Alan Bersin reflects on his work in the Obama administration, in which he served as commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from 2010 to 2011, and in a variety of roles in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from 2009 to 2017, including assistant decretary of international affairs, special representative for border affairs, and chief diplomatic officer. Bersin discusses the design and evolution of both CBP and DHS, and outlines the major security challenges the administration faced over the course of both terms. Bersin focuses on the importance of interagency coordination and transnational collaboration to effective security operations, and provides details about major events and initiatives with which he was closely involved, including the administration's responses to the crises on the southern border in 2009 and 2014, the H1N1 and Ebola outbreaks, the U.S.-Mexico Twenty-First-Century Border Management framework, and the U.S.-Canada Beyond the Border Action Plan. Bersin also reflects on how government counterterrorism activities reshape understandings of national borders, the balance between trade and counterterrorism in CBP's mandate, the importance of immigration to American history and contemporary life, and the elevation of immigration as a partisan wedge issue
Presidents--United States; H1N1 influenza--Epidemics; Ebola virus disease--Epidemics; Emigration and immigration--History.--United States; Bersin, Alan Douglas, 1946-; Obama, Barack; United States Department of Homeland Security; United States U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Format
oral histories
Genre
Interviews
Date
2021
Physical Description
81 pages
Note (Biographical)
Alan Bersin served as assistant decretary of international affairs and chief diplomatic officer for the Department of Homeland Security in the Obama administration from 2012 through 2017. Directly prior to that, he served as the commissioner of U.S. C ustoms and Border Protection. Bersin is a former secretary of education for California, as well as a former superintendent of San Diego city schools, past federal assistant united states attorney and United States attorney for the United States District Court for the Southern District of California. During the Clinton administration, he served as Attorney General Janet Reno's southwest border representative, coordinating law enforcement on the southern border
Note
Interviewed by Nicole R. Hemmer on January 19, March 4, and April 14, 2021. This interview is part of the Columbia University: Obama Presidency Oral History
Note (Provenance)
Alan D. Bersin, Gift, transferred from Columbia Center for Oral History Research 2022