Not Enough Money For Enforcement, But Plenty For Art

Feds to Spend $500,000 for New Art at Customs and Border Protection Facility in San Diego

For the past few years Customs and Border Protection has seen a marked decrease in budgetary requests and appropriations when it comes to employee salaries.  The start of sequestration saw the first ever across-the-board decrease in the amount of Administratively Uncontrollable Overtime (AUO) for Border Patrol agents.  This cut resulted in a decrease in manpower in the field, equivalent to 1,200 agents, during the shift changes which have always been the most vulnerable times.

These gaps in coverage have not gone unnoticed as cartels have used them to move drugs and special interest aliens across the border.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the Rio Grande Valley sector, which this year has been inundated by Central American illegal aliens.  During a crisis of this sort one would assume that staffing on the border would be at 100%, but sectors across the southwest border are still operating with reduced manpower levels.  All of this in the name of budgetary savings.

Now comes word that the newly renovated San Ysidro Port of Entry will feature approximately $500,000 worth of artwork through the General Service Administration’s “Art in Architecture” program.  We would not be surprised to see artwork promoting open borders or portraying Border Patrol agents as oppressive thugs standing in the way of those illegal aliens coming to this country to “do the work that Americans won’t do.”

Sadly, none of this is surprising and is par for the course for a government that refuses to take illegal immigration seriously.

Feds to Spend $500,000 for New Art at Customs and Border Protection Facility in San Diego