{"id":22849,"date":"2020-04-21T05:33:45","date_gmt":"2020-04-21T09:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=22849"},"modified":"2020-04-21T05:37:17","modified_gmt":"2020-04-21T09:37:17","slug":"cbp-wasteful-spending-gao-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2020\/04\/21\/cbp-wasteful-spending-gao-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: CBP Wasted Millions at Texas Border Detention Facility"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Did U.S.\nCustoms and Border Protection (CBP) overspend on a temporary detention center\noutside El Paso? The Government Accountability Office (GAO) thinks so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A GAO investigation<\/a> found that the Tornillo facility designed to house 2,500 adult detainees held no more than 68 at any given time. It averaged just 38 per day, during barely six months of operation in the latter half of 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adding up expenditures at the $66 million\nfacility, the GAO report said CBP \u201cspent $5.3 million on unnecessary food,\u201d and\nvastly overstaffed Tornillo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CBP paid $6.7 million for 75 unarmed contract\nsecurity guards to be on site at all times, plus 21 CBP law enforcement\nofficers and five employees from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In\naddition, 116 Texas National Guard personnel were also on site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Border\nPatrol officials in the El Paso sector reported that while there was a shortage\nof detention space for single adults in May and June 2019, crowding problems\nwere largely resolved by July, when the Tornillo facility was ordered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hindsight\nis always 20\/20, of course. And accurate predictions about the ebbs and flows\nof illegal border crossers are nigh on impossible. Still, it is troubling to\nhear local officers say they were not consulted about the project until it was\nannounced. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In their defense, CBP officials in Washington, D.C., said they maintained robust staffing levels because of earlier border surges. They noted that if Migrant Protection Protocols<\/a> were halted because of litigation or lack of cooperation by the Mexican government, more capacity would be needed quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though CBP eventually scaled back some of its\nspending on Tornillo, GAO dinged the agency for paying \u201cmillions of dollars for food\nservice it did not need and allocat[ing]personnel resources that, as Border\nPatrol El Paso sector officials noted, could have been allocated to other\nmissions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GAO\ncould have gone one step further by asking the parent agency overseeing all\nthis: Why didn\u2019t the Department of Homeland Security\nturn Tornillo over to ICE, if CBP couldn’t fill the beds? Alas that line of\ninquiry didn\u2019t come up in GAO\u2019s 15-page report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As it\nclosed Tornillo on Jan. 3, CBP said it had learned lessons there, and pledged\nto do better. Let\u2019s hope so. Any way you figure it, bilking U.S. taxpayers and\nsquandering border-enforcement resources is a double debacle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) overspend on a temporary detention center outside El Paso? The Government Accountability Office (GAO) thinks so. A GAO investigation found that the Tornillo facility designed to house 2,500 adult detainees held no more than 68 at any given time. It averaged just 38 per day, during barely six<\/p>\n

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