Arizona governor signs immigration bill

[agzg]

Originally Posted by PiKA2001

BTW, they ALL need security clearances.

Common misconception. CBP employees (especially those who patrol the spaces between points of entry) typically go through a Federal background investigation which can usually be done electronically - it's a more in-depth credit/criminal history check.

ICE and other federal employees that need any level of security clearances have to go through a 3-6 month process of polygraph tests, interviews of their families and friends, psychological testing, etc. Depending on the level, it gets pretty long and arduous. These last between 3 and 5 years and have to be renewed.

The clearance levels range from confidential (typically this is for jobs that deal with a lot of personal information, like financial data) to Top Secret/Secret Compartmentalized Information (usually reserved for national security issues but sometimes not).

CBP employees do not deal with the type of information that would require a security clearance to have. ICE employees do, especially because they've been tasked with aiding the FBI in the monitoring of foreign-born terrorist suspects (This is why I say that ICE and CBP do not really enforce the same laws).

To be 100% honest, many of the CBP agents that I know would probably not be able to get a security clearance beyond confidential for one reason or another. They'd have already been working with ICE if they had. CBP is not exactly the most desireable job in the federal government - it takes a certain kinda someone.

About the airports - that may be true, but CBP (especially the patrol) is less concerned with legitimate points of entry than they are with the spaces between. Generally, the spaces between are land-based. If you get stopped in an airport, it's a Customs and Border Protection agent. If you're getting stopped on land, away from a legitimate point of entry, it's Customs and Border patrol personnel (also part of CBP). Which is who we're talking about in this thread, mostly. My mistake for not clarifying.