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KEEPING A STRONG FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT

WORK FORCE

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,

DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

OCTOBER 17, 2001

Serial No. 107–104

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

DAVE WELDON, Florida

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

C.L. ‘‘BUTCH’’ OTTER, Idaho

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

——— ———

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

JAMES C. WILSON, Chief Counsel

ROBERT A. BRIGGS, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN L. MICA, Florida,

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

DOUG OSE, California

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

DAVE WELDON, Florida

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

EX OFFICIO

DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

CHRISTOPHER DONESA, Staff Director and Chief Counsel

NICHOLAS COLEMAN, Professional Staff Member

CONN CARROLL, Clerk

JULIAN A. HAYWOOD, Minority Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on October 17, 2001 .......................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Mead, Gary E., Assistant Director, Business Services, U.S. Marshals

Service ............................................................................................................ 26

Smith, Robert M., Assistant Commissioner, Office of Human Resources

Management, U.S. Customs Service ........................................................... 21

Ziglar, James, Commissioner, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service ................................................................................................................... 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 ............................................................ 49

Mead, Gary E., Assistant Director, Business Services, U.S. Marshals

Service, prepared statement of .................................................................... 28

Smith, Robert M., Assistant Commissioner, Office of Human Resources

Management, U.S. Customs Service, prepared statement of .................... 23

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

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

Ziglar, James, Commissioner, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, prepared statement of ............................................................................ 10

(1)

KEEPING A STRONG FEDERAL LAW

ENFORCEMENT WORK FORCE

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2001

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 1 p.m., in room

2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Mark E. Souder (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representative Souder.

Staff present: Chris Donesa, staff director; Nick Coleman, professional staff member; Conn Carroll, clerk; Tony Haywood, minority

counsel; and Earley Green, minority assistant clerk.

Mr. SOUDER. Good afternoon, and thank you all for coming.

Today our subcommittee will explore the extent to which growth,

staffing issues and management are likely to impact the ability of

Federal law enforcement agencies to carry out their missions in response to recently increased demands. We invited three of the most

important Federal law enforcement agencies, the U.S. Customs

Service, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which also administers the U.S. Border Patrol,

to testify here today. And we thank Commissioner James Ziglar of

the INS, Assistant Commissioner Robert Smith of Customs, and

Assistant Director Gary Mead of the Marshals Service for being

here today.

The subcommittee is vitally interested in ensuring the welfare of

these agencies. We will continue to explore these issues and related

ones with respect to other Federal law enforcement agencies.

Even before the events of September 11, 2001, the subcommittee

was exploring ways to assist these key agencies in their efforts to

protect our Nation’s borders, to thwart narcotics and other smuggling, to prevent illegal immigration, to track down fugitives from

justice and to provide security for our courts and other Federal installations. The recent terrorist attacks have made very clear how

important all of these missions are. Border security is vital if we

are to prevent international terrorist organizations from carrying

out further attacks on our people. Preventing narcotics smuggling

is vital not simply to keep these poisons out of the hands of our

young people, but also to cutoff funds for the future terrorist networks. And heightened security at Federal Government buildings

is essential in this new environment.

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This hearing will consider how much each of these agencies will

need to grow to effectively carry out their missions, obstacles and

challenges to growth, and to what extent new emphasis on preventing terrorism affects the ability of these agencies to carry out other

vital missions. There is a broad consensus in the Congress for expanding the number of Border Patrol agents, INS inspectors and

Customs inspectors at our borders and ports of entry, particularly

along the northern border. Indeed antiterrorist legislation passed

just last week would permit the tripling of the number of agents

along the Canadian border.

I think every member of this subcommittee would agree that expanding the Federal law enforcement work force is essential if we

are to meet the new challenges; however, rapid expansion of the

number of agents is often easier said than done. For example, in

1996, Congress passed legislation requiring that the Attorney General increase the number of Border Patrol agents by 1,000 agents

per year, every fiscal year through 2001. Although INS was able

to achieve this result at the start, hiring dropped off significantly

thereafter. INS reported that it was unable to recruit enough qualified applicants and retain them through the hiring process. In part

this was due to the very tight labor market that existed at the

time, in part due to deficiencies in pay and benefits. In 2000, INS

proposed improving the pay and benefits of Border Patrol agents,

proposals that have not yet been implemented. Expansion of these

agencies may therefore require significant improvements in the pay

scale of Federal officers. Moreover, rapid expansion will be less effective if these agencies are unable to retain experienced officers

they already have since new recruits will require significant supervision.

I believe we should also consider other ways to assist these law

enforcement agencies, including improving the infrastructure at

our border crossings, making new technologies available to the

agencies, and expanding the use of existing technologies. As I was

talking to Congressman Farr last night, one of the things he

strongly suggests is that whenever we can use technology, as opposed to people, we ought to do that, even if the short-term cost

is more expensive because of a lot of these concerns on hiring.

These issues are all extremely important and extremely urgent,

and I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about ways

to address them. When Mr. Cummings arrives, we will take his

opening statement, and I think we will go ahead with the proceedings.

Before proceeding, I would like to take care of a couple of procedural matters. First I ask unanimous consent that all Members

have 5 legislative days to submit written statements and questions

for the hearing record, and that any answers to written questions

provided by the witnesses also be included in the record. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

Second, I ask unanimous consent that all exhibits, documents

and other materials referred to by Members and the witnesses 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.

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And I would also like the record to show that Mr. Cummings and

I have really no difference in approach, nor does our subcommittee,

in tackling a lot of these issues. As I mentioned in my opening

statement, we are looking at having a series of border hearings,

and at times we may only have myself present, or, when possible,

we are having the Members on each of the borders at that place

present who may not be members of the committee. But we are

unanimous in trying to get as much detail as we can get on what

the need of your agencies are and how to keep the commerce flowing as well, and we are going to proceed ahead with the whole series of things yet this fall and looking forward to working with each

one of you.

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

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Mr. SOUDER. With that, would each of the witnesses please rise,

raise your right hands, and I will administer the oath. As an oversight committee, it is our standard practice to ask all witnesses to

testify under oath.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each of the witnesses have

answered the question in the affirmative.

The witnesses will now be recognized for opening statements,

and I would like to say for the record that the statement from Customs has not been cleared by OMB, and I wanted to show that for

the record, and I also just want to say that I am understanding

that we are in a very delicate area. We are trying to work through

the budget questions. I have, in fact, asked the agency and pushed

the agency, as our other Members of Congress, to give us information. We all understand the difficulties. Mitch Daniels is a close

friend of mine, being fellow Hoosiers.

At the same time, right now we need to find out what the needs

are, and the legislative branch needs to have the input from the

professionals in the field, too. And we will continue to work with

OMB, with each of your agencies to try to figure out in the end how

to resolve these. I am sure Senator Byrd will have a few opinions

here and there, as will Chairman Young. But as an oversight committee, the job of our committee is to identify needs that can then

go through the authorizing and appropriating, and we can’t do that

if we can’t hear what the pressures are in the system. So I appreciate each of you coming here today.

Mr. Ziglar, would you begin?

STATEMENT OF JAMES ZIGLAR, COMMISSIONER, U.S.

IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE

Mr. ZIGLAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to

testify today about the challenges that we face at the INS in successfully recruiting and retaining high-quality people, particularly

with respect to the Border Patrol agents and immigration inspectors who are the front lines of the country’s border control.

I would ask that my full statement be included in the record.

Mr. SOUDER. So ordered.

Mr. ZIGLAR. Mr. Chairman, I realize that the committee expected

someone from our human resources department to testify today;

however, I regard the issues before you as so important to our ability to do our job that I wanted to appear here personally.

