To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 840 Front Street in Casselton, North Dakota, as the Commander Delbert Austin Olson Post Office.

— 139 — Department of Homeland Security also simultaneously add efficiencies to our nation’s capacity to facilitate lawful trade and travel. The BSIA should establish clear mission requirements, responsibilities, and mandates under existing law regarding the persistent need for and utilization of U.S. military personnel and resources to assist BSIA with increasing whole-of-gov- ernment efforts and long-term strategy to secure our nation’s borders effectively. In addition, appropriate elements within the newly created BSIA should be desig- nated as part of the U.S. National Security and Intelligence Community. A conservative Administration should eliminate any prohibitive guidance, direction, or mandate from DHS or the Administration that curtails or limits CBP from publishing detailed border security and enforcement data not impacting intelligence, interdiction, and investigative operations, methods, or sources. DHS should issue a regulation mandating that CBP publish accurate and timely border security data, readily available to the public, on a regular basis that avoid White House and DHS leadership review and approval. The White House should grant the authority for CBP and DHS executives to utilize component aviation assets under the Office of Air and Marine (OAM). CBP and DHS have worldwide missions with personnel and facilities that are deployed across the globe and in every state in the U.S. With a CBP workforce alone of more than 60,000 people (240,000-plus for DHS) encompassing more than a thousand sea, land, and airports, it is essential that the Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner, Secretary, and Deputy Secretary can travel efficiently to facilities to maintain appropriate situational awareness across the department’s vast mission set and interact with the expansive workforce. Although CBP operates one of the largest aviation components of any domestic U.S. law enforcement agency, executives are prohibited from utilizing the agency’s aviation assets to facilitate official travel. Executives are required to fly on commercial airlines, and this requirement sig- nificantly limits their ability to have classified communications and takes them offline for extended periods of time. Border Patrol (BP) and OAM should be combined within CBP. BP has more than 20,000 personnel, and OAM has approximately 1,800. OAM’s assets are dedicated in support of BP operations the vast majority of the time, yet redundant approv- als, strategies, and independent hierarchal commands serve as impediments to efficient and practical resource deployments. CBP should restart and expand use of the horseback-mounted Border Patrol. As part of this announcement, the Secretary should clear the records and personnel files of those who were falsely accused by Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of whip- ping migrants and issue a formal apology on behalf of DHS and CBP. The Secretary should combine the Office of Trade (OT) and Trade Relations with the Office of Field Operations (OFO). The OT is the smallest of CBP’s compo- nents, and its operational counterpart, OFO, has a workforce of more than 30,000. — 140 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise OT’s function is interwoven with that of its OFO operational counterpart. Combin- ing OT with OFO would achieve streamlined operations and increase OT’s capacity and capability by leveraging OFO’s expansive resources. CBP, ICE, and USCIS all have authority to issue Notices to Appear (NTA) to removable aliens in their presence, which begins removal proceedings. In most instances, CBP should turn illegal aliens over to ICE for detention, and ICE can then issue any needed NTA. CBP should issue NTAs only in limited situations for humanitarian reasons, such as medical emergencies. In addition, CBP should eliminate use of Notices to Report (NTR) altogether. CBP’s established national standards of Transport, Escort, Detention, and Search (TEDS) have been widely interpreted and expanded by lower courts. This has resulted in unrealistic and differing detention standards for CBP facilities based on the jurisdiction within which they fall, negatively impacting operations. ICE has suffered similarly. A single nationwide detention standard should be codified that prevents individual states from mandating that federal government agencies adhere to widely expansive and ever-changing sets of standards. Such standards should allow the flexibility to use large numbers of temporary facilities such as tents. The annual costs associated with establishing and maintaining temporary facil- ities to address the flow of illegal migration and associated care, transportation, and processing are prohibitive, and CBP’s budget is inadequate. CBP is forced to forgo critical mission-essential endeavors to fund the additional associated costs. Often, this requires the reprogramming of funding at the DHS level, which has a negative impact on other DHS components’ operations. This predictable cost that has to be paid from existing CBP and DHS funding levels reduces CBP’s operational readiness and ability to accomplish its diverse and critical missions to protect the American people. The next President should request a realistic budget that fully pays for these costs. Increased funding is needed for BP to hire additional support personnel, which would relieve uniformed BP agents from administrative duties associated with processing aliens and allow them to return to their national security mission. Congress should increase funding for facility upgrades at strategic land Ports of Entry (POEs), including expanding state-of-the-art technology such as Non-Intru- sive Inspection equipment. Today, the cartels exploit the aging facilities and lack of adequate technology to smuggle illicit drugs, contraband, and more successfully through our nation’s POEs. U.S. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT (ICE) Needed Reforms Since the formation of DHS, ICE has increasingly been tasked with auxiliary missions that have little or nothing to do with either immigration or customs

