Following the release over the summer of an assessment of threats on the northern border, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in January plans to publish a new strategy for the northern border that will be followed later in 2018 by an implementation plan, a senior department official said on Tuesday.

The updated Northern Border Strategy, which will replace a strategy document from 2012, will focus on three key areas: enhancing border security operations, securing and helping trade and travel, and “promoting cross border resilience,” Michael Dougherty, assistant secretary for Border, Immigration, and Trade Policy, told the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security.CAPITOL

“Within each focus area the strategy will describe prioritized activities critical to achieving our goals on the northern border,” he said. “Some of those goals include enhancing situational and operational awareness, improving information and intelligence sharing both inside DHS and with our partners, modernizing our ports of entry, including the expansion of programs and technologies to facilitate rapid processing of trade and travel through the ports, enhancing cross-border response, recovery and resilience activities and capabilities, and improving DHS’ resourcing decisions based upon operational needs and projected threats.”

An implementation plan will be released within 180 days of the strategy’s release.

The threat assessment released in August, at the direction of Congress, led DHS to update its five-year old strategy for the U.S. border with Canada, Dougherty said at a hearing to examine the threats the U.S. faces along the northern border. The new strategy under development is a “whole of DHS effort” that connects “strategy development to our resource allocation process,” he said.

The Northern Border Threat Analysis Report issued by DHS in August said that the two-way flow of illegal drugs along the northern border is the biggest threat the U.S. faces there (Defense Daily, Aug. 4, 2017). It also said that illegal border crossing activity from Canada into the U.S. is low.

Transnational criminal organizations (TCO) and unidentified homegrown violent extremists represent the biggest threats along the northern border, Dougherty told the panel. He added that encounters with criminals from TCOs and extremists “remain infrequent.” Drug smuggling and illegal immigration along the northern border are “low” when compared with the southern border, he said.

At the outset of the hearing, Rep. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), the chairman of the subcommittee, noted that the threat assessment also highlights “significant gaps in our capabilities along the northern border, including insufficient amount of technology, and personnel that makes achieving operational control and situational awareness nearly impossible.” She also cited a 2010 Government Accountability Office report that showed the U.S. operational control of the northern border was less than 2 percent.

Scott Luck, acting deputy chief of the Border Patrol, told the panel said he doesn’t have an update on the level of operational control DHS has of the northern border, noting the Border Patrol is working on one for the forthcoming strategy. Luck said that it’s his “sense” that situational awareness and operational control of the northern border have improved since 2010 with the addition of more technology in places.

Luck specifically mentioned increases of Remote Video Surveillance Systems around the ports of entry, and radar in the Great Lakes region of the Border Patrol’s Buffalo, N.Y., sector, for improving situational awareness. On the hand, the Border Patrol needs more manpower, noting it is down 200 positions on the northern border, he said.

Situational awareness and response capabilities still need to be improved, Luck said.

Dougherty said later in the hearing that the new Northern Border Strategy will help drive the acquisition of the appropriate technologies for use along the northern border.