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Bush’s plan targets the hiring of undocumented workers and adds few border
agents
Houston Chronicle
Jan. 25, 2005, 11:53PM
By SUZANNE GAMBOA
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – President Bush plans to ask Congress to spend more to crack
down on undocumented workers and arrest and deport illegal immigrants. But
he wants to fund only a fraction of the new Border Patrol agents called for
in a bill he signed last year.
Bush’s budget plan will call for spending $23 million, nearly five times the
current level, on work site investigations by Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, a government official familiar with the spending plan said
Tuesday. The money would be used to conduct audits on employers, investigate
violations and prepare cases.
The administration also wants to increase spending for detentions and
deportations of immigrants to $1.2 billion, 18 percent more than in fiscal
year 2005, the official said. In addition to paying for more staff, the
money would go to apprehending fugitives and providing alternatives to
detention for low-risk illegal immigrants awaiting deportation.
Homeland Security Department spokesman Dennis Murphy declined to comment on
the numbers because the 2006 budget has not been released. He warned that
figures can change up until it is actually sent to Congress.
Bush plans to ask lawmakers to increase the Border Patrol by 210 agents. The
intelligence overhaul law he signed last year authorizes, but does not pay
for, the department to hire 2,000 agents a year for five years.
That would nearly double the number of agents guarding U.S. borders to
almost 21,000 and would be the largest buildup of border guards in the
nation’s history.
Outgoing Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson, who oversees transportation and
border security, has said paying for the 2,000 agents would require a
substantial investment from Congress.
“It appears, perhaps, the administration is looking a bit more
comprehensively on immigration enforcement. For too long we have focused
only on the border, and many people have indeed been calling for renewed
attention to the hiring of undocumented workers because that is the primary
draw,” said Deborah Meyers, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy
Institute, a Washington-based think tank that tends to favor immigration.
In fiscal 2004, immigration authorities returned a record 157,000 illegal
immigrants to their home countries from the United States.
ICE deported 8,282 undocumented immigrants from the Houston area that year,
including 4,828 who had been arrested on criminal charges, according to a
local agency spokeswoman. That also included nearly 500 people who had
ignored a judge’s deportation orders. In fiscal 2003, the Houston office
deported 10,766 undocumented immigrants.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3009530
