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THREAT CONVERGENCE ALONG THE BORDER:

WILL DRUG TRAFFICKING TECHNIQUES PROVIDE SOME ANSWERS?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,

DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JUNE 14, 2005

Serial No. 109–96

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian/Senior Counsel

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

DIANE E. WATSON, California

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

J. MARC WHEAT, Staff Director

NICHOLAS COLEMAN, Professional Staff Member/Counsel

MALIA HOLST, Clerk

RICHARD BUTCHER, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on June 14, 2005 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Passic, Gregory, Director, Office of Drug Interdiction, Customs and Border Protection ................................................................................................ 29

Placido, Anthony, Assistant Administrator for Intelligence, Drug Enforcement Agency .................................................................................................. 14

Torres, John P., Deputy Assistant Director, Office of Investigations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement .......................................................... 36

Utley, Ralph, RADM, USCG Ret., Acting Director, Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security ...................... 6

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Maryland, prepared statement of ............................................................ 57

Passic, Gregory, Director, Office of Drug Interdiction, Customs and Border Protection, prepared statement of ......................................................... 31

Placido, Anthony, Assistant Administrator for Intelligence, Drug Enforcement Agency, prepared statement of .......................................................... 16

Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Indiana, prepared statement of ............................................................... 4

Torres, John P., Deputy Assistant Director, Office of Investigations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, prepared statement of .................. 38

Utley, Ralph, RADM, USCG Ret., Acting Director, Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 9

(1)

THREAT CONVERGENCE ALONG THE BORDER: WILL DRUG TRAFFICKING TECHNIQUES PROVIDE SOME ANSWERS?

TUESDAY, JUNE 14, 2005

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY,

AND HUMAN RESOURCES,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:02 p.m., in room

2203, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Mark E. Souder (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Souder, Gutknecht, and Cummings.

Staff present: Nicholas Coleman, professional staff member and

counsel; David Thomasson and Pat DeQuattro, congressional fellows, Malia Holst, clerk; Tony Haywood, minority counsel; Richard

Butcher, minority professional staff member; and Teresa Coufal,

minority assistant clerk.

Mr. SOUDER. The subcommittee will come to order. Good afternoon, and thank you all for coming. Today we will explore Federal

law enforcement’s ability to identify, interdict, and apprehend drug

smuggling operations along our Nation’s borders. This mission requires a comprehensive, unified, multiagency effort, with a clear

plan that dismantles the organizations responsible, not just for

smuggling drugs but also illegal aliens, terrorists, and weapons

into this country. We have fallen short of this objective for many

reasons but I would like to address five of them here.

Reason No. 1 involves the organizational decision to split the investigative and inspection functions at the Customs and Border

Protection [CBP], and Immigrations Customs Enforcement [ICE].

By splitting the two functions, the Department has limited their

capacity to conduct enforcement operations in areas leading up to

the border, at the border, and beyond the border. This unhealthy

split has been exasperated by an extra layer of bureaucracy over

ICE and CBP, namely the Directorate of Border and Transportation Security.

Second, it seems that all Federal agencies engaged in drug enforcement have developed or are in the process of developing their

own individual intelligence programs complete with intel centers

that serve that agency’s needs. While I support intel operations at

these agencies, too many centers lead to duplication of effort and

stovepiped computer systems that lack the ability to communicate

with other existing systems. One example of this type of duplicaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:06 Dec 21, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24890.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tive efforts can be found at Fort Bliss in El Paso, TX. The Border

Patrol Field Intelligence Center [BORFIC], and the DEA-run El

Paso Intelligence Center [EPIC], have taken up residence at the

same military installation. BORFIC is responsible for providing

daily reports to the Border Patrol headquarters and field managers

throughout the United States. Additionally, they search for potential terrorist threats along the U.S.-Mexican border. EPIC, on the

other hand, concentrates primarily on drug movement, immigration

violations, to include all the United States and the Western Hemisphere where drug and alien movements are directed toward the

United States. While both focus on similar targets, they have developed separate databases of violators rather than sharing the information and making it available to users from one central database.

Third, we lack a strategic, comprehensive, layered interagency

plan to address border security. The DHS Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security [BTS] is currently evaluating the

merits of a border strategy that will involve the opening of yet another operational intelligence center called the Border Interdiction

Support Center [BISC]. The BISC concept would supposedly warehouse and disseminate for intelligence derived from the interagency efforts at interdicting people, weapons, and narcotics along

the southwest border. But the agencies that would be involved in

BISC, like DEA, ICE, and CBP, all seem to have a different idea

of what the BISC would do.

The perceived need to create the BISC underscores the Nation’s

lack of a coherent interagency plan to address border security. On

May 12, 2005, the Government Reform Committee held a hearing

to examine DHS management of border security. Commissioner

Bonner informed the committee that CBP has a strategic Border

Patrol plan but failed to disclose the details of a border strategy.

The subcommittee has been told that a border plan has been submitted by CBP but is now held up at BTS. We need to do better.

Fourth, DHS has failed to fund the Office of Counternarcotics

Enforcement as Congress intended. Currently the funding level for

2006 remains the same as 2005; funds are controlled by the chief

of staff, not the director; and the director continues to be employed

by the Transportation Security Agency. The office is supposed to

coordinate DHS drug interdiction efforts at the land borders, on the

seas, and in the air. The law assigns specific responsibilities to the

new director including oversight of DHS counterdrug activities and

the submission of reports to Congress. Without sufficient funds and

independence, however, the office simply cannot carry out these responsibilities.

Finally, poor organizational structure and funding, lack of intelligence coordination, and a cohesive border strategy have not only

hurt our ability to stop drug smuggling along the border, but also

the smuggling of people, terrorists, and weapons. Our failure to

identify and prosecute transportation groups that provide aliens

with tools needed to illegally enter our country calls into question

our ability to control our Nation’s borders. It is my hope that Congress and the Federal law enforcement agencies will work to improve our ability to shut down the smuggling organizations involved in criminal enterprises along the border.

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Today we have a panel of very experienced witnesses to help answer these and other questions posed by the subcommittee. From

the Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement we have the Director,

Admiral Ralph Utley. From the Drug Enforcement Administration

we have the Assistant Administrator for Intelligence, Mr. Anthony

Placido. From Customs and Border Protection, we have the Director of the Office of Drug Interdiction, Mr. Gregory Passic. And from

Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE], we have the Deputy

Assistant Director of the Office of Investigations, Mr. John Torres.

We look forward to your testimony and insight into this important

issue.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Before proceeding, I want to ask unanimous consent

that all Members attending today have 5 legislative days to submit

written statements and questions for the hearing record, and any

answers to written questions provided by the witnesses also be included in the record. And, without objection, it is so ordered.

I also ask unanimous consent that all exhibits, documents, and

other materials referred to by Members may be included in the

hearing record, and that all Members be permitted to revise and

extend their remarks. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Our first and only panel is composed of the four gentlemen that

I mentioned. And, as you know, as an oversight committee it is our

standard practice to ask all our witnesses to testify under oath. So

if you will each stand and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each of the witnesses responded in the affirmative.

Thank you very much for coming today for this important hearing as we continue to look for the most effective border strategies

that we can have, particularly as we see terrorism, drug trafficking, and human trafficking all start to merge together and will continue to merge even more closely over time.

We will start with you, Admiral Utley.

STATEMENT OF RALPH UTLEY, RADM, USCG Ret., ACTING DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF COUNTERNARCOTICS ENFORCEMENT,

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

Admiral UTLEY. Good afternoon, Chairman Souder, distinguished

members of the panel, my name is Ralph Utley and I am the Acting Director of the Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement for the

Department of Homeland Security and Acting U.S. Interdiction Coordinator. It is my privilege to appear before you to discuss drug

trafficking and its impact on our borders. And I would ask that my

written statement be entered into the record.

The Office of Counternarcotics’ goal is to lead a unified departmental effort to prevent and deter illegal drugs from coming into

the United States.

Today’s hearing on threat convergence along the border: How

does drug trafficking impact our borders, is central to this goal. My

core mission is to coordinate policy and operations within the Department and between the Department and other Federal departments and agencies with respect to stopping the entry of illegal

drugs into the United States.

Before I discuss the borders, I would like to share with you some

results of last year’s interdiction efforts in the transit zone. In fiscal year 2004, the Department of Homeland Security in cooperation

with the interagency removed over 225 metric tons of drugs that

were headed to the United States. The U.S. Coast Guard had an

exceptionally banner year for fiscal year 2004, seizing over 109

metric tons in the transit zone. Through June 1st of this year, the

U.S. Coast Guard has seized over 81 metric tons of cocaine. Much

of this interdiction was supported by CBP assets.

Other DHS agencies also set records in interdiction during 2004.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized over 905 metric tons of

marijuana, 26 metric tons of cocaine, and 1.3 metric tons of heroin

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bound for the United States. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] was involved in the investigative efforts and apprehension of over 712 metric tons of marijuana, 150 metric tons

of cocaine, and 1.3 metric tons of heroin, and 1 metric ton of

methamphetamines that were headed for the streets of the United

States.

The majority of these drugs were destined for the southwest border where they would have consequently entered California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. To combat drug trafficking along

U.S. borders, my office is committed to working with our Mexican

and Canadian Government copartners. Only with open communication and binational cooperation can this be done. The Department

is actively engaged with Mexican law enforcement officials through

the Senior Law Enforcement Plenary and the Binational Interdiction Working Group. The Department is also working with Canadian law enforcement officials through the Integrated Border Enforcement Teams. It is through these venues that bilateral ties are

strengthened and the United States has a better chance of collectively interdicting drugs.

OCE continues to work with the existing intelligence and operations centers along the border to ensure that adequate

counterdrug resources are applied to the problem. In addition, OCE

continues to coordinate policy within the Department of Homeland

Security to streamline departmental and interagency operations.

In addition to streamlining operations, we must make sure that

information is being disseminated vertically up and down within

the Department so that policies and intelligence can support operational units in the field. We also need to fuse and exploit all information that we learn across the country so that when a CBP agent

in Arizona learns of a new smuggling method, that information is

fed to our intelligence analysts, incorporated where appropriate

into our strategy to combat smuggling, and disseminated across the

Department and interagency to others focused on the same problem.

Our focus must extend beyond the Department itself. We must

review and make use of information coming from the intelligence

community, and we must play an active role in providing operational feedback to the intelligence community. Sharing information across the Federal Government is critical if we are to succeed.

To that end, I am committed to making sure that our law enforcement and intelligence partners across the Federal Government

have appropriate access to the Department’s information and analysis to the maximum extent possible under law, while at the same

time protecting the privacy rights and civil liberties of Americans.

By the same token, we must sit as full partners at the table with

full access to information from the intelligence community.

Finally, we must inform and communicate with our State, local,

tribal, and private sector partners. As information comes in, we

need to ensure it is disseminated to the right people in a way that

can be used to strengthen their effort and contribute effectively to

ours.

Very shortly, I will be providing to the counternarcotics community a national interdiction command and control plan and the

interdiction planning guidance. These documents will help organize

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U.S. resources that are committed to counter the drug threat along

our border. My office is also drafting a department-wide

counterdrug policy that will outline the current counterdrug resources of the Department of Homeland Security and will address

intelligence-driven operations and initiatives to ensure that maximum results are achieved from all DHS counterdrug effort.