As you know, my background includes management, substantial

management, in the private sector. The one lesson I have learned

from my experience is that people make the organization, not technology, not anything else. Only people make the organization. If we

don’t treat our people with dignity, respect and generosity that

they deserve, then our efforts are going to fail. And I am here to

make that point just as strongly as I possibly can.

Mr. Chairman, the tragic events of September 11th have focused

a great deal of our attention in our country on our immigration

policies and our practices. The people of this Nation and Members

of Congress are very concerned about the security of our borders.

INS definitely shares your concern. Within hours of the attacks,

the INS was working closely with the FBI to help determine who

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perpetrated these crimes and to bring these people to justice. Within 24 hours of the attacks, INS launched something we call Operation Safe Passage and deployed several hundred Border Patrol

agents to different airports, eight different airports in major cities

around the country, along with the U.S. Marshals and working

with the Customs Service, to increase the security at the airports

to help prevent terrorist attacks, and otherwise to restore a sense

of security to our citizens who are in the traveling public.

INS has dedicated, since September 11th, 1,000 of its 1,977 special agents to the terrorism investigation, and we have developed

over 1,500 significant leads ourselves. At America’s ports of entry,

INS inspectors continue to work tirelessly to screen arriving visitors while encouraging the flow of legitimate commerce and travel.

And, Mr. Chairman, you pointed that out in your opening statement, and I can tell you that is of great concern to us. It is of particular concern to me that, coming out of the business world and

off of Wall Street, that we not destroy our economy by overreaching. What we need to do is we need to figure out how we facilitate

low-risk travel, pay attention to high-risk travel, but not impede

the flow of commerce.

I am very proud of the INS’s response to this tragedy, and I am

proud of all of the INS employees who have selflessly worked

many, many hours to serve their country in this time of crisis. Mr.

Chairman, there is a great deal expected of the INS today, and we

are going to rise to that challenge, but just as a general wouldn’t

ride into battle without troops and supplies and that sort of thing,

the INS can’t possibly secure our borders without having the personnel and the facilities and the infrastructure to do that. We must

evaluate how we staff the Nation’s 6,000 miles of land border and

over 300 ports of entry.

Hiring law enforcement personnel is one of the most sensitive

and important functions of a law enforcement agency. Our ability

to serve and protect our country is only as good as the people we

hire. Therefore, we take extraordinary care at the INS to ensure

that the men and women who are securing our borders are the best

and the brightest. This year, based solely on anticipated action on

the President’s fiscal year 2000 budget request, plus attrition, we

will have to hire and train approximately 3,500 new Border Patrol

agents and immigration inspectors.

Today I would like to discuss three challenges that we face in the

effective recruiting and retention of these people: one, hiring procedures; two, pay structure; and three, job classifications.

To maintain and ensure the integrity and professionalism of our

officers as well as the safety and security of our country, the INS

pre-employment screening process for law enforcement positions is

rigorous. Depending on the occupation, applicants must pass a

written exam, oral boards and a drug test. They must meet medical

and physical qualifications, and they must undergo an extensive security background investigation. Most of our officer core positions,

including Border Patrol agents and immigration inspectors, also require a proficiency in or an ability to learn conversational Spanish.

I can assure you I would not meet the qualification.

INS has made great strides in meeting these recruitment and

hiring demands through our streamlined and aggressive recruitVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:10 Oct 03, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\81781.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ment program, including the use of uniformed agents and inspectors for recruiting. In fact, on a full-time equivalent basis, we use

about 60 of our Border Patrol agents, to recruit, and that has been

a very effective method of doing that. INS has developed a stateof-the-art recruitment effort encompassing extensive use of media

and other things. We have increased our presence on college and

university campuses, expanded our participation in professional organizations and increased recruitment of military servicemen and

women.

You might be interested to know, Mr. Chairman, that approximately 37 percent of our recruits have been out of the military. So

that is a rich source for us. I think about 30 percent out of other

law enforcement, local law enforcement agencies. On occasion we

have offered recruitment bonuses to new candidates. In fiscal year

1996, we received 23,000 applications, for example. In fiscal year

2000, we received 90,000. In short, we have worked diligently to

improve, and I think we have built the image of the INS as an employer of choice.

In spite of these efforts, though, the number of candidates that

make it through this rigorous pre-employment requirements process is pretty small. In 1999, to fill 2,000 Border Patrol agent positions, the INS had to attract 75,000 candidates. To fill 1,000 immigration inspectors, it needed to attract 16,000 candidates. In addition, INS competes with other Federal agencies—including some of

the folks here at the table—State and local governments, and the

military for high-quality candidates who can meet our requirements.

With respect to pay structure, as you know, the Federal Government has a number of pay structures for Federal law enforcement

agents. For the INS, the journey grade level that a Border Patrol

agent or an immigration inspector can currently attain without

being a supervisor is generally a GS–9. Many Border Patrol agents

and inspectors spend their entire careers topped out at a GS–9. Because our Border Patrol agents and inspectors are well trained,

they are routinely recruited by other Federal law enforcement

agencies, most of which have higher level journey positions. Therefore, we are working with the administration to address this problem.

I personally strongly support increasing the journey level for our

inspectors and for the Border Patrol to a GS–11. Many of our law

enforcement officers are working long hours in response to the

events of September 11th. Many are not being paid for these overtime hours because of a 2-week cap, and all are dangerously close

to reaching the calendar year overtime earning limit of $30,000.

I appreciate that Congress is addressing the short-term problem

for 2001 in both the House and Senate versions of the

antiterrorism legislation. In the long term, Mr. Chairman, the

Commissioner of INS needs the same flexibility accorded the Commissioner of the Customs Service, and that is the authority to

waive the overtime cap administratively. Our immigration inspectors are authorized by statute to, ‘‘enforce the immigration laws

and regulations of the United States, and any other laws or regulations designated by the Attorney General, and in the performance

of these duties, is empowered to conduct investigations; carry fireVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:10 Oct 03, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\81781.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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arms; effect warrantless arrests; or execute and serve any order,

warrant of arrest or search, subpoena summons, or other process

issued under the authority of the United States.’’ That is from the

statute.

In the course of their normal duties, inspectors routinely encounter, arrest and interrogate persons who violate both the criminal

laws and immigration laws of the United States. Let me give you

some statistics that make this point. In the year 2000, immigration

inspectors intercepted 123,548 fraudulent documents and persons

carrying them. We encountered 155,830 lookout intercepts from the

IBIS systems. We stopped 3,764 aliens for narcotic smuggling. We

intercepted 34,473 individuals being smuggled through human

smuggling rings. We intercepted 790 stowaways. We stopped

10,627 criminal aliens with offenses involving controlled substances

and trafficking. And we initiated over 636 criminal prosecutions

under the Federal laws.

Mr. Chairman, you can see why we are working with the administration to ascertain the appropriate job classification for our immigration inspectors. I personally believe that it is absolutely necessary to accord our inspectors 6C Federal law enforcement status.

Another factor that affects our ability to carry out our law enforcement mission is adequate infrastructure. Any increase to INS

personnel should also include necessary facilities and other infrastructure. While Congress has provided funding to expand the infrastructure, it has not kept pace with the growth in agents and

workload, resulting in overcrowded conditions and many older outdated facilities. Many facilities that we have have potentially serious safety and health deficiencies caused mainly by age and overcrowding. In fact, as we stand today, without regard to any additional personnel or any additional activities or missions that we

have, we are at this moment 33 percent behind the curve in terms

of having our facilities match our personnel and support our personnel. The cost of providing these facilities is high, but it is important to INS’s ability to fulfill its mission.

In conclusion, there is no doubt that we face immense challenges,

but I can assure you that the dedicated and talented men and

women of this agency are up to the challenge.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate this opportunity to appear before you

and I look forward to answering your questions. Thank you.

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

[The prepared statement of Mr. Ziglar follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Smith.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT M. SMITH, ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER, OFFICE OF HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT, U.S.

