be truthful with you,
Senator, that when it was first proposed, I had my doubts as to
how successful it would be, even with the Border Patrol coming
in and being a proponent of it. I think that it is a piece----
Senator McCain. I do not mean to interrupt, but isn't it
that the key here is not just a fence but also the surveillance
capabilities plus manpower? Isn't that pretty much the
conclusion that we could draw? I am not putting words in your
mouth, but----
Mr. Babeu. No. I think that is correct.
Senator McCain. And that is sort of what has happened in
your area of jurisdiction?
Mr. Babeu. Well, it is right now. Like I said, our issue is
that we have not seen this level of violence. The corridor
issues have been historical. We are concerned about the
violence like in Tijuana and some other areas spilling over,
which there are indicators that it may be coming, and coming
faster than we are prepared for.
Senator McCain. I noticed this, by the way, this morning:
Mexican forces seeking kidnapped bus passengers stumbled on a
mass grave holding 59 bodies. This is beyond belief, some of
the things that are happening.
Sheriff Cobos, what is your view of the measures that need
to be taken to secure the border? Do you pretty much agree with
Sheriff Loera?
Mr. Cobos. Yes, I am very much in agreement. One of the
things that I need to point out, in the Port of Palomas,
adjoining our port of entry, on our side we erected a 12- or
14-foot barrier fence that extended out to about 1\1/2\ miles
on either side. You speak about the bodies we found. I remember
up until about 2 or 3 years ago, we had found 36 bodies by
various agencies.
Senator McCain. Where did you find them?
Mr. Cobos. They were out in the desert. The remains were
stumbled upon by people, or sometimes--in one case we received
a call from a Border Patrol agent in the Yuma Sector saying
that he had received a call from a person indicating that one
of his relatives that he had, had died in our area. We went to
milepost 56 or 57 on I-10, which is west of us. We went there
and, sure enough, within 10 or 15 minutes we found the body.
And, again, the same scenario, people get sick, they get
abandoned, and unless you have a very close relative or a very
close friend with you, they are going to leave you there to die
or fend for yourself.
One of the things about that fence is that it stopped women
and children. We got pretty tired of having to rescue women and
children. We were looking for a 16-year-old immigrant that was
supposedly dying. We went out on four-wheelers, and I found
probably about nine in an area. They had broken off bushes and
covered themselves with them in about 110 degree heat. They
laid there all night long. But one of them was a woman with a
9-year-old daughter, and, again, it is one of these things. You
saw the desperation in their faces, but we simply had to take
them out of the area.
So we are going to be working closely with Border Patrol
because, if anything else, we do not want them dying in our
desert. We do not want them dying anywhere.
Senator McCain. Thank you.
Sheriff Babeu, you obviously made the case for the three-
legged stool here: Surveillance, fences, and the personnel
requirements. One of the misnomers that I think is out in
America is that we cannot control our border. And the fact is
you mentioned the Yuma Sector is largely secure. The San Diego
Sector is now secure where people used to just run up in
traffic to cross the border. Parts of Texas are secure. So it
is not that we cannot achieve that. And, yes, they will use
ultralights and, yes, they will dig tunnels. I think it was in
Douglas, we found 11 tunnels in the last short period of time.
So they are very inventive and ingenious, and, again, we need
to have this conversation about demand.
I congratulate you, Judge Escobar, on having the country's
safest city, and it is a testimony to your and others' great
work and other public servants. But I also was interested in a
couple of your statements. You said, ``We are indeed on the
front lines, and a safe border means a safe nation. But
vilifying immigrants, building expensive, ugly walls, and
encouraging hysteria and xenophobia only hurts our border
communities . . . our commerce, and the economy of the
Nation.'' Then you went on to say, ``. . . Federal dollars
being spent on a rusting monument that makes my community look
like a junkyard.''
Let me just tell you that I respect your opinion and maybe
that is the case in El Paso. The Federal Government has found
it necessary--and I will be glad to show you a picture of the
sign--to put up a sign in the southern part of my State reading
``Danger: Public warning. Travel not recommended. Active drug
and human smuggling area.'' It goes on to say, ``If you see
suspicious activity, do not confront. Move away and call 911.''
I do not think we should ask our citizens who live in any
part of this Nation to be subjected to an environment where our
own Federal Government has to put up signs warning our citizens
that they cannot travel freely in our sovereign territory. So I
must say I respect your view about ugly fences and junkyard
things, all that. But it certainly does not apply to my State,
nor the citizens of my State. And so I respect their views, and
I do not criticized anybody, and I certainly do not view the
ranchers who live in the southern part of my State who are
subject to repeated home invasions as xenophobic. And I hope
that you were not including the citizens of my State in your
comments about people who practice xenophobia.
I would be glad to hear your response to that.
Judge Escobar. Thank you, Senator. When you create walls
along the Southern Border, you are simply shifting the flow of
the undocumented elsewhere, either through tunnels or to more
extreme terrain, where they are more than likely to die in
higher numbers. And so if you want to tackle the issue of the
undocumented--and there are different types of undocumented
migrants. Clearly we can admit that there are migrants who are
here for economic purposes to seek out a better life, and they
are here frankly because there are Americans willing to give
the undocumented employment. And so there is a pull. It is the
fundamental law of supply and demand. If there were not the
demand in the United States, then you would not have this
supply chain.
And, again, all you are doing is moving the issue or the
challenge either into some other community or through tunnels,
and in my humble opinion--and I am not a Federal decisionmaker,
but I think if you want to tackle the issue of the
undocumented, you can do it through comprehensive immigration
reform. And if you are able to tackle that and utilize your
resources much more wisely on trying to attack the problem of
those who are trying to traffic in drugs or trying to create
harm in communities, then I would rather have my Federal law
enforcement agents focused on that population than on chasing
migrants who are here because there is an American company
offering them a job.
And the same thing goes with drug trafficking. It is our
insatiable appetite for illegal drugs that create these
corridors. And the longer we go not acknowledging that or
dealing with that, we are not going to get to the root issue,
is how I feel about this.
Senator McCain. Well, thank you, Judge, and I appreciate
your opinion. So basically your assertion is that we cannot
secure our borders. That is a fundamental assertion that you
and I have a strong disagreement on because I think the
security of our citizens is our first and foremost obligation.
You said the answer is comprehensive immigration reform. I
must tell you that a major part of that obviously--and I know
you are a strong advocate for it--is amnesty. I have seen that
movie before. I saw it in 1986 when we gave amnesty to 2
million people who were in this country illegally on the
promise and commitment that we would secure our borders and
that we would not have a problem anymore with illegal
immigrants. Now we have 10 or 12 million people who are here
illegally.
So to somehow assert that comprehensive immigration reform
will stop or stem the flow of people coming into this country
illegally, I think, has not been authenticated by history. So I
appreciate and congratulate you on having a very safe city. It
is hard for me to tell the family of Brian Terry, the Border
Patrol agent that was just murdered, or the rancher who was
just killed, or one of Sheriff Babeu's deputies who was just
wounded, that it is OK, we really do not have to take
additional measures to get our border secured.
Those 75 to 100 guides, they are not there guiding people
who would come across the border looking for a job. They are
guiding the drug cartels that are bringing the cocaine,
methamphetamine, and marijuana into Arizona and then to Phoenix
where, according to the HIDTA people, it is distributed
throughout the Nation with the exception of some parts of
Texas. So I strongly appreciate and respect your view, but I
strongly disagree. And I think the lessons of history are on my
side.
And, by the way, I would be glad to have Judge Escobar
respond to that. I think you have the right to.
Judge Escobar. Is there something in particular you would
like me to respond to?
Senator McCain. Would you like to disagree that we gave
amnesty to 2 million people and the promise that we would have
our border secured and we would not have the problem anymore?
Do you disagree with that?
Judge Escobar. Here is what I disagree with. I disagree
with your characterization of my testimony as stating that I do
not believe we can secure our borders. I absolutely believe we
can secure our borders in a smarter, more effective way. I
think when you have modern ports of entry--when you look at
your cell phone and the things you can do with your cell
phone--my 14-year-old son can hold up his cell phone, and there
is an application that will tell him what song is playing. That
is a pretty modern application.
The ports of entry in my community have remained
essentially unchanged. There has been very little investment in
technology in my ports of entry that will help keep us safer. I
think there are smarter ways to expend our resources. I think
it is a combination of funding, technology, and policy. But
when I hear anyone advocate for militarizing the border or
trying to create a situation that I do not think utilizes our
resources in the most effective way, I feel obligated to speak
up.
Senator McCain. Well, I thank you for that comment, and
none of us are advocating militarizing the border. What we are
seeking is the National Guard to supplement the Border Patrol
and not through military action on their part, but they have
played a critical role in surveillance, identification,
assistance in a variety of ways to the overworked and
overtasked Border Patrol. The head of HIDTA, the head of Border
Patrol on the border, I asked them, ``How has the National
Guard helped you here?'' And all of them said they are
``indispensable.'' And they are not militarized. They are not
physically arresting any illegal immigrant. There is a Posse
Comitatus situation here. But the work that they have done, in
the words of the people who are down on the border, they are
``indispensable.''
I have long overused my time, Mr. Chairman, but this is a
very important conversation. I take some of your
recommendations very seriously. We need to address the issue of
demand, and I agree with you on that very seriously. And I also
understand the attraction of jobs. I also understand that if we
are going to have immigration reform, employers must be
punished who hire people who come to this country illegally.
I think there is a lot of common ground that we are going
to have to seek, and I am confident that we can. But I cannot
say to the citizens of Pinal County who have guides sitting on
the mountains near where they live that we have the border
secure and we can move forward with comprehensive reform.
I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator McCain. That was an
important exchange. And thank you, Judge.
Senator Coburn, you are next.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COBURN
Senator Coburn. Thank you. Thank you to each of you for
being here. I have planned a trip to the border, maybe,
depending on what happens on the Continuing Resolution, and
that will be, I think, on April 18 and 19, and a couple of you
I hope to see.
Sheriff Babeu, are you aware of any pressure that local law
enforcement has received, or the Border Patrol, in terms of
reducing the number of arrests for deportation?
Mr. Babeu. Senator, ironically enough, I just spoke with
Sheriff Larry Dever within the hour on the cell phone--there
has been some public controversy over those statements where
the head of the Border Patrol here in Washington, DC, has come
out and said absolutely that is false, that is untrue,
literally calling Sheriff Dever a liar. So I called my
lieutenant, Matt Thomas, earlier today as well. He is a career
deputy, came up through the ranks, was a sergeant in charge of
our narcotics task force, working undercover, and he said,
``Sheriff, I have heard that myself directly from Border Patrol
agents in the Tucson Sector.''
And then I called T.J. Bonner, who has been the national
president of the Border Patrol Council, within the last 2
hours. He was the president from 1989 to 2011. He just retired
a month ago. And he says, ``Absolutely.'' Not firsthand, but he
has all of his Border Patrol agents, many of them, giving
firsthand accounts of that fact. I do not have firsthand
myself, but I can tell you that we need help out in Arizona. In
anybody's scorecard, if the majority of people are getting
through undetected, that is a failing grade, period. The people
in my county do not feel that the border is more secure than
ever, and we are 70 miles north.
Senator Coburn. Are there particular ways that any of you
all would say things we are doing that make it more difficult
for you to secure--or at least administer your law enforcement
on your side of the border? Are there things that we, through
the Federal Government, are doing that make it more difficult?
Mr. Babeu. Yes. The Federal Government, President Obama,
and Eric Holder should stop suing the State of Arizona. At a
time that we need help, we ask for help, we try to pass laws on
our own--which is not the solution. S. 1070 is not the answer,
even though I support it for uniform enforcement. We need the
help that we have been talking about, is real border security.
And instead we have teams of lawyers sent to fight our State
and then malign us. And then those of us who are proud to serve
in law enforcement and as protectors are made out to be the bad
guys. We stand up for the rule of law. It is not race, color,
or national origin. Two hundred of my deputies are Hispanic. So
what are they saying about them in the application of the law?
Senator Coburn. Sheriff Cobos.
Mr. Cobos. Our relationship with Border Patrol in my county
is very close. We have never had any indication--I was even
unaware of any controversy going on until shortly before I
arrived in Washington yesterday.
But the one thing I will say is that in terms of any
inhibitions on the part of the Federal Government, I think it
is better to say there are things that the Federal Government
can do.
Senator Coburn. Right.
Mr. Cobos. And one, in particular, is our biggest problem
of communications along our Southern Border in my county, and I
know that the Border Patrol and other agencies build
infrastructure, communications towers and so forth. What I
would like to see is a good study of that to see if any of that
infrastructure can be used to incorporate and include----
Senator Coburn. That is a great idea. Do you know of
anybody that is working on that?
Mr. Cobos. There are plans, I believe, to build towers in--
--
Senator Coburn. But to incorporate you into the
communication loop.
Mr. Cobos. Not that I am aware of, no.
Senator Coburn. That is key. Thank you. Sheriff Loera.
Mr. Loera. Senator, I do not know if you were here for the
part where I spoke about the coalition that we have in Imperial
County.