OCE has taken steps to actively engage in the intelligence community; specifically, we have engaged with the National

Counterterrorism Center, Joint Terrorism Task Force, El Paso Intelligence Center, National Drug Intelligence Center, Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency’s Crime and

Narcotics Center. Our goal is to serve as a conduit between DHS

and the counterdrug community as we respond to our congressional

mandate to track and sever the connection between drugs and terror.

In closing, the ability to stop the flow of drugs into the United

States is necessary for national security and public safety. By aggressively enforcing our existing laws and working transparently to

better fuse intelligence, we seek to deter drug traffickers and terrorist organizations who threaten our way of life.

I would like to thank Mr. Chairman and members of this committee for this opportunity to appear, and I look forward to answering your questions.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Admiral Utley follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Placido.

STATEMENT OF ANTHONY PLACIDO, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR FOR INTELLIGENCE, DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENCY

Mr. PLACIDO. Chairman Souder, members of the subcommittee,

thank you very much for this invitation to testify today. On behalf

of DEA Administrator Karen P. Tandy, I thank you for your continued support of the men and women of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

As the former Regional Director for DEA’s Mexico Central American Division, Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Division which borders on Canada, and a 25-year veteran of the agency, I am acutely aware of the challenges at our borders. Securing

our borders requires extraordinary coordination among and between American law enforcement and intelligence organizations as

well as robust cooperation with our foreign counterparts.

With that, let me begin with a few words about DEA’s foreign

program and our worldwide drug flow prevention strategy. The

DEA, in conjunction with other U.S. agencies, has launched an innovative multiagency strategy to significantly disrupt the flow of

drugs and chemicals before they reach our borders. The plan is to

attack the key vulnerabilities and supply, communications, and

transportation systems of these drug trafficking organizations by

executing sustained, sequential operations based on predictive intelligence. We have already deployed our foreign area support or

FAS teams to Afghanistan, and hope to go forward with at least

one prototype operation in Latin America by August 2005. Our goal

is to build on the successful model we have established in the interagency Operation Panama Express.

While DEA attempts to use its extensive foreign presence and

operational capabilities to provide defense in depth to disrupt the

flow of drugs before they reach our borders, we also recognize that

the southwest border is the primary arrival zone for the vast majority of illicit drugs that are smuggled into the United States. DEA

is committed to working cooperatively with the Department of

Homeland Security which has primary jurisdiction for border security.

Combining DEA’s extensive foreign capabilities with DHS’s efforts at the border is essential to enhancing the Nation’s border security. The strategic partnership between DEA and DHS is particularly important in our efforts to control the southwest border with

Mexico.

During President Fox’s administration, DEA participated in numerous successful bilateral law enforcement operations with Mexico. Notable drug kingpins such as Benjamin Ariano Felix, Osiel

Cardenas, Armando Valencia, Miguel Cartanterro, Alcid Ramon

Mogania, and Alpino Contero Moras have been arrested as a result

of these joint efforts. These operations and others show real promise. Unfortunately, they have not been mounted on a scale that is

commensurate with the magnitude of the problems we face from

Mexico.

The single largest impediment to enhancing our progress against

drug trafficking from Mexico is corruption. DEA has highly producVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:06 Dec 21, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24890.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tive, longstanding relationships with Government of Mexico counterparts. Unfortunately, officials of unquestionable integrity and remarkable courage must too frequently contend with a system that

is fraught with bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption. This

makes it extremely difficult and sometimes very dangerous for our

counterparts to do their jobs. These factors and the geographic

proximity to the United States will continue to make Mexico an attractive staging area for drug smuggling and transnational crime.

The Government of Mexico and DEA have scored a series of

major blows against drug cartels. Unfortunately, all of the major

Mexico-based drug trafficking organizations continue to operate at

some level. Some have become even more dangerous as the pressure has ignited turf wars along the southwest border. Drug-related violence in Mexico has expanded beyond intergang warfare to

include slayings of politicians, journalists, prison employees, and

police. This activity further undermines confidence in the Government of Mexico and has the potential to spill over onto the U.S.

border. Intelligence sharing and cooperation are vital to combating

transnational crimes, and these efforts must begin at home.

The El Paso Intelligence Center [EPIC], founded in 1974 is an

interagency organization and it is the oldest and most important

intelligence-sharing initiative. EPIC is a national center that is

specifically focused on the southwest border. I recently met with

Mr. Passic from the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection and

DEA officials from the southwest border, the Caribbean, and Mexico. The unanimous consensus of this group was that EPIC is an

important tool and that it can and must do more to promote enhanced border security.

EPIC is uniquely positioned to provide consolidated interagency

intelligence support required to protect our borders. Working with

our interagency partners at EPIC, I believe we can bring a new era

of cooperation into reality. The result will be significant enhancements in the ability of all agencies to use intelligence to inform and

drive operations and investigations and, most importantly, to protect the Nation from the scourge of transnational crime.

Mr. Chairman, at this point I ask that my full written statement

be entered into the record, and I will be glad to answer your questions.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much for your testimony.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Placido follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Passic.

STATEMENT OF GREGORY PASSIC, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF

DRUG INTERDICTION, CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION

Mr. PASSIC. Thank you very much, Chairman Souder, and members of the subcommittee and staff, for inviting us to your hearing

today. I hope that we can address the points you have raised in

your statement. I think they are all important things that we are

working on, but we need to be able to do in a better fashion, portray to you what we are trying to do and how we can work together

to achieve the results that we are all looking for.

The southwest border is a very significant part of our job. It is

also a major challenge to national interdiction efforts. I have a

chart I would like to maybe show you, and I don’t mean to bring

this up to just put numbers in front of you, but Customs and Border Protection is very, very busy on the drug account. As you can

see, last year we actually seized about 100-plus tons of drugs.

One of the better things that happened when Customs and Border Protection was created, we have one face at the border, we

have one person who can represent the commissioner’s wishes with

our partners. We can sit down and we can talk about strategies

and ideas, and it is not as complicated as it used to be.

I would like to point out, though, that most of those seizures resulted from what we call cold hits. We would welcome an opportunity to have better intelligence to our front line. What we like to

see is what we refer to as smart intelligence. We would like to have

intelligence that would direct us to seize drugs that come from trafficking groups that are under investigation. We would like to provide to ICE and DEA critical evidence in their drug cases, the

means of sometimes getting extraditions of major traffickers. Nothing is more worthless, in my humble opinion, than a load of dope

that doesn’t belong to anybody. It does remove drugs from getting

to the market, but we want to have more impact than that.

We also would like to—Mr. Placido mentioned EPIC and other

intelligence programs that DEA has. We see them as a primary

partner. They are the best repository of drug intelligence in this

government, and we need to do a better job of connecting with

them.

We appreciate DEA’s efforts in the past 60 days to include us in

their programs, to actually ask us what we need on the border, to

participate with them in making EPIC, the Drug Fusion Center,

and other vital drug intelligence programs work. And you are absolutely right: We don’t need more, we need less; we need concentrated, we need better, and we need teamwork on the drug intelligence account.

We would also like to see better eyes and ears on the border. I

mean, it is a tough job standing at that border and actually stopping drugs. We do the best we can, but we feel that we could do

a better job if we had better intelligence on the staging areas in

Mexico, if we could do more to help our ICE and DEA counterparts

and the other interdiction members of the community to seize

drugs before they get into Mexico. Mexico is a tremendous black

hole for all of us. Once it gets into that bottom part of Mexico, it

is tough. The next shot we have at it is at the border.

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And along those same lines, I think the engagement of our Mexican counterparts is absolutely critical. If we have had a hole in our

defense—and Mr. Placido mentioned that, because of the corruption

factor down there, it has been hard getting the level of counterparts that really we could do joint operations with. We see some

promise. This week the Mexicans have actually started kicking

doors in and chasing some of the major traffickers out of their safe

havens along that northern border. And we support that effort. We

laud them for trying and tackling the tough guys that have been

hard to get to in the past.

We also would like to work with DEA and ICE and others to

somehow get beyond the word ‘‘cooperation.’’ It kind of drives me

crazy, to be honest with you. We should be using the word ‘‘collaboration.’’ We should know what each other’s role is, and we should

complement each other’s role and we should strengthen and add to

that. A mere exchange of ideas is not going to take you where you

want to go as far as effectiveness on that southwest border.

And we see positive signs of that happening. There is a lot of energy in the community right now addressing the issues you brought

up. And I think that if we can somehow use that energy to, in your

efforts—and I have to laud you for—I have been a drug warrior for

37 years. I started buying dope as a cop, and I spent 15 years in

the Beltway drug war, and I have seen interest go up and down.

I know your interest is real in your subcommittee, and you are trying to help us. And I think that we need to do that together. I

think that law enforcement counterparts sitting at the table with

your help can somehow focus that energy that is out there right

now. And I haven’t seen it for 4 or 5 years, but it is back.

DEA is looking at a strategy that actually enhances our ability

to get into transportation groups. Their drug flow prevention strategy is something that we would like to support. ICE is also looking

at the money side, which I think is an often ignored part of our

drug problem, is the cash going back to these organizations that

continue to cause us problems.

But I would just like to summarize that we have—our drug initiatives are still pretty strong. We would not like to leave you with

the impression that we have, because of the war on terrorism, that

we have abandoned this field. We feel that the Arizona initiative,

that the America Shield, or even our container security initiative

of checking containers before they are shipped here helps us interdict drugs. The better technology we get and deploy on that border,

the better job we can do.

Thank you once again for inviting me and us. And my written

testimony will also be entered, and be happy to entertain any questions you might have.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Passic follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Torres.

STATEMENT OF JOHN P. TORRES, DEPUTY ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT

Mr. TORRES. Good afternoon, Chairman Souder, and members of

the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to address you

today to discuss the efforts of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] in the fight against drug smuggling.

As the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland

Security, ICE is responsible for identifying and eliminating

vulnerabilities at our Nation’s border. Our agency seeks to prevent

terrorist acts and criminal activity by targeting the people, money,

and materials that support terrorists and criminal organizations.

The 2005 National Drug Threat Assessment produced by the National Drug Intelligence Center [NDIC] makes it clear that the

southwest border is the center of gravity for most drugs smuggled

into the United States. Also, Mexican drug trafficking organizations are playing a growing role in both the smuggling into and the

distribution of drugs within the United States. Despite, or possibly

as a result of successes in controlling methamphetamine precursor

chemicals in the United States and Canada, production of methamphetamine in Mexico appears to be increasing. ICE investigators

are focused on attacking the organizations that are responsible for

the illicit movement of people, money, and materials across our Nation’s borders. All smuggling, no matter what the commodity is involved, represents a vulnerability to our Nation’s security.

The core of ICE’s contributions to the national drug effort is our

investigations which focus on attacking transportation networks

and the illicit proceeds derived from all smuggling. Several recent

investigative milestones demonstrate ICE’s successful focus on disrupting and dismantling smuggling organizations. In November

2004 and February 2005, Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela,

founding members of the Cali Cartel, were extradited to Miami

from Colombia as a result of an ICE-led investigation that is one

of the longest and most successful organized crime drug enforcement task force investigations ever conducted. The Rodriguez

Orejuela brothers are the highest-level narcotic traffickers ever to

be extradited from Colombia to the United States. The criminal indictments that resulted in their extradition also included criminal

forfeiture counts that target $2 billion in proceeds.

