Proposed Legislation on Citizen Feedback on Govt Services

So, do you think your voice regarding the federal government goes unheard? Actually it is heard and it is scored. At issue is whether any substantial corrections are made. This proposed legislation may help and it is a step at least in the right direction.

Most of us don’t bother to even voice or register complaints. Perhaps we should rethink that. Who even knew in the first place there was a tally operation on public comments and it is referred to as ‘customer service’? Hah…

Problem is there is not an agency does not have issues….okay then, let the games begin…read on.

Primer: OMB belongs to the White House:

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) serves the President of the United States in overseeing the implementation of his vision across the Executive Branch. Specifically, OMB’s mission is to assist the President in meeting his policy, budget, management and regulatory objectives and to fulfill the agency’s statutory responsibilities.

OMB carries out its mission through five critical processes that are essential to the President’s ability to plan and implement his priorities across the Executive Branch:

  1. Budget development and execution.
  2. Management, including oversight of agency performance, human capital, Federal procurement, financial management, and information technology.
  3. Regulatory policy, including coordination and review of all significant Federal regulations by executive agencies.
  4. Legislative clearance and coordination.
  5. Executive Orders and Presidential Memoranda.

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Congress could be poised to take on the federal government’s customer service problems.

Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., Wednesday introduced the Federal Agency Customer Experience Act, bipartisan legislation that would simplify the process agencies go through to gather public feedback about their customer service.

The bill would roll back requirements that force agencies to go through lengthy approval processes to gather voluntary feedback from citizens and customers, and further creates both legislative and executive oversight mechanisms to oversee how agencies deliver services.

“The bill also directs agencies to post the results to their websites and requires them to use the feedback they receive to improve government services,” Lankford said in a statement. “We must do more to increase federal customer service and remove unnecessary requirements that make basic services tedious and overly bureaucratic.”

The legislation mandates agency heads—or designated officials—collect voluntary feedback from customers “with respect to services of or transactions” made by the agency.

Feedback would be gathered across all channels based on both standardized questions created in tandem by the leaders of the Office of Management and Budget director and the General Services Administration, and agency-specific questions developed by senior officials. Those questions would revolve around customer satisfaction, such as the professionalism and timeliness of federal action and potentially other metrics.

Agencies would be required to submit customer service reports based on the feedback they collect to OMB and to post it on their websites. In addition, the legislation would create a centralized website that links to all agencies’ customer service reports.

“Most people think interacting with the federal government is unpleasant—but at the same time we’re making it difficult for agencies to ask the public how they can improve—it makes no sense,” McCaskill said. “This law will allow the federal government to better identify specific customer service issues and start to implement changes to make the government work better for the American people.”

Congress, too, would get regular updates on how agencies perform with regards to customer service.

The bill would require the U.S. comptroller general to deliver scorecard reports “assessing the quality of services provided to the public” of agencies to the Senate.

Fixing the government’s customer services woes—the government routinely ranks below industry—could unite Republicans and Democrats in much the same way the government’s IT issues have. The Obama administration elevated customer service as a major issue, yet agency progress was minimal.

Max Stier, CEO of the government-focused nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, said the Federal Agency Customer Experience Act will help agencies improve their service delivery.

“The important legislation introduced today by Sens. Lankford and McCaskill will allow agencies to continue to improve by helping them better understand the concerns of the public, continue to improve in the delivery of services and increase citizen satisfaction,” he said in a statement.

Mexico’s Cartel Kids and a Deadly State

Reuters: The Mexican army says its fight against surging opium production that feeds U.S demand is increasingly complicated by the rise of smaller gangs disputing wild, ungoverned lands planted with ever-stronger poppy strains.

The gangs have engulfed the state of Guerrero in a war to control poppy fields, turning inaccessible mountain valleys of endemic poverty and famous beach resorts into Mexico’s bloodiest spots.

Colonel Isaac Aaron Jesus Garcia, who runs a base in one of the state’s most unruly cities, Ciudad Altamirano, told Reuters on an operation to chop down poppies high in the Guerrero mountains that violence increased two years ago when a third gang, Los Viagra, began a grab for territory.

Bodies are discovered almost daily across the state, tossed by roads, some buried in mass graves. In Ciudad Altamirano, the mayor was killed last year and a journalist gunned down in March at a car wash.

