Home
Media Center
News Releases
Washington, D.C.—A proposal to incorporate the Customs Service and two other federal agencies with law enforcement responsibilities into a newly-formed independent National Homeland Security Agency is “seriously flawed” and misinterprets “the unique mission” of Customs, the leader of the union representing Customs employees said today.
In testimony submitted to a combined meeting of Senate and House subcommittees examining federal workforce retention problems, President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said the solution to having Customs and other federal law enforcement agencies carry out their critical missions effectively is to provide them with adequate funding.
“Each year, agencies such as Customs are being asked to do more with less money,” Kelley said, “and this practice has to stop.” She added: ‘If the American public expects its borders to be properly defended, let the government show the public that it is serious about threats to the borders. The government can achieve this by fully funding all agencies tasked with defending the borders and laws of the United States.”
Kelley was responding to a recommendation in a report entitled “Road Map for National Security: Imperative for Change,” produced by the U.S. Commission on National Security and calling for a new agency with the federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) at its core, and including not just Customs, but the Coast Guard and Border Patrol as well.
While agreeing with the thrust of the report that “sound organization is important” and that good organization “helps assure accountability,” she said the proposed consolidation of the agencies under FEMA “would cause logistical and institutional chaos.”
Each of these law enforcement agencies, she said, has a unique mission, emphasizing that Customs is responsible not just for interdicting contraband, including illegal narcotics, but for facilitating more than $1.3 trillion in trade annually, processing more than 450 million travelers, and collecting more than $22 billion for taxpayers each year.
It collects more revenue than any other federal agency, except the Internal Revenue Service, she noted, calling that a reason why Customs should remain under the jurisdiction of the Treasury Department.
NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 25 agencies and departments, including some 11,000 in the Customs Service.