Border Cooperation

The Justice Department's Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and Treasury Department's Customs Service are working to alleviate the problems of "dual management" at land border ports.

Their efforts, already generating better results at several border sites, include:

the development of joint performance standards, to measure and track effectiveness;
coordinated shift scheduling, to maximize staffing of primary inspection lanes and speed the entry of travelers;
cross-training, to augment the basic curriculum of each agency's service academies;
coordinated special operations, with teams that jointly develop and evaluate their missions; and
the establishment of Port Quality Improvement Committees, through which management and labor representatives from both agencies work on cooperative ventures at the ports.