ARTICLE

August 2004

Asa Hutchinson Watchful of the Diplomacy of Security

by Joe Pappalardo

The border between Mexico and the United States is more than a massive stretch of arid land. It’s also the 2,000–mile long nexus of homeland security and international diplomacy.

Straddling the line of diplomat and defender is Asa Hutchinson, the undersecretary for border and transportation security at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). His directorate, composed of more than 110,000 employees, is responsible for coordinating the enforcement activities of U.S. borders, transportation and immigration systems.

“What has surprised me is the extraordinary breadth of the international relations that we’ve had to undertake, both with Mexico and Canada, but also with the European Commission, with a whole host of other countries,” Hutchinson said in an interview with National Defense.

Fortunately, Hutchinson—whom President George W. Bush calls “Ace”—has experience working with the Mexican government on shared security issues. In 2001, Hutchinson, a congressman from Arkansas, was appointed to head the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Hutchinson served the first-ever indictments of known terrorists for drug trafficking and supervised the arrest of the head of the Arellano Felix organization, a prominent and violent Mexican drug trafficking group. He stepped down as the head of the DEA to join Homeland Security in January 2003.

Hutchinson said that Mexico has been cooperative with U.S. interests. “We go to orange alert; they support our concerns by increasing their inspections, increasing their manpower at their ports of entry,” he said. “We all come from different, a little bit different cultural backgrounds, little bit different national interests, and we sort through those. But as for cooperation, we’re very pleased.”

Counter-drug operations have paved the way for increased cooperation, a shift that Hutchinson credits to the administration of Mexican president Vicente Fox. “He has greatly enhanced the law enforcement cooperation and the rule of law in Mexico. I think he’ll go down in history as greatly strengthening those areas,” Hutchinson said. “From the perspective of homeland security, I see that pattern continuing and being implemented in the arena of security.”

He cited the Arizona Border Control initiative, a program that features Mexican and American law enforcement officers working side by side, sharing intelligence and investigatory information on the smuggling organizations.

Hutchinson referred to a two-point strategy for increasing border security: first by adding resources, such as personnel, new technology and detention space, and secondly by discouraging illegal entrance to the United States.

“There’s the economic draw that the president’s temporary worker initiative addresses. And you’ve got to be able to have a lawful path for some temporary workers to come to the U.S.,” he said. “And then the second part of reducing the attraction of illegal immigration is to discourage it through greater enforcement actions…One of the initiatives we hope to announce soon is the interior repatriation effort, which allows us, and we can only do this cooperatively with Mexico, but we return the Mexican migrants closer to the interior, to their homes to break up that cycle of smuggling.”

The Mexican government regards border security issues differently than the U.S., Hutchinson acknowledged, but he sees opportunity in overlapping concerns. “The Mexican government has been very supportive from a different context. We look at it from a terrorist threat, securing our borders context. They look at it from the standpoint of how the smuggling organizations are treating the Mexican citizens, like chattel and abusing them and endangering their lives. And so they want to address it from that perspective, more of a safety perspective. Our different perspectives tie in together very well.”

Other differences are harder to overcome. “Sometimes there’s a perception that this is a United States problem. And that they’re simply helping us as to address the threats to our own country whenever they see this as not really a threat to Mexico, or to a certain extent, to Canada,” he said. “We make the case that this is an international effort, that we’re all in the same boat together, and that it’s to all of our benefits to make sure our borders are secure.”

Hutchinson’s efforts are being performed against a backdrop of a massive government restructuring and a constant threat of terror attacks.

“I’ve been in government in various capacities for many years, and I’ve never had a challenge in government greater than what we’ve had to undergo through at the Department of Homeland Security,” he said. “You’re having to build a new organization at a time of elevated threat in our society and responding frequently to specific threats and intelligence that we have to operationally be prepared for.”

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