The Role of the National Narcotics Border Interdiction System in Coordinating Federal Drug Interdiction Efforts

Testimony was given on the role of the National Narcotics Border Interdiction System (NNBIS) in coordinating Federal drug interdiction efforts. Over the years, a lack of coordination among Federal agencies has persistently hindered these efforts. At present, the authority and responsibility for Federal drug interdiction efforts are split between three separate agencies with individual programs, resulting in differing goals, priorities, and resource decisions. The South Florida Task Force brought a degree of cohesion to the Federal efforts in south Florida by coordinating the resources of these three agencies and bringing other agency resources into the effort. GAO has not evaluated the overall effectiveness of the task force. However, the task force has successfully demonstrated the benefits of a cohesive attack on drug smuggling. NNBIS was created as an expansion of the task force to coordinate the work of the Federal agencies in monitoring suspected smuggling activity originating outside national borders and destined for the United States. In addition, it coordinates the search and seizure of contraband and arrests. However, because NNBIS does not have a mission plan, it is not possible to assess the system's effectiveness. NNBIS is staffed by permanently assigned personnel from various agencies but, because it is not a separate and distinct agency, it has no budget and does not account for its costs. Each NNBIS region has an intelligence and an operations group. GAO found that, over a period of about 2 years, three NNBIS offices participated in 154 seizures, of which 11 involved aircraft. The information for the seizures came from various sources. GAO stated that it was difficult to determine what role NNBIS played in the seizures or whether the seizures would have been made without NNBIS involvement.