CUSTOMS SERVICE

Mr. SMITH. Chairman Souder, I am pleased to have this chance

to appear before the subcommittee today. I was just informed that

my statement is now cleared and can be made entered for the

record.

Mr. SOUDER. Oh, good.

Mr. SMITH. From a human resource perspective, the U.S. Customs Service has a number of unique characteristics that present

challenges to recruitment, hiring and retention. Flexibility is the

key to our hiring and staffing needs. We deploy personnel at over

300 ports of entry across the country, including border crossings,

seaports and international airports. Many of these ports operate on

a 24-hour-per-day, 7-day-per-week schedule. We also station employees at U.S. Embassies and consulates throughout the world.

Customs’ frontline employees must be willing to work a variety

of schedules under adverse and changing conditions, both physical

and geographic. They are required to carry weapons and frequently

find themselves in dangerous situations. Our pilots find themselves

on missions that take them away from home for extended periods

of time, working with the Southern Command overseas. They fly

state-of-the-art aircraft, including the P–3 interdiction planes.

This past year the Customs Service recruited, examined, hired

and trained over 550 inspectors and canine officers, 38 pilots, and

additionally, we hired over 400 special agents, which was twice as

many that we have hired in a 1-year period in almost a decade.

Much of our hiring was achieved through the competitive staffing

process that imposes various hiring requirements. Other hiring was

accomplished through excepted appointments, which gives us some

flexibility, but not totally.

Customs Service has over 2,000 frontline Customs officers serving and protecting the American public. Our officers are experienced, with an average length of service of nearly 12 years on the

job. Many Custom employees serve in remote locations where there

are limited, if any, medical facilities, roads, housing, schools, and

even stores. We need to be able to retain these employees and provide them with the benefits that entice them to stay with the Customs Service.

Customs also has a prominent role to play in counterterrorism.

During the millennium alert it was a Customs inspector who apprehended a suspected terrorist during a routine border stop in

Port Angeles, WA. Now, in the wake of the horrific terrorist attacks

of September 11th, the Customs Service has been called upon to

lend staff resources to many different areas. We are providing staff

to serve as sky marshals. We have increased our presence through

the temporary deployment of personnel to many border ports and

airport locations. And we are now also in the planning stages to assist in providing security to the Salt Lake City Olympics later next

year.

In order for us to be able to respond to these situations, we need

changes to laws and regulations that provide us with greater flexiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:10 Oct 03, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\81781.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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bility. The current personnel laws and regulations promulgated by

the Office of Personnel Management do not provide that flexibility

and inhibit us from staffing in a way to meet these demands. The

administration’s Managerial Flexibility Act proposal would assist

us with regard to retention and recruitment in some areas.

For the upcoming fiscal year the Customs Service is anticipating

the need to hire 2,500 new employees in our frontline occupations.

We already have 500 applicants ready to come on board and another thousand going through our pre-employment processes now,

but we still need to screen between 15,000 and 20,000 applicants

in order to meet our hiring needs. With your assistance in obtaining the right tools to meet our personnel needs, we feel we certainly will succeed in meeting our mission.

Thank you for the opportunity to address you today, Mr. Chairman, and I, too, look forward to your questions.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Mead.

STATEMENT OF GARY E. MEAD, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR,

BUSINESS SERVICES, U.S. MARSHALS SERVICE

Mr. MEAD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Not knowing exactly

where we would be heading today, I also brought with me our Assistant Director for Human Resources, Miss Susan Smith, and our

EEO officer, Lisa Dickinson.

On behalf of the U.S. Marshal Service, thank you for the opportunity to appear here today. In 1789, President Washington began

appointing the first U.S. Marshals; 212 years later, the tragic

events of September 11th put to the test the Founding Fathers’ vision of the Marshals Service. This vision was a Federal law enforcement agency capable of performing a wide variety of key law

enforcement missions anywhere in the United States.

Immediately following the terrorist attacks, deputy U.S. Marshals were called upon to provide assistance with the search and

rescue efforts at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Within

48 hours the Marshals Service was involved in almost every aspect

of our Nation’s response. We coordinated and were an integral part

of the Federal law enforcement presence at 18 of our largest airports. Our Joint Prisoner and Alien Transportation System aircraft

transported hundreds of Federal agents to assignments across the

Nation. Deputy U.S. marshals assisted the FBI to locate and apprehend potential suspects. Our Electronic Surveillance Unit used sophisticated technology to locate possible survivors and the aircraft

black boxes buried in the rubble of the World Trade Center. Deputy

U.S. marshals also provided personnel security for the Director of

FEMA and other Federal officials, and we were involved in other

special activities of a classified nature.

In addition to these missions, we continue to perform the Service’s core responsibilities, specifically the security of the Federal judiciary. Security at all Federal courthouses was significantly increased. Within 3 days of the attack, our Nation’s court operations

had returned to normal except in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.

The versatility demonstrated by the U.S. Marshals Service since

September 11th is what the President and the Attorney General

have come to expect and what the American people deserve. We

were able to meet all challenges as a result of the Service’s multiskilled, highly trained criminal investigators, who comprise the majority of our deputy U.S. marshal work force. However, this hearing

could not be more timely. Although we are proud of our recent accomplishments, we are concerned about our future capabilities to

respond as directed in this new war on terrorism.

Approximately 2 years ago, the former administration of the

Marshals Service suspended the hiring of new criminal investigators. Through attrition the number of criminal investigators was to

be reduced by approximately 75 percent. They would be replaced

by officers who would perform judicial security duties within the

Federal courthouses. Fortunately, we had lost very few criminal investigators through attrition prior to September 11th. Consequently, we still had sufficient numbers of criminal investigators

to complete the complex missions we were assigned.

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Whether it is the protection of judges, witnesses or Federal officials from terrorist threats, the apprehension of terrorist fugitives,

the location and seizure of terrorist assets or the custody of prisoners accused of terrorist acts, the Marshals Service will become

more involved with national security matters and classified missions than ever before.

The apprehension of fugitives is a time-critical business. Fugitives know they are being hunted and are therefore constantly on

the move. Terrorist fugitives will face an even greater urgency to

move often and quickly. Any delay on the part of the Marshals

Service to apprehend them will be the potential difference between

a quick arrest and a terrorist remaining at large in the community.

It is essential that we have adequate numbers of versatile criminal

investigators to perform these complex missions.

In closing, I want the subcommittee to know that the Marshals

Service is very proud to serve this Nation and to be involved in the

war on terrorism. Be assured we will continue to do everything

within our power to help achieve victory. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today, and I would be happy to answer

any questions you might have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Mead follows:]

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

let me say first, as a matter of empathy, as I was explaining earlier, I was a staffer on the House side for 6 years and the Senate

for 41⁄2. A measure of empathy as to how many committees and jurisdictions on both sides you will be testifying in front of, and

whenever there is an issue this critical, everybody’s going to focus

on it.

Let me outline a little bit what we are trying to do through this

subcommittee, and I look forward to working with each of your

agencies in focusing on this, and how we are going to work, which

gives me the opportunity to kind of lay this out here.

Some of the questions that you have addressed today and some

of my questions clearly lie also with the Civil Service Subcommittee, both in authorizing an oversight in this committee. Now, interestingly, Congressman Weldon is on this subcommittee, who chairs

Civil Service. His ranking member is Danny Davis, who is on this

subcommittee, and Mr. Cummings and I are also both on Civil

Service. So, fortunately, we can kind of cross-communicate inside

that as we address these questions.

In 1989, when I was with Senator Coates and back when the No.

