Border securityEl Paso to hire more border officers to compensate for CBP budget cuts

Published 28 March 2013

In El Paso, Texas, more than 100,000 residents depend on the activity across the bridges which connect the United States to Mexico. This includes $80 billion in trade a year that crosses the El Paso bridges and millions of shoppers who cross our bridges who spend more than $1.4 billion in the El Paso economy. Sequestration-related cuts, by promising longer wait times at border crossings, will hurt the local economy, and the El Paso city council is looking for ways to minimize the damage.

Congressman Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) paid a visit to the El Paso City Council  to convince them to invest in a federal program that would help the city manage wait times on the bridges between Texas and Mexico, even though the sequestration has cut millions of dollars away from the Customs and Border Patrol.

When the sequestration took effect, DHS secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters  that cuts to CBP would lead to  increased wait times of up to six hours at border cross points.

“In El Paso, it’s estimated that more than 100,000 in our community depend on the activity that’s crossing our bridges. That includes $80 billion in trade a year that crosses the El Paso bridges and millions of shoppers who cross our bridges who spend more than $1.4 billion in our economy,” O’Rourke told Fox14.

Fox14 reports that O’Rourke and other elected officials helped to pass the Continuing Resolution in Congress last Thursday. The purpose of the resolution was to lessen the impact of budget cuts on some key departments, including CBP.

The bill allows for five pilot projects that will help create funds for more customs officers through private and public partnerships.

“If we can shorten the wait times, more people will cross, more money is spent in our community, more trade will come through this region and we will create even more jobs,” O’Rourke said.

The city council voted to compete to be one of the programs and will commit $2.1 million dollars to do so.

“To have this opportunity to be selected as one of the five communities to be able to add additional customs agents is a wonderful opportunity that we must capitalize on now,” O’Rourke added.

The city of El Paso has a good chance of being one of the five spots that are available.

“Our chances are really good because the City of El Paso under our mayor and this City Council led on this issue going back two, three years ago and said they would fund such a pilot program if the law existed at the federal level. So the law that we passed Thursday was in part response to what the city had done two years ago. I think because El Paso is part of the reason this law came into existence, we are in a very competitive position,” O’Rourke told FOX 14.