[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
KEEPING PACE WITH TRADE, TRAVEL, AND
SECURITY: HOW DOES CBP PRIORITIZE AND
IMPROVE STAFFING AND INFRASTRUCTURE?
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
BORDER AND
MARITIME SECURITY
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
APRIL 19, 2016
__________
Serial No. 114-63
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
Michael T. McCaul, Texas, Chairman
Lamar Smith, Texas Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
Peter T. King, New York Loretta Sanchez, California
Mike Rogers, Alabama Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas
Candice S. Miller, Michigan, Vice James R. Langevin, Rhode Island
Chair Brian Higgins, New York
Jeff Duncan, South Carolina Cedric L. Richmond, Louisiana
Tom Marino, Pennsylvania William R. Keating, Massachusetts
Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania Donald M. Payne, Jr., New Jersey
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania Filemon Vela, Texas
Curt Clawson, Florida Bonnie Watson Coleman, New Jersey
John Katko, New York Kathleen M. Rice, New York
Will Hurd, Texas Norma J. Torres, California
Earl L. ``Buddy'' Carter, Georgia
Mark Walker, North Carolina
Barry Loudermilk, Georgia
Martha McSally, Arizona
John Ratcliffe, Texas
Daniel M. Donovan, Jr., New York
Brendan P. Shields, Staff Director
Joan V. O'Hara, General Counsel
Michael S. Twinchek, Chief Clerk
I. Lanier Avant, Minority Staff Director
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON BORDER AND MARITIME SECURITY
Martha McSally, Arizona, Chairman
Lamar Smith, Texas Filemon Vela, Texas
Mike Rogers, Alabama Loretta Sanchez, California
Candice S. Miller, Michigan Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas
Jeff Duncan, South Carolina Brian Higgins, New York
Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania Norma J. Torres, California
Will Hurd, Texas Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
Michael T. McCaul, Texas (ex (ex officio)
officio)
Paul L. Anstine, Subcommittee Staff Director
John Dickhaus, Subcommittee Clerk
Alison Northrop, Minority Subcommittee Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Statements
The Honorable Martha McSally, a Representative in Congress From
the State of Arizona, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Border and
Maritime Security:
Oral Statement................................................. 1
Prepared Statement............................................. 3
The Honorable Brian Higgins, a Representative in Congress From
the State of New York:
Oral Statement................................................. 4
Prepared Statement............................................. 6
The Honorable Jeff Duncan, a Representative in Congress From the
State of South Carolina........................................ 6
The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Mississippi, and Ranking Member, Committee on
Homeland Security:
Prepared Statement............................................. 7
Witnesses
Mr. Eugene Schied, Acting Executive Assistant Commissioner,
Office of Enterprise Services, U.S. Customs and Border
Protection, U.S. Department of Homeland Security:
Oral Statement................................................. 9
Joint Prepared Statement....................................... 13
Ms. Linda Jacksta, Assistant Commissioner, Office of Human
Resources Management, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S.
Department of Homeland Security:
Oral Statement................................................. 10
Joint Prepared Statement....................................... 13
Mr. John P. Wagner, Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Office of
Field Operations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S.
Department of Homeland Security:
Oral Statement................................................. 11
Joint Prepared Statement....................................... 13
Mr. Michael Gelber, Deputy Commissioner, Public Buildings
Service, U.S. General Services Administration:
Oral Statement................................................. 22
Prepared Statement............................................. 23
Mr. Anthony M. Reardon, National President, National Treasury
Employees Union:
Oral Statement................................................. 25
Prepared Statement............................................. 26
KEEPING PACE WITH TRADE, TRAVEL, AND SECURITY: HOW DOES CBP PRIORITIZE
AND IMPROVE STAFFING AND INFRASTRUCTURE?
----------
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Homeland Security,
Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:04 a.m., in
Room 311, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Martha McSally
[Chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives McSally, Duncan, Hurd, Higgins,
and Torres.
Also present: Representative Payne.
Ms. McSally. The Committee on Homeland Security,
Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security will come to
order. The subcommittee is meeting today to examine CBP's
efforts to improve staffing and port of entry infrastructure
needs.
I recognize myself now for an opening statement. Before we
begin, I would like to offer my condolences for Border Patrol
Agent Jose D. Barraza. Yesterday morning, Agent Barraza, a
canine handler involved in a vehicle accident with his canine
Vino, and he was fatally injured. Border Patrol Agent Barraza
was assigned to the Sierra Blanca Station of the Big Bend
sector. He is survived by his wife, Donna Barraza, his 2 sons
Joey and Josh Barraza, and his mother Tammy Delgado, all of El
Paso. Our thoughts are with his family in this difficult time,
and we thank him for his service.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection's job is to make sure
passengers and cargo that power our economy keep moving while
keeping bad things and bad people out of the country. These
missions require 2 basic prerequisites: An appropriate number
of well-trained CBP Officers to process travelers and trade,
and a modernized infrastructure to accommodate and channel the
traffic so that it moves across the border quickly and safely.
However, CBP is seriously understaffed, despite Congress'
recent infusion of dollars to hire an additional 2,000
officers. Land ports of entry across the country are in dire
need of expansion and renovation to keep pace with increasing
demand and security requirements.
CBP is well below its Congressionally-mandated staffing
level by more than 950 officers and 1,300 Border Patrol Agents.
Even with a recent push to hire more officers, hiring is only
barely keeping up with officer attrition. We are essentially
treading water.
CBP's internal workflow staffing models show that we need
more than 2,000 CBP Officers above what CBP currently has on
board, well above even what Congress has appropriated. Once CBP
delivers the now-late staffing report as required under the
recently-enacted CBP Authorization Act, Congress will have a
clearer picture of where the needs are the greatest.
Filling staffing shortages is a challenge for several
reasons. For starters, just last year, it took more than 460
days, on average, in 11 distinct steps to on-board a new
officer or agent. Today, it is only marginally better. The
process is down to 6 months, but I think that is just for where
we have pilot programs, so I would like to hear some
clarification on that. This is still a very long time. We are
losing far too many good applicants who just throw up their
hands and move on because they have given up on the process.
Pre-employment polygraph examinations required by the Anti-
Border Corruption Act of 2010 significantly reduced the number
of applicants who make it through the process, including a
disturbingly high number of seemingly-qualified combat
veterans. I want to make sure we are vetting potential
applicants thoroughly without subjecting them to a process that
is adversarial without purpose.
Attrition is also something that should concern CBP and
concerns us. When we have good officers and agents leaving the
force in significant numbers and the hiring process is not
keeping pace, we must look for novel way to retain these
professionals. At the current hiring rate, it takes between 100
and 150 applicants to go through the process to just hire one
agent or officer. This means CBP needs to have hundreds of
thousands of people to apply just to meet their current needs.
Last year, President Obama signed a bill that I authored,
the Border Jobs for Veterans Act. This was my first bill signed
into law, by the way. This law allows the hiring of qualified
veterans on an expedited basis and establishes programs to
actively recruit military veterans to work as CBP Officers. I
look forward to an implementation update because we can all
agree that CBP should be leveraging our military veterans who
want to continue to serve the country.
Turning now to infrastructure challenges, there are 167
land ports of entry Nation-wide. Many are in dire need of
expansion or modernization. For years, funding for ports of
entry have been inadequate, considering the magnitude of the
requirements. If we tally the total requirements for ports of
entry across the country, it comes out to an astounding $5
billion.
How CBP prioritizes land ports of entry construction is not
as clear as it should be. Under current law, CBP is required to
present a 5-year infrastructure plan to Congress on a routine
basis, which I understand will be delivered shortly. What
Congress is looking for in such a plan is a rational, decision-
making process for selecting and funding infrastructure based
on specific criteria, impacting the economy, the level of
traffic, and the necessary security enhancements.
The main border crossing in my district, located in
Douglas, Arizona, is a prime example of the confusion that
exists with the current process. The Douglas Crossing Point is
1 of 6 ports of entry in Arizona, and the city of Douglas has
been attempting to secure the approval of the new commercial
port of entry with DHS since 2012. Unfortunately, determining
how to further this vital project still remains not only
relatively unclear, but frustratingly difficult for my
community. Mexico is my State's largest trading partner, and
over the past 5 years, shipments south alone have increased 60
percent. The Douglas port currently accounts for nearly $4
billion in trade through two-way truck traffic, a figure that
has grown 5 percent annually since 2010. But what is hard to
measure is the opportunity costs of inadequate and aging
infrastructure that causes bottlenecks and long wait lines.
We may never know how much commerce Douglas is not seeing,
because the cargo may be shifting to another ports of entry not
in such need of modernization. Or people that are crossing on
foot who just decide not to come anymore, because it is just
taking too long.
In 2003, the Arizona Department of Transportation
determined that the existing Douglas port of entry will not
allow CBP to adequately meet its mission within the next 5
years. That deadline is rapidly approaching and I am extremely
interested in moving along projects, whether it is improvements
or expansions of the existing port, or building a new port
altogether, that will ensure that commerce continues to move in
an efficient manner for the citizens in Arizona and also for
them to remain safe.
I hope that the witnesses today can help this subcommittee
find solutions that will ease the staffing shortages and
prioritize infrastructure spending in a transparent and
justifiable way.
[The statement of Chairman McSally follows:]
Statement of Chairman Martha McSally
April 19, 2016
U.S. Customs and Border Protection's job is to make sure the
passengers and cargo that power our economy keep moving while keeping
bad things and bad people out of the country.
These missions require 2 basic prerequisites--an appropriate number
of well-trained CBP Officers to process travelers and trade, and a
modernized infrastructure to accommodate and channel the traffic so
that it moves across the border quickly and safely.
However, CBP is seriously understaffed, despite Congress's recent
infusion of dollars to hire an additional 2,000 officers. Additionally,
land ports of entry across the country are in dire need of expansion
and renovation to keep pace with increasing demand and security
requirements.
CBP is well below its Congressionally-mandated staffing level by
more 950 officers and 1300 Border Patrol Agents. Even with a recent
push to hire more officers, hiring is only barely keeping up with
officer attrition. We are essentially treading water.
CBP's internal workflow staffing model shows that we need more than
2,000 CBP Officers above what CBP currently has on-board, well above
even what Congress has appropriated. Once CBP delivers the now-late
staffing report, as required under the recently-enacted CBP
Authorization Act, Congress will have a clearer picture of where the
needs are greatest.
Filling staffing shortages is a challenge for several reasons. For
starters, just last year it took more than 460 days, on average, and 11
distinct steps to on-board a new officer or agent. Today it's only
marginally better--the process is down to 6 months. That is still a
very long time.
We are losing far too many good applicants who just throw up their
hands, and move on because they have given up on the process.
Pre-employment polygraph examinations required by the Anti-Border
Corruption Act of 2010 significantly reduce the number of applicants
who make it through the process--including a disturbingly high number
of seemingly-qualified combat veterans. I want to make sure we are
vetting potential applicants thoroughly without subjecting them to a
process that is adversarial without purpose.
Attrition is also something that should concern CBP. When we have
good officers and agents leaving the force in significant numbers and
the hiring process is not keeping pace, we must look for novel ways to
retain these professionals. At the current hiring rate, it takes almost
100-150 applicants to go through the process just to hire 1 agent or
officer. This means CBP needs to have hundreds of thousands of people
apply just to meet our current needs.
Last year, President Obama signed a bill I authored, the Border
Jobs for Veterans Act. This law allows the hiring of qualified veterans
on an expedited basis, and establishes programs to actively recruit
military veterans to work as CBP Officers. I look forward to an
implementation update because we can all agree that CBP should be
leveraging military veterans who want to continue to serve their
country.
Turning now to infrastructure challenges, there are 167 land ports
of entry Nation-wide--many are in dire need of expansion and
modernization. For years, funding for ports of entry has been
inadequate, considering the magnitude of the requirements. If we tally
the total requirements for ports of entry across the country it comes
out to an astounding $5 billion dollars.
How CBP prioritizes land port of entry construction is not as clear
as it should be. Under current law, CBP is required to present a 5-year
infrastructure plan to Congress on a routine basis, which I understand
will be delivered shortly. What Congress is looking for in such a plan
is a rational decision-making process for selecting and funding
infrastructure based on specific criteria: Impact to the economy, the
level of traffic, and necessary security enhancements.
The main border crossing in my district, located in Douglas, AZ, is
a prime example of the confusion that exists with the current process.
The Douglas crossing point is 1 of 6 ports of entry in Arizona and the
city of Douglas has been attempting to secure the approval of a new
Commercial Port of Entry with DHS since 2012.
Unfortunately, determining how to further this vital project still
remains not only relatively unclear, but frustratingly difficult.
Mexico is my State's largest trading partner and over the past 5 years,
shipments south alone have increased 60%. The Douglas port currently
accounts for nearly $4 billion in trade through 2-way truck traffic, a
figure that has grown by 5% annually since 2010.
But what is hard to measure is the opportunity cost of inadequate
and aging infrastructure that causes bottlenecks and long wait times.
We may never know how much commerce Douglas is not seeing because that
cargo may be shifting to another port of entry not in such dire need of
modernization.
In 2013, the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) determined
that the existing Douglas POE will not allow CBP to adequately meet its
mission within the next 5 years. That deadline is rapidly approaching
and I am extremely interested in moving along projects, whether it is
improvements or expansions of the existing port or building a new port
all together that will ensure that commerce continue to move in an
efficient manner and the citizens of Southern Arizona remain safe.
I hope that the witnesses today can help this subcommittee find
solutions that will ease the staffing shortage and prioritize
infrastructure spending in a transparent and justifiable way.
Ms. McSally. The Chair now recognizes the acting Ranking
Minority Member of the subcommittee, the gentleman from New
York, Mr. Higgins, for any statement he may have.
Mr. Higgins. I want to thank the Chair, and I am pleased to
serve as Ranking Member today, particularly given the topic at
hand, staffing and infrastructure at America's ports of entry.
My Congressional district consists of portions of Erie and
Niagara Counties, including the cities of Buffalo and Niagara
Falls, and sits adjacent to America's maritime border with
Canada along the Niagara River and eastern shores of Lake Erie.
Buffalo is home to the Peace Bridge, the busiest passenger
crossing on the Northern Border, and a crucial link between the
economy of western New York and southern Ontario and our two
great Nations.
Each year, $40 billion in trade crosses the Peace Bridge,
sparing $227 billion in economic activity. Niagara County is
home to 3 more international crossings: The Rainbow Bridge, the
Whirlpool Bridge, and the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge, which are
all so crucial to travel and tourism in the region. Cross-
border travel, the efficient flow of goods and people across
the border and security of our ports of entry are vital to the
communities that I represent.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's
Office of Field Operations continues to be understaffed at
ports of entry based on the agency's own staffing model.
Staffing shortages slow legitimate crossers and makes it more
difficult for law enforcement officials to spot the handful who
may pose a concern.
In addition to staffing challenges, Customs and Border
Protection operations at the Peace Bridge are hindered by
inadequate infrastructure, including insufficient booth
capacity for a port facility of its size, as well as a
dysfunctional plaza that results in crossing inefficiencies.
In my Congressional district, we see the slowdowns,
particularly on summer weekends as locals and tourists alike
seek to enter the United States from Canada. That season is
right around the corner, and I know I will be hearing from my
constituents and area businesses about their concerns.
I hope to hear from our CBP witnesses today about what they
are doing to increase staffing for ports of entry, including
hiring 2,000 CBP Officers funded by Congress in recent years
both in the near term and over the long term. Similarly, we
know that additional investments in port of entry
infrastructure are necessary to deal with increasing cross-
border traffic and trade in evolving security threats.
New programs, such as Land Pre-Clearance, will require
additional infrastructure, but will pay significant returns on
those investments. I have long been a proponent of pre-
clearance at the Peace Bridge in Buffalo. Because of the unique
infrastructure location and space constraints we face in the
Buffalo port of entry, and the existence of sufficient acreage
on the Fort Erie side, the Peace Bridge was chosen for pre-
clearance pilot in 2004. Now that full pre-clearance is being
revised, I believe the Peace Bridge would be ideally suited for
the first Land Pre-Clearance site.
I was greatly encouraged by the announcement made last
month by President Obama and Prime Minister Trudeau regarding
the program, and I am proud to be an original co-sponsor of
legislation that would provide the legal framework needed to
move forward with expanded pre-clearance.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about how the
Department of Homeland Security, the General Services
Administration with the support of Congress, can properly staff
and resource our Nation's port of entry, including the ones in
my Congressional district and those of my colleagues here
today.
Finally, I am very glad to be joined by Tony Reardon,
national president of the National Treasury Employees Union,
which represents rank-and-file CBP Officers, including many of
my constituents. Again, I thank the witnesses for joining us,
and I look forward to your testimony.
[The statement of Mr. Higgins follows:]
Statement of Hon. Brian Higgins
April 19, 2016
My Congressional district consists of portions of Erie and Niagara
Counties, including the cities of Buffalo and Niagara Falls, and sits
adjacent to America's maritime border with Canada along the Niagara
River and the eastern shores of Lake Erie.
Buffalo is home to the Peace Bridge, the busiest passenger crossing
on the Northern Border and a crucial link between the economies of
Western New York and Southern Ontario and our 2 great nations.
Each year, $40 billion in trade crosses the Peace Bridge, spurring
$227 billion in economic activity. Niagara County is home to 3 more
international crossings, the Rainbow Bridge, the Whirlpool Bridge, and
the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge which are also critical to travel and
tourism in the region.
Cross-border travel, the efficient flow of goods and people across
the border, and the security of our ports of entry are vital to the
communities I am privileged to represent. Unfortunately, U.S. Customs
and Border Protection's Office of Field Operations continues to be
understaffed at ports of entry based on the agency's own staffing
model. Staffing shortages slow legitimate crossers and makes it more
difficult for law enforcement officials to spot thehandful who may pose
a concern.
In addition to the staffing challenges, CBP operations at the Peace
Bridge are hindered by inadequate infrastructure, including
insufficient booth capacity for a port facility of its size, as well as
a dysfunctional plaza that results in crossing inefficiencies. In my
Congressional district, we see the slowdowns particularly on summer
weekends, as locals and tourists alike seek to enter the United States
from Canada. That season is right around the corner, and I know I will
be hearing from my constituents and area businesses about their
concerns.
I hope to hear from our CBP witnesses today about what they are
doing to increase staffing for ports of entry, including hiring the
2,000 CBP Officers funded by Congress in recent years, both in the near
term and over the long run. Similarly, we know that additional
investments in port of entry infrastructure are necessary to deal with
increasing cross-border travel and trade and evolving security threats.
