When President Biden sent Congress his Homeland Security budget in the spring, his director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement was peppered with questions from lawmakers about why he was asking for a cut in funding and fewer detention beds at a time when the border was out of control.
Then-Director Tae Johnson deflected the questions, saying technology and some policy tweaks were all ICE needed.
Fast forward six months, and the Biden administration is now begging Congress for more money for detention beds and deportation flights, with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas complaining that his department’s immigration enforcement agencies have been “perennially under-resourced.”
If so, Mr. Mayorkas has been part of it.
For the last three years, he’s come to Capitol Hill to defend budgets that called for a cut to ICE and Customs and Border Protection funding. He’s sought to revoke border wall funding, cut detention space and shift money to facilitate catch-and-release.
Each time, Congress has rejected his proposed cuts.
Now Mr. Mayorkas is back with a curveball, asking for $14 billion in emergency cash to throw at the border.
“Those funds are needed for personnel, technology, facilities and additional support resources critically needed to advance our mission. We are under-resourced and have been perennially,” he told the House Homeland Security Committee last week.
Matt O’Brien, a former immigration judge who is now director of investigations at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, said the secretary’s plea was rich, coming from the man who spent years defending cuts.
“There’s one of two things going on — either the Department of Homeland Security isn’t clear on what its mission is and doesn’t know how to fund it, or Alejandro Mayorkas is lying to Congress,” Mr. O’Brien said. “I tend to think since Alejandro Mayorkas has a record of being less than truthful with Congress, that’s what’s going on here.”
He said Homeland Security is one of the largest recipients in the federal budget, and it’s been growing dramatically. In 2015, its budget was $60.9 billion. In 2023, the department received $101.6 billion. Mr. Biden asked for $103.2 billion for 2024, or an additional $1.6 billion — which makes his new ask of $14 billion for the border mess all the more striking.
Some of that new money would go to Health and Human Services to care for the record numbers of immigrant children who are in the country illegally.
Other money goes to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay localities swamped by the newcomers, and to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to speed up asylum processing and issuing work permits to immigrants who have been caught for being in the country illegally and released.
On the actual enforcement side, Mr. Biden has reversed a longstanding antipathy and asked for more detention beds to hold migrants, and more money to fly them home, which is odd because Mr. Johnson this spring said more beds wouldn’t make a dent.
Mr. Biden also has asked for money for 1,300 new Border Patrol agents, though the Border Patrol has been unable to fill currently funded posts. At a hearing earlier this month on Mr. Biden’s request, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia Republican, challenged Mr. Mayorkas on 700 agents lost to attrition in just the last year.
“We are intensely focused on hiring reform,” Mr. Mayorkas told her.
Digging deeper into the numbers, when Mr. Mayorkas took over in 2021, Customs and Border Protection was funded at $19.3 billion, according to numbers from the Congressional Research Service. Mr. Mayorkas and Mr. Biden proposed cutting $2.9 billion in their first budget, which would have left CBP at $16.4 billion in 2022.
Congress instead approved $18.5 billion.
The next year Mr. Mayorkas was back, proposing a $1.1 billion cut, down to $17.4 billion for 2023. Congress rejected those cuts and approved record funding of $20.5 billion.
Mr. Mayorkas came back again earlier this year and called for another billion-dollar cut for fiscal year 2024. Congress has yet to take final action.
As for ICE, it had a budget of $8.4 billion when Mr. Mayorkas came in. His first budget called for static funding, but Congress added about half a billion dollars. For 2023, Mr. Mayorkas proposed cutting $400 million but Congress added $200 million.
For fiscal year 2024, Mr. Mayorkas again proposed a $400 million cut. Congress hasn’t acted, but Mr. Mayorkas now says he needs way more than he asked for just months ago.
The Times presented those numbers to Homeland Security. The department didn’t respond to multiple inquiries for this story.
Adam Isaacson, who studies border issues for the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights outfit, said the sheer size of Mr. Biden’s request — 15% of Homeland Security’s regular budget — shows the government “failed to foresee some basic needs.”
He said the border has evolved but Mr. Biden, and past presidents, have been slow to adapt. Gone are the days when the flow of people was mainly Mexican adults.
Now it’s a global flow, and children and families make up 40% of the monthly migrants.
“So you’ve got armed, uniformed Border Patrol agents doing asylum paperwork, kids and families held in jail-like facilities or tents, no reduction in asylum backlogs, and little effort to keep in touch with people awaiting hearings,” Mr. Isaacson said. “This administration clearly doesn’t want to throw money at CBP and ICE in their current, outdated form. But they haven’t put much political will or resources into reforming them, either.”
He pointed out that neither agency has a Senate-confirmed director in place. Indeed, Mr. Biden doesn’t even have a current nominee to lead either agency.
USCIS, the legal immigration agency, does have a confirmed director in place. But Mr. O’Brien said that agency — which is supposed to be funded by fees paid by immigrants, rather than the taxpayers — has also been financially strapped.
Mr. Mayorkas has repeatedly sought — and won — budget increases for that agency.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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