Hearing - Fiscal Year Appropriations for Border Security and Enforcement and Immigration Services

Federal News Service

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE HOMELAND SECURITY SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: FISCAL YEAR 2005 APPROPRIATIONS FOR BORDER SECURITY AND ENFORCEMENT AND IMMIGRATION SERVICES.

CHAIRED BY: SENATOR THAD COCHRAN (R-MS)

WITNESSES: MICHAEL J. GARCIA, HOMELAND SECURITY ASSISTANT SECRETARY, BUREAU OF IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT; ROBERT C. BONNER, COMMISSIONER, BUREAU OF CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION, DHS; EDUARDO AGUIRRE, JR., DIRECTOR, U.S. CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION SERVICES, DHS

LOCATION: 124 DIRKSEN SENATE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

BODY:
SEN. PATTY MURRAY (D-WA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And I want to join all of my colleagues in welcoming our witnesses today. You have a tremendous task before you and I want to thank you for your service.

I became increasingly concerned about the level of the president's budget request when I read that, according to The Wall Street Journal, a $1.2 billion shortfall has caused a hiring freeze within your agency. So I hope your testimony will clear up whether that's actually a computer glitch or an accounting error resulting from combining budgets from legal agencies, or a real budget shortfall that this subcommittee will need to deal with.

Mr. Chairman, my questions today will focus on the administration's plan for securing our ports of entry, both on land and our seaports. As we all know, many experts in the security arena, including some in your own department, have said that securing cargo coming into this country should be one of our nation's highest priorities. I couldn't agree more. We absolutely need a coordinated plan for a nationwide cargo security regime.

However, I've been very disappointed with the turf battles that have been going on between Customs, TSA and the Coast Guard as to who is in charge of cargo security. So I will want to explore with Commissioner Bonner how he plans on working under Secretary Hutchinson to implement each of the Department of Homeland Security's port and security programs into one coordinated regime. I'm also interested to hear how our customs officers are being received overseas and the level of cooperation foreign customs agents are providing within programs like CSI and C-TPAT.

I will also have questions about the implementation of security technology, such as radiation portal monitors at our ports of entry.

Mr. Chairman, as always, I look forward to an informative hearing. I will have more specific topics to discuss with our witnesses during the question and answer period. Thank you very much.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
SEN. MURRAY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Commissioner Bonner, at the 2002 Western Cargo Conference, you said, and I quote, "The American people and the global trading system are more secure if we screen cargo containers that present a high risk for terrorism at the earliest possible, and certainly before they reach U.S. shores." I really agree with that, and I'm pleased that the two most prominent cargo security programs within Customs, C-TPAT and CSI seek to push out our borders to foreign ports. Those programs will eventually help to extend our various cargo security programs into a standard system for sending goods throughout the world, but they aren't going to get the job done alone.

We have now spent $58 million on a program called Operation Safe Commerce, which is working to test the security of 19 different supply chains running through five different ports which compromise the three largest load centers in the country. In fact, more than 80 percent of our cargo goes through those ports. I think it is really imperative that we are able to learn from all of our port security programs, and we need to tie them together and rapidly institute a large scale operational cargo security program in the United States.

Commissioner Bonner, would you tell the committee how you are planning to implement the lessons that we have learned from Operation Safe Commerce into an overall cargo security standard?

MR. BONNER: I'd be happy to that, Senator. You and I have worked a lot on this issue. First of all, Operation Safe Commerce has been a very valuable test bed for different kinds of technologies that would be useful in better securing the movement of particularly ocean going cargo containers from various places in the world to the United States. As you indicated, I think, earlier, 8 to 9 million ocean going cargo containers arrive at our U.S. seaports annually, including some of our major ports on the West Coast like Seattle and Tacoma. But, the approach is to take the lessons there to develop, essentially to improve even more the supply chain security regimen.

And there are two key elements to that.

One is, and I believe we can do this through the Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, leveraging U.S. importers and foreign suppliers to increase, essentially, the point of loading security, to meet best practices and standards at the point that the containers are actually loaded at foreign manufacturer's facilities, whether that's in Europe, or Asia, or elsewhere.

And secondly, using the lessons from Operation Safe Commerce to develop best practices, and minimal standards, if you will, for a smarter, more secure container to be used in terms of the movement of those goods to the U.S. seaports. When I say a smarter container, I mean one that, at a minimum, can be read by U.S. Customs and border protection inspectors, either upon arrival, or at the CSI ports, as we expand those to more and more ports overseas, to determine whether it's been tampered with en route.