New programs, such as land pre-clearance, will require additional
infrastructure but will pay significant returns on those investments. I
have long been a strong proponent of pre-clearance at the Peace Bridge
in Buffalo. Because of the unique infrastructure, location, and space
constraints we face at the Buffalo Port of Entry, and the existence of
sufficient acreage on the Ft. Erie side, the Peace Bridge was chosen
for a pre-clearance pilot in 2004. Now that full pre-clearance is being
revived, I believe the Peace Bridge would be ideally suited for the
first land pre-clearance site.
I was greatly encouraged by the announcement made last month by
President Obama and Prime Minister Trudeau regarding the program, and
am proud to be an original co-sponsor of legislation that would provide
the legal framework needed to move forward with expanded pre-clearance.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about how the
Department of Homeland Security and the General Services
Administration, with support from Congress, can properly staff and
resource our Nation's ports of entry, including the ones in my
Congressional district and those of my colleagues here today.
Finally, I am very glad we are joined by Tony Reardon, national
president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents
rank-and-file CBP Officers, including many of my constituents.
Mr. Duncan. Madam Chairman, I have a brief opening
statement.
Ms. McSally. Without objection.
Mr. Duncan. I have been on this subcommittee for the end of
my 6th year, and this issue comes up time again. Ronald Reagan
used to talk about a ``shining city on the hill.'' He said if
that shining city on the hill had to have walls, then it needed
to have gates to allow the normal flow of goods, commerce, and
natural immigration. I want to thank all the leaders that are
here today testifying for the work they do. Mr. O'Rourke from
El Paso, Texas, talked extensively on this committee about
trade at the border, and how important it was to El Paso. I
know how important it is in Nogales, because I have been there,
and seen the 18-wheelers lined up on the Mexican side trying to
come into this country.
But the vital component is inspection of those 18-wheelers
to make sure that contraband, illegal aliens, drugs, you name
it, don't come into this country. It could be, you know, citrus
greening fruit that doesn't need to come in and infect United
States citrus. So there is an important component, and so I
think this is a vital topic. I applaud you for this because
being from South Carolina, we are about as far away from the
Southern and Northern Border as you can imagine, but we fully
understand the threats that are opposed to this Nation that
could come across, not just across the open border areas, but
through our normal ports of entry. So they have got a vital
role to play.
I will note that in the last 10 years, the number of CBP
personnel, Border Patrol personnel has doubled to about 20,000,
I think. I don't know what the optimal number is. I hope we
delve into that a little bit. Because just increasing manpower
and not increasing effectiveness of that manpower isn't always
the answer. Giving them the tools they need, the ability to do
their job, getting the administration out of their way, and
allowing them to protect the country because that is what our
constituents expect.
So I thank you for this hearing. I look forward to the
testimony. I appreciate the Ranking Member's comments as well,
who understands this issue as well. So thank you and I yield
back.
Ms. McSally. Absolutely. Other Members of the committee are
reminded that opening statements may be submitted for the
record.
[The statement of Ranking Member Thompson follows:]
Statement of Ranking Member Bennie G. Thompson
April 19, 2016
The Committee on Homeland Security has held many hearings over the
years examining staffing and infrastructure challenges at ports of
entry. While some progress has been made toward addressing those
challenges, much more remains to be done to ensure that CBP has the
staffing and infrastructure necessary to keep pace with travel and
trade while continuing to secure our Nation's borders in the face of
evolving threats.
For example, we know that CBP remains thousands of officers short
of the number its own staffing model indicates is necessary to staff
ports of entry appropriately. Members of this Committee, including
myself, have been asking for years, on a bipartisan basis, for this
staffing model, but CBP has so far refused to comply.
As a result, we included a provision in recent CBP authorization
legislation requiring CBP to provide the staffing model to Congress.
That legislation was signed into law in February and the staffing model
was due last month, but to my knowledge it has not yet been provided.
I want to hear from our witnesses today about when we can expect to
receive the staffing model because, given how long this committee has
been asking for the document, it is in fact long, long overdue.
Also regarding staffing, CBP has had significant difficulty hiring
the additional 2,000 officers funded by Congress in recent years. While
I strongly support CBP's efforts to ensure newly-hired officers meet
appropriate standards, the agency needs to do everything possible to
recruit, hire, and retain suitable candidates.
I hope to hear from our witnesses today about the specific steps
CBP is undertaking to overcome these hiring challenges and the time
line for getting the remaining officers on board. With respect to
infrastructure at ports of entry--including at land, air, and sea
ports--it simply was not built for modern travel, trade, technology, or
security measures.
Like much of America's aging infrastructure, we need to invest in
its modernization to ensure our ports of entry--the gateways to our
country--are able to welcome legitimate travel and trade while giving
CBP personnel the tools necessary to help protect us from security
threats.
I hope to hear from our CBP and General Services Administration
witnesses today about how they identify and prioritize needs at ports
of entry and where our most pressing needs are currently. I am
particularly pleased that Tony Reardon, the national president of the
National Treasury Employees Union, is joining us for the first time.
His members, the men and women of CBP's Office of Field Operations, are
on the front lines at our ports of entry every day. I look forward to
hearing their perspectives through him in his testimony today.
Finally, I would note that we are fortunate to have many Members on
this committee with ports of entry in or near their districts. These
Members have a first-hand understanding of and keen interest in CBP
staffing and infrastructure, and they will add a great deal to the
discussion here today. I hope our witnesses will be sure to provide in
a timely way any port-specific information Members may request
regarding their districts.
Ms. McSally. We are pleased to be joined today by 5
distinguished witnesses to discuss this important topic. Mr.
Eugene Schied is the acting executive commissioner for the
Office of Enterprise Services at U.S. Customs and Border
Protection. In this role, Mr. Schied has responsibility within
CBP for real estate management, including the construction,
maintenance, and leasing of facilities. Prior to joining CBP in
November 2006, Mr. Schied was the first deputy CFO for the
Department of Homeland Security, and also served as DHS's
budget director from May 2003 until March 2004.
Ms. Linda Jacksta is the assistant commissioner for human
resources management at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Prior to this role, Ms. Jacksta served as the acting deputy
assistant commissioner for the Office of Internal Affairs. In
this capacity, she provided leadership and protection for a
wide variety of functions or programs, including backgrounds,
and clearances, and employee misconduct investigations.
Mr. John Wagner is the deputy assistant commissioner for
U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Office of Field
Operations. Mr. Wagner formerly served as executive director of
admissibility and passenger programs with responsibility for
all traveler admissibility-related policies, and programs,
including the Trusted Traveler Program, the Electronic System
for Travel Authorization, the Immigration Advisory Program, and
the fraudulent document analysis unit.
Mr. Michael Gelber the is deputy commissioner for public
buildings service at the U.S. General Services Administration.
The Public Buildings Service is one of the largest public real
estate organizations in the world, operating more than 9,000
owned and leased properties across the United States.
Mr. Gelber began his career at GSA in 1988 and has held
positions--several leadership positions including service in
the northwest and Great Lakes region.
Mr. Anthony Reardon is the national president of the
National Treasury Employees Union, a position he was elected to
in August 2015. A 25-year member of the NTEU, he joined the
organization in 1990 as the operations manager, and rose to
become chief operating executive where he oversaw budgeting and
other financial matters and managed NTEU's day-to-day
operations, ranging from personnel to information technology.
The witnesses' full written statements will appear for the
record. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Schied for 5 minutes to
testify.
STATEMENT OF EUGENE SCHIED, ACTING EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT
COMMISSIONER, OFFICE OF ENTERPRISE SERVICES, U.S. CUSTOMS AND
BORDER PROTECTION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Schied. Good morning, Chairman McSally, Representative
Higgins, Members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the
opportunity to appear this morning to discuss Customs and
Border Protection's efforts to modernize land port of entry
facilities in support of our mission to secure, and facilitate
trade and travel into and out of, the United States. CBP's
facility management and engineering division is responsible in
coordination with GSA for the oversight, repair, and
modernization of CBP's inspectional facilities at our Nation's
329 ports of entry, more than half of which, as you have noted,
are located along the U.S. land borders with Mexico and Canada.
Most CBP land ports of entry of entry were built to support
the distinct and independent operations of pre-DHS agencies,
such as U.S. Customs Service, Animal Plant Health Inspection
Service, and Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Today, of course, our facilities and our operations are
consolidated and incorporate state-of-the-art technology,
professional law enforcement personnel, who maintain the
efficient and secure flow across border trade and travel.
The success of these operations depend heavily on the
condition and operation utility of our inspections facilities.
Many of the Nation's land ports of entry were built more than
70 years ago. Even those constructed as recently as 15 years
ago still require renovation or replacement to meet present-day
security standards, enforcement, and facilitation technologies,
and the growing demand of additional processing capability.
GSA and CBP work cooperatively using a multi-step process
to plan for a land ports of entry modernization investments. In
coordination with Federal, State, and local stakeholders, we
conduct strategic resource assessment to identify individual
needs at each facility and use a sensitivity analysis to
ascertain the relative urgency of facility needs Nation-wide.
As part of this assessment process, we evaluate also the
environmental, cultural, historic preservation, land
acquisition requirements, as well as the likelihood of
obtaining funding.
We work actively in border master planning; we look at each
port's activities; we work with State and local stakeholders,
to determine what kind of inspectional facilities and repairs
are needed.
After this thorough assessment, we arrive at a capital
investment plan that is updated annually to align with
available funding to address areas of greatest need. Due to the
extreme budget environment over the last several years, funding
for facilities has been limited. However, thanks to Congress'
support in January 2014, CBP received authority to enter into
partnerships with private-sector and Government entities at
ports of entry to accept donations of real and personal
property, including monetary donations and non-personnel
services.
This donation acceptance program provides CBP and GSA the
opportunity to consider donation proposals to address local
port of entry infrastructure needs, needs which, because of our
needing to prioritize at a National level, might not otherwise
be addressed.
These donations are expected to reduce border wait times,
increase traffic throughput, create jobs, and adjust critical
operational and regional order master plan infrastructure
technology needs.
CBP also continuously works to develop alternatives to full
reconstruction, define alternative and innovative ways to
maximize resources and efficiencies. For example, where full
construction is impossible, approaches such as stacked booths
can increase throughput, high and low booths can also
accommodate the processing of either commercial or passenger
vehicles.
These initiatives provide CBP with valuable flexibility to
quickly adapt to changing port conditions, reduce the overall
footprint of facilities, and improve the mutually beneficial
opportunities to meet on-going modernization needs at the land
ports of entry.
Chairwoman McSally, Representative Higgins, Members of the
subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today
and I will be happy to answer your questions.
Ms. McSally. Thank you, Mr. Schied. The Chair now
recognizes Ms. Jacksta for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF LINDA JACKSTA, ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER, OFFICE OF
HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT, U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Ms. Jacksta. Good morning, Chairwoman McSally, active
Ranking Member Higgins, and distinguished Members of the
subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before
you today.
Throughout my own 30 years of service with Customs and
Border Protection, I have seen first-hand the impact that our
employees have on National security and economic prosperity. I
have a deep sense of commitment and dedication to this
organization, its mission, and its people. With nearly 60,000
employees in the United States and abroad, CBP has a massive
and vitally important job to do. Underpinning that effort is
CBP's Office of Human Resources Management, and our motto is
``Border security starts here.'' As someone who has worked in
CBP's operational environment, that is a responsibility I take
very seriously.
Since taking office, my priority has been to strategically
identify and assess the challenges associated with hiring and
retaining our Air Marine Agents, Border Patrol Agents, CBP
Officers, and other mission-critical personnel. We must be
nimble, adaptive, and innovative to keep peace with an ever-
changing operational landscape.
I have identified 3 key factors influencing our ability to
meet our staffing goals, and have developed strategies to
address each. The first is improving the quantity and the
quality of our applicant pool; the second is decreasing the
time to hire; and the third is reducing attrition.
We have made progress, but clearly, more needs to be done.
I have established a National front-line hiring program
management office to integrate stovepiped elements of the
hiring process and significant improvements have been made.
I have established a National front-line recruitment
command to deploy data-driven recruitment strategies to
increase the quantity and the quality of CBP's applicant pool.
I am really pleased to report that the number of applicants for
front-line positions has increased from 40,000 in fiscal year
2014, to over 115,000 in fiscal year 2015.
In addition, CBP plans to participate in over 3,000
recruitment events this fiscal year, almost double the number
of events from last year. I want to address the hiring of our
veterans. Through the Border Jobs for Veterans Act, we are
partnering with the Department of Defense to expedite the on-
boarding of veterans and separating service members into front-
line positions.
This is groundbreaking work that has the potential to be a
game-changer for CBP. We are exploring new methods to offer
reciprocity to veterans for elements of our pre-employment
process. We are also employing the use of hiring hubs, which
consolidate multiple steps of our process into a 2-day time
frame, reducing the overall time to hire by more than 65
percent. CBP has utilized reassignment opportunities and job
swap programs and we are exploring other mobility options to
address attrition.
It is important to note that we rely on other Federal
partners for portions of our hiring process, as well as an
applicant's ability to complete their part of the process in a
timely fashion. We are also the only Federal agency with a
Congressional mandate to polygraph 100 percent of CBP's front-
line applicants.
Chairman McSally, I had the opportunity to read your list
of core values, among excellence, integrity first, service, and
teamwork was the phrase ``making it happen.'' I recognized that
our challenges are significant. However, I am confident that
with the continued support of this subcommittee and other
Members of Congress, we will continue to find new and
innovative ways to make it happen for CBP.
Chairman McSally, acting Ranking Member Higgins,
distinguished Members of the subcommittee, thank you for
holding this important hearing, and I am happy to answer your
questions.
Ms. McSally. Thank you, Ms. Jacksta. The Chair recognizes
Mr. Wagner for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF JOHN P. WAGNER, DEPUTY ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER,
OFFICE OF FIELD OPERATIONS, U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Wagner. Good morning, Chairwoman McSally, acting
Ranking Member Higgins, and distinguished Members of the
subcommittee. It is a privilege to appear today before you to
discuss U.S. Customs and Border Protection's resource
optimization efforts to meet the challenge of growing volumes
of trade and travel to the United States. The Office of Field
Operation is CBP's front-line entity responsible for securing
and facilitating international trade and travel at our Nation's
300-plus ports of entry. Each year, we process nearly 30
million cargo containers and approximately 380 million
passengers with trade and travel volumes continuing to rise.
While the continued increase and lawful cross-border
commerce is a welcomed benefit for the economy, it also
presents several complex challenges for an organization whose
front-line strength does not expand at the same rate. So to
keep pace, we developed a 3-part resource optimization strategy
that identified staffing requirements using a workload staffing
model, streamlines business processes, and No. 3, promotes
opportunities for public-private partnerships to support staff
increases and facility improvement.
Thanks to the support of Congress, the Consolidated
Appropriations Act of 2014 funded 2,000 new CBP Officers.
However, the most recent results of our workload staffing model
factoring in the additional 2,000 officers authorizing 2014
show an additional need for 2107 officers through fiscal year
2017.
As Assistant Commissioner Jacksta highlighted in her
statement, the Office of Field Operations works closely with
the Office of Human Resources Management on several initiatives
to recruit, hire, and retain the highly-qualified men and women
to secure our border and facilitate trade and travel.
In addition to efforts to increase staffing, we are also
transforming our business processes to optimize the resources
we have by leveraging technology, automating procedures for the
travelers, and increasing operational efficiency by getting rid
of paper forms. These business transformation initiatives will
save CBP an estimated 536,000 inspection hours, an equivalent
to 453 CBP Officers through fiscal year 2017.
Business transformation initiative savings also benefit
travelers crossing in our land ports of entry. With the
increased use of ready lanes for those with radio frequency
identification documents, coupled with an increased
participation in our trusted traveler programs, the National
average vehicle wait time was 10 percent shorter in fiscal year
2015 than the previous year. Peak wait times have also
decreased an average by 30 percent. At the southwest land
border, the century trusted travelers experience a 73 percent
reduction in wait times compared with non-participants.
This year in the land border environment, CBP is working on
automating the I-94 arrival record, and the commercial truck
user fee collection process. These initiatives will replace
inefficient manual processes, decreasing wait times for
travelers and commercial trucks, and saving critical officer
inspectional hours.
While CBP's efforts to modernize inspection facilities,
improve business processes, and increase the number of officers
has been successful, the updated workload staffing monitor
results continue to show a need for additional capability.
A significant portion of this capability is required to
support our stakeholders' request for new or additional
services in infrastructure ports of entry across the country.
We recognize the potential economic impact for new or expanded
service and infrastructure, and we very much want to support
these endeavors. However, due to finite resources, we are not
able to always accommodate these requests.
Again, thanks to the support of Congress, CBP recently
received authority to collaborate with private-sector and
Government partners through the reimbursable services program
and the donations acceptance program to address port-specific
needs for enhanced CBP services and infrastructure improvements
that otherwise would not have been possible.
Executive Assistant Commissioner Schied discussed the
significant opportunities the donation acceptance program
offers by modernizing inspection facilities. The reimbursable
services program authority allows CBP to support requests from
stakeholders for expanding services including Customs,
agriculture, border security services, and immigration-related
inspection services at the port.
At land ports of entry, this authority enables CBP to open
additional lanes, provide services for extended hours to reduce
wait times and expedite commercial and personal traffic. In the
first 26 months of this program, CBP has entered into
agreements with 28 stakeholders, providing more than 145,000
additional processing hours at the request of our partners, and
accounting for the processing of more than 3.5 million
travelers, and nearly 525,000 personal and commercial vehicles.
Legitimate travel and trade play a critical role in our
Nation's economic growth. CBP recognizes its role in sustaining
such growth. We will continue to strengthen our front-line
staffing efforts, modernize our facilities and streamline our
business processes, reform the essential foundation of CBP's
critical security and facilitation operation at our Nation
ports of entry.
So thank you again for holding this hearing today, and I
look forward to discussing with you further.
[The joint statement of Mr. Schied, Ms. Jacksta, and Mr.
Wagner follows:]
Prepared Joint Statement of Eugene Schied, Linda Jacksta, and John P.
Wagner
April 19, 2016
Chairman McSally, Ranking Member Vela, and distinguished Members of
the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss U.S. Customs
and Border Protection's (CBP) progress in enhancing the security and
facilitation of lawful trade and travel at our Nation's ports of entry
(POEs).
As America's unified border agency, CBP protects the United States
against terrorist threats and prevents the illegal entry of
inadmissible persons and contraband, while facilitating lawful travel
and trade. The Office of Field Operations (OFO) is the law enforcement
entity within CBP responsible for carrying out CBP's complex and
demanding mission at 328 ports of entry (POE) Nation-wide and 16 pre-
clearance locations internationally. Resource demands, including
staffing and infrastructure, at the POEs continue to increase as trade
and travel volumes continue to grow.
