Thread: Chertoff: Immigration law needed this year

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/06/29/ ... index.html

Chertoff: Immigration law needed this year
Legislation 'final tool' to secure borders, security chief says
From Justine Redman
CNN Washington Bureau


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said Thursday that the problem of illegal immigration into the United States will worsen if Congress does not pass immigration reform measures before the end of the year.

"Congress has an opportunity and it has a responsibility to act this year to tackle this problem," he said in a speech in Washington. "The president has used the tools of the so-called 'bully pulpit' to speak very aggressively and clearly about the comprehensive solution he thinks is appropriate. ... That is the way presidents move Congress."

Immigration legislation has stalled in Congress with the House and Senate favoring widely different proposals. Last week House Republicans announced plans to have a series of immigration hearings around the country, a move critics say makes it unlikely any bill will pass this year.

Chertoff predicted that the number of border patrol agents in the United States will more than double during President Bush's time in office, reaching 18,000 by the end of 2008. Fences, vehicle barriers, roads, and sophisticated equipment such as sensors, unmanned aircraft and satellites will be added to their artillery, he said.

However, Chertoff said that measures must be complemented by a temporary worker program "that is not an amnesty but that does allow people to get themselves square with the law if necessary, if they've violated the law, and then work in this country temporarily."

"By doing this we will have given our border patrol and our other law enforcement agents the final tool they need to do the job we have asked them to do," he said.

Chertoff said the goal of border patrol is to capture and return to their countries of origin 100 percent of illegal immigrants, dissuading others from attempting to cross the border.

"When you look at where we are now as compared to where we were in the past, we have people crossing the desert because they can't come across San Diego anymore. That is one example of a real, measurable result," he said. "The reality is the more people are forced to endure difficult challenges in crossing the border ... because we're closing off the easier routes."

Some where we have immigration laws on the books that Mr. Chertoff is completely ignoring so now he wants more laws that he can ignore??? Let's get real!!!

How about some interior enforcement Jerkoff, I mean Chertoff. The real way to stop illegal immigration is to track down employers that hire them and toss their butts in jail. Additionally, we need to cut off all aid to them except emergency medical treatment. Also, we need to put an end to "anchor babies".

Things are going to start heating up now......They're beginning to put on the pressure. This is only the beginning!

http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?content=5720

Speeches & Statements


Remarks by Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff to the American Enterprise Institute


Washington, D.C.
American Enterprise Institute
June 29, 2006

Secretary Chertoff: Chris, thank you very much for the invitation, and for the kind introduction. And it's wonderful to be able to address AEI. I've had an opportunity to do that before on different topics, and it's a good forum to discuss some challenging and difficult issues that we face.

You mentioned that I stepped down from the Court of Appeals to do this job. And during my confirmation process, a number of times people asked me how you feel giving up a lifetime job in order to take this position. And I never had a very good answer for that, but I now realize that the true answer is that in this job, every year is a lifetime. So I will have many lifetimes of this job before I'm done.

One of the most critical priorities for this Department and for the United States right now is getting a hold of our borders and addressing an immigration problem that has challenged this country for over 20 years.

We've watched the debate about immigration escalate over the last year and a half. It's been debated in Congress, it's been debated in town halls, it's been debated in coffee shops and in private homes all across the country. The fact of the matter is, I recently asked somebody whether they thought this was the most challenging and the most energetic debate on a domestic issue that we've had in the last 20 years, and they said they thought the answer to that was yes. It certainly has touched an emotional chord in Americans, and it reflects a very serious concern we have about our security and about the fundamental attributes of our sovereignty, which are, after all, the right of this country to determine who comes into the country, and the terms under which they will be allowed to enter.

As I said, this challenge has been with us for decades; it is not a new problem. And since the President took office in 2001, he has focused the administration on tackling this challenge. The fact of the matter is, in the last five years, Border Patrol agents have apprehended and returned roughly six million people entering this country illegally. Also since 2001, funding for the Border Patrol has increased by about two-thirds, and the Border Patrol has expanded its membership from slightly below 9,000 to over 12,000 agents.

This is a lot of progress, and it has yielded some tangible results, but it is by no means the end of the road in dealing with the issue of illegal immigration.

And I think we have to begin by recognizing the very real concern expressed by Americans all across the country and in all walks of life is justified. The issue of illegal immigration challenges our very fundamental notion of the rule of law. We have a set of rules and they have to be obeyed. People are also understandably concerned about whether significant numbers of illegal immigrants pose a threat to our national security. And while the vast majority of people who come into this country illegally do so for benign reasons -- they want to work -- there are certain segments of the group that come in that want to commit crimes, or even potentially carry out terrorist acts.

