The new budget calls for the government to maintain an average of 34,000 detention beds for migrants awaiting deportation, marking a retreat for Mr. Biden, who has in the past called for slashing detention funding.
The budget, released Monday, also calls for funding for 350 more Border Patrol agents, more money to run deportation flights and more immigration judges to deliver faster decisions to those who attempt to claim asylum. The agents and judges are in addition to money Mr. Biden requested in an emergency spending proposal last year, and which the president renewed in his new blueprint.
Mr. Biden also asked Congress to give him a nearly $5 billion contingency fund he says he would use to spend more, should the border chaos require it.
“Taken together, these long-term capacity building investments represent the Administration’s vision for ensuring the Nation’s border security and immigration system can effectively respond to challenges present along the border,” Mr. Biden said in his budget proposal.
The proposal highlights Mr. Biden’s slow embrace of stiffer border enforcement, but also his reluctance to be locked into the kind of firm policies Republicans are demanding.
The president has repeatedly asked Congress to slash detention beds from 34,000 down to 25,000. Lawmakers have rebuffed those demands and kept funding at 34,000 beds, though the Biden administration for the first two years left thousands of them empty.
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But in recent months the president has embraced detention and as of the end of February, Homeland Security had more than 39,000 migrants in detention. That’s far above the level Congress has funded, and the administration has darkly warned that if more money isn’t forthcoming it may have to carry out a mass-release to balance its books.
Just last month, Mr. Biden was backing a Senate border deal that would have increased detention space to reach as high as 50,000 beds. That proposal was part of a broader bill that fell victim to a bipartisan filibuster, with Democrats saying it was too cruel and Republicans saying it didn’t do enough to stop illegal immigration.
On the legal side of immigration, Mr. Biden’s budget proposes funding to welcome 125,000 official refugees.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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