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Northern Border Security: DHS's Report Could Better Inform Congress by Identifying Actions, Resources, and Time Frames Needed to Address Vulnerabilities

GAO-09-93 Published: Nov 25, 2008. Publicly Released: Nov 25, 2008.
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Highlights

Covering nearly 4,000 miles of land and water from Washington to Maine, the U.S.-Canadian border is the longest undefended border in the world. Various Department of Homeland Security (DHS) component agencies share responsibility for northern border security, primarily U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), in collaboration with other federal, state, local, tribal, and Canadian entities. The Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Act of 2007 required the Secretary of Homeland Security to submit a report to Congress that addresses the vulnerabilities along the northern border, and provides recommendations and required resources to address them. The act also required GAO to review and comment on this report. In response to this mandate, GAO examined (1) the extent to which the DHS report to Congress is responsive to the legislative requirements and (2) actions that may be necessary to address northern border vulnerabilities in addition to the actions addressed in the report. To conduct this work, GAO reviewed DHS plans, reports, and other documents, and interviewed DHS officials.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Homeland Security To provide Congress with information that will facilitate policy discussions and resource decisions for northern border security for future reporting requirements, the Secretary of Homeland Security should include more specific information on the actions, resources, and time frame needed to improve security of the northern border along with any attendant uncertainties, and the basis used to prioritize action and resources for northern border security relative to other areas of national security.
Closed – Not Implemented
On 4/29/11, DHS provided a letter containing a status update on various strategies and activities it has undertaken concerning Northern Border security. Most notably for our recommendation, DHS is developing a department-level Northern Border Strategy to guide DHS operations in a unified manner, with public release anticipated for Summer 2011. Following the release of this strategy, DHS plans to develop an implementation plan further specifying means and methods to achieve the goals listed in the strategy. On 5/4/2011, we responded that in order to close the recommendation, we would need to see the finalized Northern Border strategy and implementation plan detailing how the strategy goals would be achieved, with portions relating to meeting our recommendation highlighted for our review. DHS released its Northern Border strategy in June 2012, and in August 2012, again notified us of other cross-border law enforcement and security efforts taking place with Canada. In September 2012, we responded that while the development of the Strategy and other efforts underway represented positive steps, an implementation plan that specifies the resources and time frames needed to achieve the goals set forth in the Northern Border Strategy would still be needed to meet the intention of our recommendation. As of August 2013, DHS has not provided documentation of an implementation plan or time frames for implementation. As a result, we closed this recommendation as not implemented.

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