The moment weve all been waiting for. Weve been talking about cbp and the Important Role that these important agencies play in creating a competitive u. S. mexico border. Were excited to have our guest speaker here today. Whether youre in the private sector, trade organization, if youre here, if you have anything to do with the border, you care very much about your on going relationship with cbp. Thats certainly the case for us at the Border Trade Alliance. Our relationship, our partnership, the communication is critical. Cbp ensures Border Security and the efficient movement of people and goods across our ports of entry. Were grateful for cbps work to reduce border wait times which is one of the most challenging barriers to trade. Today, yesterday and hopefully not tomorrow. Its my great pleasure to introduce john wagner, Deputy Executive Assistant Commission for the office of Field Operations at u. S. Customs and border protection. In 1991 he joined the Customs Service as a customs inspector and worked at the new York New Jersey seaport and the land border port of entry at laredo, texas before being assigned to headquarters. You have a fan. Serving in his current role since 2014 mr. Wagner oversees nearly 30,000 employees including approximately 23,000 cbp officers and over 2,400 cbp agricultural specialists, annual operating budget of 4. 8 billion provides for operations at over 330 ports of entry, and many programs that support the National Security, the immigration customs and commercial trade related missions of cbp. Mr. Wagner has been a leader in developing transformative efforts for the organization including the development of Global Entry Program and the automated passport control kiosks for international travelers. Overall, mr. Wagner is recognized as the driving force behind many of cbps resource, time saving initiatives. While simultaneous enhancing Security Operations at the ports of entry. Please join me in welcoming mr. Wagner, Deputy Assistant commissioner. [ applause ] you didnt have to say the whole title. Youve earned it. Its too long. Not good to have a long title in washington. I lived and worked in laredo from 1993 to 1999. We were talking out in the hallway that i was the minudo champion in 1999. How do you earn that . Its a story i cant here, maybe afterwards. Its quite a story. Thank you for the kind intro. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about what were doing in cbp. The border, the challenges today are like weve never seen before. Well start with the migrant crisis. Everyone knows were encountering record numbers like weve never seen before, just an unprecedented flow of people coming through the border. Its impacting the whole country. Its impacting everything were trying to do. Its impacting both countries really. Weve got to figure out ways to Work Together to solve these. Earl yier this month the u. S. A mexico got together to talk about these challenges and the vital importance of the teamwork between both countries. Weve agreed to strengthen that cooperation and find better ways to really secure the border and make the border a lot more efficient. But the overwhelming message, the border is open for business and vital to both countries that it remain so, and it remains secure. Our Border Patrol agents, cbp officers, we recognize that delicate balancing act that defines cbps duty. Protect the border and enforce the laws while facilitating travel. To that end were determine to manage this Border Security crisis, its a humanitarian crisis, as best we can while ensuring the border remains open and all the work we do around the country and around the world, continues to operate. The importance of this is really leveraging a lot of technology and a lot of cooperation. You may have heard about our unified cargo processing. This was something we built with the government of mexico. Onestop Business Environment for processing inbound and outbound cargo and truck rail and air modes. We work with s. A. T. In mexico and do joint cargo clearance and joint cargo examinations. The benefits, what weve seen, enhances security on both sides. Its a streamlined operation. Weve seen 50 or greater reduction in wait times when we can do this and seen a 99 trade compliance rate for participants in this. Lowering the cost of business for everyone in these operations. We started this in laredo. Still laredo proud after all these years, where we launched a cargo pre inspection pilot for southbound cargo in october 2015. Weve steadily expanded this unified cargo process ever since across the southwest border. Most recently we went to the port of t akate and doing the unified process for northbound commercial trucks since last september. So for next steps, were meeting collectively with s. A. T. And our colleagues in the Canada Border Services agency, and working on joint criteria for unified cargo processing in the air cargo environment. We plan to launch this soon in phoenix at the mesa gateway user fee airport and discussing other expansion locations, primarily in texas to capitalize on the unified cargo processing immediate cross border trade benefits. As we talk about the technology and our nonintrusive inspection systems, this is a program weve built over