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WPCNR FOR THE RECORD. News Conference of November 6 by Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff from Department of Homeland Security Press Office. November 12, 2007: In the following news release from the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff goes into very interesting detail on the efforts to prevent new illegal immigration and to ferret out illegal residents already in the country, and the newly envisioned role of ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement). His remarks deliver the state of things to come, the fence around the southern border, the match letter initiative, and more. Here is his speech and news conference:
I think you’ll remember that this past August, after Congress failed to pass the proposed immigration reform bill, we announced that we were going to use the tools that we have, such as they are, sharpen them up and go about the business of getting control of the border. And to that end, this past August the administration announced a series of reforms to strengthen immigration enforcement and to meet our nation’s workforce needs to the extent the law permits so that we could try to fill the gap left open by Congress’s failure to act to address the challenges comprehensively.
Among the 26 items that we put forward in our proposal, one was a commitment to provide periodic “State of Immigration” reports to the American people. Today, about a month after the close of the fiscal year, is the first of what I anticipate will be a number of briefings over the next year.
I’d like to use this particular tick-off briefing to provide an assessment of where we stand relative to our benchmarks for improving border security and immigration enforcement. I’m going to give a status report on our progress, as well as discuss some remaining challenges and how we’re going to work to resolve them. We’re going to talk about the promises that we’ve made and promises that we’ve kept, and in a couple of months we’ll be back with another update.
I’d like to cover four major areas today. First is what we’re doing literally at the physical border itself, particularly the Southwest border.
Second, I’d like to talk about what we’re doing with respect to interior enforcement of the immigration laws, which of course tackles the economic magnet that pulls most illegal migrants into the United States.
Third, I’d like to talk about what we’re doing to deploy tools that employers can use to verify the legitimacy of their own workforce so that they can support the law instead of violating the law.
And finally I’m going to talk a little bit about some measures we’re putting into place to alleviate what will be an economic hardship as we crack down at illegal migrants by — in particular, I want to talk about measures we are going to put into effect to streamline the process of getting temporary workers with respect to agriculture.
The Border
So let me begin at the border. And I’m going to talk about the infrastructure — meaning the fencing and the other tactical infrastructure; I’m going to talk about what we’re doing to enhance and augment our personnel at the border; and finally, how we’re using technology.
You’ll remember one of the signature commitments we made when the President announced Operation Jump Start in 2006 was to build 70 miles of new pedestrian fence during the fiscal year 2007. We exceeded that goal. We built more than 76 miles. And there are now therefore in total roughly 160 miles of pedestrian fence on the Southwest border of the United States. Add to that about 115 miles of vehicle fence, which represents where we currently are with respect to tactical infrastructure — basically, a total of 270 miles of pedestrian or vehicle fencing.
This coming year, we plan to build an additional 225 miles of pedestrian fence, which will give us 370 miles of pedestrian fence by the end of 2008. And we also intend to build several hundred miles of vehicle fence so that we can complement pedestrian fence with barriers that will prevent vehicles from coming in.
Our goals with respect to fence total by the end of calendar 2008 are 670 miles of total pedestrian and vehicle fencing. Now I have to be clear, there’s a very important condition that has to be met if we are to live up to the goal at the end of calendar year 2008, and that is, Congress needs to fund the money that the President has requested to get this important work at the border done. If Congress funds that, we will get it done. If Congress doesn’t fund it, obviously that’s going to be a problem.
Distance to the Vanishing Point
Now why do we need a fence? Fencing is not a panacea, it is not a magic bullet to deal with every issue at the border, but it is one of a number of a important tools that we can use to make the job of the Border Patrol easier and more efficient. What fencing does is, it reflects the fact that between the border and the interior, there is what we call a “vanishing point,” a point at which an illegal migrant can find a bus station or a train station or a highway, from which he or she can move readily into the interior of the country.
From the standpoint of the Border Patrol, what we need to do is lengthen the amount of time we have to intercept illegal migrants between the time they cross the border and the time they reach the vanishing point. When you go to a place like San Diego, for example, you see that there are urban areas in very close proximity to the border. What that means and what that meant prior to the San Diego fence was that it was quite easy for people to literally run across the border and within a matter of moments, they were either in an urban area or on a highway or some place where they could vanish into the interior. What the fencing does is it slows up that process to give the Border Patrol an opportunity to get there.
Now the fence obviously doesn’t do the same work in the middle of the wilderness, where this is no vanishing point within a matter of minutes or even a matter of hours, and that’s why the need for fencing depends a great deal on the landscape and the topography of the particular part of the border.
But what I will tell you is, if we get the 670 miles of pedestrian and vehicle fencing done — that is to say, if Congress gives us the money to do the job properly — then by the end of 2008, we will have barriers from the Pacific Ocean to the New Mexico/Texas border, except in those areas where the landscape itself creates a natural barrier. And I think that’s going to be a major step forward for the Border Patrol.
Another question I sometimes get asked is: Why does it take so long to build a fence? And there was a chart we displayed a little bit earlier that showed that in the last fiscal year, we began going very slowly with building fencing, and then it all of a sudden escalated and ramped up right at the end of the fiscal year. There’s a reason for that. You don’t build fence a mile at a time.
