When the Homeland Security appropriations bill was on the floor under the authorship of Senator BYRD from West Virginia. we increased port security funding. which is already fairly significant within the Homeland Security appropriations bill. we increased it by over $600 million specifically for port security initiatives. As a result. that additional funding. coupled with the funding which was already in place and which has been growing over the last few years. represented a very strong commitment to trying to upgrade our ports because we all recognizethere is no subtlety to thisthe ports are a significant point of vulnerability for our Nation. Just to put this in context. if we are able to pass the Homeland Security appropriations bill as it passed the Senateand I suspect we will be fairly close to those numbers as a result of the support we have received from Senator COCHRAN and from the leadership of both the House and the Senate in giving us the allocation plus some additional funds for emergencies to accomplish the type of funding initiatives we needwe will add 460 new Customs and Border Patrol agents purely for the purpose of port security. That is on top of the agents we already have. which number in the hundreds. We will add over $211 million for nonintrusive inspection equipment.
Keywords matched
Border Patrol