From El Chapo’s assets to security tolls, GOP looks for border wall funds

Congress didn’t include any new money for a border wall in the federal spending bill approved this week, but Texas Republicans have some alternative funding ideas that range from the creative — using assets from a Mexican drug lord in U.S. custody — to the familiar — using proceeds from a proposed charge for legal border crossers.

The measure to keep the government operating through the end of September includes $1.5 billion for technology improvements, detention facilities, hiring 10 immigration judges and additional Border Patrol agents. But Democrats wouldn’t agree to any money for President Donald Trump’s signature campaign issue.

“This represents in my view a down payment on border security,” U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told Texas reporters this week.

Cornyn is working on a comprehensive border security plan with House members that includes technology surveillance and additional personnel as well as a physical barrier.

“A border security plan is going to be expensive,” Cornyn said, adding that he was open to alter- native funding suggestions. “There are going to be other plans that will be out there to pay those bills.” Estimates of building a border wall range from $12 billion to $25 billion.

Advocates of an aggressive border security plan aren’t deterred by the lack of wall funding in the omnibus bill. “This is a step in the process,” said U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. “We’re still looking at a lot of creative options” to fund the wall, he said. “It will be addressed in September/October for fiscal year 2018.”

Here are five of the alternative funding sources:

■ El Chapo’s dinero: U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, filed legislation last month that would claim the $14 billion fortune of indicted

drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, if convicted, to pay for the wall. “By leveraging any criminally forfeited assets of El Chapo and his ilk, we can offset the wall’s cost and make meaningful progress toward achieving President Trump’s stated border security objectives,” Cruz said. “Security toll”: McCaul stands by his proposed payment plan, announced in December, to make Mexico pay for the wall by imposing

new immigration fees on visas and other immigration permits, adding a security toll at border crossings and moving to “seize and freeze” drug cartel assets. ■Border adjustment

tax: Proposed by U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, as part of his corporate tax overhaul plan, the plan would lower the corporate tax rate and change the way taxes are calculated, effectively taxing imports by 20 percent. White House spokesman Sean Spicer has said a 20 percent tax would raise $10 billion. ■Taxing remittances: U.S. Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, is co-sponsor of a bill introduced in March that would set a 2 percent fee on all wire transfers headed to Mexico.

The remittances are the way many migrant workers in the U.S. transfer money to their home countries. According to the Congressional Research Service, there were $27 billion in remittances to Mexico from the U.S. in 2016.

Child tax credit: U.S. Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Plano, introduced a bill this year, as he has for several years, targeting those lacking legal immigration status who claim the federal child tax credit of $1,000 per child. Since the benefit is refundable and doesn’t require a Social Security number, low-income families who qualify receive cash from the federal government.

Unauthorized immigrants with U.S.-born children use an individual taxpayer identification number. Johnson would require a Social Security number.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said last month that there was $4 billion a year in what he said were “excess payments” that went to “mostly Mexicans.”

Those ideas don’t sit well with U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, who is opposed to building a wall on the southern border.

“This is first and foremost a broken campaign promise,” Doggett told the American-Statesman, referring to Trump’s pledge to make Mexico pay for the wall. “None of these alternatives are what the president was promising.” Asked if they weren’t indirectly making Mexico pay, Doggett said, “Very, very indirectly.”

Limiting the child tax credit, he said, would hurt children who were U.S. citizens.

“It’s just designed as a tax on poor children, and that’s wrong,” he said. And taxing Mexican imports, said Doggett, “just raises the cost of everything from avocados to auto parts.”

Seizing El Chapo’s assets has a certain appeal, he said, but it would take a long time.

“They’re all about trying to provide some kind of rationalization of Trump’s campaign promise,” Doggett said.