Border Protector Michael J. Fisher - KMI Media Group

Border Protector
Q&A
Maintaining Vigilance on Our Nation’s Borders
Michael J. Fisher
Chief
U.S. Border Patrol
U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Michael J. Fisher is the chief of the U.S. Border Patrol and a member
of the Senior Executive Service. He is responsible for planning,
organizing, coordinating, and directing enforcement efforts designed
to secure our nation’s borders.
Fisher entered on duty with the U.S. Border Patrol in June 1987 as
a member of Class 208. His first duty assignment as a Border Patrol
agent was at the Douglas Station in the Tucson Sector. He successfully
completed the selection process for the Border Patrol Tactical
Unit (BORTAC) in 1990 and was later selected as a field operations
supervisor for BORTAC in El Paso, Texas. Over a four-year period, he
planned and executed operations throughout the United States and
nine foreign countries. Fisher later served as the deputy chief patrol
agent of the Detroit Sector and as an assistant chief patrol agent in
the Tucson Sector.
During the transition to the Department of Homeland Security in
March 2003, Fisher was appointed deputy director for the U.S. Customs
and Border Protection (CBP) Office of Anti- Terrorism in Washington,
D.C., where he staffed and directed the office during periods
of increased threats and served as the CBP liaison to the inter-agency
intelligence community for anti-terrorist planning and operational
coordination. Fisher later served at Border Patrol Headquarters as an
associate chief and in 2004 was promoted to senior associate chief.
He returned to the field in February 2006 as the deputy chief patrol
agent of San Diego Sector. He was promoted to chief patrol agent of
San Diego Sector in June 2007. He was named acting chief of the
Border Patrol on January 3, 2010, and assumed his current position
on May 9, 2010.
Fisher earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and a master’s
degree in business administration. He is a graduate of the Senior
Executive Fellows Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government
at Harvard University. He also completed the Capstone program
at the National Defense University in 2009.
Q: What are the primary challenges and threats of patrolling over
6,000 miles of Mexican and Canadian land borders and 2,000 miles
of coastal waters surrounding the Florida Peninsula and Puerto Rico?
A: Generally speaking, the primary challenge is the lack of information
about those who intend to and have the capability to come across the
border illegally [whether by land or by sea] and not really knowing
what potential threats they pose. That’s one of the things that the
Department of Homeland Security, certainly in a post-9/11 environment,
strives to do each and every day. The end state remains fluid.
It’s just a process whereby we measure the extent to which we are
successful; how we define whether we’re winning or not is really, as
General Petraeus once said, a process. It’s a huge challenge given the
geography: 2,000 miles of border with Mexico and about 4,000 miles
with Canada—it’s a lot of open territory. We are constantly evolving
and striving to adapt to the ever-changing environment in which we
operate and to the evolving and dynamic threats that we face within
this country as it relates to our national security mission.
Q: Can you elaborate on the Secure Border Initiative?
A: The United States Border Patrol is one of three operational components
within U.S. Customs and Border Protection [CBP], the Office
of Field Operations and the Office of Air and Marine [OAM] being the
other two. The Secure Border Initiative focused on three questions:
How do we combine all of the available resources; how do we apply
them to the border; and how do we evolve, as we’re doing now in our
new strategic plan, for the next five years in terms of our border security
mission? We have increased our staffing significantly in the last 10
years, from just over 10,000 in 2002 to over 21,000 today.
Infrastructure along the border has increased as well. At this point,
there are almost 700 miles of primary vehicle and pedestrian fencing
along the border with Mexico and there are more roads and better
access to the border than ever before. The third piece is technology,
both in terms of quantity and quality of technology available to us;
we have more cameras, sensors and monitoring capabilities than ever
before. As we move from a strategy that was resource based to one now
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