Obama border funding: Most money to care, feed, transport illegal immigrants; little for deportations

The money will break down like this: Of the $433 million for the Border Patrol, $329 million will be for “operational costs to include care, feeding, and transportation costs of unaccompanied children and family groups,” according to the draft testimony. Of the rest of the Border Patrol money, $35 million will go for new detention facilities in Nogales and McAllen, Texas; $29 million for 180 new members of the Border Security Task Force, and $39 million for more surveillance flights by unmanned aircraft.

Then there is the $1.104 billion for ICE. Of that, $995 million will go for “operational costs to include care, feeding, and transportation costs of unaccompanied family groups,” according to the draft testimony. Of that $995 million, the testimony says $779 million will go for “6,350 additional family unit beds and related transportation and expedited removal costs for family groups.” (It is unclear how much of that $779 million will go to “expedited removal costs,” but Hill sources say it is likely the majority of it will be spent on housing.) The rest of the $1.104 billion, a total of $109 million, will go to “support increased efforts to detect and disrupt efforts to smuggle unaccompanied children and family groups across U.S. borders.”

What about actually deporting at least some of the thousands who have crossed the border into the United States illegally? That is apparently not a high priority, at least as far as the DHS spending request is concerned.