So those are at least a couple of the things that we're looking at to see if we can't implement to improve the overall security of global trade, and movement of cargo to the U.S.

SEN. MURRAY: So we expect a report from them by the end of this fiscal year, and you are going to be using the information that they have learned form that, to get to some kind of a security standard?

MR. BONNER: It's still being evaluated. I certainly intend to. I believe, based upon the preliminary reports I've obtained, that there are some very useful things that have been done, that are going to inform us, and help guide us to improved security of the movement of cargo.

SEN. MURRAY: I do want to work with you on that. There's still $17 million to go out. We've spent a great deal of time, our taxpayer dollars, and money on this, and I think we can learn a lot from them. We want to make sure it's used, and used wisely.

Commissioner, let me also ask you, Customs is beginning the process of installing these radiation portal devices at ports of entry throughout the nation. It seems to me it's a little bit late to check for radiation. Both the ports of Seattle and Tacoma are located right next to our downtown businesses, and residential areas, and as ships bound for these ports travel through the Puget Sound, before they get there, they pass by a major refinery compound, three Navy bases, that each home port nuclear powered vessels, and a major petroleum tank farm. Why have you decided, at least initially, not to push out the borders when it comes to this kind of technology, and can you tell us if you plan on deploying these monitors to foreign ports that are participating in C-TPAT?

MR. BONNER: I think our objective, our intention is to do both. In other words, we're talking about a layered defense in depth strategy. But, we do want to do everything we can, particularly given the catastrophic consequences of radiological weapons, to improve our ability to detect them when they're arriving at our borders. This is, of course, our land borders. We've already deployed now almost 250 radiation portal monitors, very sensitive radiation detection equipment, along many places on our land border, particularly Canada. We are now expanding to seaports and so forth. But, at the same time, we want to make sure that containers, through the Container Security Initiative, as part of the security screening of those containers that are identified as posing potential risk for terrorist threat, that is potentially risks that a terrorist organization like the al Qaeda could have concealed a weapon in those containers, that they're not only run through the large scale x-ray scanning equipment, which is important to detect weapons, and potentially weapons of mass destruction, but they're also run through radiation detection. And that is part of CSI.

Now, part of radiation detection right now is radiation isotope identifiers, hand-held devices, and the like. We have at one foreign port, working with the Department of Energy, we are doing what I call CSI-plus, which is to deploy radiation portal detection systems, that have the capacity for being not only very sensitive, but detecting potentially every container moving into that foreign port, including all containers that are ultimately outbound to the United States. And we've done that, working with the Department of Energy, and I give the Department of Energy much credit here, but working in tandem with the U.S. Department of Energy, we have done that at the first CSI port, which is the Port of Rotterdam. And I don't know that it's been implemented yet, but I expect that it's going to be implemented within the next month or so. So we do see that as what we want to do, if we can get these foreign seaports to install more sophisticated radiation detection equipment. It's something we want to do. We have started that, we have a long way to go.

SEN. MURRAY: As you know, Pacific Northwest National Laboratories is the contracting authority for installing those devices, can you give us a quick update of their performance and how the project is progressing?

MR. BONNER: Well, my assessment is that they've been very, very helpful to us, in terms of helping customs and border protection select the most appropriate, and best radiation detection equipment, that makes sense for a port environment, and there are several port environments. There's the land border port environment, there's the seaport, and the like. So they have been very helpful with this, in terms of assisting us, in terms of the testing, and the selection, and the actual installation of this equipment, to make sure that we have the kinds of protocols that resolve when you do get a radiation hit, and we do get hits on these things, that we can determine quickly whether it's an innocent radiation emitting source, or whether it's something that we need to be concerned about.

SEN. MURRAY: That goes to another question I had.

SEN. COCHRAN: Senator, your time has expired.

SEN. MURRAY: Can I just follow up on his last comment, because we have heard from a number of people in the ports that they want to know what happens when there is a positive reading on these devices, and what the protocol is, whether the facilities shut down, who's in charge of making those decisions.

If you could share with us.

MR. BONNER: There is a protocol, and I'll make sure, by the way, that all of our CBP port directors make sure that they've had that discussion within the context of the port security committees that exist at each port, with the Coast Guard.

SEN. MURRAY: Thank you.