“These fractures (in the gangs) started two years ago, and that caused this violence that is all about monopolizing the production of the drug,” Jesus Garcia said.

From this frontline of the fight against heroin, Jesus Garcia sees a direct link between a record U.S. heroin epidemic that killed nearly 13,000 people in 2015 and violence on his patch.

“The increase of consumers for this type of drug in the United States has been exponential and the collateral effect is seen here,” Jesus Garcia said.

REUTERS/Henry Romero

Heroin use in the United States has risen five-fold in the past decade and addiction has more than tripled, with the biggest jumps among whites and men with low incomes.

Jesus Garcia said the task of seeking out poppy fields in one of Mexico’s poorest and least accessible regions, rising above the beach resorts of Acapulco and Ixtapa, was practically endless.

His 34th Battalion and others send platoons of troops on foot for month-long expeditions every season. They set up camps and fan through treacherous terrain, part of a campaign that destroys tens of thousands of fields a year.

One such field visited by Reuters was deep in a lawless region six hours from Ciudad Altamirano through winding dirt roads thick with dust that rose into the mountains.

It was irrigated by a lawn sprinkler mounted on a pole that spritzed water over less than a hectare of poppies and fertilizer bags were piled nearby, basic farming techniques the soldiers nevertheless said were a sign of growers’ new sophistication.

A dozen troops fanned out, chopping down the flowers with machetes.

HIGHER YIELDS

Army officials said gangs use poppy varieties that produce higher yields and more potent opium from smaller plots, and that its higher value is driving violent competition between gangs.

“Now we see more production of poppy in less terrain, and it has to do with the quantity of bulbs each plant has,” said Lieutenant Colonel Jose Urzua as he showed bulbs oozing valuable gum from slits. He explained opium is often harvested by families.

In these tiny mountain hamlets opium has grown for decades, officials said, but a coffee plague and the U.S. opiate epidemic has led farmers to plant much more.

The harvest has become central to Guerrero’s economy, also dependent on cash sent home by immigrants.

One army official said the field seen by Reuters could produce around 3 kilos (6.6 lb) of opium, fetching up to $950 per kilo from traffickers who sell it for up to $8,000.

“There aren’t many alternatives here,” said a woman selling soft drinks and snacks from a pine shack by a dirt road. Her husband grows poppies, and she said anyone who runs a business faces extortion by gangs.

***   Image result for cnn no way out cartel kids CNN

(CNN)It was the second deadliest conflict in the world last year, but it hardly registered in the international headlines.

As Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan dominated the news agenda, Mexico’s drug wars claimed 23,000 lives during 2016 — second only to Syria, where 50,000 people died as a result of the civil war.
“This is all the more surprising, considering that the conflict deaths [in Mexico] are nearly all attributable to small arms,” said John Chipman, chief executive and director-general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which issued its annual survey of armed conflict on Tuesday.
“The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan claimed 17,000 and 16,000 lives respectively in 2016, although in lethality they were surpassed by conflicts in Mexico and Central America, which have received much less attention from the media and the international community,” said Anastasia Voronkova, the editor of the survey.   
In comparison, there were 17,000 conflict deaths in Mexico in 2015 and 15,000 in 2014 according to the IISS.

Rising death toll

Voronkova said the number of homicides rose in 22 of Mexico’s 32 states during 2016 and the rivalries between cartels increased in violence.
“It is noteworthy that the largest rises in fatalities were registered in states that were key battlegrounds for control between competing, increasingly fragmented cartels,” she said.
“The violence grew worse as the cartels expanded the territorial reach of their campaigns, seeking to ‘cleanse’ areas of rivals in their efforts to secure a monopoly on drug-trafficking routes and other criminal assets.”
Mexican drug cartels take in between $19 billion and $29 billion annually from US drug sales, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Rivalries between the cartels wreak havoc on the lives of civilians who have nothing to do with narcotics. Bystanders, people who refused to join cartels, migrants, journalists and government officials have all been killed.

Not on news agenda

Jacob Parakilas, assistant head of the US and the Americas Programme at London-based think tank Chatham House, said part of the reason for the relative lack of attention paid to Mexico in the international media is “it’s not a war in the political sense of the word. The participants largely don’t have a political objective. They’re not trying to create a breakaway state. It doesn’t come with the same visuals. There are no air strikes.
“Also this has been going on since the beginning of the modern drug trade in the Americas. It’s not news in that sense. And Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a journalist. They are intentionally targeted in Mexico, which puts a dampener on the ability to report on this.”
Drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is facing trial in New York.

