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WPCNR FOR THE RECORD. The News Conference Following Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff’s Speech on the status of Immigration and Illegal Workers enforcement November 6. Conclusion of 5-Part Series. November 16, 2007: To complete the WPCNR publication of the Department of Homeland Security transcipt of Secretary Chertoff’s news conference last week, here are the questions and the secretary’s answers to media queries about his speech:
And with that, I’ll take some questions.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, can you talk a little bit more about this — is it a proposed rule? And how many workers do you think would get through under this intense —
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: Well, it’s — H-2A is not a capped agricultural program, so it can theoretically accommodate a very significant number of agricultural workers. I’m a little handicapped in my ability to be specific because the rule has not cleared yet, and there’s some legal principles that don’t allow me to get very particular about the proposal. But the general concept is we want to find a way to streamline some of the requirements with respect to wages and other kinds of terms and conditions under which people can employ temporary workers so that the program is appealing to people, so that it’s not highly bureaucratic, so that it doesn’t make it difficult for employers when they bring temporary workers in legally to make a commitment to continue to employ them during the course of the season.
We think the proposals that we are considering or that are currently being considered are sensible, that they do not compromise protections for workers, and they in fact synchronize the approach of the agricultural program with the approach we take, frankly, with other temporary workers in the non-agricultural sector.
QUESTION: Just to clarify, though, after the legal vetting is all you’re saying that needs to be done, when will this be —
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: It’s before OMB. I know there’s a great sense of urgency to have the rule and regulation cleared. I think we’d certainly like to get it cleared in plenty of time to make sure that we can have a streamlined program for next summer so that next growing season gets the benefit of temporary workers who are legal, as opposed to illegal.
QUESTION: In your guidance order that goes to the state offices, is that a must-do sort of thing, or you’re advising them to do? And is that only referring to agricultural workers, or is this all workers that they refer to any job, or —
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: First of all, it’s a Department of Labor letter, and I think it actually is more broad — applies more broadly than agriculture. I think it’s very close to a must do, shall we say kind of expected that you’re going to do it. The exact legal ability to compel is a little bit more complicated, but it’s — there’s a strong incentive to have the state labor agencies do it.
And by the way, there would be no reason I can think of not to do it. I can’t imagine why a state agency wouldn’t want to verify that the worker that they’re referring is legal. Otherwise it defeats the whole purpose. Why do you want to refer an illegal worker over? So here we have a tool that can be used. We encourage the labor agency to use the tool, and I think my expectation is that they’ll avail themselves of the guidance.
QUESTION: Do you have a sense how many states are already doing it, or how many —
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: I do not have the answer to that.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, you mentioned the recent GAO study on problems at legal border crossings. Some critics have said they’ve found an unacceptable failure rate. Do you think that’s a fair criticism? And what in your mind is a reasonable failure rate?
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: I don’t know that — the rate that people attribute in terms of failure, failure being you didn’t stop somebody, is essentially an estimation. Since you don’t know what you don’t know, you don’t know who came in that you didn’t stop. It’s kind of an extrapolation GAO undertook.
But here’s the bottom line: To me, I want to drive the failure rate down to as close to zero as is humanly possible. It’s never going to be zero because you never get perfection in human life. Just as even the best police chief in the country, I’ve never met one that succeeded in eliminating crime in their city. But it’s still considered a good thing when you drive crime down.
Likewise, it’s a very good thing as you drive down the number of people who might slip through the border without being stopped. But there’s only one way to do that. You’ve got to be able to have a secure form of identification that you can input easily into your system, which has the names of the people that you want to keep out, and you’ve got to be able also to do a reasonable amount of searching the vehicles to make sure contraband doesn’t come in. And that means, particularly as we transition to the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which in the end will use technology to give us both secure documents and documents that can be read more quickly, there is going to be some cost and there’s going to be some inconvenience. And that is the only way to plug the gap that GAO has identified.
And that’s why over the last year you’ve been hearing squawks at the border about lines, and people complaining that we’re spending too much time because we’re actually looking at the documents, as opposed to waving people through. And the answer is, that’s right, that’s how we solve a problem: we fix it.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, the border fence will cut off some cities, landowners, farmers from the Rio Grande, and that’s fueling serious opposition. How do you respond to the opposition from people who live along the river, who depend on the river? And do you recognize that while we may gain border control, we’re losing property rights and local support?
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: Well, first of all, let me say, of course, when we talk about the area from the Pacific Ocean to the New Mexico-Texas border, that’s — the vast majority of that is desert or wilderness, so there’s no issue there about the river. We do recognize that in Texas the river creates a kind of a special challenge, and that’s why we have worked to minimize the amount of fence in Texas. But some fence is important. What we want to do is find a way to build fence that allows landowners access to the river when they need it, but doesn’t simply leave it wide open for illegals to come across.
