Thread: Customs and Border Protection to issue furlough notices Thursday

Customs and Border Protection to issue furlough notices Thursday

Posted by Josh Hicks on March 6, 2013 at 1:39 pm

(Ross D. Franklin/AP)

U.S. Customs and Border Protection plans to issue official notice on Thursday of plans to furlough employees for up to 14 days, according to internal communications from the agency.
Federal agencies are required to provide a 30-day notice of furloughs before implementing unpaid leave.
Customs and Border Protection Deputy Director David V. Aguilar warned personnel about the pending notices on Tuesday, saying in a memo that the agency would implement “only the absolute minimum number of furlough days required” and ensure that ”all CBP employees serve the same amount of furlough time.”
U.S. Border Patrol, a division of Customs and Border Protection, plans to furlough its employees up to 14 days, according to a March 1 memo from the Border Patrol’s El Paso sector chief, Scott A. Luck.

Other cost-saving measures for Customs and Border Protection will include reducing overtime and implementing a hiring freeze, according to the Aguilar memo.
Border Patrol will reduce overtime and halt hiring in compliance with those plans, in addition to canceling all non-mandatory training, reducing vehicle use and ending incentive payments for retention, recruitment and relocation, according to the Luck memo.
The government-wide spending cuts known as the sequester, which took effect last Friday, require Customs and Border Protection to trim its budget by about $750 million, according to the agency.
　
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2013/03/06/customs-and-border-protection-to-issue-furlough-notices-thursday/

One of the main purposes of our federal government is to secure the borders. Yet they somehow have billions to send countries. Crazy!

Funny how this "sequester" only hits John Q.Public, but never ever does it affect the people who got us into this mess! I have a suggestion... lets permanently furlough Congress and start all over again!

The agencies could work around the furloughs but the administration reportedly want the cuts to hurt in order to return Nancy Pelosi to her throne and finish off the country without opposition. JMO

Sequestration's effects hit with long waits at airports, docks

By Lori Aratani, The Washington Postmercurynews.com
Posted: 03/06/2013 09:24:10 AM PST

A man looks to find flights Friday at Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, N.J. (Mel Evans/AP Photo)



The nation's crowded transportation system is already feeling the effect of billions of dollars in automatic federal budget cuts, with long waits at some international airports and signs that cargo may begin stacking up on seaport docks because inspectors are working fewer hours.
Up to 40 percent of the customs booths at airports in New York and Miami were unmanned over the weekend because of cutbacks in overtime for customs officials, resulting in waits of up to three hours for international passengers, Customs and Border Protection officials said. In Long Beach, Calif., the nation's second-busiest cargo port, customs officials are working 90 minutes less per shift, which could lead to longer processing times for containers.
The slowdowns are among the first tangible effects of the automatic budget cuts known as the sequester, which began to take effect Friday and will carve $86 billion from domestic and defense programs over the next seven months. On Tuesday, the Obama administration announced that the impact had reached the White House, which has canceled public tours starting Saturday because of the sequester.
Art Wong, a spokesman for the Port of Long Beach, which handles 40 percent of the nation's imports, said uncertainty about how the cuts will affect operations makes it difficult to plan.

"We're not sure where this is going to go," he said. "There are a lot of people whose jobs depend on this [port]."Wong said that factory shutdowns tied to New Year's celebrations in China mean there is a lull in the volume of goods moving through the Long Beach port, which handled $155 billion in cargo in 2011. But operations are expected to pick up in the next few weeks, he said.
Officials at the National Retail Federation said they have been told that the cutbacks could mean delays of up to five days or more in moving containers through ports. That would mean longer waits for retailers expecting spring merchandise as delays ripple through the transportation system.
"We're hoping the impact is going to be minimal, but it's too tough to say at this time," said Jonathan Gold, vice president for supply chain and customs policy at NRF.
But some airports already are feeling the pinch, and customs officials warned Tuesday that delays would worsen in coming weeks.
"Under sequestration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection will not be able to maintain its required staffing levels at our ports of entry," the agency said in a statement Tuesday, adding: "In the coming weeks we will see additional impacts as the CBP hiring freeze and furloughs take place. . . . Itineraries should be adjusted to account for unexpected delays."
In addition to Miami and New York, customs officials said there were delays for international passengers moving through Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, although airport officials there said they could not confirm the problems.
Mark Henderson, a spokesman for Miami International Airport, said that on Saturday - the airport's busiest day for international travel - passengers who would normally wait an hour to clear customs spent up to three hours in line. Customs officials said passengers aboard 51 flights that landed in Miami waited more than two hours, while those on four flights had wait times of more than three hours.
Henderson said it's still too early to tell whether this past weekend was an anomaly or a sign of things to come. He said customs lines had returned to normal by Monday. "It's important that our first-timers get a good impression," he said of wait times. "Airports are the front door of the community."
At New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, customs officials said weekend passengers from approximately 56 flights had wait times of more than two hours and those on 14 flights waited more than three.
The delays were mostly limited to weekend travelers and have primarily affected international passengers moving through customs, officials said.
In the Washington area, officials at Reagan National, Dulles International and Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall airports said the cuts have not had an immediate effect on passenger wait times.
Customs and border officials said delays will become widespread as the department begins furloughing employees. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security - which includes customs and border protection officers as well as Transportation Security Administration screeners - said furlough letters are expected to go out to employees on Thursday.
On Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said during a Politico event that wait times at some airports were "150 to 200 percent as long as we would normally expect." She cited airports in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago as examples, although she said she would have to check to be certain.
Democratic lawmakers and the White House have used the specter of long security lines and delayed flights to make their case that the mandatory budget cuts put into place because of the sequester are a bad idea. Many Republicans have pushed back, demanding more information and arguing that agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration are able to absorb spending reductions without compromising the safety or efficiency.
Napolitano said the public should prepare for longer waits in coming days as the impact of the sequester begins to ripple throughout the system.
At TSA, where a hiring freeze is expected to be put into place, officials anticipate there will be 1,000 security officer vacancies by Memorial Day weekend. That number could grow to 2,600 by the end of the fiscal year. Cutbacks at the FAA also could mean flight delays if fewer air-traffic controllers are staffing airport towers, officials said.
As a result, transportation officials said, current wait times of 30 to 40 minutes could double at the nation's largest airports during busy travel periods. Even those flying at non-peak times can expect longer waits, officials said.
Even if waits are not as lengthy as feared, travel industry representatives worry that chronic delays could still have a serious impact.
"We're a perception-related business," said Geoff Freeman, president of the U.S. Travel Association. "If it's the perception, it becomes the reality and travelers may go and spend their money somewhere else."
　
http://www.thereporter.com/ci_22729346/sequestrations-effects-hit-long-waits-at-airports-docks