— 157 — Department of Homeland Security to such returnees. These two steps could be foundational for any improvements in the recruiting process. U.S. SECRET SERVICE (USSS) Needed Reforms The U.S. Secret Service must be the world’s best protective agency. Currently, the agency is distracted by its dual mission of protection and financial investigations. The result has been a long series of high-profile embarrassments and security fail- ures, perhaps most notably its allowing of then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to be inside the Democratic National Committee office on January 6, 2021, while a pipe bomb was outside. Despite the great size and scope of the January 6 inves- tigation, this high-profile incident of danger to a protectee remains unresolved. The failures of the USSS protective mission are too numerous to list here. A December 2015 bipartisan report from the House Oversight Committee listed dozens of such incidents as well as needed recommendations for reform.14 This chapter adopts those findings and recommendations in whole, especially the finding that USSS’s dual-mission structure detracts from the agency’s protective capabilities. At the time of that report, USSS agents spent only one-third of their work hours on protection-related activities as opposed to investigative activities. USSS was established initially to investigate counterfeit currency, but its mission has evolved over the decades to prioritize electronic financial crimes. For example, as this chap- ter was being written, all 15 of the USSS’s most wanted individuals were wanted for financial crimes, many of them international in nature. Notably, the last head of the agency left not for a protection-related job, but to be the Chief Security Officer of social media company SnapChat. This is a pattern that has developed over the years, with agents seeking to burnish their online financial crimes credentials to secure corporate security jobs. Coupled with some of the lowest morale in the federal government, the agency has completely lost sight of the primacy of its protective mission. New Policies USSS should transfer to the Department of Justice and Department of the Treasury all investigations that are not related to its protective function. It should begin the logistical operation of closing all field offices throughout the country and internationally to the extent they are not taken over by Treasury or Justice. USSS agents stationed outside of Washington, D.C., should be transferred to work in Immigration and Customs Enforcement field offices where they would continue to be the “boots on the ground” to follow up on threat reports throughout the country and liaise with local law enforcement for visits by protectees. — 158 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise The only investigations not related to USSS’s protective function that agents should pursue would be directed by HSI and relate to tracking the financial crimes associated with illegal immigration. This should include tracing remittances, any funds that are used to pay coyotes or the cartels, and payments by businesses to illegal aliens and all other crimes associated with illegal immigration. USSS should keep visitor logs for all facilities where the President works or resides. The Biden Administration has evaded such transparency with President Biden spending a historic amount of time for a President at his Delaware residence. This has left the American people in the dark as to who is influencing the highest levels of their own government. Budget The suggested reforms would result in a significant USSS budget reduction, primarily because the agency would relinquish dozens of physical offices through- out the U.S. and internationally. Some amount of savings should be used to fix the personnel problems and for recruitment initiatives aimed at individuals who are inclined to join a protection-focused agency. Personnel As documented extensively in the above-referenced 2015 bipartisan congressio- nal report, low morale and high turnover are key drivers of USSS problems. With their mission focused on protection, agents would no longer spend the bulk of their time developing unrelated skillsets. Instead, USSS agents could hone their protection skills and pursue a protection career path in the agency rather than quickly leaving USSS for high-paying corporate security jobs. The Uniform Division (UD) of USSS requires a significant staffing increase. As documented in the bipartisan report, understaffing results in unpredictable and long hours, which in turn result in high turnover, which only compounds the problem. Another key issue is that UD officers lack the ability to enforce criminal laws outside the immediate vicinity of the White House. As the District of Columbia is a federal jurisdiction and currently is beholden to the trend of progressive pro- crime policies, UD officers should enforce all applicable laws. The result would be to allow UD officers to gain more law enforcement experience—an attractive credential that would improve morale. TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION (TSA) The TSA model is costly and unwisely makes TSA both the regulator and the regulated organization responsible for screening operations. As part of an effort to shrink federal bureaucracies and bring private-sector know-how to govern- ment programs, TSA is ripe for reform. The U.S. should look to the Canadian and

