Home Media Center News Releases

Washington, D.C.—The House Homeland Security Committee’s rejection, on a party-line vote, of an effort to significantly increase the number of frontline homeland security employees calls into serious question the commitment of that body to providing adequate staffing at the nation’s ports of entry, the leader of the union representing those employees said today.

“It’s one thing to talk a good game about port security,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), “and there is plenty of such talk going in. It is quite another, however, to reject an effort to add some 1,600 Customs and Border Protection Officers (CBPOs) over the next four years.”

The rejected amendment was offered by Ranking Member Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) during committee markup of H.R. 4954, the Safe Ports Act.

President Kelley recognized that the version of the legislation brought to the committee, known as the chairman’s mark, does call for an additional 1,200 new CBPOs over six years, but this number falls far short of need for additional staff at the ports of entry.

“Many today recognized the need for additional frontline staff and that is a welcome step,” Kelley said, adding that she disputes claims that CBP does not have the capacity to train more CBPOs than are called for in the legislation.

As she did when the committee’s Economic Security, Infrastructure Protection and Cybersecurity Subcommittee rejected the Thompson amendment—also on a party-line vote—Kelley called the action a “wasted opportunity” to address a critical need in the nation’s security structure. “Clearly, when it comes to the security of the American people, this is a political game we can’t afford to play,” Kelley said.

The failure of the House committee to adopt the Thompson amendment calls attention once again to the severe impact on homeland security of CBP’s misplaced and mismanaged ‘One Face at the Border’ program. Under it, the work of inspectors from legacy Customs, Immigration and Naturalization and Agriculture is being combined into a single position—CBPO.

“Despite the real impact of the ‘One Face’ program, which is the loss of inspectional expertise,” Kelley said, “the program provides an illusion of adequate security at our ports of entry as well as political cover for the administration’s failure to ensure adequate personnel and resources to perform the job that Americans have the right to expect.”

She called the ‘One Face’ program and the committee’s rejection of the effort to boost the homeland security inspectional workforce as proposed by Rep. Thompson “problems of national significance that truly need to be addressed.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 federal workers in 30 agencies and departments, including nearly 16,000 in CBP.