There are more people and goods coming through our POEs than ever
before. Since 2009, we have seen growth in both trade and travel and we
expect these trends to continue. Every year, OFO facilitates the travel
of hundreds of millions of international visitors to our Nation. In
fiscal year 2015, CBP inspected more than 382 million travelers at our
air, land, and sea POEs, an increase of 2 percent from the previous
year, and an increase of 12.5 percent since fiscal year 2011. CBP also
processed more than $2.4 trillion in imports in 2015, while enforcing
U.S. trade laws that protect the Nation's economy and the health and
safety of the American public.
The facilitation and security of lawful travel and trade is a
priority for CBP and we are taking steps, working closely with our
stakeholders, Congress, and our Federal partners to increase CBP
Officer (CBPO) and CBP Agriculture Specialist (CBPAS) staffing,
streamline our business processes, improve our POE facilities, and
enhance our security and facilitation efforts. We recognize that CBP's
role in securing and facilitating international trade and travel is
critical to the growth of our economy and the creation of more jobs.
port of entry staffing
To address the on-going challenge of securing and facilitating
growing volumes of trade and travel, CBP developed a 3-pronged Resource
Optimization Strategy that: (1) Identifies POE staffing requirements
using a Workload Staffing Model; (2) ensures the efficient use of
resources by optimizing current business processes; and (3) explores
funding strategies to support staffing increases.
Thanks to the support of Congress, the Consolidated Appropriations
Act, 2014, Pub. L. No. 113-76, included funding for 2,000 new CBPOs.
These additional officers will be allocated utilizing the Workload
Staffing Model and directed to those ports with the greatest need.
OFO's Workload Staffing Model employs a rigorous, data-driven
methodology to identify staffing requirements by considering all the
activities performed by CBPOs at our POEs, the volume of those
activities, and the levels of effort required to carry them out. The
most recent results of the Model--factoring in the additional 2,000
CBPOs from the fiscal year 2014 appropriations--show a need for 2,107
additional CBPOs through fiscal year 2017. Additionally, the
Agriculture Resource Allocation Model, CBP's analytical framework for
informing CBPAS staffing decisions at POEs, shows a need for an
additional 631 CBPAS through the same period.
With nearly 60,000 employees in the United States and abroad, CBP
is the Nation's largest Federal law enforcement organization and
requires a highly-skilled workforce capable of successfully meeting the
agency's mission requirements. CBP employs a rigorous hiring process in
order to ensure that it hires only those applicants who have the
qualifications and suitability necessary to meet CBP's mission
requirements. CBP's Office of Human Resources Management (HRM) works
diligently to recruit, hire, and retain the men and women serving in
front-line positions that secure the Nation's borders and facilitate
lawful trade and travel, which is so critical to the Nation's economic
prosperity.
Front-line Hiring and Challenges
CBP has made some progress in meeting front-line hiring goals;
however, additional work remains. The agency continues to face
significant challenges in meeting our staffing goals to include
applicants not being able to successfully pass requirements of the CBP
hiring process, law enforcement attrition, and an insufficient number
of applicants applying for front-line positions. CBP's significant
size, scope, and depth of mission--domestically and internationally--
requires a considerable number of personnel in front-line positions and
CBP must employ only the highest caliber of individuals.
CBP's hiring process for front-line personnel is intentionally
rigorous. Individuals must successfully complete an entrance exam,
qualifications review, interview, medical exam, drug screening,
physical fitness test, polygraph examination, and a background
investigation. The hiring process is challenging for most applicants
and a large number do not meet the agency's employment requirements.
The Anti-Border Corruption Act of 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-376,
requires CBP to administer polygraph examinations to all applicants for
law enforcement positions. However, the number of Federally-certified
polygraph examiners is limited, leading to competition among all
agencies to fully staff polygraph programs. The polygraph examination
helps to ensure the selection of only those applicants who are most
suitable for a law enforcement position. While we have seen that the
requirement to undergo a polygraph examination has caused some
individuals to forego the application process, the polygraph program
has also elicited many admissions of wrongdoing, which would not have
been otherwise detected.
The polygraph examination is only one of several factors that have
challenged CBP's ability to expeditiously hire front-line personnel.
Another factor is that some individuals simply do not wish to take an
entrance exam. Recent data shows that more than 40 percent of CBP
applicants failed to either schedule or show up to take the entrance
examination. Additionally, it can be difficult to find applicants who
are interested in working in remote locations, where there may be
limited medical care, schooling, and opportunities for spousal
employment.
External factors also influence CBP's ability to reach its staffing
goals, including cyber intrusions and vulnerabilities, which have
brought the hiring process to a halt for extended periods. For example,
thousands of applications were inaccessible for processing during a 6-
week shutdown of the Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) e-QIP
system in 2015. Additionally, several of CBP's background investigation
vendors experienced data breaches or had cybersecurity vulnerabilities
identified, which severely diminished CBP's capacity to initiate
background investigations. Although these issues were all temporary,
the processing delays that resulted from such circumstances generated
backlogs that often take longer to resolve than the duration of the
particular interruption.
Moreover, CBP's hiring is impacted by the limited availability of
qualified and suitable applicants. Societal views and changing
generational values are making it more difficult to attract suitable
applicants to the law enforcement profession, such as CBP's front-line
positions. A recent Rand Corporation study on Police Recruitment and
Retention, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice, found that
less than half of American youths consider a police department or law
enforcement agency a ``desirable'' or ``acceptable'' place to work.\1\
The public scrutiny of law enforcement officers, combined with the
requirement to work variable schedules and long shifts, and in some
cases, in smaller or remote areas of the country, are all potential
reasons why individuals under age 37 \2\ may be less likely to apply to
law enforcement positions.
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\1\ Wilson, Jeremy M. et al. Police Recruitment and Retention for
the New Millennium: The State of Knowledge. RAND Corporation, 2010.
Web. 1 Apr. 2016.
\2\ The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security has
established the maximum entry age for an original appointment to a
position as a law enforcement officer (such as a BPA or a CBPO) to be
the day before an individual's 37th birthday. However, acting in
accordance with the law, CBP waives the maximum entry age for veterans'
preference-eligible applicants.
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Compounding the limited applicant pool, CBP faces substantial
competition with other law enforcement agencies for quality applicants.
The military, other Federal, State, and local law enforcement
organizations, and first-responder agencies recruit similar individuals
and in some cases, offer higher entry-level salaries, may have a
shorter, less rigorous hiring process, may not require individuals to
relocate, and may offer more desirable work locations. As a result, the
market for applicants is highly competitive.
In addition to the hiring challenges, CBP must backfill positions
lost through attrition. The attrition rates for CBPO and BPA in fiscal
year 2015 were 3.0 percent and 5.5 percent respectively, requiring that
CBP hire approximately 2,000 additional front-line personnel annually
just to manage losses. Uncertainties surrounding pay and compensation,
coupled with less-than-desirable duty locations, have driven BPA
attrition to a point where losses were significantly outpacing gains.
Front-line Hiring Strategies
To address front-line staffing challenges, CBP established a Front-
line Hiring Program Management Office (PMO) that brings the agency's
subject-matter experts together to develop an integrated and holistic
approach to recruiting and hiring front-line personnel. This team is
working collectively to integrate previously stove-piped elements of
the hiring process and has already made a number of significant
improvements, such as developing a front-line hiring data model, which
is the first of its kind for CBP. This model provides a high degree of
fidelity for the front-line hiring process time lines, identifies
potential obstacles in the process, and provides estimates of hiring
projections. This model has been the foundation of CBP's front-line
hiring process improvement efforts.
The PMO has taken a systematic approach toward addressing the
agency's staffing requirements, through the identification of 4 key
factors: (1) Increasing the Quality and Quantity of the Applicant Pool;
(2) Reducing the Time-to-Hire: (3) Department of Defense Collaboration
(DoD); and (4) Reducing Attrition.
Increasing the Quality and Quantity of the Applicant Pool
A key component of CBP's efforts is increasing the number of
applicants in the pre-employment process. CBP recently established the
National Front-line Recruiting Command (NFRC) to coordinate and
strengthen recruiting efforts. This team, comprised of CBP front-line
personnel and mission-focused experts, developed a National Front-line
Recruitment Strategic Plan that outlines the strategic objectives,
critical National and local level partnerships and robust outreach
strategies for front-line recruiting. CBP employs data-driven
techniques to identify locations, event types, and advertising
strategies in order to most directly and efficiently reach individuals
potentially interested in careers with CBP. Through the NFRC, CBP
partners with industry marketing and recruitment experts to leverage
innovative business practices and identify ways to promote diversity
within CBP's front-line workforce. As a result of this team's work, CBP
was able to increase the number of BPA and CBPO applicants from
approximately 40,000 in fiscal year 2014 to over 115,000 in fiscal year
2015. Additionally, CBP is on target to more than double the 1,578
recruitment events in fiscal year 2015 this coming year.
Reducing the Time to Hire
Currently, it takes over a year for a potential front-line employee
to move through a process of more than 10 steps before an offer of
employment can be made. However, through the recent implementation of
process improvements, the average time to hire is continuing to
decrease. For example, CBP recently piloted several iterations of a
``Hiring Hub'' concept, which integrates and consolidates many steps
and several months of the hiring processes into a 2-day time frame.
These Hiring Hubs, which consolidate the interview, polygraph,
provisional clearance determination, and employment offer, have
decreased processing time to an average of 160 days, reducing the time
to hire by over 60 percent.
In addition to the hiring hubs, which will be expanded throughout
fiscal year 2016 and 2017, CBP has implemented a number of additional
process improvements to decrease an applicant's time in our process. By
hiring additional personnel for medical adjudications, and by
streamlining the medical forms, CBP was able to reduce the medical
portion of the hiring process by an average of 43 days. Likewise, by
hiring additional polygraph examiners and instituting an abbreviated
adjudication process, CBP was able to reduce the polygraph processing
time by over 35 percent. Finally, CBP implemented a ``provisional
clearance'' policy, which permits applicants who successfully pass the
polygraph examination without any significant admissions to enter on
duty to the academy while their background investigation is still on-
going. Since this policy was implemented, over 1,500 individuals were
granted provisional clearances and were able to immediately enter the
academy.
Department of Defense Collaboration
CBP is collaborating with the Department of Defense (DoD) in
developing new strategies to reduce the time to hire of transitioning
service members. By taking a holistic approach to our collective
business processes and leveraging our combined resources, we are making
progress. Together, we are exploring a new method of reciprocity
between some elements of the DoD exit process and the CBP pre-
employment process. Specifically, CBP is evaluating the feasibility of
accepting or granting reciprocity to the scores/results from the
military service physical fitness tests and medical examinations.
Additionally, we are reviewing the possibility of offering the CBP
Entrance Exam via the DoD's Joint Knowledge Online system. This would
allow service members the opportunity to take the entrance examination
at any military installation world-wide and would be a first for those
stationed in overseas locations. Moreover, CBP is currently conducting
hiring hubs at targeted installations following CBP-specific
recruitment events. CBP and DoD are exploring the option of formalizing
this partnership through installation-specific memorandums of
agreement.
CBP's overall recruitment approach includes robust strategies to
recruit veterans and individuals separating from military service. CBP
works closely with the DoD to increase awareness about CBP employment
opportunities, as well as the benefits available to transitioning
service members and veterans. The specific goals of the collaboration
are to increase target audience awareness of CBP as a prospective
employer, increase the pipeline of applications for mission-critical
positions, transform the application process to support the use of
veteran-specific hiring authorities, and consolidate multiple steps of
the CBP hiring process at military installations. CBPs goal is to
streamline the veteran time to hire processing to an average of 90
days.
With the passage of the Border Jobs for Veterans Act of 2015, Pub.
L. No. 114-68, CBP and DoD have enhanced collaboration on hiring
transitioning service members and veterans for CBPO and BPA positions.
Veterans currently represent 28.8 percent of the CBP workforce. With
250,000 to 300,000 members of the Armed Forces separating from military
service every year, recruiting from this population constitutes a
critical element in CBP's efforts to fill existing vacancies and
complete the hiring of the 2,000 new CBPOs, as well as to meet revised
CBPO manpower requirements outlined in the Department of Homeland
Security Appropriations Act of 2016. Veterans and individuals
separating from military service are often equipped with the skills
necessary to succeed in CBP front-line positions. Through this CBP and
DoD partnership, we are seeing an increase in the percentage of
applicants who are found to be initially qualified based on their
applications. CBP will continue to partner with DoD on major recruiting
and hiring events with a specific focus on installations with the
highest numbers of transitioning soldiers. In fiscal year 2015, CBP
participated in 651 veteran recruitment events and has a target of
1,000 events for fiscal year 2016.
While these efforts are still in various stages of implementation,
CBP has experienced an improvement in applicant awareness and
engagement. CBP is partnering with DoD transition offices across the
Nation to provide information sessions and workshops to transitioning
service members. One early success of the CBP and DoD partnership is
the creation of CBP's Recruiting Center on Fort Bliss in El Paso,
Texas. The Fort Bliss Recruiting Center is the first of its kind for
CBP. The DoD Transition Assistance Program Office provided space for
CBP's front-line agent and officer recruiters who provide information
to transitioning service members on a full-time basis.
Reducing Attrition
Another factor that would improve CBP's ability to reach staffing
targets is reducing attrition. CBP is employing a multi-faceted
approach, including the development of surveys to be used as part of
the out-processing in order to accurately identify the causes of
choosing to separate from CBP. Additionally, CBP is exploring creative
ways to utilize pay and compensation flexibilities such as special
salary rates, relocation and retention incentives, tuition assistance,
and student loan repayments to incentivize mission-critical personnel
to remain with CBP. Because mobility and assignment diversity is
important to CBP's law enforcement personnel, the agency is exploring
new ways to utilize rotational assignments and reassignment
opportunities. Some operational offices are utilizing reassignment
programs and/or ``job swaps'' to offer enhanced mobility and
developmental opportunities to those who are seeking a change in
location.
ports of entry resource optimization
While the 2,000 additional officers funded by the Consolidated
Appropriations Act of 2014 will bring significant support to our
mission to secure and facilitate trade and travel through our Nation's
POEs, as we noted above, the most recent results of the Workload
Staffing Model show a need for 2,107 additional CBPOs and 631 CBPASs
through fiscal year 2017. Even with the growth in international travel
and trade, this current need reflects a reduction of 517 CBPOs and 92
CBPASs from fiscal year 2015 results (2,624 and 723 respectively). This
reduction is primarily due to CBP's continued focus on transforming all
facets of OFO operations to increase productivity while reducing our
reliance on staffing resources. CBP will continue to pursue POE
infrastructure modernization, business transformation efforts, new
reimbursement authorities, and partnerships with our stakeholders to
bridge current and anticipated mission resource gaps.
Business Transformation Initiatives
Business Transformation Initiatives (BTI) enable CBP to realign
CBPO and CBPAS resources to priority initiatives, reduce CBP's required
inspection hours, resulting in a decrease of overall workload
requirements and equivalent staffing. CBP is embarking on more
transformative initiatives to expand traveler technologies, implement
biometrics, automate forms collection, and eliminate duplicative
processes to save an estimated total of 536,000 inspection hours and
the equivalent of 453 CBPOs through fiscal year 2017. These
transformative initiatives and technological advancements provide the
platform from which CBP can achieve effective and efficient operational
success in the face of increased border and air traffic, budget
constraints, and demand for new and expanded services at existing and
proposed POEs.
In the air environment, BTIs such as Automated Passport Control
(APC) and Mobile Passport Control (MPC), which increase primary
processing capacity, reduce the administrative burden on CBPOs by
automating parts of the inspection process so they can focus on our law
enforcement mission, reduce traveler wait times, use airport facilities
more efficiently, and minimize missed connections.
In the land environment, despite steady growth in passenger volume,
especially of travelers crossing in privately-owned vehicles, in fiscal
year 2015, the National average vehicle wait time was 10 percent
shorter than the previous year, at 15.6 minutes. Peak wait times have
also decreased by 30 percent, to 91 minutes. CBP has been able to
achieve these wait time reductions through increased radio frequency
identification (RFID) saturation and the corresponding use of Ready
Lanes, and also through the on-going increase in land trusted traveler
participation.
Ready Lanes are dedicated primary vehicle lanes that offer
expedited inspection for travelers with RFID-enabled documents. Over 38
million travelers have obtained RFID-enabled documents--which include
Passport Cards, Enhanced Driver's Licenses, Enhanced Tribal Cards,
Border Crossing Cards, and Enhanced Permanent Resident Cards, and
Trusted Traveler Cards (Global Entry, SENTRI, NEXUS and FAST)--and two-
thirds of all Southwest Border crossings are now made with an RFID
document. Ready Lane traffic share (not including NEXUS and SENTRI
traffic) has increased from 6 percent in 2010 to 38 percent today. In
2015, POEs with Ready Lanes have taken measures (such as traffic
segmentation, improved signage, and more responsive active lane
management) to increase Ready Lane benefits for participating
travelers. This year, Ready Lane waits averaged 30 percent less than
waits in the general lanes.
While Ready Lanes provide a wait time benefit to travelers, they
also assist CBP. Since Ready Lanes are more efficient than general
lanes, they process more vehicles (about 10 more) per hour than general
lanes. In 2015, the average Ready Lane processed 53.1 vehicles per
hour, per booth, compared to just 43.5 vehicles in the general lanes.
This efficiency benefits CBP managers who are constrained by available
booths (facilities) and staff (labor).
CBP's Trusted Traveler Programs, such as SENTRI, NEXUS, and Global
Entry, continue to expedite low-risk, vetted international travelers
while enabling CBP to focus on those unknown or high-risk travelers.
All Trusted Traveler participants must be pre-approved and undergo a
rigorous background check and personal interview before enrollment. In
fiscal year 2015, at Southwest Border POEs, the average SENTRI crossing
was 40.7 seconds faster than traditional processing with SENTRI
travelers experiencing an average of 19.1 minutes less (73 percent) in
wait times than non-participants.
In May 2013, CBP automated Form I-94 in the air and sea
environment. The automated system allows CBPOs to create an I-94
Arrival Record within primary and secondary inspection processing
systems at the time of inspection with passenger manifest information,
eliminating the need for paper forms and manual data entry. CBP has
reported over 86,000 inspection hours avoided related to the automation
of the I-94 in the air environment since fiscal year 2013. However, the
current land border I-94 process, to include the I-94W, unfortunately
remains labor-intensive for CBPOs. In order to create a more efficient
land border process, CBP intends to enhance the existing I-94 web
portal to include additional functionality that allows a traveler to
submit information to CBP and pay the required fee prior to arrival at
a port of entry. CBP intends to launch the on-line I-94 application and
fee payment later this year, which is estimated to reduce the I-94
process time by almost 50 percent.
