Subscribe to the DPJ Weekly Brief newsletter:
Subscribe
Updates
Release Date: December 14, 2006
Washington, D.C.George Washington University
Well, I want to thank the provost for that very kind introduction and for reminding you all that I've been here before. And it's been a welcome occasion for me, and I hope it's been welcome for you, as well.
I also want to thank Frank Cilluffo, the director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute, for hosting me upstairs to talk to a number of people who are involved in various think tanks dealing with the issue of homeland security.
And of course, I want to greet all the distinguished guests, colleagues, federal, state and local and university officials who are present to hear my remarks.
I'm coming up on the second anniversary of my assuming the office of Secretary of Homeland Security. I am still, as we speak, the Secretary with the shortest term of incumbency. But in two months, I'll be the Secretary with longest term of incumbency. So that gives you anea of how young the department is.
And a lot of what I need to do, of course, as Secretary is to communicate with the public about what it is we do and why it is that we do it. And that's why I'm particularly happy to be here with this audience at this university and with the members of the Homeland Security Policy Institute because this is exactly the kind of forum where we ought to be talking about and discussing and even debating the measures that we need to take to secure ourselves in the 21st century.
Now, as I look back over two years, or almost two years in office, I have to say there have been three transformative experiences for the Department of Homeland Security and for those of my colleagues who work within it.
The first of these was the intense national spotlight that was turned on the issue of immigration. This problem has been around for decades, but in the last couple of years, it has taken on a public -- it has received a degree of public attention on a sustained basis that I don't think has ever been the case previously.
A second transformative experience for the department was the terrorist plot in London this past August, which was directed against international airliners flying from the United Kingdom to the United States. This was, by any measure, the most sophisticated plot against the United States that came near to fruition since September 11th. It tested our ability to share information and to rapidly adjust security measures in the face of a very large-scale, potential attack against the United States. It was a measure of how far we've come since September 11th.
And the third transformative event was Hurricane Katrina, which struck within a few months after I arrived at the department. It tested our department's preparedness, in fact preparedness at all levels of government. And it tested our ability to respond in myriad and in some respects unimaginable ways.
Each of these transformative experiences challenged our department and our government in the area of homeland security. And we have matured as a result. Let me talk briefly about each of these.
As I've said, immigration has been around for at least 30 years as a public issue. But it has not, in my experience, received the fevered pitch of attention that it's gotten in the last couple of years at any previous period of time.
In order to look at this problem to try to see if we could turn it around and resolve it once and for all, we realized we had to take as a department a sustained, system-based view of the problem of immigration because it's not just a question of more boots on the ground, or more technology, or tougher enforcement in the interior, or changing the rules with respect to immigrant workers. It's about all of those things. It's about understanding the system as a comprehensive whole.
And that's why we came up with the Secure Border Initiative, which is the implementation of the President's commitment to comprehensive immigration reform, something that addresses the entirety of the problem from the border itself all through the interior of the country and touching upon the very significant economic engine that fuels the vast majority of illegal migration.
Among the things we did to implement this comprehensive approach in the last two years were ending catch-and-release at the border. You'll recall that was a promise I think I made even here when I spoke a year ago, and it was directed at a pernicious and demoralizing policy under which non-Mexicans who could not simply be returned to Mexico were released because we did not have the ability to detain them before we sent them back home. Not only did that undercut the enforcement effort of our Border Patrol, but it sent the signal to people seeking to come into the country illegally that if they were able to make it in, they had a high likelihood of being released even if they were caught. And that was, of course, a very perverse incentive. So we analyzed the system. We applied the resources and since the summer we have ended catch-and-release at the border.
We launched the SBI Net contract, an unheralded and unprecedented comprehensive technology approach to getting full situational awareness at the border and to giving the Border Patrol the tools they need to characterize intrusions into the country and to respond effectively. We're going to begin the first phase of this in 28 miles, starting at the very beginning of next year. And that's going to complement the President's commitment to double the Border Patrol to over 18,000 by the end of 2008.
In the meantime, as you know, we have had the National Guard join us at the border. And so we are beginning to see the first real results of a comprehensive approach to dealing with the challenge of illegal migration. Using metrics such as the number of apprehensions and what we see on the south side of the border in terms of activity and staging areas, the Border Patrol has informed me that we have seen measurable progress in the last two quarters of fiscal year 2006, as compared with the same time periods in the prior year.
These metrics of progress -- apprehensions, ending catch-and-release, and as you saw yesterday, much more vigorous enforcement in the interior, including a dramatic increase in criminal penalties against those who willfully violate the immigration laws, show that when we apply a comprehensive strategy, we can start to produce real results.
But of course, not all of this is within the power of the department or even the executive branch. To develop a truly comprehensive solution, we must put into place the final piece of comprehensive immigration strategy, and that is a temporary worker program. Only a temporary worker program will give us the ability to deal with that tremendous economic draw which has time and again over the years defeated all the enforcement measures that the government has placed on the border to try to get security for this country. And so we look forward to working with Congress this coming year to put the final piece of comprehensive immigration reform into place.
Now, on August 10th, many of you awoke and turned on your television and your radio to learn of a dramatic plot that had been disrupted in the United Kingdom, a plot in which al Qaeda-linked individuals sought to get on airplanes destined to the United States and to detonate those airplanes while they were en route from the United Kingdom.
Behind the scenes, in addition to all the very fine intelligence work and enforcement work done by our British partners and done in cooperation with our intelligence agencies and with our law enforcement folks, there was a tremendous amount of work that needed to be done to totally revamp the security procedures at our airports in the period of six hours between the time we were able to communicate to TSA what the true security situation was -- because we couldn't obviously put at risk operations that were highly secret -- and the time that people were going to start boarding airplanes the following morning under a brand new and much tougher regime of security measures. We had to redesign the program. We had to make sure that the screeners in the six-hour period were adequately educated about what the new rules would be. We had to harmonize with our counterparts in London and all across Europe. And we succeeded in doing this in a way that after the first day caused essentially no disruption in the amount of waiting time and the amount of inconvenience to the traveling public.