There have, however, been significant arrests in relation to the Mexican drug trade in recent times.
Damaso Lopez Nunez, a high-ranking leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, was arrested on May 2 in Mexico City and could face charges in the US, authorities said.
His arrest follows January’s extradition of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is accused of running the Sinaloa cartel — one of the world’s largest drug-trafficking organizations.
He awaits trial in New York on 17 counts accusing him of running a criminal enterprise responsible for importing and distributing massive amounts of narcotics and conspiring to murder rivals.

World conflict deaths fall

The number of conflict fatalities globally edged down last year, from 167,000 to 157,000, according to the IISS.
This was the second successive annual drop — 180,000 people were killed in 2014.
The number of deaths in Syria fell from 55,000 in 2015. But there were 1,000 more deaths in Afghanistan last year than 2015 and 4,000 more in Iraq.
Voronkova from the IISS said: “Civilians caught amid conflict arguably suffered more than in the preceding years. Between January and August, 900,000 people were internally displaced in Syria alone.”
The internal displacement figures were 234,000 for Iraq and 260,000 for Afghanistan.

 

China Hacked the FDIC, will Trump Sanction?

Beyond not trusting Russia, the same holds true for Iran. But then there is China. Trump should never allow China to take the lead in handling North Korea. Anyway, back to hacking and covert hegemony in Latin America.

Related reading:

Problems uncovered after employees walk off job with thousands of SSNs on flash drives.

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China hacked FDIC, US officials covered it up, report says

China’s spies hacked into computers at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation from 2010 until 2013 — and American government officials tried to cover it up, according to a Congressional report.

The House of Representative’s Science, Space and Technology Committee released its investigative report on Wednesday.

It presents the FDIC’s bank regulators as technologically inept — and deceitful.

According to congressional investigators, the Chinese government hacked into 12 computers and 10 backroom servers at the FDIC, including the incredibly sensitive personal computers of the agency’s top officials: the FDIC chairman, his chief of staff, and the general counsel.

When congressional investigators tried to review the FDIC’s cybersecurity policy, the agency hid the hack, according to the report.

Investigators cited several insiders who knew about how the agency responded. For example, one of the FDIC’s top lawyers told employees not to discuss the hacks via email — so the emails wouldn’t become official government records.

FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg is being summoned before the Congressional committee on Thursday to explain what happened.

The FDIC refused to comment. However, in a recent internal review, the agency admits that it “did not accurately portray the extent of risk” to Congress and recordkeeping “needs improvement.” The FDIC claims it’s now updating its policies.

Given the FDIC’s role as a national banking regulator, the revelation of this hack poses serious concern.

The FDIC’s role is to monitor any bank that isn’t reviewed by the Federal Reserve system. It has access to extremely sensitive, internal information at 4,500 banks and savings institutions.

The FDIC also insures deposits at banks nationwide, giving it access to huge loads of information on Americans.

“Obviously it’s indicative of the Chinese effort to database as much information as possible about Americans. FDIC information is right in line with the deep personal information they’ve gone for in the past,” said computer security researcher Ryan Duff. He’s a former member of U.S. Cyber Command, the American military’s hacking unit.

“Intentionally avoiding audits sounds unethical if not illegal,” he added.

Congressional investigators discovered the hacks after finding a 2013 memo from the FDIC’s own inspector general to the agency’s chairman, which detailed the hack and criticized the agency for “violating its own policies and for failing to alert appropriate authorities.”

The report also says this culture of secrecy led the FDIC’s chief information officer, Russ Pittman, to mislead auditors. One whistleblower, whose identity is not revealed in the report, claimed that Pittman “instructed employees not to discuss… this foreign government penetration of the FDIC’s network” to avoid ruining Gruenberg’s confirmation by the U.S. Senate in March 2012.

David Kennedy, a computer security expert and former analyst at the NSA spy agency, worries that federal agencies are repeatedly hiding hacks “under the blanket of national security.”

“With such a high profile breach and hitting the top levels of the FDIC, it’s crazy to me to think that this type of information wasn’t publicly released. We need to be deeply concerned around the disclosure process around our federal government,” said Kennedy, who now runs the cybersecurity firm TrustedSec.

