BUREAU OF IMMIGRATION
AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT
U.S. DEPARMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Reorganization Fact Sheet
June 9, 2003
Background:
The
Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “ICE”, brings together
approximately 14,000 Federal employees who focus on the enforcement of
immigration and customs laws within the United States, the protection of
specified federal buildings, and air and marine enforcement. By unifying
previously fragmented investigative functions, the Bureau will deliver
effective and comprehensive enforcement. The Bureau is led by an Assistant
Secretary who reports directly to the Undersecretary for Border and
Transportation Security. Michael Garcia, former Acting INS Commissioner, has
been nominated by President Bush to fill this role.
ICE
is comprised of the following primary program areas:
·
Immigration
Investigations – responsible for investigating violations of the criminal and
administrative provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and
other related provisions of the United States Code;
·
Customs
Investigations – responsible for investigating a range of issues including
terrorist financing, export enforcement, money laundering, smuggling, fraud –
including Intellectual Property Rights violations, and cybercrimes;
·
Customs Air and
Marine Interdiction – responsible for protecting the Nation's borders and the
American people from the smuggling of narcotics, other contraband, and
terrorist activity with an integrated and coordinated air and marine
interdiction force;
·
Federal
Protective Service – responsible for providing a safe environment in which
Federal agencies can conduct their business by reducing threats posed against
the over 8,800 General Services Administration (GSA)-controlled facilities
nationwide;
·
Detention and
Removal - responsible for promoting the public safety and national security by
ensuring the departure from the United States of all removable aliens through
the fair enforcement of the nation's immigration laws.
·
Immigration
Intelligence – responsible for the collection, analysis, and dissemination of
intelligence to immigration staff at all levels to aid in making day-to-day,
mid-term, and long-term operational decisions; acquiring and allocating
resources; and determining policy;
·
Customs Intelligence
– responsible for the collection, analysis, and dissemination of strategic and
tactical intelligence data for use by the operational elements of customs
enforcement.
Implementation
of New Structure:
On
June 9, 2003, the Department of Homeland Security, Bureau of Immigration and
Customs Enforcement implemented a new structure for both headquarters and the
field.
In a nutshell, the new structure: integrates legacy
Immigration and Customs Investigations; establishes a separate chain-of-command
for Detention & Removal; integrates legacy Immigration and Customs
Intelligence; and leaves intact the structures of Air and Marine Interdiction
and the Federal Protective Service.
This new structure is the next step in our effort to
make ICE a premier law enforcement agency.
A tremendous amount of thought and effort has gone into creating an
effective headquarters and field structure.
The new structure:
§
Is driven
by our broad mission and mandates, while supporting DHS strategic objectives
§
Integrates
operations where it makes sense
§
Fosters
accountability through clear chains of command
§
Promotes
strategic agility
§
Minimizes
management layers
§
Manages
spans-of-control
§
Uses proven
law enforcement structure
§
Facilitates
coordination between ICE programs via complementary footprints
§
Promotes
coordination within DHS, and with other Federal, State & Local authorities
§
Balances HQ
control with field accountability and responsibility
§
Defines
field offices based on existing locations, as well as strategic factors such as
smuggling corridors, significant money laundering activities, and proximity to
transportation and distribution centers
§
Defines
Areas of Responsibility based on such things as staffing/workload balance,
spans-of-control, and federal judicial lines
§
Has minimal
short-term impact on budget
Some
of the key changes for us include:
By putting the talents of Special Agents into an
integrated headquarters structure and organizing them around programs, we can
leverage their skills and increase our capabilities exponentially. By enabling them to concentrate solely on
the program and policy work of Investigations, we can ensure focus and clarity
of purpose.
Similar to other law enforcement agencies, our field
structure is based on a Special Agent-in-Charge, a single individual
responsible for managing a geographic Area of Responsibility. As with the headquarters staff, the SAC will
manage all resources and oversee investigative activities of all legacy Investigations
staff within their AOR.
