An “ICEman Cometh” to EUCOM J9
Mike Anderson
Deputy Director
J9 - Interagency Partnering Directorate
An ICE man has come to EUCOM. His name is Mr. Kevin Sibley and he is an Agent of the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agency.
Kevin works in the J9 Interagency Partnering Directorate and is one of a growing number of law enforcement/border protection-oriented interagency representatives now on the EUCOM J9 “interagency team”. Kevin, for example, is also joined by a Customs and Border Protection representative, Christina Bell, and will soon be joined by a Drug Enforcement Administration representative, Mr Nick Brooke.
EUCOM’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) representative Kevin Sibley was joined at EUCOM HQ recently by about 25 of his ICE Attaché colleagues and Mr. Robert Weber, the Assistant Director of Operations for the ICE/Office of Investigations in Washington, DC. J9 helped organize and hosted this first-ever gathering of European-based ICE Agents and their Washington, DC-based superiors, together with the leadership of EUCOM. The conference was held Aug. 16-18 and involved ICE agents responsible for Europe and Eurasia and operating from locations such as Brussels, Vienna, Frankfurt, The Hague and Rome.
The focus of the conference was to exchange information and explore areas of mutual interest between the work the regional ICE attaches are doing to investigate and prevent the trafficking of illicit materials, criminals and terrorists through Europe to the United States and how that dovetails with the EUCOM mission of defending the homeland forward.
Now, ICE’s role in the EUCOM area of focus is better understood by EUCOM and vice versa. ICE attachés are more familiar with EUCOM and its role in European/Eurasian security and the EUCOM staff is now aware of ICE activity in our AOF. Through interaction with ICE at this conference, EUCOM directly benefited. Both organizations are now actively looking at opportunities to build partner capacity, and improve intelligence sharing in order to better execute counter terrorism and counter trafficking operations.
The ICE conference created a wider awareness of both the ICE and EUCOM missions, and consequently has enhanced EUCOM’s Whole of Government approach to stability and security in the AOF.
Mike Anderson
Deputy Director
J-9 Interagency Partnering Directorate
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- Drug Enforcement Agency
- Customs and Border Protection
- Department of Homeland Security
Comments: 1
EUCOM now has two representatives from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)? Shouldn't DHS send only one representative for the entire organization, or is this merely testament to the dysfunction within DHS that after all these years the organization sees a need to send multiple liaison officers to functionally represent the older stovepipes and equities? Is there no one at DHS that can adequately explain and coordinate communication between EUCOM and DHS? Of course this begs the question, what other agencies are represented on the J9 staff and are there other similar inefficiencies? Finally, it seems to me that the law enforcement function is better aligned with the Department of State's responsibilities and roles. I question whether assigning federal law enforcement personnel to be collocated with military commands represents a value-added proposition for our nation. Law enforcement is a civil function and even giving the impression that those functions are now commingling with a military mission is of concern. Even if the DHS liaison's role is strictly for informational purposes these assignments are an expensive way of doing our government's business. Has a cost assessment been conducted to determine the value-added to military commanders of these assignments? If that conference was not attended by the COM or DCOM then these assignments do not likely rise to the strategic level that justifies the expense - or at least that a TDY from one of the other DHS liaison officers collocated with the Department of State throughout Europe could not resolve. I am not sure this post represents good news for U.S. citizens.