The president of the National Border Patrol Council blasted the Biden administration on Friday, accusing it of concealing border data in order to secure passage of a $1.7 trillion spending bill.
“It’s all political. Everything that this administration does, it has a political calculus. They didn’t want to release the numbers because they knew the omnibus was coming up,” Brandon Judd told “Fox and Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade. “If they would have released the numbers, you would have seen a larger push to get border security funding in that omnibus. That’s what this administration does. They don’t care about the American people, they care about politics.”
The omnibus bill was passed by the House of Representatives on Friday, with nine Republicans joining 215 Democrats in sending it to President Joe Biden.
United States Customs and Border Protection received $1,563,143,000 for “operations and support” in the omnibus spending bill, but the legislation prohibits the use of those funds “to acquire, maintain, or extend border security technology and capabilities, except for technology and capabilities to improve Border Patrol processing.”
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According to official figures, US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) encountered over 2.3 million migrants in fiscal year 2022, with another 230,000 in October, the first month of the new fiscal year, while another 600,000 evaded CBP, according to Fox News.
“There’s a small hiring of 300 agents, but that doesn’t matter because we can’t already meet our hiring quota. Last year we weren’t able to meet the 1,700 agents that we were supposed to hire. We hired about 200 less than that,” Judd added. “So we can’t even meet that quota as it is. And that’s law enforcement across the board, throughout the entire nation. It simply, again, comes back to politics.”
The 4,100-page bill was far too large for anyone to read in just a matter of days with clear comprehension. I worry that we’ll be feeling the financial burden of this one for generations to come.
Erica Carlin is an independent journalist, opinion writer and contributor to several news and opinion sources. She is based in Georgia.