A new congressional budget should ease the need to furlough or cut overtime hours for border agents, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Thursday, local media reported.

Napolitano made the remark after meeting with law enforcement officials in Houston, Texas, as part of her visit aimed at inspecting border security operations and pushing for President Barack Obama's immigration reform plans, the newspaper The Houston Chronicle reported.

Napolitano said in a statement issued later Thursday that the number of border agents should be back to "where we were before sequestration."

Earlier this week, the U.S. Homeland Security Department said it was re-evaluating plans to furlough border agents and reduce overtime because of the automatic federal government spending cuts.

Napolitano had said the forced budget cuts would cause a loss of about 5,000 jobs for border patrol agents.