MPI Publications	Publications > 2006

SHAPING A STRATEGY TO STOP TERRORISTS IN THEIR TRACKS

WASHINGTON -- In a new Migration Policy Institute report, a former senior counsel for the 9/11 Commission provides a blueprint for an integrated strategy to thwart terrorists by focusing on terrorist mobility.

In Countering Terrorist Mobility: Shaping an Operational Strategy, Susan Ginsburg notes that all but the most recent government counterterrorism strategies since 9/11 omit mobility as a distinct element of terrorism requiring its own operational strategy. Terrorists' need to travel can provide valuable leads about their networks and operations that the government can use to counter their ability to enter, live in, or move within the United States and like-minded countries.

"While public discourse tends to equate blocking terrorists' ability to travel with reforming the immigration system, terrorist mobility confronts us with a set of problems distinct from, although clearly linked to, controlling immigration," Ms. Ginburg said. "Terrorist mobility deserves comparable attention and resources to those devoted to terrorist finance and communications."

Ms. Ginsburg argues that a strategy to undermine and disrupt terrorist mobility must serve three purposes -- defensive, offensive, and deterrent -- and requires that eight arenas of action are effectively integrated and continually improved:

• Establishing high standards of knowledge regarding terrorist mobility;
• Targeting terrorists who act as travel facilitators;
• Aggressively working to shrink and exploit the illicit travel networks (e.g., document providers, human smugglers and traffickers, and other transnational criminals) that are sources of travel facilitation and funds for terrorists;
• Investing in the ability to track individuals en route;
• Equipping legal entry and immigration channels to better detect terrorists;
• Denying terrorists access through illegal entry channels;
• Creating a systematic approach to constraining terrorist mobility within the United States; and
• Conducting thorough, post-incident and post-attack terrorist mobility reviews that enable preventive measures to be strengthened and public confidence to be bolstered.

Ms. Ginsburg finds that while the United States must secure its own entry channels, it must also work with allies to ensure greater security within their borders as well as common global travel and trade pathways. Examples of programs and priorities focused specifically on terrorist mobility include:

• Requiring a coherent set of terrorist mobility analytic products to emerge from periodic government-wide, all-source assessments produced by the community involved with mobility;
• Mandating the establishment of a knowledge management system for terrorist movement;
• Requiring that the Visa Waiver Program be linked to higher international document and identification security standards;
• Establishing a terrorist travel document program analogous to the terrorist watch list;
• Creating an integrated operational unit to act against criminal travel facilitator networks with potential links to terrorists; and
• Following up on birth certificate security.

Ms. Ginsburg finds that strengthening performance across the range of foreign and domestic efforts will require dismantling institutional barriers that have evolved between immigration and border security, intelligence, crime control, defense, and other government agencies. A successful terrorist mobility strategy will also require establishing new arrangements within and among these agencies to capitalize on existing expertise and best integrate various counterterrorism efforts.

MPI Senior Fellow Doris Meissner noted, "The National Counterterrorism Center submits a classified report to Congress today that, for the first time, addresses the issue of terrorist mobility. Susan Ginsburg's analysis sets the standard by which its strategy should be measured."

Countering Terrorist Mobility: Shaping an Operational Strategy is available online now at: http://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/MPI_TaskForce_Ginsburg.pdf

This report was commissioned as part of MPI's Independent Task Force on Immigration and America's Future, a bipartisan panel of prominent leaders from key sectors concerned with immigration that aims to generate sound information and workable policy ideas. Former Senator Spencer Abraham (R-MI) and former Congressman Lee Hamilton (D-IN) serve as co-chairs of the Independent Task Force. The panel's work is directed by MPI Senior Fellow Doris Meissner, the former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. MPI's partner institutions in the project are Manhattan Institute and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.