The gap in CBPAS staffing will be mitigated through the expansion
of agriculture-related BTIs like the expansion of Enforcement Link
Mobile Operations-Cargo (ELMO-c) initiative to outfit CBPAS with mobile
devices. The mobile devices allows CBPASs to release more cargo in a
shorter amount of time since they do not have to return to the office.
Full deployment of mobile devices to all CBPASs is expected to be
completed by the end of 2016.
Finally, CBP is the lead organization within the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) responsible for developing and implementing a
comprehensive entry/exit system. CBP, working in partnership with the
DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) Apex Air Entry/Exit Re-
engineering Program, has benefitted from S&T's deliberate process for
analyzing and rigorously evaluating existing entry/exit processes,
identifying opportunities for optimization, and implementing
improvements that will maximize traveler identity assurance while
facilitating legitimate travel and trade in the air and land
environments. In the air environment, CBP has been testing biometric
facial comparison technology and mobile biometric capture technology
and working to incorporate the technology into existing operations in a
manner that minimizes adverse impacts to international air traveler
processing.
In the land border environment, on the Northern Border, CBP and the
Canada Border Services Agency have partnered to create a biographic
entry/exit data exchange to improve each other's visibility and control
of individuals crossing our shared land border. Both countries now
exchange data so that information collected on an entry into one
country is automatically recorded as an exit from another. CBP is able
to match entry and exit land border crossings at over 98 percent,
significantly improving the CBP's situational awareness along the
Northern land border.\3\
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\3\ The current arrangement allows for the sharing of crossing data
on all third-country nationals. However, there are plans to expand this
partnership to also cover Canadian and U.S. citizens. Since its start
on June 30, 2013, CBP has collected over 1 million records from
Canada--about 10,000 to 15,000 per day.
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On the Southwest land border, CBP has been developing new biometric
screening capabilities for non-U.S. citizens entering and departing the
United States through a Southwest land border pedestrian crossing. This
new capability will assist CBPOs to accurately identify departing
pedestrians and record their exit to enhance situational awareness and
support the identification of overstays. Most non-U.S. citizens will
have their biometrics--facial and iris images--collected upon entry for
future comparison to facial and iris images collected during departure.
In addition to testing the matching capabilities of new biometric
modalities, the field test will also evaluate how this biometric
technology captures while the individual is ``on the move,'' how it
captures from a distance, and how it operates in the challenging
outdoor environment of the Southwest land border. CBP implemented the
departure experiment at the Otay Mesa POE near San Diego, California,
in February 2016.
CBP's BTIs are an important pillar of the Resource Optimization
Strategy and allow CBP to realign CBPO and CBPAS resources to priority
initiatives. BTIs also reduce CBP's required inspection hours,
resulting in a decrease of overall workload requirements and equivalent
staffing. The fiscal year 2017 President's budget supports CBP's BTIs,
which have saved over 600,000 inspectional hours in fiscal year 2015
and are estimated to save over 500,000 inspectional hours through
fiscal year 2017.
Land Border Ports of Entry Modernization
Effective and efficient POE infrastructure is critical to CBP's
mission to secure and facilitate lawful trade and travel. Of the
Nation's 328 official POEs, 110 are LPOEs responsible for operating 167
separate crossings along our borders with Mexico and Canada. Most of
the LPOE inspection facilities were not designed to meet the post-9/11
security and operational missions of CBP. Rather, they were built to
support the distinct operations of legacy DHS components, such as the
U.S. Customs Service, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of
the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Immigration and
Naturalization Service.
Today, CBP's operations entail sophisticated targeting and
communication systems, state-of-the-art detection technology, and a
cadre of professional law enforcement personnel to identify, screen,
and inspect high-risk persons and cargo and maintain an efficient
stream of cross-border travel and trade. However, the success of our
operational strategy depends heavily on the condition and operational
utility of the inspection facilities and the availability of CBP
personnel.
Several LPOEs were built more than 70 years ago and require
renovation or replacement to meet present-day operational and security
standards. Many constructed as recently as 15 to 20 years ago also
require significant modernization to address growing demands for
additional processing capacity, new security requirements and
enforcement technologies, and the need to maximize the efficiency of
existing personnel and resources. To construct and sustain CBP's LPOE
inspection facilities, CBP works in close partnership with the General
Services Administration's (GSA) Public Buildings Service, which manages
many of the LPOE facilities.
As the facility operator at all LPOEs, including those owned or
leased by GSA, CBP works in close coordination with GSA to identify
long-term future investments for funding through the GSA Federal
Buildings Fund. Through this collaborative project team approach, both
agencies work to ensure that the available Federal funding is directed
to the areas of greatest need within the GSA portfolio in accordance
with the capital investment plan.
CBP employs a multi-step process to plan for all LPOE modernization
investments, whether planned for a CBP-owned or a GSA facility. This
process includes gathering data using the Strategic Resource Assessment
(SRA) process, evaluating identified needs at each POE location,
conducting a sensitivity analysis on the initial ranking of needs, and
assessing project feasibility and risk. The culmination of this process
is a final prioritization of proposed modernization projects and the
development of a capital investment plan in coordination with GSA. This
capital investment plan divides the project list into feasible annual
work plans that reflect the analytical conclusions and incorporate
project phasing and funding requirements. CBP and GSA update the
capital investment plan annually, taking into account any changes in
DHS's mission and strategy, changing conditions at the LPOEs, and any
other factors discovered in the course of projects already under way.
Infrastructure enhancements are critical to the improvement of
trade and travel facilitation; these changes are necessary to support
current traffic volumes and modern technology. Although stimulus
funding appropriated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
(ARRA), Pub. L. No. 111-5, enabled CBP and GSA to fund many large-scale
LPOE capital construction and facility improvement projects,
significant additional investment is necessary to modernize the entire
LPOE portfolio. Thanks to the support of Congress, CBP received
authority to accept reimbursement for activities and donations
partnerships with the private-sector and government entities
While modernizing POE infrastructure and facilities, improving
business processes, and increasing the number of CBPOs have been
successful, the updated Workload Staffing Model results continue to
show a need for additional capability to fully meet the standards set
by statute, regulation, and CBP policies, assuming maintenance of
current processes, procedures, technology, and facilities. Furthermore,
CBP is frequently asked by our stakeholders to provide new or
additional services and infrastructure at POEs across the country. We
recognize the potential economic impact for new or expanded service and
infrastructure, and we very much want to support these endeavors.
However, due to budget restraints and limited resources, we are not
always able to accommodate these requests.
A key aspect of CBP's 3-pronged Resource Optimization Strategy is
the exploration of partnering with the private sector through such
activities as reimbursement and potential acceptance of donations. As
part of CBP's Strategy, CBP received authority to enter into agreements
under Section 560 of Division D of the Consolidated and Further
Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013, Pub. L. No. 113-6 (Section 560);
Section 559 of Division F of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014,
Pub. L. No. 113-76 (Section 559); and Section 550 of the Consolidated
Appropriations Act of 2016, Pub. L. No. 114-53.
Under Section 560, CBP received authority allowing the commissioner
of CBP to enter into no more than 5 agreements, under certain
conditions, to provide new or enhanced services on a reimbursable basis
in any of CBP's non-foreign operational environments. CBP implemented
this authority, entering into agreement with the participating
locations \4\ before the late December 2013 statutory deadline. In the
first 6 months of the program, CBP was able to provide an additional
7,000 CBP Officer assignments and opened primary lanes and booths for
an additional 18,000 hours at the request of our partners, increasing
border processing throughput at U.S. air and land POEs under this
program. In January 2014, CBP received additional authority under
Section 559, which authorizes CBP to enter into partnerships with
private-sector and Government entities at ports of entry to reimburse
the costs of certain CBP services and to accept donations of real and
personal property (including monetary donations) and non-personal
services.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ The Section 560 participating partners are the Dallas/Fort
Worth International Airport Board, the city of El Paso, Miami-Dade
County, the city of Houston/Houston Airport System, and the South Texas
Assets Consortium.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Both provisions respond to CBP's efforts to find innovative
approaches to meet the growing demand for new and expanded facilities
and, in particular, the on-going modernization needs of CBP's LPOE
portfolio.
Reimbursable Services Agreements
Section 559(e) expands CBP's authority, under a 5-year pilot
program, to enter into reimbursable agreements similar to the fiscal
year 2013 ``Section 560'' authority. This new authority allows CBP to
support requests for expanded services, including customs, agricultural
processing, border security services, and immigration inspection-
related services at POEs; salaries for additional staff; and CBP's
payment of overtime expenses at airports. There is no limit on the
number of agreements CBP can enter into at CBP-serviced seaports or
land border POEs. However, at airports, Section 550 of the Consolidated
Appropriations Act, 2016 expanded the statutory limit to 10 agreements
per year, which will allow CBP to increase the impact of this program
to additional stakeholders and the traveling public. Additionally, the
law stipulates that agreements may not unduly and permanently impact
existing services funded by other sources.
CBP evaluates each Reimbursable Services Agreement (RSA) proposal
based on a single set of objective and carefully-vetted criteria to
ensure that final recommendations will be most beneficial to CBP, to
the requesting parties, and to the surrounding communities. The main
factors of consideration include the impact on CBP operations; funding
reliability; community and industry concerns; health and safety issues;
local/regional economic benefits; and feasibility of program use.
RSAs enable stakeholders to identify enhanced services needed to
facilitate growing volumes of trade and travel at specific POEs, and
enables CBP to receive reimbursement so that we can fulfill those
requirements. The authority provides stakeholders and CBP the
flexibility to meet situational or future demand for extended or
enhanced services to secure and facilitate the flow of trade or travel
at participating ports. At LPOEs this authority enables CBP to open and
staff additional lanes or provide services for extended hours to reduce
wait times and expedite commercial and personal traffic. At airports,
RSAs enable CBP to staff additional booths on an overtime basis during
peak hours. At seaports, RSAs enable CBP to provide additional
processing of cruise passengers and commercial cargo, furthering the
facilitation of travel and trade.
In the first 26 months of the program, CBP has entered into
agreements with 28 stakeholders, providing more than 145,000 additional
processing hours at the request of our partners--accounting for the
processing of more than 3.5 million travelers and nearly 525,000
personal and commercial vehicles. Among the participating airports, the
added hours and supplementary lane openings, in conjunction with other
passenger processing initiatives, have helped decrease wait times by an
average of almost 30 percent while traveler volume has increased about
7 percent. The program continues to expand as new agreements are signed
every year, as authorized by this 5-year pilot program.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ A full list of current participants is available at http://
www.cbp.gov/border-security/ports-entry/resource-opt-strategy/public-
private-partnerships/reimbursable-services-program.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Donation Acceptance Authority
Section 559(f), the Donation Acceptance Authority, authorizes CBP
and GSA to accept donations of real or personal property (including
monetary donations) or non-personal services from private sector or
Government entities. Any donation accepted may be used for necessary
activities related to the construction, alteration, operation, or
maintenance of a new or existing POE, including but not limited to:
Land acquisition, design, and the deployment of equipment and
technologies. These donations are expected to reduce border wait times,
support increased traffic flow and volume, create jobs, and address
critical operational and regional border master plan infrastructure and
technology priorities across the United States.
The Donation Acceptance Authority requires that CBP and GSA
establish and publish its procedures and criteria for evaluating
donation proposals submitted under Section 559. CBP and GSA coordinated
closely to satisfy this statutory requirement by jointly developing the
Section 559 Donation Acceptance Authority Proposal Evaluation
Procedures & Criteria Framework, which CBP published on October 1,
2014.\6\ This document outlines the robust operational and technical
evaluation criteria that CBP and GSA use to determine proposal
viability. These criteria include, but are not limited to, the impact
to CBP operations, increased trade and travel efficiency, economic and
community benefits, financial feasibility, and real estate and
environmental implications. This document also describes the procedures
that CBP and GSA use to systematically plan, develop, and formally
accept proposed donations in close coordination with its public and
private-sector partners.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ http://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/
DAA%20Proposal%20Evaluation%20-
Procedures%20%26%20Criteria%20Framework_Public%20FINAL.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last year, CBP announced that proposals submitted by the city of
Donna, Texas; the city of El Paso, Texas; and the city of Pharr, Texas
had been selected for further planning and development. CBP and GSA
have since forged strong, mutually-beneficial partnerships with each of
the aforementioned municipalities and are actively collaborating with
them to accomplish our shared border infrastructure and technology
goals. This spring, CBP and GSA expect to announce the fiscal year 2016
donation proposal selections and look forward to working with our new
partners to plan and develop their conceptual proposals into executable
projects.
In sum, CBP is implementing business improvements, thoroughly and
systematically analyzing port of entry infrastructure needs and
exploring alternative sources of funding to bridge current and
anticipated mission resource gaps. Both the Reimbursable Services
Authority and the Donation Acceptance Authority enable CBP to build
effective partnerships with stakeholders to address the port
requirements necessary to support growing volumes of travel and trade.
conclusion
Legitimate travel and trade play a critical role in the Nation's
economic growth, and CBP recognizes its role in sustaining such growth.
The combination of highly-trained personnel, technology, and modernized
facilities form the essential foundation for CBP's operational
strategy, which every POE, large or small, must be able to support. CBP
continues to evaluate and optimize its primary hiring and business
processes and will further develop transformation initiatives to
accomplish our mission more effectively and efficiently.
Chairwoman McSally, Ranking Member Vela, and Members of the
subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. We are
happy to answer any questions you may have.
Ms. McSally. Thank you, Mr. Wagner. The Chair now
recognizes Mr. Gelber for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL GELBER, DEPUTY COMMISSIONER, PUBLIC
BUILDINGS SERVICE, U.S. GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION
Mr. Gelber. Good morning, Chairman McSally, acting Ranking
Member Higgins, and Members of the subcommittee. My name is
Michael Gelber, and I am the deputy commissioner of the U.S.
General Services Administration, Public Building service. Thank
you for inviting me to this hearing on prioritizing and
improving the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and
Border Protection's facility infrastructure.
GSA's mission is to deliver the best value in real estate
acquisition and technology services to Government and the
American people. As part of this mission, GSA maintains a close
partnership with CBP to meet that agency's space needs along
our Nation's borders. CBP is our primary partner among the
Federal inspection agencies stationed along America's land
borders. GSA works closely with CBP to design, construct,
maintain, and operate land ports of entry along more than 1,900
miles of border between the United States and Mexico, and more
than 5,500 miles of border between the United States and
Canada. These ports are critical to the Nation's trade and
security.
From 2000 to 2014, the combined value of trade between the
United States and Canada, and the United States and Mexico via
surface transport increased by over 80 percent, from $546
billion in 2000 to $987 billion in 2014. Safe, secure, and
modern land ports along our borders are critical to ensuring an
efficient flow of commerce and people that support American
jobs and economic growth. Over the 167 land ports of entry
along the American border GSA manages 124, of which the
Government owns, or partially owns 102. GSA's land ports of
entry encompass more than 5.5 million square feet of space.
Given the importance of these land ports of entry, GSA, in
collaboration with CBP, prioritizes investment to modernize and
upgrade these ports. To ensure these investments address CBP's
highest-priority needs, GSA relies on priorities established by
CBP.
Over the past 16 years, GSA has invested more than $1.8
billion from the Federal buildings fund to deliver more than 20
new land ports of entry along our Nation's Northern and
Southern Borders. Since 2013, GSA has requested over a billion
in support of land port modernization, including GSA's fiscal
year 2017 request of $248 billion to reconfigure and expand the
land port of entry in Calexico, California, and $5.7 million
for the design and construction of a new animal inspection
facility in Pembina, North Dakota.
Of these requests, Congress has provided approximately $700
million to date. Without full funding requested in the
President's annual budget, GSA cannot execute the land port
upgrades that are critically needed. CBP and GSA consult with
stakeholder agencies at the onset of project planning and
continue this relationship throughout project development and
execution.
If a project involves a new border crossing and/or a
substantial modification of an existing crossing, GSA works
closely with the Department of State, which must determine
whether the project is in the National interest, justifying
issuance of a Presidential permit.
GSA also works closely with the Department of
Transportation's Federal Highway Administration, and the
transportation departments from the border States when planning
border infrastructure projects. GSA has seen significant
interest in finding funding alternatives to direct Federal
appropriations to support the delivery of land port projects.
One tool for supporting Federal efforts is section 559, the
donation acceptance program, which authorizes GSA and CBP to
receive donations and reimbursable services for land port of
entry projects.
Under this program, projects are being further assessed and
developed in the cities of Donna, El Paso, and Pharr, Texas. In
Donna, GSA and CBP have helped the city complete concept
development for their proposals, while the El Paso and Pharr
port of entry modernization projects are in concept
development.
GSA and CBP are currently reviewing fiscal year 2016
donation acceptance program proposals which may provide
additional investment and infrastructure and technology at land
ports of entry.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today about
GSA's on-going partnership with CBP to improve the Nation's
infrastructure along America's borders. I welcome the
opportunity to discuss commitment to strategic investment in
the Nation's land port of entry, and I am happy to answer any
questions you may I have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gelber follows:]
Prepared Statement of Michael Gelber
April 19, 2016
introduction
Good morning Chairman McSally, Ranking Member Vela, and Members of
the subcommittee. My name is Michael Gelber, and I am deputy
commissioner of the U.S. General Services Administration's (GSA) Public
Buildings Service. Thank you for inviting me to this hearing on
prioritizing and improving the Department of Homeland Security's
Customs and Border Protection's (CBP) facility infrastructure.
GSA's mission is to deliver the best value in real estate,
acquisition, and technology services to Government and the American
people. As part of this mission, GSA maintains a close partnership with
CBP to meet that agency's space needs along our Nation's borders. CBP
is our primary partner among the Federal inspection agencies stationed
along America's land borders.
I look forward to describing how GSA partners with CBP concerning
how the Federal Government prioritizes and executes land port projects
to improve security, trade, and economic opportunities.
gsa's on-going partnership with cbp
GSA works closely with CBP to design, construct, maintain, and
operate land ports of entry along more than 1,900 miles of border
between the United States and Mexico and more than 5,500 miles of
border between the United States and Canada. These ports are critical
to the Nation's trade and security.
On a daily basis, approximately 380,000 people cross the U.S.-
Canada border. From 2000 to 2014, the combined value of trade between
the United States and Canada and the United States and Mexico via
surface transport increased by over 80 percent, from $546 billion in
2000 to $987 billion in 2014. Safe, secure, and modern land ports along
our borders are critical to ensuring an efficient flow of commerce and
people that support American jobs and economic growth.
Of the 167 land ports of entry (LPOEs) along the U.S. borders, GSA
manages 124, of which the Government owns or partially owns 102. GSA's
land ports of entry encompass more than 5.5 million square feet of
space. Additionally, CBP owns and operates 40 primarily smaller
locations, mostly in remote, rural areas. The Department of Agriculture
owns one land port of entry, and the Department of the Interior--
National Park Service owns 2 ports.
