CBP announces $28.7 million Murrieta vehicle facility as GAO counts northern border agent staffing down to 78 percent

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is putting a $28.7 million vehicle maintenance garage on the grounds of the Newton-Azrak Border Patrol station in Murrieta. The agency's national media release announcing the Sept. 18 press conference states that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act funds the project, and that the new building will stand in for the leased commercial garage off site that the station has rented since fiscal 1997. CBP's Office of Facilities and Asset Management is planning and executing the work. The agency awarded a $23 million design-build contract to the Haskell Company by attaching it to an existing U.S. Coast Guard indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract, a route the release credits with reaching the award stage faster than a standalone procurement would have allowed.

Voice of San Diego, which covered the briefing and published Sept. 21, put Sector Chief Justin De La Torre in the station parking lot making the case for the build. The funding, De La Torre said, comes from the budget law passed last year, which he named by its popular shorthand. Newton-Azrak is the only station in the sector without its own mechanic area, he said; agents drive the fleet out to a commercial shop, spending agent gas and time on the round trip.

The operational argument came with a quote. "This facility is going to help us do something fundamental," De La Torre said, listing a fuel station, a wash rack and the ability to inspect hidden compartments on site. The release makes the same case in its own register, listing maintenance, a fueling station, a wash rack, a vacuum, an impound lot, overnight storage and secure parking on one site, plus upgrades to the station's electrical grid and a reinforced emergency power system. On the vehicles themselves De La Torre was blunter: "The fleet is far beyond its intended and expected lifecycle."

Then came the staffing line. Near the I-15 checkpoint the station runs with about 70 agents, Voice of San Diego reported, and the agency is hoping new hires will lift that number to about 100. The expectation is attributed to the agency, not quoted from any named official, and it is the part of Voice of San Diego's report that a federal record can be tested against.

That record is GAO-26-109195, which examined CBP staffing on the northern border. The report confirms the statute De La Torre named by its shorthand, and the hiring money it carries. GAO records $4.1 billion for CBP under Public Law 119-21 - the One Big Beautiful Bill Act - available until Sept. 30, 2029 for hiring and training agents and officers, and writes that the act supports the agency's hiring goals by funding 5,000 more CBP officers, 3,000 more Border Patrol agents and 200 more AMO agents.

What the report counts next is the distance between an appropriation and agents on posts. Across the northern border sectors it covers, GAO found the total number of assigned Border Patrol agents "decreased from 2,073 at the end of fiscal year 2019 to 1,948 at the end of fiscal year 2024." The staffing level over the same period "decreased from 90 percent at the end of fiscal year 2019 to 78 percent at the end of fiscal year 2024." Apprehensions along the northern border moved the other way, rising from fiscal 2019 through fiscal 2024 with sharp increases in 2023 and 2024. The report does not settle San Diego: the captured text carries no southwest border figure and no count for Newton-Azrak. What it establishes is GAO's recent count of agents actually assigned in the sectors it examined, falling from 2,073 to 1,948 while the staffing level GAO reports fell to 78 percent - the same step from money to agents on posts that the station's 70-to-100 hope depends on.

The shorthand heard at the briefing - one bill, one pot of money - collapses two appropriations with different delivery risks. The National Immigration Forum's reading of the act lists $5 billion for the construction and improvement of CBP facilities alongside $4.1 billion to hire and train new agents and support staff, plus more than $2 billion in retention and hiring bonuses. Arizona Public Media puts the facilities set-aside at about $5 billion out of the more than $165 billion the act allocated to DHS. No source in this file states which line item pays for Murrieta; the release says only that the act funds the $28.7 million project. On this desk's reading, the garage plainly falls on the facilities side of that split, while the agents meant to fill it come from the other side - the side GAO has already measured.

Two official accounts of the same station count its vehicles on different terms. The release announcing the Sept. 18 press conference states that the station's fleet maintenance operation services more than 92 vehicles, with mechanics handling about five vehicles and one all-terrain vehicle each day. Voice of San Diego, publishing Sept. 21, gives 101 vehicles, attributed to the agency, and more than 1.15 million miles driven so far in fiscal 2026. The release gives a floor for what its maintenance operation services rather than a total for the station, and neither account mentions the other's number. Neither accounts for the money, either: the design-build contract runs to $23 million against an announced project cost of $28.7 million, a difference of $5.7 million that the release does not explain and the coverage does not raise.

The release repays reading as a document. Two of its passages are written in the first person and argue the case for the build - "fleet readiness is mission readiness" is one of them - and in the captured text they carry no attribution line. The final paragraph leaves the facility behind entirely, crediting the Trump Administration's One Big Beautiful Bill Act and continuing "Under the leadership of President Donald J. Trump and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin" before describing agents stopping criminals and narcotics along the southwest border. Neither man is quoted anywhere in the release. To this desk, that closing paragraph reads as campaign register in a facilities notice.

Elsewhere on the same funding stream, CBP has been less forthcoming. Arizona Public Media sent separate inquiries about each planned Arizona station and reports that each drew the same general statement from a CBP spokesperson the outlet does not name: "We are in the early planning stages for new and modernized Border Patrol stations and checkpoints across the Southwest border." San Diego, by contrast, put a named sector chief at a briefing beside sketches of three possible designs, all branded with the contractor. The AZPM report also carries lines of objection - one of them calls the spending "taxpayer funds being squandered on massive Border Patrol complexes" - which the captured text does not attach to a named speaker.

The dates that settle this are already on the record. Voice of San Diego reports a completion target of August 2028; the captured CBP release states no completion date at all. GAO records the hiring appropriation as available until Sept. 30, 2029. The number to watch is the station's own headcount - whether Newton-Azrak stands nearer 100 agents than the roughly 70 reported in September 2026. Given GAO's count of assigned agents falling in the sectors it examined, this desk expects the station will not be staffed at about 100 agents by Aug. 31, 2028, the month its garage is due to open.