Senator Coburn. Yes, I was.
Mr. Loera. I think we have a very strong working
relationship not only with the Border Patrol, but with the DEA,
the FBI, and all of the Federal agencies. That has not always
been true. Ten years ago you could not get us in the same room.
I think that things are going well. The Border Patrol has
been very accommodating with working with us. So I think that
the relationship is good.
Operation Stonegarden has been very good for us and
everybody in Imperial County because of our financial issues
that we have. It has not only allowed us to support them but
also support our communities.
Senator Coburn. But you do not see anything specifically
that we are doing now that is a negative factor, anything the
Federal Government is doing that is a negative factor in terms
of you being able to carry out your job? That is really the
question.
Mr. Loera. I do not think so.
Senator Coburn. Thank you. Sheriff Babeu, why do you think
the Department of Interior recently replaced warning signs on
lands on the border with signs claiming to be the information
signs? Why do you think that happened?
Mr. Babeu. The signs that Senator McCain pointed out, are
probably the highest insult that you could pay the citizens of
Arizona, and all Americans should have been outraged at that--
not only the Federal Government not helping us, but putting up
these signs. We screamed about it. Our governor went on TV and
talked about it. All these 15 billboard signs that were put up
were put up in my county, not even on the border but 70 miles
north of the border, warning American citizens that in a
certain part of America travel is not recommended because
foreign cartels basically, I guess, control these areas. And
weeks before the November 2, 2010, election, these signs
miraculously came down, and more politically correct signs
about high-level law enforcement at the Federal level is taking
place here. They say, by the way, call 911. Guess who 911 is?
Me. And they have these others signs that are up, that have
been up for some time, ``Travel caution. Smuggling and illegal
immigration may be encountered in this area.'' Well, thanks for
the public warning for that.
Senator Coburn. Have the conditions changed to warrant such
a switch?
Mr. Babeu. The conditions changed because the American
people are becoming aware of the inaction, and then the insult
of suing Arizona on the Supremacy Clause saying that inherently
it is their job. We are saying do your job. So at least they
did us a favor and took down those signs.
Does it warrant it? We just want them to act. How has it
become my job as the local sheriff to go out there and fight
foreign cartels? We have arrested these people. We have had
hits. Here is one such hit, who was working for the cartels,
and he was shot half a dozen times in Casa Grande, Arizona, and
his wife and family said because the cartel suspected he was
working for local law enforcement and he was giving information
to us, and that is why he was killed.
In Chandler, Arizona, we have the local Chandler Police
Department, which I used to be an officer, and the very beat
that I served, now it comes out months later as the Freedom of
Information Act requests for these reports show that this is
connected to the cartels, a man was stabbed a number of times,
and had his head cut off in Chandler, Arizona.
So this violence, it is not just coming here. It is here.
Senator Coburn. I think you have seen a copy of the letter
that I recently received from the Department of Interior \1\
that no Bureau of Land Management lands are closed to visitors
because of border-related criminal activity or that only 3
percent of the Buenos Aires Refuge is closed to visitors or
that only 68 percent of Organ Pipe National Monument is closed
to visitors.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The letter referenced by Senator Coburn appears in the Appendix
on page 215.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Are you aware of other areas effectively closed to
visitors?
Mr. Babeu. In Pinal County, Senator, I can tell you--and I
personally inspected myself and took pictures and showed
Senator Kyl, and I believe I showed Senator McCain as well--70
miles north of the border, they are putting steel rail,
actually used for railroad tracks. They cut it and put on
Normandy barriers and put 1.3 miles near the Vekol Valley south
of I-8 to try to divert all of this traffic. Well, guess what
they do? They just drive around it. And so why are we putting
barriers this far north? They should be on the border.
So there are certain parts there. That is where these signs
are. So the Federal Government has said travel is not
recommended here. So, in fact, yes, they are.
Senator Coburn. I would presume in the Tucson Sector you
are aware of federally owned lands on the border that are used
by smugglers and drug cartels to smuggle narcotics and illegal
aliens? You are aware of that?
Mr. Babeu. It happens. Ask Nancy Henderson about it--it is
not on the border where it is sparsely populated. In my county
families have to plan--they leave a family member home while
somebody is going shopping for food because they do not want
somebody breaking into their house and stealing their property.
And this was one of our cases in Arizona City, right off I-10.
I know Nancy Henderson, who is a young widow, who says, ``I am
an American, and I do not feel free in my own country.'' And
her husband was an avid gun collector. She was at work. And she
came home, and they had busted open her safe with a pick axe
and pry bar, stole all nine of her weapons, all of her
ammunition, went in her cabinet, took food items, packages of
batteries that she had there, and six pairs of heavy-duty
socks.
Well, you do not have to be a detective to figure out what
happened here. They did not take her computers. They did not
take her TVs or her jewelry. And then there were footprints
going from her house to Wildcat Peak in the Sawtooth Mountains,
where there have been three individuals who have been arrested
who were scouts, lookouts for the cartels who provide safe
passage.
There are eight families, three of them had the courage to
come forward to stand with me to talk about it to the media. It
is just outrageous. I asked them, ``Why did you wait 3 days to
come forward?'' One of these families, Pat and Penny Murphy,
were personal friends of mine for years, and they said, ``We
were afraid we would be killed.''
Thirty-five miles outside of America's sixth largest city,
Phoenix, Arizona, we have American citizens who are in fear of
drug cartels in Mexico, that they were going to be killed by
that scout living in a cave in the mountains, less than a mile
from their backyard, or by the people that came and resupplied
him with food and water or by the people they work for.
Senator Coburn. Are you responsible for recovering bodies
of those that die on Federal lands?
Mr. Babeu. Yes.
Senator Coburn. Why are you responsible for it?
Mr. Babeu. We are the local law enforcement and have
jurisdiction. Border Patrol, anything happens, they call us. If
there is a rape or if there is an assault, I have to take a
deputy out of a beat that is primarily responsible to answer
911 calls. So you cannot divorce this from local law
enforcement and the impact upon public safety. And I have other
pictures here of kidnappings and people who were dumped in
canals, people who were shot.
This was one of two individuals who were illegals,
kidnapped in Phoenix, Arizona, and brought not to other parts
of Phoenix but to Pinal County, and these two guys, when the
vehicle stopped, they could not come up with a $3,000 ransom.
This is what they told us. And they knew they were going to be
walked out and be executed. They ran for their lives, and this
guy was the slower of the two and got shot twice in the back.
In other cases, here is one gentleman who was kidnapped,
duct-taped, thrown in the canal after he was killed. And that
is happening here.
So we care about these people. My deputies are dispatched
with the same urgency if you called and were in a head-on
collision. We respond to families who are abandoned. As the
sheriff said, we had nine individuals, two adult men, five
women, two children ages 6 and 11, that were abandoned. They
finally got into an area where they had cell service, and one
of the men called, in Spanish, and asked for help. We
triangulated his location, and we went out, our deputies. They
had not had water for 2 days, could not even move. They were
drinking their own urine for 2 days.
The compassion of law enforcement, the compassion even of
my soldiers and airmen--we never got in any gun fights. As the
Senator pointed out, through Posse Comitatus, we did not have
enforcement authorities, we did not go on patrol. We were a
physical presence and a deterrent.
Senator Coburn. I want to make one last statement, and
anybody who wants to respond to it. I notice in your testimony,
Mr. Babeu, you used the word ``illegals.'' And I notice that
Judge Escobar, an officer of the court, she uses the word
``undocumented.'' And I just find it curious that somebody that
is a smuggler or a drug runner can be labeled as undocumented
when, in fact, they are a felon. They may not be convicted yet,
but they certainly have crossed the border illegally.
And so, I think it is unfortunate that we are going to try
to--because I use the word ``illegals.'' I wonder if I am
considered xenophobic because I do not use the word
``undocumented.'' And I just find it curious that we are trying
to move this debate in terms of making things worse rather than
to making things better.
The fact is if you cross the border illegally, you have
committed an illegal act. And if you are a drug runner and have
done that, I think it is highly unusual that we would call them
``undocumented.''
Mr. Babeu. Right.
Senator Coburn. I think they are illegal. And so I do not
say that because I do not care for Hispanic people. I say it
because it is a fact.
Judge Escobar. Senator, if I could respond?
Chairman Lieberman. Go ahead.
Judge Escobar. Clearly, this is a question that refers to
my testimony.
Senator Coburn. I said that.
Judge Escobar. Right, and so that is why I think I should
be the one to respond. I appreciate that.
I think what is important here is to understand the
difference between economic migrants, people who, as the
sheriff himself pointed out, are here because they want to
improve their lives, they want to put food on the table for
their children, and there absolutely is a difference between
them and drug smugglers and coyotes, people who take advantage
of the poor and the most vulnerable in the most difficult
conditions. I never called you or anyone on the dais
xenophobic----
Senator Coburn. I did not imply that.
Judge Escobar. Well, that was the implication.
Senator Coburn. No. Let me take over here. I said is it
because I do not use that word, does it imply that I am
xenophobic. I did not say anybody said that.
Judge Escobar. So if you meant it rhetorically----
Senator Coburn. But you have to admit, in the debate out
there that is going on, the emotional debate that is going on
in our country today, is if you do not use the proper words,
then you are automatically categorized. And we are never going
to solve this problem when we do it that way. The problem is we
have people breaking the law.
Chairman Lieberman. Senator, I will let you respond, and
then we are going to have to move on.
Judge Escobar. Thank you. I think what is important is
keeping the debate rational, and I think my perspective is
completely rational, and it comes from a point--I live on the
border. I live, as I mentioned, in the largest bi-national
community in the world. And so I do think I have credibility
when it comes to telling the story of what happens on the
border, just as everyone on this panel has credibility before
you. And simply because I have a difference of opinion in the
nomenclature of how I choose to refer to migrants--and, again,
I believe there are criminals that are coming across this
border, that are intending to harm people, intending to provide
illegal drugs to Americans who want them and ask for them and
pay for them. But I see a difference between the two
populations. And I identify----
Senator Coburn. But you do not see it as an illegal act to
come across our border if you are undocumented?
Judge Escobar. It is an illegal act. But you choose a
different nomenclature than I do, and I am not critical of your
nomenclature, and so if you are critical of mine, you have to
evaluate what motivates that. I do not know.
All I can tell you is it is important in this country to
have rational discussion, not based on what you want to believe
but based on the facts. And so I bring to you a certain set of
facts. If you do not like those facts, I cannot control that.
All I can do is bring before you what has made my community
safe. It is interesting that you ask the question what can the
Federal Government do better, and you asked it of everyone
except me. And I am going to tell you what you can do better
We need stronger investment--we are trying to line up all
of our radio communications among all law enforcement, Federal,
State, and local, in El Paso. We would love more Federal
support in doing that. We think that will make us safer,
smarter, and more effective in terms of all law enforcement
levels. We would like more technological advancement in our
ports of entry. We would love for you to supplement HIDTA and
SCAAP funds, which are not funding the complete burden of what
we are trying to do with you because we do want to be a partner
with you.
Regardless of ideological beliefs about nomenclature, we
are one and the same and wanting to ensure we are all safe.
Chairman Lieberman. Good note to end on.
Judge Escobar. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. I actually think there were some
meetings of the mind along the way there.
Judge Escobar. I hope so.
Chairman Lieberman. I have to go to a meeting on the budget
impasse now, and I want to solve it because I want Senator
Coburn to be able to come and visit you on the border. I am
prepared to yield the gavel to Senator McCain, if you have any
more questions.
Senator McCain. I have no more questions. I want to thank
the witnesses. It has been very helpful.
Chairman Lieberman. It really has been. I think you used
the words ``rational'' and ``respectful.'' It has been a
rational and mutually respectful discussion, and you did
exactly what the Committee hoped you would do, which is you
brought us firsthand experience, real live experience,
different reactions but right from the border. So you have
helped our inquiry very much.
We are going to leave the record of the hearing open for 2
weeks for any additional questions or statements to be added.
In the meantime I thank each one of you not only for coming
here, which took some effort, and contributing to our oversight
but also for the work you do, the tough work, really critical
work every day. So stay safe and God bless you.
And with that, we will adjourn the hearing.
[Whereupon, at 3:05 p.m, the Committee was adjourned.]
SECURING THE BORDER: PROGRESS AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL
----------
WEDNESDAY, MAY 4, 2011
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I.
Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Lieberman, Carper, Pryor, Landrieu,
Tester, Collins, McCain, and Johnson.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN
Chairman Lieberman. The hearing will come to order. We
welcome everyone. The topic for the hearing today is ``Securing
the Border: Progress at the Federal Level.'' This is the third
in a series of hearings we have been doing on border security,
focusing particularly, of necessity, on our Southern Border.
But just as history changed on September 11, 2001, in another
way, much more positively, history had a turning point on
Sunday with the killing of Osama bin Laden. And I would be
remiss not to say a word of thanks to you, Madam Secretary,
Janet Napolitano, and to all the people who work with you in
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and by extension to
all the people in the security sector of our government--
military and intelligence--who performed so brilliantly and
bravely and worked together to bring about the extraordinary
result that was achieved on Sunday in Pakistan.