There are 25 SACs and all will report directly to
the Director of Investigations, who in turn reports directly to the Assistant
Secretary. SAC locations and
corresponding AORs were developed based on the following strategic factors:
·
High
volume smuggling corridors
·
Proximity
to state and federal prisons
·
Large
populations of high-risk aliens
·
Significant
money laundering infrastructure
·
Proximity
to subordinate offices
·
Port
responsibility
·
Locations
of transportation and distribution centers, and
·
Balancing
the number of people and the workload from across SACs
·
Managing
spans of control conforming to federal judicial lines
Headquarters
There are other important benefits to this new
operational structure. At the
headquarters level, Investigations is structured around three distinct, but
closely related strategic goals, consistent with the Homeland Security
National Strategy: (1) enhance national security, (2) promote public
safety, and (3) disrupt the financial infrastructures of organizations that
would harm the United States. The three
operational Divisions within the Office of Investigations (the National
Security Investigations Division, the Smuggling/Public Safety Investigations
Division, and the Financial Investigations Division) correspond to these three
goals. In addition to these operational
Divisions, the Office of Investigations also includes an Investigative Services
Division, which will provide cross-cutting support to all three operational
Divisions (e.g., undercover operations support, forensic support, asset
forfeiture).
Organizing around discrete programs has
several other important advantages: (1) it fosters the development of
specialized knowledge and skills, (2) it builds a technical assistance
capability that helps ensure high quality operations, (3) it promotes
consistency and uniform approaches, (4) it ensures that someone in the
organization is keeping the national and strategic terrain in mind -- watching
trends, monitoring whether or not strategies/operations are effective, and (5)
it allows best practices to be identified and shared with field units across
the country.
Field
The field structure also has key features that
improve our operational effectiveness.
Direct-line reporting to the Director of Investigations ensures
line-of-sight authority from the special agents all the way to the Assistant
Secretary. This represents a change to
those from immigration. Although achieving day-to-day operational integration
will take time, merging immigration and customs investigators helps leverages
the experience and expertise of both legacy organizations. Our geographic footprints generally conform
to federal judicial lines, and only cross them when necessary, based on mission
priorities and span of control.
Finally, the
SAC
structure utilizes a proven law enforcement management structure comparable
with our colleagues at the FBI, DEA or other key partners.
The
acting SACs were chosen using a variety of selection criteria, among them a
review of the current pool of managers and their present duty station, their
experience and expertise in criminal investigations, their track record leading
and managing law enforcement operations and personnel, and their current grade
level.
Here
are some things that are staying the same:
We
will continue to do the outstanding work that we do. We will continue to work with the same law enforcement
counterparts. We will coordinate and
partner with a wide range of law enforcement agencies, including those in our
sister bureaus – BCBP, BCIS, and the FBI, the Coast Guard, and DEA to name a
few.
What
is changing within the Detention and Removal Program?
Some of the key changes
include:
Detention
and Removal is now a stand-alone program with direct line authority. This means that the head of D&R at HQ
reports directly to the Assistant Secretary, not through a Field Operations
component or any other entity. This means
that in the field, we now report directly to D&R Headquarters, not through a District,
not through a Region. The new structure
builds a specialized D&R operation, one whose structure and
chain-of-command involves only D&R.
This will help ensure focus, clarity of purpose, and specialization, and
in turn, lead to better results.
Since
the Office of Detention and Removal at Headquarters now has direct line
authority, HQ now serves in an operational role. The new headquarters structure is based on D& R programmatic
goals and the business process, including divisions to deal with Detention
Management, Case Management, and Transportation & Removal Management. This new HQ structure will eliminate overlap
of functions, help clarify roles and responsibilities, and enable
specialization within an area of expertise.
There
are 22 D&R Field Office Directors who have all of the legal authorities
specific to D&R that were formerly delegated to the INS District
Directors.
We
have a new geographic footprint. We
will no longer have 33 Districts as we did under INS.
The
D&R leadership decided to align our geographic footprint with that of
Investigations in order to coordinate closely with Investigations counterparts.
The
Phoenix D&R Field Office has an area of responsibility that encompasses the
state of Arizona, and coordinates with the SAC Offices in Phoenix and Tucson.
What
is staying the same?
Here are some things that
are staying the same:
D&R
will also continue to perform the outstanding work that we have always
done. We will continue to work with and serve our law enforcement partners
within and outside of DHS—Investigations within ICE, Inspections and Border
Patrol within BCBP, the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, and our
local, state, and federal law enforcement counterparts.
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