President's proposed DHS budgetPresident's proposed DHS budget: Emphasis on border security, illegal immigration

The president submitted to Congress a budget which would substantially increase funding for various border security initiatives and control of illegal immigration. The administration’s emphasis is on its Secure Border Initiative (SBI) which incorporates different border security-related programs and policies. The proposed budget lists adding 6,700 new detention beds and the hiring of 1,500 new Border Patrol agents — substantial increases (note, however, that both increases fall below the increases mandated by the 2004 Intelligence Reform Act [PL 108-458] and border security legislation passed by the House in December ]HR 4437] — both of which require increases of 2,000 Border Patrol agents and 8,000 detention beds for fiscal 2007).

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) would receive an increase of 14 percent, to about $6.8 billion. There will be an increase of $100 million dedicated to what the budget document calls “border technology” for surveillance and tracking between ports of entry, including “portable imaging machines, cameras, sensors and automated targeting systems that will focus on high-tech travelers and goods.” CBP’s two cargo security programs, the Container Security Initiative (CSI) and the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT), would stay at $139 million and $55 million, respectively.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), responsible for enforcement of immigration laws, would have its budget increase by 25 percent, to $4.2 billion. The increase is for the expansion of alien detention and removal capabilities, aiming to help DHS fulfill its commitment to end, by October 2006, the practice of “catch and release” of non-Mexican illegal immigrants. The budget proposal shows $386 million in new funding and the addition of 560 new full-time employees to enforce illegal immigrants removal.

Employers beware: The budget requests that ICE receive $41.6 million in new funding to expand Employment Eligibility Verification System, or EEV, which monitors work sites for illegal employees.

Finally, US-VISIT, DHS’s ambitious biometric entry-exit control program, would have its budget increased by more than 18 percent to nearly $400 million. The program is under congressional and Government Accountability Office (GAO) criticism for lacking strategic focus and the ability to track the exit of foreign nationals, but the new funding would help the FBI’s fingerprint system move closer to the goal of a ten-fingerprint standard, rather than a two-fingerprint standard.

-read more in David Sanger’s New York Times report