In a preemptive effort, ICE’s dedicated resources to investigating,

disrupting, and dismantling those organizations that smuggle

drugs into Mexico prior to their entry into the United States

through OCDETF’s Operation Panama Express, agents from ICE,

DEA, and the FBI are providing tactical intelligence to interdictors,

principally the U.S. Coast Guard. This practice has continued to result in significant seizures of cocaine destined to the United States

through Mexico. While Operation Panama Express is often referred

to as a transit zone operation, we also see it as an important contributor to our southwest border effort. Every ton of bulk cocaine

seized from a go-fast boat has a force-multiplying effect by eliminating the need to interdict that cocaine at the southwest border.

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As this committee is well aware, ICE and one of our legacy agencies, the U.S. Customs Service, has been a leader in successfully investigating the economic proceeds of crime since the Money Laundering Control Act was passed in 1986. Since the creation of ICE,

our financial investigations have evolved into a systemic focus that

identifies vulnerabilities that cut across the spectrum of criminal

activities.

Operation Wire Cutter is a prime example of how ICE agents

have been able to apply a systemic approach to money laundering

and work cooperatively with our foreign law enforcement counterparts to attack methods used by criminal enterprises to launder

their illicit proceeds. Operation Wire Cutter, a 3-year OCDETF investigation, resulted in the arrest of 41 individuals and the seizure

of $71⁄2 million, 755 kilograms of cocaine, 61⁄2 kilograms of heroin,

and 205 pounds of marijuana. It should also be noted that this

marked the first time that a money broker was extradited from Colombia to the United States.

The focus today on our work on the southwest border should not

be taken to minimize the smuggling threats in other areas. On our

northern border we have seen a continuing growth in the smuggling of Canadian-produced marijuana into our country and, in

some cases, the smuggling of cocaine from the United States into

Canada. The northern border drug threat also includes ecstasy and

methamphetamine precursors such as ephedrine. ICE and other

DHS agencies have worked in partnership and with our Canadian

law enforcement partners through Integrative Border Enforcement

Teams [IBETs] to identify and attack organized smuggling groups

that operate along the northern border.

Like the border with Mexico, smuggling organizations operating

along our northern border are increasingly sophisticated and are

involved in smuggling drugs, aliens, commercial merchandise, and

currency in both directions.

In conclusion, I want to assure the subcommittee that investigating, disrupting, and dismantling drug smuggling organizations remains at the core of what ICE agents are focused on in order to

secure our borders in furtherance of our Homeland Security mission. By eliminating the infrastructure exploited by smugglers,

whether they smuggle drugs, people, or other contraband, border

security is enhanced. ICE is dedicated and committed to this mission. We look forward to working with this committee to enhance

our abilities to accomplish this mission.

I thank you again for inviting ICE to speak with you today, and

I will be glad to answer any questions you may have at this time.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Torres follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. I thank you each for your testimony. I am—we

don’t have our clock here, so I am going to start with some questions and I will yield to Mr. Gutknecht, and when Mr. Cummings

is here, I’ll yield to him as well.

I have lots of different questions, so it’s hard to know where to

start. I want to make it clear to any—to all of you, that the agents

involved in the field are who we pay tribute to. I mean any kind

of criticisms we’re having on organizational structure, how best to

effect this, is not criticism of individual agents who are doing their

best every day on the front lines. And I know it’s hard to pull a

large bureaucracy together, and especially multiple large bureaucracies; and we have been unsuccessful historically and now Congress is saying, ‘‘faster, faster, faster.’’

But Mr. Torres, with all due respect, part of my frustration is

that in your testimony you say there was an agreement between

ICE and CBP to enhance the work of both organizations, and that

prior to these guidelines there was little or no coordination between

the agencies before the creation of DHS, which is certainly true.

But what in the world are two divisions of an agency doing negotiating an agreement? I mean, the fundamental question here is

that most Americans thought, probably idealistically, that when we

merged DHS that there would be a joint mission, that there would

be top-down review of how to be effective. Now we are hearing

there is another review going of how to make this more effective.

Not like it is two entities negotiating as to how best to trade information, but rather a systemic, integrated firm.

Now, my concern is not whether CBP or ICE is the better. Absolutely, both are needed. And not only do you need a picket fence,

you need a flexible fence, in effect, that moves in both directions

beyond the border. We need detention and removal. Some people

are concerned about merging the two because we are going to forget the historic INS function, which is, I don’t think, going to happen right now in the environment of the United States, that suddenly we are going to forget the INS, the legacy INS function.

What we are trying to figure out is how in the world can we devise an agency here inside the DHS that then can work with DEA.

You have the Defense Department looking about standing up a

NORTHCOM with another intelligence center on the border with

JITF 6, the legacy JITF 6, whatever they come up with along the

border, if we have any Guard and Reserve people to train along the

border, but trying to figure out how to pull this all together. But

one of the initial steps has to be some kind of a more effective organization inside DHS before we even get into kind of moving the

rest.

Now, let me start with a couple of questions related to the organized smuggling enterprises. It was—and let me start with a very

particular. I mean to me, drugs have the biggest death consequence

in the United States, 20,000 minimum, 30,000 a year. Terrorism is

probably—if you take it over the last few years, has been 3,000 to

3,300 total in the United States. But there you have the risk of a

catastrophic amount of people losing their lives.

And then the third is our illegal immigrants; to the degree you

have murderers or others come across the United States who aren’t

involved in drugs or terrorism, you have a certain risk too. But baVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:06 Dec 21, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00054 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24890.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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sically a lot of these are the same people and the same organizations. And certainly the vulnerability whether—if you can smuggle

drugs across, you can smuggle nuclear parts. If you can smuggle

people across, you can smuggle drugs or nuclear parts there. And

to some degree, there is a merging of this. And we are looking at

a number of different pieces of legislation to look at this.

Now, let me ask a series of questions based off of yet what seems

like a nonborder issue but is directly related to, in my opinion, a

border.

In Elkhart County, IN, in my district, the prosecutor has taken

down two green card operations; in Allentown in my district, they

have taken one, because we have relatively low unemployment and

lots of illegals are coming in. We also see a small percentage of

those, but a percentage of those with narcotics and a small percentage of those are in watch groups in my district, all of whom come

across the border somewhere in the United States.

I also had a wedding reception the other week—and I raised this

to Director Chertoff—one lady telling me that she had four—four

people had stolen her Social Security number, and she couldn’t get

a credit card because four other people had her Social Security

number. Then a doctor sat down at the same table, whose entire

group had their Social Security number stolen and used; that, because basically if people are going to apply for jobs, they are going

to need a Social Security number, and if they have a Social Security number with a picture, then the employer can’t do anything

about it as long as there is a Social Security card and a picture.

Now, what it suggests to me is there are fairly large operations

going on here that when I go down to the southwest border, and

no matter which of the agencies I work with, clearly we are looking

at people as they are coming in. As you mentioned, the Coast

Guard is interdicting before they get into Central America. Once it

gets into Mexico we kind of lose it; it pops back up in the border.

By then the question is, are they going to go through with just kind

of an illegal immigrant violation at a regular border crossing, in

which case we will detain them and send them back and then they

will come through again; or if they have a criminal record, we will

detain them; or they will move in between the different areas. That

as you look at this pattern, particularly in between the different

areas—and now correct me if any of you feel this statement is incorrect—that those who have other criminal intents or criminal

records are more likely to move through a nonport of entry, because at a port of entry they are more likely to get caught, to be

screened and therefore detained or sent back.

So if you have a criminal record, other than illegal immigration,

the odds are you are going to move either in eastern California,

somewhere in east or west Arizona, or in so many holes in Texas.

In which case that, if that is true, do any of you disagree with that

statement that if you were a high-risk person, probably a point of

entry isn’t where you are going to head across? And that we all

know and can see with the eyes, anybody who goes to the southwest border, that these people are not likely to walk up in groups

to the desert, with up to 100 miles across, without having some

kind of vehicle designated in advance to pick them up, that somebody is out there waiting for them. That, furthermore, we full well

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know they are directing them along the way. That—in multiple

ways, whether it be in a course of the path, whether it be where

there is water, whether it is a Blackhawk is coming and you had

better hide for a while, abandoned loads of dope that we find because we got tipped off or heard that there were Border Patrol vehicles up ahead. That then, when somebody picks them up, who is

renting the vans? Who is putting the ads in Central America?

I mean, I’ve heard testimony at this subcommittee and over at

Homeland Security where they said it is $8,000 to $12,000 to get

a 7-day guarantee into the United States or you get your money

back—if you are from Mexico, a little more if you are from Central

America—testified from DHS from Mr. Garcia that it was substantially higher for Middle Easterners, but around $30,000. That that

means somebody is advertising, like a travel agency down in Central and South America; that somebody is arranging the vans; that

somebody is providing the Social Security numbers; that somebody

has probably got a job list where they are headed.

And the question is that probably many of these same groups are

involved in multiple things. They are for-hire agencies.

To what degree do you—are you coordinating with the FBI

through OCDETF, with the DEA through their narcotics intelligence efforts, through the ICE, through the Customs and Border

Patrol? To what degree are you looking at these systems, which are

probably doing—if 92 percent of the cocaine is coming through

these holes, what are we doing to catch that?

What are we doing with the human trafficking organizations? In

my bet, we’re going to find a lot of them are the same people financing this. And I’d appreciate some comments on that. And do

you need additional legislation, more penalties for coyotes, more

penalties for people who organize? What is the approach of each of

your agencies in looking at these systems? And are you talking to

each other about it?

Are we so stovepiped right at the border, stovepiped in land and

ICE investigations, stovepiped in DEA, stovepiped in the FBI, that

we aren’t even kind of coordinating a systematic—what I just outlined was probably a work force, an international, a van rental that

is—you know, they aren’t thinking, oh, this isn’t in any jurisdiction, they are working as an organized structure in between the

borders. You don’t just randomly walk through 100 miles of desert

unless you are really stupid. And some people are, but most of

them aren’t.

Mr. TORRES. Mr. Chairman, I would like to start responding on

behalf of ICE. I would like to give you one example of how we are

coordinating our efforts on the southwest border, and that is with

the Arizona Border Control Initiative along the southwest border,

mainly between the ports of entry on up through the State of Arizona into Phoenix, and our precursor operation with ICE, which

was the Operation ICE Storm.

For example, we take a look at working in partnership with the

Border Patrol, with the CBP inspectors, and in many instances

with DEA and the FBI, with the level of violence that we are seeing associated with human traffickers, human smugglers, and drug

traffickers.

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Some of the results over the past year and a half—this is an ongoing initiative that started a little over a year and a half ago.

We’ve interdicted over 7,000 aliens, presented over 300 defendants

for prosecution for human smuggling violations, recovered over 250

weapons. We have seen a dramatic drop in human aliens/kidnapping-related crime from 82 percent down to about 20 percent. And

those are based on statistics from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s

Department and the Arizona Police Department.