But here’s a dilemma in which we find ourselves: when the Border Patrol does need fencing at a certain part of the river, either because the river is narrow or because during the summer the river goes down, then if we don’t put fencing up we’re making it harder for the Border Patrol not only to keep out illegal workers, but to keep out drugs and criminals. And the drugs and criminals may not — the impact of that may not be felt by the rancher whose land is — we’re talking about for the fence; it may be felt in the city of Chicago, or Washington, or Los Angeles.
But my responsibility is to look out for the welfare of the whole country. The bird’s-eye view you get in my job is that it’s not just one person’s concerns and the burdens they feel, which obviously we want to take into account; we’ve got to look at the burdens that everybody assumes. So we are trying to be reasonable. If there’s a way to accommodate the need to get to the river that satisfies the landowner, we’re happy to do that. But at the end of the day, at some point we have to make a tough decision sometimes that we need to have some kind of fencing in there. And then we want to work to make it as easy for the landowner as possible. But we can’t, in the end, simply give everybody an individual veto over the process.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, the GAO report says part of the problem at ports of entry is serious under-staffing with Customs and Border Protection. You’ve laid out plans for increasing Border Patrol. What about CBP? What are the targets there? What’s the funding?
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: Well, I do think we need to continue to do a number of things. First of all, if we can get the documentation that we’re talking about in place it will take a good deal of the hay off the haystack, because you’ll be able to move people much more quickly. Instead of manually keying in the names, you’ll be able to swipe or simply read the name off the card from a chip, and that’s going to cut the dwell time very substantially. That’s one solution.
A second solution obviously is to build more modern and bigger infrastructure, which allows more lanes to be operated at once. A third solution is to make sure we have adequate staffing. And I’m working with the Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, and with Deputy Commissioner Ahern to make sure we’re doing everything we can to get appropriate staffing levels.
Often the constraint, though, is simply the number of booths. Because you only have so many booths in a particular port of entry, and you can only have one person in a booth, so we have some kind of a constraint limitation. I will say, though, again, because we have requested a significant amount of money across the board for Customs and Border Protection for the current budget, give us an appropriations bill. Give us the money. If we’re still operating on a continuing resolution, I can guarantee you that’s not going to give us what we need to deal with all the elements of our border strategy from a financial standpoint.
QUESTION: But you can’t give us any numbers at this point about how —
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: I don’t have a number of exactly what we need in terms of additional inspectors. What I can tell you is that as we move into Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, one inspector can get more work done because the time spent on each vehicle or each pedestrian is going to be diminished. So that’s like a force multiplier.
QUESTION: You and Secretary Rice had at one point announced plans to have a wallet-size passport card as an alternative to passports that was initially supposed to be ready I think a year ago, when you first announced it. Do you know how close you are to having that ready to go, and whether that will be ready by January?
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: The procurement is underway, and I don’t know exactly — the State Department is doing the procurement — I don’t know exactly where it is. It should be ready to begin distribution early next year.
QUESTION: How much problem would you expect from the Congress next year for maintaining the target for the fences?
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: For maintaining the target for fences?
QUESTION: Yes.
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: Well, we don’t generally just put a specific line item for fencing. We have a more general line item. Our current budget request is very substantial — it’s public; I don’t have the number off the top of my head. But the amount of money that we have asked for in the current budget request would get us to the amount of fencing that we need to get to by the end of the fiscal year to meet the targets I’ve outlined.
QUESTION: Secretary Chertoff, do you have yet any specific numbers for fiscal 2007 of the total number of detentions and deportations that took place? And of the reduction, the 22 percent reduction at the Southwest border, while you say that you have indication that less people are crossing over, some say that it can also be an indication that the undocumented have found other ways to enter into the country.
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: Well, first of all, we do have the numbers. We can supply them to you after the press conference; I don’t have them handy.
I understand there’s controversy about what the significance of it is. I can tell you that in general, the experiences, although there might be some truth with respect to a small percentage of people, I think in general, such a large decrease in apprehensions is indicative of a trend. It’s not — if we were talking about a 2 or 3 percent difference, it might suggest it could all be accounted for with people moving to different areas. But I think it’s too large and too consistent to be simply written off as people moving to different areas.
But again, it’s not razor-sharp precise. I view it more as a significant indicator of moving in the right direction, as opposed to a very specific number that can be translated directly into the decreased flow.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, when you say that you will leave no tool sort of unused, should U.S. employers and workers who are hearing your remarks today take that as some sort of signal for expanded worksite enforcement in the near future, not just against criminals or fugitives, but at workplaces? And as a follow, can you do that without providing additional workers like you’re offering for agriculture — can you do it without a tool like No-Match, since as I understand that was always used in SWIFT or the last big enforcement action against workers?
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: Well, let me separate out — the No-Match regulation that was enjoined does not prevent us from enforcing at the worksite. And typically what has happened is we get a tip and we go in and we actually look at the records there, and then we do use the No-Match records that we find on file as a way of identifying people that we ought to investigate.