Given the importance of these land ports of entry, GSA, in
collaboration with CBP, prioritizes investment to modernize and upgrade
these ports. To ensure these investments address CBP's highest priority
needs, GSA relies on the priorities established with CBP's in the
planning process for portfolio upgrades. CBP employs a multi-step
process to develop its plan. This list of priorities can include
expansion and modernization of existing land ports along with new port
construction.
CBP's process includes gathering data through a Strategic Resource
Assessment planning progress, scoring identified needs at each port,
conducting a sensitivity analysis on the initial ranking of needs,
assessing project feasibility and risk, and establishing an executable
capital investment plan.
Over the past 16 years, GSA has invested more than $1.8 billion
from the Federal Buildings Fund to deliver more than 20 new land ports
along our Northern and Southern Borders. Since 2013, GSA has requested
over $1 billion in support of land port modernization, including GSA's
fiscal year 2017 request of $248,213,000 to reconfigure and expand the
land port of entry in Calexico, California, and $5,749,000 for design
and construction of a new animal inspection facility for the U.S.
Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service at
the Pembina, North Dakota land port of entry. Of these requests,
Congress has provided approximately $700 million.
Without the full funding requested in the President's annual
budget, GSA cannot execute the land port upgrades that are critically
needed. GSA works with CBP to execute the projects that received
enacted appropriations.
land port prioritization
CBP and GSA consult with stakeholder agencies at the onset of
project planning and continue this relationship throughout project
development and execution. If a project involves a new border crossing
and or a substantial modification of an existing crossing, GSA works
closely with the Department of State, which must determine whether the
project is in the National interest justifying issuance of a
Presidential Permit. GSA also works closely with the Department of
Transportation's Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the
transportation departments from the 15 border States when planning
border infrastructure projects.
CBP and GSA are partners in the border master planning process on
the U.S.-Mexico border. In addition to coordination with State and
local agencies, the border master planning process also includes
Mexican federal, state, and local government entities as well as other
Federal agencies including State Department, DOT (FHWA, Federal Motor
Carrier Safety Administration, etc.) and sometimes private partners as
well (railroads, for example). The resulting Border Master Plan is a
listing of project priorities that State and local governments rank
regionally and provide guidance to help CBP and GSA rank projects
Nationally.
With respect to land ports at the Northern Border, GSA works
closely with the Department of State to coordinate with Government
offices at all levels in Canada.
improving land ports of entry
GSA has also seen significant interest in finding funding
alternatives to direct Federal appropriations to support the delivery
of high-priority land port projects. One tool for supporting Federal
efforts is the Section 559 Donation Acceptance Program (DAP), which
authorizes GSA and CBP to receive donations and reimbursable services
for land port of entry projects.
Under this program, projects are being further assessed and
developed in the cities of Donna, El Paso, and Pharr, Texas. In Donna,
for example, GSA and CBP have helped the city complete concept
development; while in El Paso and Pharr, port of entry modernization
projects are in the concept development phase.
GSA and CBP are currently in the process of reviewing DAP fiscal
year 2016 proposals, which may provide additional investment in, and
expedition of, infrastructure and technology improvements at ports of
entry.
conclusion
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today about GSA's
on-going partnership with CBP to improve the Nation's infrastructure
along America's borders. I welcome the opportunity to discuss GSA's
commitment to strategic investment in the Nation's land ports of entry,
and am happy to answer any questions you may have.
Ms. McSally. Thank you, Mr. Gelber. The Chair now
recognizes Mr. Reardon for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF ANTHONY M. REARDON, NATIONAL PRESIDENT, NATIONAL
TREASURY EMPLOYEES UNION
Mr. Reardon. Chairwoman McSally, acting Ranking Member
Higgins, thank you for the opportunity to testify on CBP's
efforts to prioritize and improve staffing, to keep pace with
the country's trade, travel, and security needs. As NTEU
president, I have the honor of leading a union that represents
over 25,000 CBP employees who are stationed at 328 U.S. air,
sea, and land ports of entry and a pre-clearance operations
overseas. There is no greater roadblock to trade and travel
efficiency and security needs than the lack of sufficient
staffing at ports. Studies have shown that for every 1,000 CBP
Officers hired, 3,300 private-sector jobs are created.
Understaffed ports lead to long delays in travel and cargo
lanes, and create a significant hardship for employees and
contribute to CBP's perennial low ranking in Federal employee
surveys.
Both involuntary overtime and involuntary work assignments
far from home disrupt CBP Officers' family life and destroy
morale. NTEU is most concerned that CBP continues to fall short
in its authorized staffing levels by approximately 800 of the
2,000 CBP Officers funded by Congress in 2014. CBP contends
that they are unable to find eligible applicants. One factor
may be that CBP is not utilizing available pay flexibilities,
such as recruitment awards and special salary rates, to
incentivize new and existing CBP Officers to seek vacant
positions at hard-to-fill ports.
An example of the negative impact staffing shortages have
on CBP Officers can be found at San Ysidro, where CBP has
instituted involuntary temporary duty assignments, or TDYs.
While asserting that it would prefer to use volunteers and not
involuntarily draft employees, CBP has rejected NTEU proposals
that would incentivize employees to volunteer.
Forced TDYs caused by on-going staffing shortages undermine
employee morale, and undermine overall recruitment efforts,
especially since the very best recruiters should be current CBP
Officers. Unfortunately, many Officers would not encourage
their family members or friends to seek employment with CBP.
In its fiscal year 2017 budget submission, CBP offered
several proposals to mitigate the on-going staffing shortage of
approximately 2,100 CBP Officers. One proposal which NTEU
strongly opposes is to backfill 50 CBP Officer attrition
vacancies in fiscal year 2017 with 50 CBP technicians in order
to free up CBP Officers from administrative duties. NTEU
supports hiring additional CBP technicians to free up CBP
Officers from administrative duties as long as CBP is not
reducing the current on-board goal of 23,821 CBP Officers,
since CBP technicians are not qualified as CBP Officers. Hiring
new CBP Officers should be CBP's priority.
A funding proposal in CBP's budget submission that NTEU
strongly supports is for Congress to authorize a $2 increase in
Immigration and Customs user fees to fund the hiring of the
2,100 additional CBP Officers needed to end the current CBP
Officers staffing shortage.
In recent years, in order to find alternative sources of
funding to address serious staffing shortages, CBP received
authorization and has entered into reimbursable service
agreements with private sector as well as State and local
government entities. NTEU believes that the RSAs are not a
long-term funding solution, and cannot replace the need for
Congress to either authorize and increase in Customs and
Immigration user fees, or provide increased appropriations to
hire additional CBP Officers without undermining CBP's mission
and independence by transforming it into a pay-to-play agency.
The CBP employees I represent are frustrated, and their
morale is indeed low. They work hard and care deeply about
their jobs and their country. They understand that budgets are
tight and remain dedicated to performing difficult jobs every
day, despite the impact of on-going staffing crisis. Both CBP
and Congress should address these important staffing issues.
CBP needs to improve its hiring process that has delayed the
hiring of the 2,000 Officers funded in 2014, and if Congress is
serious about job creation and border security, it needs to
fund the hiring of the remaining 2,107 CBP Officers, and the
631 Agriculture Specialists identified in CBP's 2016 workload
staffing model.
Thank you, and I am happy to answer questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Reardon follows:]
Prepared Statement of Anthony M. Reardon
April 19, 2016
Chairman McSally, Ranking Member Vela, distinguished Members of the
subcommittee; thank you for the opportunity to provide this testimony.
As president of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), I have
the honor of leading a union that represents over 25,000 Customs and
Border Protection (CBP) Officers and trade enforcement specialists
stationed at 328 land, sea, and air ports of entry across the United
States and 16 pre-clearance stations currently at Ireland, the
Caribbean, Canada, and United Arab Emirates airports.
NTEU supports the administration's fiscal year 2017 budget that
provides $12.9 billion for Customs and Border Protection (CBP), an
increase of 5.2% over fiscal year 2016. In fiscal year 2017, CBP plans
to have on board 23,861 CBP Officers at the ports of entry--which
achieves the hiring goal of 2,000 additional CBP Officers initially
funded in fiscal year 2014.
The most recent results of CBP's Workload Staff Model (WSM)--
factoring in the additional 2,000 CBP Officers from the fiscal year
2014 appropriations--shows a need for an additional 2,107 CBP Officers
through fiscal year 2017. The Agriculture Resource Allocation Model
(AgRAM) calculates a need for an additional 631 CBP Agriculture
Specialists for a total of 3,045. CBP's fiscal year 2017 budget
submission seeks Congressional approval to fund these 2,107 new CBP
Officers through an increase in user fees, but includes no additional
funding to address the current 631 Agriculture Specialist staffing
shortage.
There is no greater roadblock to legitimate trade and travel
efficiency than the lack of sufficient staff at the ports. Understaffed
ports lead to long delays in commercial lanes as cargo waits to enter
U.S. commerce and also creates a significant hardship for CBP
employees.
An example of the negative impact staffing shortages have on CBP
Officers can be found at the San Ysidro port of entry where CBP has
instituted involuntary temporary duty assignments (TDYs) to address a
staffing crisis there. At John F. Kennedy (JFK) Airport, CBP has
granted overtime exemptions to over one-half of the workforce to allow
managers to assign overtime to Officers that have reached the statutory
overtime cap. Both involuntary overtime--resulting in 12- to 15-hour
shifts, day after day, for months on end--and involuntary work
assignments far from home disrupt CBP Officers' family life and destroy
morale. On-going staff shortages directly contribute to CBP's perennial
ranking at the very bottom of the Partnership for Public Service's
``Best Places to Work'' Survey--314 out of 320 agency subcomponents on
the latest survey.
For years, NTEU has maintained that delays at the ports result in
real losses to the U.S. economy. According to the U.S. Department of
the Treasury, more than 50 million Americans work for companies that
engage in international trade and, according to a University of
Southern California (USC) study, ``The Impact on the Economy of Changes
in Wait Times at the Ports of Entry'', dated April 4, 2013, for every
1,000 CBP Officers added, the United States can increase its gross
domestic product (GDP) by $2 billion, which equates to 33 new private-
sector jobs per CBP Officer added. This analysis was supplemented by
USC in its update entitled ``Analysis of Primary Inspection Wait Times
at U.S. Ports of Entry'' published on March 9, 2014. This study found
that by adding 14 CBP Officers at 14 inspection sites in 4
international airports, the potential total net impact would be to
increase annual GDP by as much as $11.8 million.
cbp officer hiring challenges
Of major concern to NTEU is that CBP continues to fall short in its
authorized hiring efforts by approximately 800 of the 2,000 officers
that were funded by Congress in 2014. According to CBP, they hope to
have hired the 2,000 authorized by the second quarter of 2017. CBP
contends that they are unable to find eligible applicants to fill the
vacant positions.
One factor that may be hindering hiring is that CBP is not
utilizing available pay flexibilities, such as recruitment awards and
special salary rates, to incentivize new and existing CBP Officers to
seek vacant positions at these hard-to-fill ports, such as San Ysidro.
NTEU and CBP are currently negotiating over the agency's proposal
to draft CBP Officers to work involuntary TDYs at San Ysidro for longer
than 90 days. CBP has made this proposal because its solicitation for
volunteers to staff this TDY is no longer keeping up with what CBP
believes to be its staffing requirements. Yet, while asserting that it
would prefer to use volunteers and not involuntarily draft employees,
CBP has rejected NTEU proposals that would incentivize employees to
volunteer. For example, CBP has balked at offering any monetary
incentives or seeking legislative changes to allow special hiring
incentives such as student loan repayments to entice more individuals
to apply to work in San Ysidro.
To help address staffing shortages, NTEU is also exploring whether
our members would be interested in CBP offering an entry-level age
waiver of 40 years and a mandatory retirement age waiver of 60 years as
a means to attract a larger pool of potential applicants and to reduce
attrition rates due to the statutory mandatory retirement at age 57
years.
Finally, the best recruiters are likely current CBP Officers. Let
me rephrase that and say that current CBP Officers could be the best
recruiters. Unfortunately, based on their experiences with the agency,
many officers would never encourage their family members or friends to
seek employment with CBP. That ought to be telling them something
pretty important too. I have suggested to CBP leadership that they look
at why this is the case.
In its fiscal year 2017 budget submission, CBP offered several
proposals to mitigate the on-going staffing shortage of 2,107 CBP
Officers that will continue into fiscal year 2017 and beyond. One of
these proposals is to backfill 50 CBP Officer attrition vacancies in
fiscal year 2017 with CBP Technicians in order to free up CBP Officers
from administrative duties. NTEU supports the hiring of additional CBP
Technicians to free up CBP Officers from administrative duties as long
as CBP is not reducing the current on-board goal of 23,821 CBP
Officers. However, CBP's proposal, as outlined in its fiscal year 2017
budget submission, proposes a 1-for-1 replacement of 50 CBP Officer
positions with 50 CBP Technicians. NTEU strongly opposes this proposal.
CBP Technicians cannot ``backfill'' CBP Officer positions, because
they are not qualified as CBP Officers. With an on-going shortage of
2,107 CBP Officers, hiring new CBP Officers should be CBP's priority.
NTEU supports hiring additional CBP Technicians to give administrative
support to CBP Officers, but strongly objects to CBP replacing CBP
Officer positions made vacant through attrition with CBP Technicians.
A funding proposal in the fiscal year 2017 CBP budget submission
that NTEU strongly supports is for Congress to authorize a $2.00
increase in immigration and customs user fees to fund the hiring of the
2,107 additional CBP Officers needed to end the current CBP Officer
staffing shortage.
NTEU was disappointed that Congress, in last year's highway bill,
indexed Customs user fees to inflation, but diverted this fee increase
to serve as an offset for highway and infrastructure funding, rather
than to hire additional CBP Officers.
By diverting the difference in the amount of Customs user fees
collected currently and the additional amount indexed to inflation to
non-CBP related projects both increases the cost to the private sector
by escalating the current level of customs user fees paid over the next
10 years, and compels the private sector to separately fund--through
Reimbursable Service Agreements (RSA)--CBP inspectional staffing and
overtime. NTEU will work to redirect this $400 million a year funding
stream back to CBP for its intended use--to pay for CBP inspection
services provided to the user.
reimbursable service agreements (rsa)
In recent years, in order to find alternative sources of funding to
address serious CBP Officers and Agriculture Specialist staffing
shortages, CBP received authorization and has entered into RSAs with
the private sector as well as with State and local government entities.
These organizations reimburse CBP for additional inspection services
including overtime pay and the hiring of new personnel that in the past
has been paid for entirely by user fees or appropriated funding.
According to CBP, since the program began in 2013, CBP has entered into
agreements with 21 stakeholders, providing more than 112,000 additional
processing hours for incoming commercial and cargo traffic at a cost of
nearly $13 million to these public and private-sector partners.
Section 560 of the fiscal year 2013 DHS appropriations bill
authorized CBP to enter into 5 reimbursable fee agreements for a 5-year
term with the city of El Paso land port of entry; the city of Houston
Airport System; Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport; Miami-Dade
County; and the South Texas Assets Consortium (STAC.) It should be
noted that agricultural inspectional services are not eligible for
reimbursement under the Section 560 program, as it is limited to
``customs and immigration'' inspectional services such as salaries,
benefits, relocation expenses, travel costs, and overtime as necessary
at the city of El Paso land ports and solely to overtime at the 3 air
ports of entry.
An expansion of the Section 560 RSA CBP pilot program was
authorized by Section 559 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of
2014 (Pub. L. 113-76). Section 559 expanded on the Section 560 RSAs by
allowing for increased services at newly-selected ports, to include
customs, immigration, agricultural processing, and border security
services. Because of the need for CBP Agriculture Specialists to
process incoming produce, STAC quit the 560 program and applied for the
559 program. Under Section 560, RSAs were limited to CBP Officer
overtime and staffing, except in the air environment where only CBP
Officer overtime reimbursement is allowed. Under both Section 560 and
559, reimbursement for the hiring of additional CBP Officer and CBP
Agriculture Specialist positions is allowed at sea and land ports, but
only overtime reimbursement is allowed at airports.
The new Section 559 has no restriction on the number of RSAs for
sea and land ports and no limits on the terms of agreement for customs,
agricultural processing, border security services, and immigrations
inspection-related services. These costs may include salaries,
benefits, administration, transportation, relocation expenses, and
overtime expenses incurred as a result of the services requested.
nteu's rsa concerns
NTEU believes that the RSA program would be entirely unnecessary if
Congress authorized user fees collected to be indexed to inflation,
with the additional funding provided by indexing being used as set
forth in existing statute. NTEU also believes that the RSA program is a
Band-Aid approach and cannot replace the need for Congress to either
authorize an increase in customs and immigration user fees indexed to
inflation or to authorize increased appropriations to hire additional
new CBP Officers to adequately address CBP staffing needs.
Further, NTEU strongly believes that CBP should not enter into a
RSA if it would negatively impact or alter services funded under any
Appropriations Acts, or services provided from any Treasury account
derived by the collection of fees. RSAs simply cannot replace CBP
appropriated or user fee funding--making CBP a ``pay-to-play'' agency.
NTEU remains concerned with CBP's new pre-clearance expansion program
that also relies heavily on ``pay-to-play''.
NTEU also believes that the use of RSAs to fund CBP staffing
shortages raises significant equity and other issues, which calls for
an engaged Congress conducting active oversight.
For example:
How does CBP ensure that RSAs are not only available to
ports of entry with wealthy private-sector partners? (When RSAs
were first considered, there was a proposal to require 30% of
the total RSA funds collected be reserved for ports with
greatest need, not just those that have partners with the
greatest ability to pay.)
How does CBP ensure that RSA funds pay for the hiring of new
CBP Officer and Agriculture Specialist personnel and are not
simply used to pay for relocating existing CBP personnel from
other ports (robbing from Port A to staff Port B without hiring
additional staff)?
How does CBP ensure a long-term public-private funding
stream? (When RSAs were first considered, there was a proposal
to have RSA pay up-front for 10 years over 3 installments.)
There are also some port locations where staffing shortages are so
severe currently, that even entering into a RSA program may be
problematic. In 2009, there were approximately 10.7 million
international travelers processed at New York's JFK. By the end of
2015, it is estimated that JFK will process 14.5 million passengers, a
30% increase in mission-critical work over a 6-year period. Over this
same period, NTEU estimates that there has been a net gain of
approximately 100 officers to process over 3.5 million additional
travelers.