Illegal immigration has brought with it violence, trespassing, disturbance to our border communities. There's been an impact all across the country in emergency rooms in hospitals and in schools. And therefore, it's not surprising that as we've watched this problem grow year after year and decade after decade, Americans have increasingly not only asked but demanded a solution to this problem.

That's why the President has turned to Congress and asked Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. What does that mean? It means reform that will strengthen security at the border, it means reform that will enhance our ability to enforce the law in the interior against illegal immigrants and against employers, but it also means addressing very basic laws of supply and demand for labor that are driving most of the illegal migration into the United States.

Congress has an opportunity and it has a responsibility to act this year to tackle this problem. Whatever you think about the various elements of this debate, it has to be clear to everybody that we cannot allow this problem to continue to fester, because if we don't address it, and if we don't address it comprehensively, it is not going to go away of its own accord. It will be here next year and in the next decade and in the decades afterwards, and it will only become a problem that gets worse.

So I think Congress ought to act this year to take up the President's challenge to secure our borders in a meaningful way, to give us the tools to continue on our path of really committed and robust interior enforcement, but also to develop a comprehensive solution that turns the corner and gives us a permanent solution to a problem that has plagued this country for quite a long time.

Now, what's the strategy for dealing with illegal migration? Well, it has to be an integrated strategy. All the pieces have to fit together. And you talked a little bit, Chris, about my experience dealing with prosecuting crime in the '80s. The area that I spent a lot of time on was dealing with organized crime. Organized crime, traditional organized crime, the Mafia, made a business out of crime. And that's really what illegal migration has been in the hands of smugglers and traffickers. They have made a criminal business preying on the desire of these migrants to come and find a better life for themselves, and turning that into a vehicle for illegal profit. So we have to attack this in the kind of systematic, organized way we used when we dealt with organized crime back in the '80s.

The first part of it is, we've got to start at the border, and we've got to use all of the tools at hand to get control of the border. To that end, last year we announced a Secure Border Initiative that examined the entire process of dealing with illegal migration at the border, from the point of entry until the point that we apprehend and actually return people to their home countries. And we recognized it was like a system. If you only looked at one piece of it, you couldn't address the problem. You had to look at the way all the pieces fit together.

And as an outgrowth of that study, our Secure Border Initiative has come up with a systematic strategy for dealing with border control. First, it does involve getting more people, more boots on the ground. It involves more tactical infrastructure. That's a fancy word for fencing, vehicle barriers, roads, lights, and other tools that we can use to slow and stop people at the border, and also get to them and apprehend them as quickly as possible. It means better technology -- using some of the tools that we have used very effectively even overseas with the military to get a better ability to have total visibility of people coming across the border, connecting that visibility with real-time communications to our Border Patrol agents so they can get there, deploy, apprehend and capture those who come across the border as quickly as possible.

It also means that once we get illegal migrants, we don't release them into the community; we send them back home again. The essence of deterrence here has got to be to make the likelihood of successfully crossing the border and getting work in this country so small that people will basically give up doing it.

And that brings us, of course, to illegal enforcement, because any number of people who do get through, whether they come across the southern border or the northern border, or overstay their tourist visas, are coming for work. And if we can choke off that supply of work, we're going to do an awful lot to reduce the incentive to come across the border.

But part of choking off that supply is recognizing the very real demand that continues to pull people in, and finding a way to satisfy that demand in a form that is regulated, that gives us control of who comes in, that lets us identify who comes in, and that blunts a lot of that economic engine that we've been fighting against with all of these law enforcement measures.

So what have we done in the last year to implement this initiative? Well, the President recently requested almost $2 billion in additional funding for border security as part of the supplemental appropriation, and Congress rightfully and quickly acted on that request. That supplemental funding involves and includes funding for more agents, for tactical infrastructure -- fencing and vehicle barriers -- more detention beds so we can hold those that we capture, as well as better coordination with state and local law enforcement and additional immigration judges and attorneys so we can process people more quickly.

Under the President's plan, the number of agents is expected to increase to more than 18,000 by the end of 2008. That will more than double the number of agents from the time the President took office. We will also be adding hundreds of miles of fencing and vehicle barriers and lighting and all-weather roads designed to make it easier for the Border Patrol to do their job and give them the tools to be more effective.