— 664 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise not an exhaustive set of proposals, the next conservative President should con- sider whether: l The International Trade Administration (ITA) and parts of the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) should be streamlined and moved to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), along with the Development Finance Corporation; the U.S. Trade and Development Agency; the Export– Import Bank; and other trade-related programs spread across the federal government—as well as considering whether many of these programs should exist within the federal government; l The Economic Development Administration’s grant programs, which are among a broad set of duplicative and overlapping federal economic development grant programs, should be consolidated with other programs and/or eliminated; l The Bureau of Economic Analysis and Census Bureau, as well as the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, should be consolidated into a more manageable, focused, and efficient statistical agency; l The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) should be made into a performance-based organization under the Office of Management and Budget (OMB); l Alternatively, the USPTO should be consolidated with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in a new U.S. Office of Patents, Trademarks, and Standards, with all non-mission-critical research functions eliminated or moved to other, more focused, federal agencies; and l The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories. Almost every element of the department can be viewed through this lens, but with today’s political reality and multiple competing congressional committee jurisdictions, drastic structural change to the department is neither imminent nor likely. Thus, this chapter largely accepts the baseline of today’s department and proposes a bold, but achievable, set of proposals for an incoming conservative Administration. Whatever the imperfections of the Department of Commerce, it is blessed with many quality civil servants and strong statutory authorities that, directed properly, — 665 — Department of Commerce can help ensure U.S. success in 2025 and beyond. With that in mind, this chapter focuses primarily on policy, strategy, and occasionally tactics that are either imme- diately implementable under strong leadership or are critical to mission success. OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY The Office of the Secretary (OS) is somewhat of a misnomer, as very few of the thousands of employees working in the office are dedicated to staffing the secretary and implementing Administration priorities. Rather, OS’s budget and full-time equivalents have increasingly been allocated to fulfill financial, human resources, administrative, information technology, contracting, and facilities functions, using outdated and inefficient systems. The Trump Administration began implement- ing key changes, such as updating financial management tools, but more must be done to digitize and modernize the department’s processes to free resources for secretarial and presidential priorities. The above drain on resources leaves the Secretary of Commerce to rely upon a few dozen direct support staff, supplemented with detailees and indirect fund- ing from each of the bureaus to execute the President’s agenda and manage the diverse functions of the department. This structure empowers career staff in each bureau and makes it harder to mandate change. As such, it is vitally important that an incoming Administration fully staff OS with political appointees, send all existing detailees back to their home bureaus on Day One, and replace those detailees with trusted and knowledgeable career staff on an as-needed basis. Department of Commerce leadership should also fight to restore direct fund- ing and additional political appointee positions to OS and its constituent parts involved in implementing and communicating the Commerce Secretary’s and President’s policy priorities. Administration, Budget, and Appropriations. Recent practice has been for career staff to serve as gatekeepers between department leadership and external budget and appropriations partners at the OMB and on Capitol Hill. By serving not just as a central point of contact but as the sole staff-level communicators of departmental priorities, these career officials can, have, and will slow down—and even stop—changes in policy, even at the line-office level. Although the following is true at all agencies, it is particularly important at the Department of Commerce that political leadership be immediately installed at the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Assistant Secretary for Administra- tion (ASA), and that political appointees receive a mandate to communicate with external partners alongside career staff at every stage of the budget and appropri- ations process. Political appointees must also monitor internal CFO operations down to the operating division level to ensure that funds are not being diverted to programs that do not align with Administration priorities, as has regularly hap- pened in years past.