This same committee, led by Republican Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas, has previously criticized the FDIC for minimizing data breaches.

Several cybersecurity experts — who have extensive experience guarding government computers — expressed dismay at the alleged cover-up.

“It’s incumbent upon our policymakers to know about these data breaches so we can properly evaluate our defenses. Trying to hide successful intrusions only makes it easier for the next hacker to get in,” said Dan Guido, who runs the cybersecurity firm Trail of Bits.

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***  China’s Great Leap Into Latin America

U.S. President Donald Trump’s opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement and his withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership have led some critics to claim that the United States is turning its back to regional trading partners, and that Trump is thus freeing up China to make inroads into Latin America. But China’s presence in the Western Hemisphere is already well-established, having predated Trump’s election by almost 20 years. Beijing’s involvement in the region is subject to the ebb and flow of the region’s economic and political changes, but it stems from the needs both of China and corresponding Latin American capitals.

But if China’s position has long since become a fixture in the hemisphere, it is equally true that U.S. policymakers have been remarkably complacent over the years as the growing Chinese presence has necessarily impacted not only the region, but U.S. political, economic, and security interests. That needs to change.

China’s interest in Latin America is both economic and strategic.  It was the accelerating Chinese economy’s voracious appetite for raw materials that keyed its entry to the region, a land of plenty when it comes to natural resources. Iron, soybeans, copper, and oil make up the bulk of Chinese imports from the region. In turn, securing access to Latin American markets for the export of Chinese manufactured products became a priority as well.

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Economic Push

The numbers are staggering. China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and its bilateral trade with Latin America and the Caribbean has since skyrocketed, from $15 billion in 2001 to $288.9 billion in 2013 — an increase of almost 2000 percent. That number now represents 6 percent of China’s total foreign trade, an increase from 2.7 percent in 2000. (Some 13 percent of Latin America’s trade is now done with China, up from negligible levels in 2000.)

In the past decade, China’s two biggest development banks have provided $125 billion to Latin America — more than the combined total lending of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. China is now Latin America’s largest creditor. In addition, between 2000 and 2015, Chinese leaders visited the region more than 30 times.

Last November, Chinese President Xi Jinping made his third trip to the region since 2013, announcing a plan to double bilateral trade and to increase investment stock value by 150 percent over the next decade.

Not Just Economics

China also has significant geopolitical interests. It wants to project power and influence in an area long considered to be within the U.S. sphere of influence — no doubt a response to what Beijing considers U.S. efforts to contain and encircle China in Asia by cultivating allied and friendly governments.

Critical to China’s aspirations as a growing global power as well is what it calls global governance reform. In translation, that means Beijing uses its growing trade and financial might to challenge the architecture of the U.S.-dominated post-World War II order and alter it along lines more favorable to China. Beijing sees developing its own alliances through trade and loans as an important way to counterbalance U.S. influence and to secure support in multilateral forums on such important issues to Beijing as human rights, climate change, and economic governance.

It bears noting that China considers its principal regional economic and political interlocutor to be the Community of Latin America and Caribbean States, an organization established by the late Venezuelan firebrand Hugo Chavez that purposefully excludes the United States and Canada.

Finally, it is no coincidence that of the 22 countries that diplomatically recognize Taiwan, 12 are in Latin America and the Caribbean. China wants specifically to erode this support for Taipei. As a Chinese white paper on Latin America and the Caribbean in 2008 put it succinctly, “the One China principle is the political basis for the establishment and development of relations between China and Latin America.”

Changing Times

Chinese demand for commodities keyed its entry into the region and helped produce one of Latin America’s fastest periods of growth in decades, but the times are changing. Lackluster global economic growth and the cooling Chinese economy (which has contributed to the end of the global commodity boom) have resulted in a drop in Chinese imports from and exports to Latin America in recent years. Indeed, over the past year regional revenues from commodity exports to China dropped some 40 percent.

Latin America is also changing politically. China’s initial push into the Western Hemisphere was facilitated by the rise to power of a host of leftist populist governments — a phenomenon collectively referred to as the Pink Tide. Many leaders, foremost among them Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, were determined to distance themselves from the United States and from institutions perceived to be allied with Washington. These leaders were happy to align themselves with China, which adheres to a supposed policy of non-interference in countries’ internal affairs. That equally suited a number of Latin American governments, which proceeded to undermine democratic institutions and the rights of their citizens.

