- U.S. Coast Guard Authority
- Per USCG Web Site
Law Enforcement
Source: G-OPLThe United States Coast Guard is the nation's leading maritime law enforcement agency and has broad, multi-faceted jurisdictional authority. The specific statutory authority for the Coast Guard Law Enforcement mission is given in 14 USC 2, "The Coast Guard shall enforce or assist in the enforcement of all applicable laws on, under and over the high seas and waters subject to the jurisdiction of the United States." In addition, 14 USC 89 provides the authority for U.S. Coast Guard active duty commissioned, warrant and petty officers to enforce applicable U.S. law. It authorizes Coast Guard personnel to enforce federal law on waters subject to U.S. jurisdiction and in international waters, as well as on all vessels subject to U.S. jurisdiction (including U.S., foreign and stateless vessels).
National Security
For more than 210 years, the Coast Guard has served the nation as one of the five armed forces. Throughout its distinguished history, the Coast Guard has enjoyed a unique relationship with the Navy. By statute, the Coast Guard is an armed force, operating in the joint arena at any time and functioning as a specialized service under the Navy in time of war or when directed by the President. It also has command responsibilities for the U.S. Maritime Defense Zone, countering potential threats to American's coasts, ports, and inland waterways through numerous port-security, harbor-defense, and coastal-warfare operations and exercises.
Today, U.S. national security interests can no longer be defined solely in terms of direct military threats to America and its allies. With the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the U.S. has fully realized the threat faced on the home front from highly sophisticated and covert adversarial groups. The Coast Guard has assumed one of the lead roles in responding to these unscrupulous attacks upon our nation by providing homeland security in our nation's harbors, ports and along our coastlines. Commercial, tanker, passenger, and merchant vessels have all been subject to increased security measures enforced by the Coast Guard.
In the immediate days after the destruction of the World Trade Centers and Pentagon, over 2,600 reservists were recalled to provide operational and administrative support. Reservists and active duty Coast Guard members worked in unison to provide additional manpower to clean-up efforts in New York City and heightened port security in the ports of Seattle, Los Angeles, New York and Boston to include the implementation of "sea marshals." As the nation re-defines national security and government leaders organize the Homeland Security Council, the Coast Guard will continue its efforts to reduce the risk from terrorism to commercial and passenger vessels traversing U.S. waterways and designated waterfront facilities.
The Coast Guard's national defense role to support U.S. military commanders-in-chiefs (CINCs) is more explicitly outlined in a memorandum of agreement signed by the Secretaries of Defense and Transportation in 1995. Four major national-defense missions were assigned to the Coast Guard. These missions--maritime intercept operations, deployed port operations/security and defense, peacetime engagement, and environmental defense operations--are essential military tasks assigned to the Coast Guard as a component of joint and combined forces in peacetime, crisis, and war.
In recent years, the nation's CINCs have requested--and have been provided--Coast Guard cutters to conduct maritime-intercept operations, carry out peacetime-engagement missions, and perform other essential warfare tasks for all three forward-deployed Navy fleets: the Fifth Fleet in the Arabian Gulf/Middle East; the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean; and the Seventh Fleet in the Western Pacific. In addition, Coast Guard cutters have recently supported NATO operations during the Kosovo crisis. However, the Coast Guard deepwater fleet is aging and in urgent need of replacement.
The U.S. Coast Guard's physical assets (cutters, aircraft, and shore facilities) have been undercapitalized for years. Only two of the 39 countries throughout the world with similarly sized navies or coast guards have an older physical plant. To remedy the situation the Coast Guard has initiated the Deepwater Capabilities Replacement Project. Instead of proposing a traditional one-for-one asset-replacement program, the Coast Guard is working with industry to develop a system of systems in an effort to ensure effective--and cost-effective--interoperability among all of its Deepwater assets and with the other four armed services. The eventual Integrated Deepwater System (IDS) will encompass all of the Coast Guard's major cutters, aircraft, and sensors, providing the capabilities required to perform all of the Coast Guard's essential deepwater missions. IDS procurement is designed to achieve maximum operational effectiveness at minimum total ownership costs.
Outside of U.S. coastal waters, the Coast Guard assists foreign naval and maritime forces through training and joint operations. Many of the world's maritime nations have forces that operate principally in the littoral seas and conduct missions that resemble those of the Coast Guard. And, because it has such a varied mix of assets and missions, the Coast Guard is a powerful role model that is in ever-increasing demand abroad. The service's close working relations with these nations not only improve mutual cooperation during specific joint operations in which the Coast Guard is involved but also support U.S. diplomatic efforts in general: promoting democracy, economic prosperity, and trust between nations
Maritime Security
Since 1790, the Coast Guard has served as America's principal "law of the sea" agency. Originally established by Alexander Hamilton as the Revenue Marine, the Coast Guard began with the mission of enforcing import tariffs. Since then its maritime-security responsibilities have expanded exponentially, and almost always synergistically, to include the enforcement of all federal laws at sea--from stopping pirates to enforcing vessel-safety regulations and fisheries conservation laws to interdicting drug and migrant smugglers. Because the Coast Guard has law-enforcement authority, it can apprehend foreign fishing vessels engaged in poaching, interdict vessels carrying illegal drugs and undocumented migrants, and stop unsafe boaters.
