20 March 2002

Bush Leans Toward New Agency to Control Who and What Enters

The following article is excerpted from the 20 March 2002 on-line edition of "The New York Times".

President Bush appears likely to accept a proposal from his domestic defense advisers to merge parts of the embattled Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Customs Service into a new agency that would exert firmer control over who and what enters the country, administration officials said.

The recommendation, which came at a meeting of the Homeland Security Council conducted this morning by Mr. Bush, signals a significant retreat for the director of homeland security, Tom Ridge.

Mr. Ridge had advocated a far more ambitious plan that involved creating an agency including other major government entities that defend America's borders, like the Coast Guard and parts of the Agriculture Department. But he had to back off in the face of objections from agencies that recoiled at the prospect of losing major parts of their departments and budgets....

The new border control agency would fall under the control of the Justice Department, officials said, despite Mr. Ridge's concern that a more radical shift of control is required. The immigration service, which includes the Border Patrol, has long been a part of the Justice Department, which has apparently been unable to solve the mismanagement of its operations....

The new agency would combine the Customs Service with the border enforcement functions of the immigration service, including the Border Patrol and possibly immigration inspectors. The I.N.S. is already reorganizing itself to separate its enforcement and service duties, which often have conflicting mandates....

Placing the new agency within Justice rather than creating an independent Cabinet-level department, as some in Congress have proposed, was an important step in winning Mr. Ashcroft's support. "We support a cohesive, seamless coordination of border security by having it all under one entity," said one law enforcement official familiar with the Justice Department's position....

While the move of the Customs Service helps put what Mr. Ridge calls "a single face" at the border, it also puts the Justice Department in the business of collecting tariffs on goods imported to the United States. That is the main task of the Customs Service, which was created by the first Congress of the United States, and it essentially puts the attorney general, whose staff has little economic training, in charge of one of the more complex tasks in America's economic relations with its major trading partners.

"The idea of Customs going over to Justice will drive the Customs people insane," said a House Republican aide who has been involved in the debate on reorganizing the agencies.

More than 1.3 million people, 340,000 vehicles and 58,000 shipments, it is estimated, enter the United States every day.

Outside analysts said today they suspected that Mr. Ridge himself was less than happy with the compromise presented to the president. "Ridge wanted to have a much larger consolidation," said Ivo Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "And he wanted an independent agency. In essence, Ridge lost, because he wanted to make sure that border issues were not subject to the control of any other cabinet agency. And the attorney general won."...