Our ancestors are from Counties Roscommon and Clare. Like millions before them, they left Ireland to escape poverty and make a life for themselves and their children in America. And thousands more of those sons and daughters of immigrants chose public service as a career.

The Irish, for example, once dominated the ranks of the New York City Police Department and other law enforcement agencies, especially those in the great immigrant cities of the northeast. The common language made it easy, even for immigrants right off the boat, to become civil servants.

But that alone doesn't explain the attraction of the Irish in America for this calling. Something deeper, more intangible is at work -- a desire to serve and to be engaged in the issues and conflicts of the day.

The New York Times touched on the ascendancy of the Irish in politics and police work in an editorial in the wake of the assassination attempt against President Reagan. The Times said the casualties that day -- Reagan, Brady, McCarthy and Delahanty -- sounded "like the guest list for the annual dinner of the friendly sons of St. Patrick."

The Customs Service too was predominantly Irish in some of these same cities, starting from the early history of the agency. Customs is the nation's oldest law enforcement agency -- 211 years old to be precise. It was present at the creation of the republic. From a few armed revenue cutters, as they were called back then, patrolling our shores for tariff evaders, the organization has grown to almost 20,000 people who work at 301 ports of entry around the country. And we still intercept smugglers on the sea and in the air, too, using a fleet of 96 high-speed boats and 115 aircraft.

Before the institution of the income tax the Customs Service was the principal collector of revenue for the United States. Still, today, Customs is second only to the Internal Revenue Service in collection of revenues for the Treasury -- over $20 billion annually, most of it through the collection of duties on imports. And the volume and value of those imports are skyrocketing -- over one trillion dollars worth of imports came into the United States last year, or about double what it was just seven years ago.

And guess what? The value of trade is expected to nearly double again in another five years, surpassing the two trillion-dollar mark by 2006.

This explosion in trade and general economic activity manifests itself in many ways: thousands of additional tractor-trailers and railroad cars entering the United States from Mexico and Canada; millions of additional travelers entering by air, sea and over land -- about a half a billion travelers legally crossed the border of the United States last year.

This incredible level of activity is, of course, good for the country. It is part and parcel of America's booming economy, our low unemployment, our prosperity in general. As welcome as all of this expanding trade and traffic may be, it creates some huge demands and challenges for the Customs Service. We have to process all of it with an eye toward expediting lawful trade as quickly as possible, while stopping contraband from getting in, and preventing weapons and strategic materials from getting out and into the wrong hands. And we are doing all of this with aging computer technology that is badly in need of replacement.

All of this economic activity across our borders builds a much bigger haystack, an enormous haystack of perfectly legal trade and commerce in which the needles of narcotics trafficking, money laundering and terrorism try to hide. The mission of the Customs Service is to find those needles before they enter the United States to do damage to our citizens.

One such needle was named Ahmed Ressam. He attempted to enter the United States from Canada last December 14th carrying explosive material and timing devices. They were sufficient to trigger bombs not unlike those in at Oklahoma City and at the World Trade Center bombing in New York.

He took a circuitous route from Canada, entering the United States by ferry at the small and remote border crossing at Port Angeles in the state of Washington. Port Angeles can get very busy in the summer months with all the tourists. But it is anything but busy in December. In December our Customs inspectors interview each and every passenger getting off the ferry from Canada, which was not good for Ahmed Ressam.

When inspector Diana Dean questioned him she found his answers evasive and his itinerary improbable. She asked Ressam to step out of his car and open the trunk. Inside the trunk, the bomb making material was discovered. The inspector who was holding Ressam by his jacket was suddenly holding only his jacket. Ressam had slipped out of the coat and bolted from the ferry dock, running up to the main street of Port Angeles with four Customs inspectors in hot pursuit.

I recently visited Port Angeles. Believe me, the scene I am describing will be burned in the collective consciousness of Port Angeles for years to come. Ressam ran for six long blocks. At one point, he tried to hide under a parked car. Then he attempted to hijack the car of a woman who locked her doors and ran a light to get away from him. That’s when our inspectors caught up to Ressam, tackled him and placed him under arrest.

While all of the ramifications of Ressam's activities have yet to fully surface, it's apparent that the vigilance of the Customs inspectors in this case saved untold lives. America was able to celebrate the close of one millennium and the beginning of the next without incident.

Ahmed Ressam was arrested because Customs inspectors took their routine responsibilities seriously and did their jobs thoroughly. In the wake of Ressam's arrest, the Customs Service is exploring ways to better anticipate terrorist activity against the United States. We are doing this in consultation with other law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Meanwhile, the Customs Service is continuing to combat those in the United States who would deal with terrorists or rogue nations -- like the New York businessmen who tried to ship gas masks to the Japanese cult that attacked Tokyo's subway system with Sarin gas. Or the Miami gunrunner who tried to ship a crate load of AK-47s to the E.L.N terrorist organization in Columbia. Or the person who tried to smuggle nuclear grade zirconium to Iraq.

These were all major Customs investigations. Our concern about the trafficking in weapons of mass destruction or the materials needed to make them is why our Customs inspectors now wear small, pager-like devices on their belts. These detectors alert them to the presence of nuclear material. We have historically enforced laws against exporting strategic materials. And that mission is all the more important with the new vagaries of the post-Soviet world.

