[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 170 (Monday, December 10, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2243-E2244]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[[Page E2243]]
CONGRESSIONAL IMMIGRATION REFORM CAUCUS HEARING
______
HON. THOMAS G. TANCREDO
of colorado
in the house of representatives
Monday, December 10, 2001
Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, recently the Congressional Immigration
Reform Caucus held a hearing on INS reform, as well as the connections
between immigration policy and terrorism. Our witnesses gave immensely
insightful testimony. I am submitting the statement of Mr. Mike Cutler
for the record.
Testimony of Michael Cutler, INS Senior Special Agent
Chairman Tancredo, members of the Congress, ladies and
gentlemen, I greatly appreciate this opportunity to share my
views and perspectives which I have acquired during my
roughly 30 years as an immigration officer. I would like to
start out by giving you an overview of my career with the
INS, I will summarize it for you briefly.
I entered on duty with the INS at New York City in October,
1971, as an Immigration Inspector at JFKIA. I ultimately
spent 4 years in that assignment conducting inspections of
passengers arriving at that port and seeking entry into the
United States. During the course of that assignment I was
detailed for approximately one year to an examinations unit
known as the I-130 Unit, so-named because the applications
which we were adjudicating were known as I-130 Petitions.
These are the petitions that are filed by spouses and other
relatives who are seeking to obtain Lawful Permanent Resident
Alien status for their respective spouses, children or other
immediate relatives. My assignment dealt with the I-130
petitions which were filed by either United States citizens
or LPRs on behalf of their alien spouses. My goal in this
assignment was to seek to uncover marriage fraud in which the
marital relationship exists only for the purpose of providing
the alien beneficiary with LPR status.
In 1975 I became a Criminal Investigator or, as it is now
known, a Special Agent. I have remained a Special Agent with
the INS since August of 1975. I have rotated through just
about every squad within the Investigations Branch of the INS
at NYC during my tenure as a Special Agent. I spent several
years, in the aggregate assigned to the Frauds Unit in which
I was responsible to uncover a variety of fraud crimes
involving INS issues, from fraud schemes carried out with the
ultimate goal of obtaining LPR status and/or U.S.
citizenship, to the use of fraudulent identity documents to
otherwise circumvent the laws enforced by the INS.
In 1988 I was assigned to the Unified Intelligence Division
of the New York office of the Drug Enforcement
Administration. In this assignment I was responsible to work
cooperatively with members of the DEA and other law
enforcement personnel and analysts from a wide variety of
other agencies including members of the NYPD, New York State
Police, U.S. Customs Service, Internal Revenue Service,
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Royal Canadian Mounted
Police and British Customs. My assignment here lasted for
approximately 3 and a half years. During this assignment I
decided to conduct a study on the individuals who were
arrested by the DEA by reviewing DEA arrest records. We
determined that approximately 60 percent of the individuals
arrested by DEA and the DEA Task Force were identified as
being ``foreign born.'' Nation-wide approximately 30 percent
were identified as ``foreign born.'' For the 3 years that I
tracked these statistics, there were only slight variations
on the percentages. Although these numbers are now over 10
years old, I imagine that the percentages are probably not
much different.
In 1991 I was promoted to my current position of Senior
Special Agent and assigned to the OCDETF Unit (Organized
Crime, Drug Enforcement Task Force). This assignment requires
that I work with other agencies to investigate, apprehend and
prosecute aliens who are involved in narcotics trafficking
and related crimes.
The INS is charged with the responsibility of enforcing
laws that govern the entry of aliens into the United States
as well as those laws that are involved in the granting of
Lawful Permanent Resident Alien status to aliens and to the
bestowing of U.S. citizenship on aliens.
It is often said that you only get one opportunity to make
a first impression. Generally speaking, the first laws that
aliens entering the United States encounter are those laws
that the INS is supposed to enforce. When the INS fails to
effectively, consistently and fairly enforce these laws, we
are sending a very dangerous message to aliens seeking to
enter the United States. In effect we are telling them that
not only can they expect to get away with violating our laws,
they can anticipate being rewarded for violating our laws!
I have come to think of the INS law enforcement program as
a tripod. The Border Patrol is responsible for enforcing the
laws between ports of entry, the Immigration Inspectors are
charged with the responsibility of enforcing the laws at
ports of entry and the Special Agents are supposed to back up
both of the other two divisions. Each of these components of
the enforcement program, in my opinion, need to be emphasized
equally. Just as a camera's tripod needs to have three legs
of equal length, the enforcement tripod needs to rest equally
on each of its three legs. If you shorten one of the legs on
your camera's tripod, it falls over. This is the reality of
the INS enforcement program. It seems that each time the call
goes out to tighten up on the enforcement of the immigration
laws, the typical response is to hire more border patrol
agents. I am a great fan of the Border Patrol, they do
dangerous and difficult work, however, if we do not also
boost resources allocated to the interior enforcement
mission, the entire enforcement program becomes ineffective.