the years. I laugh because when i worked on the border down in laredo mayor, how are you, sir the only technology we had was a drill. The trucks would drive by and wed drill holes in them. Wed hat a brass mallett and wed tap the tanks. I think we had one big xray machine in oteay mesa. Now we have hundreds of systems. Weve built this fleet of equipment and we dont have to drill holes in things anymore. We think about, okay, whats next . Where do we go with this next . Congress was very generous to us last year. We were given over 500 million to build out, recapitalizes that fleet. Some of this equipment is 15, 20, 25 years old. But we dont want to just buy the same stuff. We challenge ourselves, what can we do next with this . Really this has the potential to transform how we do cargo processing on the border. If we can our vision is really to build these drivethrough systems where if a truck can drive through and we can have a high energy and low Energy System operating at the same time, so wed use low energy on the cab where the driver is in there and the high energy on the cargo, and we can centralize where these images go to and have algorithms help us interpret that data, not only can we scan 100 of the trucks coming in, but we could do it really quick where the trucks might not have to stop or stop very long to do that. If you look at how we billed out facilities and how we can route the trucks differently through our facility to take advantage of this, and if we can tie all this in together ill talk about farnl recognition a little later. You can do facial recognition on the truck driver when they pull up. That kicks off the transactions and the scans and all this can be automated. Theres Great Potential for us to completely transform how we do the truck inspections. Were testing some of the low energy drivethrough systems right now, i think in brownsville, an empty Truck Driving through and see how that works while we work with vendors to work on the high energy components. The trains can come through slowly. We can image and scan that as it goes by. No reason we cant build a similar system for trucks. Think about the potential of what that brings to all of us, to be able to build out those systems. Thank you to all the communities and operators working with us to build that out. As we test the equipment this year into next year, we look forward to doing this, and tieing it into the advances we made with rfid. I mentioned the facial recognition, the bio metrics, the license plate reersd. For people, looking at Self Reporting applications on a smart phone. Its really going to be an exciting time for us as we develop new concepts and new ideas. One of the things we like to pride ourselves in in cbp is were never satisfied with the status quo. Coming up on our 230th Year Anniversary in july with the formation of the Customs Service and look at the iterations over the years of what weve been annual to do. We do that by the commissioner now, acting secretary mcal lean and once coined the phrase, well be relentless self critical. Wheel always challenge the status quo and find better ways to do things. So the facial recognition, doing a lot of work at the airports, at the sea ports. Were trying some things out in vehicle lanes, in pedestrian lanes at the border. Were trying to capitalize on data we already have. If everyone already has a travel document, it means weave already got photos of people. So why not use those in a way thats really efficient for the people crossing the border. Lets figure out a ways to do this as the cameras get better and better and can take a picture and just match against that travel document without us having to handle the document or read the rfid scan. As we billed out systems to do this, what is crossing that border then look like. Should we equip officers with bodyworn cameras that, as theyre talking to travelers or Truck Drivers, it automatically picks the face up and matches against the travel document, automatically runs all the queries we need to run in our systems and how much time can that save us . How much more secure can that make us and more accurate that can make us, too. Again, look for exciting developments as we do this. When i say were open for business, it also means automating our processes and how we handle routine and lowrisk entries. It frees officers and devotes attention to highrisk cargo. More importantly, it helps your members, americas import and export community. We want to do business faster and more securely. Ace is a great example, blockchain technology, how that fits in. Well find a way to figure that out. We look at all the things happening in the Consumer World today, the internet of things, artificial intelligence, robotics, predictive analytics. We want to incorporate these into how the government does business as well, too. We want to do that in partnership with all of you. We look at, also, still a Human Element of this. The staffing piece of what we do. For years we struggled with the staffing, especially on the southwest border. We have a high turnover rate there. We struggle to hire officers timely and keep those vacant positions funded. Congress was very generous to us a couple years ago, gave us 2,000 officers