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Washington, D.C.—The leader of the union representing Customs Service officers today said it is “absolutely outrageous” that the Bush administration has asked Congress for an additional $27.1 billion in security-related spending, but no additional money for Customs to meet its key and expanding border security responsibilities.

“It is truly unbelievable that the need for additional Customs resources is so clear to virtually everyone, yet seemingly has made no impression on this administration,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents some 12,000 Customs employees.

“Customs is starved for resources, and its employees have been working on the highest alert level since the attacks of September 11, many of them on 12- and 16-hour shifts,” Kelley said. “While it focuses on proposals to consolidate border security agencies, the administration is ignoring the more important issue of the need to fund Customs at an appropriate level,” she added.

At the same time, Kelley commented on the use of unarmed National Guard personnel to “assist” Customs officers in securing the nation’s borders. While that may be a well-intentioned move, the reality is that it is “little more than window-dressing” that obscures the real problem of a lack of sufficient resources for this important agency.

On the matter of funding, the NTEU leader said a major part of problem is the continuing failure of Customs to hire inspectional personnel “in a timely manner.” It has been well over three months, she said, since legislation passed that made $245 million directly available for staffing and inspection and investigative technology at the northern border, the nation’s seaports and the southwest border.

“While this additional funding is a good start, it still falls short of the staffing level set out in the Patriot Act, which called for a tripling of Customs personnel on the northern border,” President Kelley said. “In fact, Customs’ own Resource Allocation Model (RAM) recommended that Customs needs an additional 14,000 employees to successfully accomplish its missions.” Kelley urged Customs to use all available funding, including that provided in post-September 11 emergency supplemental appropriations, “to hire new inspectional personnel as soon as possible.”

She offered her assessment on the use of National Guard personnel in a letter to Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner, writing that she finds “extremely troubling” many aspects of the agreement between Customs and the Department of Defense to assign more than 600 unarmed members of the National Guard to a number of the 301 ports of entry across the country.

In particular, she said, it is “very disturbing” that National Guard personnel will be unarmed. “Customs

inspectional personnel will not only have to protect their own well-being, but will have to watch out for the unarmed National Guard as well.”

Moreover, the NTEU leader said, the Customs-DOD agreement may be in violation of the requirements of the Level 1—or highest—alert status that Customs has been operating under since last September 11. By its

own terms, Level 1 dictates that two trained Customs inspectors are to be at every port; and that any non-Customs inspection personnel—such as the members of the National Guard—are to be assigned to administrative duties only.

President Kelley also pointed to “possible security violations” stemming from the agreement. National Guard personnel will not have undergone the Treasury Department background checks that are applied to Customs employees, Kelley said, yet will have access to the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, which contains classified national, state and local intelligence reports. “Any possible breach of security, I am sure you would agree,” she wrote to Commissioner Bonner, “could be devastating.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 25 agencies and departments.