[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE IMPACTS OF TRUMP POLICIES ON BORDER COMMUNITIES
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
BORDER SECURITY, FACILITATION,
AND OPERATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 30, 2019
__________
Serial No. 116-13
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
___________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
37-452 PDF WASHINGTON : 2019
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi, Chairman
Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas Mike Rogers, Alabama
James R. Langevin, Rhode Island Peter T. King, New York
Cedric L. Richmond, Louisiana Michael T. McCaul, Texas
Donald M. Payne, Jr., New Jersey John Katko, New York
Kathleen M. Rice, New York John Ratcliffe, Texas
J. Luis Correa, California Mark Walker, North Carolina
Xochitl Torres Small, New Mexico Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Max Rose, New York Debbie Lesko, Arizona
Lauren Underwood, Illinois Mark Green, Tennessee
Elissa Slotkin, Michigan Van Taylor, Texas
Emanuel Cleaver, Missouri John Joyce, Pennsylvania
Al Green, Texas Dan Crenshaw, Texas
Yvette D. Clarke, New York Michael Guest, Mississippi
Dina Titus, Nevada
Bonnie Watson Coleman, New Jersey
Nanette Diaz Barragan, California
Val Butler Demings, Florida
Hope Goins, Staff Director
Chris Vieson, Minority Staff Director
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON BORDER SECURITY, FACILITATION,
AND OPERATIONS
Kathleen M. Rice, New York, Chairwoman
Donald M. Payne, Jr., New Jersey Clay Higgins, Louisiana, Ranking
J. Luis Correa, California Member
Xochitl Torres Small, New Mexico Debbie Lesko, Arizona
Al Green, Texas John Joyce, Pennsylvania
Yvette D. Clarke, New York Michael Guest, Mississippi
Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi (ex Mike Rogers, Alabama (ex officio)
officio)
Alexandra Carnes, Subcommittee Staff Director
Emily Trapani, Minority Subcommittee Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Statements
The Honorable Kathleen M. Rice, a Representative in Congress From
the State of New York, and Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Border
Security, Facilitation, and Operations:
Oral Statement................................................. 1
Prepared Statement............................................. 3
The Honorable Clay Higgins, a Representative in Congress From the
State of Louisiana, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Border
Security, Facilitation, and Operations:
Oral Statement................................................. 4
Prepared Statement............................................. 5
The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Mississippi, and Chairman, Committee on
Homeland Security:
Prepared Statement............................................. 6
Witnesses
Mr. Jon Barela, Chief Executive Officer, The Borderplex Alliance:
Oral Statement................................................. 7
Prepared Statement............................................. 9
Mr. Efren Olivares, Racial and Economic Justice Director, Texas
Civil Rights Project:
Oral Statement................................................. 11
Prepared Statement............................................. 12
Mr. Mark Seitz, Most Reverend Bishop, Catholic Diocese of El
Paso, Texas, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops:
Oral Statement................................................. 17
Prepared Statement............................................. 18
Mr. Mark D. Napier, Sheriff of Pima County, Southwestern Border
Sheriffs Coalition:
Oral Statement................................................. 24
Prepared Statement............................................. 26
For the Record
The Honorable Kathleen M. Rice, a Representative in Congress From
the State of New York, and Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Border
Security, Facilitation, and Operations:
Statement of the Church World Service (CWS).................... 44
The Honorable Clay Higgins, a Representative in Congress From the
State of Louisiana, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Border
Security, Facilitation, and Operations:
RESEARCH BRIEF, HOMELAND SECURITY OPERATIONAL ANALYSIS CENTER
(An FFRDC operated by the RAND Corporation under contract
with DHS).................................................... 45
Statement of Leon N. Wilmot Chairman, Southwestern Border
Sheriffs Coalition........................................... 48
THE IMPACTS OF TRUMP POLICIES ON BORDER COMMUNITIES
----------
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Homeland Security,
Subcommittee on Border Security, Facilitation,
and Operations,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m., in
room 310, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Kathleen M. Rice
[Chairwoman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Rice, Payne, Correa, Torres Small,
Green of Texas, Higgins, Joyce, and Guest.
Miss Rice. The Subcommittee on Border Security,
Facilitation, and Operations will come to order. The
subcommittee is meeting today to receive testimony on the
``Impacts of Trump Policies on Border Communities''.
I want to thank our border advocates, business owners, and
law enforcement officials who have joined us this morning for
their willingness to testify and share their first-hand
experiences living and working along our Southern Border.
Earlier this month, I led a delegation to the U.S.-Mexico
border to examine the reality of President Trump's increasingly
restrictive border security and immigration policies. While in
El Paso, our delegation was briefed by Customs and Border
Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
on their current border operations.