However, with the bust in oil prices and other commodities exposing the economic dysfunction of the populist model, frustrated voters are shifting their support to more pragmatic, market-friendly governments. These governments can be expected to operate in a more sober and transparent manner, and to be more respectful of democratic institutions, eschewing the opaque, behind-the-scenes deals that China previously thrived on. With less opportunity to present itself as the buyer or lender of last resort, China will find itself needing to adapt to a more challenging and competitive environment.

Beijing seems to be adjusting well: China’s evolving economic strategy is now one of diversification, with an emphasis less on traditional industries such as mining and energy extraction and more on sectors such as infrastructure (including energy, airports, seaports, and roads), construction, telecommunications, manufacturing, finance, agriculture, tourism, and even the space sector.

Implications for the United States

China’s authoritarianism, global designs, and disregard for international norms and practices raise serious questions about the impact of its engagement in the Western Hemisphere on the promotion of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. In recent congressional testimony, U.S. Southern Commander Adm. Kurt Tidd put it like this:

For Russia, China, and Iran, Latin America is not an afterthought. These global actors view the Latin American economic, political, and security arena as an opportunity to achieve their respective long-term objectives and advance interests that may be incompatible with ours and those of our partners. Their vision for an alternative international order poses a challenge to every nation that values non-aggression, rule of law, and respect for human rights — the very same principles that underlie the Inter-American system of peace and cooperation. Some of what they’re doing — while not a direct military threat — does warrant examination. Even seemingly benign activities can be used to build malign influence.

This was certainly evident in recent years, with China providing anti-American governments with an alternative source of trade, investment, and finance outside conventional institutions that ordinarily require some conditionalities on good governance, transparency, anti-corruption efforts, human rights, and the rule of law.  In some cases, it didn’t create major problems. In others, such as Venezuela ($65 billion in Chinese loans) and Ecuador ($11 billion), Beijing bankrolled authoritarianism and human rights abuses, undercutting U.S. efforts to promote its policy agenda in the Americas and setting the stage for the chaos now underway in Venezuela.

Yet it is not as though the United States can block or impede Chinese trade and investment in the hemisphere. It is also important to keep things in perspective: U.S. trade with Latin America is still three times larger than China’s. Nor can China match our proximity, cultural and familial ties, and long shared history. The best response therefore to the Chinese presence in the Western Hemisphere is to do what the United States does best: compete.

The situation is best approached as a strategic competition in which the United States employs its comparative advantages and the above described strengths to secure its role as the preferred partner of choice for our Latin American neighbors. China may have the cash advantage, but it cannot compete with the United States in terms of the aforementioned, nor in the agreements shared throughout the Western Hemisphere on rules-based behavior, transparency, and a belief in economic opportunity, strong institutions, and the rule of law. The United States also boasts a 50-year record of promoting sustainable long-term regional development and humanitarian projects, a commitment to corporate social responsibility,  and — not to put too fine a point on it — laws that prohibit bribery and other corrupt practices that often undermine the public’s faith in their systems.

This is in contrast to the Chinese presence, where cultural differences, radically divergent value systems, and different ways of doing business often impair mutual understanding and trust. China also has a poor record on human rights, anti-corruption practices, and environmental and labor conventions. (In many cases, Chinese construction companies import Chinese workers, spurring local resentments over lost employment opportunities.)

On the economic front, many economists worry that China’s demand for raw materials harkens back to Latin America’s bad old days of too much dependence on commodity exports. Neither do they see purchasing Chinese manufactured goods in return as being conducive to long-term development. Again, in contrast, the United States provides meaningful value-added, job-creating investment in the region while purchasing the sort of manufactured goods that generate more jobs.

Game On

Whatever professions of a win-win economic situation for all, or of China’s benign intent, China’s position in Latin America affects the U.S. agenda and regional stability — and Beijing has the resources and motivation needed to adapt to changing circumstances and to remain such a regional fixture for the foreseeable future. That is why U.S. complacency is not an option. Competition need not be hostile, just determined. In particular, the Trump administration has an excellent opportunity to press the U.S. advantage by drawing closer to regional heavyweights Brazil and Argentina, who are attempting to shake off the legacies of years of statist economics. These are countries where China has been particularly active. Each now has a market-friendly president desperate to produce economic growth and draw foreign investment.