So we intend to continue to increase the level of worksite enforcement. I recognize it creates a hardship, which is why we’re working to improve H-2A, and I think also we’re working to improve H-2B — temporary worker programs that we think will help address that issue. In the end, what we can do by regulation is somewhat limited, and we may need Congress to get back into this issue again in a comprehensive way.
But here’s the one thing I’m not going to do: I’m not going to say that because there’s an economic impact we’re simply not going to enforce the law. I don’t think that’s a strategy which is endorsed by the public. I think it’s inconsistent with the oaths of office we all took to execute the laws of the United States. And I just think it’s time for Congress again to look at this problem comprehensively. And I think we’re doing what we can, but in the long run I think there are going to be problems in the economy if we continue to move on the enforcement side alone and we don’t take substantial steps to give people a legal way to fill their labor needs.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, if I may, a question on REAL ID. Could you confirm what the Department is doing and what you’re proposing as far as cutting billions of dollars you spend that troubles states so much? And what are some of the measures in relaxing some of the rules of the original intent of REAL ID? Is it failing, as some critics say, that a year from now it will be gone?
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: I think the ACLU, which as far as I could tell, never liked a security measure that it met, engaged in what I would describe as very wishful thinking in claiming this was dead. It was particularly ironic because we just signed an agreement with New York to go forward with REAL ID. And in fact, the tide I think is moving very firmly in favor of REAL ID.
Now, we have done a couple things to take account of some legitimate concerns the states have raised, and we’re going to issue a final regulation. We are looking at ways to significantly decrease the cost by taking some of the back office element of the system and having the federal government pay for that. We’re also trying to create a little bit of flexibility in terms of the kinds of materials that can be used so that we don’t sacrifice security, but we allow a little bit more flexibility for states to choose what will be a satisfactory actual material for the card itself. And we are working to make sure that we phase in, in a way that’s disciplined, but also allows states to transition over a period of time, because you do have to move millions of people from their existing license to a REAL ID.
That may mean ultimately that people above a certain age move at a slower pace than people at a younger age. And that’s kind of common-sense risk management. I mean, we’re obviously more worried about terrorists who are in their 20s, 30s, and 40s than terrorists in their 70s and 80s. So we’re open to making adjustments like that. But the fundamental principle remains not only unchanged, but it actually has probably got a greater level of commitment now than it ever has, because we not only have New York signing up for REAL ID, but a number of states have signed up for enhanced driver’s licenses, which will be not only compliant with REAL ID, but they’ll actually allow you to cross the land border — state of Washington, state of Arizona, state of Vermont, state of New York.
So we’re actually beginning to see more and more big states, in particular, and border states move to a system that will be REAL ID-compliant. So for those who are singing a funeral dirge, I think they’re singing the wrong tune and they may be whistling in the dark a little bit. I’m sorry, that was really an extended metaphor. (Laughter.)
QUESTION: Do you remain confident in your ICE Director after she judged a contest, a Halloween contest, and awarded Most Original Costume to someone who came dressed in dreadlocks and darkened face and prison stripes? Do you have any concerns about that?
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: Well, I — you know, I think she was right to apologize for having this proceeding take place. I’ve directed that — of the individual whose — came dressed in this kind of costume be put on administrative leave and that we have an inquiry to determine, you know, what is the appropriate sanction for this.
You know, here is the bottom line: People do dumb things. I get very perturbed when there’s anything that is done that suggests that, with respect to the enforcement of the law, we’re anything other than even-handed. I have zero tolerance for racism or discrimination in the area of law enforcement. We have to be tough, but we have to be fair. And any — you know, the idea that you’re going to come and impersonate someone of another ethnic group, I think is completely unacceptable. So, you know, there’s going to have to be an inquiry, and the appropriate level of discipline for the person who did this is going to have to be decided upon.
But I do think that Assistant Secretary Myers was quite right in first of all apologizing and reaching out aggressively, not only to Congress but to a number of groups representing personnel in the Department, to make sure that they understood her unwavering commitment to equality and fairness in the workplace and in dealing with the people that we deal with when we conduct enforcement operations.
QUESTION: Does it bother you that she didn’t recognize it until the actual complaint?
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: You know, I’m quite sure it bothers her. I know that she was kind of caught by surprise by this in the middle of a party. And I know she is mortified. But, you know, I think she’s doing what she needs to to make amends.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, you talked about using all the authority available to you on the border, specifically with regard to the fence. Are you contemplating waiving the environmental laws with respect to the construction in Texas of fencing, in towns where it’s been so controversial like Brownsville?
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: Here’s our approach everywhere, including Texas: We will certainly talk to landowners. We’ll try to reach an accommodation. If they have an alternative suggestion that achieves our results, we’re more than happy to do that.
At the end of the day, if we determine we need to do fencing, we’ll take every step reasonable to take care of environmental concerns and mitigate. But I’m not laying down any of the authorities I’ve been given to get the job done. At the end of the day, I will use whatever authorities are required, but only after careful consideration of the alternatives and vigorous efforts to mitigate, where it’s possible, to do so without compromising operational integrity.