We also toured the El Paso ICE Processing Center, where
hundreds of migrants are currently being held. In addition, we
had the opportunity to visit the pedestrian-only Paso del Norte
Port of Entry and the cargo-only Bridge of the Americas, where
hundreds of millions of dollars in goods pass through every
day.
At both ports, we witnessed first-hand the severe slowdown
of legal trade and travel as a result of this administration's
policies, beginning with the reassignment of hundreds of CBP
officers away from these ports. Even before this reassignment,
our Nation's ports of entry--and particularly those in El
Paso--were already woefully understaffed and CBP agents were
struggling to keep up with the high volume of individuals and
cargo passing through our border each day.
The recent reassignment of CBP agents has only exacerbated
an already dire situation. Wait times have reached record
highs, creating a sense of wariness and uncertainty with our
vital trade partners in Mexico. With fewer CBP agents on-hand
to screen cargo, migrants, and travelers, our ports of entry
are less secure than ever before, creating a serious National
security threat.
Last, but certainly not least, staffing shortages,
reassignments, and inadequate training of CBP agents have led
to the inhumane and haphazard treatment of asylum seekers and
migrant families.
As we saw just last month, DHS officials recently opted to
house hundreds of migrants for several days under a bridge in
unsanitary conditions. In another recent move, CBP abruptly
released hundreds of migrant families into border communities,
overwhelming local shelters and municipal services.
While we were down in Texas, we had the opportunity to sit
down with local advocates, asylum seekers, law enforcement
officials, and business owners to discuss the impact that these
policies were having locally, and specifically, how staffing
shortages at our ports of entry were playing out on the ground
in real time.
We started our trip with a visit to the Annunciation House
in El Paso, Texas, a nonprofit organization that has served as
a way station for migrants for 40 years. It is run solely by
volunteers and its services are supported entirely by private
donations. After the administration implemented its policy of
releasing hundreds of migrant families into border communities,
the Annunciation House received anywhere from 500 to 850
families each day.
We also held a roundtable discussion with local business
owners whose livelihood depended on cross-border trade. They
described 10 miles of backed-up trucks in Mexico waiting for 25
hours to cross into the United States.
Finally, we heard from CBP agents themselves, who are
stretched so thin that they worry they might miss something,
either drugs, weapons, or something far worse.
The administration's border policies, coupled with the
President's threats to close the border altogether and its
incendiary immigration rhetoric have created utter chaos and
confusion at our ports of entry. They have made us less safe,
they have undermined our trade partnerships, and they have put
thousands of asylum seekers in harm's way.
But make no mistake, this is not a funding issue or an
issue of Congressional cooperation. Congress recently passed a
bipartisan budget that would allocate $60 million to DHS to
hire over 1,000 new CBP agents. The issue we face right now is
a leadership and management problem. The anti-immigrant
directives coming from the President, along with DHS officials
that have been purged or rendered powerless by White House
Senior Adviser Stephen Miller leave CBP and ICE rudderless and
unaccountable to Congress.
The Presidential memorandum issued last night is just
another example of the White House attempting to unilaterally
change our asylum laws while circumventing Congress.
So today's hearing will give Members of this committee the
opportunity to hear directly from some of the individuals
living and working in our border communities. We will hear
about how businesses, migrants, and advocacy groups and law
enforcement officials have been affected by this
administration's latest immigration and border policies.
I want to thank all of our witnesses for joining us this
morning.
[The statement of Chairwoman Rice follows:]
Statement of Chairwoman Kathleen M. Rice
April 30, 2019
I want to thank our border advocates, business owners, and law
enforcement officials who have joined us this morning for their
willingness to testify and share their first-hand experiences living
and working along our Southern Border. Earlier this month, I led a
delegation to the U.S.-Mexico border to examine the reality of
President Trump's increasingly restrictive border security and
immigration policies. While in El Paso, our delegation was briefed by
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) on their current border operations. We also toured
the El Paso ICE Processing Center where hundreds of migrants are
currently being held. In addition, we had the opportunity to visit the
pedestrian-only Paso del Norte Port of Entry and the cargo-only Bridge
of the Americas, where hundreds of millions of dollars in goods pass
through every day.
At both ports, we witnessed first-hand the severe slowdown of legal
trade and travel as a result of this administration's policies,
beginning with the reassignment of hundreds of CBP officers away from
these ports. Even before this reassignment, our Nation's ports of
entry--and particularly those in El Paso--were already woefully
understaffed and CBP agents were struggling to keep up with the high
volume of individuals and cargo passing through our border each day.
The recent reassignment of CBP agents has only exacerbated an already
dire situation. Wait times have reached record highs, creating a sense
of wariness and uncertainty with our vital trade partners in Mexico.
And with fewer CBP agents on-hand to screen cargo, migrants, and
travelers, our ports of entry are less secure than ever before,
creating a serious National security threat.