A reinvigorated U.S. engagement with the hemisphere will reap significant benefits for the U.S. economy. It will create new investment opportunities, including in the energy sector, but it will also drive up the cost of doing business for Beijing. That China continues to expand its presence in other regions such as Asia and Africa is one thing, but encroaching in our own neighborhood more directly impacts the U.S. national interest. It’s time for America to pay closer attention.

Less than 1% of Visa Overstays are Captured

Note: Former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson signed his name to a report dated January 2016 on the matter of ‘visa-overstays’. Nowhere in the report does it state all the systems and databases are not connected or using old technology and software. Click on the link above if you want to see the tables published by country. In the summary this paragraph was included:

Due to continuing departures by individuals in this population, by January 4, 2016, the number of Suspected In-Country Overstays for FY 2015 had dropped to 416,500, rendering the Suspected In-Country Overstay rate as 0.9 percent. In other words, as of January 4, 2016, DHS has been able to confirm the departures of more than 99 percent of nonimmigrant visitors scheduled to depart in FY 2015 via air and sea POEs, and that number continues to grow.

Image result for visa overstay report  NBCBoston

Homeland Security can’t keep up with more than 1 million immigrants who have overstayed visas

Homeland Security has built up a backlog of more than 1.2 million illegal immigrants who it believes have overstayed visas but managed to arrest only about 3,400 of them, according to the most recent data, which works out to a rate of about 1 in every 350 lawbreakers.
That is far worse than the rate for those who crossed the border illegally, and it means criminals, people engaged in narcoterrorism and other national security risks are left to run free in the U.S., the Homeland Security inspector general said in a report Thursday.
Federal agents have trouble tracking down the criminals because the government still doesn’t monitor departures, meaning it can’t be certain whether those who came on tourist, business or student visas leave when they are supposed to.
Officers have to check as many as 27 in-house systems, in addition to state databases, to try to guess whether someone has left. Even then, they can make catastrophic mistakes when it wrongly appears that a visitor has left the country.

“Such false departure information resulted in [deportation] officers closing visa overstay investigations of dangerous individuals, such as suspected criminals, who were actually still in the United States and could pose a threat to national security,” the investigators said in the report. “For example, an ERO officer stated that a suspect under investigation was listed as having left the country, but had given his ticket to a family member and was still residing in the United States.”
Visa overstays, as they are called, have become an increasing focus of the immigration debate. As the flow of illegal border crossings declines, an increasing percentage of those in the country illegally are travelers who came on business, tourist or student visas but didn’t leave when their time was up.
Several of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers were overstays.
Homeland Security has struggled to get a handle on the situation, or even to figure out how bad it is.
A report last year looking at just a portion of visas calculated that more than 500,000 visitors overstayed in 2015. The total backlog grew to more than 1.2 million, the inspector general said.
Meanwhile, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested only 3,402 potential overstays in 2015.

(Advance this video to the 18:40 minute mark and listen to the statistics on inbound travelers under the Visa Waiver Program) What could go wrong on this program?


In its official response, ICE said it is trying to do a better job of calculating the number of visa overstays.
President Trump has pushed the Homeland Security Department to finish the system that would track departures, and tests are being run at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta.
The department also plans to release its next overstay report soon. That report will cover almost all visa categories, so the government will have a better sense for how bad the problem is.
But Rep. Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that until the government tracks all departures, it won’t know what’s going on.
“Visa security is a matter of national security, and it is imperative that we know who is coming to our country and when they leave so that we protect American citizens and our interests,” the Virginia Republican said.
Congress demanded a biometric entry-exit system more than 20 years ago, but administrations in both parties have failed to deliver, saying that airports aren’t configured to check departures and that the land ports of entry are an even bigger logistical hurdle.
Mr. Goodlatte said he expects Mr. Trump’s focus on immigration to finally push Homeland Security to finish the job.

Until then, officers will waste time on bogus leads, the inspector general’s report said. The data are so unreliable that officers and agents often end up finding an overstay still in the country who the systems said already had left, or spend time trying to track down someone who did leave the country or obtained legal status.
“An ICE officer estimated that he spent more than 50 hours on a single suspect, only to find the individual had applied for [an immigration] benefit and should not have been categorized as an overstay,” the audit said.

