As the Biden administration sorts out its approach to border security and continues to confront surging migration at the southern border, the acting head of the agency responsible for securing the border told Congress on Wednesday that the key features of border security remain infrastructure, technology and personnel.
Customs and Border Protection is waiting on the administration’s decisions regarding future plans for the border wall along portions of the southern border and once provided, “we’ll implement” them, Troy Miller told the House Appropriations Homeland Security subcommittee.
Miller was asked by Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), the ranking member on the panel, if CBP is conducting a comprehensive evaluation of the different layers of security needed to secure the southwest border, specifically mentioning “wall or barrier, technology and law enforcement personnel.”
Miller replied that “that is some something that we’re looking at very closely as my predecessors used to call the three-legged stool; infrastructure, the technology, the personnel. We need all three for border security. Certainly, the Border Patrol continues to look at their version of a workload staffing model, which we hope to roll out by the end of this year. We’re looking at our technology needs and our infrastructure needs as well.”
The Biden administration has halted work on border wall construction, and issue that became politically charged during the presidency of Donald Trump. Congress acted on a bipartisan basis to fund upgrades to existing border barriers early in the former Trump administration although the compromise between Democrats and Republicans provided less funding than Trump requested. Shortly after, Trump began reprogramming billions of dollars, including from the Defense Department’s construction accounts, to pay for border wall construction over the objections of Democrats.
Later in the hearing, Miller testified on general plans for non-intrusive inspection technology that CBP soon will begin deploying at land ports of entry to dramatically increase the numbers of commercial and passenger vehicles entering the U.S. that are scanned.
He said that by 2024, the number of passenger vehicles that will be screened by the X-Ray technology will go from less than 1 percent currently to about 40 percent. Over the same time, the number of commercial vehicles being scanned will increase up to 90 percent along the border
So far in fiscal year 2021, which began last October, Miller said seizures of fentanyl are up 308 percent over FY ’20, heroin seizures are up 14 percent, cocaine 100 percent and methamphetamines 20 percent.
He said that agency has deployed additional screening technology at its mail facility at John F. Kennedy International Airport that has helped improve the detection of drugs hidden inside mail. Further deployments of technology to screen inbound international mail for drugs is planned, he added.