Thousands of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers responsible for securing the nation’s ports of entry from terrorists and other threats have not received fundamental training in immigration enforcement duties, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced yesterday. The new GAO report suggests a widespread breakdown of CBP training and ability.
“More than 4,000 customs officers have not completed the immigration fundamentals, immigration law, and agricultural fundamentals courses, although they were required to complete them during a cross-training program,” GAO said in a summary of the report. The report authors added that “the results of [CBP’s] covert tests are not generalizable to the entire CBP officer population. However, they reveal a consistent pattern of weaknesses among the officers tested in their ability to perform basic tasks and these weaknesses have not been corrected.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which administers CBP, prevented GAO from providing much detail about particular security weaknesses. GAO explained that “DHS deemed some of the information in the prior report as Sensitive Security Information (SSI), which must be protected from public disclosure.”
The new report indicates that efforts to correct previously identified errors in CBP training have not succeeded. CBP was formed in 2003 by combining three now-defunct agencies that resided in different cabinet departments — the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Customs Service, and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection service. In 2010, CBP inaugurated a “Back to Basics” training program after testing showed that many officers had not received adequate training. GAO notes that CBP “but has no plans to evaluate the effectiveness of the training.”
GAO recommended that CBP evaluate its training courses, “identify the causes of and system issues underlying” the failures discovered by covert testing of the officers, improve training oversight, and assess the current skill level of CBP officers who may need further training.
“DHS stated that CBP is taking action or has taken action to address each recommendation,” GAO noted.
You can read the full report below.
