The legislation would have allocated $118 billion in funding, part of which would have gone to fill a $700 million budget shortfall at ICE, according to four Biden administration officials who spoke with the Washington Post. Other sources told NBC News that the budget shortfall is only $500 million unless the bill passes. Under the border deal, an additional $6 billion in supplemental funds would be allocated for ICE enforcement operations. Now, per sources who spoke to the Post, ICE officials are circulating an internal proposal to save money by releasing at least 16,000 detainees. Record high illegal border crossings late last year resulted in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies blowing through their budgets for this fiscal year, the Post reported. Critics of the Senate bill won’t back it for several reasons, chief among them that the bill would not provide genuine border security. In one example, it would allow up to 8,500 border encounters per day before triggering DHS’s “emergency authority” to close the border and turn away migrants. Opponents warn the legislation would give the U.S. President authority to simply ignore provisions they don’t believe are in the “national interest.” They also state that new legislation is not needed, as there are current laws on the books that could solve the border crisis — Biden administration officials, they argue, are simply ignoring them. The massive new spending compelled by the proposed legislation is another sticking point, drawing staunch opposition. Only $20.3 billion would be provided for U.S. border security, while more than $14 billion would be sent to Israel, more than $60 billion would be sent to Ukraine, and another $4.83 billion would go to support U.S. partners in the Indo-Pacific region, to assist their dealings with China. Pro-migrant activists celebrated Republican lawmakers’ efforts to kill the border legislation. “While we feel some relief that the Senate did not include the harmful and permanent immigration policy changes it was considering and that ICE is not getting a more than $7 billion infusion above their already astronomical budget, we continue to demand actual cuts [to the ICE budget] that shrink the detention system,” Silky Shah, the executive director of Detention Watch Network, an advocacy coalition, told the Post. “We find it problematic that the framing is that ICE is facing cuts, when in fact, ICE’s budget has continued to grow astronomically year after year,” she added.U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is planning a mass release of tens of thousands of illegal aliens after a proposed Senate border bill stalled.
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
