Government Security News January 2017 Digital Edition

Will Congress fund President Trump’s executive
order on border enforcement?
By Joshua Breisblatt
President Donald Trump’s Border
Security and Immigration Enforcement
Improvements executive order
is an attempt to fulfill his campaign
pledge to build a wall at the
southern border, to provide additional
resources to Border Patrol
agents, to curtail due process
at the border, and to increase detention
along the southern border,
including for those who are
seeking protection. Much of this
order will require more funding
from Congress, and that is by no
means guaranteed.
The executive order directs the
Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) to take immediate steps
to allocate available funds to start
constructing a wall, as well as creating
a long-term funding plan for
it. As a practical matter, with estimated
costs of $15 to $25 billion
to build the remaining border wall
segments, Congress would have to
appropriate significant additional
funding for construction and annual
maintenance.
Apart from the wasteful expense,
construction of additional border
fencing is unnecessary; as of early
2017, approximately 650 miles of
border fence already exists. Even
the head of the National Border Patrol
Council, a union representing
16,000 Border Patrol agents which
endorsed Trump during his campaign,
said, “We do not need a wall
along the entire 2,000 miles of border.”
The order also directs DHS to immediately
construct detention facilities
at or near the southern border
and to hire an additional 5,000 Border
Patrol agents. The federal government
is operating under a Continuing
Resolution until April 28,
2017, and it is doubtful that significant
funds exist to implement these
plans. Construction and maintenance
costs for new detention facilities
are exorbitant; spending on
ICE’s 34,000 detention beds costs
taxpayers over $2 billion each year.
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Hiring additional border patrol
agents is going to be a tall order as
well. Currently, Border Patrol is required
to have 21,370 agents but as of
October 2016, they only had 19,828,
nearly 1,500 below the required levels.
Border Patrol has significant
issues with its hiring process, low
morale and high attrition rates,
making it hard to increase staff
quickly even it were to get additional
funds from Congress. Not
to mention, the fact that Border
Patrol staffing doubled in the early
2000s, which has led to it being
Photo by John Taylor
considered “America’s most outof-control
law enforcement agency.”
DHS is also directed to expand
“expedited removal” to the full extent
the law permits. This type of
summary removal procedure was
previously restricted to wide border
regions (within 100 miles of
any US border) and recent unlawful
entrants (within 14 days). The
order would expand application of
expedited removal throughout the
country, to individuals who unlawfully
entered the U.S. and cannot
prove to DHS that they have been
continuously present for the previous
two years.
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