If you want to build, for example, 35 miles of fencing at the Barry M. Goldwater Range, what you first do is you make sure you have the land, you survey it, you grade it, you dig the areas to drop the posts of the bollards in, you pour concrete, you drop the posts and bollards in, and only at the end of that process do you begin to put the wire sheeting between the bollards that creates your pedestrian fence. And that’s why you go for a significant period of time while you’re doing the preparatory work, and only at the end do you see an escalation towards the goal that we reached in the last fiscal year.
And that is, in fact, what you’re going to see as we go forward. You will see the process moving in chunks of border at a time as we begin to build from the bottom up, and escalate at the end by dropping the sheets of wire, or wire mesh, that needs to be put into place to complete the pedestrian fencing.
Now I recognize that some people don’t like fencing. Of course some people really do like fencing, and I often believe I find myself caught in the middle between those who want to see the entire border fenced with double-fencing, and those who don’t want to see any fence on the border. Again, my compelling rationale for building fencing is, the operational need of the Border Patrol, driven by what the Border Patrol assesses as their tactical needs and what fits in with their overall strategy and lay down of capabilities at the border.
Environmental Concerns
But obviously the border is an environment in which not only people live but also animals and wildlife have their habitat. And so people do raise the issue of the environmental impact of the fencing. Therefore, in addition to obviously the paramount concern we have with the Border Patrol’s tactical and strategic needs, we do seek input from local residents and landowners, we do conduct environmental assessments so that we can mitigate or minimize any impact on the environment, and we of course conduct engineering assessments to build the type of fence that, from an engineering standpoint, works in the particular landscape.
Not surprisingly, there are differences of opinion at the border, and we’ve seen environmentalists recently challenge our efforts to build in one particular area of Arizona in the San Pedro area, claiming that we were interfering with the environment of the local habitat. This is a classic example of how we have a conflict between the needs of national and homeland security on the one hand and environmental concerns on the other.
Congress has spoken on the subject by giving me as the Secretary the authority to waive environmental laws as necessary to promote our control of the border. And I do not use that authority lightly. I do not use it without careful consideration of the equities. But on the other hand, I do use it to prevent undue delay in terms of excessive litigation or long, drawn-out procedural fights that could result in delaying our ability to build fencing and lighting and roads literally for years, if not decades.
In the case of the particular area we recently waived the environmental laws on, that waiver was undertaken only after four separate environmental reviews had been conducted over a period of a decade, covering not only this particular area but a broader area of the border. Two separate federal land management agencies authorized us to proceed with the construction. The particular construction steps we are undertaking do include mitigation measures to address wildlife concerns, and we have committed to working with the Fish and Wildlife Service to make sure we can address those concerns. We are, for example, erecting temporary river barriers so that we can remove them during a flood season. And we’re working to make sure that the construction does not permit the spread of invasive weeds, or result in storm water pollution.
So even when we waive the laws with respect to environmental protection, we put into place voluntarily measures that reasonably respond to legitimate environmental concerns that have been raised as a consequence of a lot of study.
But I also have to make it clear to the pubic that in the end, this is a matter of reasonable balancing: balancing risk and considering not only the environmental consequences but the human consequences of what we do at the border.
Apprehensions
Fencing does have a very significant impact in terms of human consequences. In the particular area of San Pedro, for example, last year 19,000 illegal entrants were apprehended in the course of fiscal year 2007; 11 percent of those people had criminal backgrounds. Obviously we didn’t necessarily apprehend everybody, but to the extent that fencing allows us to minimize and reduce the number of illegal people who are smuggled in, and particularly to reduce the number of criminals who come in or drugs that are smuggled in, that to me is a very positive step for the human environment; for the human environment of the entire country, because if we reduce the flow of marijuana and methamphetamine and cocaine, and if we reduce the flow of criminals coming across that part of the border, we are reducing some of the environmental damage that occurs in our cities when those drugs hit the streets or those criminals commit crimes.
There’s also a humanitarian dimension to building a fence here. There were multiple migrant deaths last year due to the elements — I think there were 14. To the extent that fencing discourages or prevents people from crossing into this particular area, and then losing their life due to the elements, there’s a positive humanitarian benefit to building that fence.
So as I balance on the one hand the concern of the environmentalists, I have to consider on the other hand the very important humanitarian and public safety elements that are promoted by building fencing in this area. Indeed, even if we look at the habitat by itself and the impact on the local environment, just in a particular area that we’re building fence, I would suggest to you that a proper balance recognizes that fencing can actually protect the local habitat and not merely interfere with it.
One thing we have seen repeatedly is that in areas where drug smugglers and human smugglers operate freely, there is trash and human waste that has an impact on wildlife and vegetation. There’s an impact on water quality. There are wildfires that are created because of campfires that get out of control. And therefore, to the extent that we minimize smuggling, we’re actually protecting part of the local habitat.
I understand some people have a negative reaction when I suggest that there’s actually a local habitat benefit to building fencing. But the reality is, if you actually go to the border and you see the consequences of smuggling, if you see the refuge that the smugglers leave behind — the cans, the rusted automobiles that we sometimes find — you have to recognize that in some ways a fence can be a positive impact on the habitat.
The bottom line is this: We will continue to use the authority that Congress gave this department in a way that’s sensitive to local concerns, that is mindful of the need to protect the environment, but that does not allow the process of securing the border to get bogged down in endless litigation or procedural wrangling that will result in years going by before we complete the mission that Congress has mandated and that the American people rightfully expect us to get done.
(To Be Continued)