1 issue was drugs, and the No. 2 issue was drugs, and the No. 3

issue was drugs, and we had our periodic big crusade on the drug

war, it became evident to us early on that if we were going to do

that, we were going to have some changes in the hiring, pay grade

and other things, which we did in that period. And we did a number of pieces of legislation with it. It becomes a component of an

outgrowth of when you focus on something to be able to get the

type of people you need to do that. But it will overlap with a number of committees. What we are going to try to do here, for example, I have a number of senior Members, as you have looked at the

list, like Mr. Gilman, and Mr. Mica is having a hearing simultaneous with this one on airports over in Transportation, which they

also were trying to get him to cancel, so he may be sitting there

alone also. But it is important we get these things in the record.

And clearly, while we are going to focus here on border, we probably won’t focus as much on air unless we get synchronized with

Mr. Mica.

I have talked to Congressman Shays who actually has

antiterrorism jurisdiction in Government Reform. This committee

was designed and our uniqueness is we were the only committee

that could deal holistically with the antidrug question, and because

of that they put the Justice Department here; in addition, anything

in drugs. All of a sudden we had Justice. What we have learned

in South America and Central America in particular, when you

talk about narcotics, you talk about immigration. Well, Mr. Mica,

when he chaired this, also had Commerce moved in because you

can’t talk about immigration and drugs and Customs without talking about Commerce. So we’re probably the only committee in Congress that can cross a number of these jurisdictions and try to get

into that.

Even that said—and one other thing I want to say as a predicate.

I have been active in the U.S.-Canada Exchange Group; a little less

active, but supportive of the U.S.-Mexico group. But in the context

of doing this series of border hearings which are starting at the end

34

of this month in Vermont and Champlain, NY and Highgate

Springs, VT, then we are going to do it in Mexico, in the McAllen

region, Laredo and McAllen and Brownsville—we probably won’t do

a hearing, but visit there—and then some of the smaller posts, and

then up in Washington State at Blaine.

We have been working with the Canadian-U.S. group with Amo

Houghton about this; and John LaFalce on the Canadian group;

and George Nethercutt, who heads the Northern Border Caucus;

with Jim Kolbe and Cass Ballenger on the U.S.-Mexico Caucus;

with Henry Bonilla, who represents Laredo; with Congressman

Hinojosa, who represents McAllen; with Congressman McHugh,

who represents Champlain; with Congressman Sanders, who is on

this subcommittee, who represents Highgate Springs; as well as I

was just talking to Congressman Wolf again, who has part of the

appropriations; and Congressman Istook, who are—in our understanding we are trying to make sure that we are a little on the

same page here because your nightmare is you have got every committee of Congress coming up. And after Mr. Ziglar’s briefing to a

large group of Members proceeded to panic a lot of us on how we

are going to deal with the borders and the number of staffing and

how—which this hearing is partly an outgrowth of, and Congressman Wolf and I started talking on the floor about what we could

do in the appropriations bill. We wound up with Congressman

Weldon in it, and that led us into the whole question of the whole

Civil Service, and there is some concern from OMB is if we bump

some of the law enforcement agencies, what’s going to happen to

other Federal employees who are kind of off market, and these are

broad questions.

But I wanted to make you aware that we are trying to network;

that this is going to be very hard, as you well know, being called

up to the Hill constantly. But as we focus in this committee on the

more narrow concerns, then our goal is to try to get to the authorizing and appropriating in a much more synchronized fashion than

we have had before. Some of this may be yet this fall. Some may

be in February when we come back at the beginning of the year

if we have an emergency. Some may be the next cycle. And in sorting through in the questions, not everything will become apparent

short term.

I am very concerned, as are an increasing number of Members,

that we are going to overreact, do some things that aren’t necessarily wise for long-term planning. For example, if we don’t have

a vision, and 37 percent of the people who we hire as Border Patrol

agents come from military, and 30 percent come from local law enforcement, and we double your size, what does that do to those

other agencies if we haven’t thought this out in a plan of attack?

So let me start with a series of questions here that—and just go

through them. First let me look at the recruitment questions. You

each had, to differing degrees, parts of that. And we all know

that—let me ask you this question right up front: Do you believe

that with the existing size of your Department, you can meet the

increasing terrorism demands and still do what you are required

to do or we have asked you to do in the past in each of your areas

on immigration, on narcotics, and Customs questions?

35

Mr. ZIGLAR. Absolutely not, Mr. Chairman. We need more people.

It is not a question—if I could make one point. On the military, we

are not going in and recruiting people out the military. These are

people that are retiring early, or they are leaving the military. We

are not actively doing that. And the local law enforcement, they are

people who are coming to us to apply because they see that as a

career that they are interested in.

I was also concerned, Mr. Chairman, that you said that I panicked the Members when I briefed you. I didn’t mean to panic you.

I meant to show you the dimensions of what we needed, and I was

trying to get you to open your pocketbooks to us.

Mr. SOUDER. Yes. And I understand. And ‘‘panicked’’ may be an

overstatement. But let’s say you got their attention in ways that

previously the attention was lacking in the sense of immediately

everybody’s concerned; oh, we have got to seal off our borders, we

don’t want terrorists coming in. And then they learn, oh, you mean

we have vacancies in the Border Patrol? What do you mean? I

think you had made a statement that five people had retired the

day before. You know, here we are trying to figure out how to hire

people, and we can’t fill, and we are losing people. If we can’t retain those we have and fill the vacancies we have, how are we supposed to meet this need? And in that sense there was a sense of

urgency that there hasn’t been before.

Mr. ZIGLAR. Actually, Mr. Chairman, you make a very good point

that I would like to mention. What I had said about the five people

was that five people the day before had gone to work for the sky

marshals, and that emphasizes a point I was making in my opening statement, and that is that because of this disparity in the pay

grades between our Border Patrol people and inspectors, and, for

example, what the sky marshals will have as a journeyman level,

there is really no reason for our people not to go and apply for

those jobs, because they are to have better working conditions, and

they are going to have higher pay. And these are people that we

have trained very carefully, selected very carefully, so they are perfect targets. I come from the private sector—they are perfect target

for our competitors, the sky marshals and the Customs Service, to

go and try to recruit from us.

It’s our job to make our people like their jobs and to feel respected and treated with dignity, but if I don’t have something to

put on the table that lets them feed their family better, then

they’re going to go work someplace else, even if this is a more

pleasant place for them to work.

Mr. SOUDER. I want to make sure for the record, for Mr. Smith

and Mr. Mead, do you believe that you can—if indeed we are at a

minimum of 2 to 5 years of the intense pressures and the

antiterrorism, that you can meet your increased demands without

additional staff?

Mr. SMITH. No. Customs Service would need many more employees. We have our inspectors currently working 16 hours a day or

more. So in order to facilitate trade, perform our enforcement functions, drug interdiction, and now our new mission, antiterrorism,

we do need many more people.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Mead.

36

Mr. MEAD. Mr. Chairman, we also have another complication in

terms of answering some of these questions. We don’t have a permanent Director just yet. Our Director is awaiting Senate confirmation, which could happen any day, and we know that this is

one of the issues that he will address as soon as he gets on board.

With that being said, we have got about 2,500 deputy marshals

nationwide. That’s our total law enforcement work force. When we

were at our peak in terms of response to the terrorist attacks, we

had between 500 and 600 of them, or more than 20 percent of our

daily work force, devoted to extra special missions that had nothing

do with our basic assignments. And obviously, if those type of missions became permanent, we could not sustain that level of, you

know, extra support in other areas.

And the other issue that faces us is if we were to acquire those

type of complex missions, we would need to have the ability of

these criminal investigators to perform them. And so we need our

new Director to help us work through the issue or the decision of

the prior administration to draw down the number of generalist

criminal investigators and go with these more specialized employees who probably would not be suitable to do protection of dignitaries, complex criminal investigations and the like.

So the short answer is if we continue those missions, yes, we

probably would need more resources.