The teamwork that was so pervasive in the successful
assault on that compound in Pakistan is precisely what this
Committee hoped for when we worked so hard first to establish
the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 after September 11,
2001, then introducing and bringing forth the legislation that
created the 9/11 Commission Act, and then considering in two
phases and advance through the Committee, and ultimately to
enactment, the Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act,
reforming the intelligence community. I think all of us are
very grateful and very proud of the work that was done. And
since this is the first opportunity I have had to see you in
public, I wanted to thank you and ask you to thank all those
who have worked with you. And I hope you will say a few words
about that in your opening statement.
Also, as good as we feel about what happened on Sunday in
Pakistan and as much as we know that it makes us safer, and the
world safer, we also know the war against Islamist terrorism is
not over. The enemy is still out there and will continue to try
to attack us here at home, and to the extent that you are able
in your testimony, I think, either in the opening statement or
in questions, I would like to ask you a bit about the post-bin
Laden sense of homeland security.
Let me come back to the topic of the day. Briefly, the
security of our borders in all its manifestations is very
important. The truth is that one of the great achievements
since September 11, 2001, is the extent to which we have
secured our borders against those who would come in to do us
harm. The focus of these hearings, of course, has been on a
different kind of border security, which is border security
related to illegal immigration, but also concerns about the
drug cartel violence in Mexico and the extent to which it may
come over our border into the United States. And, in this
regard, too, I want to thank you for all you have done. I think
you have faced really significant challenges, both in terms of
all kinds of border security and, of course, natural disasters.
And you have handled your job with real strength and
effectiveness and common sense, and I appreciate it.
Witnesses at the two previous hearings on the topic of
border security, particularly the Southern Border, largely
agreed that the situation along that border has improved
significantly over the past decade. The best statistics
available bear this out. The one that seems to be most commonly
used is that apprehensions of illegal aliens along the border
are down 73 percent since 2000, which is the lowest level in
three decades.
This is, of course, good news. We have spent a fair amount
of time in the previous hearings on the metrics, on the
statistics, and we know that they are just a piece of the
picture and can be misleading. At different times, for example,
the Border Patrol has cited increases in apprehensions as proof
of progress, and sometimes decreases in apprehensions, on the
theory that the fewer people trying to get over into the United
States, the fewer the apprehensions. So we believe we have to
try our best to figure out how many people actually are
attempting to come over the border and compare that to the
number of those who succeed. I understand the Border Patrol has
been trying to collect this information through footprints,
video footage, and sensors, but that its methods are not 100
percent up to the challenge. And it is a difficult challenge
because we are trying to measure the number of people whom we
have not apprehended. I hope that you will be able to find ways
to improve the collection of this information and consider
making it public so we can more accurately assess the extent of
the problem and our progress on it.
The second point that has come out of these hearings that
has struck me is that the focus on the Southern Border has
often overshadowed other vulnerabilities that continue
elsewhere in our immigration enforcement system. One statistic
which reveals such a vulnerability that I would guess would be
and is very surprising to most Americans is that about 40
percent of the illegal immigrants in our country--undocumented
aliens, people living and working in the United States today
illegally--came into this country legally and then overstayed
the terms of their visas. So in terms of the problem of illegal
immigration, about 40 percent of the problem is not people who
come over the border and into our country illegally but people
who have come in legally and over stayed. And this both
undercuts the kind of legitimacy of the law that we have about
temporary visas, for instance, but it also threatens our
security.
The most pressing, the most sort of illustrative number to
me still is the 9/11 Commission, which reminded us that five of
the terrorists who attacked us on September 11, 2001, entered
the United States legally and then intentionally overstayed
their visas. Just recently, a couple of years ago, in 2009,
Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, arrested in Dallas on suspicion of
planning terrorist attacks, was in the United States originally
on a student visa, a legal visa, and then overstayed.
A new GAO report,\1\ which just came out, concludes that of
the roughly 400 people who have been convicted of any
terrorism-related crimes since September 11th, 36 had
overstayed their visas. In other words, almost 10 percent of
the people who have been convicted of terrorism-related
activities in the decade since September 11, 2011, were legal
immigrants who overstayed their visas and became illegal.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The GAO report referenced by Chairman Lieberman appears in the
Appendix on page 263.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Despite a lot of congressional effort and DHS effort, we
still lack an exit system that will effectively identify people
who have overstayed their visas in real time. The reality, it
seems to me, is that the U.S. Visistor and Immigrant Status
Indicator Technology (US-VISIT)--the DHS program that is
supposed to identify visa overstays based on visitor entry and
exit information--remains a troubled and ineffective program.
Officials of your Department have told the Committee that
US-VISIT processes less than half of all potential overstays
identified by automated matching of entry and exit records, and
GAO, in this just-released report, found that the program has
an overall backlog of 1.6 million potential overstay records
that have not yet been processed. I am sure part of this is
that we have not given you the support to do that, but it is a
real problem.
Identifying individuals who overstay is a crucial component
of securing our borders and making our immigration system
credible and real to the law. And to me it is just unacceptable
that we are still unable to systematically identify people who
overstay. So I hope you will be able to talk about that and
what the Department is doing about it in your testimony.
As we began this series of hearings on border security, I
at least had the goal of both dealing with the current state of
border security, how are we doing at keeping our borders
secure, particularly with regard to illegal immigration. But
here was my hope: That if we reached the level of finding out
what is not working in border security and could fix it, that
we would not only have achieved that good result, but it would
be a preface to going back and considering reform of our
immigration laws, which just about everybody here in Congress
agrees need to be fixed but have different ideas about how to
fix them. So the presumption was border security could lead not
only to better border security, but to building a political
consensus to deal with the continuing problem of illegal
immigration.
It seems to me now, as I listen to the testimony, that the
inverse is also true, that there are forms of what I would call
``smart immigration reform'' that also can enhance border
security, or to put it more explicitly, there are kinds of
smart immigration reform that can significantly reduce the flow
of illegal immigrants into America. And to the extent that we
have time--and I hope we will--I welcome your thoughts on that
connection. Thanks very much for being here. I look forward to
your testimony.
At this time I am pleased to call on our Ranking Member,
Senator Collins.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS
Senator Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me join you
in welcoming the Secretary of DHS back before our Committee
today. With the welcome news that Osama bin Laden has been
killed, I want to join the Chairman in thanking everyone
involved, particularly those brave Navy SEALs who so flawlessly
executed the mission, and the many other members of our
military, intelligence, and homeland security forces whom we
may never know. This was, as the Chairman has pointed out,
exactly the kind of collaboration of our intelligence and
operational capabilities that we envisioned when we reformed
our intelligence community in the wake of the attacks on our
country on September 11, 2001.
This successful operation demonstrates once again the
importance of sharing intelligence information across the
agency silos--the very opposite of the disjointed pre-September
11, 2001, experience.
I appreciate, Madam Secretary, that the Department
immediately issued a Situational Awareness Alert to key State
and local homeland security and law enforcement officials at
midnight on Sunday sharing intelligence information and
including a call for heightened vigilance. That system did not
even exist prior to the attacks on our country.
Today's hearing, as the Chairman has pointed out, is a
continuation of this Committee's focus on the challenges facing
us regarding border security. Border security is critical not
only to prevent individuals from entering the United States
illegally for whatever reason, but also to stop--at the border,
at visa-issuing points, or on inbound flights--those who are
determined to harm us. And, despite the killing of Osama bin
Laden, we must never forget that the battle against Islamist
extremism will continue.
The first two hearings in this most recent series
emphasized the challenges along the Southwest Border, while
earlier the Committee held a hearing on the Northern Border.
When we consider the Southwest region, we should all pause to
honor and remember the sacrifice of Border Patrol Agent Brian
Terry, who was murdered last December, and Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agent Jaime Zapata, who was killed by
members of a drug cartel in February.
These fallen heroes and the horrific news reports
continuing to stream out of Mexico reveal the brutality of the
cartels. Recently, nearly 300 bodies were discovered in mass
graves--some just 90 miles from Brownsville, Texas.
Just last month, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Director Robert Mueller observed that ``drug cartels transport
kilos of cocaine and marijuana, gangs kidnap and murder
innocent civilians; traffickers smuggle human cargo; and
corrupt public officials line their pockets by looking the
other way.'' Director Mueller concluded that, taken together,
these issues ``constitute a threat not only to the safety of
our border communities, but to the security of the entire
country.''
This backdrop explains why many of us were perplexed to
hear the Secretary state, in late March, that security on the
Southern U.S. Border is ``better now than it ever has been''
and that violence from neighboring Mexico has not edged north.
The National Border Patrol Council, the union representing
Border Patrol agents, has countered that crime indeed is
spilling over from Mexico. They point to the murder of three
Border Patrol agents by the cartels in the last 3 years, the
ranchers and other citizens who have been gunned down in border
communities, and the Phoenix area which has risen to become a
cartel-related crime hot spot. The council concluded, ``The
U.S.-Mexico Border is unsafe and to say anything else is not
true.''
While the Secretary's data on apprehensions on the border
are certainly useful, there are contributing factors that
should not be ignored as we scrutinize the numbers about
declining interdictions.
For instance, are some of the declining numbers simply
reflecting a slow economy so fewer people are trying to cross
over into this country? Is the persistent cartel violence
deterring others from crossing? To put it bluntly, individuals
will not be arrested at the border, or north of it, if they are
too frightened to run a gauntlet of terror that may end in a
mass grave.
These and other factors should be considered as we evaluate
the effectiveness of the Administration's policies in
addressing what is a very difficult issue.
While the Southwest Border is much more likely to make the
evening news, we must not forget the Northern Border, and the
Chairman has pointed that out. Senator Tester has also made
that point on numerous occasions. According to a report
released by the GAO earlier this year, the Border Patrol was
aware of all illegal border crossings on only about 25 percent
of the 4,000-mile Northern Border. The Border Patrol was able
to make an immediate arrest on less than 2 percent, or 69
miles, of that 4,000-mile border. This is especially troubling
because GAO has observed that the terrorist threat on the
Northern Border is higher than the Southern Border, given the
large expanse of area with limited law enforcement coverage.
That is why I believe that the Administration's proposal to
limit Operation Stonegarden to the Southwest Border is ill-
advised, and I am glad that it has been repeatedly rejected by
Congress. This program should be used to help secure both the
northern and the Southern Border. It helps fund joint
operations between the Border Patrol, State, and local law
enforcement that act as a force multiplier in areas that
otherwise would be left unguarded.
To cite just one example of the program's success from my
own State, Operation Stonegarden funds were instrumental in the
arrest and conviction of an individual involved in a bulk cash
smuggling operation. During an Operation Stonegarden mission, a
Fort Kent, Maine, police officer caught this criminal
attempting to smuggle $137,000 across the border. He was
patrolling well outside his regular community of Fort Kent, and
this individual simply would not have been caught but for
Operation Stonegarden funding.
Finally, the effort to secure our borders is not limited to
the borders themselves, and the Chairman has mentioned a GAO
report that is of tremendous concern to me. The report
indicates that ICE is only allocating about 3 percent of its
resources to target individuals who are here illegally because
they have overstayed their visas. They came legally in the
first place, but now they are here illegally. And it is an
enormous number. It is more than a third. It is between 33 and
40 percent of the number of people here illegally fall into
that category.
Another report by GAO examined the Visa Security Program
(VSP), which deploys ICE special agents to foreign visa-issuing
posts to help identify terrorist and criminal threats.
According to the GAO, the United States only has VSP offices at
19 of the 57 high-risk posts. The GAO further found ongoing
turf battles between ICE and the State Department, which are
simply unacceptable when it comes to dealing with the terrorist
threats.
So I look forward to discussing these issues with the
Secretary today, and I thank her for appearing.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Senator Collins.
Secretary Napolitano, thank you once again for being here,
and we welcome your testimony now.
TESTIMONY OF HON. JANET A. NAPOLITANO,\1\ SECRETARY, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Secretary Napolitano. Well, thank you, Chairman Lieberman,
Senator Collins, and Members of the Committee, for the
opportunity to testify today. I have a more complete statement
that I ask be included in the record.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Secretary Napolitano appears in the
Appendix on page 246.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chairman Lieberman. Without objection.
Secretary Napolitano. I would like to begin, however, with
discussing a topic that is on everyone's mind before moving on
the principal topic of the hearing.
The operation against Osama bin Laden was an extraordinary
success, not only for the United States but for the entire
world. And I want to join you in commending the men and women
of the intelligence community, the armed forces, and our
counterterrorism professionals who played such an important
role in bringing Osama bin Laden to justice.
But this does not end our counterterrorism efforts. We must
remain vigilant regrading the threat to the United States posed
by al-Qaeda affiliates or al-Qaeda-like affiliates such as al-
Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), al-Qaeda in the Islamic
Mahgreb (AQIM), and al-Shabaab, as well as the threat posed by
homegrown violent extremists.