For the last 2 years JFK management has received overtime cap
waivers for CBP Officers compelling these officers to work 12-, 13-, or
15-hour shifts day after day for months on end. Officers were required
to come in additional hours before their standard shifts, to stay an
indeterminate number of hours after their shifts (in the same day) and
compelled to come in for more overtime hours on their regular days off
as well.
The majority of CBP Officers are already working all allowable
overtime, much of which is involuntary. I want to be clear that all CBP
Officers are aware that overtime assignments are an aspect of their
jobs. However, long, extensive periods of overtime hours can severely
disrupt an officer's family life, morale, and ultimately his or her job
performance protecting our Nation.
CBP is currently negotiating separate RSAs with British Airways and
American Airways at JFK. In this situation where existing Officers'
overtime at JFK is already stretched beyond their limits, the RSA
should be restricted to hiring new CBP Officers, and not to simply
expanding overtime hours.
Another concern is that CBP continues to be a top-heavy management
organization. In terms of real numbers, since its creation, the number
of new managers has increased at a much higher rate than the number of
new front-line CBP hires. CBP's own fiscal year 2015 end-of-year
workforce profile (dated 10/3/15), shows that the supervisor to front-
line employee ratio was 1 to 5.6 for the total CBP workforce, 1 to 5.7
for CBP Officers and 1 to 6.6 for CBP Agriculture Specialists.
The tremendous increase in CBP managers and supervisors has come at
the expense of National security preparedness and front-line positions.
Also, these highly-paid management positions are straining the CBP
budget. With the increased use of RSAs to fund additional CBP Officer
new hires, NTEU urges that CBP return to a more balanced supervisor-to-
front-line employee ratio.
agriculture specialist staffing
CBP employees also perform critically-important agriculture
inspections to prevent the entry of animal and plant pests or diseases
at ports of entry. For years, NTEU has championed the CBP Agriculture
Specialists' Agriculture Quality Inspection (AQI) mission within the
agency and has fought for increased staffing to fulfill that mission.
The U.S. agriculture sector is a crucial component of the American
economy generating over $1 trillion in annual economic activity.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, foreign pests and
diseases cost the American economy tens of billions of dollars
annually. NTEU believes that staffing shortages and lack of mission
priority for the critical work performed by CBP Agriculture Specialists
and CBP Technicians assigned to the ports is a continuing threat to the
U.S. economy.
NTEU worked with Congress to include in the recent CBP Trade
Facilitation and Enforcement Act (Pub. L. 114-125) a provision that
requires CBP to submit, by the end of February 2017, a plan to create
an agricultural specialist career track that includes a ``description
of education, training, experience, and assignments necessary for
career progression as an agricultural specialist; recruitment and
retention goals for agricultural specialists, including a time line for
fulfilling staffing deficits identified in agricultural resource
allocation models; and, an assessment of equipment and other resources
needed to support agricultural specialists.''
CBP's fiscal year 2016 AgRAM, shows a need for an additional 631
front-line CBP Agriculture Specialists and supervisors to address
current workloads through fiscal year 2017, however, even with the 2016
increase in AQI user fees, CBP will fund a total of 2,414 CBP
Agriculture Specialist positions in fiscal year 2017, not the 3,045
called for by the AgRAM.
NTEU urges the committee to authorize the hiring of these 631 CBP
Agriculture Specialists to address this critical staffing shortage that
threatens the U.S. agriculture sector.
cbp trade operations staffing
CBP has a dual mission of safeguarding our Nation's borders and
ports as well as regulating and facilitating international trade. In
fiscal year 2015, CBP processed more than $2.4 trillion worth of trade
goods and collected $46 billion in revenue. Since CBP was established
in March 2003, however, there has been no increase in CBP trade
enforcement and compliance personnel even though in-bound trade volume
grew by more than 24 percent between fiscal year 2010 and fiscal year
2014.
In 2011, CBP established the Centers of Excellence and Expertise
(CEEs)--10 industry-specific Centers--requiring significant changes in
CBP trade operations, employees' workload, and work practices.
In 2014, 4 of the CEEs began operating at an accelerated level of
processing and became fully operational. On March 24, 2016, the
remaining 6 CEEs came on board. Critical for supporting the CEE's
virtually-managed and geographically-dispersed workforce is the
completion of the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). Now 3 years
behind schedule and more than $1 billion over budget, CBP began rollout
of the ACE ``single window'' for industry filing electronic trade
entries on March 30, 2016. According to industry users, the ACE rollout
has been challenging. Users have experienced network error and system-
wide crashes.
The rollout of CEEs has raised many issues affecting trade
operations staff at the ports including insufficient front-line
staffing and insufficient training for both front-line employees and
supervisors. NTEU urges Congress to authorize the hiring of additional
trade enforcement and compliance personnel, including Import
Specialists, to enhance trade revenue collection.
additional cbp personnel funding issues
NTEU commends the Department for increasing the journeyman pay for
CBP Officers and Agriculture Specialists. Many deserving CBP trade and
security positions, however, were left out of this pay increase, which
has significantly damaged morale. NTEU strongly supports extending this
same career ladder increase to additional CBP positions, including CBP
Trade Operations Specialists and CBP Seized Property Specialists. The
journeyman pay level for the CBP Technicians who perform important
commercial trade and administration duties should also be increased
from GS-7 to GS-9.
NTEU also supports extending enhanced retirement that was granted
to CBP Officers in 2008 to the approximately 120 CBP Seized Property
Specialists, the only armed, uniformed officers at CBP that do not
receive Law Enforcement Officer retirement.
recommendations
Funding for additional CBP staff must be increased to ensure
security and mitigate prolonged wait times for both trade and travel at
our Nation's ports of entry. The use of RSAs as an alternate source of
funding is merely a Band-Aid approach and cannot replace the need for
Congress to authorize an increase in customs and immigration user fees
or to provide sufficient appropriations to hire 2,107 new CBP Officers
to adequately address CBP staffing needs.
Therefore, NTEU urges the committee to:
authorize increases in trade, travel, and agriculture
inspection and enforcement staffing to the level called for in
CBP's most recent WSM that shows a need for 2,107 additional
CBP Officers and an additional 631 CBP Agriculture Specialists
through fiscal year 2017;
authorize an increase in journeyman pay to additional CBP
personnel, including CBP Technicians, Import and other
Commercial Operations Specialists, and enhanced retirement to
armed, uniformed CBP Seized Property Specialists; and
engage in robust oversight of RSAs to ensure that this
program does not replace primary funding sources or result in
inequitable distribution of CBP Officer resources.
Lastly, NTEU asks Congress to support legislation to allow CBP to
increase user fees to help recover costs associated with fee services
and provide funding to hire additional CBP Officers. If Congress is
serious about job creation, then Congress should either authorize
funding or raise immigration and custom user fees to hire the
additional 2,107 CBP Officers as identified by CBP's own Workload
Staffing Model.
The more than 25,000 CBP employees represented by NTEU are proud of
their part in keeping our country free from terrorism, our
neighborhoods safe from drugs, and our economy, safe from illegal
trade, while ensuring that legal trade and travelers move expeditiously
through our air, sea, and land ports. These men and women are deserving
of more resources to perform their jobs better and more efficiently.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify before the committee on
their behalf.
Ms. McSally. Thank you, Mr. Reardon. I now recognize myself
for 5 minutes for questions. I am going to do a couple of
rounds. So this round is going to be focused on the staffing,
and then I will come back and talk about infrastructure in the
second round.
Ms. Jacksta, I want to start with you. As the author of the
Border Jobs for Veterans Act, I believe we had an update due to
us on April 15 with how that is going, which is now overdue. So
can you give me an implementation update, how many veterans
have been hired since that went into law? When are we going to
get the report from you?
I have a number of other questions related to some of the
things you mentioned in your testimony. But if a veteran has
got a TS/SCI clearance, has been through an SSBI, is given all
those clearances, are you still starting from scratch with a
veteran going through your 11-step process, or are you
accepting what they have already gone through to get the
clearances that they have? Are you looking for waiver
authorities, for polygraphs, for those that already have
clearances, accepting their medical, their physical fitness,
all the things that would fast-track our veterans that we
intended you to be doing by this law?
Ms. Jacksta. Thank you, Chairwoman McSally. I want to thank
you for sponsoring that legislation. As I said in my opening
statement, I believe that this has the potential to be a true
game-changer for CBP. With respect to the report that you
mentioned, it is my understanding that it is going through
internal vetting, it has left the agency, and, hopefully, it
will be en route to you shortly.
Ms. McSally. It is in the black hole between the agency and
Congress, got it.
Ms. Jacksta. In terms of implementation plan, and the 7
goals and objectives that you outlined in the Act, I have very,
very good news in terms of the level of collaboration that we
have had with our partners at the Department of Defense. We
have reached some significant agreements on levels of
reciprocity that we would like to offer for a couple of key
areas in the hiring process. One would be the medical.
So when a separating servicemember is separating from the
military, they have an exit medical. We would like to use that
as our entrance medical. Another example is physical fitness.
We recognize that servicemembers in the different branches of
military have regular fitness assessments. We would like to
offer reciprocity for our physical fitness. We have two of
those in our hiring process.
In addition, the e-QIP process and the background
investigation process, to the extent that we can leverage an
already existing background investigation, we will. So I think
those are groundbreaking approaches that we are trying to
implement. The goal right now is to start that reciprocity
arrangement with DOD in the month of May.
Our overarching goal for the time to hire to on-board
through this facilitative process, service members and veterans
into front-line occupations is within a 90-day window, that is
our goal. It will probably take us a little time to walk
through that as we implement a new process, but the goal is to
get to a 90-day time period.
Ms. McSally. Go ahead.
Ms. Jacksta. With respect to the polygraph requirements and
the TS/SCI, we do offer reciprocity for some types of
polygraphs, so that a policy that we put in place, and it has
been in place for some time. So if we have a transitioning
service member with a polygraph within the last 3 years, we
will look to offer reciprocity. Above and beyond that, we are
exploring some concepts, again, pre-decisional does not
necessarily represent an agency position, but we are looking at
does it make sense to maybe have a risk management framework in
place to assess levels of suitability depending upon your
background, experience, you know, different levels of clearance
that you held in former positions, maybe some different types
of exceptions in that regard? That is something we are
exploring now as an agency. We have not really put pen to
paper, that is pre-decisional. But I want to leave you with the
thought that we are leaving no stone unturned and we are
exploring all options.
Ms. McSally. All right. Thank you. Just to clarify, though,
when it comes to someone who has been through, like, an SSBI,
are you accepting that background investigation, or are you
doing an entirely separate background investigation? Are those
some of the things you are going to consider to accept as well?
Ms. Jacksta. Yes, Chairwoman. That is what we are
considering.
Ms. McSally. Okay. Great. Thank you. Also I would encourage
you, it sounds like the hiring hubs are helping the streamline,
but if you were to have those hiring hubs located in places
that have military facilities, you could speed up everything
even tighter.
So, I do know we are having a jobs fair in southern Arizona
that I am hosting. I would love to coordinate with you to
possibly have a hiring hub be a part of that. We have got 2
large military installations there and a lot of veterans, just
so--and I have heard from other Members, too, that have large
military presence in their communities to help sort of
streamline that to put those two together.
Ms. Jacksta. Thank you, Chairwoman. We welcome the
opportunity to collaborate on the recruiting site. For your
awareness, we will have a hiring hub in Tucson in April, and if
you agree to it, we can collaborate on recruiting. That would
be wonderful. We have also had hiring hubs at Fort Bliss,
Bragg, Campbell, Fort Hood, Camp Lejeune, and Joint Base Lewis-
McChord.
Ms. McSally. Great. Thank you. Next I want to talk about
the polygraph itself. We have heard several anecdotal horror
stories of decorated combat veterans who, for some reason, were
unable to pass this polygraph, coupled with some bizarre-
sounding behavior on behalf of the polygraph examiners. Can you
outline how closely CBP is monitoring the polygraph exam and
the individuals who administer the test?
Ms. Jacksta. Absolutely. As you know, Chairwoman, CBP is
required to conduct a polygraph per the Anti-Border Corruption
Act of 2010. I guess the parting thought that I want to share
with you is that our program follows the same standards as any
other law enforcement polygraph program. We are certified by
the National Center for Credibility Assessment, we undergo that
certification every other year; our last assessment was done
last January. So I share that with you because the training and
the program get certified on a regular basis.
With respect to how we monitor the activity, we have a
quality assurance program within CBP that actively monitors, on
a daily basis, the activity of the individual polygraph
examiners, and they will intervene if they believe that an
examiner is trending in an area that is beyond established
thresholds. In addition to that, they take a look at audios.
Every polygraph exam has an audio recording, so we look at the
audio tapes. Sometimes we will pull that polygraph examiner off
the line if we feel that more remediation, or maybe training is
needed, particularly when we are on-boarding new polygraph
examiners, there is that mentoring component that we have.
In terms of our degree of rigor, I would say that it is
fairly sound. I would also say that we take very seriously any
complaints that we have with respect to the administration of
that exam or any constituent concerns that maybe some of your
constituents might have.
There is a method called the Privacy Act waiver that
constituents can complete, and we would be happy to share the
findings of a polygraph exam, the nature of any admissions that
are uncovered in that exam, if someone elects to complete a
poly--a Privacy Act waiver.
Ms. McSally. Thanks. Mr. Reardon, I know you represent
those that have made it through the process, but are probably,
then, going through periodic screening while they are in
service. Have you heard any concerns related to the polygraph
from your members?
Mr. Reardon. Thank you, Chairwoman. More of what I have
heard is really related to family members and friends of our
members who have, in some recent times, gone through the
polygraph process. I have heard some of the same kinds of
horror stories that I suspect you are probably referring to.
The kinds of questions that are asked go beyond, really, at
least from what I have heard--clearly, I wasn't there--but the
stories I have heard clearly go beyond what I think is probably
acceptable to be asking someone.
So I have raised this actually in the past with CBP,
because I think something--this really should be looked at very
carefully to find out where the problem is. I mean, where we
have it taking I think the numbers that you provided early on
were 100 to 150 applicants in order to get one CBP Officer on
board, I think there is something wrong in the process. I
suspect that at least some of that is related to polygraphs,
and I think that should be looked at very carefully.
Ms. McSally. Thank you. Just to reiterate from my opening
statement, we all agree we have to make sure we vet
individuals, we have got to make sure that we have got
accountability, and those that are serving in these important
positions are above-board. We have just got to make sure that
we are not wrongfully filtering out, especially our combat
veterans in the process, through false positives, or however
you want to categorize that.
The Chairman will now recognize other Members of
subcommittee for questions they may wish to ask the witnesses.
In accordance with our committee rules of practice, I recognize
Members who were present at the start of the hearing by
seniority in the subcommittee, those coming in later will be
recognized in order.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Higgins, the acting Ranking
Member.
Mr. Higgins. Thank you very much. Congress has 2
responsibilities here: One is budgetary and the other is
oversight. So in the omnibus bill of 2014, based on concerns
that were brought to Congress, Congress responded by providing
funding for 2,000 additional agents to try to address the
problems, the staffing shortages at the ports of entry.
Also in that legislation was a mandate that Customs and
Border Protection provide a staffing model to show how that
personnel was going to be distributed along both the Southern
and Northern Border. That has not been available yet, so it is
very hard for Congress to do, to exercise, to fulfill its
oversight responsibility. So the only thing that we really have
to go on is anecdotal evidence that the staffing shortages
still exist along both borders resulting in inefficiencies and
employees who are dissatisfied.
I was reading in Mr. Reardon's testimony that on-going
staff shortages directly contribute to CBP's perennial ranking
at the very bottom of the Partnership for Public Services' Best
Places to Work surveys, 314 out of 320 agency subcomponents on
the latest survey. That is a problem. That is a problem in
terms of morale--morale and just the importance of that
relative to recruitment of Officers.
Second, there is an avoidance factor, particularly on the
Northern Border. My experience with the Peace Bridge in Buffalo
is the busiest Northern Border crossing for passenger vehicles.
If there is a sense that there are delays there because of lack
of infrastructure, because of poor staffing strategies, people
adjust their economic behavior to avoid the cross-border
movement; it hurts economies in Buffalo and western New York
who rely on an efficient, reliable predictable movement into
and out of southern Ontario, which has a population center of
12 million people. Very, very important to the life quality and
economic viability of places from, like, western New York.
So I guess for everybody on the panel, we just need to do a
much better job here, because security is obviously a primary
issue. But that important balance of economic activity and
promoting it as efficiently as possible is important too. So
when Congress takes an action 2 years ago to address the needs,
the personnel needs of both Southern and Northern Borders, and
yet, we have not fulfilled that obligation, and we have no
information from Customs and Border Protection about the
staffing model, what are we to go on, other than the anecdotal
evidence? Poor morale, borders that just continue to be
congested? We are not fulfilling our responsibilities, so I
throw that to the panel generally. Mr. Reardon, do you want to
take that?
Mr. Reardon. Thank you, Congressman. You know, I think that
you are absolutely right. I mean the poor--from my perspective,
the staffing shortage is certainly a large part of the problem
when you start looking at the morale. We have got--and, in
fact, last week I was with more than 350 of our leaders from
around the country, CBP leaders from around the country. You
know, I had the opportunity then, and certainly at other times
to speak with them about the morale at CBP. You know, where you
have individuals, for example, if we take San Ysidro, the San
Ysidro crossing, you have people who are working 12- to 15-hour
days, you know, day after day, week after week after week.
After a while, it begins to wear on people, people are beaten
up, they are tired. You know, we were noticed by CBP a while
back that they were going to not only have TDYs up to 90 days,
but they were--they noticed us that they could go up to 180
days.
Well, even when you look at taking someone from their
family from far away and moving them for 90 days where they
potentially have small children, they have certainly got lives
where they are, that kind-of thing begins to really wear on a
human being. You know, I guess I would also add kind-of to the
small list I am giving you, the fact that when you talk to CBP
employees, I think, probably at the core for them, is that they
don't feel valued.
So, I believe that, you know, there needs to be some
serious work. You know, we have already talked about the FEV
scores, the Federal Employee Viewpoint scores; they are
routinely, year after year, very low. At some point, something
has to be done to actually address those issues. Certainly, I
think, staffing is a large component of that.
Mr. Higgins. Anybody else?
Ms. McSally. Thank you, Mr. Higgins. The Chair now
recognizes Mr. Hurd from Texas.
Mr. Hurd. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for holding this
hearing and all that you have done to make sure that we are
focused on the border. I would like to start off, like, with
most of my colleagues, with condolences for the family of Jose
Barraza. I know it is hard to lose a colleague, and I can only
imagine what his wife and 2 sons are going through. So please
pass our condolences along.
I want to thank Mr. Schied and Mr. Gelber for your work on
helping us with trying to extend the 559 program. Hopefully, we
will see that over the finish line soon, and Commissioner
Wagner, it is always a pleasure to see you.