in our budget. For a couple years we could only hire a thousand of them. Im glad to report this year, based on work we started last year where we hired above our attrition about 300 officers. This year were on pace to hire a thousand over attrition or potentially 1,200 to 1,300. Normal attrition is 700 do 800 nationwide. Were looking to hire over 2,000 cbp officers this year. By the end of this year we would have all those vacancies filled for the first time in many, many years. Our system freezes up and asks for more. We can hire them. I dont want to say the hiring process is fixed because it takes a long time. Theres some things were working on in doing that. Its about focusing our recruiters around the country, building up what we call destination guides, if were recruiting in chicago and we have vacancies in el paso, we can talk to potential job applicants about the benefits of living and working in el paso or any other station where we need to put people. Weve been out talking to a lot of chambers of commerce. How do you sell the city to attract business, and if we can bring 100 federal employees down there, help us convince people these are great places to live. I went from new york city to laredo. I went on a tdy and ended up staying. How do i take that experience and translate that into people coming out of the military or College Graduates or other people interested in this work. I can sell them on the agency. Thats always easy. How do we sell them on the work we do and go to the locations where we perform this work and whats so great about living and working there. Weve kiktd off what we call a fast track hiring process, a pilot we ran. We took a handful of applicants. The things with hr, when you apply for a job, you go to the bottom of the pile and wait ten, 12 months for you application to come to the top. We sort of pre evaluated people and put easy applicants on the top and give them a priority appointment, how quick could we hire somebody . What normally takes 10 to 12 months now, we hired somebody in 26 days from start to finish. The officer went to laredo. Thats where they went. It was great. We had a motivated applicant and we found the spot for that person within a month. We hire a handful of people within 30 to 45 days. Now we take those lessons and incorn rate them into the bigger hiring process. If we can fix that hiring process, we can attract quality applicants into our workforce because they need a job and theyll want a job quickly. Who has 12 months to wait for a job . Somebody else will scoop you up in the meantime. We plan to hire were making plans for potentially several more thousand next year depending, of course, how the budgets shake out and see what our vacancy rate is at that point in time. Our position should be filled. This is critically important because even with the migration crisis and some of the challenges and struggles weve had in managing that, weve got 700 officers right now detailed from around the country just to the Border Patrol stations. We started with a bunch from the southwest border. We saw the trucks and cars back up. We went to the airports and sea ports and started detailing people to the Border Patrol stations to help them out, and really just the care and the processing of the migrants as they go into that process and get that work done. But this is really the only way weve been able to survive because our southwest border is fairly well staffed to what were funded for right now. If we didnt have that, it would be catastrophic. Were still pushing the hiring very strongly. Were still working on that process. Were still working on now it becomes a training problem. How do you get so many people through the academy and get them through quickly. We just jammed three more classes through this year. Well train over 2,000 cbp officers this year which are recordbreaking numbers. In the past we were lucky to do 700 to 1,000. Were pushing that hard because the people are the best part of our workforce. The technology is great, but we need the people to operate it and need the people to interpret it and the people that interact with you to think of new things to do and come up with better ways to do things. As we look at building a competitive border, it requires all of us. We have to adapt, adjust and acted date to change. Like i mentioned, the pace on us is always relentless. The first customs modernization act passed in 1993. A whole probably a couple generations ago. That year we witnessed a grand total of 600 websites in the whole world. Amazon hadnt even sold its first book yet. At the time, the socalled mod act was considered radical and it gave cbp or customs back then new enforcement authority. It created the National Customs automation program, ncap. Anybody remember that one . Like anything else, trade has undergone a massive transformation. We look at the ways of doing business today. Ecommerce. Look at how thats just upended how we do things and the volume of epacts we get in the mail coming from china and around the world and how do we adapt to these new business models. We cant sit back and say you have to do it this way because weve always done it that way. Earlier this year, thanks to the input of our trade stakeholders