Mr. SOUDER. Would each of you provide for the record—and

maybe you can talk with the staff to figure what the logical trend

line is, whether it is a 5-year trend line or a 10-year trend line of— and let’s work through with staff what the best measures are— budget, number of agents, and then where you’ve had a bump-up,

if there was a specific mission attached to that or a piece of legislation.

For example, as we put new restrictions on immigration, or as

we said this is an antidrug effort or an antiterrorism effort, because the fundamental question we have, and I’ve talked with DEA

about this, too, is each agency is enthusiastically responding to any

requests on antiterrorism and the new pressures. The question nobody really wants to answer is either you are being diverted from

things that were also important to the United States, or you had

excess capacity. And I believe that the data will show that we have

been already squeezing most of the agencies given the mission. But

the danger of each agency saying, look, we’re doing this to respond

to terrorism is the American people are not aware of what are we

giving up as we go to that if we don’t add. And I want to be able

to illustrate that in the record and highlight that as we go through

the debate.

Clearly this committee with primary oversight over narcotics is

very concerned that in chasing potential antiterrorist acts, that, as

Congressman Cummings has said, the main chemical attacks on

the United States right now are coming through illegal narcotics.

The Taliban uses that as a funding source, and we don’t want to

see their heroin come into the United States, particularly if we put

pressure on Colombian heroin eradication, and we need to have

that. Also mentioned counterfeit goods and other things that come

in through Customs. Immigration questions that lack of criminal

investigators as this type of thing goes. But we need some kind of

37

a baseline trend line, which I’m sure we will—if you don’t have will

serve well in the other debates.

Let me first, a couple of general things that I—just quick things

that popped into my head off of some of the testimony. Mr. Ziglar,

in your testimony you said that many of the Border Patrol agents

had to be bilingual. Is that generally on the Mexican border at this

point?

Mr. ZIGLAR. One of the requirements is that they either be proficient in Spanish, or that they have the ability to learn Spanish.

So we give them some kind of test to understand. That prompted

my comments that I’d never pass that test because I am linguistically impaired.

Mr. SOUDER. The Vermont and Maine borders, is there French

in the mix of that? Is that—— Mr. ZIGLAR. You know, that’s a good question. I don’t know the

answer to that question. We require Spanish for all of our officers.

The way it works is that a rookie officer comes into the Border Patrol and goes to the Southwest border first. We tend to put our

more mature, our older and more experienced officers up on the

northern border because it’s a different kind of mix up there. So

they come in needing Spanish. But we don’t have a requirement for

French.

Mr. SOUDER. I am going to ask a similar question, Mr. Smith and

Mr. Mead, in just a second. Obviously we are not going to put

somebody who can speak Farsi at every border. Do you foresee that

you’re going to have personnel who can field language questions

that if somebody at a border has an emergency that they need to

contact in to somebody to check, that you will be looking at that

as a potential language requirement?

Mr. ZIGLAR. That is an issue that we face every day. Of course,

at our points of entry, people come in that don’t speak English, and

we have a variety of different ways that we, you know—bigger

places we have lots of people that can speak different languages.

They also can use a—telephonically they can get some assistance

if they have to. But you definitely put your finger on an issue that

we have to address, and that is more language skills at the point

of contact with people.

Mr. SOUDER. Can I ask the same question of Mr. Smith and Mr.

Mead? Do you see this as a pressing need? Do you have the skills?

Obviously every person isn’t going to be able to speak 5 to 10 languages, but the ability to respond if there is an emergency at the

border, they are having trouble with communications. There are

some questions. Is there electronic ability to get with somebody,

or——

Mr. SMITH. Well, we do target recruitment of people with special

language skills. Admittedly most of our officers have Spanish as

their second language, if you will. There is one point, for Federal

law enforcement officers, according to regulation, they are entitled

to a foreign language bonus, but that is only for law enforcement

officers. There is no bonus paid for non-law enforcement officers

who speak languages that we would require.

Mr. SOUDER. Could you explain in your agency who would be

classified in law enforcement in that sense? Inspectors would not

be.

38

Mr. SMITH. Or special agents, obviously, are included. And by

special legislation our inspectors and canine officers are also included.

Mr. SOUDER. So who in that system might have critical information at a point of contact who wouldn’t be available for a language

bonus?

Mr. SMITH. Import specialists, administrative people, entry.

Mr. SOUDER. OK. So the data sources for the law enforcement

personnel basically.

Mr. SMITH. Correct.

Mr. ZIGLAR. Mr. Chairman, that makes a very important point

that I made in my testimony in that our inspectors are not treated

as Federal law enforcement agents, even though they carry guns

and they have arrest powers and all of that sort of thing. They are

not 6C Federal law enforcement agents, so we have that same—we

have that problem with respect to our inspectors.

Mr. SOUDER. So that’s true of the entire INS, you can’t get a language bonus?

Mr. ZIGLAR. Inspectors. Border Patrol folks and investigators, intelligence officers are Federal law enforcement officers.

Mr. SOUDER. So Border Patrol can, but the inspectors can’t.

Mr. ZIGLAR. The inspectors cannot.

Mr. SOUDER. The foreign language bonus sounds like a very important thing to pursue. I guess it’s only going to become more intense of a question rather than less intense.

Mr. Mead.

Mr. MEAD. Yes, we actively recruit Spanish-speaking individuals

to become deputies. We don’t have enough deputies that are fluent,

particularly along the Southwest border. We do provide some basic

law enforcement Spanish training to as many of our employees as

we can. It is not nearly as comprehensive as what the Border Patrol does. But we are concerned about the need for Middle Eastern

languages because in addition to apprehending terrorist fugitives

where that would be useful, we also contemplate that we are going

to be getting people in the witness protection program that probably don’t speak English and don’t speak Spanish either, so we are

going to need some different languages there. Just prisoners in our

custody as a result of terrorist arrests may not speak English, or,

you know, we would have the need to converse with them in another language. There’s just a lot of areas where we are going to

need a whole new skill set of languages that we have never even

contemplated, so we are going to have to come up with some way

of doing that.

Mr. SOUDER. Let me ask you in another—the custody and witness protection is really interesting because what that presupposes,

which I would assume each of you have had to work with, too, is

that intelligence may come in. The person—in other words, it isn’t

just that the people who are, quote, bad guys are going to necessarily have in the current context of the Middle East a language

question. The people who are the good guys, are giving us the tips,

are also likely to be Middle Easterners who have seen the infiltration, and will we have the ability to handle those tips?

We have so focused on the Mexico border and Spanish in this

country that this is a phenomenon that is throwing us off a little

39

bit, that the stuff that—the leak, if you look at the border, the

leaks are on the Canadian border. Also the catches have been on

the Canadian border. But the potential vulnerability there, it’s— the country has pivoted in how they’re thinking about it because

we’ve always seen—looked south for the problem, not north. And

the diversity of the country and the terrorist groups, right now it’s

Middle Eastern and al Qaeda, but, I mean—and the FARC would

be more likely to be a Spanish language base. But if it’s Hezbollah

or Hamas or an Indonesian group, now that we have copycat terrorists, our language challenges and your challenges and immigration questions and custody questions and intelligence questions are

immense compared to when we were predominantly focused on the

Spanish language.

Any other comments on—— Mr. SMITH. You’re very correct, sir. You reminded me that the

Customs Service employs several hundred intelligence research

specialists, and they—a foreign language bonus pay for them to enable them to listen to the radio, read the newspapers, etc., would

be very helpful.

Mr. SOUDER. I also wondered, Mr. Smith, if you are able to elaborate at all when you said current personnel laws and regulations

promulgated by OPM do not provide the flexibility.

Mr. SMITH. I have seen the parts of the administration’s Managerial Flexibility Act, I haven’t read it all, but there seems to be some

things in there that will help us. The rule of three that they are

proposing change is very important to us and gets away from

rankings. The rule of three, just interestingly, I don’t know if you

are aware, that was enacted for the government in 1888, and hopefully now we will be able to change that law to give us a lot of flexibility there.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, I am pretty concerned about—1888 is a long

time ago without changing the law.