Aliens who are illegally in the United States don't only come
to this country by running the border. Often, they obtain
visas under assumed identities or violate the terms under
which they were admitted after they enter the United States.
As we have seen with the terrorists, most of them, from what
I have read, appear to have entered the United States with
visas that were issued by the State Department and then
engaged in their treacherous missions. The task of tracking
down such aliens is purely the domain of the Special Agents.
We also need to exploit technology to help us to track
aliens entering and departing the United States. We need to
also use this technology to help prevent aliens and other
criminals from creating multiple identities for themselves,
further complicating the law enforcement efforts of the INS
as well as other law enforcement organizations.
We have heard calls recently for the implementation of a
student tracking system. We have similarly heard calls for
the INS to keep gabs on non-immigrants who violate their
terms of admission (or immigration status). I couldn't agree
more with these goals, however, I would like to know who is
supposed to do this work? If we simply enter this information
in a computerized database, we certainly will become aware of
violations of the Immigration laws, but then what? I presume
that the goal of establishing a tracking system would be done
to enable the INS to remove those aliens who violate their
Immigration status, however, without a cadre of dedicated
Special Agents, who will do the job? Currently, according to
published statistics there are fewer that 2000 Special Agents
of the INS nation-wide. At the present time, there are
approximately 100 Special Agents to cover the southern half
of the state of New York, including New York City.
Clearly this situation is untenable. We need to have many
more Special Agents. We also need to have an agency that
functions effectively. At present, each district office
operates more as a franchise than as a component of a
paramilitary organization. While I agree that each office
needs to have some autonomy to take regional variations into
account, the over-all functioning of the agency should stress
a direct chain of command from Headquarters to each and every
field agent throughout the United States. Each employee needs
to feel that he or she is within the chain of command to
headquarters and the level of accountability should be
directly proportionate with the level that the employ works
at. That is to say, the higher up the chain of command, the
more accountable the employee needs to be. Issues of morale
and attrition rates which have been, in my experience,
virtually ignored, can no longer be ignored. A considerable
sum of money is spent on recruiting and training each law
enforcement officer of the INS. Special Agents require
several years from the time they are hired to the time when
they are truly ``up to speed'' and possess the skills and
abilities that they need to do their difficult and complex
jobs. However, for many reasons, highly qualified agents
often leave the INS shortly after they complete their
training at the Academy. This revolving door is not cost
effective and helps to erode morale and efficiency in those
offices which suffer from high attrition rates. It would seem
that when Special Agents resign they should be given formal
exit interviews to identify the issues which caused them to
leave. To my knowledge, this is not being done. Often the
agents who leave go on to other agencies where many of them
develop successful careers.
The role of the Special Agents is vital. When our nation
was attacked on September 11, 2001, the danger posed by
terrorists became all too clear, however, various criminal
[[Page E2244]]
organizations over the years have also exacted their toll
from our nation and our people. Go back to that statistic I
quoted earlier. Sixty percent of all people arrested in New
York City by the DEA and the DEA Task Force were identified
as being foreign born. Over the years, how many people may
have lost their lives or suffered terribly at the hands of
narcotics traffickers? What of the impact of other criminal
aliens? We have seen the rise of ethic organized crime
throughout or nation. How many more people have fallen victim
to these criminals? The most effective way of dealing with
these criminals is to beef up the interior enforcement
program of the INS. Any law enforcement agency has two
primary goals. Goal one is the detection of crime and the
successful investigation, apprehension and prosecution of the
criminal who commits the crime. The second goal is to be a
credible deterrent to those who would violate the laws which
fall under the jurisdiction of that law enforcement agency.
This goal is directly dependent on how effectively the agency
carries out its first goal. Without an effective interior
enforcement program, criminal aliens are emboldened to
attempt to enter our nation to commit their crimes. They are
not deterred by a program that lacks man-power and
leadership. We need to change the reality and consequently,
the perception. Not only to prevent future terrorist attacks,
but to also deter criminal activities of a wide spectrum of
criminals who still find America to be a ``Land of
Opportunity''.
Please understand, I am not opposed to the lawful entry of
aliens who come to the United States to share the ``American
Dream'', I only take issue with those who come here in
violation of law and who end up creating America's
nightmares. Indeed, my own mother was welcomed by this
country shortly before the Second World War, enabling her to
survive, while her mother, for whom I am named, perished in
the Holocaust. We simply need to know who we are admitting
and having an agency that possesses the resources to not only
tracks aliens who end up violating their Immigration status,
but also has the resources to track them down and ultimately,
when appropriate, remove them from the United States. This
capability is a matter of nothing less than national
security.
____________________