and our partner government agencies, we unveiled a map for the road ahead. Our 21st century customs framework, the five key pillars. First we believe ace and our other systems function as important infrastructure thats just as valuable as our roads and bridges. We want to ensure a selffunding stream so infrastructure will not fail when our stakeholders and partners need it most. Second is building on our commitment to one u. S. Government or one usg. Kpp wants to use the data we gather through ace more effectively. Were looking at data sharing opportunities with our stakeholders and Partner Agencies and allowing all partners to make better informed decisions in a more timely fashion. Thirdly, we want to make sure we work with our Industry Partners to identify roles and responsibilities that may exist outside current definitions. Fourth, we support intelligent enforcement, a concept of working with the stakeholders to improve Risk Management and impact our efforts to defect highrisk activity, deter noncompliance and deter fraudulent behavior. Lastly, we recognize that 20th century trade processes cannot support 21st century trade. Many of our procedures are designed for large containerized shipments. These shipments are no longer entirely representative of how International Trade operates. We have to figure out a way to adjust to that. Well talk about the usmca for a minute. A few words on that. Three countries are reviewing it to determine what new legislation is required prior to passing it. This includes provisions that directly affect cbp and homeland securitys operations including Customs Enforcement, trade facilitation and immigration. The entry of force into this would represent really a historic milestone in u. S. Trade policy, as it would signify for the first time the u. S. s renegotiated and replaced an existing free trade agreement. Theres large sections of the old nafta that remain untouched. The agreement doesnt change the zero tariffs policy on most manufacturing and agricultural goods. It provides unique opportunities for us to enhance our trade mission, codifies ambitious trade facilitation standards while adapting to a modern technologydriven landscape that didnt exist when nafta first started. Just to conclude and then ill open it up for a couple of khweis if we have time. We dont view the shared border as a dividing line. This is really a powerful seam that unites the two nations. We have to continue to challenge ourselves to find better ways to make it more efficient and make it more secure. Im pretty confident based on the work weve done for many, many, many years that were going to continue to challenge ourselves to find better ways to do things. Thanks for the opportunity to be here. Ill open it up for any questions you may have for us. [ applause ] thank you. Actually im going to take the liberty of asking the first question. You cant have my minudo recipe. I still want to know how you earned the title. You talked about the hiring and the 2,000 officers going through academy this year. Weve lacking still the 700 agents that were taken from the northern border and airports and sea ports. Is that the priority, to replace those positions that have that are no longer there . We greatly appreciate the return of some of the agents, but were still experiencing huge delays as many of our ports of entry which, even before the staffing issue, was an issue. How do you prioritize where they go . The 700 are not permanent relocations, at least we hope not. If the migration crisis comes to an end or becomes more manageable, those officers will deploy back to their ports of entry. At this point theres no plans or indications that those are permanent reassignments. How much longer this goes on, its tough to predict right now. The numbers are still staggering. But as that starts to hopefully die down, those officers will redeploy back. If it takes a year oh zbloe thats the struggle and challenge weve got to figure out. The hiring right now most of the vacancies, a couple of the large airports are struggling with vacancies on the southwest border. We still have work to do in arizona and calexico. Thats where the vacancies will go. These officers, the expectation is they will go back though. The time frame, were hoping its shorter rather than longer. Thats what weve got to plan for. It will be a tough summer to get through if this continues because you cant just pull 700 officers out and deploy them to the primary mission. Its tough. In otay mesa were still down one lane. Otey is tough. San ysidro is fully stand at this point and that helps otay mesa because we can move people back and forth. Theres no way to pull 700 people off the line, so to speak, and put them to this activity. Again, this activity is also essential to what were trying to do. We try to spread it out around the country to the best we can so one place isnt impacted worse than others. Definitely appreciate that. All right. We have several questions. Well start here, jerry, real quick first. First of all, thank you for your service. I agree with you. I think before in cbp puts on a star, they should have served in laredo at one time or another. Given the environment you have today, if you had your choice between