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Senate Acts To Boost
Vermont’s Northern Border Security
Adds $210 Million To Begin Building
Security Staff Levels
The U.S. Senate has taken a major step toward the
goal of tripling Northern Border security staffing.
The Senate has approved domestic security
supplemental appropriations, responding to the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks, that would increase funding for Northern Border security by
nearly $210 million. These funds include $130 million for U.S. Customs
agents, $56 million for more immigration inspectors and $24 million
for more Border Patrol staff.
The latest Senate action follows the inclusion of
added funds for Northern Border security in the annual appropriations
bills approved for these agencies. In the last two weeks, the Senate
has approved budgets for 2002 that would provide an additional $56
million equally divided between the U.S. Customs Service and the
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for added resources along
the Northern Border.
Together, the bills would make significant strides
toward tripling resources along the Northern Border, nearly doubling
Customs agents by adding about 1,700 agents. The Border Patrol could
see an additional 240 staff, an increase of more than 80 percent. The
INS immigration inspection staff could grow by 470 inspectors, more
than 90 percent over current levels.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, a senior member of the
Appropriations Committee, worked with other Northern Border senators
to include the supplemental funds for domestic security in
the annual Defense Appropriations Bill, which
passed the Senate Dec. 7. The bill now goes to conference with a
counterpart House bill to reconcile the differences. A battle over the
border security provisions looms with the White House, which so far
has resisted efforts to carry out the Northern Border security
provisions of the recently enacted anti-terrorism bill.
Over the past few decades the Northern Border has
continually been shortchanged as resources have been diverted to curb
drug trafficking along the Southwest Border. The number of Border
Patrol agents along the 2,000-mile Southwestern Border has risen to
nearly 8,000, while the number at the 4,000-mile Northern Border has
remained at about 300 –– the same number as a decade ago.
Similarly, the U.S. Customs Service employs roughly 1,800 agents along
the border in the north, compared to the 8,000 agents who serve on the
U.S.-Mexican border.
Leahy has also led the fight on the Judiciary
Committee to strengthen Northern Border security. As the committee’s
chairman, Leahy wrote and included provisions in the anti-terrorism
bill to triple the number of Border Patrol officers, INS Inspectors,
and Customs Service agents in the states that share borders with
Canada. Since the bill was signed into law in October, Leahy and a
bipartisan coalition of about two dozen senators from Northern Border
states have urged the Administration to begin implementing the
anti-terrorism bill’s Northern Border security provisions. To date
the President has not responded to their two letters asking the
Administration to designate funding to do that, even though Congress,
in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, appropriated $20 billion for
domestic security to be used at the President’s discretion.
"Our security staff on the Northern Border have
been working long hours for far too long, and calling up the National
Guard to help is only a temporary fix," said Leahy. "We
cannot afford to wait another year to begin building the staff we need
to adequately secure the Northern Border."
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