Proposed FY 2007 Budget Insufficient for Immigration Enforcement & Fraud Detection

By Michael Cutler

The Bush Administration's budget for FY 2007 has been released and where immigration is concerned, all I can say is, here we go again! You can download the overview of the entire appropriations request for DHS below, and I have pasted some of the highlights to this post as an image to the end of this post.

The President is, once again, requesting fewer special agents than the 800 per year that was recommended as a result of the findings of the 9/11 Commission. It is also of critical importance to realize that the 800 new special agent positions per year for each of the next five years was recommended without any thought being given to a Guest Worker/Amnesty Program. It has been estimated that there are anywhere from 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens currently in the United States at the present time. If a significant percentage of these aliens seek guest worker status, how will ICE police the millions of aliens who will apply for this program? Yet the administration is making it clear that he wants this Amnesty program that he is now referring to as the Temporary Worker Program. I guess the President or someone in the administration figured that by substituting the word "Temporary" for the word "Guest" would make this Amnesty program more palatable. As Shakespeare said, "A rose by any other name..." If we are unable to remove the millions of illegal aliens who currently flaunt our laws on a daily basis, secure in the knowledge that they have the tacit approval of many of our nation's alleged "leaders" how will this nation seek to remove these Temporary/Guests when their "Temporary" period of employment expires?

FY 2007 DHS Budget Overview (Acrobat file)

Download 07bib_dept_of_homeland_security_fact_sheet.pdf

Furthermore, we need to consider that the administration is seeking to hire barely more than an additional 200 new special agents to seek to arrest fugitive aliens. According to the document that I have attached, there are now some 450,000 such fugitives in the United States including sexual predators, members of organized crime organizations, violent gangs and potentially, terrorists. I have read that each year some 35,000 additional aliens become fugitives. From what I have read, each team assigned to fugitive alien operation consists of from 5 to 8 special agents. The administration claims it has decided to have a total of 70 such teams assigned for the entire United States of America to search for these nearly one half million fugitive aliens. That would mean that there would be roughly 400 special agents on the hunt for 450,000 fugitives.

Let us also look at the issue of USCIS, the division of DHS that adjudicates applications for various immigration benefits, ranging from the granting of authorization for an alien to extend his/her temporary stay in the United States, attend schools in the United States replace a lost or stolen alien registration card to conferring of resident aliens status and United States citizenship upon aliens. The first item listed in that segment is the reduction of the massive backlog while the last item is Benefit Fraud Assessment Program. This program has purportedly assisted ICE in the prosecution of individuals involved in immigration benefit fraud. Interestingly, there is no mention of how many prosecutions have been brought in this highly critical area. From what I have been told, there are only a relative hand full of such prosecutions each year. This is the sort of issue that keeps me awake at night. While it is far more dramatic to show a video of agents arresting illegal aliens, especially if a chase or a "dynamic entry" is involved (a dynamic entry means that a door was breached with the use of a battering ram or other such device and agents in battle gear then enter the premises to effect arrests), the alien who manages to obtain lawful status or worse, United States citizenship through fraud or deception can be a greater risk to our national security. The goal of a terrorist is to hide in plain sight or, in the parlance of the 9/11 Commission, to embed himself/herself in our country. The terrorists who attacked our nation on 9/11 and on other occasions, had often received lawful status in the United States because they understood the need to maintain a low profile. They also needed to travel often and extensively as they prepared to launch their attacks. Immigration benefit fraud facilitates this sort of deception that is vital to facilitating their malevolent objectives.

The clear focus that the administration has placed on the need to clear up the huge backlogs means that the process is flawed where the detection of fraud is concerned. This represents a major threat to the security of our nation. However, it seems that the reduction of the backlog and the enactment of a Guest Worker (Amnesty) Program is of greater concern than our nation's security. The other consequence of rampant fraud in the immigration benefits program is that it encourages many more fraudulent applications to be filed, further increasing the backlog and further impeding the proper adjudication of applications for immigration benefits. In 1973 I was assigned to the unit that adjudicated applications for resident alien status for aliens married to United States citizens or resident aliens. The New York office had initiated a pilot program to weed out the fraud applications. We found fraud was rampant and that even some attorneys were involved in arranging these marriages. Having the adjudicators work in coordination with the special agents, we succeeded in uncovering many marriage frauds including large rings of marriage arrangers. The result that many fewer applications were being filed and the fraud rate dropped. If law enforcement is to be successful, those who would violate the law need to be convinced that there is a good chance they will be discovered and that if they are discovered the consequences will be significant. When the pilot program ended and alien realized that they could most probably get away with committing fraud, they began filing more and more fraudulent applications.

A number of years ago, before the attacks of September 11, 2001, I spoke with a friend who was a District Director for the former INS. I told him I was concerned that special agents were often assigned to help with clearing up backlogs of applications for immigration benefits and told him that I was concerned about the security issue that this represented. I also told him that I was concerned that agents were being pulled off cases in order to act as adjudicators, thereby having a negative impact on their criminal investigations. I raised this issue with him because under the old INS the District Directors were in charge of the special agents as well as the adjudicators and so these managers were in the position to order special agents to drop their case loads in order to assist with the adjudication of immigration benefits applications. This District Director was candid in explaining the reason that special agents were often utilized as "utility players." He told me that he could not remember the last time he received correspondence from a Congressman or Senator's office demanding that an alien who was illegally in the country be arrested, but he had stacks of such complaints from those officials when his office failed to adjudicate an application for citizenship, residency or some other such benefit. He told me that it was in his best interest to keep the politicians happy.

So, while we know that the terrorists made use of the holes in the immigration system, our officials still refuse to take those steps that will secure the system from fraud, which is known to be a major area of vulnerability. I pray that our country will never again suffer another terrorist attack. If such an attack should occur, however, I wonder if any of the terrorists will have successfully gamed the system and gained an immigration benefit through fraud to hide in plain sight. If that was to happen, our government will bear a major responsibility for being derelict in its duties.

Highlights of Proposed FY2007 Budget (click on image to enlarge)

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