Cuts will increase smuggling, Border Patrol union says

By Amanda J. Crawford
Bloomberg News
Wed, 03/06/2013 - 2:14pm

PHOENIX, Ariz. — Illegal immigration, drug smuggling and border crime may rise as U.S. spending cuts reduce hours for Border Patrol agents, their union said Tuesday.

The officers may have to take as many as 14 days of unpaid time off, or furloughs, and see their typical work hours cut to 8 from 10 as overtime is scaled back by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said Shawn Moran, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, representing 17,000 non-supervisory agents.

“The smuggling organizations are keenly aware of what our operational capabilities are,” said Moran, who’s based in San Diego. “Once they see that we don’t have the manpower we had out on the border previously, they will take advantage.”

Across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration are forcing government agencies to reduce spending. The government must trim $85 billion for the rest of this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, distributed evenly between defense and non- defense portions of the budget.

Customs and Border Protection funding is expected to be reduced by more than $500 million, according to a March 1 report by the White House Office of Management and Budget. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, whose department includes the Border Patrol, told Congress last month the department will have to shrink hours equivalent to the salaries of 5,000 Border Patrol agents and 2,750 Customs and Border Protection officers beginning April 1.

The Customs and Border Protection agency is trying to reduce its budget in a way that is “least disruptive to the facilitation of lawful travel and trade and our employees, while not compromising our security mission,” said Jenny Burke, a Washington-based spokeswoman.

“Because CBP is reducing, but not absolutely eliminating overtime pay, and because the length of the sequestration is unknown, it is difficult to project the impact of the reductions,” Burke said by e-mail.

The cuts follow the release last week of hundreds of immigrant detainees by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, attributed to sequestration. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, a critic of President Obama’s administration on border issues, said the releases were “payback” to her state for its attempts to curb illegal immigration, such as the 2010 crackdown she signed.

The governor’s spokesman, Matthew Benson, said the Border Patrol reductions would be “outrageous” and could put Arizonans at risk.

“The White House approach to sequestration seems to be to create as much pain and public panic as possible,” Benson said in a telephone interview. “Any cut that impacts public safety should be a last resort.”

Joe Arpaio, elected to his sixth term as sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest, as he faced a federal civil- rights lawsuit over immigration-related arrests, criticized the planned reduction.

“You shouldn’t take away resources when you still have a problem,” Arpaio, 80, said Tuesday in an interview. “It doesn’t make sense.”

The furloughs and loss of overtime are equivalent to a 35 percent pay cut for Border Patrol agents, David Cox, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement. The group is the parent union of the border patrol council.

“Agents will be instructed to stop working at the moment their straight shift ends,” Cox said. “Good news for criminals and others who would enter our country illegally; but very bad news for Americans who rely on the courage and devotion of Border Patrol agents who risk their lives every day to keep drugs and guns and gangs outside our borders.”

The cuts probably won’t dramatically increase crime or significantly compromise border security, said Chris Wilson, an associate with the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, a Washington-based research group. The number of Border Patrol agents has doubled in the last decade, and illegal activity along the border between the ports of entry has fallen.

Border Patrol is “bigger than they’ve ever been and crossings are lower than they’ve ever been,” Wilson said in a telephone interview. The proposed cuts “would not put us at staffing levels unlike what we had in recent years and, therefore, would not put us at a point that we would have major security concerns as a result.”

Cuts will increase smuggling, Border Patrol union says

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