Please find below an example of UPI's continuing coverage of Homeland Security and related issues, published yesterday. I hope you find it interesting. You may link to it on the web here:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050308-073440-3463r.htm If you have any comments or questions about this piece, need any more information about UPI products and services, or want to stop receiving these alerts, please get in touch. Thank you, Shaun Waterman UPI Homeland and National Security Editor E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: 202 898 8081 ICE defenders gird for merger fight By Shaun Waterman UPI Homeland and National Security Editor WASHINGTON, March 8 (UPI) -- With House and Senate oversight committees both considering major organizational changes to the Department of Homeland Security, supporters of one embattled agency within the department are girding their loins to fight off calls for it to be merged with the agency it was split from only two years ago. Richard Falkenrath, the former deputy White House homeland security adviser, says he is no partisan for the current structure but that "no one has told me what problems these changes are designed to solve." A hearing Wednesday of a House panel will be the latest opportunity for lawmakers to consider a proposed merger of Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- the agency charged with hunting down money launderers, sanctions busters and human traffickers, and which is the sole enforcer of immigration laws inside the country -- with its counterpart agency on the borders, the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection. A Senate panel in January already began looking at the idea, first floated in a report from the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. A memo announcing an investigation into the merits of a merger was circulated last month to employees of both agencies by the department's acting Inspector General Richard Skinner. Skinner says his analysis and conclusions will be based on "information gathered from requested documents, and interviews with front-line employees, supervisors, mid-level and senior managers, and external agencies that both (Customs and Border Protection) and (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) interact with on a regular basis, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Attorney's Office." The two agencies were formed when the old Immigration and Naturalization Service and U.S. Customs were put into the new Department of Homeland Security two years ago. Immigration and Customs Enforcement got the interior, investigative functions of both agencies, while Customs and Border Protection got the job of guarding the borders against both illegal entrants and contraband goods. Falkenrath says the new organization has barely had time to settle in. "There is still a great deal of work to be done to make the current structure function as well as it could," he told United Press International. "The last thing we need is to change the goalposts again just because it seems like a good idea to some people on the Hill. "Outside academics, labor leaders and former low-level officials are not in a position to say whether this is a good idea," Falkenrath added, in a reference to the witnesses who will testify Wednesday. A committee staffer said that the hearing was "a preliminary information-gathering exercise." Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are tight-lipped in the face of the ongoing congressional consideration of the changes and decline to comment, but some who have left Homeland Security feel freer to speak. "This is not a helpful discussion to have at this time," one former department official told UPI of the merger talk. "Any sense of instability can only damage morale. There's a sense of bewilderment (in the agency). It's like, 'What now?'" Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been beset by a series of financial crises, the result, officials say privately, of the way it was "shortchanged" in the budgeting process. Management has instituted a hiring freeze, a ban on non-essential travel and a suspension of training programs in what has amounted effectively to a state of permanent emergency in the agency. Nonetheless, agency officials say they have managed to improve their performance. "We have doubled the number of arms (importation) investigations," said Russ Knocke, the agency's director of public affairs. "We are conducting more money-laundering and other financial investigations than ever before. The numbers of apprehensions (of illegal immigrants) are way up. "Our numbers look good," he concluded. "They are finally getting over the hump," said the former department official of the agency. "Why is this getting attention at this point, just as things are turning around?" The former official attributed the momentum behind the suggested merger to "cultural resistance" to the agency's new shape, particularly among veteran employees of the legacy agencies, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and U.S. Customs, who are "still clinging to the old ways of doing things." "The old guard don't get it. They want to go back to the 'good old days,'" the former official said. Falkenrath points out that reorganizations always impose a "performance penalty" in the shape of "wasted man hours struggling for turf, for office space, to come to terms with new responsibilities." The former official added that any financial cost of the merger would be "not nearly as significant as the cost to identity and mission." The agencies defenders insist they are not opposed to change but argue that a single law-enforcement behemoth -- with 80,000 personnel, a merged entity would be several times larger than the FBI -- is not the way to go. "Rather than a merger, we should be looking at whether there is a better way to realign some of (the agency's) responsibilities," said the former official, suggesting that the presence of the Federal Air Marshal Service and the Federal Protective Service, which guards government buildings, might be clouding the clarity of the agency's investigative ethos. "Immigration and Customs Enforcement might do better with a clearer mission." -- [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> DonorsChoose. A simple way to provide underprivileged children resources often lacking in public schools. Fund a student project in NYC/NC today! http://us.click.yahoo.com/EHLuJD/.WnJAA/cUmLAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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