Home Media Center News Releases

Washington, D.C.—The leader of the union representing tens of thousands of frontline homeland security employees today expressed to a key House subcommittee strong support for the administration’s proposed fiscal 2014 budget for Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The budget proposal would provide funds for another 3,477 CBP Officers at the nation’s 331 ports of entry, President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) told the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee in submitted testimony.

The White House proposal includes an increase in funding of $210.1 million that would cover the costs of an additional 1,600 frontline CBP Officers. The additional 1,877 CBP Officers would be paid for by an increase in customs and immigration user fees that have not been increased since 2001.

Collectively, the additional personnel would result in a substantial boost to the economy, Kelley said, noting that CBP has the dual missions of helping protect borders as well as facilitate critically important trade. Citing a University of Southern California study released earlier this month, Kelley said that for every 1,000 CBP Officers added, the U.S. can increase its gross domestic product by $2 billion.

Right now, the opposite is happening; insufficient CBP personnel is leading to sharply increased wait times for both passenger and commercial traffic at border entry points, she said, emphasizing there has been no increase in CBP trade enforcement and compliance personnel since creation of CBP’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, in March 2003.

CBP collects more government revenue than any agency other than the Internal Revenue Service. In FY 2010, CBP collected $32 billion in revenue.

“NTEU urges the committee not to cut CBP trade operations staff, but to increase funding to hire additional trade enforcement and compliance personnel, including Import Specialists, at the ports of entry to enhance trade revenue collection,” President Kelley said.

The testimony also strongly urged Congress to end the sequester, which calls for deep cuts to CBP’s budget. Congress did provide some relief to CBP as part of the continuing resolution funding government through the end of this fiscal year, but the CR did not end sequestration. Language in the CR requires CBP to maintain the current Officer staffing level. “Maintaining current staffing floors means CBP cannot use all of the increased funding in the CR to reduce furloughs for current employees since it must continue to fill vacant positions,” President Kelley said.

Prior to enactment of the CR, the CBP sequester plan required all CBP employees to be furloughed up to 14 days—one day a pay period—during the remainder of this fiscal year. With the additional funding included in the CR, however, there may be a reduction in the number of furlough days that all CBP employees must take before the end of the fiscal year. In light of the new funding bill, CBP is re-evaluating previously planned furloughs and has postponed implementation of furloughs pending that re-examination.

“Even one furlough day for these critical frontline employees is too much,” said Kelley.

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