Our security posture, which always includes a number of
measures both seen and unseen, will continue to protect the
American people from the evolving threats that we face. We have
taken a number of actions specifically in response to Sunday's
events. These include issuing advisories to fusion center
directors, homeland security advisers, major city chief
intelligence commanders, private sector critical infrastructure
owners and operators, and other law enforcement entities. We
are and have been reviewing all open cases of potential al-
Qaeda core, AQAP, and AQIM operatives possibly in the United
States in conjunction with the FBI. We are identifying any new
targeting rules that should be instituted based on incoming
intelligence. We are continuing to strengthen our recurrent
vetting for visa asylum and other benefit applicants and
recipients in cooperation with the intelligence community. We
are deploying additional officers to non-secured areas at our
large airports, the so-called Category X airports. And we are
providing additional information to all air carriers.
Now, as you know, we have recently substituted for the old
color code, which was commonly viewed as obsolete, a new
system, known as the National Terrorism Advisory System, to
more effectively communicate information about terrorist
threats. Right now we do not have any specific or credible
intelligence that would lead us to issue an alert under this
new system, realizing that under the new system the baseline is
already elevated. In other words, the baseline assumes a
continuing and evolving terrorist threat against the United
States.
We continue to review on an ongoing basis all material
seized during the operation as well as new intelligence that
may be coming in, and I stand ready to issue an alert should
intelligence or information emerge that warrants it under the
new advisory system.
Now, to move on to the main topic of today's hearing, I am
glad to have the opportunity to speak about the Southwest
Border, and I gather I will now be speaking also about the
Northern Border, because unprecedented resources have been
dedicated over the past 2\1/2\ years, and that has resulted in
significant progress being made. And I also want to discuss the
metrics that can be used to gauge that success.
Now, as I just said, the Administration has dedicated a
historic level of resources to securing the Southwest Border in
terms of manpower, in terms of technology, and in terms of
infrastructure. We have increased the size of the Border Patrol
to more than 20,700 agents, more than twice the size it was in
2004. ICE now has a quarter of all of its personnel in the
Southwest Border region, more than ever.
We have completed all but three miles of the fencing called
for by Congress, and we have deployed thousands of technology
assets along the border. And for the first time, DHS unmanned
aircraft aerial capabilities cover the Southwest Border from
California to Texas, providing critical aerial surveillance
assistance to personnel on the ground.
Furthermore, the actions being taken at the Southwest
Border are being supplemented by critical security improvements
at the Northern Border, including additional Border Patrol
agents, technology, and infrastructure, as well as strong,
serious, and strategic enforcement of immigration laws in the
interior of the United States.
Now, as someone who has lived most of her life in border
States and who has worked as a public official dealing with
border-related issues since 1993, I can say from personal
experience that the steps that have been taken constitute the
most comprehensive and dedicated effort to strengthen border
security that our country has ever deployed. Over the past 2
years, seizures of contraband have risen in all categories:
Drugs, illegal weapons, and illegal bulk cash. Illegal
immigration attempts, as measured by apprehensions of illegal
aliens, have decreased by 36 percent in the last 2 years and
are less than one-third of what they were at their peak.
In addition, FBI crime statistics demonstrate that the
crime rates in border communities have remained steady or have
dropped dramatically in recent years, continuing a decade-long
trend.
In this sense, I am not the only one, Senator Collins, who
has stated that the border is safer now than it has ever been.
The border city mayors themselves have stated that and are
concerned that the misperception that the border communities on
this side of the border are unsafe is interfering with their
ability to attract jobs and economic development to their own
regions.
I am also, I must say, perplexed that the union which
represents some of our Border Patrol agents does not support
the success that the Border Patrol has achieved over the past
2\1/2\ years, and I can only say that I am perplexed. I will
not go into that any further.
Now, the significant improvements would not have been
possible without the bipartisan support of this Congress,
particularly the $600 million supplemental appropriations for
border security passed last summer, and I thank you for your
continued support in that regard.
Nonetheless, we still face challenges. This is not a
victory lap. We must continue to build upon the progress we
have made. We remain deeply concerned about the drug cartel
violence taking place in Mexico. We know that these drug
organizations are seeking to undermine the rule of law,
especially in northern Mexico, and we must guard against any
spillover effects into the United States. And while our efforts
over the past 2 years have led to progress in every significant
metric we currently have, we must focus on new ways to
comprehensively measure results along the border.
Ultimately, the success of our efforts must be measured in
terms of overall security and quality of life along the entire
border region. Accordingly, I have directed the U.S. Customs
and Border Protection (CBP) to develop a new index supported
both by CBP, other law enforcement, and third-party data to
comprehensively measure security along the Southwest Border and
the quality of life in the region.
As part of this process, CBP is convening a group of
independent third-party representatives to evaluate and refine
any such index. In developing these border metrics, it is
important to keep in mind our ultimate goal, which is to make
border cities more secure and to provide a basis there for
economic prosperity.
That is why a new border security index will not only take
into account traditional measures, such as apprehensions and
contraband seizures, State and local crime statistics, and
overall crime index reporting, but we will also incorporate
indicators of the impact of illegal cross-border activity on
the quality of life in the border region. These can include
factors such as traffic accidents involving illegal aliens or
narcotics smugglers, rates of vehicle theft and numbers of
abandoned vehicles, impacts on property values, and other
measures of economic activity that can be impacted by illegal
immigration.
Because defining success at the border is critical to how
we move forward, our definition of success must meet several
guidelines. It must be based on reliable, validated numbers and
processes, it must tell the complete and transparent
statistical story, and it must draw upon the priorities of
border communities themselves.
The approach currently underway is designed to meet all of
these criteria, and I look forward to working with this
Committee on this important issue.
There are a number of other things I can say, particularly
in response to some of the GAO numbers that were cited. I think
I will reserve that time for the question-and-answer portion of
the hearing. Suffice it to say, however, that many of those GAO
statistics are neither comprehensive nor totally complete with
respect to the efforts that have been undertaken. I look
forward to being able to address that a little bit during the
question and answer period.
But with that, Chairman Lieberman, Senator Collins, and
Members of the Committee, thank you again for the opportunity
to testify. Thank you again for the opportunity to present the
case for border security in the United States.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Madam Secretary. We will do
7-minute rounds of questioning.
I appreciate the comments you made about the state of
readiness of the Department post-bin Laden's death. I want to
ask a few questions to, I think, hopefully illustrate the
seamlessness of our counterterrorism effort now.
We know that the Navy SEALs took out of that bin Laden
compound in Pakistan an enormous amount of data, computer
systems, and the rest. I assume that as this material is gone
over, anything related to homeland security will be shared
immediately with your Department.
Secretary Napolitano. It is being shared.
Chairman Lieberman. Great. Second, I want to sort of
highlight what I believe I heard you say, which is that
although you have not raised the National Threat Advisory
System alert--and you are right, it is very important to point
out that in one sense the change that you put into effect just
last week, the new system, has us always at a state of alert.
Secretary Napolitano. That is correct.
Chairman Lieberman. We are always at a state of alert. The
judgment you make in changing that would be to raise it to an
elevated state of alert and then one that is imminent, where
there is imminent danger?
Secretary Napolitano. We have a Counterterrorism Advisory
Board that is comprised of all of the members of the
intelligence community that are constantly reviewing the
intelligence coming in as it relates to the homeland. And then
they analyze it for whether a threat is either elevated from
the norm or it is so specific and credible that it actually
reveals an imminent threat.
At that point, an advisory would be issued. It has three
parts, tells people as many facts as we can. It tells them what
they can do to protect themselves or their families from the
threat. It tells them what they can do to help us with regard
to the threat. For example, we may be looking for certain types
of vehicles, certain types of other things. And it tells them
where they can go to get consistently and continually updated
information.
So, rather than the colors, which did not communicate any
information, the new system is designed to communicate
information.
Chairman Lieberman. And just to clarify, the fact that you
do not have specific and credible evidence and, therefore, have
not raised the alert level to elevated does not mean that the
Department has not taken additional steps in the days since
Osama bin Laden was killed. And in your testimony today, you
indicated that there was increased security at ports of entry,
including airports. And I do not know that you mentioned
seaports, but I assume that is included. Is that correct?
Secretary Napolitano. That is correct. We have surged some
resources there. In airports in particular, we have also taken
additional efforts at our borders, and as I mentioned, Mr.
Chairman, we are also going back and reviewing all of the pre-
existing intelligence with respect to open files against the
United States.
Chairman Lieberman. Right. I appreciate that. It is very
reassuring to know that some of the materials that were seized
at bin Laden's compound are already being shared with the
Department because it is certainly my impression that bin
Laden, himself, continued to be focused on attacks on the
United States of America, on our homeland. And it may be that
the information that was gathered by the SEALs from his
compound will help us hopefully prevent such attacks.
Let me focus in now on the direct question that we
originally were going to handle, which was border security. We
are operating in a political context here, and I mean that in
terms of the body politic, not partisan politics. We are
dealing with how we can form a consensus to both improve the
security at our borders, but as we said, there has been an
equation that many people have articulated that yes, our
immigration system is broken, but we are never going to have
enough support for immigration reform until we can say our
border is secured. So I want to deal with that part of it
first.
The Secure Fence Act of 2006 required that the Department
of Homeland Security achieve operational control of the border,
which that 2006 law defined as ``the prevention of all unlawful
entries into the United States, including entries by
terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism,
narcotics, and other contraband.''
Madam Secretary, at a recent colloquium, former DHS
Secretaries Michael Chertoff and Thomas Ridge and you all
agreed that total operational control over our border is
effectively an unreachable goal, that we are never going to be
able to fully seal off the border from all illegal activity.
If that is correct--and I suspect it is correct--I think we
have to ask ourselves, and I am going to ask you now: What is
an achievable goal in terms of securing our border? And I ask
that both because we have a responsibility to secure our
border, but also be hopeful that it will help us determine what
the level of border security is we can agree that we need to
achieve before we can then go on to deal with the problem of
immigration reform.
Secretary Napolitano. Well, Mr. Chairman, I think two
things. One is that is why we have gone back and said, look,
``operational control'' is an archaic term. I think that was
testified to by some of the other witnesses you have had in
this area. It is a limited term of art. It makes for a sound
bite, but it does not actually reflect the reality of what is
happening at the border.
But the fact of the matter is that we need a more
quantitative and qualitative way to reflect what actually is
occurring at the border. That is what I have directed CBP to
prepare. But also, Mr. Chairman, there is a linkage between
immigration reform and the border. They are interrelated, so
the notion of this kind of sequencing does not reflect the
reality that with immigration reform on some of the underlying
laws involving visas, temporary workers, those sorts of things,
if you deal with the legal immigration system, that also has an
impact on what is in the illegal immigration system.
And so this is a Gordian knot that we must untie, looking
at all of these things together.
Chairman Lieberman. So I take it that what you are saying
as an example is that we may be able to reduce the flow of
illegal immigrants by altering immigration law, for instance,
to provide for temporary work visas, or perhaps to raise the
existing cap on visas allowed for people coming into the
country.
Secretary Napolitano. Indeed, and a category example would
be, for example, agricultural work visas.
Chairman Lieberman. Right. Exactly.
Secretary Napolitano. But there are many others as well.
Chairman Lieberman. Let me just as a final word--my time is
up--thank you for the announcement you have made this morning,
I think, significant, which is that you have directed Customs
and Border Protection to come up with a new index, a new metric
for measuring border security, and in doing so they are going
to bring in outside experts to consult with them. I think that
will really help to inform the debate and allow us to set some
goals that are achievable, that we can meet, and also hopefully
create a foundation for moving on to the related question of
immigration reform.
Secretary Napolitano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and we are
moving as expeditiously as possible on this. It is a bit of an
onion to peel when you actually look at it.
Chairman Lieberman. It is.
Secretary Napolitano. One of the things we want to know,
for example, is how many people have been deterred or prevented
from crossing illegally by the measures we are taking. And it
is very difficult in all areas, but especially here, to measure
a deterrence number, to get the denominator in that way. And so
we have to have other factors we look at from which we can
reasonably say and reasonably extrapolate that we now have a
safe and secure border region that also facilitates the flow of
legal commerce, trade and tourism, and the like.
Chairman Lieberman. Right. Thank you very much. Senator
Collins.
Senator Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Madam Secretary, let me first just start on the border
security issue because you made a comment that you were
expecting to talk about the Southwest Border but would talk
about the Northern Border. Just to clarify, our title of this
hearing of ``Securing the Border'' and our witness letter made
very clear we were talking about all the borders.
Secretary Napolitano. And I am ready to do that.
Senator Collins. So I just do not want those watching this
hearing to have a misleading impression.
Secretary Napolitano. Indeed.
Senator Collins. Let me just start with a December GAO
report that looked at a number of border security issues, and I
know you are familiar with it. It was in this report that GAO
quotes DHS as reporting that the terrorist threat on the
Northern Border is higher given the broad, expansive area with
limited law enforcement presence. The GAO also went on to say
that DHS reports networks of illicit criminal activity in the
smuggling of drugs, currency, people, and weapons between the
two countries.
Now, the vast majority of trade and travel between the U.S.
and Canada obviously is legitimate, and we do not want to
impede that legitimate travel and trade. But that is one reason
I am such a supporter of Operation Stonegarden. It allows for
joint operations that truly are a force multiplier for the
Federal Government as well as helping State, county, and local
law enforcement.
