During the summer of 1994, at the height of Operation Able Manner, the Coast Guard led a joint effort to rescue or interdict tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who were fleeing Haiti largely for economic reasons. Shifting and ambiguous national strategies, a lack of third-country support, and no service or national mass-migration plans complicated the joint response to the challenging humanitarian crisis. Because of the lessons garnered from Able Manner and the heightened focus on border security after 9/11, the Coast Guard has since worked with other federal agencies to create, exercise, and regularly update an extensive plan that, despite some weaknesses, will adequately guide the operational commander in planning for and leading a mass-migration response.
The interagency forces involved in interdicting and processing waves of Haitian and Cuban illegal migrants during Operations Able Manner and Able Vigil in the early 1990s did an outstanding job rescuing many from grossly overloaded and unseaworthy vessels. This success, however, occurred despite a lack of operational planning and exercises that continued until the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was formed in 2003. Thereafter, significant improvements were made to readiness.
A number of lessons are to be learned from Able Manner. Some key mistakes were made before the crisis even began.1 First, despite a steadily increasing migrant flow from Haiti over the previous ten years and worsening political instability, the Coast Guard had neither developed nor exercised a mass-migration contingency plan.
The Adaptable Service
Throughout its history, the Coast Guard has been assigned additional duties, earning it a reputation as a jack of all trades that has demanded flexibility among its operational commanders. However, this approach, combined with a focus on high-tempo tactical operations, led to a lack of service-wide planning in the 1990s.2 Neither the Joint Operation Planning and Execution System nor the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Incident Command System planning processes were used to any extent. Major operations such as Able Manner were conducted with a great deal of improvisation. As an article in the July 1997 Proceedings explained:
Further, many of the operational details were planned essentially at the last minute, without the benefit of any professional planners. Instead of having a J-5 shop toiling away on planning orders for months or years in advance, Able Manner and Able Vigil were largely plan-as-you-go . . . with operational orders written literally the night before they were needed. . . . This was not an indication of a lack of professionalism, but a recognition that some shooting from the hip is often the best approach for the jobs at which the Coast Guard excels.3
But the article went on to add that because of the lack of planning, the ad hoc task-force staff had to address important issues such as communications, command and control (C2), and force sustainment while coordinating high-tempo operations. The need for a joint plan may seem obvious, however one wasn’t created until 2003 at the direction of DHS.
This had several detrimental effects. First, after the Guantanamo Bay migrant camp closed in 1991, DOD declined to use it again as a holding facility, which significantly delayed opening it during the 1994 mass migration. Meanwhile, cutters continued to interdict migrants but had nowhere to take them, which required a single minimally manned 224-foot cutter to carry more than 700 migrants on deck.4
The Coast Guard scrambled to find other options and even contracted a commercial cruise ship for $60,000 a day but never used it, because of the need to keep the migrants in the open air to prevent the spread of tuberculosis. The same concerns limited the use of the USNS Comfort (T-AH-20). The Navy and Marine Corps hastily constructed a camp for 2,500 migrants on Grand Turk Island in Turks and Caicos, which cost $18 million. But construction delays and poor environmental conditions (including dust and shallow water at the piers) prevented even a single migrant from being housed there.5
Cutters became overloaded with migrants, and DOD reopened the camp after President Bill Clinton directed it to do so.6 Following Able Manner and the subsequent Cuban mass migration, Guantanamo nearly reached its capacity. Had the mass migrations continued, no plan was in place for another country to accommodate significant numbers.7
Stressing the System
During this time, the Operation Support Democracy embargo was occurring concurrently with several naval assets, and it was relatively easy to divert some to assist with migrant interdiction. However, the Navy was unfamiliar with migrant processing, and it had to receive all of the required migrant supplies, such as blankets, lifejackets, and baby food, before it could embark migrants. The Navy also wasn’t initially comfortable with having its tactical control with the Coast Guard initially hampering the commander’s C2 function.
When the mass migration began, the Commander, Coast Guard District Seven (D7), Rear Admiral William P. Leahy Jr., led the at-sea response from the D7 command center. However, many of the watch standers were sent to the USCGC Hamilton (WHEC-715), the high-endurance cutter serving as command task unit (CTU). Although D7 was able to commandeer some officers, both the command center and the CTU watch standers were shorthanded and on a port and starboard rotation for approximately 36 days.8 Poor planning also led to disagreements among the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Customs Service, and other interagency members regarding migrant rights, since the issues were not vetted prior to the operation.9
With so many migrants on board its ships, the Coast Guard coordinated six-person Marine Corps security assistance teams for larger cutters. But since points of contact hadn’t previously been established or a recall exercised, the security force was delayed in arriving.
