Sponsors (2)
The bill secures a modest expansion and clearer boundaries for Harpers Ferry National Historical Park while transferring and exempting a ~25‑acre parcel to CBP for training—improving federal operations and administrative certainty but reducing public park acreage, raising local governance and precedent concerns, and imposing modest taxpayer/agency costs.
Park visitors, historians, and conservation efforts gain administration of ~71.51 acres added to Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, increasing protected land and preservation/visitor opportunities.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) can acquire a ~25-acre parcel for an Advanced Training Center without purchase costs, enabling improved training operations and possible operational consolidation.
Federal and local land managers receive clarity and finality on park boundaries via a required survey and allowance for clerical corrections, reducing future boundary disputes and administrative uncertainty.
Park visitors and nearby communities lose public park acreage and potential access because the ~25-acre parcel is excluded from park boundaries.
Residents, local governments, and conservation advocates may view the permanent jurisdictional change as favoring federal law enforcement over preservation, generating local opposition and added management complexity.
Amending the park acreage cap to exempt returned land could complicate future park-size accounting and set a precedent for bypassing statutory limits on park expansion.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Swaps about 25 acres to CBP for a training center and about 71.51 acres to the National Park Service for Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, requires a CBP-funded survey, and allows reversion if CBP no longer needs the parcel.
Transfers about 25 acres of federal land in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia from the Department of the Interior to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for inclusion in CBP’s Advanced Training Center, and removes that parcel from the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park boundary. In exchange, roughly 71.51 acres of CBP land are transferred to the Interior to be managed as part of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. CBP must pay for and provide a survey to finalize the 25-acre parcel description, may correct clerical map errors in consultation with the Interior, and must return the parcel to the Interior if CBP no longer needs it; that return will not count against the park's statutory acreage cap.
Introduced July 15, 2025 by James Conley Justice · Last progress May 4, 2026