Washington ? President Bush, responding to the terror attacks, is expected to ask Congress to remove the Customs Service from the Treasury Department and create a new agency in charge of securing America’s porous borders.

His domestic security team recommended in a meeting Tuesday that Bush seek to merge the Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which includes the Border Patrol, according to senior officials in the administration.

The Justice Department would oversee the new agency, which would take over enforcement activities from the embattled INS.

In a sign that Bush was likely to endorse the plan, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer defended the concept of merging border security agencies.

“There is a school of thought that you can have better controls and more effective ways of welcoming people to this country, welcoming trade to this country, while keeping people out who would do us harm as a result of consolidation,” Fleischer said.

Though he said Bush has not decided whether to accept the recommendation, other aides said the president was likely to do so. It is the first major overhaul plan presented by Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge.

The plan would require congressional approval. Bush’s lobbying team began consulting with Congress on Tuesday, a step that aides said Bush wanted taken before he signed off on the plan.

Praising the proposal, Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-Tex., said, “Terrorists are not playing by the old rules and neither should we.”

The suicide hijackings over Washington, New York and Pennsylvania pointed out holes in the nation’s border security procedures.

The government has acknowledged that four of the Sept. 11 hijackers had overstayed their visas, and a recent Justice Department review suggested the system has remained lax since then. That review found that even after the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. immigration officials have been failing to consistently check terrorist watch lists when approving foreign visitors entering the United States without visas.

In addition, Bush was embarrassed by last week’s disclosure that the INS issued paperwork relating to student visas for two of the hijackers six months after the attacks.