And last but certainly not least, staffing shortages,
reassignments, and inadequate training of CBP agents have led to the
inhumane and haphazard treatment of asylum seekers and migrant
families. As we saw just last month, DHS officials recently opted to
house hundreds of migrants for several days under a bridge in
unsanitary conditions. In another recent move, CBP abruptly released
hundreds of migrant families into border communities, overwhelming
local shelters and municipal services. While we were down in Texas, we
had the opportunity to sit down with local advocates, asylum seekers,
law enforcement officials, and business owners to discuss the impact
that these policies were having locally, and specifically how staffing
shortages at our ports of entry were playing out on the ground, in real
time.
We started our trip with a visit to the Annunciation House in El
Paso, Texas, a non-profit organization that has served as a way station
for migrants for 40 years. It's run solely by volunteers and its
services are supported entirely by private donations. After the
administration implemented its policy of releasing hundreds of migrant
families into border communities, the Annunciation House received
anywhere from 500 to 850 families each day. We also held a roundtable
discussion with local business owners whose livelihood depended on
cross-border trade. They described 10 miles of backed-up trucks in
Mexico waiting for 25 hours to cross into the United States. And
finally, we heard from CBP agents themselves, who were stretched so
thin that they worried they might miss something: Either drugs,
weapons, or something far worse. The administration's border policies
coupled with the President's threats to close the border altogether and
his incendiary immigration rhetoric have created utter chaos and
confusion at our ports of entry. They have made us less safe, they have
undermined our trade partnerships, and they have put thousands of
asylum seekers in harm's way.
But make no mistake, this is not a funding issue, or an issue of
Congressional cooperation. Congress recently passed a bipartisan budget
that would allocate $60 million to DHS to hire over 1,000 new CBP
agents. The issue we face right now is a leadership and management
problem. The anti-immigrant directives coming from the President along
with DHS officials that have been purged or rendered powerless by White
House Senior Advisor Stephen Miller, leave CBP and ICE rudderless and
unaccountable to Congress. The Presidential Memorandum issued last
night is just another example of the White House attempting to
unilaterally change our asylum laws while circumventing Congress. So,
today's hearing will give Members of this committee the opportunity to
hear directly from some of the individuals living and working in our
border communities. We will hear about how businesses, migrants, and
advocacy groups and law enforcement officials have been affected by
this administration's latest immigration and border policies.
Miss Rice. I now recognize the Ranking Member of the
subcommittee, the gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Higgins, for an
opening statement.
Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank our witnesses
for being here.
The crisis at our Southern Border is worsening by the day
and is a result of decades of Congressional inaction, or
inadequate action, and loopholes in our current laws. Combined,
they leave us ill-prepared to handle this crisis.
This fiscal year, Customs and Border Protection is on track
to apprehend the highest number of illegal migrants since 2008,
a number greater than the entire population of the city of New
Orleans in my home State of Louisiana.
Border Patrol processing facilities were not built to house
families and children, which we are seeing in record numbers,
of course, and El Paso, Rio Grande Valley, and Yuma facilities
are all far beyond capacity. Migrants are telling Border Patrol
agents that they are bringing children because smugglers have
told them they will be released if they do. This raises serious
safety concerns and heightens the risk of human trafficking.
According to the Customs and Border Protection, there have
been over 3,000 cases since April 2018, where an adult claiming
to be a parent or legal guardian of a child was found not to
be. Groups of more than 100 migrants are arriving at the
Southwest Border at unprecedented levels. Over the last 6
months, 104 groups of that size have been encountered by CBP.
Comparatively, there were only two such groups in all of 2017.
In the past 4 months, Border Patrol agents have spent more
than 100,000 man hours transporting migrants to hospital. This
takes these agents off the line of duty.
This crisis is fueled by a combination of loopholes in our
immigration laws which we must fix, and a backlog in
immigration courts that prevent consequences from being
delivered to those illegally entering our country without
legitimate asylum claims.
The situation at the border is so bad that the CBP Office
of Field Operations has reassigned over 500 officers from land
ports of entry to help Border Patrol with processing. This has
led to increased wait times for legal travel and trade. This
diversion of resources poses a serious risk to individuals that
man the border and risk of individuals slipping through our
border who wish to do harm to this Nation. It is a concern.
Last month, CBP and ICE told Congress that due to resource
constraints, they no longer have the ability to process,
transport, and detain all migrants attempting unauthorized
entry at the Southwest Border. They just can't handle the flow.
They are being forced to release families into local border
communities without screening them for credible fear or
outfitting adults with GPS tracking bracelets.
Right now, there are no consequences to entering our
country illegally. This only encourages illegal immigration and
puts both Americans and migrants at risk. The nongovernmental
organizations, or NGO's, that Customs and Border Protection and
ICE usually partner with to house overflows of migrants have
been pushed beyond their own capacity. There is no relief
without additional resources from Congress.
