26 field offices nationwide and in puerto rico. opr field offices are responsible for investigating allegations of criminal and serious administrative misconduct, reporting investigative results to the principal offices, conducting integrate training to i.c.e. employees and guidance to all offices within their areas of responsibility. the inspections division reviews i.c.e. offices, programs and detention facilities to ensure compliance weapons agency regulations, policies and standards in order to provide executive management with an independent review of the agency's organizational health and assess the efficiency of the overall i.c.e. mission. finally, the security division is responsible for the implementation of agencywide security programs including personnel, physical information, operational and counter intelligence. screening employees on the front end is an important step we take toward ensuring the integrity of our mission. our vigorous screening process

includes preemployment security checks followed by periodic background investigations every five or ten years. once employees are on board, we apply proactive training measures and oversight and management of employees at every level to ensure the integrity of the i.c.e. workforce. the i.c.e. ethics office providing training and guide tons all employees with respect to standards of conduct and the federal conflict of interest statutes. collaboration among federal agencies is critical to the mission of enhancing employee integrity. in 2010, i.c.e. and cbp entered into a memorandum of understanding whereby internal affairs investigators are assigned to field offices to participate in all investigations of bbp employee criminal misconduct enabling management to make informed decisions when considering alternative administrative remedies. this has solidified i.c.e.'s commitment to providing complete and timely awareness of

involvement and investigations of cbp employees. recently dhsoig transferred cases involving i.c.e. employees. the cases regard cbp employees worked in conjunction with internal affairs and opr will provide monthly status updates. we will have taken aggressive steps to ensuring all allegations are swiftly addressed. i speak for director morton when i say that i.c.e.'s leadership proud of the integrity of our workforce. thank you for your continued support of i.c.e. and its law enforcement mission. >> and thank you, mr. moynihan. let me reiterate, we certainly appreciate you being here and your testimony. we will asked either director morton or someone at a deputy or policy level to appear before this committee. and unfortunately, your agency

failed to produce that witness. with that, the chair now recognizes himself for five minutes for questioning. you know, i worked in the public integrity section in the department of justice. i serve now on the ethics committee. so i've always believed that public service is a public trust. while the vast majority of your employees are honest and hard working, unfortunately, the actions of a few bad apples tainted the entire organization. and the purpose of this hearing is not to taken the the overall organization at all. but rather to look at the specific abuses and determine how can we fix the problem. and i'll go with each agency. i'll start with you, mr. winkowski. cbp, you know, the allegations of border patrol agencies, cbp officers working with drug traffickers to facilitate their

business is just unconscious snabl. and you know the threat from a national security standpoint. you know they're trying to infiltrate our organization. i want to first ask you about your polygraphs that you do conduct with employees prior to employment. if you can elaborate on what some of your findings have been in terms of these preemployment screeningsing. >> yes, thank you very much, mr. chairman for that question. as i mentioned in my oral interview, we've begun -- we began doing polygraphs in 2008, and we've done about 10,000 polygraphs, about 400 a month. come january of 2013 under the anti-border corruption act, we're mandated to do all law enforcement officers and we will meet that mandate of 2013. matter of fact, we'll meet that sometime this summer. so this summer, we'll have 100% of our law enforcement officers

undergoing a polygraph prior to coming on board as a law enforcement officer. so, of those 10,000 polygraphs that we've done, we have discovered a whole host of individuals that applied to be either border patrol agents or customs and border protection officers. the polygraph was able to identify individuals that had a very, very questionable past. let me give you sempl examples, mr. chairman. we had a case where between 2002 and 2009, al applicant smuggled several bundles of marijuana within the united states and was paid $200 on at least three occasions, the applicant personally unloaded duffel bags of drugs from vehicles and stored them at his residence and the applicant also accepted $1,000 in exchange for allowing vehicles loaded with marijuana

to be stored at his home. so the polygraph was able to be identify that and obviously, the employee was not hired for a law enforcement position. and another example, in march of 2009, the applicant and a friend became involved in transportation of cocaine and marijuana. the applicant's friend profited an unknown amount of the transportation of marijuana and he proved from $3500 for the transportation of the cocaine. so we have these individuals that in some cases i believe their sole purpose of wanting to become a customs and border protection officer or border patrol officer is to infiltrate us. we have robust background process while we have am skoal type systems i talked about in my oral reply, we really believe that the polygraph is he going to be a real game-changer for

