Hearing of the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee on Fiscal Year 2005 Budget Request
Federal News Service
HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE HOMELAND SECURITY SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE
SUBJECT: FISCAL YEAR 2005 BUDGET REQUEST FOR THE U.S. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT
CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE HAROLD ROGERS (R-KY) WITNESS: MICHAEL J. GARCIA, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, U.S. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
LOCATION: 2358 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.
BODY:
REP. HAROLD ROGERS (R-KY): The committee will be in order. Mr. Secretary, we're pleased to welcome you here. Michael Garcia, assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to present his Fiscal Year '05 request for U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE.
Secretary Garcia was confirmed in his present position last December, and this marks the first time he's testified before the subcommittee. Secretary Garcia, you already have a good share of experience under your belt. You have shepherded the new ICE bureau during the first year, joined together a huge investigative mission from two differing agency cultures, begun to focus on improving the detention and removal function, focused on modernizing the air and marine integration mission, and brought the Federal Protective Service and the Federal Air Marshals Service under the umbrella of an agency with a law enforcement and security culture.
You have a great background for this task. You served with distinction as a federal prosecutor, working on cases such as the first World Trade Center bombing case, the Ramzi Yousef air bombing conspiracy and the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa. As assistant secretary of Commerce for Export Enforcement you gained experience with strategic trade investigations and as the last acting INS commissioner, you got a taste of the strenuous task you face in building a successful agency from the ashes of that organization.
Today we expect to hear about your progress in coping with Immigration and Customs Enforcement challenges. You have inherited a huge agency with close to 15,000 employees, about 8,000 of them in the investigative arena, and a budget approaching $4 billion. We want to know what your priorities are and what you are doing with those resources.
We are aware that you have success stories such as investigations of financial vulnerabilities and money laundering, drug trafficking, child predators, and traffickers in foreign artifacts. We are interested in how ICE has built on and improved the traditional INS and Customs investigative missions to address alien and drug trafficking. A good example of the leverage you have benefited from was the case last year in Victoria, Texas, where 19 people, including children, were found dead in the back of a tractor-trailer. By joining your financial and immigration expertise, you followed the money, arrested and indicted the ringleader and thirteen other co- conspirators, and rescued a three-year-old boy.
Yesterday, Undersecretary Hutchinson announced a $10 million Arizona Border Control initiative to intensify efforts to gain control over the border and deter and interdict the smuggling and trafficking that plagues the region. We hope to hear what part ICE will play in that effort.
You have inherited critical assets, such as Air and Marine Operations and the Federal Air Marshals Service, and some new resources to prevent terrorism, such as the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, SEVIS. We're very interested in seeing that your stewardship of these tools bears fruit, that vulnerabilities such as surveillance gaps on our borders or from drug traffickers are reduced and that you make the best use of investigative and intelligence tools to prevent terrorists from violating our immigration or customs laws, and that you succeed in making ICE a model of professionalism and cooperation in working with federal, state, local and international law enforcement agencies.
An area of special concern for me is the internal immigration enforcement function at ICE. With an undocumented alien population of between eight to 10 million, by most people's account, including about 465,000 fugitives and absconders, it is essential to the credibility of our immigration system. Enforcement also serves to deter those who would abuse our system. We expect to hear from you today on your efforts in that area, and how you will achieve significant reductions in backlogs.
We look forward to hearing your testimony, which of course we hope you will summarize for us. We will file your written statement as a part of the record. Before I recognize you let me turn to my colleague, Mr. Sabo, for any remarks he might wish to offer.
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REP. DON SHERWOOD (R-PA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have to say that it looks like it would be a wonderful partnership if you can move in and help local law enforcement get some of these people off the street because they have immigration violations. That would be great cooperation. Any time you reduce crime in one area it has a multiplier effect. Just like if you don't address it in one area, it has a multiplier effect against you. But I'd like to get back to your deportation talk. You were saying that with certain countries the paperwork was difficult?
MR. GARCIA: Yes, sir.
REP. SHERWOOD: Well, isn't that the way it's going to be? In other words, what country wants somebody deported back to them? Nobody's going to cooperate with you on that. I mean, I think-I would think it would be very difficult to get people deported and get other countries to stand up and provide the paperwork and say, sure, we'll accept this no-good SOB and let him be our problem again.
MR. GARCIA: It is not an easy sell to tell a country that you're going to be getting a gang member back or-but there are obligations to receive their nationals. Most countries are relatively cooperative. We have specific problems with a number of countries. One recent example was Cambodia where we were having tremendous difficulties. Our issue is to get travel documents, Congressman. We can't send them back without a proper identification issued by that country.