Let me ask you a couple or three questions that you don’t need

to necessarily answer here, but if you could give me—I will give

them to you for written.

But, for example, how many new officers and inspectors would

each of you need to meet the challenges you are being asked to

face? That can be specific or approximate. And we will continue to

produce that, because, quite frankly, every 30 days we make new

demands and expectations because it is a—kind of a moving target,

so to speak.

Could you address a little bit—each of you alluded to experience

and training—how rapidly new officers and inspectors in your

agencies can be added?

Realistically are we looking at a—I think one of you said that

you had 1,000 in the pipeline, and you had just hired at Customs.

Border Patrol was seeking out more. I think, Mr. Ziglar, in your

testimony, the written that you had, it takes—you had a phenomenal number of people who—16,000 candidates to get 1,000.

Mr. ZIGLAR. 75,000 to get 2,000 Border Patrol.

Mr. SOUDER. 75,000 to get 2,000.

Could you give me a rough idea of, is your retirement—is the

length of service declining at a rapid rate, or has that stayed relatively constant, or are you seeing that accelerate? Are people takVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:10 Oct 03, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\81781.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
40

ing early retirement? You mentioned the five for the sky marshals.

Has there been an accelerating pattern on that have you seen for

a period of time?

Mr. ZIGLAR. I don’t know the answer to that question, but let me

make one point. One of the problems about the 6C is that you have

a 57-year—you have to be 57 years old, you are required to retire.

That may have been a good policy at some point in the past, but

being someone who is about to be 57 soon, I—I don’t think it is

such a good idea anymore.

But all of the joking aside about it, we have lots of Border Patrol

agents, for example, that are reaching that age limit that are in

great health. They do a good job. They are grown-ups. They know

how to act, and we are forcing them out the door by virtue of that

law.

I think we ought to change the statute to allow for maybe a little

bit later entry. If you—57 you are out, then you can be hired if you

are older than 37, and yet, there are situations where military

folks retire maybe at 41, 42. They are perfect for us. So we need

to change that system, and that, I think, would slow down the retirement of the good people that we have, experienced people, in

the system.

One thing that Mr. Smith did not mention, that I will, because

I think it is probably a slightly sensitive subject, and that is the

notion of going to an excepted service format for hiring and promoting people. That is a much more flexible way of managing your

business, and we certainly would like to have excepted service at

the INS rather than going through the typical Civil Service socalled competitive process, which I don’t find to be very competitive. That would give us better selection of people, hire them and

promote people who really are performing well.

I know it is a somewhat controversial subject, you know, that

OPM hates it because it would put them out of a job, but I think

it is something that we need to do to run this government much

more like a business.

Mr. SOUDER. I know you are trying to make a meeting, so I will

let you go here. We are going to give you some written questions,

and one of the things that I will promise to each of you is to get

some placemarker legislation so that we can at least debate some

of those subjects, and we will work with your legislative offices to

do that. That will help force a debate. Maybe we can get it done

this year, some may take longer, and some will get blocked, but at

least we will force a discussion.

But I have some additional questions.

Mr. ZIGLAR. I just got a note that my hearing—my meeting on

the Senate side has been canceled or rescheduled, so I am at your

disposal.

Mr. SOUDER. I will go another 10 or 15 minutes to try to get an

idea of the type of things we are looking at.

What is apparent is each of you have in the different posts in

your agencies substantially different training periods, phase-in periods for different positions. But roughly what kind of training periods are we talking about in getting people into your agencies?

Mr. SMITH. New special agents go to school for 26 weeks, inspectors about 12 weeks, and K–9 officers, it is about 13 or 14 weeks.

41

Mr. MEAD. Our criminal investigators go to school for approximately 16 weeks, and our more specialized law enforcement people

go 10 weeks.

Mr. SOUDER. And if I could ask each of you, Mr. Ziglar said—and

this is what we want to try to do is not rob Peter to pay Paul. As

we boost things, obviously the temptation becomes greater to go to

one agency or another which is at least in law enforcement. There

needs to be more equalization. But let me ask also in Customs and

U.S. Marshals, where do your recruits generally come from?

Mr. SMITH. In the Customs Service they come from all over the

country. We have a very aggressive recruitment strategy.

Mr. SOUDER. How many of them come from local law enforcement would you say?

Mr. SMITH. This would be a guesstimate: 25 percent.

Mr. SOUDER. What about retired military, people who have left

the military?

Mr. SMITH. A lot of military. I would guess 30, 40 percent, not

necessarily retired military, but veterans.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Mead.

Mr. MEAD. We also get a fairly substantial number of people

with prior law enforcement experience, and we do actively recruit

at military separation centers. And laid on top of that, we periodically give a national exam that anyone can take, and even there

we see sort of repeat applicants who have law enforcement and

military experience.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Ziglar, does this include—do you pick up people

in Guard and Reserve? Did you include that in the military?

Mr. ZIGLAR. You know, I don’t know if that is inclusive.

It is.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you pick up people from private security as

well? Private security operation, is that considered any valuable

training?

Mr. SMITH. Customs Service does not target those people for hiring.

Mr. MEAD. A basic security post wouldn’t qualify them to be deputy marshals.

Mr. ZIGLAR. I mean, we will take applications from anyone. Obviously the weeding-out process is very aggressive. The percentage

that would come from private security, I don’t know, but I can get

that number for you.

Mr. SOUDER. I am partly curious because, for example, we look

at the airport question. If we would Federalize all of that, which

is predominately done by private security, I assume that we are

going to have a lot of cross-rating, not to mention at the State and

local law enforcement, depending on the logical ramp-up procedures. And I hope each of you will have the courage to tell House

and Senate appropriators—everybody gets enthusiastic. It is kind

of like if you don’t take the budget opportunity in the year it is offered, you never get it.

On the other hand, we have to have a logical ramp-up procedure

here, or all we are going to be playing is musical chairs in our system, and part of this is a risk assessment strategy of where we

need to have it.

42

We have some more technical questions on the pay things. We

have covered a lot of that. You have mentioned language bonuses,

overtime. Do the Customs and the Marshals Services have overtime pressures on them right now like the Border Patrol is having?

Mr. SMITH. Overtime pressures? Congress several years ago enacted what we call our COBRA legislation, which is kind of our

processing fees for passengers on conveyances, because our workload is so great now, we are spending more than we are taking in,

and that is a big concern to us. Additionally, that COBRA law sunsets, I believe, next year. It also pays for almost 1,100 of our inspectors right now.

Mr. SOUDER. So you aren’t capped on whether you can pay overtime? You are capped because of the revenue that pays for it?

Mr. SMITH. Well, we, too, have a $30,000 cap.

Mr. SOUDER. Are you near that?

Mr. SMITH. It can be waived for certain individuals for justifiable

reasons.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you have a waiver clause?

Mr. ZIGLAR. No, sir, it is statutory. I have no authority to waive

it.

Mr. SOUDER. That is what you were referring to.

Mr. MEAD. We don’t have a cap on overtime per se, but we are

subject to the biweekly earning limitation that I think the Commissioner is talking about. When our people work 12-hour shifts, for

example, 7 days a week, for more than, you know, a few weeks,

they will exceed that maximum earning limitation for the pay period, and then they just don’t get paid for hours that they have actually worked, and we do not have any authority to waive that.

I can tell you that is a very serious morale issue, particularly in

times of crisis where you have got people working very long hours,

very long periods of time, gone away from their families. You add

on the fact that they are not being paid, that is a morale issue. We

don’t have a way to deal with that presently.

Mr. SOUDER. What do you mean they are not going to be paid?

