Critics: $10 billion border bill unneeded

TUCSON A $1 billion-a-year bill moving through Congress would add miles of roads and fences along the border and waive more than a dozen environmental laws within 100 miles of the border even though top immigration officials say that's not needed.

The proposed bill requires the Department of Homeland Security to achieve operational control of the U.S.-Mexico border. That means that all illegal entries are stopped meaning all illegal entries are stopped, which top DHS officials have said is unrealistic.

But Martha McSally, Southern Arizona's newly elected Republican U.S. Representative who co-sponsored the House bill, said setting an ambitious standard is the best way to achieve success.

"We have to set a very high goal to understand how important it is to get this job done," McSally said. Arizona's U.S. senators, Republicans John McCain and Jeff Flake, co-sponsored the Senate version of the bill.

The House bills author, U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, calls it the toughest border security bill ever set before Congress, but neither the Border Patrol union nor local environmentalists think it's needed.

We dont address the underlying issues, said Roger McManus, a biologist who is president of Friends of the Sonoran Desert. People keep coming here for jobs, and drugs keep coming over the border because there's a demand for them, he said.

Groups on both sides of the immigration debate also have spoken out against the bill either because they say it doesnt do enough to stop illegal immigration or because it won't lead to comprehensive immigration reform.

Perhaps the strongest rebuke of all came Friday from Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, who issued a statement saying the bill "is extreme to the point of being unworkable; if enacted, it would actually leave the border less secure. The bill sets mandatory and highly prescriptive standards that the Border Patrol itself regards as impossible to achieve, undermines the Department of Homeland Securitys capacity to adapt to emerging threats, and politicizes tactical decisions."

Among other things, the Republican bill would:

add 48 miles of new double-layer pedestrian fencing;

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Critics: $10 billion border bill unneeded