Cambodia was being very difficult in terms of accepting their nationals back. We've done a lot of work on that front and in fact that has opened up and we're seeing movement back, repatriations, removal back to Colombia. My director of detention and removal just returned from a trip to Israel, where we're seeing similar issues, and has tried to negotiate new arrangements in terms of those travel documents that I think will help us in that area.
We still see problems with other countries in terms of delays in getting those travel documents.
Delays mean costs for us, they mean lodging people. In certain cases they mean releasing people, Congressman, because we've got up against certain Supreme Court rulings, constitutional law in terms of how long we can hold folks. In some cases that means releasing people with criminal records so it's a very serious issue, as you pointed out, on a public safety front.
We work country by country. I work with the State Department. I work with ambassadors who are here in Washington from those other countries to try and resolve some of these document issues. It's an area we understand is incredibly important and keep pushing on on all fronts, identifying particular problem areas, as we've just done, resolving some, in the case of Colombia, and continuing to work with other countries.
But, for example, I met with El Salvador. We have a tremendous gang problem in this country, MS13. What they asked for was information on their returns: if you're sending gang members back let us know information about it, because they pose obviously some concern for the host government. And we work with the host government in terms of letting them know the histories of the folks we're sending back. So it is a partnership in many ways as well.
REP. SHERWOOD: Your S5 and S6 visas I would think would be a critical resource on your war on terror. Do you know how successful this is being? I don't want to ask you specific numbers, but-and how accessible are these individuals to your intelligence and investigative personnel, and have you experienced any coordination problems with the DOJ?
MR. GARCIA: Congressman, if I might ask, can I give you-get back to you on that specific issue?
REP. SHERWOOD: Sure.
MR. GARCIA: I'd be happy to provide the information to you.
REP. SHERWOOD: Okay, you get it to my office.
MR. GARCIA: I will, sir.
REP. SHERWOOD: Currently, as we've talked before, we don't have a consolidated terrorist watch list. And, you know, we've discussed here and other places that the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center is pulling together several lists as we speak, but I would like to know about ICE's role in this process. And in view of the fact that we don't have this consolidated list, how effective do you think the new visa security unit in Saudi will be?
MR. GARCIA: Two parts to your question. First, ICE is involved in putting together a list. Obviously we have access to unique information as a law enforcement agency, and particularly in Immigration Customs Enforcement Agency, that could be very critical. We work with our law enforcement partners. We're not primarily responsible for that project but certainly support it for the obvious benefit that you cited. We need to do that.
In terms of visa security unit in how it plays out particularly in Saudi right now, we have to balance off-we have to run names against a number of different databases. We have to ensure that what is the State Department doing, what is Homeland Security doing? Are we reaching not only the proper databases, but the proper levels within those databases? There are different-which has been explained to me on a few occasions-levels, sub files of databases that we need to reach into to really get the full picture of the information that's out there. We have a program in Saudi trying to use it as a model to ensure that we're running names, potential visa-the visa applicants against all the different databases to ensure that we have the full spectrum. Obviously it would be much better to have consolidated databases much more efficient to be able to do that.
We saw a similar issue with the recent increase to threat level orange where we were running-looking at people, running names through databases and we're running them through various agencies and various databases to ensure we were getting the full picture. Everybody agrees working towards that goal of combining databases, one-stop shopping in effect, is the most efficient and effective way to go.
REP. SHERWOOD: Thank you. We very much appreciate the difficulty of your job and the hard work that everybody is putting into it. But on the hearing we had the other day, I still feel that the force multiplier issue was thrown up as a red herring, and I don't think there were the purest of motives there. I think we were a little deceived by the effectiveness of that issue, or tried to be.
MR. GARCIA: Congressman, you made that very clear at the session we had the other day and I do understand your concerns about it. However, it is potentially a very effective, cost efficient program that will get us something extra. Never meant to be sold as a replacement for the Federal Air Marshals or as a red herring, but it is a simple concept I think of good government where we should know what armed law enforcement agents are flying in case there's an incident at minimum. FAM should have that information and the FAM should have the option to redeploy where there are agents flying that they believe could provide minimum coverage on a flight to maximize their resources. That's where we're headed with that: not as a replacement for Federal Air Marshals, but as a tool.
REP. SHERWOOD: We agree it could work. We agree it's a good idea, but it was presented to us as something that was in effect and being effective and it isn't in effect and it isn't effective.
MR. GARCIA: It certainly isn't in effect. It's in the early stages. In fact we signed the MOU with the Secret Service within the last six weeks or so, I believe.
REP. ROGERS: Thank you, Mr. Sherwood.