But this is not going to happen overnight. We've got to train the agents, we've got to get them experienced enough to go into the field, we've got to grade the roads and build the fences and put up the lighting. And even as we're working to do that, we've got to still take concrete steps every single day to do better at the border.

One of the things the President has done, therefore, is to inaugurate Operation Jump Start, which is the deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops over the course of this summer to the border to support the Border Patrol, even as we go through the important and time-consuming process of recruiting and training actual Border Patrol agents to get to that 18,000 number.

What this will let us do is immediately enhance the boots on the ground, give our Border Patrol agents many additional eyes to spot those coming across, even while we are working overtime to get fully trained agents into the border so that ultimately, the National Guard can return to its normal duties, and we have a fully deployed Border Patrol from Texas all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

At the same time, we're in the process of analyzing and awarding SBInet, which is our 21st century technological enhancement to give the Border Patrol eyes, ears and other kinds of tools to make their job easier. We're talking about detection systems, sensors, remote video surveillance, unmanned aerial vehicles, even satellites, which will be a force multiplier for these 18,000 Border Patrol that we are in the process of training. And as a particularly high priority, we want to drive to 100 percent catch-and-return for everybody we apprehend at the border.

This is a classic example of the way economics works in illegal markets. When illegal migrants believe that they will get caught and released, that gives them a greater incentive to try to come into this country. When they understand that their being caught will lead to their being returned, that diminishes the incentive to come in.

And we've actually proven that this works. Over the last few months, we've begun this process of moving from catch-and-release to catch-and-remove. And we've done it by adding beds, and that includes the 4,000 additional beds in the supplemental; we've done it by radically decreasing the time it takes to remove someone at the border through a mechanism that we call expedited removal, which cuts the legal process very dramatically. And through this set of tools, we have begun to take populations of non-Mexicans, and instead of releasing them because we don't have enough beds to hold them, we hold them and we return them in record time.

What this means is that for virtually every population of non-Mexicans that we previously were forced to release into the country because we didn't have enough bed space, we had to basically put them out on bail. We have now got them into 100 percent detention -- Hondurans, Brazilians, Guatemalans. And one of the things we've seen, even in the last six months, is as the word has gotten out, the number of people that we are seeing coming in from those countries has begun to dramatically decrease, and decrease even with a seasonal adjustment, meaning that when we account for the fact that at various times of the year, we tend to get more migrants than others, even with that, we are seeing a net decrease in the total number of people coming from these countries. That proves that this kind of deterrence works.

We're continuing to build on this lesson. For example, for a long time, we couldn't deal with families, in terms of catch-and-remove, because we didn't have a place to put families, so we would release them into the community. You know what this led to? They were actually renting children out to illegal migrants so that the migrants could come in and pretend to be family groups and get released. So what we did was we built a family detention facility. And now when we apprehend a family coming across the border, they go into an appropriate facility where they can be held until they're returned. And that has yielded a decrease in the number of families coming across.

There is, however, one challenging area, as it relates to catch-and-release that we still have to surmount, and that is a population of people from the country of El Salvador who are legally prohibited or inhibited from returning under the catch-and-remove program, because we cannot use expedited removal.

You ask me, why is that? Why is it that this particular population can't be put in the same expedited removal channel? Well, the answer goes back about 20 years. Twenty years ago there was a civil war in El Salvador, and a case was brought against what was then the INS, Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the claim was that because of the way that these migrants were being treated they weren't getting an appropriate opportunity for asylum. So a court order was put into effect.

Twenty years has passed. The defendants who were originally named in that case are long gone. The agency which was the subject of that litigation has disappeared. The civil war, which was the cause of the case, is now over. But the court order still remains, the dead hand of the law inhibiting us from doing what I think the public rightfully demands that we do, which is getting to full catch-and-remove.

So we're working with the court to see if we can lift that order, but we're also asking Congress to give us a tool that would let us revisit these old court orders so that we can make sure that we can update them and eliminate those that no longer serve a useful purpose.

Again, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The single population that has continued to increase, in terms of the number of migrants, is El Salvadorians, because the word has gotten out to the criminal groups that that's the one population that does not get detained and removed. And as a consequence, we now see people from other countries pretending to be from El Salvador, because they understand that there's a loophole that the law has created and they're trying to exploit it. The lesson to me is, let's close that loophole, and that's going to give us the kind of deterrence tool that's going to support our Border Patrol.