What we do is we work hand in hand almost in a task force environment down there, sharing intelligence and working leads together. Whether we get a call somewhere across the country that

says there are people being held against their will in a drop house

in Arizona, we will work in concert with the FBI, if necessary, with

State and locals, to go rescue those people. In many instances

those, as you said, some of those organizations are also moving

drugs. And we are working closely with DEA, we are working closely with Customs and Border Protection through the Border Patrol

agents to interdict and to focus on the organizations.

ICE focuses on the investigations itself, and we take a look at

where there is displacement. When we received intelligence that

those organizations were moving outward, either toward Las Vegas

or Los Angeles International Airport, we then focused our efforts

in Los Angeles. Exactly as you were saying, we focused on travel

agencies, because those travel agencies were bringing people into

the United States or providing some sort of money laundering operation for those organizations. And we also had significant success

in dismantling those organizations in Los Angeles. I can’t speak on

behalf of everyone at this table, but I would venture to guess that

most of them here would say that Arizona Border Control Initiative

has been very successful as an example of how we are coordinating

on the southwest border.

Mr. PLACIDO. Chairman Souder, the Drug Enforcement Administration takes a very systemic view of collaboration, cooperation, at

the interagency level. Let me give you just a few examples of that.

Our foreign office in Mexico, which I recently ran, in our office

spaces are not only DEA personnel, but ICE and FBI physically colocated and co-mingled. The El Paso Intelligence Center since 1974

has been an interagency center designed to bring together people

at this level. Our Office of Special Intelligence in the Special Operation Division at DEA are interagency, and now the new OCDETF

Fusion Center, all designed to be interagency, and with the express

purpose of doing exactly what you are talking about: assuring that

we collect the right kinds of information, we maximize our efforts

in collection, and then get that information to the agency that has

primary jurisdiction for handling that matter.

I believe that what we really have is more of a problem in execution than in strategy. We know what needs to be done; I think that

we just need to do this more fluidly and to really recognize that

this is an order of magnitude problem; that the flow of drugs,

chemicals, and other transnational crime coming across that border

is enormous. And the level of cooperation that is required to combat it, given the resource constraints that we have, particularly

outside the United States, has to be really maximized and optimized to get to the place that we all want to be.

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Thank you.

Mr. PASSIC. Just one short comment. We have the luxury of

being outside the cat-fight domain of the investigators and the intel

community, and that is where the rub comes in the Federal drug

war. And we are lucky in that we can sit down and we can talk

to ICE and DEA and the interdiction community about just doing

a better job. They don’t have to worry about us competing or having that overlapping jurisdictional problem that the rest of the

guys have to work with. So we do need that information that you

talked about, though, because when we pick up somebody, especially at those inspection points inland, about the only thing we can

count on is a thumbprint. And we are hoping that the OCDETF

Drug Fusion Center, combining 32 Federal databases, not just drug

information, but all criminal data is going to be in there to include

identification of subjects. We want to figure out a way to plug into

that. We want to be able to have our license plate readers not only

on our points of entry, but also in those inland inspections, automatically query all of those databases so we know who we have

and we can make an apprehension and a detention.

Because the bottom line is, on that border we have to have—

there has to be some threat of arrest and incarceration. There has

to be some deterrence that has to be built into it. The catch-andrelease policy doesn’t work very well, and we recognize that. And

we need that intelligence, we need more prosecutors and investigators to do that.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. I will ask some probably written detailed followup. And we may have to do something in particular on

the Arizona Border Initiative.

I asked Commissioner Bonner from the committee how many

people extra came through in Texas and California, because, for example, I was there during—at the time of the Arizona Border Initiative, and know that Texas was more or less stripped of resources, as was much of California in the sense of helicopters,

planes, many agents; that also the numbers that were—the number of people detained on the border daily across that have been

given to us by CBP didn’t totally change much, it just switched to

Arizona.

That suggests there may have been a counter movement if you

don’t have enough people on it. And I want to pursue that a little

bit more, because the third thing with that is what actually happened to the people who we arrested, and did we in fact get any

of the systems? But we will followup more with some written questions.

I yield to Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am glad

you are holding this hearing this afternoon. And I apologize to our

witnesses. Ms. Norton and I were meeting with the Secretary of

State, Ms. Rice, and we ran a little bit over.

But again I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this important

hearing to examine the efforts by the Department of Homeland Security and the Drug Enforcement Administration to address the

narcotics smuggling as one among many serious threats to Homeland Security both in northern and southern U.S. borders.

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Our outlook on border security has changed substantially since

the attacks of September 11th, as the independent bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States

noted in its July 2004 report on the September 11th terrorist attacks. And they said: In the decade before September 11, 2001, border security encompassing travel, entry, and immigration was not

seen as a national security matter. Public figures voiced concern

about the war on drugs, the right level and height of immigration

problems along the southwest border, immigration crises originating in the Caribbean and elsewhere, and the growing criminal traffic in humans.

The immigration system as a whole was widely viewed as increasingly dysfunctional and badly in need of reform. In national

security circles, however, only smuggling of weapons of mass destruction carried weight, not the entry of terrorists who might use

such weapons or the presence of associated foreign-born terrorists.

That is from their report, the 9/11 Commission.

Our heightened attention to terrorism and different terrorist

methods do not change the fact that some 20,000 Americans die as

a result of drug abuse every year, nearly seven times the number

of lives lost on September 11th. It is therefore critical that we not

lose our focus on drugs when it comes to protecting America’s borders, and Congress has taken steps to ensure that this does not

happen.

To ensure that the attention to the counternarcotics mission

would not take a back seat to other priorities within the component

agencies of the new Department of Homeland Security, Congress

specifically provided that the Department’s primary mission would

include the responsibility to monitor connections between illegal

drug trafficking and terrorism, coordinate efforts to sever such connections, and otherwise contribute to efforts to interdict illegal

drug trafficking.

Congress has since established within DHS the Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement to ensure a high profile for the

counterdrug mission within DHS and to facilitate coordination of

counterdrug intelligence among DHS component agencies and between DHS agencies and outside governmental agencies.

Unfortunately, the President’s fiscal year 2006 budget request

chooses not to fund DHS Counternarcotics Enforcement Office. This

is simply unacceptable in light of the threat that illegal drugs pose

and the fact that DHS is the lead Cabinet-level agency for providing drug enforcement along our Nation’s borders.

According to the National Drug Intelligence Center’s National

Drug Threat Assessment for 2005, the southwest border States are

primary points of entry for major illicit drug threats such as Colombian and Peruvian cocaine, South American and Mexican heroin, Mexican methamphetamine, and Mexican and Colombian

marijuana. The northern border States are primary entry points for

Canadian marijuana, southeastern heroin, and ecstasy.

Given this reality, it is imperative that DHS component agencies

cooperate fully with each other and with DEA and other sources of

operational and intelligence support to interdict drugs both at the

borders and before they reach our borders and shores in the transit

zone.

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Our witnesses hopefully will provide information along those

lines.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Elijah E. Cummings follows:]

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Mr. CUMMINGS. And to that end, Mr. Chairman, if I still have a

moment, I just want to go to Mr. Utley and just ask you one quick

question and then I know my time is probably up.

I am just wondering what kind of message, Mr. Utley, do you

think it sends when the President fails to include money in his

budget for your office, for what you are doing?

Admiral UTLEY. Well, the 2006 budget included $1.82 million for

the office that has been carved out to the chief of staff’s office. And

I do have complete freedom with that. And it has not—the working

under the chief of staff’s—well, under the auspices of the chief of

staff has not proven to be negative in any way.

Mr. CUMMINGS. I don’t know if you know it, but it was the legislation of this subcommittee, and in particular Mr. Souder and the

ranking member, myself, that created your position. And we have

been very concerned that position has not had the oomph that we

had intended it to have. As a matter of fact, when your predecessor

testified before us, I almost vomited to know how weak the position

was. And I just wanted to know where we are today. I mean, you

feel pretty good about it? Do you feel like you are having some impact? Do people listen to you?

Admiral UTLEY. Oh, absolutely. As a matter of fact, I mean, I

meet with Commissioner Bonner and Mr. Garcia and the Commandant of the Coast Guard on a monthly basis, and we discuss

all of these things. I have absolute access to these individuals to

talk about coordination and how we can make things better, and

I have access to the Secretary as well.

Mr. CUMMINGS. The other week we had some testimony, I guess

maybe about a month ago, before our subcommittee about the

southwest border. And they made it sound like you could come

through—that the southwest border had holes like Swiss cheese.

And they talked about—what is the name of that group, the group

of, the—yeah, the Minutemen, the Minutemen. Them. And they

talked about, they provided some very interesting testimony. And

they made it sound like people were like coming over the border

in droves. And, you know, you can’t help but think as I listen to

them, and we kind of hit on it in that hearing, what they might

be bringing with them and how porous that border is with regard

to drugs. And I was just wondering, do you all see that as a major

point of entry? And you all may have testified to this already.

Admiral UTLEY. Well, generally, the conventional wisdom is that

cocaine comes through the ports of entry and marijuana comes

through between the ports of entry. I mean, that is certainly not

exclusive, but that’s generally what it is. And if you—I had the opportunity to follow the chairman on his trip to the southwest borders. I have laid eyes on that southwest border, and I understand

how difficult that is to maintain the line, as they say, in the Border

Patrol.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Did you think we need more Border Patrol?

Admiral UTLEY. I think that the system of people, infrastructure

and technology is really the answer. And I think that you probably

talked to Chief Aguilar about that. And you can’t do one without

the other. The answer is not green shoulders, shoulder to shoulder

across the line, I think it has to be a holistic approach, and to include U.S. Attorneys, bed space, things like that.

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Mr. CUMMINGS. Do you all think there are enough resources

down there? I’m talking about the southwest border. This is the

Congress, we’re supposed to be allocating money. I’m just curious.

Admiral UTLEY. Well, the President’s budget asked for more Border Patrol agents, so there are more resources going there. And

also, there is the America Shield Initiative, which has support from

the administration, that will bring this technology to the southwest

borders. Once again, it is not just people, it’s a combination.

Mr. CUMMINGS. You realize we had legislation not very long ago,

an amendment to try to bring more members of the Border Patrol

and it was voted down by the Congress. Do you realize that?

Admiral UTLEY. Yes, I do.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Were you disappointed about that?

Admiral UTLEY. Well, like you said, it has to be a holistic approach. In other words, it has to have a holistic approach across

the entire border. It’s not just people.

Mr. CUMMINGS. I got that piece. I’m asking you were you disappointed about the fact that the Congress voted down more members of the Border Patrol that would have been patrolling that

southwest border that you’re talking about? You’re our guy, you’re

our guy in this operation. So I’m asking our guy, the one whose position we created, were you disappointed? And I realize there are

other things that have to be done, but right now I’m dealing by the

way with this piece.

Admiral UTLEY. Well, anything that takes away with more on

the southwest border is, of course, disappointing.

Mr. CUMMINGS. And so do you need more resources—I got that

piece, do you—I’m almost finished. Do you need more resources

with regard to this other piece that you talked about? You said

there are more pieces than just people, which I do agree. Do you

have the resources you need for that, for the other pieces?

Admiral UTLEY. It has not been fully developed yet. This is one

of these things almost like the analogy—any great procurement, in

other words, you come with an idea of what you would like to have,

set of requirements, but you don’t know what all the hardware is

and what the best way to do it is. And we are not far enough along

to have that information and present to Congress and say, this is

what we need precisely. Do you see what I’m saying?

