In 1970, Gene Kranz, the flight director for the ill-fated Apollo 13 Mission took charge of NASA's seemingly impossible goal of returning three American Astronauts alive to the earth after a catastrophic failure of the Service Module. His now famous quote was, “Failure is not an option!” He knew that had NASA failed, those three valiant astronauts would have paid for the failure with their lives. As we all know, those astronauts were, indeed, safely returned to the Earth and, I had the great fortune of meeting the commander of that mission, Jim Lovell at the souvenir shop at the Johnson Space flight Center in Houston while on a weekend break from my training at the Border Patrol Academy in 1972.

Today we are here seeking to answer the question as to whether or not our nation is safer from the threat of terrorism four years after the failures of a number of agencies unwittingly conspired to enable terrorist to succeed in launching the worst terrorist attack in the history of our nation, resulting in the slaughter of approximately 3,000 human beings who lost their lives because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Today, failure, once again is not an option, yet, it is my belief, that at least where the immigration component to the issue of national security is concerned, we are at least as vulnerable today as we were on September 10, 2001. Potentially, many thousands of lives are in jeopardy. For NASA and its leaders, failure was not an option because 3 lives hung in the balance. Approximately 3,000 lives were violently obliterated in the worst terrorist attack ever committed on our soil 4 years ago, yet where the enforcement of the immigration laws are concerned, we have seen little more than failure after failure.

Our nation has sent Border Patrol agents to Iraq to secure the borders of that beleaguered nation while our nation is failing to secure our borders. A lack of adequate jail space causes the Border Patrol to engage in the insane policy known as “Catch and Release” in which aliens who are from countries other than Mexico (so-called OTMs) are often permitted to head for the interior of the United States after they are processed by the Border Patrol and given administrative notices known as Notices To Appear, a document that advised the alien in question to appear at an immigration office for a deportation or removal hearing. Because only about 10 to 15% of these aliens appear for such hearings, the Border Patrol agents often refer to these documents as “Notices to Disappear!” This absurd situation enables aliens from many countries to gain access to the interior of the United States including potentially gang members, drug traffickers and terrorists.

Our nation is failing to enforce the immigration laws from within the interior, seeking to apprehend those aliens who fail to appear for hearings and aliens who gain unlawful employment. The law states that it is illegal for an employer to knowingly hire an illegal alien, yet not a single employer has been fined in the last year for knowingly hiring illegal aliens. Our nation is failing to restore integrity to the process by which aliens are accorded a number of benefits ranging from authorizing students to change schools, granting resident alien status to aliens and naturalizing aliens, conferring upon them the greatest privilege our nation has to offer an alien, United States citizenship. When I have testified before Congressional hearings I have made the point that while it is the prospect of gaining employment in the United States that draws the majority of illegal aliens across our borders, immigration benefit fraud enables them to remain in the United States and hide in plain sight. When we grant an alien resident alien status, or even more significantly when we afford them United States citizenship and the United States passport that they become entitled to, we not only facilitate their travel into the United States, but we also facilitate their travel into many other countries on the strength of that passport.

These failings leave our nation vulnerable to terrorists, drug traffickers and violent gangs yet there is no apparent coherent game plan to change this. We continue to permit aliens from 28 countries to enter the United States under the auspices of the Visa Waiver Program. When a British subject was found to have brought bombs on board and airliner concealed in his shoes, our government quickly began to require that all passengers preparing to board airliners be searched for possible bombs concealed in their shoes. The fact that Richard Reid could have entered the United States under the Visa Waiver Program was ignored by our government and continues to be ignored, even the though the terrorists who bombed the London underground could also have sought to enter the United States without first securing visas in order to seek entry into the United States. The requirement of securing a visa prior to seeking to enter the United States is significant on three levels. First of all, the visa application process serves to offer an additional layer of protection to our nation, affording our visa-issuing officials with an opportunity to more thoroughly screen aliens applying for admission to the United States. Second, the application for a nonimmigrant visa can provide highly useful information to investigators conducting an investigation of aliens who seek to enter the United States. Finally, aliens who commit fraud on a visa application face 20 years in jail if the fraud was committed in conjunction with narcotics trafficking, 25 years where the visa fraud is committed in conjunction with terrorism. In fact, suspected terrorists are often prosecuted for visa fraud when it is the easiest charge to bring against individuals who seek to attack our nation. Al Capone, the infamous gangster who operated in Chicago in the 1920s was ultimately imprisoned for tax evasion and not for racketeering, bootlegging, gun running or murder, even though he was involved with all of those criminal activities. The investigation and prosecution of terrorists and other serious criminals for committing visa fraud is a great prosecutorial tool, however, aliens who enter the United States under the Visa Waiver Program cannot be prosecuted for visa fraud because they did not require a visa when they entered the United States.

When I testified before the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security on May 5 th of this year, just four months ago, I was outraged to hear that where immigration law enforcement is concerned, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has no mission statement! This was the message of Richard Stanna, the Director of the GAO that deals with immigration-related issues. How can an agency succeed when it doesn't even know what it wants to do? Failure should not be an option, but it is what passes for business as usual as we near the fourth anniversary of 9/11. The new agents who have been hired by ICE are not getting the necessary foreign language training that they need to be effective in carrying out their duties and their oaths of office. We still have just slightly more than 2,000 agents assigned to attempting to enforce the critical immigration laws from within the interior of the United States. The Real ID Act that was proposed by Chairman Sensenbrenner and other members of the United States Congress, and enacted earlier this year, was a good step in the right direction and I commend him for his leadership with that critical piece of legislation, but it is only a first step that addresses one of many issues that all need to be addressed if we are to secure our nation against terrorists and others who would do harm to our nation and our citizens.

We have seen just how unprepared our nation has been to deal with the devastation that was inflicted by Hurricane Katrina. I am afraid that we are similarly unprepared to deal with a massive terrorist attack. It has been said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of Cure.” The best way to prevent a terrorist attack from being committed within our borders is to keep terrorists from entering our country. The security of our country begins at our borders. Our nation's continuing failure to secure our borders is outrageous as are the other failures I have enumerated.

From an immigration perspective, I regret that in my judgment, our nation is no safer today than it was on September 10, 2001.