Some of them are going to get in anyway, some of the illegal migrants. And so we have to continue to increase, and, frankly, be much tougher with our interior enforcement program. We recognize the fact that traditionally, the way we've dealt with illegal migrants in the workplace is using administrative sanctions. And I've seen statistics that say in the '90s there were thousands of administrative sanction cases brought, and we've much reduced that number now. And some people have said, well, doesn't that mean you're doing less interior enforcement? My answer is, we're doing better interior enforcement because we're doing tougher enforcement.

Under the old administrative detention rules, it was often the case that after a long investigation where it was determined that an employer had deliberately hired illegal migrants, you got a small administrative penalty, like a couple hundred dollars. I call that a "corporate parking ticket," and I don't think a corporate parking ticket is the way you solve the problem of illegal migrants being deliberately brought into the workplace. I think what you have to use are tougher criminal sanctions.

So we have retooled ourselves, in terms of our emphasis, to focus on high-end, high-impact criminal sanctions as a way of cracking this pattern of hiring illegal migrants by some major employers.

This, by the way, is exactly the strategy we used against organized crime. At the beginning of the campaign against organized crime, there were a lot of little cases against gamblers, and those cases never yielded a big result. They gave you a lot of numbers, a lot of people got arrested, but there was no impact on the overall illegal business. But in the '80s and '90s, what we did is we turned it around. We brought fewer cases, but high-impact cases, major cases with major charges against major figures that were in the illegal arena. And there was initially much of the same criticism we hear now: Oh, you've diminished the number of cases. But I can tell you that when people saw the results of the campaign we waged, and they saw the results, in terms of ridding labor unions of illegal organized crime, ridding legitimate businesses of illegal organized crime, people understood the wisdom of a concentrated tough approach as opposed to an approach that goes with a lot of almost immaterial sanctions.

In 1999, there were 24 criminal arrests for crimes related to hiring illegal migrants. In fiscal year 2004, it went up to 160, and this year so far, with the fiscal year in progress, we're up to a record 382 criminal arrests. These are real results, which are having a real impact.

In April, Immigration and Customs Enforcement carried out the largest single work site enforcement action ever taken against an employer, arresting over 1,100 illegal alien employees and seven managers in 26 states in a nationwide operation.

In the period of time from October 2005 to March 2006, we have arrested over 2,100 unlawfully employed illegal aliens through this pattern of enhanced, criminally-focused work site enforcement investigation, we've seized millions of dollars of cash and assets from employers, and this is beginning to have a real deterrent impact.

We're also continuing to focus our interior enforcement on the worst of the worst -- those illegal migrants who come in not to do jobs that Americans won't do but who come in to victimize Americans, to prey on Americans, and actually to prey on the other illegal migrants themselves.

We've got Operation Return-to-Sender, for example, through which ICE has apprehended over 2,000 criminal aliens, including illegal alien gang members, fugitives who have violated court orders and other immigration status violators. It was the largest ICE operation of its kind.

And before we carried out Operation Return-to-Sender, we had Operation Community Shield, which resulted in the arrests of more than 3,100 gang members on a variety of charges -- some of them criminal, some of them immigration. So we are literally focusing on thousands of illegal migrants who pose the greatest threats to our individual communities.

A third thing we're doing: We're trying to be smart about the way we use all of the elements of our government, not just the law enforcement, in enhancing and supporting increased and tougher work site enforcement.

You know, until -- for a long time, it was the case that when Social Security detected a discrepancy between a name of someone who was listed as an employee and the Social Security number that was listed on their reporting form, they'd send a letter out to the employer. And it was not clear, at least to some employers, what they ought to do about it. And a lot of employers simply ignored it, because they used the excuse that, well, if we ask questions about this, we're going to be accused of doing something wrong or discriminating.

But recently, we've put out a Notice of Rulemaking, a federal regulation that is going to make it very clear to employers that when you get Social Security no-match data, you have an obligation to check and ask why is there a discrepancy. Now, if there's a legitimate reason -- a typographical error or something of that sort -- great, you correct the error and everybody's happy. And if you do it in due diligence, and you do what you should do when you get the letter, the employer is protected against a sanction. But if the employer asks the question and determines the reason there's a discrepancy is because it's a fake Social Security card, and you've got an illegal employee, then the employer has an obligation to take action. And what the regulation makes very clear is there's no putting your head in the sand or not following up, that if you simply toss the letter in the trash, you're not going to have an excuse when the ICE agents come knocking to enforce the law.