Mr. CUMMINGS. Yes. And so I take it that all of you must be a

little concerned, particularly after September 11th—or greatly concerned about—I’m just talking about the southwest border, I’ll talk

about the other one when I get to another round on it, I guess—

about the fact that this border is as porous as it is. Is there anybody that feels comfortable that it’s OK?

Mr. PASSIC. Greg Passic from Customs and Border Protection.

Commissioner Barner, I believe, addressed our personnel needs

at the full committee hearing, but I know that we have presented

a package which is being looked at now by principals in our Department and they’re trying to figure out how to fit that together.

And I would be happy to get back to you about how that is progressing and what enhancements we’ve asked for.

Mr. CUMMINGS. What about you, Mr. Torres? I was asking, do

you, I take it, any of you all satisfied with the southwest border

at all? Do you feel comfortable with it?

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Mr. TORRES. Actually, we’re looking at the southwest border now

to develop new ideas and innovative ways of addressing the threat,

whether it is the human smuggling threat or whether it’s the drug

smuggling threat or whether it’s an immigration threat, so that we

can leverage all resources, not just the ICE resources, but resources within the Department and from State and locals.

So if your specific question is, am I comfortable with the southwest border? I would like to see more on the southwest border, and

that’s why we’re taking a look at different opportunities to see how

we can address that.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Do you have a timetable?

Mr. TORRES. Actually, the Department of Homeland Security and

ICE is participating in a southwest border strategy effort; that’s ongoing, I don’t have a specific timetable for you.

Mr. CUMMINGS. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. I think the record needs to show there

is no budget item for your office. What you were referring to was

the fact that inside the administrative budget of the agency, that

you’re inside the chief of staff and your internal budgeting, they intend to spend $1.2 million.

Admiral UTLEY. That is correct.

Mr. SOUDER. But the budget is something that puts the President’s stamp of approval, it then gets locked by the appropriations

process. And in fact, when we went to the Homeland Security debate, as we tried to formalize that in the budget, the administration opposed that aggressively with Chairman Rogers, he said he

would continue to negotiate through. And in fact, this office continues to be not funded in the budget, but funded at the discretion of

the chief of staff and his internal budgeting, which is different than

a Federal budget that acknowledges that the office is there.

Admiral UTLEY. That’s exactly right.

Mr. SOUDER. Also, I think it’s important to note, because I

misspoke earlier and you clarified, that while most, other than immigration, most illegal activity is concentrated between the ports

of entry, that is not true for the larger loads going through trucks,

tunnels and trains, which Mr. Placido, you had in your detailed

testimony where you talked about the cocaine. Is it not true that

most cocaine and precursors to methamphetamines and others are

moving in larger loads, probably not on the backs of individuals or

between the borders, but rather through more major transit

things? Not through the human port of entry or even in between

the borders as much; you’re seeing more of that in the tunnels, the

trains and mostly trucks. And Mr. Passic can maybe talk about

that, too.

Mr. PLACIDO. Yes. It is a little more complex than that. One of

the things that we’re all challenged with as we look at drug seizures, particularly cocaine seizures that are seized in transit. And

we will see in a typical go-fast operation, the seizure will be in metric tons, on a fishing vessel 5 tons, but we know that the average

seizures along the southwest border are 50 to 100 kilos at that

time. And so what happens is those large loads are moving into

Mexico, they’re being staged. And our adversary is very sophisticated and they’re playing the law of averages. They take very large

loads into Mexico, break them down and run them across. And

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we’re fighting a veritable ant army, if you will, as they cross and

then it is reconsolidated again for movement throughout the

United States. So it is a very sophisticated adversary that we’re up

against, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Passic, Mr. Placido, in his testimony, said there

were like 40 tunnels. And these tunnels are amazing. They often

go from one company to another company across the border. When

you take one of those down, can you give an idea of the scale of

the volume that you’re getting as opposed to when you take down

the individuals or even individuals who split up who are bringing

the loads across?

Mr. PASSIC. It goes back to the issue of intelligence and investigations, why we are looking for our buddies here to help us out

there.

You need to develop intelligence on both sides of the border, both

in the staging areas and also where is the dope going once it comes

through, that’s why controlled deliveries are so important. I can’t

really tell you the magnitude or percentage of drugs that comes

through the tunnels, it is significant.

Mr. SOUDER. But like when you get a case, it’s not a kilo, it’s

tons.

Mr. PASSIC. Yes. But you often only get the person that is coming

through the tunnel at that time. You don’t get what went through

before, but we recognize that.

We will also agree that with cocaine and heroin shipments, mostly from Colombia, we’re looking at the ports of entry, at vehicles

coming through. Border Patrol is mostly marijuana seizures.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Ruppersberger.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Sure. We sit here on a regular basis and

hear testimony, and I want to thank you all for what you do. But

it’s very frustrating to look at how we put the drug interdiction enforcement as a priority in this country.

We, right now in Iraq and Afghanistan, have some of our best

intelligence officers. We have joint task force working together,

Army, Navy, Marines, whatever, all coming together and intel is a

very strong component. We have right now in the United States

dealing with the issue of terrorism, the Joint Terrorism Task Force

that has the FBI, CIA, NSA, I think Customs, Immigration, I believe DIA all working in the area of terrorist threats, as we should.

But then you look at what’s happened with respect to drugs; 85

percent, I think, of all violent crime in the United States is drug

related.

And what I see in my travels, and I just got back from South

America, but when I was in Chiang Mai and Thailand, I saw there

are very few DEA agents left. I see that the budgets are getting

lower and lower, and that we have not made the war on drugs the

same priority as we’re making the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And I think this is a big mistake because they both should be high

priorities.

Now, when I just came back last week from Bogota, Colombia,

you see where the drugs are coming from. I think the leadership

there and the president is very courageous in that he is telling the

narcos and the FARK that we’re going after you, we have a drug

program where they are either spraying or literally pulling the coca

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plants out of the ground, and then getting the people in poverty

that are picking the plants and having them plant something else.

And I don’t see that priority here.

I think one of my biggest concerns that I want to express here

today is about our intelligence capabilities regarding the trafficking

of drugs. Once they leave Mexico and Central America and are on

the way to us, the United States, I believe there is a hole in our

intelligence network that must be closed, and I hope that additional cooperation between the agencies—Mr. Passic, you mentioned today a couple of times about how you would want to receive

more intelligence. You know, if you took some of the same resources and you put all the disciplines that we have, you put the

CIA, NSA, DEA, FBI, Customs, Immigration, you put those resources, and you put them in Mexico as an example and get the

intelligence that’s necessary, we could make a difference. Right

now, right now we, I believe—and correct me if I am wrong—85

percent of all the cocaine and most heroin is coming from Colombia

is going through Mexico, and you all are out there trying to do the

best you can, trying to talk about your strike forces and everything

else, and I need to know what your resources are. You can’t sit

here, I guess, because you represent a certain agency and ask for

more money, but we’re sitting here looking at what you’re doing

and you’re not getting the resources.

Now Mr. Passic, first thing, what type of intelligence would you

want to see? What do you need to help you do your job in a better

way?

Mr. PASSIC. Since you asked the question——

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. And I’d like the answer.

Mr. PASSIC. I’d like to try to give you the straight answer here.

Drug intelligence is very fragmented, we’re all responsible for

that, law enforcement, Congress, we all kind of watched it go into

32 separate databases over the 25, 30 years I’ve been here. One of

the best things that happened to drug intelligence after September

11th—and this was a congressional initiative, Congress came up

with this and gave law enforcement, the OCEDEF program, $25

million to startup infusion of drug intelligence, to take those 32

separate pots of intel and put them together in a super computer.

That includes not only the drug intelligence, but it includes financial intelligence from Treasury, it includes a lot of intelligence that

we’ve been collecting at great expense to the taxpayer over the last

30 years that we’ve never exploited or used correctly. I think that

was a step that Congress took that forced us to react to it, I think

it was a good step. I think the community needs to continue to support that because if we can make this work, if we can get in there

and we can have one-stop shopping at some place that has all of

that intelligence with one query, not having to hit 32 different

databases, that’s a major step forward.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Let me ask you another issue, too—and

maybe anybody can answer this. Part of the reason I think Mexico

traffickers are doing so well in Mexico is because it’s a safe haven

for them. It’s because the corruption that probably exists in certain

arenas allows them to exist or it wouldn’t be there. What do we

need to do to deal with the issue of corruption from your opinion,

anybody on the panel that has the answer. Is it political, is it poVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:06 Dec 21, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00070 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24890.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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lice, military? I mean, it’s multifaceted, and if we don’t start focusing, prioritizing, it’s never going to stop. And it seems to me the

same people that are taking illegals over the border, taking the

drugs over the border, sure enough are taking al Qaeda cells over

the border, also.

Mr. PLACIDO. Yes, sir. In one my former assignments between

2000 and 2002 I served as DEA’s regional director for the Mexico

Central America Division. And I can tell you that under the Fox

administration during the last 5 years, we have seen an amazing

turnaround. We have probably had more success in terms of disrupting and dismantling organizations in Mexico in the last 5 years

than we have in the last 50, but it’s really a drop in the bucket

compared to what needs to happen.

You mentioned Mexico is a safe haven, and it is. Things that we

take for granted here in the United States, we talk about forming

task forces and relying on State and local and tribal law enforcement to assist Federal authorities. In Mexico, law enforcement frequently is not a source of assistance; they are the criminal adversaries that we face, they’re the hired guns of the narcotic traffickers.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. OK. So how do we deal with this? And let’s

talk solutions.

Mr. PLACIDO. Yes, sir. One of the things we have done with great

effect is our vetted unit initiative. We have pulled together groups

of police officers in Mexico, and the successes that we have had are

a direct result of this, who are given a very rigorous background

examination, polygraph examination, urinalysis, and when they

pass through that process, we end up giving them specialized training and the tools to work with. And these form the basis of our

international cooperation; this is the vehicle through which we’re

able to share very sensitive information and advance U.S. interests.

But the problem is, on an order of magnitude, these are very

small units, and we can advance on a case-specific base——

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Doesn’t it have to start at the very top, the

president? Let’s take an example of something that works because

you want to look at what works.

I was very impressed last week in Bogota, Colombia and we met

with the president and the head of narcotics. And it seems to me

that the United States and Colombia have done an excellent job in

removing the corruption and getting the right people, creating a

patriotic atmosphere for the Colombians. And that the generals

and the people involved in narcotics have basically moved out with

our help, the United States, a lot of the corrupt people, and now

they’re able to do things they’ve never done before. And I don’t see

that same type of situation in Mexico. Do you agree with that or

not?

Mr. PLACIDO. It’s difficult to say. I’ll offer a personal opinion

here, and I have spent extensive time in both countries.

I think the fundamental difference between Colombia and Mexico

is that the Colombians themselves have viewed the narcotics problem as the engine fueling huge domestic problems for themselves.

They’ve made an internal decision to change. I don’t think that as

a nation, Mexico is there yet.

68

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. And that means it starts at the top, and it

is part of our pressure, too.