So I truly do not understand, in light of DHS's own
assessment that the terrorist threat is higher from the
Northern Border and that there is significant criminal activity
and smuggling of drugs, people, and weapons, why the
Administration year after year tries to restrict Operation
Stonegarden to just the Southern Border.
Secretary Napolitano. Well, if I might discuss some of the
measures that are ongoing at the Northern Border that I think
are not captured in the December GAO report, the Northern
Border is different than the Southwest Border in the sense that
you have some big areas, urban areas, where a lot of traffic
goes back and forth, and then you have huge expanses of very
sparsely populated farmland, to which Senator Tester could
testify.
So our design for the Northern Border is different than the
Southwest Border, and our Northern Border strategy is different
as well. It is much more technology dependent, for example. So
we are adding more systems up there that can detect low-flying
aircraft. Also, our partnership with Canada has really evolved
over the past months so that you had Prime Minister Stephen
Harper and President Obama themselves announcing a joint vision
for a perimeter involving Canada and the United States, and
greater cooperation with Canadian law enforcement on both sides
of the border. And that is going extraordinarily well. For
example, we are looking at being able to integrate their own
sensor and radar feeds into our system as well.
With respect to Operation Stonegarden, there are some
Operation Stonegarden monies that have been allocated to the
Northern Border, but, Senator, in terms of looking at where the
need is greatest--because I only get so much and we only get so
much--measured by what the local law enforcement is asked to
do, the overtime, the maintenance of vehicles, those sorts of
things that Operation Stonegarden is designed to help pay for,
I will acknowledge that the priority has gone to the Southwest
Border, and it probably will continue to do so.
Senator Collins. Well, I would just suggest--and I
understand the problems of the Southwest Border are severe, and
that is why we have so many more border agents there, and we
should. But this is a program that is not an expensive program
that allows you to do more than you otherwise could, and it is
DHS's own findings that warn about the terrorist threat from
the north and the smuggling.
Let me in my remaining time switch to a different issue,
and that is the Visa Security Program. I have been watching
this program for many years, since 2002, I think, when it was
first established, and the fact is we are just not making much
progress. ICE personnel have only been deployed to 19 of the 57
highest-risk State Department posts around the world, and this
program is an example of one where we can stop people from
getting visas in the first place. And it is an example of the
kind of coordination that you have advocated and helped advance
across department lines and that this Committee has always
promoted. So, to me, it is very disappointing that the
President's budget request is unchanged from last year for this
program.
Are you going to be able to cover more of these high-risk
posts given a flat budget?
Secretary Napolitano. I think in the fiscal environment,
one of the things we were asked to do was to see if there are
current functions we are performing that we could continue to
perform or even enlarge if we could figure out another way to
do them. The Visa Security Program, as you acknowledge,
requires an agreement with the State Department, and I will
acknowledge there have been some issues there. I think we are
working our way through them.
But the other thing I tasked ICE to do was to figure out a
way in which we could provide the same sort of double-check
service on a visa remotely by using now some of the information
technology systems we have in place. And I believe, Senator,
that this year we will be able to do that and expand our visa
eyes and ears in that fashion.
Senator Collins. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Senator Collins.
In order of appearance, the next Senators would be Senators
Tester, Johnson, Landrieu, and Pryor. Senator Tester.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR TESTER
Senator Tester. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and it is
always good to see you, Madam Secretary. I appreciate the trips
to Montana to look at the Northern Border and see the
challenges up there. I also very much appreciate the statement
you made earlier today when talking about Osama bin Laden, that
this is not a victory lap; this is about getting a job done and
moving forward, making sure we are diligent on our security in
the war on terror, and it is about some very difficult
decisions that were made. And you were a part of that, and you
need to be credited for that, and I want to thank you.
The other thing that I wanted to talk about really quick,
because the Ranking Member talked about this a lot, was
Operation Stonegarden, so I am not going to dwell on it a lot,
but I do want to just simply refresh on what you just said, and
that is, there would be Operation Stonegarden grants available
to the Northern Border.
Secretary Napolitano. Yes, there are Operation Stonegarden
monies available, Senator, but they are not in the same amount
as for the Southern Border.
Senator Tester. And I understand that, and when we are
talking about Operation Stonegarden and limited amounts of
money, are you able to take into account, as the head honcho,
the potential money that the Operation Stonegarden dollars
could save in manpower and be able to use some of that money
saved from manpower to further expand that program? Are you
able to do that within your budget?
Secretary Napolitano. Yes, and that is an analysis we are
using for all our grant funding. I will say, Senator, that one
of the things that we have been doing over the past weeks is
looking at the fiscal year 2011 budget agreement, which cut a
lot of the grant funding that we have for anti-terrorism grants
and looking at, well, how do we prioritize, how do we make sure
the money is going to where it is best used to reduce risk,
realizing that we will never totally eliminate risk. And we are
doing the same with Operation Stonegarden.
Senator Tester. At least can I get your reassurance that
when 2012 comes around there will be dollars, whether Operation
Stonegarden or some other grant, there will be dollars to be
able to develop partnerships with local law enforcement
agencies up on the Northern Border?
Secretary Napolitano. Senator, it is fair to say that
through Operation Stonegarden or other grants there will be
dollars available, but the whole universe of grants, when you
add them up, is less than it was last year.
Senator Tester. Yes. We may or may not be able to help with
that.
Border interoperability: There is a demonstration program.
I was pleased that DHS announced a round of grants through that
demonstration program on interoperability. I think that it is
critically important that people are able to communicate, as
you well know, with what just transpired, how important that
is.
As we move forward, is DHS looking to expand upon this
program? And if so, how are they going to expand to help
increase communication abilities between the very same people
we are talking about through Operation Stonegarden?
Secretary Napolitano. Well, we have a whole different set
of funding streams for interoperability, and the answer is yes.
And I will also say that this is an area where the Northern
Border is a particular issue because of the large amount of
rural territory that has to be covered. And from an
interoperability standpoint, that is really our most difficult
problem in some respects. Urban areas, we pretty much have ways
to deal with the urban areas of the country, but the rural
expanses of the country are more difficult.
Senator Tester. These overstays--and I am just going to
touch on it a little bit. The Chairman and Ranking Member also
touched on it. You had talked about Prime Minister Harper and
President Obama getting together and having a meeting and a
joint vision. Is there anything being done to be able to share
information on visa overstays in that regard?
Secretary Napolitano. That is something we have discussed.
There is nothing concrete at this point, but I have met with my
counterpart several times about this. And let me, if I might,
though, go to a point that was made about the GAO saying that
only 3 percent of our resources go to visa overstays. That is
an example of only looking at one account which is 100 percent
devoted for visa overstays. But the fact of the matter is that
a lot of our programs capture visa overstays. Secure
Communities, for example, which picks up those individuals who
have been arrested, also picks up visa overstays. And so the 3
percent is not really an accurate reflection.
Senator Tester. And I understand that. I mean, it is
difficult, but I will tell you that folks who come in legally
and then forget to go home, I think it is a huge problem, and I
think the Chairman brought it up. And anything we can do,
whether it is developing relationships with Canada, Mexico, or
anybody else, to help you in that regard to remind them to head
back, I think, is critically important.
Also there are sham universities. Recently I called for an
investigation into sham universities that manipulate
immigration laws to bring people in, totally back-door,
thousands of folks. Are you aware of these schools? And is the
Department taking any steps to remedy that?
Secretary Napolitano. Yes, we have had a whole initiative
out of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigratin Services on the sham
university issues, and we have actually dealt with several of
the shams, so absolutely.
Senator Tester. Good. Thank you for that.
First of all, I appreciate Commissioner Alan Bersin's work
with that as far as--well, there are some issues about allowing
planes to land at the Great Falls Airport with fewer
passengers. The director of Great Falls Airport is going to be
coming here and meeting with, I believe, Commissioner Bersin
and other senior folks over at the CBP, and I would hope that
would be a productive meeting.
I do not ask this as a question, but I just appreciate your
efforts in working together to solve the problem. I think it is
a big problem, quite frankly, from my perspective, and I think
it is a problem that can be handled at your end giving guidance
to folks on the ground. So thank you for that.
Secretary Napolitano. We will work with the Great Falls
Airport Authority. If they want to land more international
passengers, as I understand it, they need to do some different
things at the facility. They are landing 20 to 29 passengers
now by flight. They want to go to 56.
Senator Tester. Yes, well, I think it can be worked out,
and I think that the bottom line is that--well, I will just put
it this way--there is no need getting into the specifics.
Secretary Napolitano. We will try, yes.
Senator Tester. I appreciate that.
Secretary Napolitano. Absolutely.
Senator Tester. You talked about an elevated state of
alert, which is what we are on now, correct?
Secretary Napolitano. We are always on that, yes.
Senator Tester. Was it increased after the events of
Sunday?
Secretary Napolitano. No, we did not issue a separate
advisory, except I think it is important to note that we began
immediately putting out intelligence products to fusion
centers, State and local law enforcement, transportation
authorities, and the like so that if they wanted to take any
individual actions, they could do so.
Senator Tester. Well, it was interesting. Just as a
sidebar, I had to fly into Minneapolis Sunday night and flew
out Monday morning to get here earlier than I could normally
out of Montana, and it seemed to me that the Transportation
Security Administration (TSA) was in a more elevated state. I
saw people walking around in places I had never noticed them
before. Lines were much longer. I thought maybe the job being
done at security was more thorough.
Did they do that on their own, or did you give them
instruction, or did somebody give them instruction?
Secretary Napolitano. No. That is correct, Senator. TSA
surged some resources for a few days until we could see what
the intelligence outcome was from what was seized at the
compound.
Senator Tester. Very good. Well, once again, I just want to
thank you for your leadership. I very much appreciate it, and
it is good to have you in front of the Committee. Thank you.
Secretary Napolitano. Thank you, Senator.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Tester. Senator
Johnson.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHNSON
Senator Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Madam Secretary,
welcome back.
Secretary Napolitano. Thank you.
Senator Johnson. I would like to pick up a little bit on
what Senator Tester was just talking about, the increased
threat level. I just want to understand why we are not
increasing the threat level. It sounds like we will only
increase it under the new system if there is a specific threat
as opposed to just a generalized threat level.
Secretary Napolitano. If there is specific credible
intelligence of a threat, yes, an advisory would go out. It can
be elevated or it can be imminent. The idea or the thought
behind this--and this was the product of a bipartisan
commission co-chaired by former FBI Director William Webster
and Fran Townsend, who was President Bush's Homeland Security
Advisor, and then there were a number of experts on the
commission. The idea is, instead of just putting out a color,
to actually give people information. An advisory itself, if we
elevate, might be restricted to, say, a particular
transportation sector or it might be restricted to a particular
area of the country. And they are designed to expire on their
own in 2 weeks so that we do not continually add advisory on
advisory on advisory with the effect that nobody really pays
attention anymore.
Senator Johnson. But if you increase the threat level, that
does imply that certain actions are being taken, correct?
Secretary Napolitano. There would be certain actions taken
associated with increased threat levels, yes.
Senator Johnson. And if there was ever just a generalized
increase in the threat level, it would be in relation to an
action, the successful capturing and killing of Osama bin
Laden, correct? I just do not quite understand why we would not
be increasing the threat level here over a short period of
time.
Secretary Napolitano. First of all, this is an ongoing
evaluation, but at the time of the capture of Osama bin Laden,
and as of yesterday, there was no specific credible threat of
specific retaliation other than generalized there may be
something that happens. Under that generalized sense, we
already lean forward; we already ask people to help, if they
see something to say something. We already have police
departments doing suspicious activity reporting. We already
have resources deployed at areas that have been of particular
interest historically, like aviation. So that already happens.
The idea behind the advisory system is that if we need to
elevate a particular area or a particular sector of the
country, that goes out, and we provide them as many facts as we
can, and we provide then what we want people to do, how they
can help the government, and how they can stay consistently
informed. And if you go to disasteralerts.gov, there is a
template for the advisory system and a briefing on how it
works. It is new, and that is why I think people are still
making that adjustment.
Senator Johnson. Well, let us go on to border security. The
last time you appeared before the Committee, I was trying to
determine what we needed to do to secure the border, and one of
the questions I asked you is: If it is a problem with
resources, what would it cost to actually secure the border?
And your answer was: We have enough resources.
So taking off from that point, do you have in your mind a
multiple-step process--I mean, what are your priorities in
terms of, you say you have the resources, now what steps are
you going to take to actually get the border secured?
Secretary Napolitano. Well, they will be different between
the Southern and Northern Borders. As I mentioned to Senator
Collins, these are very different areas to secure. But it is a
combination of manpower, technology, and infrastructure. And we
are constantly looking at a number of measures to adjudicate
whether we are getting results for the investments we are
making.
And when you ask me whether we have enough resources, I
realize and I think we all realize that we are in an era of
depleted resources, and I have to figure this out, recognizing
that in all likelihood there is not another $600 million
supplemental that is going to come my way for the border.
So how do we make the best use of what we have? Well, we
insist on accountability. We insist on producing results. And
now I am insisting that the CBP develop a better way to measure
those results.
