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Washington, D.C.—The head of the union representing a substantial majority of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) employees will testify before a key House subcommittee later this month on a variety of critical CBP human resource issues—including the detrimental impact of CBP’s misguided ‘One Face at the Border’ program.

President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) will offer NTEU’s perspective to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Management, Integration and Oversight. The hearing is scheduled for 9:30 a.m., Thursday, May 18, in Room 311 of the Cannon House Office Building.

The ‘One Face at the Border’ initiative combines the work of legacy Customs, Immigration and Naturalization and Agriculture inspectors into a single position; the impact has been a serious loss of inspectional expertise, with a resulting weakening in security at the nation’s ports of entry.

The NTEU leader also will address the pressing need for additional personnel at U.S. entry points, including both frontline inspectors and the import specialists and entry specialists who play key roles in facilitating the more than $1 trillion in trade that helps fuel the U.S. economy.

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