Since 9/11, Republicans Have Voted Repeatedly Against Strengthening Border Security

• Since 9/11, Democrats have been highlighting the lack of border security and trying to enhance federal resources targeted at improving border security – but we haven’t been getting any help from Republicans.
• Seven times over the last four and a half years, Democrats have offered amendments to enhance border security resources.  If these Democratic amendments had been adopted, there would be 6,600 more Border Patrol agents, 14,000 more detention beds, and 2,700 more immigration agents along our borders than now exist.  Each time, these efforts have been rejected by the Republican majority.
• By not funding adequate border security resources, the Republican majority has also been breaking the promises they made in the Intelligence Reform (or 9/11) Act that was enacted in December 2004.
• In the 9/11 Act of 2004, the Republican Congress promised to provide 2,000 additional Border Patrol agents, 8,000 additional detention beds and 800 additional immigration agents per year from FY 2006 through FY 2010.  And yet, over the last two years, Republicans have broken this promise.
• Republicans are currently 800 Border Patrol agents, 5,000 detention beds, and nearly 500 immigration agents short of the promises they made in the Intelligence Reform (or 9/11) Act of 2004. 

Performance on Border Resources and Immigration Enforcement Has Fallen under the Bush Administration

• From 1993-2000, the Clinton Administration added, on average, 642 new Border Patrol agents per year.  Despite the fact that 9/11 highlighted the heightened need for border security, in its first five years, the Bush Administration added, on average, only 411 new Border Patrol agents.
• Between 1999 and 2004, worksite immigration enforcement operations against companies were scaled back 99 percent by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which subsequently was merged into the Department of Homeland Security.  In 1999, the United States initiated fines against 417 companies.  In 2004, it issued fine notices to only three.
• The Bush Administration also has a worse record than the Clinton Administration on pursuing immigration fraud cases.  In 1995, 6,455 immigration fraud cases were completed.  And yet, in 2003, only 1,389 – or 78 percent fewer – immigration fraud cases were completed.
• The Bush Administration has said that, in its first five years, it caught and returned 6 million undocumented individuals – this is actually a drop from any five-year period during the Clinton Administration.