Chertoff Needs to Go

I continue to be extremely unimpressed with the performance of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Yesterday's appearance on Fox News Sunday was no exception; the transcript is here.

One of Chertoff's statements Sunday: "We've got 40 percent of our illegals coming through the ports of entry using legal visas and overstaying."

The immigration bill would have solved that? Chertoff lives in a fantasy world if he thinks everyone would have magically come forward to be accounted for if the bill had passed.

My question: If we're unable to keep track of those who are here legally on visas, how would we administer a program many times larger to handle Z visas and the like? We can't even process legal immigration applications or passports in a timely manner right now! What is the secretary doing to improve compliance with the terms of legal visas, and to speed the processing of legal immigrants?

Chertoff also complained Sunday that fences cannot beat ladders and tunnels. What is he doing to deal with those issues, other than throwing up his hands and proclaiming that fences are just "symbolic" and don't work?

I feel Chertoff comes across as a very unserious person, who is all about politics rather than national security and border protection. For one thing, it's hard to trust our nation's safety to someone who would -- not once, but twice -- assert that opponents of the failed immigration bill want to execute illegal aliens. That's the worst kind of lying political demagoguery, and it's frankly appalling to me that the President hasn't requested that Chertoff, at the least, offer an apology for his statements. But then nothing the President does with regard to immigration and border security seems to make much sense.

Does anyone really believe Chertoff when he says: "We don't really have the ability to enforce the law with respect to illegal work in this country in a way that's truly effective"?

For starters, what was Simpson-Mazzoli all about, and did anyone take that legislation off the books?

It's all about the will to enforce the current laws and campaign for adequate funds to do so -- like the $4.4 billion the administration dangled as a carrot if senators would go along with their amnesty plan. Chertoff simply doesn't have the will and instead has been complaining that since the amnesty bill didn't pass, he'll have to separate families, which he says leads to "unfortunate pictures of crying children." (Gee, Mr. Chertoff, what about my daughters' school friends from India and Korea who were separated from their parents for exended periods of time while waiting to join a parent who was here legally?) Chertoff is all about sympathy for illegal alien families, and not at all about border enforcement and national security.

And does anyone believe Chertoff's recent claims on Sean Hannity's radio show that the border fence has not been built because it's a difficult engineering problem? I sat there shaking my head at the radio. As others have pointed out, if we could build the Hoover Dam during the depression and develop the atomic bomb during WWII, certainly we can build a simple fence in a reasonable amount of time? (And find ways to deal with ladders and tunnels too...)

I'll be blunt and use language that is pretty strong for this website: Chertoff is a whining political hack.

What makes it worse is that the President accepts and perhaps encourages Chertoff's performance, or lack thereof.

Bottom line: Chertoff is not the right man for this most important job. And until the President replaces him and shows that he is serious about defending our nation with secure borders, as well as by fighting terrorists overseas, he will continue to sink in my estimation.

Update: Paul Mirengoff at Power Line responding to this article on Chertoff: "Chertoff's pique may interfere with his agency's willingness to enforce existing laws against illegal immigration... His latest comments reinforce the sense that, when it comes to enforcing current law, his heart isn't in it. Doubts about the administration's commitment to enforcement formed a substantial part of the basis for the opposition of many to the administration's comprehensive package. To that extent, Chertoff's petulance is self-defeating."

Chertoff comes off once more as an immature whiner, not as a serious adult committed to succeeding at a job critically important to our national security.