us. so we're ready for that. we've been doing polygraphs but come this summer, everybody will undergo one. i think one of the things also that is both you and the ranking member has talked about were the national security positions. i view the cbpos and the border patrol agents as national security positions. and as such, i think we need to take a different view of that will position so for example, while we're starting the polygraph prior to their employment and weeding out those individuals that are deceptive, our data indicates that really an officer goes on the other side about 8.8 years into service. so the question becomes while we have data mining and we're doing am skoes and looking for anomalies and we have the periodic reinvestigations every

five years, i think we need to be looking at polygraphs throughout the employee's career. i think that is very, very important and we'll work with the office of personnel management towards that end, but i couldn't agree moral with what you said and mr. keating said about the national security positions. >> let me say i agree with you that it really is a national security issue, and i think the cases that you discussed in terms of preemployment screening with polygraphs demonstrates that they are trying to infiltrate our law enforcement. >> yes. >> there are other law enforcement agencies that require post employment polygraphs. and you and i talked about this yesterday. can you tell me some of the hurdles? because as a former public corruption prosecutor, usually the corruption occurs after employment. >> yeah. >> after they've been down on

the border or points of entry where they're then corrupted by organizations with high dollar amounts to infiltrate the united states with drugs and human trafficking. so can you elaborate on what would be the challenges and hurdles to require post employment polygraphs. >> one of the challenges that we have is working through the hiring it policies that we have and the office of personnel management, and i'll make it very clear. we have not approached the office of personnel management on this particular issue but we will do that. i have asked my staff to begin the process of identifying what those hurdles are. so you know, the anti-border corruption act clearly gives us the authority on the preemployment. we need to work through

internally with our personnel office as well as the office of personnel manage. to look at what it will take to do polygraphs from the standpoint of at the time of the periodic reinvestigations and in between those periods of time whether it's looking for reasonable suspicion or looking at more like a drug screening type of process where randomly we do polygraphs. i think we have a lot to learn from other agencies that employ polygraph on a more routine basis and we're going to undertake that endeavor. >> let me just say, i'd like to work with you and cbp. i hope the ranking member would like to join me in this in terms of changing that policy and certainly if any legislation is required to look at making that change, i think this is vitally important. i'll try to keep my time

limited. but mr. duncan, turning to tsa, allegations and indictments of tsa employees stealing personal belongings of passengers, improper luggage screening which after we saw the latest attempt out of yemen to potentially smuggle an explosive device on to an airplane, again, a national security issue. we can't afford to have corrupt tsa officers. so what is tsa doing to address that? >> sir, there's three aspects to tsa's efforts to prevent and detect the kind of corruption that the committee is justly concerned about. the first echoes what mr. winkowski has discussed in terms of background checks to make sure that we're not hiring people into tsa who are going to be problems. in the last three years, our background checks have actually disqualified more than 5,600

applicants who were subject to criminal history checks, financial checks, and other mechanisms to make sure we're not bringing people in who have vulnerabilities. the second aspect really has to do with prevention and we have undertaken various prevention initiatives in the wake of scenarios such as honolulu where we did determine that there was a large number of bags not being screened or subject to security. and some of the working groups is we've created in the wake of honolulu have focused on identifying tools that local leadership can use to prevent and detect violations of our security protocols. i know there's some recommendations that they've come up with working in conjunction with our investigative office and those are focusing on metrics and on other kinds of reports that can be used by field leadership so that we can you know, identify

difficulties before they blossom into full blown corruption. >> because my time is limited. a 22 count zirnlths employees took payments to provide dug couriers access through the los angeles international airport so drugs could be smuggled into the united states. that is outrageous and really unacceptable. i understand what you're trying to do prescreening. as i understand it, you mentioned a system, a tracking system that you're implementing to basically a systemic tracking system to look at this misconduct. you have 400 different offices out there. yet, it's not integrated into one system. i understand you're trying to develop that. when do you anticipate that that will be completed? >> i don't have a specific time frame for you, sir, but i know as a result of the ig audit that has recently been released that the tsa is working not just on

coming up with a workable single definition of security breaches but to overhaul its reporting system so that security breaches are reported consistently, that they're validated and that headquarters gets the information from all 450 airports so they can study it and come up with more comprehensive. >> what's the time frame when this wouldable completed. >> i'll have to get back to you on that. >> moving on to i.c.e., you know, accepting thousands of dollars in bribes to provide documentation, you know, ties to drug trafficking organizations, you know, this is exactly the kind of thing the terrorists want to exploit getting documentation to get into the united states and attack the american people. again, this is just really unacceptable. what are you doing within i.c.e. to remedy this? >> mr. chairman, we have a vigorous preemployment screening

