Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.), who is likely to become chairwoman of the House panel that oversees funding for the Department of Homeland Security, has said she opposes hefty increases in spending on physical barriers along the southern border in favor of a number of other priorities, including a new heavy polar icebreaker for the Coast Guard and more research funding for the department.
In July, the congresswoman voted against the $51.4 billion markup by the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee (HAC-HS) of the fiscal year 2019 DHS spending bill, saying then that there are “significant parts of the bill” that she disagrees with, foremost being a provision to spend nearly $5 billion on a border wall.
Roybal-Allard pointed out that one reason for opposing the wall funding is that it is being justified in part to help staunch the flow of illegal drugs into the U.S., although most of these drugs are coming to the country through ports of entry where the wall wouldn’t be built.
The $4.9 billion for the border wall is backed by Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.), the chairman of the subcommittee who was defeated in Tuesday’s mid-term congressional elections. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, didn’t run for re-election. The recommended spending for the border wall is about $3.3 billion higher than what the Trump administration proposed and what was agreed to by Senate appropriators.
Senate appropriators in June approved $48.3 billion in discretionary spending for DHS. Differences between the two committees must still be worked out in conference. The department is currently operating under a continuing resolution, which limits spending to fiscal year 2018 levels. The resolution expires Dec. 9.
President Donald Trump, who earlier this year threatened a veto of the FY ’18 appropriations bill because in part it doesn’t include all the funding he wanted for the border wall, said at a White House press conference on Wednesday that he wouldn’t “necessarily” threaten a government shutdown if he doesn’t get all the funding he wants for the wall in FY ’19. Trump said he speaks “to Democrats all they time. They agree that a wall is necessary.”
Trump added that the wall should be built all at once rather than in “chunks” and “pieces.”
At the House markup in July, Roybal-Allard said, “At the top of the list” for “more urgent priorities” than the border wall is the Coast Guard’s proposal of $750 million for the first of three new heavy polar icebreakers. The HAC-HS markup eliminated the funding but said it wanted the Coast Guard to lay out its case for the new ships, which will replace a single heavy icebreaker that is expensive to maintain and is in need of life extension program.
Roybal-Allard also said she opposes an increase in the House appropriators budget for more detention beds for captured illegal immigrants and a proposed increase in Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
Proposed increases in the House appropriations bill that Roybal-Allard said she supports include additional Customs officers that would be stationed at ports of entry, more help for unaccompanied children that have been detained, cyber security, and non-intrusive inspection technology, which is used to detect contraband, illegal drugs, and illegal aliens being smuggled into the U.S. in vehicles, containers and parcels.
“These and other increases in the bill are all good investments, but there are others we could be making if the bill were not saddled with a nearly $5 billion price tag for border infrastructure and unwanted ICE increases,” she said during the July markup. “For instance, I would like to see an even strong investment in new Customs officers, an increase above last year for the Science and Technology Directorate, and a restoration of TSA’s Law Enforcement Officer Reimbursement Program and Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response teams.”