One question that I have, Mr. Chairman, and I’ll stop. What resources do we need to start dealing with the issue in Mexico? Is

it money, is it our leadership putting the pressure on the leadership in Mexico? I mean, bottom line, I think more and more with

Colombia’s eradication, they’re not going to ever stop it, but they’re

moving somewhere. Do you agree that 85 percent of our cocaine

comes from Mexico right now?

Mr. PLACIDO. The official statistic, sir, has just gone from 77 percent to 92.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. There you go, it’s even more. And how

about the heroin, at least 90 from the east coast, Mississippi River

east?

Mr. PLACIDO. It’s a significant amount.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. If you were the President of the United

States and you knew, based on your background, tell me what you

need, the resources, to deal with corruption, to deal with this problem in Mexico. Because then when it gets to our streets and we

have our police officers out there working and trying to stop it and

catch people, you take down one, two more come up.

Mr. PLACIDO. Well, clearly, as an official of the administration,

I support the President’s budget——

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. We’re not asking about that, you covered

yourself there.

Mr. PLACIDO. I understand. What I can tell you is that there are

great efficiencies that can be had from using the resources that we

already have at our disposal to greater effect. And I think that

we’re seeing the beginnings of that right now. I am very encouraged by some of the steps that were taken immediately prior to

this hearing to try and leverage increased deficiencies from the resources we do have. I am not prepared to sit here and tell you that

we wouldn’t like more resources. The magnitude of the problem

that we face from Mexico is enormous.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. I’m glad you gave that answer and you covered the President, and whatever. Bottom line, the war against

drugs is hurting more Americans than the war right now in Iraq

and Afghanistan, and we have not put the resources in, the budgetary money isn’t there, and we haven’t stepped up what we need

to do. And I would hope that a hearing like this will at least come

out with some solutions so that we, as Members of Congress, can

work in a bipartisan way with the administration to make sure

that they identify this is a serious problem, and what we’re doing

now isn’t going to solve it.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Just 1 second. You just said something that I

just want to know what you meant by it. You said you were

pleased with the things that happened just before this hearing. I

just want you to clear that up, I don’t know what that means.

Mr. PLACIDO. Yes, sir. In the weeks leading up to this hearing,

and not because of this hearing, DEA has held a series of meetings

on what we’re calling our Worldwide Drug Flow Disruption Strategy. We met with ICE, CBP, Coast Guard the intelligence community to try to pull together a strategy to try and degrade our adverVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:06 Dec 21, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00072 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24890.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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sary’s capability to get drugs to the border. So that’s very encouraging.

About a week prior to the meeting, Mr. Passic and I met, and

there currently are no CPB officials at EPIC, for example, they

weren’t there before the reorganization, but we’re working together

integrating CBP into EPIC and to bring them into the OCEDEF fusion center. So there are some initiatives that are underway right

now that we’re very optimistic are having to bear fruit and really

help bring greater efficiency than the resources we already have,

sir.

Mr. SOUDER. If I can followup one more on this with a question

from Mr. Ruppersberger on the fusion center. Mr. Passic, given

what I just heard from Mr. Placido, I take it your office is looking

at joining the fusion center, your agency, CBP?

Mr. PASSIC. Yes, that is correct.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Torres, has ICE agreed to submit their data to

the fusion center?

Mr. TORRES. That is actually being reviewed practically at the

cabinet level, looking at the different legal hurdles that we have in

submitting all our data that is in our system right now. A couple

of issues, one has to do with asylum data in our immigration basis,

and the other with a proprietary commercial business administration that is owned actually by the companies out there. So we’re

looking at those right now.

Mr. SOUDER. If those issues prove to be stumbling blocks,

couldn’t most of the information be isolated from that? In other

words, rather than legal issues, block submitting case management

data as a whole going in, rather than isolate out some?

Mr. TORRES. I would have to get back with our technical experts

on that and give you an answer.

Mr. SOUDER. Because it doesn’t do us any good to do fusion centers if the other agencies don’t fuse.

Mr. McHenry.

Mr. MCHENRY. I will defer at this moment.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Ms. Norton.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think what you’re

hearing from the committee in part reflects the fact that after September 11th, there was some reason to believe that the terrorist

threat, in and of itself, would raise the priority for effective ways

to deal with drug trafficking on the one hand, on the trafficking

side and on the demand side, and I think there is real disappointment that this has not happened.

It’s easy enough to recognize that drug traffickers and people just

crossing the border would take the same routes. I’d like to raise it

to the next step, because if it’s easy enough for terrorists to figure

out, as Mr. Souder said, why bother to come in legally? I mean,

isn’t it kind of silly to bother to come in legally if there are so many

entryways, illegal entryways that are so easy to manage, even for

amateurs. And these are people that tend to get to be professionals

in what they are doing rather quickly, whether it’s flying a plane

or figuring out the best route across the border.

The next step, of course, is to figure out, if it’s so easy to cross

the border, look at how easy it is to make money trafficking in

drugs. Boy, they’ve shut down al Qaeda and perhaps done an effecVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:06 Dec 21, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00073 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24890.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tive job, as we understand, shutting down the money routes, the

known money routes.

A lot of folks, also amateurs, are making a lot of money smuggling drugs, I mean, millions upon millions. So I’m interested in

specific connections between drug smuggling, drug trafficking and

terrorists. And not only terrorists themselves, but again, you really

don’t have to be one of these rather able terrorists, and they have

shown themselves to have some strategic ability, to figure out

that—you might not even have to get in the business yourself—

there are already plenty of folks who smuggle—to establish connections between those folks, the same folks, by the way, so that one

doesn’t have to look at nationality—but the same folks might be an

even better way, since the one thing that turns out to be fairly easy

to do is to get drugs across the border and to find people willing

to take risks to do so.

So my question is, to what extent are terrorists used in the drug

smuggling business? Have they yet found their way—God knows I

can’t believe they won’t, at some point—have they yet found their

way into the business, either directly, or using the many agents

they could find who are already in the business, and to what extent

is this occurring, and to what extent do you know anything about

whether it’s occurring?

Admiral UTLEY. Well, part of the mandate that was set up by

this committee was to track a connection between terrorist and

counternarcotics, I’ll tell you what I’m doing. First of all, we have

not found a direct connection by terrorist organizations using counternarcotics to bring anything in the United States. Now, of the

CPOC targets, the consolidated priority drug trafficking targets, 18

of those have a connection, even if it is peripherally and it’s outside

of your borders.

Now, what have we done to energize this? I’ve asked ENDIC, and

they are providing a study right now to determine in depth what

the association would be.

I have also energized the National Counterterrorism Center to

look at this as well, and the JTTF precisely with that. And I have

set up a division within the organization that I have that is precisely looking at tracking, and if a connection is found, severing a

connection between drugs and terrorist.

So it’s not—we’ve got an eye on it, I guess, and we’ve engaged

the right people in the intelligence community to take a look at just

exactly what you are asking.

Ms. NORTON. One of the great criticisms of our intelligence was

that we didn’t have human intelligence, we didn’t have people on

the ground, we didn’t have people trained in the language and so

forth. Well, you know I think we do have the capability to have

human intelligence, people who speak Spanish. And it does seem

to me pretty clear that unless one is engaged in human intelligence, one cannot possibly know if this is happening or be able

to stop it before it becomes a real phenomenon.

And again, I stress that if the whole point after September is to

be forehanded, the only question is, when will somebody figure out

that this is a fairly easy way to do it? So my question is, do you

believe that human intelligence should be used? Is human intelVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:06 Dec 21, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00074 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24890.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ligence being used on the other side of the border, whether for

straight out drug trafficking or for finding these connections?

Mr. PLACIDO. Yes, ma’am. A direct response to your question,

and with the support of this committee and the Congress, the DEA

operates approximately 80 offices in 63 countries around the world.

About 10 percent of our work force is overseas, and about a fifth

of DEA’s 5,000 informants that are active at any given time are

based outside of the United States. So we are actively recruiting

human source intelligence around the globe.

And increasingly——

Ms. NORTON. How about in Mexico and the Caribbean, in these

countries that are the most direct importers, Colombia—the most

direct importers to the United States? Do we have human intelligence helping us to, on the ground, to figure out what is happening?

Mr. PLACIDO. Yes, ma’am. We do, in fact, have human intelligence. The largest DEA presence outside the United States is in

Latin America, specifically in Mexico and Colombia. And increasingly, we are working with our counterparts in the intelligence

community—DEA has made a move to rejoin the intelligence community—to make sure when we are debriefing sources about drug

trafficking, that we’re also asking additional questions about terrorism. We’re not trying to expand our mandate, we are the only

single mission agency in the government dealing with drugs, but

by taking 5 minutes extra during a debriefing, we can ask additional questions and get that information to the agencies that do

have primary jurisdiction for terrorism.

What I can tell you is that the interagency assessment of the use

of drug trafficking to fund terrorism, the assessment is that the

connection between drugs and terror is, quote, infrequent and opportunistic, with the exception of the FARC and the AUC in Colombia, and, to a lesser extent, also in Peru. However, we’re very concerned and we’re trying to develop a sense of warnings and indicators that would alert us to any change as this develops.

Clearly we are very much dialed in to the possibility of the

southwest border being used as a route to move either people or

weapons of mass destruction into the country. It is, however,

counterintuitive to think that drug traffickers would intentionally

go into the WMD or terrorist business, as that would likely invoke

a response that would cut into their profits. But we know that people don’t always operate in logical ways, and there are indicators,

certain key extraditions, arrests, murders must force certain traffickers to operate in ways that are illogical.

In addition, we frequently see cover loads; there are different

rates to smuggle heroin and cocaine, and they will commingle to

try and get a better break on smuggling certain commodities in.

Substitute anthrax for heroin, and you can unintentionally smuggle

WMD into the country. It is a point of real concern. And I think

if one thing has changed since September 11th, it’s that while we

don’t want drugs to continue to flow across our borders, we don’t

want any weapons of mass destruction or terrorists. We’ve got a

zero tolerance level.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman——

Mr. SOUDER. Ms. Norton, can I followup with——

72

Ms. NORTON. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Directly on the Mexico question. In the States immediately crossing the U.S. border, DEA had pulled out from some

because of the danger to agents. Are you back in on most of those

across the border? What is our current status direct along the border, as opposed to Mexico City and more inland?

Mr. PASSIC. Every office that we have along the border, there are

currently three, is back at its normal staffing level. Periodically,

the threat level has peaked and we’ve moved people out. That has

typically been for a couple of weeks at a time when there is a specific threat. But more importantly, I’d be glad to take you off line,

some recent developments in Mexico. They are very optimistic as

far as future cooperation. I just made some promises not to discuss

them in public at this point.

Mr. SOUDER. With that caveat, do you believe there has also been

progress made in the Cancun area in Yucatan Peninsula, which

also had great chaos?

Mr. PLACIDO. That continues to be a major staging area for drugs

coming into the country. You will recall in, I believe, 2001 the

former Governor of Quintana Roo, the State in which Cancun is located, was arrested. He was involved in very high level corruption

for the Carrillo Fuentes organization facilitating the flow of drugs

into that area. That part of the country still remains a very significant port of entry for drugs that are coming from South America

and being staged in Mexico.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I had no more questions. I do want

to say that you don’t need to be an ordinary smuggler and decide

to go into WMD business, the weapons of mass destruction business. I mean, these smugglers deal through intermediaries so that

nobody knows who is working for whom. And to the extent that

somebody gets a cut of somebody’s business, the only way—and

gets into their business—they don’t have to know it, which goes

back to my point about the only way you’re going to know it is it

will be people on the ground, I mean, human intelligence on the

ground who will ferret out those connections—I hope I don’t sound

like some movie that I recently saw, because that is not what I had

in mind.

