Border patrol agents are facing salary cuts, gas rationing, and other constraints in the face of budget cuts driven by the sequester even as detained illegal immigrants live in detention centers replete with comforts.
No announced cuts have been made for amenities at detention centers, which include taxpayer-funded health care, dental services, barber services, and bingo and movie nights. Funds for the detention centers come from the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
ICE and DHS are under fire for the release of more than 2,200 illegal immigrants from detention, some of which were level one offenders and had to be re-apprehended.
The amenities afforded detained illegal immigrants are numerous and are part of the Obama administration’s detention reform initiative. Over the past four years, millions have been spent revamping detention centers.
One such center is the Karnes County Civil Detention Facility in Texas that opened last year at a $32 million cost to taxpayers. Tours of the facility were given to reporters, and their stories depict a college-like setting in which detainees are housed in dorms or suites that hold eight.
Each is equipped with a television and private bathroom. Soccer fields, basketball courts, and other recreation areas, in addition to a computer lab with Internet access and legal resources, are all available to illegal immigrants.
“Detainees will be free to move through much of the center 24 hours a day. Unarmed staff members, dressed in blue polo shirts and khaki trousers, are known as ‘resident advisers,’ not guards,” according to a New York Times report.
Read more: freebeacon.com
