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Washington, D.C.—Since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, employees of the Customs Service have been working 12- to 16-hour shifts every day to increase security on our nation’s borders. This helps illustrate that Customs simply does not have sufficient resources and personnel to provide the kind of service the nation demands and deserves, and it is the responsibility of the administration and Congress to promptly address these needs, the leader of the union representing Customs employees said today.

In testimony submitted to a key Senate subcommittee, President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said that Customs needed additional funding and personnel even before the increased demands placed on it by the attacks. Customs “has confronted its rapidly increasing workload with relatively static staffing levels and resources” over at least the past 10 years, the NTEU president told the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Treasury and General Government.

These needs were clear even before an agency study last year, known as the Resource Allocation Model, showed that Customs needs more than 14,700 new hires “just to fulfill its basic mission for the future,” Kelley said. NTEU represents some 12,000 Customs employees, including import specialists and others who help facilitate some $1.7 trillion in export-import trade annually, along with inspectors and canine enforcement

officers who make up the front line of defense against drug smuggling, terrorism, contraband trade, child pornography and more.

In addition to bolstering staffing at the nation’s southwest border, where long wait times hinder trade and where drug smuggling is at its peak, Kelley said Customs must have sufficient resources to increase staffing along the unprotected northern border with Canada—a focal point of discussion among security experts and many others after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Kelley urged Congress to take particular note of the expanded public safety and security role of Customs employees—beyond their traditional law enforcement activities—in the wake of the terrorist bombings. Inspectors and others are working daily 12 to 16-hour shifts, performing not just their regular functions but assisting the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Border Patrol, Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Marshal Service and other agencies.

“Despite the fact that inspectors and canine enforcement officers have the authority to apprehend and detain criminal suspects, carry weapons and have been instrumental in thwarting terrorist acts in the recent past,” Kelley said, “they still do not have law enforcement officer status,” as do their counterparts in numerous other agencies.

Such status would carry with it eligibility for 20-year retirement and “would be an appropriate and long overdue step” in recognizing the contributions Customs employees make to protecting the nation’s borders, the NTEU leader said.

NTEU is the nation’s largest independent union of federal workers, representing some 150,000 employees in 25 agencies and departments.