CQ Homeland Security - Government Reorganization

Tuesday September 27, 2005

The new leader of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should have extensive law enforcement and management experience, some lawmakers and experts say.

They say Julie L. Myers, the administration’s choice to head the federal government’s second-largest investigative agency, does not fit that description.

“This is a 20,000-person agency that didn’t exist until a couple of years ago, and doesn’t work very well at all,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies. “I wouldn’t want the job if I were [Myers].”

Krikorian said the former head of ICE, and several heads of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), were short on immigration and law enforcement experience. However, he said, “I can’t think of anybody who had as little experience as Ms. Myers in that position.”

Parts of the INS were folded into ICE when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was formed in 2003. ICE’s only confirmed leader — Michael J. Garcia, now U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York — was acting INS commissioner and a federal prosecutor before he joined the new agency.

James Ziglar, who preceded Garcia, did not have an immigration background but was an old friend of then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss. Gary McNary, President George H. W. Bush’s nominee to head the INS, also lacked immigration experience.

Before joining the INS, Ziglar was the 35th sergeant at arms and doorkeeper of the Senate and worked 23 years in public finance as a banker and a lawyer. McNary was a prosecutor and four-term county chief executive — both elected positions — in St. Louis County, Mo., before he was nominated as INS commissioner, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Lingering Questions

Last week, Susan Collins, R-Maine, chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said she wanted Myers to answer more questions before the committee would vote on her nomination.

DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, meanwhile, vigorously defended his former chief of staff.

“This is a superbly qualified former prosecutor, someone who has been involved with law enforcement from virtually every side of the issue,” Chertoff said of Myers on CBS’s “Early Show” on Sept. 21. “I don’t think you could find many people with a range of experience and qualifications that she has to address the precise kinds of questions that come up in the customs and immigration enforcement area.”

Charles Showalter, president of the National Homeland Security Council of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), said the union has not taken a position on Myers.

However, he said, whoever occupies the top post at ICE must be willing to enter into a “partnership” with the union, which represents about 7,800 ICE officers and 14,200 other DHS employees.

“I never had a sit-down with Garcia, though I met him,” Showalter said in a telephone interview. “I would like to have a sit-down with Ms. Myers. That is a standing offer from us. I hope she will take advantage of it.”

Showalter said the ICE chief should solicit feedback from officers and make sure they get what they need. “Let’s face it, this is law enforcement,” he said. “Ms. Myers, I’m sure, is a fine attorney. I understand she’s done tremendous work on money laundering, and I respect that. But to be effective, she’s going to have to listen to what officers on the ground . . . tell her they need. We’re not asking for ice cream; we’re asking for the basics — equipment and training — so we can be safe.

“Our officers want to know that they’ve got someone steering the ship who has experience in law enforcement and knows what the day-to-day trials are.”

Myers, 36, was Chertoff’s chief of staff while he was at the Department of Justice. She is the niece of Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the wife of Chertoff’s current chief of staff, John F. Wood.