WASHINGTON –- Budget plans to help pay for President Trump’s controversial Mexican border wall by reducing U.S. Coast Guard spending had security experts’ heads spinning Friday.

Stephen Flynn, retired commander of the Coast Guard, and members of congressional committees that oversee the maritime agency said it makes no sense to cut one to pay for the other.

They said the Coast Guard already plays a key role in drug and illegal migrant interdiction, the very issues the border wall is intended to stop.

“It’s like the old yarn, ‘If you build a 30-foot wall, I’ll get a 35-foot ladder,’” said Flynn, a political science professor at Northeastern University in Boston.

James Loy, deputy Homeland Security secretary under President George W. Bush, said reducing the Coast Guard’s capability to patrol the nation’s coastlines would be counterproductive to ramping up national security.

“The bad guys,” he said, “would just go around” to unprotected waterways to illegally enter the country, creating a greater danger.

News reports and congressional sources reported the White House’s Office of Management Budget plans to reduce Coast Guard spending by $1.3 billion during the next fiscal year to reinforce the nation’s southern border with a wall and additional border agents.

The Coast Guard now operates with a $9.1 billion annual budget. Reportedly, one area of spending under scrutiny is the $43 million allotted to the agency’s drug interdiction teams.

Major cuts are also planned to the Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Administration to free up money for border security.

A spokesman for the president’s budget office said no final decisions have been made on how much or where spending will be reduced.

The Coast Guard is the nation’s primary domestic maritime security force, operating on both coasts and other border waterways such as the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. The agency is within the Homeland Security Department. It also helps clean up oil spills and ensures ship access to the Arctic region by operating the nation’s only icebreakers.

Coast Guard records show that last year alone it prevented 6,246 illegal migrants from entering the U.S. from the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Cuba. The agency said it detained 585 suspected smugglers as well.

In response to an inquiry, the Coast Guard said last year it also seized more than 201 metric tons of cocaine and 52,613 pounds of marijuana with a combined street value of nearly $6 billion.

In addition, the Coast Guard said, it saved 5,174 lives in 2016 with air and water rescue services at stations located around the country.

A bipartisan group of 21 U.S. senators have written a letter to the budget office objecting to the Coast Guard spending cuts. The group included Sen. Dan Sullivan, D-Alaska, chairman of the House’s Coast Guard subcommittee, and Sen. Gary Peters from Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee.

Peters, in an interview Friday, strongly criticized any plan to reduce the Coast Guard’s mission.

“What’s so outrageous about it is that Donald Trump realizes the Mexican government won’t pay for the wall, even though that’s what he promised,” said Peters. “So now he wants to make American taxpayers pay for it by gutting essential services.”

Rick “Ozzie” Nelson, a former Navy helicopter pilot and national security expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said shifting funds from the Coast Guard budget to pay for the Mexican wall is “just robbing Peter to pay Paul.” He added that it also trades protection from terrorists to stopping undocumented immigrants.

Published reports quoting congressional sources said the president’s budget would shift $2.9 billion from the current Coast Guard, TSA and FEMA budgets to construction of the wall along the country’s southern border.

The cost of the wall is still unknown, although Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has estimated it would require about $15 billion. CNN reported an internal Homeland Security estimate put the price tag at $21.6 billion.

Flynn said he’s hopeful Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, a retired high-ranking Marine Corps officer and commander of the U.S. Southern Command in 2016, convinces the president to reject cuts to the Coast Guard budget.

Flynn said Kelly understands the important role of the Coast Guard, including its expertise in boarding suspicious ships at sea. 

Kery Murakami is CNHI’s Washington reporter. Contact him at kmurakami@cnhi.com.