Thread: DHS witnesses describe border security efforts to Senate panel

DHS witnesses describe border security efforts to Senate panel

Tue, 2013-05-07 04:58 PM
By: Jacob Goodwin
gsnmagazine.com

A handful of senior DHS officials testified on May 7 in front of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to describe what they see as the significant strides their department has made in recent years in securing the U.S.-Mexican border, and to listen to the concerns of senators who are deliberating over a draft piece of bi-partisan legislation aimed at implementing comprehensive immigration reform.

The DHS officials ticked off a list of accomplishments they claim has made the Southwest border more secure than ever:
DHS has doubled the number of Border Patrol agents from 10,000 in 2004 to more than 21,000 today;

Prevented 4,199 “high risk travelers,” who would have been found inadmissible, from boarding planes destined for the U.S.;

DHS seized 71 percent more currency, 39 percent more drugs, and 189 percent more weapons along the Southwest border, as compared to the period FY2006 to FY2008;

P-3 patrol aircraft crews were involved in the interdiction of 117,103 pounds of cocaine and 12,745 pounds of marijuana in fiscal year 2012.

The officials also pointed with pride to two initiatives recently launched by DHS. The first, known as Illicit Pathways Attack Strategy, or IPAS, was begun last year by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to integrate federal resources in order to combat transnational organized crime. “IPAS combines traditional law enforcement investigations and prosecutions with efforts to disrupt and deter the underlying criminal activity,” explained prepared testimony offered by the DHS witnesses at the Senate committee hearing.

The DHS officials also pointed out that the proposed bi-partisan legislation, known as the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, or S. 744, includes provisions aimed at enhancing DHS’s ability to track visa overstays by collecting data for foreign nationals departing the U.S., often referred to as “exit data.”

“This program, together with additional system enhancements to be deployed in late 2013, will dramatically improve our ability to successfully match entry and exit records and will strengthen our ability to identify and target for enforcement action overstays who represent a public safety and/or national security threat,” said the witnesses’ prepared testimony.

Scheduled to appear before the Senate panel were David Heyman, assistant secretary of DHS for policy; Kevin McAleenan, acting deputy commissioner of CBP; Michael Fisher, chief of the Border Patrol; Daniel Ragsdale, deputy director of ICE; and Anne Richards, an assistant inspector general of DHS.

http://www.gsnmagazine.com/node/29354?c=border_security

Where are the American citizen witnesses that need to testify about how their loved ones were killed by the majority of illegal aliens that pass through our opened borders with ease?

W