House Bill Includes $5 Billion for Border Wall, More ICE Agents
“This bill fully supports our men and women on the frontline who work tirelessly to keep us safe. The bill also provides the necessary funding for critical technology and physical barriers to secure our borders.”
The House Appropriations Committee has introduced a fiscal year 2019 Homeland Security bill that includes $5 billion for a border wall that spans 200 miles and money to hire more ICE and border patrol agents.
This could trigger a showdown with the Senate since that chamber only included $1.6 billion for a wall in its bill. President Donald Trump threatened a shut down of the government if he does not get more.
The Bill
The bill wants $51.4 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, which is $3.7 billion more than the 2018 fiscal year:
In addition, the bill includes $6.7 billion – the same as the President’s request – for major disaster relief and emergency response activities through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
The legislation also includes $5 billion for physical barriers and associated technology along the U.S. southern border. This amount provides for over 200 miles of new physical barrier construction. Additionally, the bill includes $223 million for 140 new Customs and Border Protection (CBP) canine teams to initiate a five-year strategy towards achieving 100 percent scanning on the southern border.
“The Committee takes its role in safeguarding our homeland and protecting our citizens seriously. Globalization, cybersecurity, and terrorism are changing our way of life and we need to change with it. This bill fully supports our men and women on the frontline who work tirelessly to keep us safe. The bill also provides the necessary funding for critical technology and physical barriers to secure our borders. It is a balanced approach that enhances our capabilities and preparedness,” Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen said.
The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will receive an increase of $3.8 billion from 2018. The bill wants the CBP to have $17.8 billion, including the money for the wall and $126 million for border technology. The committee wants 375 new border patrol agents.
ICE, which has faced opposition from the left and demands for its elimination, will have the biggest raise. The bill requests $7.4 billion for the agency, which is $328 million more than 2018. Out of this amount, $78 million will go to hiring 400 more agents and support staff.
The Appropriations Committee decided to distribute $1.9 billion, which is $275 million more than requested, “for domestic and international investigations programs, including efforts to combat human trafficking, child exploitation, cybercrime, visa screening, and drug smuggling.”
Detention and removal programs will gain $4.1 billion and 44,000 detention beds.
The committee honored Trump’s request of $132 million “for E-Verify to help companies ensure their employees may legally work in the United States.”
Reactions
Rep. Charles Fleischmann (R-TN) and others admitted they may not get the $5 billion for the wall through the Senate. Their counterparts on the Senate Appropriations Committee have been working with Democrats on its bill.
Granted, the Republicans only have a seat majority in the Senate and bipartisan comes a little easier with a smaller majority.
As I mentioned earlier, Democrats and people on the left have called for the elimination of ICE. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (CA) wants to overhaul the agency and has done everything she can “to prevent spending bills from including money for new agents or border wall funding.”
According to The Washington Examiner, Republicans insist the wall and more agents are needed:
But Republicans said Tuesday that the agents and and wall are needed to stop the flow of drugs and gangs across the southern border.
“Cartels are trafficking $64 billion a year in drugs and people across our border and much of it comes through one small stretch at the Rio Grande Valley,” said Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-Kansas, who chairs the Appropriations Homeland Security subcommittee. “This bill takes the largest steps in years toward finally fulfilling our promise to the American people to secure the border.”
The legislation calls for spending $4.1 billion on detention and removal programs for illegal immigrants who cross the southern border. The funding would pay for 44,000 detention beds, an increase of 3,480 beds.
Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), the top Democrat on the committee, said the $5 billion wall number “unacceptable” and that it’s “a non-starter given numerous other needs in areas such as education and health care.”
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Comments
We need to enact penalties for being in America that are so harsh that most of the illegals rush to deport themselves. I suggest seizing all ill gotten gains from illegals. I also suggest heavy penalties and fees on funds being transferred to Mexico, at least 20% of the gross amount. It was reported a year or two ago that the amount transferred was over 70 billion and growing. 14 billion a year (20%)would go a long ways towards making Mexico pay for this.
Some of the funds being remitted to Mexico, Central Am, So Am, are being sent from legal residents to help their families. I oppose punitive fees.
I am a third generation US citizen, but I help subsidize my wife’s family in the Philippines. (My wife is a US born citizen.) We send money to the Philippines every month. Money that we earned here in the States, legally, and which we paid taxes on. Why should high fees be imposed on remittances?
Governments routinely exercise some control over the flow of people, animals, raw materials, manufactured and agricultural goods, and money over their borders. This is one of the things which makes a country a political reality, rather than just a blob of color on a map.
It’s not totally obvious that cash sent to the Philippines or Mexico should be exempt from all such control.
I don’t view it as punitive. It’s more like a fee charged from those who get the most benefit from it. I can’t speak for you, buy I think most immigrants came to America to partake I in it’s prosperity and opportunity, and (rightly) send some of the fruits of that prosperity back to friends and family back home.
I think of it more like a tollway – the road is built and maintained by those who get the most use from it.
This will harden Trump’s base and earn the loyalty of many still on the fence.
The GOP has played Lucy to our Charlie Brown for far too long.
I am aware of the arguments against static defenses, but we can’t trust our own representatives to keep their word. Immigration policy and laws against illegal immigration are as perishable as the paper they are written on.
We need a solid physical barrier that can withstand years of corruption by the Establishment Party (E) long after Trump is gone.
Added, just saw your post Justice. I agree that motivation to self-deport would be effective.
But I think we need both that and a physical barrier. Policy without that would be like the Bill of Rights without the support of the 2nd Amendment.
Good. We need immigration reform in order to promote emigration reform. The problem is there, not here, and we cannot afford persistent avoidance through media cover-ups and population replacement schemes.
Slow the flow, curb the local demand, and work with our neighbors to improve conditions at home.
I have long been reluctant to build a wall where there are natural barriers because I believe that the act of building and maintaining a wall would have the perverse effect of making the border more porous (due to the proliferation of small towns all along both sides of the border).
But with the State of California issuing driver’s licenses to illegal aliens and automatically placing them on the voter rolls, as well as San Francisco extending the vote in local elections to illegal aliens, the physical barrier has become a necessity.
Build it, and enforce it.
Just as my fence has the perverse effect of keeping my animals on one side and my neighbors on the other. No wait, the neighbors animals are now wandering freely through my fields. Wait! Now my animals are all over the highway wandering back and forth.
None of that happened, everything was where it was supposed to be because I built a fence.
I am glad you quit finding excuses not to build the only thing that will keep the illegals out. Now go convince ten other people who don’t understand how fences work.
Give the voters the names of the Senators who oppose this and let’s see what the Fall elections look like.
Needs a half million volts electrically charged on the south side. Let the smell of burnt flesh permeate the air of half of Mexico.
Sure there may be good things in this bill. But I have no doubt it will also be PORK-tacular. Ever since the Tea Party has relaxed and gotten quieter more politicians have returned to cramming every vote buying spending item into bills that they can get away with.
I hear that old song, “Rest of the Wall, I wait for you….”