This is the use of this kind of information in a way that makes it very clear that we have no tolerance for avoiding your legal obligation to be sure that the people that you hire have complied with the law. There's a safe harbor for those who do make a good-faith effort, but there's a very clear message of no excuses for those who don't make that good-faith effort.

We, of course, have a lot of work left to do. Past of what we need to do is continue to build on the tools that allow employers to verify whether their employers are legitimate. We have a program called Basic Pilot, which allows people to run names and Social Security numbers through the government to determine if they are legitimate. We're going to expand that program, because the more we make it available to people, the more we can give them the tools to obey the law.

But at the end of the day, I have to come back to the initial point I made. There is, in fact, a strong demand for workers who perform jobs in this country, whether it's putting tar on roofs or cleaning rooms in hotels or picking lettuce in agricultural areas, a strong demand that is going to continue to be there. And it is that demand that is drawing people across deserts sometimes to sneak into this country.

For us to be really effective in enforcement, and for us to help our Border Patrol and our ICE agents do their job, we've got to find some way to break that incredible pressure, economic pressure that is pushing on the border.

And now that we have a lot of rain, I guess I'm a little hesitant to use this analogy, but one of the analogies I often do use is I compare it to damming a river. When you have a powerful raging river, and you build a dam, you also build a spillway, which is a channel in which you can redirect some of that force of the water into a productive fashion so that you don't have to simply keep building the dam bigger and bigger and stronger and stronger because of that relentless pressure.

That's what we've got to do here. We've got to have a spillway that directs some of this economic pressure -- driven, frankly, by people who want to do things that are going to help their own families, they want to work hard -- we've got to direct that into a channel that is regulated, that has proper, verifiable identification, that gives us control over who comes in through background checks, but that also gives employers a legal way to satisfy this overwhelming demand. And it is my conviction that by building a temporary worker program that allows us this channel that is not an amnesty, but that does allow people to get themselves square with the law if necessary, if they have violated the law, and then work in this country temporarily.

By doing this, we will have given our Border Patrol and our other law enforcement agents the final tool they need to do the job we have asked them to do. It's a complicated problem. I understand there's a lot of heat on all sides of this issue, but I will tell you this: We have an opportunity now to prove to the American people we can do the job right, to take what the President has described as a rational middle ground, and what is as important, a workable ground, something that will really work.

If we let this opportunity go by, I think we will be disappointing the American people. And I am looking forward to continuing to work with Congress to get this job done in the right way.

Question: I'm from USDA, but I don't represent the agency at this time. Thank you for taking my question. I am going to concentrate on the supply and demand side that you talk about later, which is very, very important. What is your administration doing to get into formal agreements with the government of Mexico to work in collaboration, to get real agreements?

They are the supply; we are the demand. And I didn't hear anything that is taking formal steps, having a time line, having written some kind of compromises for the government of Mexico to have a more active participation in this process. Thank you.

Secretary Chertoff: Well, that's a very good question. We have been working with the Mexican government on this issue, in particular, making sure that we are focusing them and helping them address the very serious problem they have with these criminal organizations that smuggle not only people, but smuggle drugs and other contraband into the country.

I've met with my counterpart. We have set up agreements that now allow us to exchange information very quickly when there is violence at the border. They have committed to us to taking more aggressive steps, focusing on the smuggling organizations that are really the engine of this illegal business. It's very clear that the Mexican government does have a responsibility on its side of the border. It can't all be demand, just as we have to attend to the demand side of the border. But I can say we are working much more closely together than we ever have in the past. And I think President Fox has been very committed to making sure that we do collaborate in breaking this illegal business.

Question: Thank you. I am the reporter for the China Press. And several months ago, when you visited Beijing, the U.S. government and the Chinese government reached a primary agreement to deport the illegal Chinese immigrants here. And I wonder what the programs going on right now?

My second question is…the Chinese government complains that the political asylum is abused by some of the illegal Chinese immigrants here, so this problem is related to the deportation issues of the Chinese illegal immigrants. So what's your comment on this issue? Thanks.

Secretary Chertoff: Another good question. One of the challenges we have in this policy of catch-and-return is that we have to return people to a place, and the place has to accept them. And although the number of illegal migrants that are removable in this country that come from China is not large relative to that from some other countries, it is true that it is the largest population that we've had difficulty in returning.

We have approximately 40,000 Chinese now under orders of removal that are awaiting permission to go back. And of course, if they are not accepted back, then, for all intents and purposes, they are free to remain in this country because we have no place to remove them to.

