Michael Cutler -- Homeland Security? What Homeland Security?

The Boston Globe article is important because it deals with nothing less than the security of our nation and the safety of our citizens. This is literally a news report about life and death.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 the administration which had just taken office began to implement the biggest re-organization of the federal government in many decades. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security was supposed to protect our nation from the continuing threat of future terrorist attacks. It certainly provided the illusion that the administration was determined to secure the homeland.

Some of the measures that were implemented were useful. However, as those of you who have read my commentaries, read my Congressional testimony or heard me speak on television and radio programs and at conferences I have attended around the United States know that I am extremely dissatisfied with the progress (or lack thereof) in truly protecting our nation and our citizens.

I have been so angered and frustrated that I have, on occasion suggested that the DHS should be renamed the Department of Homeland Surrender!

How in blazes can the administration and our nation's "leaders" honestly speak about "Homeland Security" when there are millions of foreign citizens in our country in violation of law? We have no reliable way of knowing the identities of these millions of illegal aliens. We don't even know, with certainty, what their nationalities are. We don't know about their possible criminal histories or affiliations with criminal or terrorist organizations. We don't know what their intentions are and there are so many of these illegal aliens in our country that if we were to somehow gather them into one place and drew a chalk line around them, they would constitute the 2nd or 3rd most populace state in our country!

Even legal immigration is so mishandled that the fraud rate stands at some 90% in some areas where aliens are granted lawful immigrant status!

Report after report issued by the Office of the Inspectors General of several agencies and the GAO (General Accountability Office) paint a horrifying picture of nonfeasance, misfeasance and malfeasance by USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services).

Incredibly, when DHS was created a wall was erected between the components of the immigration administration and enforcement program. As bad as the former INS was, the creation of two distinct agencies, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) included the interior enforcement elements of the old INS. This includes the special agents of the INS and the officers of the Deportation and Removal Branch, the administrative equivalent of the probation department. Additionally, ICE also folded in special agents of Secret Service and the U.S. Customs Service. It also included the GSA police that are charged with protecting federal buildings. Finally, TSA employees were also folded into this unwieldy bureaucracy. CBP (Customs and Border Protection) included the U.S. Border Patrol, another former component of the INS along with from Legacy INS, Legacy Customs and the U.S. Agriculture Department.

Finally, as I noted above, USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) became a "stand alone" agency that adjudicates all of the various applications filed by aliens seeking everything from a change in immigration status and extensions on their authorized period of admission to the acquisition of lawful immigrant status and even United States citizenship.

Many of the managers at ICE and CBP came from Legacy Customs. They have little or no background in the enforcement of the immigration laws and just as little interest in enforcing those critical laws. I have heard from some of the disgusted employees at those agencies that their bosses are more concerned with counterfeit designer luggage and jeans than they are about counterfeit passports!

The first director of USCIS was a guy by the name of Eduardo Aguirre. You would have imagined that the director of an agency that had such serious national security implications would bring a wealth of experience in law enforcement with him to this important component of Homeland Security. In point of fact, he had previously been the director of the private bank of the Bank of America. Yes, that Bank of America- the bank that encouraged illegal aliens to apply for credit cards and accepted Mexican Matricula Consular cards and ITIN's instead of SSN's.

His successor, Emilio T. Gonzalez had an impressive military background, but the job he had immediately before being assigned to USCIS was to work for a law firm that specialized on lobbying activities, Tew Cardenas.

I testified at several hearings before various committees on the topic of the merger of those dissimilar agencies. To succinctly sum up what I had to say, the merger of Legacy Customs and Legacy INS plus several other agencies constituted a "shotgun" wedding that I predicted would never be consummated!

On May 5, 2005 I provided testimony at a hearing conducted by the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims on the topic:

"NEW ''DUAL MISSIONS'' OF THE IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES"

You can read the transcript of that hearing by clicking here.

Add to all of this the fact that the potentially deadly Visa Waiver Program is being expanded when, in fact, it should have been terminated on September 12, 2001.

What is astounding about all of the discussions about the "War on Terror" is that there is absolutely no mention of the role of immigration law enforcement in conjunction with efforts aimed at preventing terrorists who want to enter our country and embed themselves within our country to enable them to attack our nation!

While Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff boasts about how the administration has doubled the number of Border Patrol agents so that there are now purportedly more than 18,000 such agents, there is absolutely no mention made of how many special agents are at ICE. In fact, I have been told that the number of ICE special agents is considered national security information! Supposedly the rationale is that they don't want the terrorists to know how many agents are "out there."