Perhaps the greatest lesson gleaned from Able Manner was the role a national policy decision can have in influencing a mass migration. At the time, the Coast Guard was under the Department of Transportation. There was no designated adviser to the secretary for mass-migration issues and no plan to delineate how migrant issues should be brought to the attention of national leaders. In fact, a year before Able Manner, a Coast Guard student at the Naval War College made the case that “policy makers must be keenly aware of the action/reaction chain that escalates so quickly,” and that “had a CONPLAN existed for the 1991-2 Haitian AMIO, the mass exodus experienced may have been averted.”10 A recent intelligence report added that “since 1980 the fluctuating monthly Haitian migrant flow has been marginally influenced by deteriorating internal economic factors (which create the basic underlying desire to emigrate), but the primary short term driver for Haitians to emigrate in large numbers has consistently been changes in U.S. policy.”11
Although some units submitted tactical-level after-action reports, surprisingly not one was completed at the operational level. Apart from Able Manner, no operations were created or discussed after the 1965 and 1980 Cuban mass migrations.12 While all such migrations are different, an after-action report may have led much sooner to a plan. To date, while the Marine Corps fully documented its efforts during Able Manner in an official historical monograph, the Coast Guard has not produced a comparable document.
This was not the case with Operation Sea Signal, DOD’s efforts to operate the migrant camp at Guantanamo Bay from 1994 to 1995.13 U.S. Atlantic Command produced a detailed video concerning lessons learned and an extensive report to which U.S. Southern Command refers.14
Operations Plan Vigilant Sentry
In March 2003, the Coast Guard became part of the DHS, and Homeland Security Policy Directive Five designated the DHS secretary as the principal federal official for domestic incidents. The chief of staff of the fledgling department was retired Army Major General Bruce M. Lawlor, who had a strong background in DOD planning doctrine. He promptly called for the development of an integrated and comprehensive DHS mass-migration plan. After extensive coordination among the Coast Guard and various agencies, including DOD, the State Department, the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services, Immigration Customs Enforcement, Customs & Border Protection, Citizenship and Immigration Services, FEMA, the FBI, and various state and local representatives, Operations Plan Vigilant Sentry was approved by DHS Secretary Tom Ridge on 1 November 2004.
The plan marked a dramatic improvement in readiness for a potential mass migration well beyond the numbers seen during both 1994 mass migrations combined. Its primary objective is to “protect the safety of life at sea and to deter and dissuade mass migration using organic DHS forces, supported by other federal assets and capabilities”—support that maximizes the operational factor of force. The more than 1,000-page document delineating the plan provides guidance on deterrence, maritime and land-based interdictions, and migrant processing, protection, and housing. It was updated in 2007 to reflect organizational changes to DHS and was approved by then-Secretary Michael Chertoff.
Much input for subsequent changes has come after operational or tabletop exercises. So far, there have been more than a dozen exercises. Lessons learned regarding legal and funding issues will be incorporated into the plan’s upcoming revision, in accordance with a new DHS standard plan architecture.
To minimize response time and improve C2, DHS directed the establishment of Homeland Security Task Force Southeast (HSTF-SE), a standing core element located at D7. In response to advance indicators of a potential migration increase, billets within the command and general staffs will be filled. Branch and section chief positions have been pre-designated, and others will be surge-staffed and scaled as appropriate to the specific situation.
When the rest of the task force reports, it won’t consist entirely of Coast Guard personnel. In fact, only two of the five sections (intelligence and operations branches of the civilian incident command system model) are headed by a Coast Guard representative.16 This serves as an effective force and expertise multiplier, preventing a port and starboard watch while also ensuring a wide range of expertise. HSTF-SE is designed to sustain operations for up to 180 days.17
Readying Guantanamo Bay
All support is important, but DOD’s is deemed critical. It includes a request for assistance/request for forces process for maritime asset support and migrant processing facility support at Guantanamo Bay. Because of the geographic areas involved, primary support is coordinated by U.S. Southern Command, which has done a great deal of site-preparation work for migrant-camp operations there. U.S. Army South, Southern Command’s Army component command, has been designated the Joint Task Force Migrant Operations, charged with responding to DHS requests for assistance to rapidly establish the expanding camp with space available for tens of thousands of migrants.18
DOD is fully engaged in this process. Arizona National Guard Major Ricardo Giron of JTF Guantanamo writes that “boots-on-the-ground training is the best way to prepare Guantanamo Bay for a possible large-scale migrant operation. Holding encompassing training exercises, with role players, tabletop planning, and involving many different government organizations is an effective way to prepare.”19 This planning improves C2 and should help ensure that cutters can offload migrants without delay.
