The request IS in the just released Biden admin budget…
Anyone think the House Republicans are gonna ‘support’ this ?
President Joe Biden’s budget proposal for 2025 includes a $4.7 billion emergency fund for border security to enable the Department of Homeland Security to ramp up operations in the event of a migrant surge, according to a portion of the budget reviewed by NBC News.
The contingency fund would let DHS tap into funds on an as-needed basis when the number of undocumented migrants crossing the southern border tops a certain threshold that is unspecified in the budget. If the money is not used to address a surge, the money would be transferred to the general funds of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
The request is likely to fall on deaf ears among congressional Republicans, who have already refused to fund $13.6 billion the Biden administration asked for in an emergency supplemental request aimed at responding to a record high number of migrants crossing the border.
It comes as both CBP and ICE are facing significant budget shortfalls.
NBC News first reported that ICE will have to start cutting key operations by May if Congress does not help cover a $500 million budget gap….
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Biden’s budget also asks Congress for $405 million to hire 1,300 more Border Patrol agents, funding to keep ICE’s 34,000 existing detention beds, $1 billion for aid to Central America to address the root causes of migration, and nearly $1 billion to address the backlog of over 2.4 million pending cases in U.S. immigration courts.
To combat fentanyl smuggling, the budget asks for funding to hire an additional 1,000 CBP officers who can stop the illicit drug from coming across the U.S.-Mexico border and $849 million for technology to detect fentanyl at the border….