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Washington, D.C.—A government report helps to lay bare once again the folly of the ‘One Face at the Border’ program of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the leader of the union representing thousands of frontline homeland security workers said today.

The report to key congressional committees by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlights the increased vulnerability of the vital U.S. agriculture industry to foreign pests and diseases stemming from the 2003 transfer of some 1,800 Agriculture Department inspectors to CBP, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). That occurred even as Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) retained responsibility for domestic animal and plant programs.

“That step was problematic in and of itself,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). “But CBP then compounded it significantly by seeking to combine inspectors from legacy Customs, Immigration and Agriculture into a single position—CBP Officer. The result is a continuing and severe loss of inspectional expertise at the nation’s ports of entry,” she added.

A key problem, GAO said, is that agricultural inspections of cargo entering U.S. ports actually has declined under DHS, with insufficient attention being paid to shipments via what GAO called “key pathways” into the country, including commercial aircraft, vessels and truck cargo.

The ‘One Face’ program, which Kelley has called both misguided and mismanaged, has had a serious negative impact on the morale of CBP employees and has led a number of them to leave the agency. The GAO report noted that “more than one-third” of CBP agriculture specialists have been hired since the 2003 transfer to DHS—and most of those within the last year.

“That constitutes a considerable loss of institutional knowledge and talent,” President Kelley said, emphasizing the report’s assessment that CBP agriculture specialists are assigned to only 161 of the 317 U.S. ports of entry staffed by CBP employees.

Further, underscoring a sharp criticism NTEU has leveled at CBP, GAO said the agency “has not yet developed or used a risk-based staffing model to ensure that adequate numbers of agriculture specialists are staffed to areas of greatest vulnerability.”

CBP not only failed to use an updated staffing model compiled by APHIS with recommendations for the staffing of agricultural specialists at various ports, it hasn’t compiled or used any updated staffing model.

“Although CBP officials told us the agency is planning to develop its own staffing model, it has not yet done so,” GAO said. NTEU repeatedly has called for CBP to produce a staffing model.

The congressional watchdog agency also took aim at flawed communications between CBP and APHIS, including the failure to provide agriculture specialists with timely notifications of changes to inspection policies and urgent inspection alerts, “in large part because of problems with dissemination of information down the CBP chain of command.”

As an example, GAO estimated that only 21 percent of agriculture specialists always receive urgent alerts in a timely manner.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 federal workers in 30 agencies and departments, including some 16,000 in CBP—making it the largest union representing CBP employees.