For naval assets, Southern Command currently works closely with Navy operational commanders and force providers to monitor deployment readiness for all supporting platforms. This is in accordance with the 2010 Guidance for the Employment of the Force, which lists Caribbean mass migration as one of the 14 top-priority contingency planning requirements and the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan, which directs Southern Command to develop a concept of operations plan with time-phased force and deployment data for it.20 Northern Command is directed to draft a base plan and is responsible for support within its area of responsibility, leading to it being more focused on the U.S. land-based portion of Operation Vigilant Sentry. The task-force director also has authority “to direct and reallocate all DHS personnel and assets within the HSTF-SE area of responsibility to the extent necessary to meet objectives,” further enhancing C2.21
Operations Plan Vigilant Sentry notes that naval vessels will be embarked with a Coast Guard law-enforcement detachment to provide full-time assistance with command-and-control and law-enforcement authorities. Also, migrant supplies are stockpiled in Guantanamo Bay and Key West, improving logistics. The nature and extent of DOD assistance is delineated in a series of executive orders and presidential directives. But such support will become mandatory once the President declares that the mass-migration poses a threat to national security.
However, HSTF-SE and Southern Command have established a very close relationship. According to Tobey Morison, senior interagency specialist in the partnering directorate, Southern Command does not intend to await such a declaration and will start making full preparations as it sees indicators and warnings develop.
POG/SOG
The most significant lesson learned had to do with the role U.S. policy changes can have in instigating a mass migration, and the Operations Plan Vigilant Sentry even addresses this. The plan created the senior oversight group (SOG) at the assistant secretary level to resolve significant DHS policy issues. The director of DHS operations, coordination, and planning serves as the SOG chair. The planning oversight group (POG) includes key action officers who facilitate interagency coordination and assist the SOG with policy.22 The POG/SOG could identify issues and help create issue papers and talking points that could be pushed up to the National Security Staff for a decision.
Although the plan has been regularly exercised, the HSTF-SE was pressed into action in 2004. Haiti was experiencing unrest with the pending departure of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and migrant flow had begun to increase. Since Operation Plan Vigilant Sentry was in draft form and not yet approved by DHS, HSTF-SE quickly drafted an abbreviated 14-page plan, Operations Plan Able Sentry. It was approved, and the task force stood up for the first time during a real event. By leveraging the plan to quickly establish a visible force and repatriate all 905 of the undocumented migrants, a mass migration was prevented, according to Michael Scully, the task force chief of staff. A well-attended hotwash meeting, which FEMA facilitated for the operation, generated some valuable insights that allowed HSTF-SE to make some last-minute modifications to the Vigilant Sentry draft plan.
Are We Truly Prepared?
Operations Plan Vigilant Sentry is a significant step toward readiness, but concerns remain. First and foremost, the plan is intended to manage a mass migration of up to 100,000 migrants, but Guantanamo Bay’s official holding capacity is significantly smaller. The State Department “has explored the possibility of locating additional sites for non-domestic migrant processing centers in other countries,” but there likely won’t be a third country location designated in advance.23 If the Guantanamo camp were to reach capacity, the United States would likely provide the required funds to rapidly permit a large camp in a nearby country. A third country could indeed be required, considering that more than 60,000 migrants were interdicted during the nearly sequential 1994 Haitian and Cuban mass migrations and that the Haitian population has grown by 66 percent over the past couple of decades.24
Further complicating this situation is a general feeling that a mass migration no longer seems likely. The number of interdictions has dropped to their lowest level in more than a decade, and Haiti, with a significant presence of nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations in the country, is more stable. However, a major political upheaval, natural, pending, perceived, or actual change in policy, or an improved U.S. economy could all lead to an increase in migrant numbers, especially if not effectively countered with the deterrence methods outlined in Operations Plan Vigilant Sentry.