My first question is actually is to Ms. Jacksta. We talked
about the polygraph a little bit. There are a number--the
number of folks that are not making it through that process
seem incredibly high. My question is: The number of folks that
fail the poly during the interview process, is it comparable to
other agencies that do polygraph for hiring?
Ms. Jacksta. Thank you, Congressman, for that question. We
are in the process now of conducting a benchmarking study. We
have reached out to the National Center for Credibility
Assessment to try to ascertain where we stand vis-a-vis other
organizations that are conducting the same polygraph. The one
word of caution that I would mention is that our applicant pool
is vastly different than many other applicant pools from other
Federal law enforcement organizations. So, we are trying to be
careful in making sure we are measuring apples to apples.
Mr. Hurd. I completely understand that. Being someone who
has gone through multiple polygraphs. I appreciate this issue.
How long is that going to take?
Ms. Jacksta. I would be happy to take that back for the
record.
Mr. Hurd. I copy you.
The next question, and maybe stay with you, ma'am, hardship
pay, that was something that was--listen, being on the board
multiple times a month, I recognize the hardships on the
difficulties that the men and women within all of DHS have to
go through. Hardship pay has changed over the years. You know,
it is something where--because there are some places that are
harder than others, let's be honest about that. The difficulty
sometimes in finding folks to go to those really hard places,
remote--trying to encourage them to do this, what is on the
horizon when it comes to hardship pay and using that as a way
to help retain or reduce attrition?
Ms. Jacksta. Certainly. I recognize that this is a
conversation that is ensuing with a number of different folks
on the Hill. What I would share with you is that we already
employ a couple of different elements as a way to augment the
basic rate of pay. One is the use of special salary rates, and
we use special salary rates right now on the border of North
Dakota for the ag specialists. We are looking at pursuing
something for CBP Officers and Border Patrol Agents as well.
But that, again, is something that we are working with the
operational offices on; and also, special salary rates for our
Air Interdiction Agents at select locations across the country.
We are also using incentives.
Mr. Hurd. When do we think those studies will be completed,
or when there will be a plan?
Ms. Jacksta. It is my understanding that, for example, the
CBP Air Interdiction Agent special salary rate is in existence
today. The use of recruitment incentives is also in existence
today. That is to help us specifically fill positions in hard
or remote locations. We use data, attrition data and applicant
data, to help us guide where we want to offer those incentives.
In fact, year to date in fiscal year 2016, we have offered 75
different incentives. In the State of Arizona alone, there are
340 folks pending incentives. So with respect to the hardship
pay, I would say that we are looking at a broader strategy of
special salary rates across the board.
Mr. Hurd. Again, when do we think that review will be--and
I have 30 seconds, so I want to ask 2 more questions so----
Ms. Jacksta. That review is under way. So I will get that
for the record.
Mr. Hurd. Yeah. I would like to know what time--when this
could be completed.
Who is engaged in conversations with local merchants,
businesses? When, you know, we can protect our border and
facilitate the movement of goods and services at the same time.
There is groups like the Border Trade Alliance that are looking
at understanding what the volume is going to be in the future
in order to ensure the staffing levels are there at the ports
of entry. Who is responsible for that engagement within your
organization?
Ms. Jacksta. I will defer that question to my colleague,
Mr. Wagner.
Mr. Hurd. Mr. Wagner.
Mr. Wagner. Good morning. So, I mean, that is a
conversation we have at the local level with our local managers
and at the National level with us. You know, we work closely
with all the, you know, alliances and representative groups. In
our workload staffing model, we factor in about a 3 percent
workload increase across the board. A conservative figure, but
it does account for across-the-board growth. If there is new
and special things, new facilities, new activity that we are
certain, we can also factor those into the model too. So it's a
combination of both.
Mr. Hurd. Good copy. If Madam Chairwoman would indulge me
with 1 question to you, Mr. Wagner. Internal checkpoints, there
are a number in Texas. How is the staffing decided at those?
Have studies been done at peak times? Because one of the things
that I frequently hear from folks is on Friday afternoon, and
Sunday mornings, the internal checkpoint, it takes long to get
through that than if you were trying to cross the border. I am
interested in looking at, you know, are there times when we can
ensure we have, you know, all hands on deck in order to
facilitate that travel?
Mr. Wagner. Yeah. I will have to get back to you on that. I
mean, the Office of Border Patrol handles the interior
checkpoints. I mean, we do a lot of work with them from the
ports of entry lining the technology and communicating back and
forth. But let me get back to you with a better answer on how
they determine the staffing for those.
Mr. Hurd. Good copy. I yield back the time I do not have.
Ms. McSally. Thank you. The Chair now recognizes Mrs.
Torres from California.
Mrs. Torres. Thank you. I want to make sure that our panel
truly gets a good picture of how concerned we are about the
staffing issues that you are facing. You can have a recruitment
center across every State, across every city, across every
military branch, and we will only be wasting money if we are
not able to retain people because of the work environment that
you are providing for them.
I've heard directly from CBP employees, that have been
given absolutely no notice, and been sent from LAX to our
Southern Border. For 17\1/2\ years I have worked in a
paramilitary organization. I understand that it is a lifestyle,
that weekends, forced overtime, and holiday work and nights is
part of the job. That is why it is a lifestyle and not just a
job.
But it is unacceptable when we are asking single moms,
single dads, to abandon their children without any notice for 3
months. That is unacceptable. Certainly you would not want to
do that or want to have that job. So if we are not able to
staff people because we are overwhelming them on background
checks, on other types of testing that are not applicable to
the job, I think this is time for a serious revision of this
hiring process.
I hope that today when you leave this hearing you don't
just turn the page and go on about your bureaucratic, you know,
way of doing business, and that you actually take a serious
look at how you are impacting families and my constituents. Not
just the employees, but also how that is impacting our
airports.
I have the Ontario International Airport in my district.
This is a small airport. Currently they have 16 arriving and 16
departing international passenger flights per week on 2
carriers. But CBP Officers are deployed to Ontario as an as-
needed basis and not stationed there. How is the staffing
shortage affecting smaller airports? How can we work together
to correct this problem?
I remember several years ago when a carrier had to--they
had to do a layover at Ontario Airport. The passengers waited
16 hours because they were waiting for CBP personnel to come
from LAX. That is unacceptable. That is not the business model
that we want to see.
Can you tell me how this is impacting our smaller airports,
your lack of ability to hire people?
Mr. Wagner. Sure. I agree with you on both points. If I
could address the temporary duty situation first in San Diego
and the port of San Ysidro. We have deployed 197 employees to
date. The procedures we use to do that, something we have
negotiated with the National Treasury Employees Union is we
take volunteers first. Out of the 197, 194 of them have been
voluntary assignments. There were 3 employees from the Chicago
field office that were involuntary assigned to that. Now, as we
go to the next round, and as we hit summer, I imagine that
number will increase. But these are the negotiated provisions
by which we make those assignments.
Now, out of the people that are there, 27 of them are--
have, asked to extend and go into the second round. We have had
a handful of employees want to transfer there permanently. I
did that. I went from New York City down to Laredo, Texas on a
TDY----
Mrs. Torres. I have a limited time, sir.
Mr. Wagner. I ended up staying.
Mrs. Torres. Excuse me. I have limited time here. What I am
telling you is that the employees that I heard from are not--
are telling me that you have run out of volunteers. So when you
run out of volunteers, you are forcing people to either
continue their deployment there where you have transferred them
or you are deploying new bodies.
So I would like to go on to continue to ask you about--
specifically about how this is impacting my airport in my
community. As part of the new strategic business plan for
Ontario, expanding airline service is a top priority. As part
of this initiative, the Ontario International Airport Authority
has identified opportunities for new and increased services to
Mexico, Central America, Asia, and the Pacific Rim, as well as
western Canada. However, to capture those opportunities,
Ontario needs a commitment for more on-site CBP personnel. How
is that going to happen under this environment that you have
created?
Mr. Wagner. It is very difficult for us to do that. We have
service requests for multiple small to mid-size and the large
airports for increased service. We have John Wayne, we have
Melbourne, we have Reno, we have Pittsburgh, we have San Diego.
All these airports have been in to ask us for increased
service, and including Ontario. So we do our best to balance--
the good part about Ontario is we have a large pool to draw
from, from LAX, to provide that.
There is other options that they have available with the
reimbursable services agreement. They can go with the user-fee
status, and there are other opportunities for them to be able
to provide some of those costs that fit into their business
model. There is also technology that they can choose to deploy.
They can purchase automated passport control kiosks. They can
help us do our job more efficiently too. So it is continued
discussions with them on how best to provide that service.
Mrs. Torres. I am out of time. I yield back the rest.
Ms. McSally. Thank you. Mr. Higgins, did you want to get--
--
Mr. Higgins. Yeah. I ask unanimous consent for the
gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Payne, to sit and question the
witnesses at today's hearing.
Ms. McSally. Without objection, Mr. Payne is recognized for
5 minutes.
Mr. Payne. Thank you, Madam Chair. To the Ranking Member, I
appreciate the opportunity to be here with you.
I am the Member of Congress that has the Port of Newark and
Newark National Liberty Airport in my district. Customs and
Border Protection Officers at New York airport clear up to
20,000 passengers every day. At the Port of Newark, one of the
busiest ports on the East Coast, agricultural specialists
inspect imported food items, marble slabs, tiles, and wood
packing material, all of which can carry insects and other
pests that can harm domestic agriculture. So I have a question
for the entire panel.
We all know there is a severe shortage of agricultural
specialists at Newark's port of entry, in the neighborhood of
around 30. How does CBP propose to fund the hiring of 631
additional CBP agricultural specialists as called for in your
agency's own agricultural RAM?
Mr. Wagner. So I believe in the--so we have the agriculture
resource allocation model. It is about 723 employees when you
factor in supervisors into that number. I believe in our 2017
budget, and I will have to verify the number, 100 or so of
those positions would be provided for.
Now, with the new agriculture user fees that went into
effect, we are looking at the collections that are coming in
and putting together the strategy on how to hire the balance to
reach that number.
Mr. Payne. So at this point you say you have the resources
to get 100?
Mr. Wagner. I believe we put into the 2017 budget proposal
it is 100-and-something agriculture specialists that would be
proposed to be funded. But I will get you that exact number.
Mr. Payne. Okay. But am I off base with the 631 that are
needed?
Mr. Wagner. Right. There is still a large gap that would
remain.
Mr. Payne. So what is the plan moving forward in order to
fill that gap?
Mr. Wagner. So as we look at the new agriculture user fees
that we collect, we would look to use those to support
additional positions. So we are looking at--the new fee
schedule just went into place earlier this year. So looking at
the increase in collections in those different fees and what
funds might be available then to fund additional positions.
Mr. Payne. You know, what factors are considered when
determining staffing levels for particular ports of entry? How
do they vary by type of port of entry? What trends are you
noticing for northern or coastal ports of entry compared to
those on the Southwest Border?
Mr. Wagner. So our workload staffing model, what we do is
actually take all of the different tasks an officer or
agriculture specialist does each day, the time involved it
takes to do each one of those tasks. Then we multiply it by how
many times it is typically done at that particular port of
entry, and we come up with the amount of work hours needed to
run that port. Divide that by the available work hours of an
employee, and we come up with a staffing number. That is
tailored to each specific port of entry on a basis of an
assessment of this very specific workload that goes there. We
use that, then as the guide to judge what is the right amount
of staff to put at each port of entry, and then adjust that
seasonally as we see the traffic and workload conditions
dictate.
On your other question, what we are seeing is an increase
in travel and trade. Commercial air travel at the commercial
airports was up 5-point-something percent last year. It is
tracking at 7.8 percent growth this fiscal year. Land border
traffic, we have seen a small decrease on the Northern Border,
that could tie into the Canadian dollar, and less Canadian
visitors coming in, but we have seen a small decrease. We have
seen somewhat of a recovery on the Southwest Border, though,
with the passenger vehicle and the pedestrian traffic
increasing slightly, 1 to 2 percent last year into this year.
Mr. Payne. Okay. As I wrap up, how does CBP assess risk and
prioritize infrastructure improvements across air, land, and
sea ports to ensure that the investments that go into the
ports, the investment goes into the ports with the greatest
needs?
Mr. Schied. So we have got a strategic resource assessment
process that we use particularly for the land ports of entry.
Each of the environments: Land, sea, air, has a slightly
different approach. They have different authorities and
different ownership models to them. But for the land ports of
entry, we use the strategic resource assessment process.
For the airports, that is generally free space that is
provided by the airports to CBP. So in those cases we are
working with the local airport authorities on their plans for
modernization of those ports. We have--we provide to them a
series of requirements that we look to have included in our
inspectional facilities at the airports. The same is true with
the seaports.
Mr. Payne. Well, thank you. I would like to thank the Chair
for indulging me, and the Ranking Member allowing me to come
over and ask a few questions. Thank you.
Ms. McSally. Absolutely. All right. We are going to do
another round here.
I want to transition to the ports of entry, especially
focus on the land ports of entry and the dire need to upgrade,
expand, and modernize them. As many of my colleagues have
mentioned, the border provides challenges for security, but
also provides opportunity for commerce which is tied to our
economy, growth of jobs. So we have got to figure out how to be
able to let the good stuff in and keep the bad stuff out. The
infrastructure is a main facilitator or barrier to that. We see
that in my community, and many of us have talked about that
already.
Many Members, including myself, are concerned about the
prioritization process. It doesn't seem totally transparent to
us or understandable. I mean, I hear about a capital investment
plan. I hear about a strategic resource assessment process. Mr.
Gelber, you talk about a border master planning process. This
is like making--this is a bureaucracy headache. It doesn't seem
very obvious what the process is to us, what the prioritization
and the criteria are. We want to make sure that it reflects
common-sense criteria, because how you measure and rank order
things obviously can determine the outcome, whatever criteria
that you are using. You know, the obvious things of wait times
and the amount of traffic that is going through and increasing
seem to be obvious. But as we have mentioned here already, the
opportunity cost of what is not coming through, how people are
changing their behavior, businesses are not growing.
We hear about this all the time in our community.
Businesses that want to expand, but because they know they are
bottlenecked related to coming through the Douglas port of
entry, they are not going to be able to expand, people that are
choosing not to come over and spend money or shop, because time
is money.
So how do you measure opportunity costs? How do you measure
whether you have a partner on the Mexican side as well related
to the government or land owners? Talk me through this process
and what can we do to make it more transparent and
understandable for us.
Mr. Schied. Well, I will start with that and then throw off
to Mr. Gelber. So, again, the different environments, and you
focused specifically, I think, on the land ports of entry so
that is where I will focus----
Ms. McSally. Yep.
Mr. Schied [continuing]. The assessment, starts with the
strategic resource assessment. So what that is, is CBP
personnel going to the ports of entry, literally going through
in a checksheet-type fashion and assessing the infrastructure
as it exists. Walking around actually looking at the facility,
how the traffic flows through the facility, looking at issues
like the building systems. Is the facility basically working or
not working. Also interviewing the staff to find out what is
going on with that facility. That gives us basically the
foundation for the existing facilities, what is going on there.
We do work in the regional planning. So we do take into
account--try and factor in, is there projected workload growth
at that location? Try and factor in do the Mexicans or the
Canadians have a project that would need to work with you on
that? What are the local highway and transportation plans? So
we start with that basic resource assessment, then factor in
what else is going on in the environment.
Ms. McSally. Do you include local stakeholders in that or
just the staff?
Mr. Schied. Local stakeholders. So most we are trying to
get the various locations, we are trying to plug into the
regional planning, which usually is going to involve the local
community and the Department of Transportation----
Ms. McSally. Okay.
Mr. Schied [continuing]. As a part of that conversation.
Ms. McSally. How often do you do this? Once a year when you
update your 5-year plan or----
Mr. Schied. So I would say a lot of the conversation is on-
going. The strategic resource assessments, and actually going
out and doing that kind of physical inspection, only happens
every few years.
Ms. McSally. Okay.
Mr. Schied. The actual working with GSA on how much, you
know, what the top priorities would be is an on-going basis but
results in an annual plan.
Ms. McSally. Do you know the last time that you did that at
the Douglas port of entry?
Mr. Schied. Yeah. Last year.
Ms. McSally. Okay.
Mr. Schied. We actually did the walk around.
Ms. McSally. Two-thousand fifteen. Okay. Great. As you
know, the Douglas port of entry has needed modernization for
many years. From our perspective, it has tremendous shortfalls
and limitations to it. We have struggled to find the financing.
Where is the Douglas port of entry on the prioritization list?
Could you please provide the committee with the most recent
capital investment plan? Will you guys please share future
iterations of the plan with this committee, given the
significant interest of our Members? We would prefer not to try
and extract it from you, but actually deliver it to us in a
timely manner.
Mr. Schied. Sure. So we won't provide the list--the
authorization bill that Congress recently passed actually
requires us to provide that to you. So, of course, we will do
that.
Ms. McSally. So when are we going to get it?
Mr. Schied. So I think that--I forget what the exact time
frame was after enactment. I think it was about 3 months after
enactment. So it would be later this spring or summer, is when
owe it to you, and that is when we will deliver it.
Ms. McSally. Okay. I mean, other committees have it
already. So we are just wondering when are you going to deliver
it to this committee.
Mr. Schied. So the other--so that would be a different
report. That would be the----
Ms. McSally. Okay.
Mr. Schied [continuing]. Five-year or the annual 5-year
plan.
Ms. McSally. Okay.
Mr. Schied. Again, we can work with the other committees to
make sure there is no objection on their part to us sharing
that information with this committee as well.
Ms. McSally. Okay. Can you share where Douglas is on your
prioritization plan and how you came to that conclusion?
Mr. Schied. Sure. So Douglas will be in the upcoming plan.
We recognize that as one of the top infrastructure needs that
we have. As you have mentioned, the facility is very
inadequate. It is old. It fails on multiple counts to be the
kind of facility that we want to provide. In the upcoming 5-
year plan, I expect Douglas will be a part of one of the
projects that we seek funding for. It is one of our higher
priorities.
Ms. McSally. Upcoming meaning the one that you have
produced already and delivered to the other committees----
Mr. Schied. So the 2016 plan has not yet come up to the
committees.
Ms. McSally. Okay.
Mr. Schied. So that is working its way through that black
hole that you referred to earlier. Douglas is on that list.
Ms. McSally. Okay. We look forward to following up with
you. Again, we don't have time in this just 5 minutes. But I
really look forward to working with both GSA and CBP to better
understand the criteria that you are using so that we can, you
know, feel more confident that it is a transparent process.