I did meet with the Chinese government. We did reach an agreement on a process to expedite that removal. That is a very positive step, and we appreciate that agreement. We appreciate the commitment of the Chinese government. But of course, now we have to implement that, and we have made some progress in implementing it.

We are in the process of sending somewhat larger numbers back but I want to be clear in saying that I think we have a ways to go in completing this implementation. And I'm looking forward to continuing to work with the Chinese government to live up to the promises that we made a couple of months ago. I think the public is going to be watching this very closely.

You raised the question of asylum. It is true that under our laws, under international law, and where -- part of the treaties that require this, if a migrant has an ability to show that they're entitled to asylum, they get asylum. And then they're not illegal anymore; they become legal. I will say that what I have told the Chinese government is, to some extent, delays in removing people actually enhance or tend to increase the number of people who seek asylum, because as they wait to be removed, the wheels are turning in their mind about how they might postpone the day of removal, and they tend to seek advice about how they can perhaps use the asylum laws to do that.

I frankly think swifter removal and better cooperation removal would minimize illegitimate use of the asylum laws. Obviously, people who have a legitimate case for asylum we will continue to treat seriously and grant asylum.

Question: Mr. Secretary, first, congratulations on your aggressive work in this area. It's a great effort.

I want to ask about the employment verification system. The House passed one version; the Senate has passed a different version. And I guess the question is, what do you want? What would you like to come out of the legislation that you can't do on your own under existing authorities?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, there are several pieces to it. One is, of course, we have to build out the existing system in terms of a capacity. And we do have the current capacity, given the current usage, the capacity to receive the requests for verification and check them. For the most part, that can be done electronically. There are some things that require some manual assistance.

We need to now build that out. Some of that is a requirement of money. At some point, we need to create a stronger incentive for participation. Obviously, making it mandatory would be a very strong incentive. We're looking at some other incentives we can put in place. But as we get further down the road to increasing and expanding the scope of employment verification, I think what you'll see is increasing pressure for a temporary worker program, because what the employers will say is, okay, we are going to verify now, but when we can't find workers who pass the verification, what are we going to do?

And the answer to that is going to have to be, I think, there's a way to get workers to satisfy your labor needs that is regulated, that requires a verifiable biometric identification card, and that we have some ability to control. So we're working now to build this out. If I had to sum it up in a word, whatever Congress does has to be workable.

Question: I wanted to focus on the European experience, with Spain and southern Europe. And is there a possibility that the administration would take into account the infrastructure and other needs of these countries, like they did in Europe, to bring them up to a better economic playing field? And since Mexico primarily trades with us, would that be a win-win for everybody?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, the European situation, of course, is a little different than ours for a lot of reasons, but I do agree with your basic point. The best way to keep migrants from coming into this country is to give them an opportunity to get a better life in their own, in the own countries. And that's why we have -- with NAFTA and CAFTA, the building of prosperity in home countries -- better education, better healthcare -- is the best tool for people to stay at home, and not to sneak into the United States. So that would be a win-win.

Question: Mr. Secretary, as you probably know, there are a lot of people who are quite skeptical that it's real this time. They experienced the 1986 legislation. And there are some who are saying, show me first, and -- some in Congress who are saying that. What would be wrong with that position of first proving that the work site, for example, the work site verification will work -- first putting into action some of the plans that are still on the drawing boards for the border, and then moving ahead on some kind of temporary plan, which some people say, nevertheless, is really an amnesty because it does legalize these workers?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, I'm sympathetic with expressions of skepticism. I mean, I understand why people have those feelings of skepticism, because if you look back over the last 20 years, we haven't really done the job we need to do.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and I point to the things we have done already. We have not only authorized, but we've got money to get us to the doubling of the Border Patrol that we're talking about doing. We've got our procurement out there for the high-tech knowledge. We've got manned aerial vehicles. Those are concrete, real, measurable steps.

We have dramatically moved from catch-and-release to catch-and-remove, with the exception of this one population where we need some further congressional action. So I would say to people, let's look at what we've done. Let's look at the steps that have been taken. We are, for the first time ever, as far as I know, really measuring in a disciplined way the progress that we've made, for example, on things like catch-and-remove; now we're seeing real results in terms of deterrence.

I think we're beginning to see -- you know, one of the indicators of success is that we're seeing more and more people trying to cross in inhospitable areas, and that's because the areas that they used to be able to cross relatively freely have now been cut off. So these are the kinds of concrete steps that I would suggest to the skeptics are measurable, real proof of commitment. And that's my response to those who say it's just business as usual.

