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A novice to manage immigration policy

UNION-TRIBUNE
January 12, 2006

The fellow next door seems pleasant enough. Might he make a good Cabinet secretary?

Any of us must have at least 100 friends smart enough for the Supreme Court.

And what about one of those bright checkout clerks at the drugstore to run Immigration and Customs?

Silly as it sounds, this is very close to the approach President Bush seems to have taken toward an astonishing number of high-level appointments. One supposes he'd consider the gravity of any leadership job calling for Senate approval. How does it happen, then, that three times within a space of 18 weeks the nation has witnessed a strangely cavalier attitude toward the presidential appointive power? An attitude bordering, it appears, on abuse of that power.

First was Bush's discovery that an Arabian horse expert had not been an auspicious choice to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency – a blunder immortalized by the now historic utterance, "You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie." The FEMA farce was still playing on what's left of our vaudeville circuit when Bush faced a task most presidents find awesome – selecting a Supreme Court justice. Suggestive of a magician's rabbit-from-the-hat, however, he pulled the unknown Harriet Miers from deep within his White House legal staff, where hitherto she blushed unseen as the rose in Gray's Elegy. Her nomination was mercifully withdrawn after a fortnight of cruelly embarrassing public examination.

We now have a new personnel selection for which there can be no persuasive explanation. With a major battle just ahead over tightening U.S. borders, Bush designates yet another White House functionary, 36-year-old Julie Myers, to manage our newly combined Immigration & Customs Enforcement. This agency was intended to be an important element in Homeland Security's defense against terror. The Myers appointment hardly squares with that expectation. It's more like seeing Radio City Rockettes dispatched to relief of the Alamo.

Almost as startling as the selection itself, first announced in September, has been the president's manner of implementing it. When Senate response pointed to a heated confirmation battle, Bush bided his time until the congressional Christmas break. He then exercised an executive prerogative available to a president when Congress is out of town. He simply puts his nominee on the job for one year without confirmation, and the hell with what those senators may think of her. More than a dozen lesser appointments were similarly slipped past Capitol Hill gatekeepers at year's end, the same way bully-boy John Bolton became ambassador to the United Nations.

Yes, a president can do things this way, but how smart is it? Julie Myers becomes the first boss of a crucially important adjunct to the Department of Homeland Security. She signs on absent an iota of experience in the immigration service or customs. And without public hearings that would have revealed hers as possibly the worst job assignment that has been made even by the ham-handed hiring hall this administration has become.

Purely as a guideline, the statute establishing Myers' job calls for someone with a minimum of five years' experience in law enforcement. (Her most recent responsibility had been the management of White House interns.) The new job gives her the supervision of more than 20,000 immigration and custom officers and other assorted staffers, plus a budget to match.

And what specific duties? The Homeland Security Act puts her in charge of investigating alien smuggling, illegal arms trafficking and money laundering. Our borders will actually be guarded by a different bureaucracy, but Myers' agency will be charged with finding terrorists whose entry eluded detection. You go, girl!

The most sensitive duty falling to our new administrator could be the imposition of fines against U.S. employers who willfully violate the statute against hiring undocumented aliens. Should anyone get tough on these folk, it would be for the first time ever. Indeed, the most caustic comment seen anywhere concerning the Myers appointment comes from an editorial in the reliably conservative National Review, which writes of the lady:

"Her nomination highlights the administration's desire to keep immigration management on a short leash, lest some rogue official embarrass the White House by actually enforcing immigration law."

Hmm-mm. Could be they're keeping it all in the family. Administrator Myers is a niece of Gen. Richard B. Myers, recently retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And she's the recent bride of John F. Wood, who is chief assistant to Michael Chertoff – yes, the secretary of Homeland Security.


Van Deerlin represented a San Diego County district in Congress for 18 years.