Though the legislation included his important additions, Cuellar was forced to vote against the bill due to the addition of anti-immigration amendments that roll back President Obama’s recent executive action.

“The inclusion of this language is extremely important to Texans along the border, and it’s unfortunate that House Republicans played politics with this legislation and insisted on adding amendments that will jeopardize national security funding,” Congressman Cuellar said. “My hope is that we will have the opportunity to vote on a clean Homeland Security appropriations bill that serves our border communities and strengthens the middle class, without the anti-immigration amendments.”

The language Cuellar added requires the Commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection to review training manuals and coursework as well as incident reporting practices within the agency. The focus of this language is to make sure that customs and border patrol officials are trained to interact respectfully with those crossing the border. Furthermore, the addition to the bill asks that CBP report to the Committee on their findings of their review within 60 days.