As a result, our local border communities are becoming
overwhelmed and overrun. Sheriff Napier can tell us first-hand
that border sheriffs are seizing the largest volume of drugs
they have seen in years, and are increasingly coming across
migrants that have made it past Border Patrol who need
immediate humanitarian assistance.
We are a Nation of law in order. However, this is chaos
that we face at the Southern Border. Without changing the laws
and providing the Department of Homeland Security adequate
resources to address these issues, we are tying the hands of
the men and women we have entrusted to keep the homeland safe.
This crisis is diminishing American safety, security, economic
prosperity, and the integrity of our Southwest Border. We must
address it head-on or it will continue to get worse.
I am looking forward to hearing testimony from our
witnesses about the impact of this crisis on border
communities.
I yield back, Madam Chair.
[The statement of Ranking Member Higgins follows:]
Statement of Ranking Member Clay Higgins
April 30, 2019
Today we have gathered to discuss the ``Impacts of Trump Policies
on Border Communities.'' This conversation will no doubt contain
accusations and falsehoods designed to disparage President Trump and
push false rhetoric that the border crisis is ``manufactured.''
Therefore, I'd like to set the record straight, the crisis at our
Southwest Border is worsening by the day and is the result of decades
of Congressional inaction. Loopholes in our current laws have made us
ill-prepared to handle this crisis.
This fiscal year CBP is on track to apprehend the highest number of
migrants since 2008, a number greater than the entire population of New
Orleans.
Border Patrol processing facilities were not built to house
families and children, which we are seeing in record number. The El
Paso, Rio Grande Valley, and Yuma facilities are all at more than 100
percent capacity.
Migrants are telling Border Patrol agents that they are bringing
children because smugglers have told them they will be released if they
do. This raises serious safety concerns and heightens the risk of human
trafficking.
According to CBP there have been over 3,000 cases since April 2018
where an adult claiming to be a parent or legal guardian of a child was
found not to be.
Groups of more than 100 migrants are arriving at the Southwest
Border at unprecedented levels. Over the last 6 months, 104 groups of
that size have been encountered by CBP. Comparatively, there were only
2 such groups in all of 2017.
In the past 4 months, Border Patrol agents have spent more than
100,000 hours transporting migrants to hospitals, taking them off the
line of duty.
This crisis is fueled by a combination of loopholes in our
immigration laws and backlog in our immigration courts that prevent
consequences from being delivered to those illegally entering our
country without legitimate asylum claims.
The situation at the border is so bad that the CBP Office of Field
Operations has reassigned over 500 officers from land ports of entry to
help Border Patrol with processing, which has led to increased wait
times for legal travel and trade.
This diversion of resources poses a serious risk of individuals
slipping through our border who wish to do harm to this Nation.
Last month, CBP and ICE told Congress that due to resource
constraints, they no longer have the ability to process, transport, and
detain all migrants attempting unauthorized entry at the Southwest
Border.
They are being forced to release families into local border
communities without screening them for credible fear, or outfitting
adults with GPS tracking bracelets.
Right now there are no consequences to entering our country
illegally. This only encourages illegal immigration and puts both
Americans and migrants at risk.
The non-governmental organizations (NGO's) that CBP and ICE usually
partner with to house overflow of migrants are now pushed past
capacity.
There is no relief without additional resources from Congress. As a
result, our local border communities are becoming overwhelmed and
overrun.
Sheriff Napier can tell us first-hand that border sheriffs are
seizing the largest volume of drugs they've seen in years and are
increasingly coming across migrants that have made it past Border
Patrol who need immediate humanitarian assistance.
We are a Nation of law and order, however, this is chaos. Without
changing the laws and providing the Department of Homeland Security
adequate resources to address these issues, we are tying the hands of
the men and women we have entrusted to keep the homeland safe.
This crisis is diminishing American safety, security, economic
prosperity, and the integrity of our Southwest Border. We must address
it head-on or it will continue to get worse.
I am looking forward to hearing testimony from our witnesses about
the impact of this crisis on border communities, and I yield back the
balance of my time.
Miss Rice. Thank you, Mr. Higgins.
Other Members of the committee are reminded that under the
committee rules, opening statements may be submitted for the
record.
[The statement of Chairman Thompson follows:]
Statement of Chairman Bennie G. Thompson
April 30, 2019
Today's witnesses are experts on life at the border--they live
there and their work brings them into constant contact with events
there every day. I am eager to hear about what they are witnessing
first-hand, their thoughts on the humanitarian challenge at the border,
and the impact of the Trump administration's border policies on their
communities. To say I am concerned with President Trump's and the
Department of Homeland Security's misguided, counterproductive actions
would be an understatement. No other administration has carried out a
policy to deliberately and systematically separate all migrant children
from the adults that care for them.
