New task forces made up of various components of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that are aimed at improving security along the nation’s southern border and maritime approaches are expected to go operational in July, the head of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said this week.
“Sometime around July the Joint Task Forces will work” that will be led by CBP, the Coast Guard and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Gil Kerlikowske, commissioner of CBP, said on Wednesday at an event hosted by the Brookings Institution.
Last summer DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson began laying the groundwork for the three muiti-agency Joint Task Forces as part of his “unity of effort” initiative, which in part is to help eliminate stovepipes among the different operating components that make up the department.
Joint Task Force-East will be led by a Coast Guard admiral and will be responsible for maritime ports and approaches in the southeast. Joint Task Force-West will be led by a CBP officer and will take charge of the southwest land border and the West Coast of California. Joint Task Force Investigations will be led by ICE and will support the other two geographic task forces and pursue the human smuggling networks.
The task forces are charged with reducing the risk of terrorism to the United States, combating transnational criminal organizations, preventing the exploitation of legal traffic and commerce at ports of entry, countering illegal flows at maritime approaches and between ports of entry, and disincentivizing illegal border behavior.
Johnson told a House Appropriations panel last month in his prepared testimony that the new Southern Border Campaign “will direct DHS resources in a much more collaborative fashion with pre-identified, Secretary-approved, outcomes and targets for the range of threats and challenges.”