Poor leadership at ICE cited as security threat

U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement’s ability to gather and share intelligence data, conduct the investigations needed to guard the nation’s borders against terrorists and enforce immigration law is being challenged by a growing number of ICE supervisors and agents.

Both supervisory and rank-and-file personnel, in numerous interviews, said the Department of Homeland Security agency is overwhelmed by low morale, mismanagement and the lack of a clearly defined mission, and said the lack of effective leadership threatens its ability to defend the United States against a new terrorist attack.

At least two congressional committees are reviewing the accusations and have met with ICE supervisors and agents to discuss the matter.

“Serious accusations have been made and there is a concerted effort under way to determine their validity and, more importantly, find out how they impact the country’s ability to fight the war on terrorism,” said one congressional investigator. “The complaints are specific and widespread. We take them seriously.”

ICE supervisors and agents say they are worried about, among other things, management decisions that have muddled long-standing chains of command; the assignment of patrol agents and inspectors to one agency and investigators to another; and the misuse of computer systems that had been effective for everything from inspections, investigations and data collection to in-house networking and personnel matters.

They questioned whether ICE has sought to maintain the legacy of its predecessor, the U.S. Customs Service, which developed an expertise in smuggling and money-laundering investigations, and said they doubted the new agency is committed to enforcing immigration law, particularly in the nation’s interior, where 10 million illegals live.

Less than two years after ICE was created, discontent among supervisors and rank-and-file agents has spread from quiet chatter in locker rooms and patrol vehicles to open rebellion in its field and regional offices.

Letters and e-mails sent by ICE personnel to members of Congress show that many think significant leadership shortfalls have translated into low morale.

One e-mail delivered to congressional investigators said field agents “desperately require a set of goals that relate to terrorist investigations and protecting our borders,” but because the ICE leadership has failed to accomplish that goal in the 20 months since the agency was created, they have “no respect or confidence in their ability to do so.”

Much of the criticism targets Asa Hutchinson, Homeland Security undersecretary for border and transportation security, who oversees ICE, and ICE Assistant Secretary Michael J. Garcia, who heads the agency.

The supervisors and agents said the two had done little to help the complicated reorganization of several law-enforcement agencies into a single body, while others said they let the agency’s investigative functions erode, even though ICE is billed as the investigative arm of Homeland Security.

Mr. Hutchinson has said ICE has made “great strides,” despite problems associated with the complex merger of agencies. Mr. Garcia described the transition as “unprecedented,” saying that regardless of a lack of adequate funding for manpower, resources and equipment, he was confident ICE was moving forward.

“It has taken time to find out ICE’s role in preventing a new act of terrorism, where we fit in the overall picture, how we learn and adapt, what tools we need to get the job done, and how to use them more aggressively,” Mr. Garcia said. “But look at the service they have performed despite those uncertainties. We have come a very long way in a very short time.”

But an ICE supervisor who heads a major field office said agents assigned to combat terrorism think the dismantling of Customs has led to a serious breach of national security, one that top department officials have yet to address. He said at a time that Customs and the FBI were seeking to allow a freer flow of intelligence data, Homeland Security “is erecting walls and roadblocks between itself.”

Matthew L. Issman, national legislative vice president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA), which represents 25,000 federal agents in 57 agencies, including those at ICE, said that major “systemic issues and concerns” raised by agents and forwarded to members of Congress show the agency is suffering from a serious morale problem.

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