VOLYN OBLAST, UKRAINE – FEBRUARY 13: Ukrainian border guards walk past concrete barrier during patrolling of the border with Belarus on February 13, 2024 in Volyn Oblast, Ukraine. Airspace monitoring is carried out with the help of unmanned aerial vehicles. Also border guards patrol the area on foot and in armored vehicles. (Photo by Yevhenii Vasyliev/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
JOHN BINDER | Breitbart.com
A spending bill backed by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) includes hundreds of millions of dollars in American taxpayer money for border patrol agents in Ukraine as illegal immigration at the United States-Mexico border remains at record levels.
The spending bill, which 151 House Republicans helped 165 House Democrats advance on Friday, would see more than $95 billion sent to foreign countries — including about $61 billion to Ukraine amid its ongoing war with Russia.
Slipped into the funding package’s Ukraine spending is $300 million for “the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine 20 and National Police of Ukraine, including units supporting 21 or under the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
The State Border Guard Service is the Ukrainian equivalent of the U.S. Border Patrol.
At the same time, while illegal immigration stays sky-high at the southern border, President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is asking Congress to fund only 34,000 detention beds for migrants arriving at the border — 7,500 fewer beds than those currently funded by lawmakers.
Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Patrick Lechleitner, though, told Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) this week that he would prefer Congress fund 50,000 detention beds, a figure still below the hundreds of thousands that are necessary but well above DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s request.