Coast Guard: Challenges during the Transition to the Department of Homeland Security

The Coast Guard is one of 22 agencies being placed in the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS). With its key roles in the nation's ports, waterways, and coastlines, the Coast Guard is an important part of enhanced homeland security efforts. But it also has important nonsecurity missions, such as search and rescue, fisheries and environmental protection, and drug and migrant interdiction. GAO has conducted a number of reviews of the Coast Guard's missions and was asked to testify about the Coast Guard's most recent level of effort for its various missions and the major operational and organizational challenges facing the agency during its transition into the newly created DHS.