The Ripon Advance: Garbarino leads GOP in offering bill to incentivize retention of transnational law officers

U.S. Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY) on May 18 proposed a bill that would authorize a total of $4 million to help address personnel shortages in the Transnational Criminal Investigative Unit Program within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“By strengthening the ranks of TCIU [Transnational Criminal Investigative Unit] we can take on criminal organizations at the source and head off transnational criminals before they reach our border,” Rep. Garbarino said. 

The DHS Transnational Criminal Investigative Units Supplemental Pay Act, H.R. 7821, which Rep. Garbarino sponsored with eight GOP original cosponsors, including U.S. Reps. John Katko (R-NY), Michael McCaul (R-TX), and Peter Meijer (R-MI), would authorize $2 million for each of fiscal years 2023 and 2024 for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to provide stipends to certain vetted foreign members of TCIUs, according to the bill’s text...

...“My constituents are all too familiar with the damage that transnational criminal organizations can do. Border patrol is being overwhelmed by the record-breaking number of migrants attempting to cross our border, which has allowed violent transnational criminal organizations like MS-13 to slip through the cracks and infiltrate our country,” Rep. Garbarino said. “DHS has confirmed that hundreds of thousands of known gotaways evaded border patrol last year and those numbers are only increasing.” 

If enacted, H.R. 7821 would specifically give HSI the authority to provide the stipends to TCIU law enforcement officers for both retention and recruitment incentives.