The Trump administration's family separation policy has irreparably
damaged children. The administration is claiming that reuniting
families it separated in 2017 would be ``onerous'' and could take up to
2 years. This is outrageous. Equally outrageous is the White House's
agenda to cut off avenues of humanitarian relief to people seeking
asylum and refuge. The administration has tried--and failed--multiple
times to change our asylum laws on its own, only to be blocked by the
courts. To consider levying fees on individuals fleeing dire conditions
in their home countries is cruel and completely blind to the reality
these individuals are facing. Another example of the Trump
administration's blindness to reality is the President's continued
obsession with the wall.
Building it will not stop the majority of dangerous drugs that are
coming through our legal ports of entry. Moreover, the President never
talks about the American families who will be thrown off the land their
family has had for generations. To make matters worse, the President
continues to threaten to shut down the border, which would be
devastating not just for border communities, but for our Nation's
economy. Indeed, the economic consequences for this country would be
catastrophic. The Chamber of Commerce in San Diego estimated the 5-hour
shutdown last November at San Ysidro port of entry cost its 700
businesses at least $5.3 million. I shudder to think what the fallout
would be of ending $1.7 billion in trade each day. Our border
communities have thousands of people who cross the border all the time
to go to work, go to school, and see family. There are an estimated
500,000 border crossings each day. All of that would grind to a halt if
President Trump has his way.
So, I am especially pleased to hear from these witnesses today.
They will be able to give us their personal and professional views of
the border as people who live there and deal with the impacts of
policies set in Washington, DC on a daily basis. The proposals and
actions carried out by the Department to date are inadequate, and
sometimes harmful, for actually trying to address the root problems at
our Southern Border. What we discuss today will help the committee
address the issues at the border in a productive manner. Committee
Democrats intend to advocate for smart, effective, and humane
alternatives to handling this humanitarian challenge occurring at the
border.
Miss Rice. Additionally, I ask unanimous consent that the
Members of the full committee shall be permitted to sit and
question the witnesses as appropriate.
Without objection, so ordered.
I welcome our panel of witnesses.
Our first witness, Mr. Jon Barela, is the CEO of The
Borderplex Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to
economic development and policy advocacy in the Ciudad Juarez,
El Paso, and southern New Mexico region.
Prior to becoming a CEO of the alliance in 2016, Mr. Barela
served as New Mexico's economic development cabinet secretary,
where he led unprecedented efforts to develop and attract
investments to the North American Borderplex and increase trade
with Mexico. He has also worked at Intel Corporation and at
Modrall-Sperling Law Firm. Mr. Barela has an international
relations degree with honors from Georgetown University's
School of Foreign Service.
Next, we have Mr. Efren Olivares. Mr. Olivares is the
racial and economic justice director at the Texas Civil Rights
Project. Mr. Olivares handles and supervises cases in State and
Federal court involving institutional discrimination,
Constitutional violations, immigrants' rights, disability and
economic rights, among others. Mr. Olivares joined TCRP's South
Texas office in 2013 after working at the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights and at Fulbright & Jaworski, LLP. He
is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Yale Law
School.
Next, we have Bishop Mark Seitz, who has been bishop of the
Diocese of El Paso since 2013. He has served on the Diocesan
Liturgical Commission and the Committee for Continuing
Education of Priests. He is a member of the Presbyteral Council
and the College of Consultors in the diocese of Dallas. Bishop
Seitz was named a Prelate of Honor, a Monsignor, by His
Holiness Pope John Paul II in December 2004. Bishop Seitz is
also an author, and in 2017 released Sorrow and Mourning Flee
Away: Pastoral Letter on Migration to the People of God in the
Diocese of El Paso.
Finally, we have Sheriff Mark Napier, the sheriff of Pima
County, Arizona. He started his law enforcement career in
December 1981 as a police officer in Iowa, before moving to the
Tucson Police Department in 1987, where he eventually retired.
He then served as the assistant director for the Glendale,
Arizona, police department and worked for the Department of
Justice as a peer reviewer on Federal grant programs. He is
here today as a member and representative of the Southwestern
Border Sheriff's Coalition, which represents 31 counties along
the U.S.-Mexico border.
Without objection, the witnesses' full statements will be
inserted in the record. I now ask each witness to summarize his
statement for 5 minutes, and we will start with Mr. Barela.
STATEMENT OF JON BARELA, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, THE
BORDERPLEX ALLIANCE
Mr. Barela. Well, thank you, Madam Chair. It is an absolute
privilege to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
Members of the committee, thank you also for our ability to
testify today.
The Borderplex Alliance is, to my knowledge, the only
privately-funded organization that serves as the policy
advocacy and economic development arm for our region. Our
region consists of 2.5 million individuals, as the Chairwoman
stated, Ciudad Juarez, El Paso County, and Dona Ana County, New
Mexico, my home county, are really, the crux and, to me, the
heart of trade for the United States.