technology and more lanes on points of entry, what would you prefer in regards to the efficiency of our port of entry operations . Its both really. But recognize that we cant always up and build bigger ports in more lanes. How do we maximize the infrastructure thats there today . Are we maximizing that . Is the deck nolg such that its not creating additional work, were not creating additional gaunt lents. Too often b we throw something out and it ye aets another step and ten more people to run it. Were trying to infuse that technology to make that transaction more efficient so we can get more throughput through that existing infrastructure while we also work to expand it. All right. Sam . Sam veil Border Trade Alliance public policy. Commissioner wagner, weve been through a lot of the permutations that youre talking about from 1993, the modernization, the staffing. I dont see a lot of focus on binational highfiber lines going to the ports of entry. That seems to me to be the backbone of any future one port unified cargo processing concept. I dont see anywhere thats coming in to a request or funding by cbp. Were trying to do it in small ports because we want to improve it. They cant put all the people on the internet at the same time to do their work. So what about that kind of stuff . Thats a great point, too. We roll out all this technology and do we have the electricity to plug it in . Do we have the internet lines to make it work . I think weve got to look at that infrastructure, but thats a great point. I dont have an answer to that right now. Well take a look at that, too. Weve had that challenge in a lot of places. Mayor darling. Jim darling from mccallan. I was wondering when wed start the return to mexico policy on the eastern side of the border. Discussing this pretty aggressively. I dont have a date to discuss just yet. Its being progressively pursued and the right locations and where to do that. Are we coordinating with the authorities in the city of rinosa . We should be, yes. Gustavo with the smart border coalition, city of san juan. You laid out technology, facial recognition and use of cell phones and so forth. Where do you see cbp in the next five years as far as implementing these things and where . Are you considering across the entire southern border . What are your priorities as far as the technologies . Youll see us start rolling some of this is being rolled out as we speak. Some of these like a drivethrough nii system. We have to design and build and test it. Over the next couple years, shortterm i see this stuff coming out and really starting to change the landscape of how trucks and cars and people move back and forth across the border. Weve got to think about what should the facility look like . Which way should the trucks go . Can we actually have a truck roll through the border without stopping . Theres some value in an officer talking through the driver. If were scanning the whole truck, do we need that . We havent answered that question yet. I think those are the things that well start to figure out as we test this and see the capabilities of it and what it does for us. I do see dramatic change within the next five years. Im pretty confident were going to roll out a lot of these sis stems, a lot of this technology and get out of this process in the booth of typing data in or paper forms and getting rid of a lot of that. Thats really our focus. Make the precious Human Resource as efficient as can be and focus on the work we need the officers doing, not so much doing a scripted transaction in a booth, be it a truck or a car, where pedestrians coming in, or at the airport. We still have too much typing i want to get rid of the keyboards, the mice, all that technology out of the border. You still have officers there with the mouse in the primary booth clicking. We have young adults coming out of college and they go, whats a mouse . Weve got to rebuild a lot of that stuff. That work is under way. I think within the next five years youre going to see dramatic changes. The facial recognition, were testing it in arizona in a couple of the pedestrian lanes, really spectacular results. Got 130something imposters in a couple of months coming through with legitimate documents. They know the camera is. There after the first few hours everyone knows its there. Well roll that out. Pedestrians will start coming and going a lot quicker and more securely to do that. We tested in the vehicle lanes, the cameras that could see inside the vehicle. We could capture high Quality Images of people in the cars. Now, how we use that and what we do with that, weve got a lot of work to do on that. Whats the infrastructure requirement behind us . Do we have the lines to plug them in. Can we move pictures back and forth this quickly. Weve got a lot of teams and were really dedicated and focused to do it. Were committed. The nii system will be a big, big driver of this i think. Chris, do you want to go next . Thanks very much. This has been fascinating conversation. I wonder if you could talk to us a little bit about theres been many programs, whether its century or f. A. S. T. , special programs for a special segment of traffic to be moved through faster. Oftentimes cars need to wait in