Because they are salary; therefore, they are not?

Mr. MEAD. There is a biweekly computation made, and if you

were earning in that 2-week period what you would be allowed to

earn when prorated out annually, you don’t get paid for those

hours that you worked in that pay period. Instead of being computed on an annual basis, so at the end of your time you would

know where you stood, they actually compute it every 2 weeks and

prorate it as if you were going to work that amount.

Mr. SOUDER. So because this is—I am getting into very technical

Civil Service areas, which we will work through. But it is a morale

question, potentially a retention question, not necessarily a recruitment pressure, because people wouldn’t have been exposed to it

yet.

Do you have other methods—classification in law enforcement is

one. Do you have other methods, or could other methods be done

that wouldn’t necessarily threaten a Civil Service structure in our

agencies that could be done, for example, emergency bonuses, if we

were declared in a state of emergency in law enforcement, that you

could have an energy bonus, or does FEMA—— Mr. ZIGLAR. I am not aware of an emergency bonus.

43

Mr. SOUDER. I am not saying necessarily that there is one. Are

there other things that we could look at that might relieve some

of the pressure short term as a category that would give you management flexibility?

Mr. ZIGLAR. I think, frankly, there are really two overtime cap

issues. One is that the 2-week cycle cap, which is really causing a

lot of our people to not be paid for work that they do, and never

be paid for the work that they do, that is beyond a—that is a fairness issue. I mean, in the private sector the laws wouldn’t allow

the private sector to decide how much overtime they were going to

pay, so why should we cap the Federal employees?

And the basis for that cap is based on level 4—Executive level

4 pay. In other words, I am an Executive level 4. So someone could

not make, on an annualized basis, more than—in a 2-week period

than I could make, even though they worked a whole lot more than

I did. That is just fundamentally unfair. The other part is the $30,000 annual cap, which is—I mean, people just stop work when they reach that cap. That is one option.

But that is, in a sense, their option, not our option. That is not so

good to us, particularly in an emergency when we need those people to be there working, and yet we are not able to pay them. It

is truly a fundamental fairness issue as well as a good management issue, and I think the Congress ought to try to deal with this

2-week cap as well as the other one.

And Congress needs to trust managers to make good decisions

about how they allocate the overtime and they manage that overtime. You know, if you wanted to give us these jobs and have us

come do it, you have got to give us some flexibility to run the business, and to run it in a way that serves the taxpayers in a fiscally

sound way and also serves the country from a security and a policy

perspective.

Mr. SOUDER. Also I am trying to think outside of the box a little

bit. For example, I doubt if there is any provision in current law

that if an agency is, say, 5 to 10 percent short in filing the current

vacancies, that they are allowed to make some sort of a change or

have—you had a recruitment supplement. Is there something that

could be for a shortage supplement? Is there something that could

be—if the ramp-up is—if we ask you to add a certain number of

people in a short period of time that puts pressures on the system,

could there—once again, maybe a variation of recruitment, but an

emergency provision that says, given the fact that this emergency

classification, that—I am trying to think if there is another way

that we can differentiate this; for example, from an extension office

in the Agriculture Department.

Because what I sense is that some of the resistance is coming because it is perceived as long-term potential pressure on the entire

system because we have a short-term law enforcement pressure

that could be from 2 to 5 years. But the fact is that Congress is

going to put this pressure on because the American people are demanding to be safe, and, therefore, in demanding to be safe, we are

running into ways—is there a way to address the particular type

of crisis in front of us other than, in effect, diverting resources?

Mr. MEAD. Mr. Chairman, in general, I don’t think, at least from

the Marshals Service perspective, we have a shortage of applicants.

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The Federal law enforcement positions are very desirable jobs. Obviously we could be robbing State and local government, but I don’t

think that it is attracting the initial attention of applicants. Some

of the things that the Commissioner and Mr. Smith have mentioned in terms of the process, how long it takes to get them

through the process, are probably greater impediments to being

able to ramp up quickly than getting the initial interest.

We just announced our new test, and it was only open to the

public, I think, for about 21⁄2 to 3 weeks, only over the Internet,

and no real aggressiveness out there promoting it. And we had almost 20,000 applicants. So, you know, it is not the initial interest,

it is how long it takes you to run that.

Mr. SOUDER. You are probably each going to have differences

within, but you are also going to have qualified versus the relative

qualifications, and also, depending what the economy is going to

make, another—— Mr. ZIGLAR. I have to say, and that is—we can get people, we can

attract people to it, but the process is so burdened down with the

bureaucratic rules. That is why I mentioned the excepted service

as an alternative, as an alternative to select and bring them on

quick and then promote them based upon how well they do their

jobs.

Mr. SOUDER. I will start to wind this up here. Let me ask you

another question. This grows out of that. I and others are somewhat concerned about, particularly if you have worked in this area

for some time, another danger of ramping up fast. Given the fact

that there are pressures that slow us down and the pressures in

adding lots of new agents in addition to qualified, I happen to believe, and many do, that the only way that we are going to have

much impact on terrorism, on narcotics, on other types of targeted

smuggling is you need tips, you need intelligence. Otherwise you

are looking at a needle in a haystack.

That is somewhat of a deterrence, looking for the needle in the

haystack, but the truth is most of our busts come from a tip; that

as we put more pressure on intelligence, as we look at the border,

the fast pass or others, a screen to see whether there is any checking, whether it is at airports or Coast Guard or wherever it is, obviously it is dependent on the people inside being clean.

Given the current pressures, are you taking any additional efforts, or what things do we need to do in the applicants that are

coming in that—and the urgency to bring people on that we can

have thorough background checks and studies to make sure our intelligence stays clean?

This is like a layman’s type of fear. I am afraid we are going to

put these steel doors on the airplanes so we can’t get to the pilot

and then find out that the pilot is bad, and we can’t get to him anymore.

Mr. ZIGLAR. Mr. Chairman, the old adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is one I believe in. Certainly from

our perspective, we are not about to lower our standards in terms

of the people we take or not do the investigations.

An example of what can happen is when the Metropolitan Police

Department here in Washington a few years ago was in bad need

of officers, just bad need of officers, they went out and they reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:10 Oct 03, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\81781.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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cruited people, and they didn’t do the background checks, they

didn’t train them well, because they needed people on the street.

As a result of that, we saw what happened for a period of time

until they weeded out people who shouldn’t have been in the force

in the first place, and then it created a very bad situation for the

Metropolitan Police, which is a fine police department.

We are not going to let that happen at the INS, Border Patrol

or any part of our enforcement operation. And I guarantee you,

knowing the Customs and the Marshals, they can speak for themselves, I guarantee you they wouldn’t let that happen either.

Mr. SMITH. Very correct, Commissioner. Those numbers of applicants that we have said we needed thousands, actually it is—for

every 1 position we fill, we need to recruit or have applicants for

about 20 to 25 to fill 1 position. They do go through extensive testing, extensive background investigations, the drug screening, medical exams, physical exams, and actually the processes that INS utilizes are virtually identical to Customs.

Mr. SOUDER. I have been very rattled in the narcotics area about

the compromising of intelligence after what happened in Mexico

with their drug czar actually living in the apartment of somebody

who was one of the cartel members, and we had shared our intelligence with him, and all of a sudden your entire network of information suppliers is gone.

And the whole question that we are going to be dealing with in

an upcoming hearing of RIS and EPIC, and as we broaden where

the intelligence goes, there is more risk of intelligence being compromised.

And I just want to make sure, and you all in your points of responsibility, that in our pressures to, say, hire a bunch of people,

that you actually are even more rigid than you have been before

in checking their status and background checks, because the worst

thing is if people get inside the system, it will be in worse shape

than we are now.

