The U.S. Border Patrol’s busiest region on the southern border now expects to spend more than $20 million on consumable items and services for asylum-seekers, up from the $12.5 million it had budgeted for the year due to a continued surge of families illegally crossing into the United States, according to federal data obtained by the Washington Examiner.
The extra money to aid asylum-seekers along the Rio Grande Valley Sector, the eastern-most region of the 2,000-mile southern border, will go toward “medical, shower/laundry, food, caregiver, etc.,” a Border Patrol official told the Examiner on condition of anonymity.
The Rio Grande Valley Sector had expected to spend $12.5 million on contracted services between last October and this September, known as fiscal 2019.
However, due to a drastic uptick in the number of immigrant family apprehensions in the valley since October, they now say they are on track to spend $20 million by September.
Nearly 250,000 people who illegally crossed into the U.S. as part of a “family unit” have been taken into custody across the southern border since October. Of that figure, nearly 102,000, or 40%, took place in southeastern Texas, likely because it is the closest destination for Central Americans to enter the U.S. at 1,100 miles from the Guatemala-Mexico border.
If costs out of the Rio Grande Valley are similar in proportion to the apprehension rates in the other eight regions along the border, the agency would spend approximately $50 million on these types of services and goods by the fiscal year’s end across all southern border regions.
In February, Congress gave U.S. Customs and Border Protection $128 million for medical staff; $40 million for food, formula, and diapers; and $24 million to cover transportation costs of migrants in Border Patrol custody. The $192 million supplemental funding expires in September 2020.
Customs and Border Protection did not respond to a request for comment on how much of the $192 million it expects to spend by this September or what it will do with leftover money.
[Also read: Border Patrol expects to quadruple spending as more immigrant families arrive in Arizona]
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a policy analyst for the American Immigration Council, told the Washington Examiner he is concerned about how the department is spending the supplemental money and why it is seeking an additional $4.5 billion, when “only $10 million would go toward” consumable items like food, diapers, and baby formula.
“At a time when DHS is saying that they have run out of resources, this shows that they are currently operating within the funding that Congress already gave them,” Reichlin-Melnick said in a phone call. “The amount of money Congress gave the agency in February looks to be well within the range they actually need.”
The supplemental $192 million from February appears to be enough to last Customs and Border Protection until September 2020, but the Department of Homeland Security has insisted it needs more “humanitarian” funding. In an April 30 hearing before the House Appropriations Committee, acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan said Customs and Border Protection needed an additional $500 million because he expected to “exhaust all resources” by September.
The majority of that money will not go toward those three focuses, but will be directed toward installing semi-permanent “soft-siding” facilities, or tents. Setting up temporary facilities would allow families to be held together while their asylum cases are rushed through the immigration court system. The Trump administration legally cannot hold families for more than 20 days due to a 2015 court ruling in the Flores settlement and has had to release hundreds of thousands of family units since October.
“Whereas CBP would say building new processing centers is humanitarian, I think it stretches the definitions of humanitarian to say that increased detention is humanitarian, while acknowledging the current facilities are not fit for holding children,” Reichlin-Melnick said.
Ronald Vitiello, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in March Border Patrol agents have had to release onto the street immigrant families apprehended at the southern border rather than transferring them to ICE. Those released are told to show up for asylum hearings in the future, often two to five years down the road.
