From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: The Use of Air and Marine Assets for Border Security Audio interview by GAO staff with Rebecca Gambler, Director, Homeland Security and Justice Related GAO Work: GAO-12-518: Border Security: Opportunities Exist to Ensure More Effective Use of DHS's Air and Marine Assets Released: April 2012 [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's April 2012. The Office of Air and Marine is part of the Department of Homeland Security. It provides aircraft, vessels, and crew at the request of its customers, primarily Border Patrol. In fiscal year 2010, OAM received nearly 39,000 air support requests as well as nearly 10,000 requests for marine support. A group led by Rebecca Gambler, Acting Director in GAO's Homeland Security and Justice team, recently reviewed how this office managed all those requests. GAO's Jeremy Cluchey sat down with Rebecca to learn more. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] To start off, can you tell us a little bit about the Office of Air and Marine, how it works and who its customers are? [ Rebecca Gambler: ] Of course. The Office of Air and Marine is a subcomponent of Customs and Border Protection within the Department of Homeland Security and it is responsible for providing air and marine support to different customers, both within the Department of Homeland Security as well as outside the department. Some examples of customers within DHS include the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And examples of customers outside of DHS include other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. The type of air and marine support that the office provides includes patrols to detect illegal activity or aliens who may have illegally entered the country. Other examples include surveillance, as well as transport of Border Patrol equipment and personnel. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] And your team looked at the extent to which OAM met its customers' needs over a given period of time. What did you find there? [ Rebecca Gambler: ] We assessed OAM's fiscal year 2010 data to look at the extent to which the office met air and marine support requests. For fiscal year 2010, OAM met about 73% of its air support requests and about 88% of the marine support requests. To give a sense of the universe of total requests in fiscal year 2010, there were over 38,000 requests for air support and nearly 10,000 requests for marine support. We also found that the extent to which Air and Marine met those support requests differed by location, by the type of mission, and also customers. To give an example of how the support requests being met differed across locations, in the northern region, the Office of Air and Marine met air support requests 77% of the time, but met these requests 60% of the time in the southeast region. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] This report also talks a lot about OAM's mix and placement of resources. What do we mean by this and what did you find in looking at it? [ Rebecca Gambler: ] The mix of resources refers to both the personnel that the office has as well as the different types of assets it has, both aircraft as well as marine vessels. The placement of those resources refers to where the assets, where the personnel, and the vessels, and the aircraft are deployed across locations along U.S. borders. In looking at the mix and placement of air and marine assets, we had two key findings. First, we found that the office had not documented the underlying analysis it used to determine the mix and placement of its resources. We found that the office had strategic documents that laid out things such as strategic goals, mission responsibilities, and threat information, but we did not find underlying analyses that linked those factors to deployment decisions. Secondly, we found that the office did not meet its national goal of providing air support to Border Patrol in response to Border Patrol's requests. And we found that the office was not always providing assets and fulfilling support requests from high-priority locations. And we found that the office could benefit from reassessing its mix of assets as well as the placement of those assets to better address threats and to make sure that resources were being used effectively. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Finally, for taxpayers interested in border security and how we can use our resources more effectively, what's the bottom line of this report? [ Rebecca Gambler: ] The bottom line of the report is really that CBP and the Department of Homeland Security could take some additional steps to make sure that they are using their air and marine assets effectively. They could reassess the resources, both the mix and location of those resources, and they could also look at ways to improve coordination among air and marine assets between the Coast Guard and the Office of Air and Marine. [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit gao.gov and be sure to tune in to the next episode of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office.