Mr. Mead, did you want to——

Mr. MEAD. Yes. We think that we have a very good record in

terms of ensuring the integrity of our work force, and there is no

reason to change that. There is no reason to change the portions

of the hiring process that deal with integrity, the background investigation, drug tests, credit checks, all of those things.

They can be done in a reasonable period of time. It is some of

the—frankly, more administrative requirements that we impose on

ourselves as being part of the Civil Service that take the extensive

amount of time. And regardless of what the hiring procedures are,

we will not sacrifice the integrity portions of the process.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, let me just close with this, and we will send

you some additional questions. But one of the—and we may come

back and revisit this again after we have actually been out to a

number of the borders—I have been to San Ysidro a number of

times, as well as Nogales and El Paso and crossed many times at

the Canadian border—that we are not going out on these border

hearings to do anything but try to figure out how to tackle the

problem, going with no preconceived notion other than it is going

to take more money.

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But my assumption is we are going to see different things at the

different borders and the pressures that are needed from the different services. The type of things that we are going to be looking

at are what types of technology are needed as supplements at the

big border crossings, what at the smaller border crossings, what

kind of personnel differences are there in—if you look at—because

we have just been looking at this I–87, the Montreal corridor. I–

87 is clearly going to need a little bit different than 89 going

through Vermont, but in between there is another little border station, and there is a couple more.

It is not clear that if you put—and if we put more pressure on

the border crossing, that they aren’t going to go 500 yards east

through the woods. How exactly is this going to work? Yet there

is no question that we have been pulling our resources back toward

the borders, that the quickest way to get people is to find them

when they are coming in and trying to penetrate into the communities. So there is going to be tremendous pressure on this, and we

are going to concentrate resources on it, but my sense is it is going

to be different pressures in different places.

Furthermore, not only do you have at Champlain on I–87 and at

Highgate Springs on I–89 and a border crossing between, you have

Lake Champlain coming up at two points in between where a person in a canoe or a small boat can come through. We need to be

looking at this in a holistic way.

We need to be looking at it from a trucking standpoint. Obviously

at the Mexican border you can see the prescription drugs being—

in addition to other illegal narcotics, being carried across and pharmacies lined up, that the challenges are immense. The responses

are going to need to be diverse. And we look forward to plunging

into that, and where we can do it with technology, where we might

be able to do other things along the border in between the sites

that, instead of an invisible border, are there going to be other

technology ways that we can watch that and tap that in, because

if we squeeze one place, just like narcotics, it is going to move elsewhere. Terrorism, illegal immigration and everything else is going

to be similar.

Any comments, Mr. Ziglar, that you want to make here?

Mr. ZIGLAR. Mr. Chairman, you are absolutely right, that this is

not an issue that can be solved by more people alone. We are going

to have to start overseas, where we are granting visas to the consular stations. They need to have more information at their disposal so that they can identify people and not give them visas

where the people are coming into this country under the visa waiver programs. The airlines need to start providing us information in

advance of their boarding so that we can identify people who may

be coming. The INS needs, the Department of State needs, the Customs Service needs, we need access to all of the intelligence information or at least some kind of signal that the person that we have

got in front of us is a problem.

That is one of the problems that we have had in this government

is that agencies don’t share information with each other, and so we

may have someone in front of us that somebody has got some information about that we don’t have.

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That is one issue. Another issue is use of technology as part of

the web of protection. We can’t have soldiers on the northern border arm to arm. We don’t have enough people to do that. There are

places that people can come over. We have to identify those potential corridors. We have got to beef up our security there. We have

got to use remote surveillance, sensing, all of those sorts of things

on the border so that at least we have some early warning system.

We need to work with our neighbors to the north and to the

south so that we, in effect, have a perimeter security approach to

things, because if they are coming across our borders, they are

coming through some other country, land borders. If we can work

with our neighbors to keep people out of their country, they will

not get to our country, and they will not create problems for them

either.

It is truly a holistic approach that is needed to deal with this,

yet at the same time understanding that millions and millions and

hundreds of millions of people that come to this country every year

are not coming here to do us harm. They are coming here to visit

the United States. They are coming here to spend money in this

country. They are coming to visit family. They are an enormous

number of low-risk travelers that we can identify and we can bring

in this country on an expedited or facilitated basis.

Commerce going across our borders is not commerce that is designed to do damage to us, it is designed to support our economy

and their economy, and we have to develop good ways of identifying those things that need to be facilitated, and those things that

are high risk to our country, identifying those and dealing with

them.

But it is truly a holistic issue, and to say that we can close our

borders and that will fix it is not an answer. It will kill our economy, it will kill our freedom, and it will kill everything else in

sight. So we have to be rational, and we have to do this in a studied approach, realizing that we need to get on with it, because the

American people do feel a sense of insecurity.

But I endorse what you said; that is, that we need to look at this

in a very dispassionate, calm way, because if we do things that

make us feel good but don’t work, we are worse off than as if we

did nothing.

Mr. SOUDER. Before I close, I forgot there was one line of questioning I wanted to raise. This is not a primary function of this

hearing, which was to focus just on the work force. But, particularly Mr. Ziglar and Mr. Smith, if you can, I know they are doing

this at San Ysidro, what has historically kind of happened is that

when we know someone at the border is looking for drugs, there

is some movement of the people who are moving illegal immigrants, even in the lanes—to some degree the similar thing is if

you are looking for immigrants, if there is a Customs person, because—and this is leading to a broader question, but at San Ysidro

some of the agents are being cross-trained so that traditional people and Customs can do some immigration things. People who are

trained to be the drug specialists can also look for other things.

This has become huge in the antiterrorism question.

My concern there on the narcotics committee is that we are going

to be so busy looking for terrorists that we forget to look for the

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other things. If you can give us some information of which borders

the cross-training is occurring, where we could accelerate those

processes, because the No. 1 thing that is getting a head of steam

among Members—and I would like to also get—if you want to give

it for the record, or written, that—your opinion on this—there is

talk about, well, we need one superagency to do this south border,

we need one superagency for the north border, this jurisdictional

question doesn’t work. But the problem is your missions are different once they go away from the border.

We have looked at this for many years. There may need to be a

supervisor, but if we just get another homeland terrorism czar,

drug czar, border czar, all of the additional agencies, we are getting

so much bureaucracy. I am interested in your reaction to that, and

can that, in effect, be headed off by more cross-training at the border where your agents, even if you are from diverse agencies, can

help cover the other agencies’ questions.

Mr. ZIGLAR. That is a perfect question. I can tell you that based

upon my extensive 2 months’ experience in this job, that the Customs Service and the INS work together very cooperatively at the

borders. We share jurisdiction at the ports of entry, and we crosstrain our people, because there are times when Customs people are

doing an INS function and vice versa. So we do cross-train our people, and they work together very well. In fact, many of the regulations at the ports of entry are—for example, on threat levels, those

are the guidelines that the Customs Service has that we work with

them on when we change a threat level.

So it is a very cooperative relationship. Sometimes it is competitive when they want to hire our folks, but it is a very cooperative

relationship, and we understand what we are trying to do there.

What we need together are more resources so that we can really

do that job and do that job effectively.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

Mr. SMITH. I can only second Commissioner Ziglar’s response.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, thank you, each of you, for coming today. I

appreciate Mr. Ziglar taking his busy time to come. As Commissioner, we know this is very important. There is a lot of immigration pressures and a lot of different ways, and we appreciate you,

now with the terrorism angle and the narcotics. And, Mr. Smith,

we have worked with the Customs on lots of different issues, and

sometimes the U.S. Marshals Service doesn’t get included in these,

and we try to do that wherever possible, because the other parts

can’t be executed if the Marshals Service isn’t providing their critical support to that.

I thank each of you for coming. I ask that Mr. Cummings’s statement be inserted into the record, and we will look forward to hearing responses to our written questions as well as future hearings.

With that the hearing stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 2:40 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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

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