I just obtained a May 2, 2005, memo (after the jump, below) from a Department of Homeland Security source. Bottom line: They’re moving around some bureaucratic furniture and getting rid of some dead wood. But it’s not all good news.

The document reveals that Robert Bonner, Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, has been asked to step down and should be leaving shortly. Authored by Immigration and Customs Enforcement official Tonya Fox, the memo also states that a proposed merger between Customs and ICE is “not going to happen.” (Background from supporters of The Merge–gawd, it’s like a national security episode of Survivor–here and here.)

Note also that the hapless Transportation Security Administration and Federal Air Marshals Service will apparently no longer be under the ICE umbrella. No word on the fate of Thomas Quinn. And, demonstrating what the bureaucrats’ big priorities are at DHS, check out the fourth item in the memo–which reports that ICE employees will be getting yet another set of new badges and credentials because their agency is getting another name change. Feel safer?

Tellingly, the “I” in ICE will no longer stand for immigration, but for “investigations.” The turf-protecting FBI ain’t gonna like that.

More to the point: If the Border Patrol is forbidden from doing interior immigration enforcement and local cops and state troopers can’t or won’t do it, and ICE will no longer even put that responsibility in its own acronym, who will pick up the slack?

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