Customs officers undergo broader training
More than 2,000 recruits will go through basic training to become a customs inspector this year, Jayson Ahern, director of field operations for the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection reported to the Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations.
All the recruits are receiving multidisciplinary training to handle customs, immigration and agriculture primary exams as part of the agency’s new unified approach to traveler and cargo exams.
So far six Customs officer training classes, averaging 48 cadets, have graduated since the new training program began last September, Ahern said. Customs has 21 separate training modules for the three types of traditional duties, along with a heavy does of antiterrorism and weapons of mass destruction training, he said. Training will continue once they are in the field for another two years. Some modules take up to 19 days to complete, he said.
Ahern pledged that officers won’t be rushed through training to meet some arbitrary staffing goal. “We don’t want to do it for symbolic effect. We don’t want a diminished mission. If they have not demonstrated proficiency, they won’t be put on the line,” he said.
Within the next 60 days, Customs plans to begin training the existing 18,000-strong workforce to take on additional duties, Ahern said. Prior to the new “one face at the border” policy inspectors were segregated with separate duties with the old Customs, Immigration and Naturalization Service and Agriculture Department. The agency will be conducting the training in phases until everyone completes the coursework.
Customs’ overall reorganization is still a work in progress, Ahern said. The goal of a unified primary inspection exam is proving successful in the field “but I don’t assume for a second that we it right. I don’t assume for a second that we’ll just finish it, implement it and walk away from it,” he said. Transition plans will continue to be refined “because some of the assumptions we’ve made certainly could be proven wrong as we go through implementation stages.”