But Mr. Chairman, I must say that I believe that, leave aside

terrorism and the need for human intelligence, I cannot help but

believe we would be doing a much better job in combating trafficking of drugs, period, if we had more human intelligence. But I have

no sense of how much, how deeply it is used, how much it is used.

And I was pleased to hear what you said.

But it just seems to me that, with what we believe human intelligence can do, that if it were really being widely used in the trafficking business, that we would have a much better chance at

knocking out large operators than we seem to be able to do.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. WATSON. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you, Ms. Watson.

Ms. WATSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate

your sensitivity to the issues that you have been bringing up in our

subcommittee.

73

And one element that seems to me completely missing from this

discussion is the role of the State Department in our diplomatic

service. And I don’t think there is anyone here on the panel that

represents those areas, but let me just say this and get it off my

chest.

If we were truly to shut off this avenue and better secure our

southern border, we must do more to engage the Mexican government and support them in efforts to improve the administration of

justice in our country. The combination of Justice, Homeland Security and the State Department will send a resolute and unified

message to the drug cartel. It will also cover all the different aspects of government necessary to combat illicit drugs. But what

really comes to mind is supply and demand. Nations and States are

financing their budget through the sale of these illicit drugs. Now

let me give you a case in point and bring it closer to home.

I represent an area in southern California. It is very simple for

terrorists who are people who come over from Mexico and fit the

profile of what a person from Mexico should look like. And there

is no question in my mind that they’re not residing right in Los Angeles today.

I found a gun shop in my district that has been operational for

15 years selling guns to foreign governments, to the military, to the

police. We’ve been trying to close it down. They’re out of compliance. So Mr. Torres, I called ATF and U.S. Customs. I also put an

amendment in the gang bill to increase Border Patrol, to increase

agents, because the word back to me is we don’t have enough people in the field to investigate and to move any quicker.

So this hearing, Mr. Chairman, and the way it was written it

says to examine cooperation among agencies. Unless we can all

start working together, we’re never going to—and have enough

staff, personnel out there—we’re never going to get a handle. Because as I look at the numbers there, and that’s, I guess, the

amount that they were able to collect, think about the drugs that

come over the border, carried by ponies that they can’t touch. And

I believe somebody sitting on the 40th floor of corporate America

is in cahoots because this is all driven by money.

Now here is my question to anyone that wants to answer. How

can we get all of the agencies involved to cooperate? When I give

a call to ATF, to Customs, I want immediate turnaround because

I’m talking about something I know and see all the time. The way

it came to my attention was that there was a demonstration by

gangs in front of this shop. I wouldn’t be surprised if narcotics are

moving in and out of there. And I can’t get anyone to really take

action. And so they smuggle over the border because there is a tremendous demand. I can’t get the police to investigate, I had the

mayor out, I had the councilman out and so on, but I can’t get

these agencies moving because it’s not a top priority.

So if we’re looking at terrorism and the means to bring it about,

weapons of mass destruction, we need to look at a better way that

we cooperate among agencies, and when we give you a tip, that you

cooperate with us.

Mr. Torres, can you tell me why it has taken so much time for

U.S. Customs to get the guy out because he doesn’t conform to the

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ons in a certain way? And I know the gang members know how to

put a gun at his head and say give us every weapon you can. And

the murders that go on in my district go on because somebody cut

the deal and didn’t hold up their end of the bargain in terms of

drugs. So how can we cooperate, get you to cooperate with other

agencies?

Mr. TORRES. I would be more than happy to meet with you to get

the specifics of the case so that we can refer that to our office.

Ms. WATSON. Please do. I mean, I’ve been on the phone since

March 5th.

Mr. TORRES. And regarding the gangs, I can assure you the gang

enforcement is a top priority for us, as is narcotics trafficking and

human smuggling. So if there are violations——

Ms. WATSON. We can’t even close the violators down in my district, can’t even close him down.

Mr. TORRES. We would definitely like to work with you and get

that information.

Ms. WATSON. I’ll see you outside the door.

Mr. TORRES. Very well.

Mr. SOUDER. Any further questions?

Ms. WATSON. No.

Mr. SOUDER. I wanted to followup on the border strategy question, because one of the fundamental things is to try to get a comprehensive border strategy. I wanted to ask Mr. Passic and Mr.

Torres whether the Border and Transportation Security Directorate

approve of your efforts to develop a border strategy, or is it being

blocked? Is it moving ahead? I believe that Mr. Passic said you

thought something was moving, and hopefully in a couple of weeks.

Are you feeling resistance in the Department? What is taking so

long?

Mr. PASSIC. No. I think when we initially were asked to participate in this thing, we thought it was a great opportunity. We want

to turn those seizures, those numbers into a gear that fits into a

machine that impacts pain on traffickers. And we saw this as a

great opportunity to build in an engine that included all of us instead of seven or eight different engines puttering around as we

often do. So we did what you did; we went down to the border, we

took a look at all the operations, we came up with 11 action items

that we thought we could do a better job to include working with

the Mexicans on flights landing short of the border. And we put

that list of things we thought we could contribute on the plate of

BTS with our colleagues from ICE. And from what I understand

one of the holdups is, other elements have said geez, we’d like to

throw a couple of our ideas on that thing, too, to make it even more

meaningful. So from what I’ve heard, that’s the hangup.

Admiral Utley can probably jump in there.

Admiral UTLEY. Basically this is an administration-driven issue.

The NSC, in conjunction with ONDCP, chairs an international

drug control policy coordinating committee, the PCC. The administration, at the highest level, as in the President, said we’ve got to

get a handle on the southwest border. The fact that there is as

much narcotics coming through here as they are indicates that it

is pretty porous, and what does it say for our controlling border?

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Mr. SOUDER. They just discovered this the last month, or the last

3 months ago or 10 years ago? With all due respect.

Admiral UTLEY. It was passed through the PCC to do this perhaps the latter part of last year, latter part of last year. And it

came to be that the rose is pinned on BTS through CBP, because

that’s who controls most of the southwest border.

DHS says, well, you know, having a drug control strategy, an immigration strategy and a counterterrorism strategy doesn’t make a

whole lot of sense, you probably ought to wrap it all together.

Through this PCC a sub PCC was stood up with USIC and ONDCP

as a lead to do the counternarcotics piece. There is no obstruction

in there; it is a coordinating thing because it’s larger than DHS.

This strategy is coming through the White House, may end up with

NSPD. There is a good possibility of this, but it has to be interagency, it has to be larger than BTS and larger than CBP and larger than DHS. That’s what is taking—the core is being developed

within DHS.

The interagency process is slower than we would all like it to be,

and no one is holding it up or holding it hostage; it’s the coordination mechanism that we’re pushing, and we’re optimistic that we

will have it sooner rather than later. I know you’re asking for a

date, can’t give you one.

Mr. SOUDER. How about if I ask you for this; since I’m in my

11th year of Congress and have served on this subcommittee since

the start, when we started getting involved in narcotics, when Bill

Zeliff was chairman, and 11 years ago raised to a previous administration in their first term about putting together a southwest border strategy. Then General McCaffrey, as ONDCP director, talked

about when the speaker headed this subcommittee and he talked

about a Southwest border strategy. How about we start with this;

when is DHS going to have a date for its southwest border strategy, and DEA going to have a date for its southwest border strategy, and the DOD for its—and then once you each get one, then

we can maybe get them together.

But if we never start with anybody getting one done, then we

don’t have a way to integrate them. And where in the world is

ONDCP, since we have been asking them for 11 years for a coordinated—now we have a southwest border HIDTA, it’s not like we

don’t have any strategy. What we don’t have is an integrated strategy.

But it seems to me that the new player at this, because you have

merged multiple agencies, is DHS. So that if you get a date certain

for a DHS southwest border strategy, then we can put it together

with the others, but if everybody is going to wait until the next one

gets done, this is what we’ve been doing for over a decade since I’ve

been here.

Admiral UTLEY. What you have outlined is exactly what’s going

on. I probably didn’t explain it as well as I should have. The other

agencies are putting together their counternarcotics piece of this as

well, and it will be melded together. You’re right, it doesn’t have

to be in series, it can be in parallel, and that’s what we’re trying

to do.

Mr. SOUDER. OK. Let me ask you about the Department of Defense. They’re proposing the possibility of changing JTF North to

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A JATF, a joint agency operation. Do you feel DOD should be the

lead agency to provide command and control support to

counterdrug along the border?

First Mr. Utley, then Mr. Placido, Mr. Passic. Mr. Torres, if you

would have a comment on that, too.

Admiral UTLEY. I don’t think it should be DOD-led. It probably

should be, I would say, DHS lead only because—I mean, a huge

player is going to be DEA. But what DOD brings to the table is

their pipes—and I’m talking about the things for communication

and for intelligence—and huge infrastructure in knowing how to

manage big things. And it’s not—we would certainly welcome help

in this effort with DOD, but it should not be DOD-led.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Placido, how does the DEA feel about it?

Mr. PLACIDO. I would concur with Admiral Utley——

Mr. SOUDER. That it should be DHS-led or that it should not be?

Mr. PLACIDO. It should not be DOD-led. I reserve judgment as to

who should lead it. I don’t think that necessarily should be DEA.

I think drugs are a subset of the southwest border, as opposed to

being the whole thing.

What I will say is that, while we’ve had very good success with

the Joint Interagency Task Force South, which is in Key West

south, and west in Honolulu, there are some fundamental differences about what’s being proposed along the southwest border,

not the least of which is that Mexico has—they’re very prickly

about sovereignty concerns. And what JATF South and JATF West

can do may not be possible over the territory of Mexico. Also, on

the domestic side, as JATF North, if it were stood up, would be in

the United States, you would have a whole series of issues with

posse comitatus.

So I think they could be a very important partner in supporting

this thing, but they should not lead it.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Passic, do you agree?

Mr. PASSIC. Yeah, it’s a law enforcement mission, not a defense

mission. There are elements of defense in there, and we want to

partner up with them, we don’t want to discourage them from integrating with us. But I’d just like to mention something about the

strategy.

When we looked at our components, that didn’t stop us from

moving forward to implement them. We’ve already started down

the road doing that because we want to make sure that we’re doing

the best we can with our organization right now as the paperwork

gets processed at higher levels.

But we would like to make things work that are there better,

and it should be a law enforcement function mission led.

Mr. SOUDER. Because one of the challenges, we will all be awaiting to see whether, in fact, some of the rivalries between the agencies and among the agencies can be kind of put to bed, because you

not only have yours, but you have the HIDTA, the southwest border HIDTA, which presumably would be involved in this. ATF—

Ms. Watson was just talking about ATF is going to get involved in

certain of these violations, clearly ICE inland in the investigations,

air and Marine, wherever they are located, are both all the way

from Colombia up into the United States. But I’ll tell you, there is

a level of frustration in Congress that’s building, that if it doesn’t

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get organized between the other agencies, DOD is just going to

take it over. They’re bigger, they have more money, they have lots

of resources, you use a lot of their intelligence already.