Again, we hear anecdotes that sometimes if, you know, local
governments are helpful or not helpful, there is some
subjective elements there that move projects up or down the
list. We just want to understand what is objective, what is
subjective so that, you know, we can have confidence in the
prioritization process. I know I am way over my time again. But
I have lots more questions. But I am going to hand it over to
Mr. Higgins for a little while.
Mr. Higgins. Thank you very much.
I see that the infrastructure guy isn't here.
Infrastructure is obviously a, you know, very important piece
to all this. I am amazed when I read this story about the new
international bridge being constructed between Detroit,
Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, and the fact that the entire
project is being financed by the Canadian Government. A 6-lane
bridge, and the Canadian Government is also financing the
entire cost of the American plaza.
Total project cost is $2.3 billion. You know, can you
explain to me--can anybody explain to me how this happens, and
why is there seemingly, at least in this project, and
presumably generally a lack of United States Government
commitment to building these critical border crossings?
Again, that profoundly--you know, all of the, you know, the
information coming from the State of Michigan, from the city of
Detroit is that how this international bridge crossing will
profoundly influence favorably the economic prospects of the
State of Michigan and the city of Detroit. Yet, from what I am
reading, there doesn't seem to be any U.S. financial commitment
to the building of this critical international border.
Mr. Schied. So I would start with the funding for that
project is going to come from the tolls that are collected, and
so a lot of the privately-owned infrastructure, there is tolls.
So there is a revenue stream. I think that the position of the
U.S. Government was that that revenue stream could pay for the
plaza. In terms of commitment, though, the U.S. Government is
going to put in substantial commitment to this project because
we will be staffing and operating that facility.
Mr. Higgins. You are staffing and operating a facility
anyhow. I am not talking about the staffing. I am just talking
about the infrastructure commitment to these kinds of projects.
I do understand that the money will be recouped from the
recurring revenue that exists from tolls.
But this project has been delayed substantially because of
lack of interest, lack of will, on the part of the U.S.
Government to contribute. I mean, you know, Canada is a country
of 30 million people. The United States is a country of 323
million people. The economy of our Nation is $19 trillion. Our
budget is $4 trillion a year. Yet there is no infrastructure
investment into this bridge that, to me, speaks to, again, a
larger problem relative to ports of entry throughout the entire
Northern Border.
Mr. Schied. So I would agree with you on the fact that we
do have a challenge on getting the resources necessary to
rebuild a lot of the ports of entry on the Northern Border.
So, I mean, through the--I think we, you know, from a CBP
perspective recognize that the privately-owned facilities, as
well as, the publicly-owned facilities, need substantial
infrastructure investment. Where we can find a private entity
or a local bridge authority that will work with us to make
that----
Mr. Higgins. But don't you think it speaks to a larger
problem when the Canadian Government is financing not only the
full cost of the bridge span between Windsor, Ontario and
Detroit, Michigan, but they are also financing the full cost
and the build-out of the American plaza?
Mr. Schied. I think it does speak to the challenges that we
face----
Mr. Higgins. Yeah well.
Mr. Schied [continuing]. In funding the infrastructure. I
mean, we have got, as I think was alluded to in the
Chairwoman's opening statement, a $5 billion need in terms of
recapitalization. So we do face a significant challenge.
Mr. Higgins. All right. So CBP has projected that $6
billion over the next 10 years would be needed to modernize the
existing inventory of land ports of entry to recent security
and facility demands.
How much of this money is budgeted? I mean, we do a
transportation bill that is typically a bill that is a 5-year
authorization. How much of this $6 billion is funded in that
bill, or does it come from someplace else? If it comes from
someplace else, where does it come from?
Mr. Schied. So of that figure, most of it would need to
come from the Federal Buildings Fund because most of those
ports of entry, particularly the larger ones, are GSA-owned
facilities.
Mr. Higgins. Okay. Let me just--I will finish up here
because I am over. But, you know, when we talk about the
importance of cross-border movement, in terms of National
security and in terms of economic benefit, at the very least to
those communities that are specifically affected by those land
ports of entry, we are falling significantly behind. This is
not a challenge. This is a crisis.
Again, I can tell you that, you know, look at behavioral
economics. You know, when we are confident, we move. When we
are not, we don't. Here is what I know the situation in terms
of behavioral economics at the Peace Bridge. I suspect that
this is pervasive throughout other congested land ports of
entry. That people have adjusted their economic movement, their
behavior, to do what they refer to as avoidance. They avoid a
situation that they are not certain of because there is no
reliability, there is no predictability. The only way that you
build in reliability and predictability is to build in
capacity.
You know, the Peace Bridge in Buffalo was built 89 years
ago. It is the busiest Northern Border crossing between the
United States and Canada. Guess what? It is 3 lanes. The
population of Southern Ontario since that time has increased by
400 percent. So 50 percent of the time you are down to 1 lane
because they use an alternating lane system. I know anecdotally
from people who I know and my experience myself is you don't go
near the Peace Bridge unless you are absolutely--you have no
other choice. That is the wrong message to be sending,
particularly when you look at--the relationship at the Southern
Border is different. I understand that. But the relationship at
the Northern Border is very different as well. For the border
communities that depend on predictable reliable access into and
out of southern Ontario, again, a population center of 12
million people projected to grow another 3 million over the
next decade, and you have that avoidance, we are really hurting
ourselves economically, and we are compromising our National
security.
Ms. McSally. Thank you, Mr. Higgins.
I do want to follow up on the source of funding. Because
right now these very important ports of entry, land ports of
entry are included into the Federal Building Fund. So we are
prioritizing between something that is so important for our
security and our commerce with, you know, office buildings for
some bureaucracy for people to come work, which is--you know,
it is also important that people have a place to come to work.
But to me should not be in the same category.
Should we be somehow moving ports of entry into a different
funding category so it is not mixed in with the Federal
Building Fund, and it is more a part of our infrastructure?
Mr. Gelber, do you have any comments on that?
Mr. Gelber. From GSA's perspective, we would prefer to keep
the CBP inventory as part of the larger Government real
property inventory, so that we can allocate these dollars in
the best way that addresses the entire Executive branch's
needs.
On an annual basis, we allocate approximately $150 million
of funding for CBP projects. This fiscal year we are working on
the Alexandria Bay crossing in New York as well as the Columbus
crossing in New Mexico. We have had a request for the Calexico
crossing in California, and then fiscal year 2018 our request
will be for the Alexandria Bay crossing in New York.
In the out-years of our 5-year plan we set aside in effect
$150 million for funding for CPB's projects once we receive
their 5-year plan. So while it is a difficult issue to balance
the needs of a variety of Federal agencies, we still believe it
is the best way to approach the Government's real property
inventory.
Ms. McSally. Mr. Schied, do you have a similar opinion or
something different?
Mr. Schied. I would just appreciate as much money out of
the Federal Buildings Fund as CBP can get to modernize its
infrastructure.
Ms. McSally. Okay. Great. I also want to ask--often you are
entered into long-term leases for some of these structures. You
know, one of the attempts, just as an example, that Douglas
used to try and fund them was through a bond. The community was
literally going to mortgage its future for the land and any
investment and then was asking to have it be leased back. But
it was denied because it wasn't under the current public/
private partnership, which is--I get that.
But is there not a potential model to also lease back from
local communities that are willing to do bonds to invest in
this infrastructure because they see the benefit? What new
authorities would you need, and is that something you would be
willing to entertain if we gave you those authorities?
Mr. Gelber. That would be something GSA would be interested
in discussing with the committee. Currently the--well what I
will refer to as the Government accounting rules state that for
a lease of that nature that you are referencing requires to be
accounted for all in the first year of the lease. So it is a
significant hit, if you will, on the Federal budget for that
one year even though the payments will occur over a 20, 30--or
20- or 30-year payment period.
Ms. McSally. But you still have long-term leases with other
entities. Right?
Mr. Gelber. We do. Some of those leases are treated as what
I refer to as operating leases. Some other leases incur the
budgetary scoring rules that would make it a little more
difficult to enter into a lease in the manner in which you are
speaking.
Ms. McSally. Mr. Schied.
Mr. Schied. Yeah. I would add to that, part of the public/
private partnership dialogue that we want to have, and part of
I think the advantage of that kind of a program is it does let
the local community approach us with ideas and commitments that
they would be willing to make. I think as we--we are only going
through this the second--this is the second round that we are
going through.
So I think both us and the local communities are still in a
bit of a learning curve as to sort of what is acceptable, what
is not acceptable, what is legally permissible, what is not. I
think as we continue to work through that we might have some
further ideas about, you know, future changes to language or
authorities that would be useful. It also helps us to educate
the local communities about how they might structure a project
that when they do bring it to us it is something that we would
be able to accept.
Ms. McSally. Okay. Great. I just want to close with a
couple final questions on manning, if you don't mind, related
to the manning.
You know, Mr. Reardon, I heard your--thanks for your
testimony and the perspectives of your--the workforce and the
low morale. I mean, I think just from my military experience,
oftentimes low morale comes from a variety of different root
causes. Sometimes it is hardship circumstances. Sometimes it is
leadership culture. There is a variety of different things. I
think of some of the situations you are talking about. But we
have men and women in uniform, in our military, that are often
told on very short notice to deploy for a year over and over
again away from their families. They make it work. Morale is
often very high in very arduous circumstances because we are a
part of something greater than ourselves.
So I don't believe those that are your workforce are just
cash-focused. My hope would be that that is not true. That
there is hopefully a deeper commitment to service and to making
a difference, being a part of something greater than
themselves. There is maybe a variety of other issues that are
associated with this, that hopefully it is not just I want more
cash to be able to, you know, do this particular role. I think
these things sometimes can be complex cultural issues.
But I just want to clarify that. Do you believe there is a
cultural issue or leadership issue, or is this just a monetary
issue for the workforce?
Mr. Reardon. Chairman, thank you for the question. No. I
absolutely do not for one moment believe that it is a monetary
issue alone. I think that rather there are a wide variety of
issues at play here. I do think that there is a leadership
issue. I think that oftentimes our front-line employees are
not--they are not involved in decisions that are made. They are
not asked their opinions on decisions that are made. I think
that is a problem.
I think it is a problem also that when our members believe
that they do really outstanding work, and they do outstanding
work--and let me just for the record say that our CBP
employees, they without question, do this work and are proud to
do this work and proud to do it for this country. There is no
question about that many of them are former military. So I want
to underscore how critically important the work is that they do
and how committed they are to doing the work.
But I think, you know, I mentioned in my earlier comments
about employees feeling valued, you know, and the whole issue
certainly in the military related to esprit de corps, you know,
those kinds of things, as you well know, are important. So if
there is a disconnect between the leadership and the front-line
employees, you have a problem. Oftentimes that goes directly to
the issue of trust.
So, you know, you asked if there are other issues at play
here. I would say absolutely there are. You know, for example,
we have--someone mentioned, I think Mr. Wagner mentioned
earlier, you know, the contract certainly that exists between
CBP and NTEU. We run into situations where certainly in our
view the contract is not adhered to. You know, those kinds of
things, when that happens repeatedly, when the contract isn't
followed, when decisions are made by arbitrators and so on and
so forth, and then CBP continues to push off, you know,
reacting to the arbitrator's decision, for example, forever, I
mean, on and on and on and on, you know, there is a message
that is sent to front-line employees that we don't matter, that
we are not valued. So, yeah, I mean, I think there is--I think
there is a--certainly a cultural issue here.
Ms. McSally. Mr. Wagner, I want to give you a chance to
respond.
Mr. Wagner. Great. Thank you. You know, I agree with Mr.
Reardon. Our employees are motivated by the mission. They are
100 percent behind it and dedicated to it and support it. You
know, it is a great mission to get behind. It is very difficult
jobs that they have. This--it is a very demanding job, and
there is a lot of responsibility on the decisions they make day
in and day out.
They work in very difficult conditions. They work very
difficult hours and places, dangerous places. So these things
do compound themselves. When, you know, when you are short on
resources and traffic is increasing, and, you know, like any
large organization, we struggle with communication efforts. It
does compound itself, and you see these things manifest
themselves in things like, you know, the scores in the FEV
survey. But they are an incredibly hardworking group of men and
women. The sacrifices that they do make I don't think we always
appropriately recognize. You know, someone has to work
weekends, someone has to work holidays, somebody works
Thanksgiving day and Christmas day, and the sacrifices they
make to miss graduations, birthday parties, anniversaries, and
a lot of family time and personal commitments, you know,
someone has to be there. The border has to be open. We just
can't close on a holiday and say: We will be back tomorrow. You
don't have that option. So someone has to work.
We negotiate provisions with the bargaining unit and with
NTEU on how to fairly select people to work those assignments.
You know, somebody has got to work overtime on Christmas day.
It happens. Nobody wants to volunteer. But we have a system
that the low earner on a list, and it is the base of earnings
gets stuck with the longest job, in some sense of fairness and
equity. We try to balance that. It is tough to explain that to
the person who is getting forced to work, the person that
involuntary gets sent TDY to San Ysidro said: You know, we have
23,000 CBP Officers. Why do I have to go? Can't find anyone
else out of all--sometimes it is difficult to explain. We do
struggle with that communication. But I agree 100 percent. Our
employees are extremely hardworking and are motivated. Very
successful at what they do in a lot of very, very challenging
circumstances.
Ms. McSally. Great. Thanks. Just please indulge my time
here. Now that I have got you all here I do have a few more
follow-up questions just, again, related to the manning and
personnel.
One is the, you know, the mandatory age 57 retirement which
backs up to a 37 is the highest age, although that can be
waived, and I understand is waived for veterans. For me, I
think this is an artificial number. I mean, this is sort of
ageism in some regard that you are looking at people, you know,
based on just their age versus their experience. I think about
some of the veterans coming out of the military, if you are an
officer, you are retiring at the earliest at 42, 43. Again, I
know there is exceptions to every rule, but is this a barrier
as you are trying to fill these qualified positions? It just
seems to me that there should be--you should look at people as
individuals and not these blanket age rules. You know, is there
something that we can do to help with that based on the current
mandatory 57 retirement.
Also, it was noteworthy to me--I mean, we were talking
about these thousand and thousands of people that you are
hiring--or that are applying that is coming down to, you know,
just trying to fill these positions. I think in your testimony
you said 40 percent of the applicants don't even show up for
their interview or their, you know, next stage in the
application, which is troubling to me. So we obviously--all
your efforts are trying to find the right people to get into
step 1 so you are not wasting a lot of time casting a huge net.
I mean, what else can we do to assist you in that? Are
there other things that we need to help fast-track? Or is this
just all for you to internally address?
So those 2 quick questions.
Ms. Jacksta. Thank you, Congresswoman. I think you will be
pleased to know that the commissioner has recently raised the
entry age for law enforcement occupations from 37 to 40, and
also from the mandatory retirement age from 57 to 60. He has
the authority to do that for new employees and front-line
occupations. He will do that for a 3-year period.
Ms. McSally. Okay.
Ms. Jacksta. So I think that is very, very good news and
specifically addresses your concern.
Ms. McSally. For a veteran can that be higher than that?
Because, again, the earliest an officer can retire is usually
at 42 from the military.
Ms. Jacksta. I will take that back and research that for
you.
Ms. McSally. Okay.
Ms. Jacksta. With respect to the entrance exam, what we
have found is that we lose 50 percent of our applicant pool at
the entrance exam, and we want to find out why is that
happening? We implemented a survey. Thousands of people
responded. We are in the process of assessing what the results
of that survey indicate.
Early analysis tells us a couple of things. First is upon
further reflection the applicant determined maybe I don't
really want to pursue that law enforcement career. We have an
11-step process that is fairly rigorous, intentionally so.
Second is polygraph acts as somewhat of a deterrent. When
they recognize--when they get scheduled for their entrance exam
and they see all the other requirements and then they finally
realize that the polygraph is one of those requirements, they
say: Thank you, but no thank you. So certainly as we discussed
earlier this morning, we are certainly willing to have a
dialogue with you and other Members of Congress in that regard
and any flexibilities we may want to employ going forward.
With respect to the recruitment, I think this is one of the
No. 1 areas where we need to focus our efforts. We have used
data, 5 years' worth of data, to specifically identify areas in
the country where we have been successful previously in
recruiting officers and agents into front-line positions. That
data has been provided to every field office in every sector in
the country. That is 40 different locations. Each sector chief,
and each director of field operations, has specific goals and
objectives for targeting in those local areas based on what the
data tells us. So we are hopeful that that targeted recruiting
strategy will bear some positive news for us. I will share with
you that early indications are somewhat positive in terms of
our qualification rates, and the hiring process are starting to
see a little bit of an uptick for the good. I think it is too
early to tell whether or not that targeted effort is really
producing what we want. But we are cautiously watching and we
are cautiously optimistic.
Ms. McSally. Can you clarify that the 161 days or so that
it is now taking, is that just for where we have hiring hubs,
or is that the average for all hires?
Ms. Jacksta. That is a pilot that we implemented for hiring
hubs. Our goal by the end of this fiscal year, however, is to
take a look at the entire applicant pool and get at least 50
percent of that applicant pool into some type of hiring hub
construct.
Ms. McSally. So what is the current average for the hiring
time?
Ms. Jacksta. Currently average is about a year-and-a-half.
Ms. McSally. It is still up to a year-and-a-half. Oh, my
gosh. All right. Get on that.
Ms. Jacksta. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. McSally. One last question is, I know the polygraph is
sort of a bottleneck, obviously, for resources and the specific
requirements for that. I am constantly talking about this in
other venues. Are you looking at other deception detection
technologies before the polygraph, early on as somebody is
doing the initial interview or filling out a form to just be
able to identify whether, you know, somebody is just definitely
going to be ruled out that is much cheaper off-the-shelf
technology that might be able to help you filter quickly?
Ms. Jacksta. I will take the specific technology question
back for the record. I will provide a response to you.
What I can share is that there is a pre-polygraph interview
process that occurs before someone actually sits in the chair.
In a number of different cases we have seen that people have
admissions during that process which we know ultimately will
render them unsuitable for employment. When that occurs, we are
able to make that judgment call earlier in the process than we
did historically. As a result, we have been able to streamline
the process significantly.
Ms. McSally. Got it. Yeah. I would love to follow up with
you. I mean, I have constantly talked about some technologies
that have come out of the University of Arizona. But there are
others around the country that are off-the-shelf that can
really help you, I think, quickly identify whether somebody is
being deceptive when they are filling out an on-line form or an
in-person interview, just sensing other things that is not a
full-up polygraph. So I would be happy to follow-up with you as
well on that.
Okay. Thank you for all your patience. I want to thank the
witnesses for all of your valuable testimony and answers to
your questions, and the Members for their questions. The
Members of the committee may have some additional questions for
the witnesses, and we ask that you will respond to these in
writing. Pursuant to committee rule 7E, the hearing record will
be held open for 10 days.
Without objection, the committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:50 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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