What was said to be a “small subset” of misspent money from the more than $100 million in emergency funding that Congress gave Customs and Border Protection last year to help feed and provide medical care for migrants during the border crisis is actually in the tens of millions, a senior official told the Senate.
“There was a chunk of … $112 million that there were some issues,” Mark Morgan, performing the duties of CBP commissioner, told the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Thursday. “$60 million of that is what is really in question. And so some of that, about half of that, we believe were due to some technical errors. I’m not an accountant, but you see we put it in the wrong line.”
“$30 million is really what is left — we think is in question,” Morgan said. “It still requires some further analysis and kind of a legal opinion with respect to that.”
A Government Accountability Office report released earlier this month concluded the Department of Homeland Security agency misspent an unspecified amount of the $112 million Congress had provided in the 2019 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Humanitarian Assistance and Security at the Southern Border Act. The money was supposed to be spent on “consumables and medical care.” From early 2019 through late summer, Border Patrol agents were encountering several thousand migrants illegally crossing the southern border each day. People who enter unlawfully are taken into custody, where they have the opportunity to claim a credible fear of being returned home, the start of the asylum process.
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The watchdog report found some of $112 million was spent on all-terrain vehicles, dirt bikes, boats, motorcycles, facility upgrades, its canine program, and more. In a statement, CBP said GAO’s findings of misspent money were “technical in nature.”
“CBP charged a small subset of expenses in fiscal year 2019 to the incorrect account. We are working to itemize all such expenses, and correct our accounts as recommend by the GAO,” CBP wrote in a statement. “We emphasize that, and GAO’s opinion does not suggest otherwise, all of CBP’s obligations were for lawful objects related to agency operations and the care of those in our custody.”
Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire asked Morgan why the agency had not launched an internal investigation to determine how $30 million had potentially been misreported and another $30 million was not spoken for.
“We believe that there was no violation of the Antideficiency Act,” Morgan said. “We believe all the charges appear to be valid CBP operating expenses, we just may have put them in the wrong buckets.”
“As I read the summary of the GAO report, I might differ with that, because I think expenditures on certain kinds of vehicles aren’t connected to the kind of emergency care that Congress intended that funding to be spent on it,” Hassan said.
The GAO recommended CBP amend its budget. CBP has not said how much of the $112 million was spent on food or medical costs or how much each of the items it bought with the emergency funding cost.