Iraq: Sallyport Global = Sex Trafficking, Alcohol, Lax Security

Sheesh…..typical for a government contractor and in Iraq.

U.S. Firm in Iraq Overlooks Smuggling, Security for F-16s

WASHINGTON (AP) — The two American investigators felt a sense of foreboding that Sunday as they headed to an emergency meeting with their boss on the Iraqi air base. But they didn’t expect to be surrounded by armed guards, disarmed, detained against their will — and fired without explanation.

It was March 12 — less than two months ago. Robert Cole and Kristie King were in Iraq working as investigators for Sallyport Global, a U.S. company that was paid nearly $700 million in federal contracts to secure Balad Air Base, home to a squadron of F-16 fighter jets as part of the U.S.-led coalition to annihilate the Islamic State.

** Click here for video

Cole and King had spent more than a year together in Iraq investigating all manner of misconduct at Balad and beyond.

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They’d uncovered evidence that Sallyport employees were involved in sex trafficking , they said. Staff on base routinely flew in smuggled alcohol in such high volumes that a plane once seesawed on the tarmac under the weight. Rogue militia stole enormous generators off the base using flatbed trucks and a 60-foot crane, driving past Sallyport security guards.

Managers repeatedly shut down Cole and King’s investigations and failed to report their findings to the U.S. government that was footing the bill, the investigators said.

Right before they were fired, Cole and King had opened an investigation into allegations of timesheet fraud among Sallyport employees. In a call with Sallyport lawyers, they said, they were advised to keep two sets of books about potential crimes and contract violations.

“One for the government to see and one for the government not to see,” King told The Associated Press.

The company said that the investigators misinterpreted the instructions.

In a statement to the AP, Sallyport said it follows all contracting rules at the base, home to the F-16s that are a key to the fight against the Islamic State.

“Sallyport has a strong record of providing security and life support services in challenging war zones like Iraq and plays a major but unheralded role in the war against ISIS,” Chief Operating Officer Matt Stuckart wrote. “The company takes any suggestion of wrongdoing at Balad very seriously.”

More than 150 documents obtained by AP, as well as interviews with more than a half-dozen former or current Sallyport employees, show how a contractor ran amok after being hired for lucrative and essential combat support operations. The investigators and other witnesses describe grave security breaches and illegal schemes that went unreported until the government asked about them.

The point behind requiring contractors to employ their own investigators was to limit the waste and corruption that has marred federal security contracting going back to the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Pentagon’s own auditors, who were frequently on the base 50 miles north of Baghdad, were not told of the serious problems until early this year, a potential violation of law. The Pentagon auditors’ reports, obtained by the AP, detail dozens of more minor infractions. That gap illustrates the limits of U.S. oversight for billions of dollars in contracts run by companies that have cashed in on the fight to protect Americans from extremism.

The Defense Department declined to comment.

The morning of March 12, King had gone to church and was still carrying her Bible when she and Cole walked into the office foyer for the meeting with the boss. To their astonishment, they were immediately surrounded by armed security guards and forced to turn over the 9 mm pistols they both routinely carried on the job.

The boss, David Saffold, informed them they were being fired but wouldn’t say why.

“We knew too much,” King told AP in an interview at her home in Amarillo, Texas. “They want to cover it up and move on because it’s a huge amount of money.”

BODYGUARD OR TERRORIST?

In 2004, Rob Cole was a retired California police officer and licensed private investigator when he decided to go to Iraq for a series of contracting jobs. Like many U.S. contractors working in hazardous regions, he went because the work paid a lot more than he could make back home.

Americans have been at Balad on and off since 2003. Sallyport’s parent company, Michael Baker International, announced in 2014 its subsidiaries had been awarded $838 million for work on the base.

Cole’s first job at Balad was cut short in June 2014, a month after he arrived, when the Islamic State group began sweeping across Iraq and Syria. The extremists ultimately made it to the gates of Balad, which was evacuated.

When the Americans went back, they found a looted base largely under the control of Iranian-backed Shiite militias that were supporting the Iraqi government, according to former employees. A former senior manager told the AP that Sallyport reached an understanding with the militias that they would not enter the flight and residential areas. He declined to be named because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter and didn’t want to be blacklisted from future jobs.

