U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) called out President Joe Biden’s (D) Fiscal Year 2025 budget for not doing “nearly enough to address the flood of illegal migrants and fentanyl entering the United States” at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing last week.
Also at this hearing, Sen. Collins asked Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas to address Customs and Board Protection (CBP) staffing shortages in Maine that are jeopardizing the arrival of international cruise ships in Eastport this fall.
According to a press release published by Collins this past Thursday, CBP has told Eastport that it “cannot accommodate the four planned international cruise ship arrivals this fall.”
This comes in spite of the fact that CBP reportedly “staffed a larger number of international cruise ship arrivals” this past year.
Collins also noted that Bar Harbor is “seeing a reduction in international cruise ship arrivals” this year.
[RELATED: Bar Harbor Town Council Unanimously Dissolves Cruise Ship Committee]
During these same remarks before the Appropriations Committee last week, Collins also raised concerns about security along the country’s northern and southern borders.
After calling out the “flood of illegal migrants and fentanyl” entering along the southern border, she drew attention to the fact “migrant encounters have also grown dramatically –albeit from a much lower base — at the northern border increasing 73 percent in Fiscal Year 2023.”
[RELATED: 18 Romanian Illegal Aliens Who Stormed Maine-Canada Border Released Into Community — Collins]
Collins’ comments appeared to imply a connection between the nation’s border crisis and CBP’s inability to provide the necessary staffing to the port of entry in Eastport for this summer’s cruise ship season.
“The cruise ship industry is vital to many Maine communities and delivers millions in economic benefits to our state annually,” Collins said. “This is the flip side of the problems that we’re now seeing on the southwest border, creating also problems on the northeast border and northern border in general.”
“Mr. Secretary, what I’m asking from you today is to look into this staffing issue and follow up with me, to try to resolve this problem,” said Collins.
Click Here to Read Sen. Collins Full Press Release
“The Eastport Port Authority thanks Senator Susan Collins for taking the time to bring real issues, affecting real operations in our parts of the world to the forefront,” Executive Director for the Port of Eastport Chris Gardner said in a statement last week.
“To see a Cabinet Secretary have a hearing start off by being asked specifically about issues of our port, and our friends to the south in nearby Bar Harbor, shows that good representation matters,” Gardner said.
“Let us hope this work lends itself to us to finding the solutions we need to continue to grow our port and continue to bring much needed economic activity to the entire region,” said Gardner.
“Sometimes it can seem that the world is so big and its problems too numerous for attention to be brought to the little corners of the country in our smaller communities,” the Eastport Port Authority said in a statement on Facebook last week. “Although the smaller communities vastly outnumber the larger centers across this country, they seem to lose ‘airtime’ to the issues of the urban centers that dominate most discussions.”
“Let us hope this work lends itself to us to finding the solutions we need to continue to grow our port and continue to bring much needed economic activity to the entire region,” the Port Authority concluded.
Eastport is one of only a few Maine ports that are certified to serve as an initial port of entry for international vessels, which reportedly account for a large percentage of cruise ships docking along the Maine coast.