We’re seeing this in the security of the Capitol building, that the

question was, everything you just raised on the border you would

think would be doubled here in Washington, DC, yet clearly since

DHS doesn’t have a clear internal policy as to how we’re supposed

to be protected in this Capitol building, and Secret Service is involved in this. And DOD, at the end of the day it was an F–16 that

came up over the Capitol building that took command at the end

of the day, that the posse comitatus question can be addressed

through Guard, it can be addressed through how the risk is defined.

And I have been one, while trying to make sure the Defense Department stays involved in the narcotics issue, for example, in Afghanistan, where it’s totally interrelated, to have some concerns

about the southwest border. And I believe that all you agencies, if

you get organized, should, in fact, be that, given especially the

problems with Mexico and their concerns about the U.S. military,

not that they would have any historic concerns about the U.S. military in their territory, that it would seem to be a law enforcement

function.

But as you can tell each year, the votes for putting more military

on the border because of a frustration about the lack of the law enforcement agencies to address it, the effectiveness of the other

JATFs, and who has the most intelligence information and equipment, watching how we battled through the 9/11 Commission report, and the strength of the DIA and the intelligence in the military with that means that while all this nice kind of intramural

jockeying between the different agencies and who’s going to have

control of what along the border will get lost if DOD gets at the

table because you all just may get squished.

So speed is important here. I understand it’s frustrating, I understand that, but it’s not like we haven’t been waiting for some time.

Do you have any questions, Ms. Watson, before we——

Ms. WATSON. I have tremendous frustrations because, again, representing a State from a State that’s right on the edge of the ocean,

with all kinds of ports, we don’t have the resources, and they

haven’t come through the channel yet to give us the kind of security that we need. And the reason why I amended the bill on gangs

where there’s going to be a big effort across the country to go after

these gangs here in our own land, I think that there is a tremendous threat on the border.

Now, these self-professed volunteer border guards, the vigilantes,

are not the answer. And I really would like to see military—I

mean, during this time when we were trying to build a network,

we need our military with us. And I think military and additional

border guards, and maybe for just a period of time, could do a lot

to seal off that border, both from the southern end of my State and

the United States, and from the ocean as well. And so this is a

comment.

My frustration is that I don’t see the working together of all

these agencies. I see it’s the same as it was prior to September

11th. People hold onto their turf, and in holding onto their turf

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they allow for gaps in the chain. And I don’t feel any safer today,

my people don’t feel any safer today than they did before we had

the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security. So unless we can do something dramatic where the country can see that

we really are serious about protecting our borders, I think we drift,

and we offer an opportunity for the terrorists to really get a foothold.

And as I said before, I have no doubt that they’re already here.

We’ve never found out the origin of anthrax, the mailing of anthrax

here. And while we are, you know, throwing money into a deep

dark hole, which shall remain anonymous, we’re suffering here at

home.

And so I would hope that the various departments and agencies

could, when together, come up with a proposal that says we’re cooperating, we’re using the intelligence that was asked for by my

colleague, and we’re using every means we can, and we’re using

DOD not to lead it, but to lend to your efforts. We have to be serious about protecting our borders, and we just need to do something

immediately and dramatic to do that. That’s a comment.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And again, I want to

thank you for holding these hearings.

Mr. SOUDER. Thanks. And one of the great things about our

study hearings is we have had bipartisan support and aggressive

bipartisan support by people like Councilman Watson, who have

been active at the State level for some time. Elijah Cummings in

Maryland was a State legislator before he came here. Mr.

Ruppersberger was a prosecutor. And it’s really great. And for

those of you who have worked in the drug area and all of a sudden

see bipartisan consensus again, it seems like we kind of come and

go on our focus on the drug war, and yet, because it could be gangs

for a while here, missing children over here or Iraq over here, but

the fact is it is a cause—every community in the United States, 70,

85 percent of all crime, including child support, is drug and alcohol

related.

And it is something that everyday new people are exposed, we

just have to stay at it. And this new focus on the southwest border

is exploding. We are about to vote on CAFTA, which, to many

Americans sounds an awful lot like NAFTA, which to many Americans they weren’t really thrilled about. The administration is very

concerned about that vote, so it has also heightened the border

question. Clearly it’s been in the news a lot and the border question, and this is exploding. I don’t disagree that the President himself is extremely focused on this for the first time in some time.

And now we need to move aggressively in trying to coordinate

the narcotics efforts on the border with the human trafficking efforts on the border and the terrorism, because what we all know

is we shut down other financial opportunities, they have to come

up with their money in some different ways. And the more skilled

organizations are going to be the ones that are going to survive.

And they’re going to wind up, if not directly merging, at least have

different divisions that are successful in ways that move around it.

And we have to get more sophisticated as well.

Many Members are on the floor today concerned about what the

administration is doing in meth, and I want to insert in the hearVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:06 Dec 21, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00082 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24890.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ing record here the Mexican connection to the methamphetamine

problem in the United States from the Oregonian newspapers by

Steve Soul. He has raised repeatedly, the Mexican government is

now acknowledging that there is roughly now 150 tons of meth precursors, the pseudoephedrine coming across the Mexican border, of

which the testimony today suggests we’re getting maybe 20 million

tons of that 150 million. The DEA and Department of Homeland

Security took down a huge bust in Detroit that seems to have dented it coming through the north, but now we’re having it explode

through the south, coming from India and China and major manufacturing.

So when people talk about the meth problem, it’s still heavily a

border problem because as the mom-and-pop labs are starting to

decline in the United States, there never were more than 30 percent, we’re seeing it substituted with the super lab stuff, and once

again we’re right back to the border again. So we clearly have to

look as it as far as meth as well.

I had an additional question, it was directly related because one

of the things a number of us are working on in a number of different committees right now is how to deal with the smuggling operations. And Congressman Issa last week, when Secretary

Chertoff was testifying, said that the U.S. Attorney in his area was

not taking up some of the cases of the coyotes, who are the smuggling operations. And maybe Mr. Torres, you could directly answer

this.

Do you see that in other jurisdictions as well? And is it because

the enforcement penalties aren’t worth the effort for the prosecution? Is it that there aren’t that many cases? What are you seeing

in this kind of human smuggling, human trafficking lack of going

after some of these organizations? What is the biggest need and

what is the biggest way that we can help?

Mr. TORRES. One of the concerns that we’ve seen over the years

has been addressed in the form of a trafficking act that was passed

several years back, so it raised the penalties for human trafficking.

That did not correlate to human smuggling, only to those that were

being smuggled in the United States through force, coerce or deceit,

and then being held against their will in the form of the title

181590 statutes for trafficking.

When looking at smuggling, there is an opportunity to go for an

upward departure for enhanced penalties, only as that relates to

the potential serious injury or death of the people being smuggled

into the United States. And as you are aware, what happens with

that is you have to wait for someone pretty much to be seriously

injured or to be killed in the process of being smuggled before you

can actually use those enhancements, as opposed to those penalties

being higher than the standard 5-year felony, of which may result

in a 1 or 2-year Federal sentence, depending on the crime.

If you’re looking at the standard drivers over-the-road smuggling

on the southwest border, that happens quite frequently, especially

if you’re looking to focus on smuggling through the ports of entry

or through the airports, then they’re forced to smuggle people over

the road. And ultimately what happens is you end up arresting a

lower level person who was a driver, who was driving a rented van

or a lesser quality type vehicle, and so you’re really not working

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the organization. That becomes a lower priority case for the U.S.

Attorney’s Office to prosecute because it gets back to, well, if you

are going to prosecute a low-level coyote case, what about the drug

smuggling cases and what about the other Federal crimes that are

out there, bank robbery, etc?

So that is a particular issue in some areas, depending on whether or not the area of the country that you are looking at and whether the resources are there in the U.S. Attorney’s Offices, that is an

issue that we see.

Mr. SOUDER. We appreciate your help as we move to legislation

that a number of us are working with and may, in fact, become an

administration position rapidly. And we want to make sure we do

this right. But if you can—it’s been very helpful the way you define

how trafficking law is currently applied, and what some of the difficulties that are. But if you could also ask someone in your office

and figure out who the best people are to help us with the different

legislation on what the penalties should be on the human trafficking relating to smuggling, what size groups, what you’re seeing

around the United States, where it’s being done and not done and

what the tradeoffs are that they’re making, whether, in fact, some

of this may be related to we don’t have enough space to put people

if we convict them, it may relate to not enough U.S. Marshals, U.S.

Attorneys.

In other words, you have to have a support system if you’re going

to pass a law off, and we in Congress don’t do that, we pass the

law but not the support system, and then force the decision at the

U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Another relationship to that would be, do we have penalties in

human trafficking, i.e., smuggling in this case of large groups, for

the people who lease the vans, who provide the jobs, who provide—

the travel agencies that are providing the—seeking the people in

the community illegally. In other words, rather than necessarily

focus on picking on the poor individual worker, can we have tougher penalties for the people that are bringing them in in droves?

And then actually, in my opinion, work out a responsible immigration work permit policy. But what good does it do to have a work

permit policy if you don’t have control of the border, if people can

make their green cards, if people can get around this system, it

won’t do us any good to change the immigration policy, because

there is no motive to go into a work permit if, in fact, you can get

an illegal green card and there is no penalty for it, or a minimal

penalty, or that we’re so backed up nobody will take the case.

The other question I asked you, before the hearing started, I

want to put on the record that we would also like to work with is

the question that Congressman Reyes raised, which is for nonMexican illegals, when a Mexican comes across the border, if they

don’t have criminal activity other than violating immigration law,

they’re deported back to Mexico.

But if they are not from Mexico, the question is, what happens

to them? Are they out on their own recognizance? Do they get detained, which is a matter of how many places detain? And then do

they make bond as you mentioned to me? And what is the extent

of this problem? At San Ysidro, when we got the statistics there for

the earlier part of this year—and while we were there, they picked

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up Brazilians. What happens to the Brazilians? You can’t put them

back to Mexico. That’s not where they’re from. Eventually, we send

them back. So do we release them? We may have held them for a

couple hours. And then, if we release them, do we have statistics

of how many actually come nice and orderly to their deportation

hearing? What about the 130 that came in from countries of interest, i.e., countries on the terrorist list, who weren’t on a watchlist

so we released them on their own recognizance? We didn’t really

have any grounds, but clearly, there is a flaw in this system in the

sense of counting on them to self report, especially if while they

may not have been in our watchlist system, they may in fact be an

embedded person who is coming in. They may just be somebody

wanting a job, but they may in fact be an embedded person. And

we are so focused on Mexico that many of us have totally forgotten

that there is about 10 percent of the people coming across the border who we can’t immediately deport back to Mexico. And what are

we going to do with that? And that is one of the things we are looking at in our legislation, too.

But thank you very much for being with us today and sharing

any additional information we want you to give to us. We may have

a few more written questions. It has been very helpful as we continue to move for aggressive strategies, and hopefully you will in

your agencies even outstrip the enthusiasm of Congress in trying

to address the border enforcement. With that, the subcommittee

stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 4:02 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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