Today, U.S. national-security interests can no longer be defined solely in terms of direct military threats to America and its allies. Working under the necessarily broader current definition of national security, the Coast Guard is seeking to reduce the risk from terrorism to U.S. passengers at foreign and domestic ports and in designated waterfront facilities, but it faces the extremely difficult challenge of enforcing increasingly complex laws against highly sophisticated adversaries. Coast Guard boarding teams deal continuously with violations of multinational fisheries agreements and foil high-tech attempts to smuggle drugs into the United States.
The influx of illegal drugs is one of America's maritime-security problems. As the nation's leading maritime agency in protecting the U.S. public from the drug threat, the Coast Guard plays a key role in implementing the President's national drug-control strategy. Despite the vast complications in enforcement, the Coast Guard performs this new task with only modest additional funding. A tremendous number of assets are required to patrol the long coastlines of the United States and the even greater expanse of waters encompassing the maritime "transit zones" used by drug smugglers. This six-million-square-mile area, roughly the size of the continental United States itself, includes the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Eastern Pacific.
To carry out its drug-interdiction mission the Coast Guard has established Operation Steel Web, a multiyear strategy aimed at reducing the flow of illegal drugs into the United States. In fiscal year 2001, the Coast Guard interdicted more than 135,000 pounds of cocaine--setting a maritime cocaine seizure record for the third consecutive year. The street value of the cocaine seized, estimated at $4.4 billion, exceeds the Coast Guard's entire operating budget for the year. Not incidentally, the Coast Guard seized 32,000 pounds of marijuana during the same period.
The protection of U.S. living marine resources--primarily through the detection and deterrence of illegal fishing activity--is another of the Coast Guard's historic mission areas of responsibility that continues to expand. Beginning with the protection of the Bering Sea fur seal and sea otter herds and continuing through the vast expansion following World War II in the size and efficiency of global fishing fleets, Coast Guard responsibilities in this mission area now include enforcement of laws and treaties in the 3.36-million-square-mile U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), the largest in the world.
Approximately 110,000 commercial fishing vessels operate from U.S. ports, in an industry worth some $25 billion, that in the early 1990s produced almost 4.7 million metric tons per year. The United States can anticipate increased enforcement responsibilities in this field as the world's fish stocks decline and more pressure is put on the Coast Guard to protect U.S. fisheries resources. To carry out these added responsibilities, the Coast Guard will continue to patrol the millions of square miles of ocean that make up the EEZ and the high seas. This is a daunting challenge for an agency with a finite number of assets available for the patrol of such a vast area of water.
The world's population is anticipated to increase in the next two decades by nearly two billion people. Ethnic and sectarian strife will likely continue to fuel sudden and uncontrolled migrations of large numbers of people, putting increased demands on limited resources. The flood of undocumented migrants in boats onto America's shores is both a threat to human life and a violation of U.S. and international laws. Coast Guard migrant-interdiction operations are as much humanitarian efforts as they are law-enforcement missions. In fact, the majority of migrant interdiction cases handled by the Coast Guard actually begin as search-and-rescue missions, usually on the high seas rather than in U.S. coastal waters.
The Coast Guard is the lead agency for the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws at sea, stressing sensitivity in dealing with undocumented migrants in all realms: mass migration, asylum/refugee requests, smuggling and repatriation. Since 1980, the Coast Guard has interdicted an estimated 305,000 migrants from 62 countries. Today, alien smuggling ventures facilitate most of these undocumented persons. In its effort to increase U.S. security against undocumented migrations, the Coast Guard constantly monitors maritime transit zones, interdicting undocumented migrants, rescuing people from sinking or unsafe vessels, providing humanitarian assistance, and training nations to discourage undocumented migration into the United States
Posse Comitatus & The Coast Guard:
"POSSE COMITATUS ACT" (18 USC 1385): A Reconstruction Era criminal law proscribing use of Army (later, Air Force) to "execute the laws" except where expressly authorized by Constitution or Congress. Limit on use of military for civilian law enforcement also applies to Navy by regulation. Dec '81 additional laws were enacted (codified 10 USC 371-78) clarifying permissible military assistance to civilian law enforcement agencies--including the Coast Guard--especially in combating drug smuggling into the United States. Posse Comitatus clarifications emphasize supportive and technical assistance (e.g., use of facilities, vessels, aircraft, intelligence, tech aid, surveillance, etc.) while generally prohibiting direct participation of DoD personnel in law enforcement (e.g., search, seizure, and arrests). For example, Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachments (LEDETS) serve aboard Navy vessels and perform the actual boardings of interdicted suspect drug smuggling vessels and, if needed, arrest their crews). Positive results have been realized especially from Navy ship/aircraft involvement