Cole, now 62, returned to Balad in May 2015, as Sallyport was preparing for the arrival of American F-16s sold to the Iraqi government. Sallyport’s mission, along with its parent company, was to keep the base operating smoothly, train the Iraqis, and most importantly maintain security on the base, where thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of contractors work.

The federal contract required investigations into potential crimes and violations involving the company’s work at Balad. That was Cole and King’s assignment.

“They wanted someone to be competent enough to process an investigation, if there was a crime, or if someone turned up dead,” King said. “The way it was put to me: If someone turned up with a knife in their back, who are you going to call?”

From the start, it was clear that much was awry on the base. Despite the urgency of fighting IS, the delivery of the F-16s had been delayed by months amid security concerns. It would be catastrophic if IS seized the base and its multimillion-dollar jets.

On July 13, 2015, four F-16s flew in from Arizona, the first of 36 fighter jets that the U.S. planned to deliver.

Brett McGurk, then the U.S. deputy envoy for the international coalition against IS, hailed the arrival in a tweet.

“After years of preparation & training in the U.S., Iraqi pilots today landed the 1st squadron of Iraqi F16s in #Iraq,” he wrote.

The first security breach came in less than 24 hours: A long black skid mark on the tarmac was reported. It stopped about 45 yards from the nose of one of the fighter jets. A truck had plowed through a rope barrier in the “no-go” zone, where lethal force is authorized to protect the planes. For more than 10 minutes, no one even responded as the vehicle drove away, according to reports citing surveillance video.

That turned out not to be a terrorist. But Cole says the out-of-control truck was a harbinger. He noted the lax protection for the F-16s in his report and forwarded it to the chief of security, Steve Asher. Under the requirements of the contract, Cole’s report should have then made its way to the Pentagon. But he says Asher kept a lid on the incident.

Three months later, in October 2015, Cole reported another security breach, the theft of a Toyota SUV that Sallyport had assigned to bodyguards to drive VIPs around the base. Cole eventually uncovered a plot by three Iraqi Sallyport staff working with a dangerous Iran-backed militia, known as Kataib Imam Ali.

The Shiite militia was an ongoing headache, politically connected and operating outside the law, with sidelines in theft and gunrunning. It has ties to the leader of the umbrella militia Popular Mobilization Forces, which is on the U.S. list of designated terrorists.

To Cole’s astonishment, the prime suspect threatened to join the militia during his interrogation. He was a Sallyport bodyguard. In fact, the investigators later found a photo of him on his Facebook page, dressed in black militia garb and a patch indicating his allegiance to the group.

He is “viewed by the Investigations Unit as a hard-core recruit to become a terrorist who poses a serious threat to all personnel on this base,” Cole wrote in another report.

The Toyota was recovered within a few days, but Cole was ordered off the case. In an interview with AP, the former senior manager defended the company’s order, saying negotiations with the militias were highly sensitive and had to be handled with Iraqi cooperation. Still, the suspect was supposed to be banned from the base, and Cole later saw the man walking around freely.

GUMMY BEARS SOAKED IN VODKA

The longer Cole was on the base, the more he suspected that management was turning a blind eye to criminal activity.

On the books, Balad is a dry base, where alcohol is restricted. But in reality the booze was everywhere and everyone knew it. Finding out how it got there led to more troubling questions.

A Sallyport employee who worked in the air terminal reported in late 2015 that co-workers were involved in a smuggling scheme. They were bringing in cases and cases of water bottles filled with liquor that they’d sneaked onto planes flying in from Baghdad.

According to investigative documents and people who watched the smuggling in action, three empty suitcases would routinely be loaded onto a flight to Baghdad. Each time, the bags came back with plastic water bottles filled with liquor. When they were unloaded, the bags were not searched but taken directly outside to be picked up — a serious security risk in a war zone.

“You could be putting a bomb in there,” said one former employee who witnessed the smuggling. “You’ve got people just going rogue.” He spoke only on condition of anonymity because he didn’t want to imperil his new job with a different overseas contractor.

Steve Anderson, who worked on flight logistics, says he was pressured to sign off on faked flight manifests that omitted passenger names and falsified the weight of cargo to cover for the alcohol smuggling and other infractions — a violation of international flight regulations. The planes were getting so weighed down he was worried about flight safety.

“They were playing Russian roulette with the passengers’ lives — including mine,” Anderson said.