I believe that they don't want the American citizens to know how few agents are enforcing the laws for our nation.

I believe that there are about 6,000 special agents at ICE and somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 ICE special agents are dedicated to enforcing the immigration laws for the entire country. This is an outrage!

New York is the safest big city in the United States. With more than 8 million residents, the city of New York has more than 36,000 police officers. It was recently announced that an additional one thousand cops were to have been hired but won't be because of the downturn in the economy. Immediately concerns were raised about the potential that this loss of one thousand additional cops would have on crime rates! Meanwhile, there are somewhere between two and three times as many illegal aliens scattered across the entire country as there are residents living in the city of New York. Yet the number of ICE agents is just about 10% the number of police officers who protect New York City!

It must also be noted that ICE special agents are supposed to conduct many investigative and enforcement missions in addition to seeking to arrest illegal aliens. They are supposed to enforce sanctions against employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens. They are supposed to work cooperatively with other agencies in narcotics, organized crime and terrorism investigations. These agents are supposed to conduct investigations into fraud document vendors and those who concoct fraud schemes to circumvent the immigration laws. They are supposed to conduct investigations into alien smuggling.

When was the last time you heard anyone in a leadership position even talk about thee critically important missions?

The news article below, did not even talk about the enforcement of the immigration laws from within the interior of the United States!

I regularly speak at a seminar conducted in Washington, D.C. involving employees of various intelligence agencies and the military. Not long ago, while doing my presentation a young lady at the rear of the room seemed to be upset with my discussion about illegal immigration. I stopped speaking and turned to her and asked her what was bothering her. She told me that many members of her family had been immigrants and that she was uncomfortable with what I had to say about the risks of having millions of illegal aliens in our country. I told her that my mother was also an immigrant, but the difference between an immigrant and an illegal alien was equivalent to the difference between a houseguest and a burglar.

I decided that an analogy might help her to understand my perspective so I asked her what she would do if that evening she decided to grab a midnight snack before going to sleep. To flesh out the scenario I asked her how would she react if she went downstairs to the kitchen from her bedroom and in passing the living room on her way to the kitchen, if she saw a half dozen people milling about in her living room she did not recognize, what would she do? I asked her, "Would you simply pour yourself a glass of milk, grab some cookies and head to your bedroom?"

On the other hand, I asked her if she thought it would make more sense to call the police.

Without hesitation, as you might expect, she said she would call the police.

I responded by telling her that the United States has the equivalent of millions of strangers milling about our country in communities from coast to coast and border to border. I asked her, "How safe could that possibly make you feel?"

After my presentation was completed she came over to me and told me that the analogy I provided her with helped her to gain a new perspective.

I hope that this works for you as well.

We the People must make our voices heard!

Right now the administration and members of Congress are moving forward with their plans to create an amnesty program for millions of illegal aliens currently living in our country in violation of law and we know absolutely nothing about them.

The open border advocates are providing hefty campaign contributions for the politicians and making their voices heard. They are determined to foist Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) on this country and our citizens. If they succeed, there will be no way to undo the damage or reverse the process.

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Many people complain that the politicians don't listen to us. The point is that few Americans are even trying to be heard. The apathy and silence of the vast majority of Americans must end!

As members of a democracy We the People have more than the right to speak out, we have the obligation of speaking out!

Michael W. Cutler graduated from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York in 1971 with a B.A. in Communications Arts and Sciences. Mr. Cutler began working for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in October 1971 when he entered on duty as an Immigration Inspector assigned to John F. Kennedy International Airport. In August 1975 he became a Criminal Investigator (Special Agent) for the INS at NYC.

He rotated through virtually every squad in the Investigations Branch. From 1988 until 1991 he was assigned as the INS representative to the Unified Intelligence Division (UID) of the DEA in New York. In 1991 he was promoted to the position of Senior Special Agent and was assigned to the Organized Crime, Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) which required that he work with members of other law enforcement agencies including the FBI, DEA, ATF, U.S. Customs and local and state police as well as law enforcement organizations of other countries including Israel, Canada, Great Britain and Japan, to conduct investigations of aliens involved in major drug trafficking organizations. He retired from the INS in February 2002, after a career that spanned some 30 years.

Finally, Michael Cutler has appeared on numerous television and radio programs including Lou Dobbs, Fox News, MSNBC and many other television and radio news-oriented programs to discuss the enforcement of immigration laws.