Texas’ border security costs may surpass $1 billion
Public safety officials seek more money for personnel, equipment
AUSTIN — The Texas Department of Public Safety, already operating the nation’s biggest state-funded border security program, is seeking a nearly $300 million budget increase that over two years could drive the total cost of the controversial program to more than $1 billion.
Officials said Monday the additional funds are needed to hire 250 more state troopers for border duty, install 5,000 more cell-based cameras along the Rio Grande, replace 1,240 vehicles, two helicopters and four airplanes used in border enforcement, and to upgrade cybersecurity and counterterrorism initiatives.
The proposed items would add $291.7 million to the agency’s two-year base budget request of $749.9 million.
If approved, that total request would increase the beefed up border security cost to more than $1 billion — about what Texas currently spends on all of its psychiatric hospitals, and is roughly two-thirds of what it costs
to feed two-thirds of the state’s public school students in the free lunch program.
The proposal comes at a time when polls show border security rates as a top issue among likely voters, especially Republicans. GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has made building a border wall a major campaign issue in the fractious November general-election race.
Critics of the state’s heightened enforcement efforts say some border areas are being needlessly flooded with law enforcement personnel who cannot enforce federal immigration laws and can only make arrests for violations of state law and that officials are unduly militarizing the border by using National Guard troops on temporary deployment.
Supporters of ramped-up state spending have countered that they have no option because the federal government has declined the secure the border, especially two years ago when a flood of children and families overwhelmed federal patrols.
Intense debate expected
Legislative leaders on Monday said they had not yet seen the details of the request but predicted that the increase promises to spark intense debate and questions as state revenues are expected to fall at least $5 billion short. The drop is caused by a sluggish economy due to the decline in oil
prices and related downturn in tax collections — and because of a shift in general sales tax revenues from myriad state programs to transportation infrastructure work.
Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat, and border lawmakers raised issues last legislative session about whether border-security spending could be sustained over the long term.
“At some point in time, you have to balance what this state is spending on the border with other critical needs we have — and this may be when that happens,” Whitmire said on Monday.
“I can tell you that crime problems at the border don’t stay at the border,” Whitmire said. “Human trafficking, dope smuggling, cartel gangs, they end up in Houston and Dallas and San Antonio and Austin and other cities. Security at the border is important, but so is security in our cities.”
Anticipating that the Legislature will have less than expected revenues when it starts writing a new two-year budget in 2017, top state officials — Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Joe Straus — in June asked all state agencies to submit budgets that were 4 percent less than their current spending. Border security was exempted.
Since then, many agencies have submitted requests arguing that they need the 4-percent cut restored to ensure public safety or to keep from damaging key programs. DPS officials make the same pitch in their request for a two-year budget that totals just under $2 billion.
Spending opposed by some
Immigration and other advocacy groups that have been critical of border-security spending questioned the proposed billiondollar price tag after Texas more than doubled its spending to almost $800 million in 2015.
“If DPS tells us where they spent the first $800 million, which they haven’t done so far, then we can talk about the billion they want now,” said Terri Burke, executive director of the Houston-based ACLU of Texas, a long-standing critic of the border enforcement spending. “Why don’t they give that money to local law-enforcement agencies to do the enforcement . ... We’ve got a foster-care system in Texas that’s completely broken, so why not spend a billion to fix it? Or how about trying to prevent so many women from dying in childbirth? Or how about investing a billion on the many other programs in this state that are so drastically underfunded?”
DPS director Steve McCraw has touted the border program as a key to thwarting international drug cartels from spreading crimes across Texas, as well as combating terrorist threats.