FLAKE. Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the Customs
and Border Protection Hiring and Retention Act, or CBP HiRe Act. In recent years, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, has had
a lot of trouble recruiting, hiring, and retaining personnel to
adequately staff the border and our ports of entry. Today, CBP is
nearly 1,000 officers below the mandated staffing levels. The Border
Patrol, whose duty it is to secure 6,000 miles of borderlands, suffers
from a shortage of more than 1,800 agents. These shortages persist,
despite ample backing and funding from Congress and the threat they
pose to both national security and trade-reliant communities and
economies, particularly in my State of Arizona. This has been
frustrating for border communities across the country, but it is
especially problematic for Arizona, a State that depends on both border
security and a lot of cross-border trade. For example, the Nogales port of entry in Southern Arizona is one of
the busiest ports in the United States. It processes approximately $2.5
billion worth of produce each year.
Keywords matched
Border Protection Border
Patrol border
security