Napolitano Defends Proposed Cuts to ICE, Coast Guard
By: Mickey McCarter
04/15/2013 ( 8:00am)
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is defending funding priorities in the proposed fiscal year 2014 budget for her department, debating proposed construction at a biodefense lab and a headquarters building as well as cuts in spending for the US Coast Guard and immigration enforcement.
Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, opened the hearing of the homeland security subcommittee on April 11 by expressing his dissatisfaction with proposed spending for the Coast Guard and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offered by the White House on April 10.
"The department has presented a proposal to decimate the Coast Guard and ICE...in favor of headquarters pet projects and controversial research projects," Rogers said.
Under the proposal, overall funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would receive $39 billion, down 2.2 percent of $800 million below FY 2013.
Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), chairman of the subcommittee, assailed proposed cuts to ICE, which Congress consistently has mandated maintain 34,000 beds for illegal aliens at federal detention facilities.
The proposed DHS FY 2014 budget would fund only 31,800 beds. "We are proposing to make greater uses of alternatives to detention, which are cheaper," Napolitano said, citing the cost of a detention bed as $119 per day.
Carter assailed the release of ICE detainees, particularly those released in February ahead of the anticipated March 1 start date for automatic budget cuts under sequestration. ICE released some detainees who are top offenders and should not have been eligible for supervision under alternatives to detention, such as ankle bracelets or other supervised release mechanisms.
Napolitano acknowledged the mistaken release of "a handful" of offenders who committed serious crimes in addition to entering the United States illegally. Those offenders did not go free, Napolitano said, and remain subject to ICE authority. As originally mandated, however, sequestration would have hit ICE hard and the agency was required to prepared for the cuts prescribed by the Budget Control Act of 2011.
The FY 2013 consolidated appropriations act, signed by President Barack Obama on March 26, largely spared DHS from the worst of sequestration for the remainder of the fiscal year, however.
Still, ICE must have flexibility to "stick to an artificial number of beds" or adjust the levels as necessary, Napolitano said. The requested number of beds for FY 2014, 31,800, would house all top offenders. Using alternatives to detention would allow DHS to drop the ICE budget to $5.3 billion, a decline of $641 million or 11 percent under the proposal from FY 2012 to 2014.
At the US Coast Guard, the FY 2014 budget proposal would cut 826 military billets and cut Coast Guard recapitalization by 40 percent, Rogers said. DHS would cut such frontline operations in favor of building up DHS headquarters and increasing funding for the Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate.
Under the budget proposal, the Coast Guard would receive funding for a seventh National Security Cutter, which represents its top recapitalization priority, Napolitano said.
The cut in military billets represents unstaffed positions as well as reduction in crew as new ships like the National Security Cutter require fewer personnel to operate than their legacy counterparts, Napolitano said.
While funding for other Coast Guard projects like the Fast Response Cutter would see cuts, the agency would still be on track to achieve the numbers sought under their official programs of record, the secretary said. Overall Coast Guard funding would fall to $9.8 billion (down 6 percent from FY 2012) under the FY 2014 budget proposal.
Construction projects
The increase in spending at the DHS S&T Directorate would go toward fully funding the construction of the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) in Manhattan, Kan., Napolitano said.
The facility is necessary to replace the failing Plum Island Animal Disease Center, which soon will not be able to support national requirements to defend against threats posed by biological agents, Napolitano said.
"This innovative federal-state partnership will support the first Bio Level 4 lab facility of its kind, a state-of-the-art bio-containment facility for the study of foreign animal and emerging zoonotic diseases that is central to the protection of the nation's food supply as well as our national and economic security," Napolitano said in her testimony.
The state of Kansas already has put up $320 million to build the center, Napolitano said. DHS must respond with its portion of the funding, totaling $714 million.
"At some point, we have to bite the bullet," Napolitano said of finishing NBAF construction.
The department also requires the other major construction project proposed in the FY 2014 budget -- continuation of the consolidated DHS headquarters on the campus of Saint Elizabeths' Hospital in Washington, DC. The FY 2014 budget proposal would provide another $105.5 million toward DHS headquarters consolidation.
The Coast Guard will relocate its headquarters to the facilities on the campus by Thanksgiving, Napolitano said. Even so, DHS operates more than 50 separate facilities around the Washington, DC, metropolitan area for its various agencies.
"Our ability to connect the dots and to work in an integrated fashion is facilitated by having a headquarters, where people can actually meet and talk to each other," Napolitano said. "To do our best work, ultimately we are going to need a headquarters."
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