WASHINGTON, March 19 (UPI) -- President George W. Bush is leaning toward forming one U.S. border agency "to focus on the holes in our border process," key administration sources told United Press International Tuesday, but as one source put it, "he is no where close to making a decision" on whether Homeland Director Tom Ridge will head the new agency.
At a meeting Tuesday of the Homeland Security Council, President Bush was offered three options, according to these sources. One was to form a new border agency that would combine the U.S. Treasury's Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, forming one of the largest enforcement agencies in government and dwarfing several others like the FBI.
Another proposal, these sources said, would leave the agencies separate, but reorganize the INS into two bureaus one to focus on enforcement and the other on servicing immigrants.
"A third option would be to leave as they are, which is not a viable option," one source said. Even after increased alertness after Sept. 11, the United States can only screen tiny portion of freight and travelers that cross the country's 7,500 miles of land border and dozens of ports of entry each day. "The president is convinced that we can't have homeland security without border security," said another source.
From the time he was appointed last fall, Ridge the former Republican governor of Pennsylvania, has pushed for a single agency. But it was opposed by the vested interests in the INS, Justice and the Treasury Department who saw it eviscerating the power of their agencies. If Bush chooses Ridge's plan to combine the agency it will be a major boon to the prestige of the Homeland Security director.
From the beginning many powerful Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have believed that a single border agency should be formed and they also believed that Ridge should head and agency to have the power to better shape a homeland security policy. Throughout the past months, Ridge has found himself often being resisted and sometimes publicly embarrassed by statements about border security that counter to his agreements with Canada and other foreign governments.
UPI established that both Robert C. Bonner, commissioner of Customs, and James Ziglar, have clashed with Ridge behind closed doors and that the disputes have come out the open.
The new agency would be under the general administration of the Department of Justice and would supplant the current troubled INS. This, one source said, was to bring Attorney General John Ashcroft on board with the plan.
Though White House spokesman Ari Fleischer would hint at the president's decision, he already seemed to be backing the concept of the single agency in his Tuesday briefing:
"There is a school of thought," he told reporters, "that you can have better controlled and more effective ways of welcoming people to this country, welcoming trade to this country, while keeping people out who would do us harm as a result of consolidation."
A White House source told reporters that the decision would not be made until Bush is back from Latin America. The president leaves Thursday for an economic conference in Monterrey, Mexico, a visit with Mexican president Vicente Fox and then stops in Peru and El Salvador.
Ziglar, chief of INS, told reporters at a National Press Club luncheon Tuesday that if Bush wanted to combine the agencies he would support it. "I support George Bush," he said, but one administration source thought it doubtful that Ziglar would be chosen to head the new agency.
INS has been for years one of the most trouble departments in government. It has some 35,000 employees, about 9,000 members of the Border Patrol, which guard U.S. borders, but the agency has never been able to properly flood of aliens into the United States. At present there are some estimated 9 million illegal aliens in the United States.
About half came surreptitiously across the Mexican border and about half are aliens who have overstayed their visas. The agency's record system is so confused and inadequate that often it has allowed dangerous persons to slip through U.S. border and entry points. Only last week, it was disclosed that an INS contractor mailed approvals for visa requests of two of the Sept. 11 hijackers to the flight school they were attending in Florida.
Bush was embarrassed and angered by the flub and said his displeasure was transmitted to the attorney general and to Ziglar. Ziglar got his job through Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R.-Miss., but Lott has lost influence since the Democrats took of the Senate.
U.S. borders have patchwork of federal agencies guarding them, which over recent years often did not work together. In addition to the Custom's Service, Border Patrol agents and INS immigration officers, the Agriculture Department has a border service to screen farm products, the U.S. Coast Guard guards ports and harbors and searches vessels at sea and the Department of Transportation's security agency has responsibilities for screen truck and aircraft transportation for terrorists.
"This is a very tricky move," one official told UPI, "it has implications for the war on drugs as well as on the economy."