Question: Thank you very much for taking my question. I'd like to know, please, if you could give us some concrete ideas about the fence -- a systematic, organized procedure -- and also if there's been any thought of having prisoners build part of the fence. Thank you.

Secretary Chertoff: Well, first of all, fencing is an appropriate, but not exclusive, means for dealing with this issue at the border. It depends on the particular landscape. We have used fencing very effectively, for example, in areas that are -- where the border is right next to a city or close to a city, where we really have to stop people cold at the border. In the desert wilderness, fencing may not be the best tool. It may be hard to maintain, and we may look at vehicle barriers, or, in some cases, high-tech.

There is no question, at the end of the day we will need significant amount of fencing, significant amount of vehicle barriers, but also a significant amount of technology, in terms of being able to have visibility over large areas of what would otherwise be very difficult desert to patrol.

In terms of the mechanisms for building -- of course, one of the things we're doing now is using the National Guard to build fencing under Operation Jump Start. That is a very cost-effective way. As far as prisoners doing it, there are probably so many laws that apply there that I would be sticking my neck out if I offered an opinion about it. We do, however, look for cost-effective ways to do the job, but we have to recognize that when all is said and done, it is not inexpensive to build, not only the labor, but the material, the grading, and you're, of course, working people in a very difficult environment, with a lot of desert and heat. So it's a challenging but important mission.

Question: Yes. Number one, what is President Bush doing to influence those Republicans in Congress who oppose the temporary worker program and the plan that was approved by the Senate? And also, can you give us an assessment of what the National Guard has done so far in the month that they've been there at the border?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, as you know, the President has spoken out, I think, in unprecedented fashion, publicly laying out his very concrete principles for a comprehensive solution. He's not only spoken about it publicly, in a lot of different venues, but he gave a really extraordinary national address on the problem, explaining it to the American people. And he's continued to be committed to carrying the message that comprehensiveness is necessary to really solve the problem. And that means: tough at the border, tough at interior enforcement, but also making sure we look at the supply-and-demand side of it. So I think he's been very aggressive.

I have to confess, I have now forgotten the second part of your question. So, if you could, remind me.

Question: An assessment of what the --

Secretary Chertoff: Oh, the National Guard --

Question: Yes, but I don't think you've really answered my question about President Bush, because I know what his message is and I know what he wants, but what is he doing to influence the lawmakers in Congress -- the Republicans that are opposed to the plan? And also, the second question was, can you evaluate what the National Guard has done so far to help the Border Patrol?

Secretary Chertoff: The short answer to that first question, as I have said, is, the President has used the tools of the so-called "bully pulpit" to speak very aggressively and clearly about the solution, the comprehensive solution he thinks is appropriate. And of course, the President doesn't get to vote in Congress, but that is the way Presidents move Congress, I think, through persuasion, and through using the force of their conviction.

The National Guard -- we started this process this month. We're going to be up to approximately 2,500 at the end of the month. The National Guard is manning observation posts, helping us run surveillance equipment, freeing Border Patrol agents who have been doing, for example, training or maintenance, to go into the field and do arrests.

What this does is it leverages our Border Patrol resources by freeing them up from any task other than literally catching and transporting illegal migrants. And that really spreads that resource as widely as possible, so they've been very, very effective.

Question: Secretary, thank you very much for your remarks. I have two related questions. The first one is, the enforcement plan that you've described along the borders seems to require a very expensive apparatus, and also a potentially indefinite effort. My first question is, how much is all of that going to cost over the course of the years of trying to track down and then expel illegal aliens? And then my second question, which is related, is, what do you say to those critics who say that all of that enforcement is just going to result in creating a smuggling market across the border?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, it's clearly not inexpensive, and the supplemental, of course, put an additional $2 billion in for purposes of Border Patrol and beds, and our budget next year has literally billions of dollars focused on border enforcement. On the other hand, I think it's a fundamental obligation of government to secure the border. I mean, there are some basic things people expect from government, and one of them is, you have to have control of your territory.

But I also agree that if all we do is boots on the ground, it is probably the most expensive way to achieve this result, and probably the one that is most doomed to be unsuccessful, because we do have this tremendous demand that is drawn by this economic engine. And that's why the temporary worker program becomes a way of relieving some of that pressure. And it's really a very simple, straightforward proposition. For people who want to come in and do nothing more than work, and feed their families, and go to church, and do things that, actually, frankly, most Americans value, we need to find a way to identify them, give them a biometric card, get them with employers who can't find other workers, and then we know that these people will not be sneaking across the border because they will have a legitimate way to satisfy their understandable needs.

