WASHINGTON, (Jan. 11, 2005) — U.S. President George Bush has chosen federal appeals court judge and former federal prosecutor Michael Chertoff to take over responsibility of the U.S. Homeland Security department.

Chertoff, who replaces the department’s first chief Tom Ridge, headed the Justice Department’s criminal division from 2001 to 2003, where he played a central role in the nation’s legal response to the Sept. 11 attacks, before the president named him to appeals court position in New Jersey.

U.S. Homeland Security is the department that oversees several offices charged with implementing border crossing security policies that affect Canadian truck drivers entering the U.S. Among these are Customs and Border Protection and Transportation Security Administration, which is currently in the process of testing biometric identification cards — known as the “Transportation Worker Identity Credential” — for truck drivers that haul into safety-sensitive locations.

In December, outgoing U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge told a delegation of border trade stakeholders and trucking representatives that the busiest crossings along the northern border would introduce measures to increase capacity by 25 per cent over 2005.