Perhaps the biggest wild card is a natural disaster. While no previous Caribbean mass migration has been attributed to such an event, the potential is there. When the 12 January 2010 earthquake devastated Haiti, the HSTF-SE started ramping up for operations, but such a migration never occurred. The DHS was not forced to activate Vigilant Sentry. In fact, migrant numbers in the weeks following the disaster were below average. The main reason was likely the enormous military air and surface presence off Haiti’s coast. Although there for a humanitarian mission, they also provided a visible deterrent to potential illegal migrants.
As a consequence of the near-implementation of Vigilant Sentry, it became clear that if a mass migration and a natural disaster occurred simultaneously in the Caribbean, D7’s command center would not be able to accommodate the staffs necessary to effectively manage both events. As a result, an alternative command center location for the task force was identified.
The degree of foresight present in this plan is atypical of the Coast Guard. To ensure that DHS recognizes the plan’s value and understands how similar plans could be created for other contingencies, it should encourage its planners to seek and obtain a war college degree, consider its own version of the Goldwater-Nichols plan, and complete a third-stage review.25 Such initiatives would help coordinate planning and operations, require “joint” assignments, and improve alignment of the department’s various services.
Finally, while it is too late to apply every lesson learned from Operation Able Manner, the Coast Guard should nevertheless create an official, detailed report, especially while many involved personnel are still on active duty. Such a document would help record operational challenges and also ensure that the efforts of Coast Guardsmen and members of the joint interagency team are not forgotten.
1. Operation Able Manner is a more accurate measure of mass-migration readiness in the early 1990s, because Able Vigil followed only weeks later when many preparations were already in place.
2. Ivan T. Luke, “Shooting from the Hip.” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, July 1997, p. 53.
3. Ibid.
4. Commander Joseph Buzzella, U.S. Coast Guard, telephone call with author, 15 October 2009.
5. Nicholas E. Reynolds, A Skillful Show of Strength: U.S. Marines in Humanitarian Operations, Washington, DC: U.S. Marine Corps, 2003, p. 12.
6. Ivan Luke, email message to author, 9 October 2009.
7. Commander-in-Chief Atlantic Command and ASD for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, Migrant Camp Operations: The Guantanamo Experience, DVD, OC Inc., 1995.
8. Tobey Morison, telephone call with author, 30 September 2009.
9. Christopher Mitchell, “U.S. Policy toward Haitian Boat People,1972-93,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, July 1994, No. 534, pp. 69-80.
10. Robert Parker, “Did the USCG Use the Lessons Learned from the 1980 Mariel Boatlift from Cuba in Dealing with the Haitian Migration Crisis of 1991-92?,” research paper, pp. 21-24. Newport, RI: U.S. Naval War College, 1993.
11. U.S. Coast Guard Atlantic Area Intelligence Assessment, “Temporary Protected Status for Haitians: Perception of Relaxation of U.S. Policy Could Cause a Major Increase in Illegal Migration,” 10 January 2009, p.1.
12. Dennis Noble, “Lessons Unlearned: The Camarioca Boatlift,” Naval History, August 2009, pp. 44-49.
13. CinC Atlantic Command, Migrant Camp Operations: The Guantanamo Experience.
14. N. Reynolds, ibid.
15. U.S. DHS, Operations Plan Vigilant Sentry, cover memo. (FOUO/LE Sensitive).
16. Michael Scully, “Exercise Unified Support,” PowerPoint presentation, 21 September 2009, Miami, Florida: HSTF-SE.
17. U.S. DHS, Operations Plan Vigilant Sentry, 27 August 2007, p. 10. (FOUO/LE Sensitive), information extracted is unclassified.
18. Ibid.
19. Eric Liesse, “Coast Guard, GITMO Keep Migrant Ops about Safety,” JTF GITMO News, 6 June 2008, http://www.jtfgtmo.southcom.mil/ (accessed 11 October 2009).
20. CJCS Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP), H-G-5. (Secret) Information extracted is unclassified.
21. U.S. DHS, Operations Plan Vigilant Sentry, p. 6.
22. U.S. DHS, ibid., p. 5.
23. U.S. DHS, ibid.
24. Campbell J. Gibson and Emily Lennon, “Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-Born Population of the United States: 1850-1990,” U.S. Bureau of the Census Population Division Working Paper No. 29, Washington, DC, February 1999, Table 1.
25. Michael A. Mohn, “U.S. Caribbean Maritime Alien Migration Interdiction: A Perspective from an Enforcer,” research paper, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2008, p 65.