By Kari Jacobson
FAIR
On Monday, the Biden Administration released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 budget proposal. Unsurprisingly, the $7.3 trillion budget maintains status quo on the border, allocating billions in taxpayer dollars towards funding an open-borders, anti-enforcement agenda.
Of the $107.9 billion in proposed spending for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), $19.8 billion is allocated to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), $9.7 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and $6.8 billion for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). However, instead of proposing any meaningful changes to secure our borders, the President chose to use the budget request to reinforce his failed policies and again call on Congress to enact a Senate border package that fails to reform our asylum system, end widespread abuse of parole, or stop the mass catch-and-release of illegal aliens.
A deeper dive into the funding proposal shows that the Biden Administration’s FY25 budget continues to focus on quickly processing and releasing illegal aliens into the country. The budget provides funding to hire 310 more “processing coordinators” and an additional 1,600 asylum officers and support staff to support the unprecedented flow of illegal aliens claiming asylum when the vast majority are economic migrants.
In addition, $5 billion would be allocated to a new Southwest Border Contingency Fund to support surges at the border, a slush fund for Mayorkas, with very few details on how the funds would be spent. While ostensibly that fund is to help DHS respond to immigration surges along the southern border, in reality it would serve as a replacement for the Shelter and Services Program by financially supporting non-governmental organizations (NGOs) facilitating illegal immigration. The budget request provides for tranches of the $4.7 billion fund to be made available at quarterly intervals, assuming that encounters at the southern border reach certain levels. While ostensibly that fund is to help DHS respond to immigration surges along the southern border, in reality it would serve as a replacement for the Shelter and Services Program by financially supporting non-governmental organizations (NGOs) facilitating illegal immigration. The budget request provides for tranches of the $4.7 billion fund to be made available at quarterly intervals, assuming that encounters at the southern border reach certain levels.
The creation of this $4.7 billion slush fund appears calculated to give the Biden administration as much flexibility as possible in spending taxpayer dollars while ensuring as little accountability as possible. With such broad guidelines as to the purposes for the money, the “contingency fund” would provide easy access to billions of taxpayer dollars for DHS Secretary Mayorkas to distribute as he sees fit. The first $1.4 billion would be released on January 1, 2025, three months into the fiscal year, if total encounters reach 165,000. Another $1.52 billion would be released on April 1, 2025, if total encounters reach 575,000. For context, illegal encounters through January 1 in FY23 reached over 715,000 and through April 1 reached 1.2 million. The third threshold represents a closer margin based on FY23 encounters – a 2.23 million encounter rate by July 1 as opposed to roughly 1.8 million in FY23. Even with a higher bar for the third batch of funding, though, the first two tranches, totaling nearly $3 billion, would almost certainly be dispersed.
In addition to the DHS slush fund, the President’s budget includes $652 million for an “emergency contingency fund” within Health and Human Services to handle the surge of unaccompanied alien children (UACs). The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), would be provided $9.3 billion, of which $5.5 billion would support the care and custody of UACs. This office would also use hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars to support the resettlement of 125,000 new refugees from around the world as asylum seekers flood our borders.
Finally, for all of the billions in proposed spending, the President’s budget clearly conveys that removing and detaining illegal aliens is still not a priority. The proposed budget only proposes removing 125,000 aliens in FY25, a stark contrast from an average of over 400,000 per year in the first three years of the Trump Administration. Given that nearly 10 million have entered in the last three years, removing 125,000 each year would take 80 years to deport just those who entered under Biden’s watch.
The Biden administration’s failure to remove illegal aliens has also contributed to the explosion of the non-detained docket, which represents aliens who are in the country illegally, released into the interior, and waiting for a court hearing. The President’s budget reveals that the non-detained docket has now exploded to over 6.3 million aliens. To make matters worse, many of the aliens on the non-detained docket have criminal backgrounds. A House Judiciary report released this January revealed there are 617,607 aliens on the non-detained docket – nearly 10 percent – who have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.
In short, President Biden’s budget shows that he has no interest in securing the border, as he continues to advocate for harmful policies, refuses to take any executive action to end the crisis, and shifts blame to Congress for his own administration’s shortfalls. As highlighted by FAIR, American taxpayers are already on the hook for $151 billion to offset the costs of illegal immigration every year. The President’s FY25 budget would only compound the costs imposed on Americans while doing nothing to ensure that their safety and security is protected.
To read more about actions that Biden can take to secure our borders today, click here.