In fact, almost one-fifth of the trade between the United
States and Mexico occurs through our various ports of entry.
Eighty-two billion dollars in the last year of trade occurred
through our ports of entries in the region. We, in many ways,
style ourselves as the gateway of trade for the Americas.
So it is clear that the symbiotic relationship that we have
with our southern neighbor is important to our region. But this
morning, I would like to explain how the symbiotic nature of
the relationship between the United States and Mexico provides
between 5 to 6 million American jobs, collectively, in all of
your States, over 1.2 million jobs.
Let me state at the outset that I believe firmly that
Mexico is an economic and strategic ally of the United States.
It is not a foe. As I mentioned, between 5 and 6 million
American jobs rely directly on trade with Mexico. It has just
recently become the No. 1 trading partner for the first 2
months--the No. 1 trading partner, eclipsing China and Canada--
No. 1 trading partner, again, of the United States.
What we are experiencing along the border, however,
threatens the economic security of our country. Our country is
doing very well. We are at full employment. Our region reflects
that. El Paso's unemployment rate is below 4 percent, at 3.9
percent, and even in Ciudad Juarez, the unemployment rate is at
3.6 percent.
Second thesis I would like to put out today is that trade
is not a zero-sum game. As I have said many, many times, a job
created in Ciudad Juarez ought to be a job created in the
United States. Unfortunately, we are experiencing right now,
with the difficulties that are currently being experienced, is
creating economic devastation, potentially, for our area.
Two particular circumstances, the gentleman who runs a
medical device industry has recently had to furlough because of
the supply chain in Ciudad Juarez and New Jersey--he has had to
furlough dozens of workers in New Jersey and move those to
Eastern Europe.
A second individual owns an auto supply scrap business. He
takes scrap material, scrap iron and metals, provides them to
industries in Mexico which then form them into auto parts, is
currently operating at 20 percent capacity and he has had to
furlough employees.
He explained to me that, if these supply parts, these parts
that go into automotive production in the United States, is not
provided on time, it will have a very, very adverse effect on
automotive production in the United States.
So as we move forward--and I do appreciate the comments
made by the Chairwoman and the Ranking Member, Congressman
Higgins. We appreciate that very much. We are in total
agreement that the ripple effect could turn into a tsunami for
the United States if we don't solve these wait times, which we
are currently experiencing between 8 and 24 hours, as we speak.
We simply cannot do business in our region, nor can the United
States afford this sort of ripple effect, which, again, will
become an economic tsunami if we are not careful.
We must remain competitive as a North American region, and
we must provide the adequate resources in a bipartisan,
pragmatic way to help the courageous officers that we have
working these very difficult issues day in and day out.
The last thing I will say before my formal comments are
done is that this has been an issue that has been decades in
the making. For many, many years we have said that our ports of
entry have been woefully inadequately funded. It is not a
mutually exclusive idea to secure our borders, which we all
support, and to facilitate legitimate commerce.
So therefore we urge, respectfully, that significantly more
resources be put in to help infrastructure along our ports of
entry in the Southern Border. With that, Madam Chair, I
appreciate very much the ability to be here. Thank you so much
for the honor and privilege to do so.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Barela follows:]
Prepared Statement of Jon Barela
April 30, 2019
Madam Chair and Members of the committee: It is a great honor and
pleasure for me to testify today before this esteemed committee. The
Borderplex Alliance is a nonprofit organization dedicated to economic
development and policy advocacy in the El Paso, Texas; Las Cruces, New
Mexico; and Cd. Juarez, Chihuahua region.
Located in a gateway for international trade, The Borderplex
Alliance is the go-to resource for regional ideas, information, and
influence. We are supported by a coalition of over 250 businesses,
community and civic leaders, all with a shared vision--bringing new
investment and jobs to the Borderplex region and creating a positive
business climate.
The Borderplex Alliance provides regional, National, and
international development, advocacy, representation, and support to
businesses looking to expand their operations within the Borderplex
region. The organization also serves as an advocate for the region in
State and National capitals, promoting the economic prosperity of the
region and the strength of the U.S.-Mexico relationship.
My message today is simple. The U.S.-Mexico border is a dynamic and
critical economic driver for the United States. Investing in
infrastructure at our ports of entry and prioritizing the facilitation
of legitimate trade and travel between the United States and Mexico
will pay significant dividends for our economy.
We need a bipartisan, economically prudent approach to legislation
impacting the U.S.-Mexico border. Doing so will improve North America's
economic competitiveness, help secure the border, and address the
migration crisis in a way that treats migrants with dignity and respect
while following U.S. law and keeping within the best traditions of our
Nation. When considering legislation related to the U.S.-Mexico border,
please keep in mind these three compelling points.
