Prepared Statement of Senator Chuck Grassley
U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Department of Homeland Security Oversight Hearing
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Chairman Leahy, thank you for calling this important hearing conducting oversight of the Department of Homeland Security. On March 1, 2008, DHS celebrated its five-year anniversary since Congress created the National Strategy for Homeland Security and the Homeland Security Act of 2002. In the past five-years the Department has worked to carefully manage the merger of a number of existing federal agencies into a new Cabinet level Department. This task was and remains daunting. I thank Secretary Chertoff for appearing today and look forward to asking him a number of questions.
Everyone on this Committee knows I am no stranger to oversight and believe that ensuring federal agencies in accordance with the law is our solemn duty under the constitution. Oversight of the Department of Homeland Security is of the utmost importance given the difficult task of coordinating several entities securing the homeland. The management challenges facing any federal agency are enough to warrant oversight hearings and are only heightened when you have a new cabinet level Department.
I understand that the Secretary’s testimony will largely address the Department’s role in strengthening border security and efforts to reform immigration. While I am pleased to discuss the important reforms that are needed to our immigration laws, I view oversight hearings as an opportunity to ask about any matter with the Department. As such, I’d like to discuss H1-B visas, E-verify, and cooperation with state and locals to confront illegal immigration. I would also like to focus on some time on outdated law enforcement memorandums of understanding, my ongoing investigation into the lack of progress in establishing visa security units and the issuance of a student visa to Ahmed Mohamed, and if time permits the Department’s chemical facility antiterrorism regulations.
On immigration, amnesty failed in this body because the American people didn’t have faith in the government to enforce the laws on the books. People back home want the border secured, and they want illegal aliens apprehended, detained, and deported. The Department has a full plate – from the border to the workplace – and their efforts to protect the homeland from intruders and overstayers must not stop.
The Administration promised more than 25 reforms in August 2007. While it was an ambitious plan, I’m disappointed in the progress made on this front. I have yet to see substantial reforms to the H-1B visa program which is a major issue for companies and American workers. I’m waiting for rules to be proposed to require contractors of the federal government to use the E-verify program. More also needs to be done to help our state and local law enforcement deal with illegal immigration.
Another issue I’d like to discuss relates to interagency agreements for law enforcement agencies. One of the most difficult tasks facing the Department of Homeland Security during its creation was merging the various federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Homeland Security combined a number of federal law enforcement agencies that previously existed under other Departments. For example, the investigative arm of the Department, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is now composed of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service from the Department of Justice and the U.S. Customs Service which was previously in the Department of the Treasury. This merger created complex issues that appear to have been successfully resolved. However, it has come to my attention that a number of the interagency working agreements for federal law enforcement, known as Memorandums of Understanding are extremely outdated and are signed between federal law enforcement agencies that were redefined by the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.
The past relationships between federal law enforcement agencies have been blurred. These Memorandums are helpful in resolving jurisdictional disputes that exist between law enforcement agencies that may have concurrent or competing jurisdiction. While not carrying the force of law, these contractual agreements create a set of boundaries and procedures for addressing disputes. I have recently learned that three Memorandums of Understanding affecting the Department of Homeland Security are outdated. In fact, one Memorandum regarding investigative guidelines for firearms investigations is 30 years old and is an internal agreement between the Customs Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. The Memorandum is dated 1978 and is an intra-agency agreement because both the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and Customs were within the Department of Treasury at the time. Now that Customs is part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms is at the Justice Department, this Memorandum of Understanding makes little sense. I want to hear from Secretary Chertoff what efforts are ongoing to redraft these three outdated Memorandums that impact the Department of Homeland Security law enforcement entities.
I also want to talk about the failure of the Homeland Security Department and the State Department to establish Visa Security Units as required by law. This failure has led to at least one indicted terrorist, that we know of, entering the . Last Fall, I wrote to Secretary Chertoff seeking information about two University of South Florida students arrested near Goose Creek, South Carolina with explosives in their trunk. They are Egyptian nationals and have been charged with terrorism related offenses. I learned that one of them, Ahmed Mohammed entered the on a student visa despite having been previously arrested in . Worse than that, he had even declared his arrest on his visa application form. I launched an inquiry to find out why the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security failed to use their shared responsibility over visa policy keep this individual out of the country. It took four months to get a reply from DHS, and even then all I got was a letter denying my request on the grounds that the indicted terrorist had not consented to the release of his records under the privacy act. This is outrageous. Concerns about the privacy of an indicted terrorist who is not even a citizen or legal resident of the should not trump the need for Congress to conduct oversight of the visa issuance process.
The Homeland Security Act required that the Department establish Visa Security Units around the world to ensure that the State Department isn't just rubber-stamping visa applications the way it did for the hijackers before 9/11. There are over 220 posts that issue visas. Nearly seven years after 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security has only established about 10 security units in 9 countries. That number is shamefully low. There was no Visa Security Unit in Cairo at the time that Mohammed received his student visa, and if there had been, he would almost certainly have been denied entry into the U.S. because of his previous arrest. The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department need to get these security units in place. It has been far too long since the 9/11 attacks to still have vulnerabilities this fundamental to our security.
Time permitting; I would also like to discuss an issue near and dear to my home state of Iowa, the issuance of federal regulations by the Department known as the Chemical Facility Anti-terrorism Standards. These regulations were required by Congress and are meant to address security of dangerous chemicals at facilities across the country. These regulations became a concern to me when they included stored quantities of propane as a “chemical of interest”. Because of an initial decision by the Department of Homeland Security to require facilities to register if they had propane in excess of 7,500 pounds, many rural homeowners, agricultural producers, and small businesses in rural areas would have been subject to the regulations. By its own admission, the Department believed the cost to comply with this would have ranged from $2,300 to $3,500. I wrote to Secretary Chertoff in June of 2007 expressing my concerns but was merely thanked for my letter and heard little constructive feedback. So I took to the Senate floor and offered an amendment to the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill limiting funding for this rule. Unfortunately, my amendment failed to get a vote but I continued the fight for rural Americans.
In August of 2007, I was joined by a bi-partisan coalition of 16 Senators who wrote to the Office of Management and Budget expressing our concerns with this proposed rule. Ultimately, the Department of Homeland Security amended the regulation and raised the propane threshold to 60,000 pounds of propane, exempting most rural homeowners, agricultural producers and small businesses. While this limit still impacts a large number of agricultural producers, it’s a step in the right direction, but the Department needs to keep Congress in the loop on the impact these adjusted regulations will have. I authored a provision in the Senate version of the Farm Bill that would require the Department of Homeland Security to report this impact to Congress. While the Farm bill remains in flux, I want a commitment from Secretary Chertoff to provide this information to Congress.
I hope that Secretary Chertoff will provide answers to these important questions and commit to getting me the documents I’m seeking.
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