a line mixed together with all the other traffic for a while before they get to that special lane and get that special passage. How do you think about, as youre rolling out new technology, how much of it is going to be available to everyone versus the portion thats a special program . And then what are you doing to incentivize having more people, more companies, more Truck Drivers enroll in those special programs so we dont keep running into that challenge. I know the physical infrastructure is a big part of the challenge. But i think which have to be realistic that its not always we cant always build the special lanes out as far back as we need to. So what we need to do in my opinion at least is get more of the traffic over to that special lane, because obviously it works better. But how are you thinking about that kind of balancing between special programs, general traffic and figuring out how to make sure that, as youre deploying new technology, its actually improving overall throughput, not just for a special segment that might get stuck somewhere else. The special programs are special for a reason. Theyre not going to be for everyone. If everyone is in it, youre back to where you started in a way. But the people that are going to cross frequently, the trucks that are going to cross frequently, people that are going to do business frequently, weve got to leverage their experience in crossing the border and build a way a trust component in that to segment that traffic out so we can deal with the rest. Yes, theres actually physical limitations as you go over the bridge and onto the other side and youre into the city streets. We need some help from the transportation authorities, the City Planners and helping us build for the future in these and how far should these lanes extend back . If you go to arizona and california where there is no bridge, how do we manage that traffic on the city streets on either side to do that . One thing that we felt was pretty successful at san ysidro to get people into the century lanes, we said our goal is to have a 15minute wait or less in the isntry lanes and well open up enough lanes to keep to that. We divided the rest of the lanes to the ready lanes, people with rfi dinchts documents versus everyone else and well keep the ready lane wait to half of the regular lane. Its flipping a switch to convert them and changing the sign at the top and make sure that were keeping up with our promise that, if you enroll in these special programs and jump through all these hoops, to get involved, theres a meaningful benefit. If it takes an hour to get to the lane to use it, it defeats the purpose. Thats something we have to continue to work at. We need a lot of help from all of you, were not experts in the logistics of the transportation and how many lanes and we get into the city streets. We have no expertise in that area. We really need all of you to help us with that, sit down and talk about the ideas. Whats the right way to move this type of traffic through the border crossings back and forth . Thank you. John duncan. Thanks for being here. Id like to haer your comments on the potential for expanding free clearance in mexico and also collaboration with mexico in mexican ports. I think thats an area we havent explored enough. Pre clearance, were around the world trying to talk to different airports about how to expand our pre clearance operatio operations. We think its a Great Security model, great facilitation model. Its certainly easy on the travelers when you can clear cbp before you depart. It gets into the negotiations then on ones with the Airport Authority on the space within that airport, where it would operate, where the airlines are going to park, which gates would be available, how do you secure that space . And then the negotiations with the government authorities that would allow us to operate on their soil and under what conditions and what would we be allowed to do or not allowed to do or whats permissible within that defined space that we could do that. And then the cost, about who funds the cost and how its paid and how do we reach agreements on that. And then for our employees, its the privileges and immunities of working there and their families and the residences and where they work and go to school and do that depending on how big the operation is. Theres a lot of work to go through to do that. But were committed to that pre clearance model. We think it addresses, again, a lot of not only security and facilitation, but also the cooperation. When were on site with our colleagues from the other government and the stakeholders from the other government, it builds that natural cooperation, and it builds out a lot of the communication back and forth. You think about the benefits of that, too. Were committed to doing this. Were still talking to a lot of Different Countries about whats the right fit to do it and who would allow us to do it there and whats the impact on the u. S. Airports. Are there domestic gates you can park at . Some of the airports are full, so we have to figure out where the planes can come in, if they dont have to come to the customs arrival hall to do that. We really think its definitely a priority for us. Were continuing