process and a thor role background investigation to try to weed out those individuals on the front end prior to employment. .subsequent to that, there was constant all new employees go through ethics and integrity training. we have an annual requirement to take an awareness program, a policy for all employees to refresh responsibilities and rules of conduct. the all new supervisors attend, get extensive of integrity training as well as all law enforcement officers. we put out constant guidance regarding the guidelines and reporting employee misconduct. oftentimes information is received from a co-worker that sees something doesn't seem right or they have actually information. we kind of constantly are going back and educating the workforce and making sure that they know what the standards of integrity, what the agency expects from them and the proper ways to

report that. then i discuss briefly about we have office the located nationwide upon receipt of the allegation, we are required to refer to the dhsoig and maybe work in an investigation clab ra it havely with them. or refer it back to our office and we would address it as swiftly as possible. >> in conclusion, we need to move on. i looked at some of your manuals. there's really -- doesn't seem to be nel overarching policy within i.c.e. and there's no specific ethics policy for i.c.e. employees. it's very generic. and i would ask that you maybe go back and look at that in terms of specific ethics policies that you could direct towards your employees. a lot of this is just common sense though. and you know, as i said public service is a public trust. when you seep that violated in these egregrious examples, it's

just unacceptable. and again, overall, though, the majority of employees are honest and hard working, do a great job every day. with that, i now recognize the ranking member. >> thank you, mr. chairman. a couple comments i want to make. first of all, taxpayers are spending enormous amounts of money to try and make sure that are safety is ensured in their travel. and american citizens are going through enormous personal intrusions themselves going through the gate, getting screened, getting scanned. having their belongings gone through. this is a very serious matter. and i would think given the fact that our security and what the public puts into in that at this hearing, we would at least get the people that were requested from tsa and from i.c.e. to show up. that will to me says something about how seriously they're

taking this issue or how not seriously they're taking this issue. i want to be clear about that in the beginning secondly, this is just an old saw that we've had before my time here, as well. the 9/11 commission has made it clear that one of the primary problems that has to be addressed is the issue of jurisdiction. and this patchwork quilt of jurisdictions conflicting with each other still is with us. and it seems in every hearing we have, it's an underlying theme that we have, and i think it's here again today. so it prompts a couple questions i have. mr. edwards and mr. winkowski, last year in testimony before the senate committee on homeland security and government affairs, commissioner burlison stated and i quote that there is more than tension and friction between cbpia and dhsiog. so between customs and border and department of homeland

security. there was outright confrontation in an unacceptable situation. that's the end of the quote. the fact that both part of one department of homeland security had to enter into a memorandum of understanding in the first place for oig to perform a function that sta statute ril belongses to that office raises some grave kernz. has the inclusion of cbpia employee as required by that memorandum improved that cooperation at all? even though we had to do that to get there, has that improved the situation? >> thank you, senator, for the question. august 11th of last year, i signed the mou with commissioner burlison. i can assure you that we have taken every step to work closely in a number of my offices i have cbpi agents working closely jointly with us on cases.

there is absolutely no turf battle. oig, cbp and i.c.e., we're all working together because this is not just a dhs problem. this is a problem for the entire nation. we want to make sure that we address each investigation effectively and in a timely manner. >> just a couple of comments. i agree with mr. edwards that the mou i believe has done a good job of really laying out the path forward as mrs. moynihan had indicated, cases are being transferred from the ig over to i.c.e. and cbp is part of that process. so i think we've come a long way since former commissioner about your son's testimony. >> just a couple of questions too that came to mind.

if it's possible to give us a generalization. the bulk of the people that have been involved in this corruption, unethical conduct, what's their salary range? i know, you know, i just want to give a generalization. how much are these people getting paid, most of them that are committing these things? >> i would say in the average a base salary when you look at a border patrol agent or a cb pp officer at the gs-12 level which i think is about $675,000 a year and then there's overtime associated with that. >> pretty good. >> especially when you look at the southwest border, there are some of the highest paying individuals down there in some of those communities. >> a question for mr. edwards. your office has primary authority over the investigation instances of public corruption and employee misconduct. within the department of homeland security. however, you have the right of first refusal there as well.

