Sponsors (24)
Introduced March 4, 2025 by Juan Ciscomani · Last progress March 4, 2025
The bill expands border‑security infrastructure, agency authorities, and funding for cleanup—strengthening enforcement and operational capacity—while raising significant environmental harms, civil‑liberty and privacy risks, added taxpayer costs, and limits on emergency sheltering and local input.
Border communities, law enforcement, and federal responders gain expanded operational access and infrastructure (584 miles of vehicle-capable roads, clarified access and temporary detention authority), enabling faster response to unlawful crossings, emergencies, and search-and-rescue.
Residents of affected federal lands and local communities receive dedicated funding and programs to remediate environmental harms from illegal cannabis cultivation and hazardous fuels (about $16.037M/yr plus additional FY2023–2032 funding), reducing contamination and wildfire risk.
Federal land managers, DOD, CBP, and partner agencies get clearer legal authority and protocols for operations in wilderness and for cooperative deployments (roads, fences, surveillance, authorized motorized/air operations), reducing legal uncertainty and speeding deployments when needed.
Border and recreationist communities, wildlife, and public lands users face substantial environmental harm from constructing and maintaining hundreds of miles of roads, barriers, and expanded surveillance across federal lands, degrading wilderness character, habitat, and visitor experience.
Immigrants, border residents, and volunteers face increased civil‑liberty and privacy risks from expanded detention authority, broader CBP enforcement powers, greater surveillance footprint, and mandated nationality reporting, which could lead to detention, stigmatization, or intrusive monitoring.
Taxpayers bear significant new and ongoing costs from large-scale road and infrastructure construction and maintenance plus new remediation funding (the bill creates multi‑million dollar annual obligations), increasing federal spending burdens.
Based on analysis of 11 sections of legislative text.
Requires federal land managers to inventory and build at least 584 miles of vehicle-capable roads on federal lands that share a border with Mexico, place them within about 10 miles of the border, and make them available to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Department of Defense, local law enforcement, and emergency responders, with completion within five years. Expands CBP authorities on certain federal wilderness lands for border operations, creates cleanup and fuels-management programs and funding for contamination and wildfire risks from illegal activity, raises criminal penalties tied to illegal cultivation and pesticide misuse on federal lands, and bans use of federal funds to provide housing to undocumented (non-admitted) aliens on lands managed by major federal land agencies while revoking a specific park lease at Floyd Bennett Field.