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Washington, D.C. —Customs and Border Protection (CBP) staffing at U.S. northern border ports of entry is woefully short of the critical need, a situation that will only get worse unless Congress moves to provide additional staffing for this key homeland security agency, the leader of the union representing the entire 24,000-employee CBP workforce told a Senate subcommittee today.

“There has not been a new hire for over two years at the ports of entry in Vermont,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). “Ten percent fewer CBP Officers in Vermont are now processing approximately twenty percent more vehicle and commercial traffic.”

The NTEU leader offered the Vermont example and others in testimony submitted to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security, chaired by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). The subcommittee is conducting a hearing on improving security and facilitating commerce at the nation’s northern border ports of entry.

While the U.S. southern border with Mexico, with its 24 major land ports of entry, gets most of the media attention, the 4,000-mile U.S. land border with Canada is more than double the length of the U.S.-Mexico border and has some 150 land ports of entry. CBP Officers inspected more than 45 million vehicles entering the U.S. from Canada in fiscal 2010.

The 293 miles of densely-wooded area along Maine’s land border with Quebec, Canada, was among the examples cited by President Kelley for the severe impact of staffing shortages along the northern border.

Among the other examples: In Buffalo, N.Y., “CBP management is constantly pulling CBP Officers from various areas to open auto lanes” to keep traffic from backing up; in Detroit, where staffing is “below peak,” there are insufficient Officers to cover the duties of those who otherwise would be sent to training—with the result that the port skimps on training; and at the Port of Sweetgrass, Montana—which processes some 130,000 commercial vehicles a year—the frontline workforce is down by 11 Officers just since Jan. 1, 2010.

“All of this should be unacceptable to Congress and the public,” President Kelley said. “It increases the threat to our nation.”

She called for increasing port security and trade enforcement staffing at the nation’s 331 ports of entry to the level recommended in the 2009 report of the Homeland Security Advisory Council; strongly recommended—both for security and efficiency in reducing traveler and commercial vehicle wait times—that all existing travel lanes and booths at ports of entry be staffed to capacity; and that CBP be required to submit a yearly workplace staffing model that including optimal staffing requirements for each port of entry.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.