now, recently, there's that right has been heavily exercised and your office has transferred hundreds of cases to cbp and i.c.e. to handle. what contributed to that? was it a result of a backlog that you did that? what contributed to that backlog, if that's what led to this? >> sure. thank you, sir. we had he 2350 open cases. and il have 219 agents. clearly, the workload for each agent is more than 12 kays per agent. i've been working actively with cbp to have their agents detail to our office to work the cases jointlily. there's 38% increase if border patrol allegation corruption in the last several years. border patrol agents have doubled in size. oig has not had the resources that it had requested. in short, i cannot keep piling

up these cases. i need to act on it. this is a dhs problem that we have to address. so under my supervision, i have transferred 374 cases of named subjects to cbp, i mean i.c.e. opr. i'm not transferring any crcl cases. it's employee corruption, program fraud analyst mainious cases. 301 of who is it cases with cbp cases and 73 of those cases are i.c.e. cases. still because iso pr has an average of 4.5 cases per agent. so clearly i'm taking their resources and you know in some of my female fraud cases an agent is carrying 25 cases. clearly i cannot keep taking these cases long time to close. i need to bring resolution to these cases quickly. sore this one time on the named subjects we took that effort.

out of the 2350 cases, 40% of them are unnamed subjects. we have an analysis group to vet those unnamed cases but cbp also has those resources, so does i.c.e. so our intention on this to work jointly on these unnamed subjects and try to see if we can come up on some leads on that and investigate. i think talking to john morton and dave aguilar, this is a joint effort and this is one time i'm fairly confident with the many ises we have put in place and with this initiative, we're going to address this problem effectively and as soon as possible. >> and it's partially resulting in your budget situation? >> absolutely, sure. >> i want to be clear on that. with that, mr. chairman, i yield back. >> i thank the ranking member. the gentle lady from new york is recognized. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. i thank all of our panelists for coming in to share their insights with us this morning. i want to follow up and pick up

on mr. keating's last question and ask that both mr. edwards and mr. moynihan respond to this. from physical year 2010 to the present, i.c.e. opr has received a total of 26,983 allegations of employee misconduct. some involved corruption. while others did not. in any event, this number is extremely high. in addition to investigating these matters, i want to know does i.c.e. opr work with i.c.e. at large and cbp to encorporate lessons learned from these investigations into new standards and procedures and given what you just stated, mr. edwards, having to deal with the budgetary constraints, you know, how does this actually work out when i.c.e. seems to have a whole host of their own

investigations to conduct? i mean, i think if you add up all of the allegations together, i don't even know how personnel is able to manage. but that's for you to answer. >> yes, ma'am. thank you for your question. even for oig, the complaints we received in fi 12 so far has been 10,438. nonetheless, i think even before this investigation, this is -- there needs to be an all the components are doing is the proactive effort in terms of the prescreening, the preemployment screening, the periodic background investigation, sbeth grit briefing, ethics briefing. we do a number of those as well and let the employees know what to look for when there's potentially fraud happening. then when the allegation comes in, we go through the vetting process just like i.c.e. does the same vetting.

and when a criminal case is there, then we worked jointly not only with i.c.e. opr, with i.c.e. hsi, with fbi, with any number of partners jointsly because the aggressively we try to do this is going to get to a resolution sooner. so looking at our caseload and what i.c.e. has presently, i 24i6 this effort that they've taken on is going to address these problems quickly. >> thank you, ma'am. >> first i'd the joint intake center which is like the central clearing house for i.c.e. and cbp for reporting allegations from misconduct as well as other reportable information, it's a clab raltive information and sits in cbp's office space and staffed by both i.c.e. and cbp internal affairs personnel. it's a great working relationship and collaboration that's existed since the creation of dhs. the number represented as far as allegations, those are actually items that were reported to the

joint intake center. so they involve lesser degrees of miskungt or items such as lost, missing stolen property things that are not necessarily allegation based. so that number seems much larger. it's things we want to the document and make sure there's a proper record of. but not all those 26,000 allegations are true allegations of misconduct and warrant investigation. and i can get back to you as far as a specific number of what was. from our case inventory perspective, we have about 600 cases in our inventory right now and in addition to the 374, that mr. edwards will be transferring here shortly. but we're working closely with cbp intempbl affairs. full participation. weeps during this transfer, obviously, it's a big you lift. it's a large number of cases at one time. we've set up teams together to triage, look at cases that have viable leads and most egregrious

allegations that are showing us the greatest vult neshlt. we'll do that in an effort to address them as quickly as possible and the most serious -- >> my question is, what happens with those employees who are -- who have alled to do something? do they remain in their posts? you know, how is that handled because certainly you know, we're concerned about the public. and interactions with these individual who have alleged to have some sort of misconduct, whatever that may be. and also their colleagues. you know, sometimes one bad apple can spoil a bunch. so, you know, how is that managed? >> absolutely. ma'am, i also want top before answering your question about the unable of open cases, i just want to make it clear, you know, we have open cases and we have closed cases but as