First, Mexico is an economic and strategic ally of the United
States, not a foe. Mexico is currently our third-largest goods trading
partner. In 2018 the total U.S. goods and services traded with Mexico
reached $671.0 billion. In 2017 Mexico invested $18.0 billion in the
United States. This trade and investment on both sides of the border
result in a symbiotic relationship with sophisticated supply chains
that route goods back and forth across borders and ultimately to
consumers around the world. This trade and investment is not a zero-sum
game. It creates jobs, hope, and opportunity on both sides of the
border.
In the Midwest, more than 700,000 jobs directly rely on trade with
Mexico. Nationally, that figure is between 5 and 6 million. That is why
the ratification of United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement is so
critical to keeping this fruitful relationship between our great
nations. The Borderplex region is the at the heart of the relationship
and is the gateway of trade for the Americas. El Paso ports saw $81.9
billion worth of trade in 2018, up 5.1 percent from in 2017. Investing
in and modernizing these ports should be a priority to help make wait
times more predictable and shorter. It will also make the Nation more
prosperous.
Second, urgently-needed infrastructure improvements not only
facilitate legitimate commerce, but it also helps secure the southern
frontier. Securing the border and facilitating trade are not mutually
exclusive. Every minute $1 million worth of goods and services are
traded between the United States and Mexico. As I testify before you
today, delays and unpredictable wait times at are our ports of entry
are devastating business along the border and across the Nation. I've
heard from multiple companies operating at 20-50 percent capacity,
waiting 12-24 hours to get their shipments through the ports of entry.
One employer is furloughing hundreds of employees and reducing
their hours. This employer is a canary in the coal mine for global
supply chains. He is a scrap metal supplier. His goods make their way
into auto parts. He tells us that due to the delays in crossing the
ports of entry, companies in Mexico are making fewer goods and thus
less scrap metal. These conditions create a ripple effect through the
National economy that could turn into a tsunami of potential job losses
in the United States.
The unpredictable and unacceptably long wait times are causing
another member company of the Borderplex Alliance to move jobs from a
plant in New Jersey to a facility in Eastern Europe in order to ensure
continuity of product availability in the U.S. market. His products are
life-saving medical equipment, such as heart stents used in the United
States.
The cadence and flow of tractor trailers that travel back and forth
between the United States and Mexico, first with raw materials and then
with finished goods is part of the rhythm of investment and jobs.
Disruptions in trade cause factories to slow or halt production, reduce
hours or jobs, and create the conditions that result in emigration from
the South to the North.
Long and unpredictable wait times at the ports of entry have been a
problem on the border for decades. It is a bipartisan problem that
should have been solved years ago. Only now, however, with the threat
to shut the Southern Border, this problem has become a National
economic security concern. I suggest Congress use the President's $5.7
billion funding request for a border wall to:
Hire more CBP officers;
Invest in advanced technology at our ports; and
Increase staffing at our ports during peak hours.
Third, we need a humane, rational, and long-term solution that
works for immigrants and U.S. citizens alike. Immigration is a complex,
multidimensional issue with economic push and pull factors at its
heart. But when as a Nation we embrace trade, globalization, and a
rules-based international order we can increase opportunity for
everyone. I urge the Members of this committee to help us address this
specific problem locally and more broadly work across the aisle to fix
our broken immigration policies on the Federal level. Specifically, I
believe Congress should:
Streamline legal immigration;
Clarify our asylum laws;
Hire more immigration judges;
Co-locate immigration processing centers with immigration
courts;
Create a special envoy to the North Triangle Countries to
help rebuild civil society and institutions; and
Work in a multilateral fashion with governments and
international organization such as the Organization of American
States, and others.
This crisis is creating local challenges as well. Several weeks
ago, the Federal Government issued a request for proposal for a new
$192 million migrant processing center in the Border Patrol El Paso
Sector (El Paso County, Hudspeth County, and the State of New Mexico).
Due to the dramatic spike in asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle
of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador), the
processing center is slated to be open as soon as June. While the
situation on the ground is urgent, it is paramount that we get this
right.
A quick retrofit of a former manufacturing plant will not produce a
quality facility that reflects our community's values or those of the
hardworking and brave agents and officers of the Border Patrol and
Customs and Border Protection. Rather than hastily retrofit a vacant
industrial warehouse, the Federal Government should design and build a
new facility, purpose-built, to process migrants. Given the
humanitarian crisis, it is possible to move swiftly and construct a
custom-built facility. Moreover, while looking for a processing center
location, the Federal Government should consider the entire El Paso
Sector, including Hudspeth County, the State of New Mexico, and all of
El Paso County. While we recognize the urgent need for a migrant
processing center, the solution to this complex problem cannot be
another quickly-built, ill-conceived facility like the ones reported on
by the National media. Neither El Pasoans nor the migrants are well-
served by a rushed, reactive response that keeps children in cages and
has hundreds of families sleeping on the floor of an empty warehouse.