Senator Johnson. I am a little confused. Do you have enough
resources or don't you?
Secretary Napolitano. I believe, Senator, that with the
resources we have and the resources that the President has
requested, which will sustain the record level of resources at
the border--we have never had these kinds of resources at the
border. So the key is not more. The key is sustainment. So with
those, with the supplemental we already have and annualizing
the supplemental, which is what the President has asked be done
in fiscal year 2012, we will be able to continue our efforts at
securing the border.
The question is and the challenge for the Committee and
Senate will be making sure we have a fiscal year 2012 budget
from which to work because if we have to go back to a
continuing resolution, we will have some problems.
Senator Johnson. I am a numbers guy, so I am liking the
idea of some overall metric because in preparing for this
hearing, there is just an awful lot of numbers, there is a lot
of data. Turning that into real information, I mean, is the
concept here that we are going to have an overall single number
index? And is that going to be by region? Is that going to be
for the entire country? What is your concept in terms of a
threat assessment or securing the border type of index?
Secretary Napolitano. I am waiting for CBP--they are
already in this process--to come back to me, but I believe it
conceivable that we would have two different indices, one for
the Northern Border and one for the Southern Border, because
they are different. But I do not think we have concluded that.
And the index may be a range, which would reflect overall
efforts at the border.
What I know for sure is looking at apprehensions alone does
not cut it. Using the anachronistic term ``operational
control'' also does not cut it. We need to have something more
qualitative and quantitative that you can use in allocating
resources and we can use as well.
Senator Johnson. Even at the Southern Border, there is a
vast difference in terms of our level of success, correct?
Wouldn't you want to have that index region by region along the
different borders?
Secretary Napolitano. Well, we would anticipate using it
sector by sector. I mean, there is a big difference between,
say, the Yuma Sector, which is very isolated and in which there
is a lot of military land, and the Tucson Sector, which is the
busiest and is the one where we are putting the most resources
right now. So even within one State--albeit the Yuma Sector
crosses a little bit into California--we see a difference. So
that is why I think any kind of index will probably have to
reflect some sort of range.
Senator Johnson. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you very much, Senator Johnson.
Just to come back to the threat level, we are all getting
accustomed to the new system, though I think it is an
improvement. Well, let me put it this way: We are always on
alert, and so the question is do we raise it to elevated. Right
now, after Osama bin Laden was killed, you have not raised it
to elevated for the reason you state. There is not specific and
credible evidence of a threat against the U.S. homeland.
However, you have taken additional steps.
So just for clarification--I do not want to belabor this--
when you go to elevated, if you did, does it mean that the
government is taking additional steps or that you are calling
on the citizenry to be more alert, or both?
Secretary Napolitano. Both.
Chairman Lieberman. Both.
Secretary Napolitano. And it also corresponds to additional
efforts by State and local responders as well.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Secretary Napolitano. And so in instituting the new system,
one of the things we did was to work a lot with police
departments and so forth around the country as to what elevated
would mean.
We are always at a state of alert. We are always calling on
the citizens to, as we say--and it is a very easy to remember
slogan--if you see something, say something. And our actions
are predicated on the fact that we are always on alert.
I will also say that the decision to raise or not to raise
is based on recommendations from the Counterterrorism Advisory
Board, which is comprised of representatives from all of the
intelligence community and is constantly reviewing what is
coming in. And right now, given the material obtained from the
compound, they are meeting at least once daily to go through
everything to advise me as to whether, yes, we should raise it.
Chairman Lieberman. That is really important, both the
clarification--but, again, I come back to the fact that our
system is really working seamlessly now so that you are getting
real-time information from the material seized at bin Laden's
compound in Pakistan, and you are evaluating it every day to
determine whether you see anything in that information that
would lead you to raise the threat level.
Secretary Napolitano. More precisely, Mr. Chairman, the
Counterterrorism Advisory Board is receiving that, and other
information as well.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Secretary Napolitano. I mean, it constantly comes in, and
they are constantly analyzing it. Instead of meeting
sporadically, they are meeting regularly and really in an
ongoing fashion now in relation to what happened on Sunday. And
if they provide me with or advise me that, Secretary, this is
what we have and we think this means that you should elevate
the alert system that already exists, then I will act.
Chairman Lieberman. That is very good to hear. I think the
system is working as we would want it to.
Let me go to the visa overstay question and the report that
was issued yesterday by GAO. I know you have taken issue with
at least one segment of it in terms of, you might say, the
accuracy or clarity of the information. The report did say--and
this is the part that was most troubling to me--that the US-
VISIT program has a backlog of 1.6 million potential overstays
that were identified but which have yet to be processed. So let
me ask you to talk about that a little bit.
To the best of your knowledge, is that accurate? How are
the potential overstays identified under the current system?
Secretary Napolitano. Well, let me, if I might, explain
what is happening and what we are doing to improve the system.
Visa overstays are another form of illegal immigration. I mean,
once you have overstayed your visa, you are in the country
illegally just as if you had come across the border. I mean,
you have broken the law.
Just as we do with people who have crossed the border and
with visa overstays, we are appropriated enough money to remove
about 400,000 people a year from the country, and that is
probably a small percentage of those who are in the country
illegally total.
Chairman Lieberman. And that 400,000 is specifically on the
overstays?
Secretary Napolitano. No. Total.
Chairman Lieberman. Total of overstays and illegal entry?
Secretary Napolitano. Yes. If you really cost out what it
costs to remove somebody who is in the country illegally, we
get enough money between ourselves and the Justice Department
to remove about 400,000 people. And so we have set priorities.
Who are the ones we really want to make sure we get?
First, we want to make sure we get those who fall within
our guidelines for being possible national security threats.
Second, we want to remove those who are violating criminal
laws in addition to the immigration laws.
And then we want to, third, deal with those who are
fugitives--and this is not really so much a removal process as
dealing more effectively with those who we pick up right at the
border who are gaming the system and going back and forth.
Now, when we get a visa overstay--and there are systems set
up now that tell us or reveal to us that somebody is a possible
overstay--the first thing we look at is who of those fall
within our guidelines for being a possible national security
threat. I do not want to say in an unclassified setting what
those guidelines are, but they exist. All of those individuals
are sent to another unit within ICE to be vetted and found. So
we have 100 percent in that category.
Chairman Lieberman. Let me stop you there just to ask, what
is typically the way under the current system--just for the
record--the Department finds out that somebody has overstayed
their visa?
Secretary Napolitano. It can be a number of ways. One is if
we have no record of exit.
Chairman Lieberman. Most logical, right?
Secretary Napolitano. So right now, in the air environment,
which this all started not because of land crossers but air.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Secretary Napolitano. We now can match or no-match about 89
percent of all travels to an entry and an exit. So 89, 90
percent. The question is the remaining 10, and we do not have a
match for them. And then if they fall within our national
security guidelines, 100 percent of that category would go to
an ICE unit to be vetted and found and investigated. So we
start there.
The second category are those who have violated criminal
laws, who are dangerous to the public safety, and we do a
similar process there. Now, there the institution of Secure
Communities is really helping us because it is identifying for
us those who are in the country illegally who are also in jail.
Chairman Lieberman. What can you do and what can we do to
help reduce both the backlog of those who are identified as
potential overstays but not processed and also, of course, to
more effectively identify people either prior to coming in who
seem to be coming in with the intention of overstaying, or to
do better at finding the people? This is a larger question, a
wrap-up question in a way on this subject. But if you take the
40-percent number and you take the lower number that we hear
for estimates of illegal immigrants in the United States, 10
million, that means 4 million people are here because they came
in legally and overstayed their visa. And as you just said--you
are absolutely right--once you overstay your visa, you are as
illegal as somebody who illegally crossed the border. For
instance, if somebody hires you, that is illegal.
Secretary Napolitano. Right.
Chairman Lieberman. So how can we better deal with this
part of the illegal immigration problem?
Secretary Napolitano. Well, I think, Mr. Chairman, it is
important to recognize that we have to have priorities because,
as I said before, we get enough money to remove 400,000, so now
we have to go from 4 million, and that is just on the visa
overstays, plus the illegals who cross the border to the
400,000. That is why setting basically prosecution priorities
is key.
The plain fact of the matter is most of the visa overstays,
they are here illegally, but they are being drawn because they
can work here. So that is why border security and immigration
reform are so connected, because the plain fact of the matter
is that a number of these individuals, if they could get a
different kind of visa or a longer visa tied to employment, you
would not put them in that 4 million category. So we want to
take off the top national security, criminals, and fugitives.
Chairman Lieberman. That is fair, and I think that is the
right thing to do. I am over my time, but I just want to ask
one more question while we are on this. I want to ask who are
the people, do we know, who are more likely to overstay their
visas and then become illegal immigrants? Are they coming from
different parts of the world even though their motivations may
be similar, which is to work here, rejoin family, or the like?
Secretary Napolitano. That is a question to which I do not
know the answer. In other words, you are asking are the
demographics different for the overstays versus the illegal
border crossers?
Chairman Lieberman. Right. We assume that most of the
illegal immigrants are coming in illegally. They are illegal
immigrants because they came in illegally. They have come
across the Southwest Border.
Secretary Napolitano. That is right.
Chairman Lieberman. And probably there are a lot of reasons
for that. The interest in coming over is greater by far than
the number of legal visas that bring them in.
Secretary Napolitano. Well, and the other thing is
recognize that the vast majority of people who are coming into
our country illegally or coming legally and overstaying are
coming for purposes of employment or they are related to
somebody who has come over to work. And so all of the systems
that are designed to really deal with the interior enforcement
issue would help. E-Verify helps. Increasing--and this will
take legislation, and that is why I say all these things get
knit together. Increasing the penalties on employers who
consistently hire illegal labor and adjusting the elements in
the burden of proof which makes those cases so unnecessarily
difficult, that also would be very helpful because then you are
dealing with the demand driving illegal immigration as well as
the supply.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much. I thank my colleagues
for their patience. Senator Collins.
Senator Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Madam Secretary, I want to return to the issue of the
threat level because as I listened to my two colleagues
question you about that--and I thought about the comments of
the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC)
that we can expect attempts to retaliate--I am wondering why we
are not increasing the threat level. It seems to me that until
a further assessment is conducted of the intelligence,
including a full exploitation of the materials and data seized
at the compound at which Osama bin Laden was living, it would
be prudent to increase the threat level, not to the highest
level but you have revamped it in a way that I believe makes
sense, but to acknowledge that we are in a situation where we
are at risk. And so I am curious why given Michael Leiter's
public comments, given the fact that we have yet to do a full
exploitation of the materials from the compound, and given the
fact that we are still doing an assessment of the reaction to
Osama bin Laden's death, we are not taking what to me would be
a prudent step of increasing the threat level.
Secretary Napolitano. Well, Senator, I think we are always
asking people to be alert. We are providing additional
intelligence products into the law enforcement community and to
the private sector so they could take whatever actions they
deem prudent. We are constantly evaluating whether we should
issue a special advisory, and NCTC is part of that group that
makes that recommendation.
So on an ongoing basis now, it may come to the point where
we say in this area for this we are going to issue an elevated
alert, but I think we want to be careful here. We do not want
to say because we suspect, and reasonably so, that at some
point there may be retaliation that we go ahead and put the
Nation into an alert status without more information than we
currently have. That could change. It could change tonight. It
could change tomorrow. But the whole idea behind the new system
is to say, look, we are always on alert, we are always facing
risk. The threat of terrorism is always with us, and we are
never going to be without it, even with the death of Osama bin
Laden. We have other members of al-Qaeda, we have AQAP, we have
AQIM, we have al-Shabaab, and that does not even count the
homegrown terrorists who we are quite concerned about just from
a lone wolf standpoint in particular. But that does not mean
that under the new criteria we issue an elevated threat.
Now, as intelligence comes in, as things are digested--and
that is happening on a real-time, seamless basis--that may very
well be adjusted. But I think for the Nation to keep paying
attention to these alerts, we want to really make sure they are
tied to something that is specific.
Senator Collins. I appreciate your explanation of the
process. From my perspective, it just still seems prudent to
temporarily, at least, elevate the threat level until the
assessment is completed. But I understand your point.
You have mentioned just now and earlier the threat of a
lone wolf attack, and as you know, this is an issue that this
Committee has devoted countless hearings over the past few
years, and as part of our Fort Hood investigation and report,
we called upon the Administration to create a strategy to
ensure a unity of effort among Federal departments and agencies
and the development of a specific strategy to counter
radicalization within our country. If you look at the plots
over the last 2 years, they have largely been domestic plots by
people who have been inspired by al-Qaeda, but not in most
cases directly linked to al-Qaeda.
I would appreciate this morning an update on the
development of those Federal strategies to counter domestic
radicalization and to ensure a coordinated effort.
Secretary Napolitano. Yes, we have looked at this from what
do we do to prevent somebody who has been radicalized from
successfully carrying out an act of violence, and we have
concluded that the best way for us to intervene is to support
through grants and other programs local police in kind of
neighborhood policing strategies that reach out to the
community in the same way that we dealt with gang violence
during the crack epidemic, where we really focused on police on
the street who were intimately known by the neighborhood. You
develop that flow of information because there was an
underlying foundation of trust. And the Department of Justice
and the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program has
also worked on that.