As far as our more familiar activity of interdicting narcotics is concerned, the Customs Service is seizing more drugs than ever -- more than any other law enforcement agency. About a ton of heroin last year; over 80 tons of cocaine; and about a million and a half pounds of marijuana.

As disturbing as these amounts are, they are not dramatically new. What is new is our record seizures of the synthetic drug Ecstasy.

Popular among teenagers and young adults at raves and dance clubs, Ecstasy is manufactured, mainly in the Netherlands, for pennies. But it retails for about $25 a tablet in clubs in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. The profit margin is so big that the ad hoc distribution of just a few years ago has become more systematic. It has done so with the help of Israeli organized crime and others. Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, for example. His life after serving as John Gotti's enforcer now includes an arrest in connection with Ecstasy trafficking in Phoenix.

Seizures of Ecstasy were negligible before 1997. In 1997, the Customs Service seized about 350,000 tablets. In 1998, we seized about 750,000. Last year, over three million tablets. And already four million in the first few months of this year. If the trend continues, we estimate that Customs will seize at least eight million tablets this year.

The traffickers would have our teenagers believe that Ecstasy is harmless. But repeated use has been linked to brain damage, and it kills. It should be called "agony" for all of its destructive potential. And it has been called, appropriately, a lobotomy in pill form, and a frightening new threat to growing up safely in America.

The Customs Service has been successful in intercepting Ecstasy in shipments arriving from overseas, through the mails, and on travelers carrying the tablets with them. And yesterday the first dogs ever trained to sniff out Ecstasy graduated from our Canine School in Front Royal, Virginia. They will join the hunt today. But the fact remains that as long as the demand for illegal drugs is high, the traffickers will find a way to bring it to market.

In the meantime, the Customs Service will continue to use all of the ways at our disposal to intercept the drugs, their couriers and the traffickers behind them. That includes the dispatching of our marine and air assets to intercept drugs before they reach the United States; as well as more focused efforts by our inspectors to stop contraband at our ports of entry; and investigations by Customs special agents who conduct controlled deliveries to track narcotics and other contraband from abroad to their domestic dealers.

As the guardians of America's borders, the Customs Service has extraordinary powers to detain and search travelers entering the United States. That authority is used to stop, and sometimes search, individuals who, more often than not, are not carrying contraband.

That's the nature of passenger processing. Large numbers of law-abiding travelers will have their luggage checked. Some will be subjected to pat downs or even more intrusive searches. We want to make certain those searches are conducted professionally and with the utmost care and sensitivity.

In recent years, the Customs Service has had to face charges by certain members of the travelling public that the agency engaged in racial profiling in our efforts to interdict narcotics. I will state again that racial profiling is not the policy of the Customs Service, and it will not be tolerated in practice.

Over the last year, we implemented numerous reforms to our personal search policies to protect the rights of travelers and maintain our ability to carry out our mission. Personal searches are now done only with the knowledge, oversight, and permission of supervisory personnel. In order to take a passenger away from the airport or border crossing environment for an X-ray examination the Port Director, the most senior Customs official on site, must give his or her consent - but only after consulting with our attorneys. Suspects are no longer held incommunicado indefinitely. And travelers suspected of carrying narcotics who don’t want to be subjected to a pat down search may opt to go before newly installed body scans that allow for thorough hands-off inspection.

Is the number of searches going down as a result of these reforms? The answer is yes. But the number of seizures has remained relatively constant. In other words, we're getting better at searches, still intercepting smugglers while subjecting fewer law-abiding travelers to physical inspections.

Our new policies, in my judgement, are working. This is what the latest numbers show:

In the first quarter of 1999, we conducted 10,733 personal searches. Three hundred seventy-six drug seizures resulted from those searches. In the first quarter of the year 2000, we conducted 2,814 personal searches, and made 306 seizures.

It's a continuation of a trend that began last year when we instituted our reforms. Even before President Clinton issued his Executive Order last year requiring federal officers to record the race and gender of those they stop to question or arrest, the Customs Service had developed a sophisticated data collection system to track these very same categories for every examination conducted by Customs officers. For the first time in the agency's history, that system implemented uniform definitions, strict data collection rules, and supervisory accountability to ensure that statistics are obtained accurately.

I receive daily reports on searches conducted by Customs officers nationwide.

I believe we're moving in the right direction. Last year we began a Customer Comment Card Program. The cards can be found in the personal search processing areas at major international airports around the country. In 1999, we received over 8,000 of them. Eighty-two percent were complimentary of the Customs Service and the work of our inspectors. That shows us we can engage the narcotics traffickers vigorously, without allowing the rights of the law-abiding public to become casualties in the war on drugs.

These reforms would not have been possible without the bipartisan help of Congress. Special thanks are owed to Congressmen John Lewis, Amo Houghton, Danny Davis, and Greg Meeks for their support and their counsel.

The Customs Service has a big plate of diverse responsibilities. I could go on at length about other successes in the Customs Service in combating money laundering; in fighting Internet child pornography; in enforcing laws against the importation of goods made by forced child labor; in intercepting works of art stolen by the Nazis from Holocaust victims; in returning stolen antiquities to their rightful governments; in conclusively documenting Iraq's attempts to skirt the embargo against oil exports...

The list goes on. But even on St. Patrick's Day, a Kelly must surrender the podium at some point. So I want to thank you for inviting me, and I'd be happy to take any of your questions.