Sooner State News

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) on June 8 participated in a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing entitled, “FASTA implementation and optimizing the efficient use of federal property.” Lankford used his time during the hearing to question GSA leadership on red tape that has prevented US Customs and Border Protection from adequately securing and protecting the US border. GSA serves as the federal government’s landlord and buildings’ superintendent. 

Lankford and Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) sent a letter earlier this year to advocate for CBP to receive the resources they need from GSA at ports of entry. Lankford and Sinema introduced a bill that would give CBP the authority to repair ports along the border without involving GSA unless the project valued more than $300,000. 

Lankford remains the leading voice in the Senate to secure our southern border, end catch-and-release, and fix the broken asylum process. Lankford got Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to admit that our asylum process is broken and being abused and that our entire immigration process is broken.

Lankford recently visited the US-Mexico border in Nogales, Arizona, after Title 42 authority was lifted, and he saw first-hand the national security risk the wide-open border has presented because CBP has been forced to process illegal migrants into the US instead of protecting the border. Lankford also called out the Biden Administration for fudging the illegal border crossing numbers to fake success of their Title 42 plan. 

Excerpt

Lankford: … Some agencies like the Department of Labor have a lot more flexibility with their facilities. When you go to CBP, some of the facilities they own; some of them GSA owns. There are some real differences there on how this is handled. The disposal process for that, the Department of Labordisposes of it [property], they get to keep that revenue and be able to reinvest it. CBP, if in one of their facilities if they’ve got an air conditioner out or whatever it may be, they’ve got to replace it. …if it’s a GSA facility, they get in line and they’ll pay the additional fee to GSA to be able to then hire the contractor to be able to do the maintenance. So, for them literally the cost is much higher if GSA owns that facility and the maintenance happens. When they get in line for the maintenance to happen…versus them have to have it. 

It seems to me part of the solution here is giving more flexibility to the agencies whenever possible. That the agencies are actually making decisions for that. GSA has an incredible diversity of locations and facilities that literally we can’t even get a data list of even the properties out there that we own. To be able to have that list to know what we have, much less know how to be able to manage it. So, why wouldn’t we allow more agencies to operate like the Department of Labor, or more facilities like CBP to run on their own rather than wait in line for someone to get down to the border to be able to check it out, to be able to get in line, to be able to have higher maintenance cost from someone from the outside literally flying in to do it rather than a local maintenance person that would be cheaper?

Original source can be found here.