The Senate’s proposed supplemental bill that would fund continued military, security and other assistance for Ukraine and Israel also includes $758.5 million in acquisition and deployment appropriations to help secure the southern U.S. border with Mexico.
The proposed border security technology funds are $90.5 million less than the Biden administration requested last October as part of the supplemental package. The administration is seeking $849 million for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to purchase and field non-intrusive inspection (NII) systems to scan vehicles and cargo entering the U.S. to detect and counter illegal drugs and human trafficking.
The Senate’s bill would provide $424.5 million for NII technology, $260 million for other border technologies, and $74 million to acquire and deploy air assets. The administration’s request is only for the NII funds.
The $260 million proposed for other border security technologies includes $170 million for autonomous surveillance tower systems in areas of the border currently without the sensor-equipped towers, $47.5 million for mobile surveillance systems, counter-drone systems, and small unmanned aerial systems, $25 million to detect tunnels under the border, $10 million to acquire data from “long duration unmanned surface vehicles in support of maritime border security, and $7.5 million for integrated communications to extend the connectivity of Border Patrol agents.”
The unmanned maritime surface vehicles are likely a reference to vessels operated by Saildrone. The Coast Guard is currently purchasing data from Saildrone unmanned vessels operating in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
President Biden in a statement on Sunday evening said of the bill, “I strongly support it.”
The Senate has yet to vote on the measure and House Republicans, who over the weekend also unveiled a supplemental that only targets assistance to Israel, oppose the bipartisan Senate offering.
“Any consideration of this Senate bill in its current form is a waste of time,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (La.), Majority Leader Steve Scalise (La.) and Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) said in a statement on Monday. “It is DEAD on arrival in the House. We encourage the U.S. Senate to reject it.”
House Republicans and some Senate Republicans oppose the proposed Senate bill for being soft on immigration policy.
“Among its many flaws, the bill expands work authorizations for illegal aliens while failing to include critical asylum reforms,” the House Republican leaders stated. “Even worse, its language allowing illegals to be ‘release from physical custody’ would effectively endorse the Biden ‘catch and release’ policy.”
Sen. James Lankford (Okla.), the lead Republican negotiator in the Senate on the proposed supplemental, would disagree.
“The border security bill will put a huge number of new enforcement tools in the hands of a future administration and push the current administration to finally stop the illegal flow,” Lankford said in a statement on Sunday. “The bill provides funding to build the wall, increase technology at the border, and add more detention beds, more agents, and more deportation flights. The border security bill ends the abuse of parole on our southwest border that has waived in over a million people. It dramatically changes our ambiguous asylum laws by conducting fast screening at a higher standard of evidence, limited appeals, and fast deportation.”