So out of that conclusion, we said, well, we should have a
curriculum that really focuses on what are the behaviors that
indicate that somebody has become radicalized, and radicalized
to the point of violence. So working with police across the
country, we developed a training curriculum. We have beta-
tested it already at the Federal Law Enforcement Training
Center (FLETC). We are putting people through it now. There is
a curriculum at FLETC, and then there is a training module that
can be used at home so that you do not have to travel to FLETC.
So that is ongoing as well.
We continue to look for other ways, but we are really going
to focus on is how can we empower local law enforcement in
particular to prevent a lone wolf from being successful.
Senator Collins. Thank you. Let me just say that I was very
pleased to hear you mention the ``See something, say
something'' campaign. The Chairman and I had to work so hard to
get that through when it came to the transportation sector, and
without the Chairman's willingness to stand up against many on
his own side of the aisle, we never would have suffered. So I
hope your comments mean that you will endorse the broader bill
that the Chairman and I have introduced, which would provide
immunity from civil lawsuits to individuals who in good faith
report suspicious activity to the authorities. They would not
be protected if it were not in good faith because right now the
law that we wrote only applies to the transportation sector.
Secretary Napolitano. I would be happy to look at that,
Senator.
Senator Collins. Thank you.
Secretary Napolitano. And if I see something, I will say
something. [Laughter.]
Chairman Lieberman. I only supported Senator Collins'
proposal because it happens to be right. [Laughter.]
Chairman Lieberman. Senator Johnson.
Senator Johnson. Well, thank you again, Mr. Chairman.
I do not want to beat a dead horse here, but let me take
just one more stab at this threat advisory. The purpose of an
advisory is to signal to the American public that something has
changed. I mean, if we are always on the same constant level of
alert, that just degrades over time. So, again, I am just kind
of scratching my head.
Secretary Napolitano. Well, if I might, Senator, that was
the problem with the color code because we were always at
orange and nobody paid any attention. The purpose of the
advisory, in my view, is to communicate facts and information
so people know what to do. So if we elevate the advisory, it
will be accompanied by information. What are the facts that we
can disclose? What can people do to protect themselves and
their families? Where do people go to get updated information?
How can people help us help them?
So it is not just to be alert. We are always on alert. That
is the elevated base. But now we would be providing additional
facts based on the intelligence we receive that tells people
what to do.
Senator Johnson. I get that. Let us move on.
Let us talk a little bit about where the threat of
terrorism sort of intersects with border security. I have read
some relatively alarming statistics about percentage of non-
Hispanic apprehensions at the border. Can you speak to what are
the real facts and what are the stats by region?
Secretary Napolitano. Yes, we are looking at that right now
because one of the things we have seen is an uptick in a
category called OTMs--it means ``other than Mexicans''--illegal
immigrant apprehensions in one of the Texas sectors. It has
gone as high as one in three recently. Many are from east
India, the country of India, and we are trying to get to the
bottom of what is the trafficking route, what is the demand,
what is happening there. And in this setting, I would just
prefer to say we have seen that trend over the last few months.
We have devoted some additional resources to that trend, and we
are trying to get to the bottom of it.
Senator Johnson. Have we increased our alert level in terms
of those apprehensions now in light of recent events?
Secretary Napolitano. No.
Senator Johnson. Do you think we should?
Secretary Napolitano. Senator, if I am advised by the
Advisory Board on the intelligence side that we should, I will
do that.
Senator Johnson. I did make a trip down to the Tucson
corridor there, and went down to the border by Nogales. You
talked about manpower and infrastructure, and I am a little
concerned. You know, obviously, we want to protect the border,
and so we have put a lot of resources into Border Patrol. But I
am a little concerned about the Customs and Border Protection
agents. We are building a lot of infrastructure down at
Nogales. I think even with the current infrastructure I am
concerned about the staffing levels there. Can you just speak
to the relative staffing between Customs and Border Protection
versus Border Patrol?
Secretary Napolitano. Well, the supplemental that was
passed provided for several hundred more port officers to use
on those additional lanes and so forth. And so they are in the
process of being deployed right now. It is another reason why I
am concerned about our fiscal year 2012 budget request. The
President has asked that those additional port officers be
annualized, that they become part of our base. And that is
necessary because we need that legal trade to move; we need
those lines, those wait times to be shortened. We have been
investing in some major improvements and enlargements on some
of these ports, and that means more lanes to cover. We want to
keep some of them open more hours, and that also means more
coverage.
And so right now we are watching that very carefully. We
have been hiring up on the port officer side, and we want to
annualize that hiring.
Senator Johnson. I do want to say I was very impressed with
the professionalism and dedication of the agents down there. I
really was. I mean, that was comforting.
Secretary Napolitano. That is great. It is a hard job.
Senator Johnson. It is.
Secretary Napolitano. It is a very tough setting.
Senator Johnson. It is very hard. You have to remain
vigilant. I was impressed.
Secretary Napolitano. Great.
Senator Johnson. I was intrigued by Senator Lieberman's
comments about smart immigration policy. Can you just speak to
what your concept of that would be and how that would really
affect our illegal immigration problem here?
Secretary Napolitano. Well, as I mentioned, one of the big
draws for illegal immigration is the demand for illegal labor,
and the current laws on employer sanctions are very minimal.
They do not give us a great deterrent on the investigation and
prosecution side, and so I think those need to be looked at as
well as the elements of proof that we are forced to demonstrate
or that the Justice Department is forced to demonstrate.
I think we should be looking at the different types of
visas that are offered and look at streamlining and enlarging
the visa categories that we have, particularly on the temporary
visa side. And then we have to have some way to parse the
population that is already in the country illegally given that
we are only given the resources to remove about 400,000 people
a year, and we want to focus on those who are security threats,
who are criminals, who are fugitives--in other words, those who
fit in those kinds of priorities.
Well, once we fill those priorities there are still
millions of people left. What are we supposed to do? So that is
where really the tough part comes in, but I believe the
President would support a program to get those people out of
the shadows, regularized, identified, and for those who are
there, if they can earn their way to citizenship by paying a
fine, getting in the back door behind people who are attempting
to use the system legally, or figure out some way to do that.
That has been the hardest part of the immigration issue because
that has been viewed as amnesty.
Senator Johnson. Let me go back to the step process of
securing the border. I am assuming from what you have said
already that the first step is really measuring, getting the
metric. Correct?
Secretary Napolitano. I think that is an initial step, yes.
Senator Johnson. Once we have that metric, what is the next
step?
Secretary Napolitano. I think then we need to be
concurrently looking at what is the intersection between
interior immigration enforcement, what is going on in
immigration generally, and what is happening at the border. The
border is only one part of this entire problem, so we need to
be looking at the intersection between that and the border
metric at the same time.
Senator Johnson. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you very much, Senator Johnson.
Senator McCain has just arrived. I do want to state for the
record, I know he was very interested in this hearing, and I
know he was not able to be here until now because Senate
Intelligence and Armed Services Committees both met with
Admiral William McRaven today.
Incidentally, Senator Collins and I are going to ask
Admiral McRaven if we can have another briefing for those of us
who had to be here. Admiral McRaven is head of the Special
Operations Command which oversaw the SEALs that carried out the
assault on Sunday.
So, with that, I thank Senator McCain for coming by and
call on him now.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MCCAIN
Senator McCain. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I
apologize, Madam Secretary. I was at this briefing by Director
Leon Panetta and Admiral McRaven, and I apologize for being
late.
Madam Secretary, I am interested in your comments about the
hardest part with the things that we need to do. Again, Senator
Kyl and I have introduced legislation which we believe would be
sufficient measures to secure our borders. We have never had on
your part or the part of the Administration serious sit-down
negotiations on this issue.
Now, I understand the President's zeal for immigration
reform, and yours, but as I have said on numerous occasions, I
have seen this movie before. I saw it in 1986 when we gave
amnesty to 2 million people and said we would secure the
borders, and we have not. When there are still 171,000 people
apprehended in one year crossing our Tucson border, in the view
of most observers that is not a secure border.
We have a plan that can do that, and sometimes my friends
from other parts of the country and other people think that
maybe Senator Kyl and I and a lot of our constituents,
particularly those who live in the southern part of Arizona,
are a bit intransigent.
I received a briefing from the High Intensity Drug
Trafficing Area (HIDTA) program staff--two of them--that there
is between 100 to 200 spotters sitting on mountains in southern
Arizona, inside the borders of the United States of America,
spotting for drug cartels, who then get the drugs up to Phoenix
and--in the words of HIDTA, not mine--distribute them. Phoenix
is the drug distribution center for the Nation with the
exception of some parts of the State of Texas.
Now, I do not think that that is an acceptable situation.
Perhaps you do. It was not my assessment of the situation. It
was the assessment that was given to me--100 to 200 spotters
sitting on mountains inside the State of Arizona guiding the
drug cartels as they bring the drugs to Phoenix and then
distribute them throughout the country. That, at least to the
constituents that I talk to of mine, is not an acceptable
situation.
Then in an act that I still do not understand, the National
Guard is withdrawn from the border. I go down to the border,
and I ask the Border Patrol, the HIDTA people, and I ask the
U.S. Attorney: How important is the role of the National Guard?
``Indispensable.'' That is the word they use.
And then we are supposed to believe that the Administration
is serious about securing our borders. Well, I do not think so.
So I would hope that we could understand that when any
State has 100 to 200 spotters, members of drug cartels, inside
their borders guiding drug cartels as they bring drugs to
Phoenix, Arizona, and then distribute them throughout the
Nation, with the exception of some parts of Texas, that that is
not a situation that I should expect my constituents to
tolerate.
So I guess it is more of a statement that I would seek your
response. The border is not secure. The Yuma Sector is secure.
There are many other areas. There have been improvements. I do
not doubt that. But I was in Douglas, Arizona, a few weeks ago,
and we saw a film of what had happened about 3 nights before--
SUVs with flashing lights on the road right next to the fence,
take a left turn, stop, and let loose a fusillade of bullets
killing 5 people and wounding 13. That is a serious situation,
and some of those bullets fly across the border. And these mass
graves are obviously something that has shocked the Nation. And
all of it has to do with drugs that are moving into the United
States of America.
So, again, I would hope that we could have some serious
conversations rather than meetings with various interested
groups and see if we cannot sit down and take the necessary
measures that are clearly there in our view that could assure
our citizens of the country that our border has a reasonable
level of security and maybe move forward in order to achieve
that.
I would be interested in your response.
Secretary Napolitano. Well, thank you, Senator, and your
constituents used to be mine, and I spent a lot of my life on
these border-related issues, and so I think we share the same
values and the same goal. Let me take on four of the points
that you have made and help provide you with some information.
First, with respect to the National Guard, they have not
been withdrawn. They are at the current force level they have
always been this year, and the Administration has not made a
final decision about whether to continue to deploy them.
One of the issues is who pays for the Guard, and we have
asked our appropriators twice to allow us to reprogram funds to
pay for the Guard and to continue to pay for the Guard at the
border. And that reprogramming has been denied. This Committee
may want to look at that issue. It would be very helpful for
sustaining the presence of the Guard. But, again, like I said,
I asked our appropriators, and it was denied last year. We
would renew that request.
On the 10-point plan, Senator, many of those things we are
doing or are close to doing, there is a fiscal cost to it. I
think your own numbers show it to be over $4 billion, and the
issue, I think, is whether some of the items there are the most
cost effective way to reach the common goal that we share. I
want to have that discussion with you and work with you on
that.
On the spotters, now I speak as the former Chair of the
Arizona HIDTA, and I speak as the former U.S. Attorney and
Attorney General. I know the Vekol Valley very well. I have
asked the Border Patrol because I have been down there myself
several times in the last few months. ``Where are the spotters
that I keep hearing about?'' And the answer I receive is that
there are a couple hundred tops from which a spotter could act,
but they are not sitting there, 200 drug spotters. And we are
now deploying technology into that area to enable us to pick up
more individuals involved in the drug trade than we already
are. So I would really be interested in seeing if we can
clarify that particular point.
And then, last, on the number of illegals coming across the
Tucson Sector, I agree with you, I do not like that number
either. It is dramatically down from what it used to be. It is
down 35 percent from what it was when I started as the
Secretary. But we are going to continue to put resources into
that sector until we get that and drive that number down even
further.
The part of this hearing that you missed--and I will be
happy to set up a private meeting with you about--is developing
a real border metric that takes into account apprehensions,
typical crime statistics, but also other measures that give us
a better overall sense of what is happening at the border
because I think there is a general consensus that the
apprehension number in and of itself is not a complete
measurement.
Senator McCain. Well, thank you. I am fascinated by your
comment that they could not tell you where these spotters are.
They probably cannot tell you exactly where they are because
otherwise they would get them. But the fact is they are
absolutely, totally, factually correct. They are there, and
everybody knows they are there. And for you or your staff to
deny that they are there is sort of symptomatic to me of the
lack of really recognition or appreciation of the problems that
exist along our border.
