Engagement Works

From the beginning, our Department has invested a great deal in community outreach, particularly with regard to racial, religious and ethnic minority communities. We are more effective when we explain our policies to people, when we listen to their feedback, and when we ask community groups to roll up their sleeves to work with us on projects to secure our country.

I am pleased to announce that we have taken another step forward in reaching out to the American public by creating a webpage on community outreach. This page includes recent news of interest; links on immigration information, filing complaints on travel or civil liberties concerns, and training resources that build cultural competency; and, video of Secretary Chertoff speaking about the importance of community outreach and the proactive role that American Jewish, Arab and Muslim communities can play in our national security.

After almost six years of working with racial, religious and ethnic minority communities around the country, we can say with certainty that outreach pays concrete dividends.

For example, organizations representing Jewish and Sikh communities have helped us improve our ability to screen religious travelers. The Sikh community has partnered with our office and the Federal Protective Service to develop training posters on how security guards should screen people who wear or carry certain religious items. We also co-sponsored an excellent seminar on violent extremism with the Anti-Defamation League.

When Hurricanes Gustav and Ike hit the Gulf Coast earlier this fall, we worked with our colleagues from immigration groups to ensure that evacuation materials were translated and messages were spread within communities. We are convinced that lives were saved.

Our relationships with disability rights organizations have helped us attract accomplished new employees. These organizations have also supplied subject-matter experts to help us analyze the emergency operations plans of a dozen major cities. This groundbreaking analysis was a key component of the Department’s Nationwide Plan Review, which set the agenda for improving emergency management post-Katrina.

We have also invested a great deal in outreach to American Arab and Muslim communities. We have regular roundtables with government officials and community leaders in Washington, Detroit, Houston, Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles. Our senior leaders have briefed groups when a new policy is announced, such as recently when Kip Hawley briefed the community groups on Secure Flight—an initiative that will decrease watchlist misidentifications. Secretary Chertoff has personally invested a great deal in this effort – speaking to the South Asian Chamber of Commerce in Houston, meeting with inter-faith religious leaders at a mosque, discussing issues with Pakistani-American doctors, and holding roundtables with students from these communities.

After almost six years of this engagement, we have tangible evidence that engagement between the Department and these communities is effective. Consider the following

• Earlier this year, we held a call with a number of community leaders to talk about the imminent release of a European film critical of Islam. As a result, several prominent Muslim leaders in this country wrote and spoke to their communities about the appropriate response to a film of this sort. Their work decreased tensions among Muslim communities and helped to prevent a repeat of the Danish cartoons controversy.
• At our Houston roundtable, an FBI colleague made a presentation about the threat of extremism among young people. The participants understood the message and wanted to address the concern locally and proactively. They organized a program for the imams of 11 of the largest mosques in Houston to all speak out against extremism on a single Friday, and then developed an anti-extremism curriculum that was taught in the mosques in subsequent weeks.
• After Katrina hit, disability advocates filled several trucks with medical equipment and supplies. However, they did not have enough money to pay for the trucks to drive across country to the Gulf Coast. When a Muslim civil rights organization heard about the situation, it raised the money within 24 hours, and the trucks were on their way.
• Community leaders have offered to encourage the youth in their communities to put aside skepticism and seek employment with the federal government. As a result, we were able to create the National Security Internship, a partnership between the FBI and DHS that brought almost two dozen Arabic speakers into our intelligence divisions. Next summer’s class will be even larger, and will expand to bring Arabic speakers into TSA and ICE.

The bottom line is this: community outreach educates our citizens; conversely, it educates us. We know from experience that community outreach builds support for the homeland security mission and it makes the people who carry out that mission more effective.

Daniel W. Sutherland
Office of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties

Turning the Tide on Illegal Immigration

An important story is taking place along our nation’s southern border that has largely escaped the attention of the American public and the national media. For the first time in decades, a historic shift is occurring in illegal immigrant traffic into the United States.

From Texas to California, fewer immigrants are attempting to enter our country illegally by breaching our southern border. Annual immigration trends also have begun to reverse direction, favoring legal immigration over illegal immigration. And third-party indicators, such as remittances to Mexico and Latin America, have plummeted. In short, the tide of illegal immigration is turning.