to work through a lot of those negotiations. The other question was . It was about mexican ports. I think theres potential for great cooperation there. We have cbp officers all around the world in our Container Security initiative program. Being on site working with our colleagues and the other customs agencies, that flow of communication and intelligence and expertise back and forth pays dividends for both countries. And working in partnership to look at risks that both countries are going to be concerned with. They might not always be the same, but theyre always compatible and the systems and techniques to uncover them are always compatible. Even if you look at commercial violations versus narcotics, versus National Security criteria, theres always a path in the middle to figure out, what are the tools and techniques we use to identify these and do the inspections and do it in a way thats most efficient. I think theres a Great Potential to expand on a lot of work there now. I think we had another question over there. Hi, commissioner. Thanks for being here. Brian bradley with american shipper. I was just wondering if you can talk a little about any plans to boost recruiting and retention at ports of entry in rural locations. So one of the key things weve done in our hardtofill locations some are rural, some arent weve been offering hiring bonuses, paying upwards of 25 , sometimes 30 of the officers first three years of salary to go to these locations. That was key on how we filled a lot of the southwest border ports. We had them in california and texas across the border, a smattering of places along the northern border. Doing it in San Francisco right now. Just the cost of living there, its tough for us to recruit people to live there. Those hiring bonuses have put out well over a thousand of those in the last couple years. Were seeing most of the officers will stay at least those three years to attain those bonuses to do that. And then from there, we have various we call them lateral reassignment policies where officers have the opportunity to go to other ports of entry. They have the opportunity to transfer. They have the opportunity to swap with other officers around the country. Through pre clearance they have the opportunity to go overseas. Theyre always welcome to come to washington and work for me. I dont get too many takers on that. But we try to build out that career path, too, so its not just about selling that first station that youre at. Its about what does your career look like when you come work for us and selling the full capabilities of the agency to these young adults that want to come work for us. Thats really proven successful do do that. Thats where weve seen our record numbers of hiring. We actually have enough people in the pipeline right now to hire a couple thousand for next year. I think we actually have enough applicants right now that, as they work their way through, we could hire well over 3,000 officers next year, providing we had the funding to do so and the ability to train that many. Again, those are good problems to have. But were not slowing down on the recruiting and the hiring incentives to do that. But part of it, like i mentioned earlier, too, was packaging up about whats great about working at different places around the country. As we recruit around the country, lets not just recruit for our local ports, but lets recruit nationwide. Then we have to get our recruiters trained about where the vacancies are, where do we need people most . Whats it like to work at otay mesa if im in new york . Ive heard about it, but whats it really like . We create guides that show the cost of living, the cool options, entertainment options, all the how much money you are going to make. What your overtime pay is going to be. What is your Retention Bonus going to be, Foreign Language bonus . What is your daily work life so we can recruit people to different places where we actually need them. We can cover the entire country and get people to do that. Really, this targeted focus recruiting has helped us as well, too. Our attrition, its generally about 4 a year. I mentioned earlier thats 750 to 800 officers. Most of our attrition, more than half, is officers retire out of this occupation. We dont see a lot of people quitting. We dont see a lot of people going to other agencies. Theyre coming in and spending their career with us. Because most of them are leaving through retirement or taking different jobs in the agency out of the uniform series. Its like another 20 . You look at 70 of our attrition is they are staying within cvp or retiring. Now its about getting those initial applications through the process and were hard at work on that. We dont want to slow down any of this momentum. We really appreciate the time you have taken. We had a very hearty discussion, allowed for many questions. I appreciate everybody for participating. I want to reiterate again our thanks. Many of the conversations we have had today were focused on from the panelists and speakers, talking about the need for cooperation and coordination. Not just with border stakeholders but with your counterpart, with your counterpart in mexico. You guys really have done a tremendous job working with your