That will then allow us to focus our resources on the people who are illegitimate: drug dealers, criminals, and people who may even want to commit acts of terrorism. So, to me, the temporary worker program is frankly an enforcement tool. It is a way of enhancing the ability of our law enforcers to focus on the people that they most need to focus on. And that's why I think, however you look at this problem, at the end of the day, you always come back to the notion, it has to be a comprehensive solution.

Question: Mr. Secretary, there is a report of the arrest of a supervisor from the Department of Homeland Security's Citizenship and Immigration Services on charges of federal immigration fraud charges. What's your response to this?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, my first response is, in any case where someone is arrested, is there's a legal process, and for me to comment on an individual case would probably be viewed by a judge as an improper thing to do.

But I will say this: We are very serious about policing ourselves. That's why we have an Inspector General. From time to time, in our Department, as in every department of government, at every level, you will find a few bad apples. And we work very hard to root those apples out and get them out of the barrel.

The vast majority of people who work for this agency are dedicated and do a proper job. When we find those few who transgress, we will be relentless in pursuing them and rooting them out.

Question: (Off mic.)

Secretary Chertoff: You know, I got to tell you, I mean, every department in government, at every level, has occasional incidents like this. I mean, the New York Police, for example, which I respect as probably the finest police department in the country, had an experience where two police were convicted in the last couple of months for carrying out organized crime murders.

Now, that doesn't cause me to doubt the capacity of the police department. It causes me to praise them, because they hunted these guys down and they pulled them out and they prosecuted them. Likewise, I think it ought to comfort the public that we are relentless in pursuing those few people in our Department who violate the law.

I mean, I wish we could be perfect. Human existence is not perfect. But I tell you, it is a very small proportion, and there is nothing more important than finding those few bad apples and throwing them out of the barrel.

Question: Hi, Mr. Secretary. As you know, Congress is going to hold field hearings before they actually move on an immigration bill. Is it your belief that if an immigration bill doesn't pass before the elections, there's not actually going to be an immigration bill?

And the second thing is, what are the concrete, measurable achievements that you plan to have with the Secure Border Initiative? I mean, what will we see in a year or two years, in terms of the number of arrests going down, in terms of what smuggling routes are you going to target, and how long will it take to achieve operational control of the borders?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, the first thing I will say is, I by no means view hearings as suggesting that there's an impediment to enacting this legislation this year. I think -- as far as I'm concerned, discussion is good -- let's talk about this, it's a serious issue. I think Congress has it well within its capability to pass a comprehensive bill this year. And Congress, obviously, is going to control that schedule.

In terms of measuring success, you measure it in different ways. One way we measure, for example, is in the percentage of people that we remove. Another way we measure it is by looking at third-party indicators -- what are we hearing from local communities, in terms of what they're experiencing in terms of traffic. One way we measure it is by the miles of fencing and the miles of vehicle barriers that we're building that are impeding people from coming across. One way we measure it is by the number of boots on the ground that are visible and are deterring people from coming across.

So there are going to be a lot of different ways to measure this. Some of them are going to be easier; some of them are going to be less easy. But I will tell you that when you look at where we are now, as compared to where we were in the past -- if you look, for example, at the fact that we have people crossing the desert because they can't come across San Diego anymore, that is one example of a real, measurable result.

The reality is, the more people are forced to endure difficult challenges in crossing the border, it means the harder we're making it for them, because we're closing off the easier routes. And as we continue to build boots on the ground, fences, technology, we're going to continue to raise that bar, and make it harder and harder. And I think that's going to provide us with one good measurable way of seeing what our success is.

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we have begun to take populations of non-Mexicans, and instead of releasing them because we don't have enough beds to hold them, we hold them and we return them in record time.

Through all that BS a little truth emerges and this is what counts! They've made this a Mexican issue, not us!!

However, Chertoff said that measures must be complemented by a temporary worker program "that is not an amnesty but that does allow people to get themselves square with the law if necessary, if they've violated the law, and then work in this country temporarily."

So far the Senate plans to forgive identity theft, I suppose that might get some of them square with the law.
Mr Homeland Defense needs to be deporting the criminals that are being arrested instead of letting them go. It seems that the only people that get deported are the drug dealers and felons and OTMs. The illegals that just come here illegally and have 3 fake IDs, commit welfare fraud etc. are let go. Anyone ever try to ICE on the phone?