This was, I think, a signal accomplishment of the maturation of TSA and the department. This highly ified operation was kept secret until the very last moment, and then in that intervening night, we all pulled all-nighters to be able to get our entire system retooled so that we could efficiently and safely allow the traveling public to travel internationally while we were taking this plot down in the United Kingdom. That is both a sobering reminder of the fact that we still face threats of enormous magnitude, but reflects great credit upon all the lessons we've learned over the last five years about how to turn security around efficiently, effectively and quietly when we need to do so.
And finally, about a year and a half ago, we suffered the blow of Katrina, followed very closely thereafter by the blows of Rita and Wilma in what was a uniquely devastating hurricane season for the United States. It forced us to focus on the fact that this country had not adequately planned for a true catastrophe, whether it be a natural catastrophe, or a manmade catastrophe, that the kind of rigorous planning at all levels and the building of capabilities that were necessary in the admittedly rare catastrophic instance was not there. And therefore, although there was tremendous work done by, for example, the Coast Guard in conducting 33,000 rescues, it was a vivid demonstration of the fact that improvisation is no substitute for preparation.
Since that period of time, we've embarked on a very ambitious program of retooling FEMA to make it a 21st century response organization that includes a comprehensive review and adaptation of emergency plans, including a great deal of work that was done this past year to get ourselves prepared in the event we had another serious hurricane season in 2006. It meant a much strengthened partnership with the Department of Defense for the first time ever in this country's history, joint planning -- preparing in advance mission assignments for the Department of Defense to be able to quickly and effectively come to assist civilian authorities in a way that was not -- for which the capability was not there before 2006, these are measurable steps forward. And they're important steps forward. But I also have to say we've got a lot more work to do.
We've got to continue to build out our total asset visibility. And we've got to do a much better job, frankly, of how we manage the process of recovery. We still have tens of thousands of people who suffer the lingering effects of Katrina. And as the city of New Orleans and as the state of Mississippi and the state of Louisiana try to recover and rebuild in what is a mammoth task, we have to make sure that FEMA does not become so enmeshed in its own bureaucratic processes sometimes that they lose sight of the need to have simple common sense and humanity in dealing with the public. So we're going to have to continue to crack down and make sure we get this job done.
Whether it be, therefore, in the area of immigration, or in the area of managing an international airline threat, or in building a 21st century response capability, DHS employees over the last two years have exercised enormous perseverance, skill and dedication across a very demanding set of responsibilities.
And just to touch on a couple of other areas where we've had some real accomplishments this past year, for years we had a very significant backlog in terms of processing those who were eligible for citizenship. We laid down as an objective the elimination of the immigration backlog at Citizenship and Immigration Services. And we recognized that that backlog was causing real pain and hardship to millions of people who were waiting for a decision about whether they had met the requirements for American citizenship. I am pleased to say that the backlog within CIS is now gone, and notifications are now being made within months.
We've also improved our immigration databases and our fingerprint databases so that for the first time we have real interoperability in a number of cities between the FBI's law enforcement database and DHS' immigration databases. That is producing real results in terms of allowing local police toentify individuals who have both immigration warrants and law enforcement warrants pending against them.
And we've also made major steps in refashioning our intelligence collection and sharing activities of the department under the leadership of our chief intelligence officer, Charlie Allen.
And we're now working very intensively with state and local officials to set up 20 intelligence fusion centers across the country. These centers, which we've funded with about $380 million, will have embedded DHS analysts in state and local offices and also state and local analysts at DHS, improving the flow of two-way information and fusing our intelligence -- not only horizontally across the government, but vertically at all levels, as well.
All of these accomplishments are a true testament to the remarkable talent of well over 180,000 DHS employees who face immense challenges every day protecting our borders on land and in coastal waters; analyzing intelligence 24 hours a day, seven days a week; protecting air travelers during extremely busy travel seasons and responding to fires and hurricanes and earthquakes and other natural disasters that often put their own lives in danger. These hardworking men and women of DHS deserve our gratitude for these and so many efforts over the past year. And I'd like to thank each of you personally for your service to the department and to our entire country.
So that's looking back at some of the challenges and accomplishments that have matured our department. But our work is not done. So what are we going to set as our goals and priorities for the next two years?
I like to break these into five categories: First, we've got to protect Americans against dangerous people; second, we've got to protect Americans against dangerous things; third, we've got to make sure that our critical infrastructure is sufficiently hardened so that even if dangerous people or dangerous things are used in an attack, we can resist that attack -- we have to build 21st century response capabilities; and finally, we have to unify the department into a seamless whole, one in which people are both parts of proud components with real legacies, but also working together to build a visionary new 21st century government organization.
So let me talk a little bit about the key goals in each of these areas. First, protecting Americans from dangerous people. A big part of this job is making sure we don't have terrorists coming into our country. We have a huge challenge. Over 400 million people every year enter the United States just through our ports of entry. I'm not talking about between the borders. We can't let them all in blindly because some small number of them do represent a real risk to the United States. That surely is a lesson of 9/11.
So we have to have a way to manage the risk. We have to have a way to know who are we going to focus on, who is the higher-risk person that ought to be pulled into secondary and questioned, and how do we separate those from the very many millions of people who we should move through as quickly and as conveniently as possible.
Well, in order to be able to do this, in order to be able to make an intelligent assessment of who you ought to look at more closely, we use a number of tools. First, of course, we have our watch lists. Those are name-based. And if we know the name of someone who we have reason to be conc