President Obama recently submitted his supplemental budget request for border security, and at first glance it looks impressive: $399 million for the Department of Homeland Security and $201 million for the Department of Justice, all focused on the southwestern border. But the request includes only $6.5 million to fund 30 new Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) customs officers at ports of entry across the nation’s border with Mexico.
I wrote a letter to the president June 10 requesting $300 million for the CBP and the General Services Administration to upgrade technology and infrastructure and ensure adequate CBP staffing across our southwestern border. As the letter notes, "The Greater Nogales Santa Cruz County Port Authority [. . .] reports a current operational deficit of 100 full time officers for both commercial and non-commercial operations. Douglas needs an additional 30 officers and San Luis needs another 40."
The president’s request for only 30 new port of entry agents will not come close to addressing those needs. I’m dismayed that 1,200 National Guard troops will be sent to the border without any kind of serious structural upgrade to the long-term CBP operations in the region.
Making our border truly secure from smuggling and other criminal activities will take customs inspection manpower levels that we’re well short of at this point. The president had a chance to fix that with this request, and the fact that he didn’t do so is very disappointing.
I support the proposed budget from House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, which includes $208.4 million for 1,200 additional Border Patrol agents deployed between the ports of entry along the border and $136 million to add 500 additional officers at ports of entry. Our border officials and agencies must be given the staff, technology and infrastructure they need. I fear that if we do not start training additional Customs officers now, we may lose a cost-effective opportunity to protect the southwestern border from illegal activity and defend the cross-border economy vital to Arizona and the nation.
The people on the ground who work on border issues every day have made their needs clear for a long time. There’s no reason not to give them what they’ve been asking for. I got a June 23 letter from the Greater Nogales Santa Cruz County Port Authority that said, "Staffing to need is the key. To say that CBP only needs an additional 30 officers is a severe underestimation of the need at the border." That letter is correct.
More broadly, the question of how to fund and legislate border security has become wrapped up once again in immigration politics. Lawmakers and activist groups that oppose the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act, which I cosponsor, love to deride the bill as amnesty and complain that we can’t do anything on immigration until the border is "secure." I put that word in quotes because no one knows what a finally, permanently, satisfactorily secure border would look like any more than we know what victory would look like in Afghanistan. This is exactly the wrong way to go about really solving the problems created by our broken immigration system. Why wait to pass a bill that would make the borders secure and bring millions of currently undocumented people into compliance with the American legal system?
The needs of this country’s social and economic infrastructure are being held hostage to ever-expanding demands for more fences, more armed troops, and more expensive aerial drones hovering over our own communities 24 hours a day. I want to stop smuggling and other illegal activities in our border regions. I represent a district with 300 miles of Mexican border, and I know these issues firsthand. But to play border security against the imperative of immigration reform is a gross injustice. I have yet to hear a convincing argument about how 1,200 National Guard troops on the border address the approximately 12 million undocumented workers in this country.
This is not an either-or problem. Opponents of immigration reform will never be satisfied with the security measures we introduce – trying to please them is like buying a ticket for a train that won’t come. Instead of convincing ourselves that we have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on turning the border into Fortress America – when border crime is at historic lows already – we should take a mature approach to the real issues and implement a system to bring undocumented people fully into society with a fine, English and civics classes, and a waiting period for legal permanent residency. Continuing to kick that can down the road will only invite further hardship. Pointing guns at the border and digging trenches is not the answer. These are legal and social questions, not military or engineering questions. Congress should remember that.