counterpart in mexico. We commend you for that. Its critical for all the stakeholders involved. So again, i want to applaud you for that. We look forward to supplemental appropriations bill which is going through or being considered. Many of us are pushing for that as we need to support the needs and the current demands that increasing demands we have today. Thank you for taking the time to be with us. Thank you. [ applause ] here is a look at our prime time schedule. Starting at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, parents who lost students in parkland discuss School Safety and gun violence. On cspan2, the acting director of immigration and Customs Enforcement testifies. On cspan3, a hearing examinings high Prescription Drug prescription prices and the impact on patients. Saturday morning, Washington Examiner immigration reporter Anna Giartelli discusses progress on the border wall and other immigration topics. Then a look at Boris Johnsons agenda and the potential impact on u. S. And uk relations with heather connolley. And Steven Rodrick talks about his piece all american despair. Looking at the suicide epidemic in the western u. S. Shington jou saturday morning. Join the discussion. This weekend on American History tv, saturday, at 5 00 p. M. Eastern, a discussion about the 1980 refugee act. I think the president carters decision to push for that act and to implement it was a hugely important humanitarian decision. And he deserves every bit of the credit we heard here today. That said, we have to be realistic and say that that doesnt solve all the problems and, in fact, it creates some. At 6 00, on the civil war, a scholar gary gallagher. Whatever i did in academia should have some dimension that reached out to people who were just interested in the era, the way i had been when i was growing up. It seemed there should be more bridges between academia and the public than there are. One of the key places where that can happen, i knew also from experience, was at battlefields where you can make a connection to the past in a way that you cant. Sunday at 4 00 p. M. Eastern on reel america, the 1967 film testimony of truth details siflian injuries and deaths caused by u. S. Bombing in north vietnam. Csiflian injuries and d caused by u. S. Bombing in north vietnam. Ivsiflian injuries and caused by u. S. Bombing in north vietnam. Isiflian injuries and d caused by u. S. Bombing in north vietnam. Lsiflian injuries and ds caused by u. S. Bombing in north vietnam. Ian injuries and deaths caused by u. S. Bombing in north vietnam. All 13 of them, including an unborn baby have been killed. Only i am left. Even little babies are innocent victims of the american air raids. At 6 45 p. M. , historians discuss Health Care Policies since world war i. Trumans would have covered everyone. Initially, a majority of the public, up to 75 supported the idea of Health Insurance for all via the Social Security system. Explore our nations past on American History tv. All weekend, every weekend. Only on cspan3. This weekend on book tv, saturday at 8 15 eastern, in her latest book what do we need men for e. Jean carol talks about sexual assaults throughout her life. Including an alleged assault by donald trump in the mid 1990s. Men who take what they want, men who had their choice of women are seen as leaders. Thats how this is reading. All these women, the more women that come forward, he is more like alexander the great, he is like the great kennedy, clinton. Name them. Jefferson. Its a mark of a leader in many peoples eyes who see a man taking what he wants. Then at 9 00 p. M. , from freedom fest, the annual libertarian conference in las vegas. We feature an author with his book the war on guns. 45 of the countries in the world dont report firearm homicide data. In the countries that dont report firearm homicide data are the countries that have the highest homicide rates. On sunday, our coverage from freedom fest continues at 8 00 p. M. With former georgia congressman bob barr talking about his book. We have allowed you Public Discourse and political activity to sink to the level where we dont demand a requisite amount of understanding, education, civility and professionalism in what we do with and demand of our elected officials. What happens then is those important mechanisms such as impeachment are devalued. Then at 9 00 eastern, in his new book the fifth domain former george w. Bush Administration Special adviser for cybersecurity, richard clark, talks about how to make cyberspace less dangerous. There are corporations in america that are pretty secure. Are they invulnerable to attack . No. But they are resilient to it. Can someone penetrate their network . Sure. Theres no perimeter anymore. But can they do real damage to those companies . The answer is, no. Watch book tv every weekend on cspan2. Up next, former diplomats discuss the state of relations between the u. S. And saudi arabia and saudi arabias relationship with other countries in the middle east. This event is hosted by the middle east policy council. I am the vice chairwoman of the board. Im pleased to welcome you to this our 97th quarterly capitol hill conference. Our topic today is the United States saudi arabia relationship