According to a recent Pew Hispanic Center study, for the first time since 2001, there has been no net increase in illegal immigration in the United States, and it is likely that there has been a net decrease in the number of illegal immigrants in our country. To be sure, a down economy has caused some to rethink whether to illegally cross the border. But tighter border security, a significant expansion of the Border Patrol, the deployment of new technology, and increased interior enforcement are having an undeniable impact.

On a recent visit to Arizona, I had an opportunity to tour the border with the Chief of the Tucson Border Patrol sector to see firsthand some of these changes. As a result of new border infrastructure, including hundreds of miles of physical and virtual fencing, additional Border Patrol agents, and stepped up enforcement, arrests of illegal aliens have dropped 16 percent in the Tucson sector over the past year. Across Arizona, they have fallen 22 percent. For the entire southern border, they have decreased 17 percent. These are the lowest levels in more than a decade.

Moreover, in areas where the Border Patrol has implemented Operation Streamline, a program where illegal immigrants are prosecuted and face jail time for crossing the border, even greater reductions have occurred. In Yuma, Arizona, apprehensions have fallen 68 percent. In Del Rio, Texas, they have dropped 46 percent. These are not seasonal anomalies. They reflect increased border security and the deterrence that comes with the prospect of spending time in a federal detention facility.

The Border Patrol’s own estimates of known illegal entries also support these trends. Known illegal entries are internal estimates of the number of immigrants who have crossed the border but managed to elude capture. Tracking these figures helps the Border Patrol assess the volume and pattern of illegal crossing on a given day so it can adjust its tactics and deployment of personnel. Over the past fiscal year, known entrants eluding capture dropped below actual arrests, suggesting that not only are fewer people attempting to illegally enter the country, but even fewer are successfully making it through.

Beyond the statistics, there are numerous anecdotal signs of positive change along the border. Communities once plagued by drug smuggling and criminal activity are flourishing. Crime rates have dropped in many areas. And businesses that once relied on illegal labor are dying down or closing their doors.

Unfortunately, there have been some negative consequences of heightened enforcement, namely a rise in cross-border violence by criminal organizations fighting to control territory and smuggling routes. Assaults against the Border Patrol rose 11 percent over the past year. It is a regrettable fact of stepped up border security, but one that is necessary for the security of our country.

Despite this progress, there is still more work to do. Our challenges at the border have been years in the making, and they will take time to fully address, including action by Congress to enact immigration reform. In the interim, it is important that we not scale back or surrender the progress we’ve achieved in just a few short years.

Proponents of immigration reform should remember that part of the reason past efforts have failed in Congress is because the government lacked credibility on the issue of border security.

Over the past two years, we have attempted to establish that credibility and help pave the way for a more comprehensive solution, including a temporary worker program that will take pressure off the border and address the underlying motive for illegal immigration. Until that time, it would be a mistake to allow the tide to turn in the wrong direction. To do so would only set back efforts to control the border, endanger our country, and create additional barriers to future reform.

Michael Chertoff

The Rest of the Story

The Houston Chronicle recently published a three part series focusing on the burden illegal immigration is placing on the criminal justice system. Without question, the issue is even more urgent in metropolitan areas such as Houston, where proximity to our Southwest Border is directly related to the movement of illegal aliens into the United States.

While U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) does not believe the writer of this series presented an accurate depiction of current facts, we could not agree more that identification and removal of criminal aliens is an urgent priority. The good news is that the men and women of ICE are working hard every day to implement new and innovative programs designed to eliminate the possibility of any criminal illegal alien being arrested and subsequently released back into our communities.

We recognized that better, faster local access to the millions of immigration records contained in the Department of Homeland Security’s databases is essential to local police departments and local sheriffs’ offices confronting criminal suspects whose backgrounds were unknown and who may be in the United States illegally. To meet this critical need, ICE implemented new technology that enables local officers to check both the criminal and immigration histories of all those processed at their jails. This integrated technology is the cornerstone of ICE’s Secure Communities program, and is currently deployed in seven jails, including those in Harris and Dallas counties.

With the ongoing deployment of Secure Communities, we fully expect to see a steady increase in the number of criminal aliens identified in local custody. Every increase moves us closer to our ultimate goal of removing all criminal aliens currently held in the prisons and jails throughout the country.

