Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra (left) and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testify during a hearing before Senate Appropriations Committee on Nov. 8, 2023.

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra (left) and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testify during a hearing before Senate Appropriations Committee on Nov. 8, 2023. Alex Wong/Getty Images

Biden administration defends substantial immigration hiring surge as Congress debates emergency spending

Republicans say a more robust package is required to address the southern border.

A flood of new funding for a surge of hiring at immigration and border agencies is required to address growing numbers of migrants arriving in the country, Biden administration officials told lawmakers on Wednesday, pitching the proposal as uncontroversial despite significant partisan pushback. 

While not representing the comprehensive approach to immigration reform the administration would like to see, Alejandro Mayorkas and Xavier Becerra, secretaries of the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, respectively, conceded, it would address an immediate, acute problem of an overwhelmed workforce. Republicans on the committee, however, said they would not approve the White House’s larger $106 billion supplemental funding request—of which the DHS hiring is a part—as written. 

The Biden administration is seeking $13.6 billion to hire nearly 6,000 employees at DHS and the Justice Department, saying the resources are necessary to keep the Southwest border secure and restrict the flow of fentanyl into the county. The ask marked a significantly ramped up approach from the Biden administration, which previously pushed for smaller increases to its immigration and border security workforce.

It also raises questions about how realistic the proposals are given DHS’ previous failures to grow certain components, which lawmakers posed to Mayorkas at the Senate Appropriations Committee’s hearing. 

“How in the world are you going to hire an additional 1,000 officers when you can't even hire up to the allotted amount that you appropriated for today?” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., asked. 

DHS is working on reforming the hiring process, including the longstanding bottleneck caused by the polygraph process, Mayorkas said. 

“We are intensely focused on that administrative aspect of the challenge because we need additional personnel,” the secretary explained. 

Moore Capito suggested DHS boost pay and retention bonuses for Border Patrol personnel, as Senate Republicans proposed in a recent package of border security reform proposals that also included strict limitations on asylum and other immigration pathways. President Biden asked for funding for 1,300 new Border Patrol agents as part of his request. Congress funded an additional 300 Border Patrol agents as part of the fiscal 2023 omnibus spending bill—marking the first such increase in more than a decade—and Biden requested an additional 350 in his fiscal 2024 budget. 

Customs and Border Protection has struggled for years to fill Border Patrol and customs officer positions. The Trump administration signed a contract worth up to $300 million to help it bring on 7,500 border personnel, but canceled it after it managed to hire just 15 employees. Lawmakers for years were forced to claw back money appropriated for CBP hiring after the agency failed to meet its targets. In more recent years, the agency has seen some success in slowly growing its workforce.

Under Biden’s current supplemental funding request, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would gain 1,600 new asylum officers, CBP would see 1,000 new officers and Immigration and Customs Enforcement would add 1,470 attorneys. The latter hiring would accompany 375 immigration judges within Justice’s Executive Office of Immigration Review—the agency that runs the nation’s immigration courts—and support staff for each of them.

Filling Biden’s request would likely prove operationally challenging beyond just CBP, as DHS components have for a decade struggled to hire to their authorized levels. The asylum officer and ICE attorney plans would more than double those workforces.

Republicans on the spending committee expressed some support for increasing resources for border agencies, but said the request was incomplete without accompanying policy reforms. 

“I’m with you,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. “We need to have more men and women at the border.” 

Mayorkas assessed the response to his requests in saying the proposed hiring “does not seem, to me, to be particularly controversial,” though Murkowksi and others noted that she did not want to dump more money into a broken system. 

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the top Republican on the appropriations panel, made clear Republicans would not accept the White House’s package as is, though expressed optimism a bipartisan measure could be possible. A small, bipartisan group of senators are reportedly working on immigration measures that could be added to a supplemental funding package. House Republicans, meanwhile, opted to split off a standalone bill for aid to Israel, which it passed primarily along party lines.

“We are working on the funding request, and then I hope that we can work together to address some real concerns about the funding request, as well as some policy issues,” Collins said. 

Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., added additional funding must be accompanied by better metrics to track the performance of new DHS employees, while Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., suggested DHS had a "'implementation of the law problem, not a funding problem." Mayorkas repeatedly stressed the administration would only consider policy reforms as part of a comprehensive package. 

Sen. Patty Muray, D-Wash., who chairs the panel, said staffing for immigration and border personnel should be part of the supplemental package, which focuses on aid to Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific. 

“We should all be able to agree that we need to make sure that the folks who safeguard our borders have the resources they need to do their jobs safely, humanely and effectively, and that reducing the USCIS backlog is a good thing,” Murray said. 

Mayorkas suggested the hiring itself would amount to a policy change, as it would allow for greater deterrence through increased enforcement. 

“When we talk about hiring, for example, additional personnel to conduct the case processing? That means that the Border Patrol agents are out into the field, which is where they belong to do the jobs they swore to do and they signed up to do,” Mayorkas said. 

More asylum officers, meanwhile, would enable faster adjudication of asylum cases in each stage of the process. 

“The unacceptable fact [is] that it is far too slow a process, the asylum adjudication process, that is, because the system is broken and, critically, we are terribly underfunded and under-resourced,” Mayorkas said.

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.