Secretary Napolitano. Senator, with respect, there is no
one who has spent more time working on this Arizona issue than
I have over the past 2 years, and we will continue to drive the
numbers down----
Senator McCain. There is no one that has spent more time on
the issue than I have, Madam Secretary, long before you were
governor and long before you were Secretary, and I am told by
the law enforcement people from the sheriffs up to the U.S.
Attorney that there are between 100 and 200 spotters sitting on
mountains in Arizona. And for you to dispute that is a big
problem you have between yourself and them. And it should be
clarified.
Secretary Napolitano. Well--yes, let us clarify it.
Senator McCain. So if you want to say that it is not true,
that is fine with me. But it happens to be true, and it happens
to be a huge problem, and it also happens to be that Phoenix,
Arizona, in their view, and other experts' view, is the
distribution center for drugs around this country. So maybe you
want to deny that, but the fact is that it is. And so, again,
if you want to change the matrix, fine, change the matrix. But
on the ground, in Arizona, on the border, we see people still
living in an environment that they are not living secure lives.
And we had witnesses before this Committee who testified to
exactly that, ranchers and sheriffs of the counties along the
border--Larry Dever and others.
Secretary Napolitano. Well, if we are going to get into the
sheriff discussion again----
Senator McCain. See, you may not trust the word of Larry
Dever and these other sheriffs. That is fine. You may dispute
them. We, in Arizona, trust them because they are the elected
law enforcement officials that are there dealing with these
issues every single day. And I know the facts on the ground,
and I agree that there have been improvements, and I am
grateful for those improvements. But I would argue they have
not kept up with the escalation of violence on the other side
of the border.
And I go back to my original point that I made at the
beginning of my comments. I think that it would be great if at
least once for the Administration to come and sit down with us
who are in border States, not just Arizona but New Mexico,
Texas, and California, and see if there is some kind of way we
could work out a way to get our borders secured. And maybe then
it would be of some benefit to all of our constituents. Please
respond.
Secretary Napolitano. Well, Senator, look, the issue is a
lot more complicated, and what we need to do at the border is
exactly what we are doing, and more so and sustain it. It is
more manpower, it is more technology, it is more
infrastructure. It is adding air cover, which we now have
across Arizona, which we did not have before. It is also,
though, related to interior enforcement. It is having the
ability to identify who is in our jails that are also in our
country illegally and being able to remove those.
The ability to have consequences for all who cross
illegally, that is important. I grant you that. Doing the same
thing in every sector that you do in a small sector like the
Yuma Sector may not be the best way to achieve that. That is a
discussion we ought to be having.
So I look forward to sitting down with you, and we will go
point by point through the plan. We have some options I would
like you to consider. As I mentioned before, your challenge to
me at our last hearing was: What is a border metric? What is
something that we can measure that would say we have a secure
border? And you asked me that question. So I have directed CBP,
I said, ``Look, we need to create a metric that makes sense,
that measures all of these things.'' And we can include, and
probably will, all of the drug activity and so forth.
I must say, however, that let us not get into a debate
because some sheriffs say the situation is better, and some
sheriffs say it is not. Most mayors say it is better, but there
are a few who say it is not. We have to look at the entire
border and create a safe and secure border region that
legitimate trade and travel can use because Mexico is the
second or third largest trading partner for 22 States of the
country. And we do not dispute that is the goal. We just have
some differences on how we measure and how we get there.
Senator McCain. Well, I do look forward to sitting down
with you on this issue before the election season gets too
polarizing, but I think it is important because I think we are
on the right track, and I have clearly stated that there have
been improvements. But I think we have some more to go.
Would you indulge me one other comment?
Chairman Lieberman. Sure.
Senator McCain. Madam Secretary, this is an entirely
different subject--I continue to get complaints from people who
are subject to this physical pat-down. We really ought to try
to work on some kind of technology that would not be necessary
for our inspectors to go through. It is just very invasive, and
I have heard all the reasons for it, but it seems to me in a
country like ours we could develop some kind of technology that
would make something like that unnecessary. Some people feel it
is really embarrassing and humiliating, and I certainly
understand their complaints.
Secretary Napolitano. Senator, I understand them as well,
and I receive them as well. Three things:
One, we are investing in research and technology. The
research cycle is not an immediate cycle, but we are investing
and working with national labs and others on better technology.
Two, I have asked and TSA is moving to a more risk-based
approach to how we screen. Part of that will lead to what my
third point, which is we want to enlarge trusted traveler type
programs where people have a biometric card, then they can go
through similar to what we use for pilots now, anyway, and we
are looking for ways to scale that up.
Senator McCain. Well, thank you, Madam Secretary, and I
look forward to continuing our spirited dialogue.
Secretary Napolitano. I enjoy them, too.
Chairman Lieberman. And may I say, those of us who are not
from Arizona enjoy them, too. [Laughter.]
I actually want to thank both of you for the exchange, and
you both agree that things are better along the border, and you
both agree that they are not good enough. And I think your
announcement today that you have directed the CBP to develop a
new metric, a new index for judging, for reaching a conclusion
of whether the border is secure and how to make it more secure
is very important.
Beyond your official announcement to an earlier question,
in typical Napolitano style you said, and I paraphrase: The
existing system of judging border security by the number of
apprehensions ``does not cut it,'' and the existing definition
in law of ``operational control'' of the border does not cut it
either. I agree with you, and I think you have the opportunity
here now to develop a new standard of border security that is
much more accurate and effective and can be a basis for a
meeting of minds between people on different perspectives, both
on the question of border security and on the related question
of immigration reform. And I really urge you forward. I hope
you will engage Senator McCain and the other Members of
Congress from the Border States, and the governors, whom I know
you know well. And if you have room in any of those meetings
for a guy from Connecticut, I would be honored to be invited.
Secretary Napolitano. We will make you an honorary Border
State Senator.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you.
You both know this better than I do. This is a really
important question, and it ties directly to the other important
question of immigration reform. And Senator McCain is right. I
may be quixotic in saying this, but we still, in my opinion,
have a chance in this session to try to achieve some
significant improvement in border security and in a related way
some what I called earlier ``smart immigration reform.'' And I
hope we try every opportunity to do that. And the two of you
are critical in whether that is possible or not, so I thank you
both.
Senator Carper.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. As Joe Biden would say, ``From your lips to
God's ears.'' That would be great.
Madam Secretary, nice to see you. Thanks for your
leadership and your commitment and hard work and that of the
team you lead.
Secretary Napolitano. Thank you.
Senator Carper. One of the things I have been focused on is
deficit reduction. They look at cutting spending and they look
at raising taxes. And I focus more on a third and a fourth
idea; and the third idea is how do we promote economic growth
to help us in our efforts and what kind of smart investments
can we make in the workforce, infrastructure, and research and
development (R&D) that could be commercialized on the R&D side
to create the products and innovations that we can sell around
the world. So that is a focus of mine.
My other focus is really on creating what I call a culture
of thrift in the Federal Government to replace what some might
describe as a culture of spendthrift. We talked about it a
little bit in our caucus luncheon just yesterday. And I like to
say that everything I do, I know I can do better. I think the
same is true of most of us. We were just talking about in this
exchange you had with Senator McCain trying to find ways to do
better. I like to say if it is not perfect, make it better.
I think we need to look in every nook and cranny of the
Federal Government and ask a question of almost all Federal
programs, whether domestic, discretionary, or entitlements, is
there a way to get a better result for less money or maybe a
better result for not much more money?
And with that, and in the spirit of that thought, I just
wanted to ask you about the Department of Homeland Security's
Secure Border Initiative. It was created, as I recall, to
bolster our Southern Border with a variety of high-tech
technologies, with physical infrastructure, and with border
enforcement officers, and we have all supported that stuff. The
program was, I think, designed to secure some 700 miles of the
Southern Border by, I think, the year 2005 at a cost, I think,
close to $900 million. I think this includes both the new metal
fencing and some of the various surveillance technologies.
What has troubled me the most with respect to this program
is the technology component, and I am told that of some 700
promised miles of various surveillance equipment, we have
deployed maybe 50 or so miles of the anticipated 700, and this
at a price of about $750 million. At least this is what I have
been told.
I understand you have frozen that program, the Secure
Border Initiative, to try to identify a smarter and more cost
effective way forward, and I just want to ask you to take a
couple of minutes here today to discuss with us, if you would,
how we can get a better bang out of the taxpayer's buck in this
regard and what you see we ought to be doing going forward in
this regard.
Secretary Napolitano. Thank you, Senator. The so-called
SBInet program I did freeze. It was not proving to be cost
effective. One of the reasons why was because it presumed that
you could have one fixed sort of technology to use across the
border at tremendous cost. And so we ended it at one small
sector, and what we have done is say let us buy off-the-shelf
mobile technologies that are available now that we can equip
our men and women with now. And that will differ depending on
what sector you are in because you will have different types of
geography, different populations, and so forth.
So every sector along the border has to develop their
technology plan for how they will use the funds freed up by not
investing in the SBInet system.
I asked for the technology plan first from Arizona because
it had the greatest need. That is in. We are making those
procurements now. And then we are moving border wide over the
course of the year.
Senator Carper. And how will you measure success as we go
down this new path?
Secretary Napolitano. Well, it is the question that has
dominated the hearing today, but a number of ways, one of which
obviously is apprehensions both of individuals but drugs, drug
traffickers, so forth. One is the ability to be a force
multiplier so that we are able, once we spot somebody, to
immediately go out and pick them up. Those are the kinds of
things that would be added to the mix.
Senator Carper. Just about every day we see more violence
along our border with Mexico. I think we are partly to blame
for that, and part of this is the exchange of drugs for guns.
We are somewhat complicit in that exchange, unfortunately. I
was down there about a little over a year ago, and I had a
chance to go along the border, not in Arizona but over on the
California side and talk to a number of the folks that are
working down there, in some cases at real jeopardy to their own
safety. My understanding is we are having patrol agents that
are being shot at more frequently, patrolling some of the
harshest terrains on our continent. And then we have a new
trend, and it is a disturbing trend. We have had agents
actually being killed by drug traffickers and by cartel
members. It is also beginning to become less safe for Americans
traveling to some of these cities across the border.
Could you just describe for us your assessment of the
escalating violence along the border? And is it safe to say
that this violence has--I am tempted to use the word
``officially''--officially spilled over into the United States?
Secretary Napolitano. The states of northern Mexico have
been experiencing a serious increase in violent crime,
especially homicides, over the last several years related to
the determination by President Calderon to take on the cartels,
a determination with which we agree and are supporting in any
way that we can, and also cartel-on-cartel violence as they
fight over ever more limited territory.
In Juarez, for example, I think Juarez must be one of the
one or two highest homicide rates in the world right now. But
it has also spread to other states, Tamaulipas, Sonora, and so
forth. When I say a safe and secure border region that border--
on our side we have about 7 million people who live along the
entire border. There is a much higher number who live in Mexico
along the border. So we are really working with Mexico--in
fact, we met with their leadership last Friday on a number of
cross-border strategies to increase safety.
Our men and women in the Border Patrol have very dangerous
work, and any way we are supporting them, making sure they are
well equipped, well trained, and have support, you have given
us the resources to help do that. That is very important.
I would say, however, that while we have had isolated
instances of violence that have come into the United States
from northern Mexico, if you take a step back and look at
everything, the police reports, the arrest reports, the
numbers, etc., they do not indicate that officially we have a
plague of spillover violence.
Senator Carper. All right. Thanks.
Mr. Chairman, my time has expired. Could I just ask for one
more minute?
I have been at another hearing, as some of my other
colleagues have, so I missed your testimony. Would you just
take a minute, give me some good take-aways from what you had
to say in your testimony, just maybe one or two points that I
ought to just walk out of the room----
Chairman Lieberman. You are back as U.S. Attorney or
Attorney General, and the Judge is giving you----
Secretary Napolitano. I am giving a summation.
Chairman Lieberman. A summation of your argument, right.
Senator Carper. You have both been Attorneys General,
haven't you?
Secretary Napolitano. Yes. They were both great jobs.
Senator Carper. Would you say it is the greatest job you
have had so far?
Secretary Napolitano. I would say I have always had great
jobs. [Laughter.]
Senator Carper. I would say you have, too. And so have the
rest of us.
Secretary Napolitano. I would say that we talked about
Osama bin Laden and that we have current and seamless exchange
of intelligence right now, and if I am so advised, I will raise
the advisory level. But I have not been so advised.
On immigration, that we have more resources at the border
than ever before, at both borders, and different strategies at
both borders, but they continue to be works in progress. We
cannot deal with border security without dealing also with
interior enforcement and immigration reform. They are related.
Senator Carper. All right. Thanks so much. Good to see you.
Secretary Napolitano. You bet.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Carper.
Madam Secretary, thanks for your testimony. You have been
responsive to our questions. You have been informative and very
helpful. My confidence in you continues to rise.
Secretary Napolitano. Thank you. I appreciate it.
Chairman Lieberman. We will keep the record of the hearing
open for 15 days for additional statements and questions.
And with that, the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:07 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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