If Congress doesn’t approve by August a $3.7 billion emergency supplemental bill that deals with the recent surge of unaccompanied children at the southern border, then two Department of Homeland Security agencies will run out of money before the end of the current fiscal year, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson warned on Thursday.
Johnson told the Senate Appropriations Committee that if the supplemental bill isn’t approved by August, “at the current burn rate” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will run out of money in mid-August and, if projections hold, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in mid-September.
Without the supplemental, DHS will have to find bill payers to deal with the immigration crisis on the southern border and that might mean raiding cherished programs, Johnson said.
“If there is no supplemental we’re going to have to go to some very dramatic, harsh form of reprogramming, which I’m sure the committee is familiar with, away from some vital homeland security programs that I’m sure members of this committee care a lot about or risk Anti-Deficiency Act violations, which is intolerable to me,” Johnson said.
The committee met to hear testimony from Obama administration officials related to the president’s submission earlier this week of the emergency supplemental request, which includes $1.1 billion for ICE and $433 million for CBP (Defense Daily, July 9).
Committee Chairman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) responded that “the fact is the failure to act does not save money for the taxpayer.”
To deal with the recent increased rise of illegal immigrants that are coming from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, many of which are children, Johnson said that DHS lacks the money in its FY ’14 budget. He said the department has been building additional detention and removal facilities space and has “surged” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services personnel to conduct screenings. In addition, The Coast Guard has loaned air assets to transport children and families among CBP facilities and ICE is leasing charter aircraft to transport children to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services, he said.
Johnson said that in FY ’13 CBP apprehended 24,000 unaccompanied minors at the border while through the first nine months of FY ’14 that number was 57,000.
Mikulski said at the outset of Thursday’s hearing that she supports “muscular deterrence” to stop the flow of children attempting to illegally enter the United States through the southern border, and that “the best way to make this surge of children temporary is to pass an emergency supplemental and undertake a substantial deterrence strategy so we can attack the smugglers and traffickers and inform families of the risks of coming here.”
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the ranking member on the committee, said in his prepared remarks that he has “no confidence that pouring billions of dollars into our current immigration system will solve this crisis.” He blamed the Obama administration and previous administrations for failing to secure the nation’s borders.
For CBP, the emergency supplemental requests includes a proposal to add nearly 17,000 flight hours for air surveillance missions and 16 additional crews for unmanned aerial vehicle operations along the border.