In just over a year, ICE has increased its staffing level at the Harris County Jail from a single officer to nearly a dozen. The Harris County Sheriff’s Office also has a pool of nine 287(g) trained deputies who work with ICE to identify, interview, and process criminal aliens for removal.

Without doubt, our joint efforts have yielded success. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2008, the ICE’s Houston Field Office identified and placed more than 13,300 illegal aliens, encountered in the custody of another law enforcement agency into removal proceedings, including more than 7,200 from the Harris County Jail. This is an increase of more than 3,300 over FY 2007.

Everyone in law enforcement today recognizes the power of partnerships. Both federal and state law enforcement officers all share a common mission to make the United States as safe and secure as possible and it just makes sense to work together.

John P. Torres
Acting Assistant Secretary
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Coast Guard Acquisition

Several blog and media reports have made a series of misrepresentations concerning the Department of Homeland Security's rescission and acquisition delegation of authority to the Coast Guard. Let me take this opportunity to help get it straight.

Some blog entries presented the acquisition decision as a disciplinary measure with negative ramifications for the Coast Guard. In fact, the language puts in writing a best practice that the Coast Guard voluntarily implemented.

Bottom line – the re-establishment of DHS as the acquisition decision authority formalizes an oversight structure that had effectively been in place since 2006; despite the delegation authority provided in 2003. Our Investment Review Process conducted reviews of the Coast Guard acquisition programs, including the various Deepwater projects and contracts, as documented in Acquisition Decision Memorandums. The formal rescission merely documents the operating procedures and demonstrates uniformity in the DHS acquisition management function as detailed in our new Acquisition Directive 102-01.

The Coast Guard marked a major milestone in July 2007 with a new consolidated acquisition directorate. Rear Adm. Gary T. Blore, leads the enterprise as assistant commandant for acquisition, managing an investment portfolio worth more than a billion dollars of investment annually.

It should be noted that Rear Adm. Blore welcomed the acquisition decision since brings Deepwater into the fold of the normal acquisition process. This re-establishment of DHS as the acquisition decision authority restores the checks and balances the Department needs, and it provides full transparency to our acquisition process.

On Nov. 7, Rear Adm. Blore clarified for his entire directorate several misrepresentations made in traditional and social media outlets concerning the Department of Homeland Security's rescission of its delegation of authority to the Coast Guard for acquisition of Deepwater projects.

The Coast Guard has made remarkable progress to improve their programs across the board, and I have complete faith in their acquisition program. Without a doubt, they turned the corner from early acquisition errors.

Elaine C. Duke
Under Secretary for Management

The Visa Waiver Program Success Story—Our Newest Chapter

Each year, we welcome hundreds of millions of visitors to America. Since 1986, many of them have arrived under our Visa Waiver Program (VWP), which enables nationals of certain countries to travel to the United States for tourism or business for stays of 90 days or less without obtaining a visa.

Last month, President Bush announced that seven new nations – the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Korea – have met the requirements needed to enter the program. Starting today, eligible tourists and business people from these nations will be able to travel to the United States without a visa and contribute to our economy, as visitors have from other VWP countries for more than a generation. They will return to their countries with a first-hand impression of America and its people, helping us further enhance our reputation overseas.

The admissions requirements reflect a significantly upgraded and modernized VWP. Acknowledging the need to modernize and to recognize post-9/11 realities, they include new elements, mandated by Congress, such as new security provisions for countries and visitors alike.

Under the new requirements, countries must now provide information about serious crimes, known and suspected terrorists, timely reporting of lost and stolen passport data and cooperation on airport and aviation security.

As for individual visitors, our Department’s new Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) requires all VWP travelers to submit biographical and eligibility information on-line prior to their departure for our country. This will enable us to pinpoint potential security threats ahead of time, identify ineligible individuals before they board (saving them a wasted trip to a U.S. airport and back) and process authorized travelers more efficiently.

For the better part of a year, I have been privileged to work with my colleagues in each of the seven countries that are joining the VWP. I am proud of their accomplishments as free nations that have stood up to tyranny. Their admission to the program is a milestone in their history. It promises to be a boon to our country, while opening a bright new chapter in the VWP success story.

Michael Chertoff