ICE head named U.S. attorney in N.Y.

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Michael J. Garcia, who has headed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since the agency’s creation in March 2003, has been named by the White House as U.S. attorney in New York.

Mr. Garcia has been criticized by some members of Congress for longstanding budgetary missteps and by ICE supervisors and agents who have complained the agency was a threat to the country’s national security efforts because of mismanagement, low morale, a lack of a clearly defined mission and ongoing financial problems.

But the veteran prosecutor, a former assistant U.S. attorney in New York, is expected to win Senate confirmation to the post based on the backing of Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, and New York Gov. George E. Pataki, a Republican.

The post has been held on an interim basis for the past two years by David N. Kelley.

“Assistant Secretary Garcia is honored to be nominated by the president for this important position and looks forward to working closely with the Senate during the confirmation process,” ICE spokesman Dean Boyd said yesterday. “In the interim, he will continue to fulfill his responsibilities overseeing the critical work of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

ICE was created following the merger of the U.S. Customs Service, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the Federal Protective Service. Criminal investigators from the Customs Service and INS were assigned to the ICE Office of Investigations and given the task of preventing terrorist attacks.

But ICE’s ability to gather and share intelligence data, conduct counterterror investigations and enforce U.S. immigration laws has been challenged by both its supervisors and agents.

Many supervisors and agents said in letters and e-mails to Congress that the agency was burdened by a complex and mismanaged administrative system that lacked a definitive mission statement, adding that ICE’s investigative efforts had undergone a “functional paralysis.”

Noting that while the fiscal 2005 budget called for a $300 million increase, ICE canceled all training, implemented a hard hiring freeze, ordered its cars parked, ended Spanish-language training for investigators and limited spending and investigative activities.

As an assistant U.S. attorney in New York from 1992 to 2001, Mr. Garcia helped prosecute some of the nation’s highest-profile terrorism cases. He was a member of the prosecution team that in May 2001 won convictions against four suspected terrorists accused of conspiring with al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Mr. Garcia also was involved in the successful prosecution of the terrorists involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, and he helped prosecute Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and two others on charges of planning 48 hours of “terror in the sky” in a conspiracy to plant bombs aboard 12 American passenger aircraft in the Far East.