Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Thursday said that he is establishing three new joint task forces to apply a more integrated approach to security and investigations along the nation’s southern border, part of a new strategy for securing that land and maritime border from Florida to California.

Joint Task Force-East will be responsible for maritime ports and approaches in the southeast, Joint Task Force-West will take charge of the southwest land border and the West Coast of California, and a the standing Joint Task Force for Investigations will support the other task forces, Johnson said as part of remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. Photo: DHS
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. Photo: DHS

The task forces are one component to a new department-wide Southern Border campaign that Johnson said will take advantage of the assets and personnel of Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Coast Guard, Citizenship and Immigration Services and other resources. He said that the department is “discarding the stove pipes.”

“Our overarching goals will be effective enforcement and interdiction across land, sea, and air, degrade transnational criminal organizations, and do these things without impeding the flow of lawful trade, travel, and commerce across our borders,” Johnson said. “We are now in the midst of developing the more specific plan to pursue these goals, and associated metrics.”

A Coast Guard official, Deputy Commandant for Operations Vice Adm. Charles Michel, is in charge of a DHS planning team that is creating the action plan to accomplish the goals of the new campaign, Johnson said.

“These efforts, the department-wide campaign planning and Joint Task Forces, will enable more effective, more efficient, and more unified homeland security and border security efforts across our Southern border and approaches,” he said.

DHS didn’t provide further details about the new task forces or when they would be stood up. Johnson said they will each be headed by a senior department official who will direct resources of the relevant agencies into the task forces.

Johnson said his southern border strategy is in line with the risk-based approach the department is taking to homeland security.

“Today we have the intelligence capability, surveillance equipment and technology to do more,” Johnson said. “Much of that is already deployed on the border today. We need to go further in this direction, so that we can focus our resources where our intelligence and our surveillance tell us the threats exist. This is a smart, effective and efficient use of taxpayer resources.”

To better help the public understand the state of border security, Johnson said that DHS is developing metrics to measure security efforts. These metrics will be made public, he said, adding that the staff of the Office of Immigration Statistics is being augmented with new statisticians.

Johnson said that over the past 15 years, the administrations of Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama have continued to increase the resources and manpower dedicated to securing the southern border. He said that apprehensions along the Southwest border have declined in the past 15 years and are now one-third of 2000 levels and at the lowest levels since the 1970s. He pointed out that apprehensions of illegal aliens are a measure of illegal border crossing attempts.

Johnson also used the speech as an opportunity to fire back at critics of the administration who claim that security along the Southwest border is lacking.

“Not enough has been said publicly by our government, in a clear, concise way, about our border security efforts on behalf of the American people,” he said. “And, in the absence of facts, the American public is susceptible to claims that we have an open, porous border, through which unaccompanied minors and members of terrorist organizations such as ISIL may pass.” ISIL stands for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and is the army of terrorist fighters that United States and coalition air forces are engaging in Iraq and Syria.

Pointing to allegations made a month ago that four persons apprehended at the border were suspected of terrorist ties in the Middle East, Johnson said these individuals, who were arrested and are detained and awaiting deportation, said they claim to be members of the Kurdish Worker’s Party, which is fighting ISIL and defending territory in Iraq.

He also said that the numbers of unaccompanied minors showing up at the border is at its lowest since January 2013.