Let's work together to find a better solution.
conclusion
Ladies and gentleman of the committee I want to thank you for the
opportunity to speak before you today on this important topic. I want
to particularly thank Chairwoman Rice who recently led a Congressional
delegation to El Paso to see first-hand the issues we discussed here
today. It has been a pleasure to address you all today, and I look
forward to answering your questions.
Thank you.
Miss Rice. Thank you, Mr. Barela.
Mr. Olivares.
STATEMENT OF EFREN OLIVARES, RACIAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE
DIRECTOR, TEXAS CIVIL RIGHTS PROJECT
Mr. Olivares. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good morning. It is my pleasure to be here providing
testimony before this committee this morning. I am an attorney
with the Texas Civil Rights Project. My office represents
landowners whose land the Government is trying to condemn in
order to build a border wall in the Rio Grande Valley in south
Texas.
Our office has represented these landowners for over 10
years now, since the 2008 border fence wave of condemnations.
This morning I want to touch on, briefly, two types of
impact that this policy is having on border communities,
particularly in the Rio Grande Valley.
First, the eminent domain process and how it leaves
landowners wondering how they can oppose a taking of their land
by the Federal Government, and second some of the broader
impacts that the border wall will have on border communities
and it is already having.
When the Government identifies a property where they want
to build the border wall, they first try to purchase it from
the landowner voluntarily. They make an offer of sale.
Historically, those offers have been woefully below market
value.
Now, how far below market value? One of the cases that our
office handled, the initial offer was for $100 for 1.3 acres of
land in Cameron County. The case ended up settling for $56,000.
That is a multiple of 560 times the value of the land. That is
not atypical.
Part of the problem is that the initial offer of purchase
from the Government doesn't have to be backed up by a formal
appraisal. So the Government can make any offer it wants, and
especially if the landowner is not represented, they have a
very hard time defending against--in those processes.
Another important piece of the process is that in virtually
every case, the Government tries to get physical possession of
the land before the issue of just compensation is resolved.
Unfortunately, the eminent domain process allows for that.
Federal courts routinely grant the Government physical
possession of the land before the landowner has received a dime
for their property.
This has resulted in dozens of landowners having lost the
land to the Government, having the border wall built literally
on their backyard, and then, years later, not have received a
single dollar for that as just compensation, as required by the
Fifth Amendment.
Such is the case of Ms. Maria Garcia in the city of San
Benito in Cameron County. The border fence was built on her
backyard back in 2012, and Ms. Garcia unfortunately passed away
in November 2017 and never received a dime for her property.
Many other landowners, including some of our clients, have
been in the process for over 10 years and the Government has
changed how much of their property it wants to take, and the
landowners have been living with the uncertainty looming over
their heads without having received any compensation in more
than 10 years by now.
Another important factor that makes the eminent domain
process terribly unfair to the landowners is the fact that the
Secretary of Homeland Security can waive all laws, except for
the Constitution and treaties, but every other law--the
Secretary of Homeland Security can waive pursuant to a waiver
authority granted by Congress--and it has been described as the
broadest waiver authority ever granted by Congress--that allows
him or her to waive every law. So that leaves the landowners
not being able to challenge the taking, other than challenge
the amount of just compensation.
Now, on the effects that the border wall is going to have
on the community, one thing that is often lost in the
discussion is the fact that the wall is planned to be built
many hundreds of yards from the actual border, from the river
itself.
So Professor Madsen from the Ohio State University has
calculated that, in Texas alone, 43,000 acres are going to be
walled off from the rest of the country. They are going to
become no-man's-land. Of those 43,000 acres, 42,000 acres are
in the Rio Grande Valley alone, which are the three counties in
the southeastern-most tip of Texas: Cameron, Hidalgo, and Starr
Counties.
In those areas between what is going to become the wall and
the river, the so-called no-man's-land, there are communities,
there are neighborhoods, there are businesses that are going to
be walled off from public utilities, from roads, public
transportation, and everything that is on the northern side of
the wall.
Some landowners may get gates, but not all of them. Not
everyone is going to get a gate, so not everyone gets access to
their property.
So imagine for a second if the Federal Government were
walling off 43,000 acres of U.S. soil not along the Rio Grande
but along the Potomac or along the Hudson. It would be a
scandal. But in our community in south Texas, a majority
Latino, Hispanic community, it is unfortunately something that
we have become all too familiar. Our office will continue to do
everything we can to represent these landowners so that they
are treated fairly and with dignity.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Olivares follows:]
Prepared Statement of Efren C. Olivares
April 30, 2019
It is a great honor to testify before such a distinguished
committee about the disastrous impact that a border wall would have on
border communities in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Thank you for
inviting me.
For my testimony this morning, I draw from my work as director of
the Racial and Economic Justice Program at the Texas Civil Rights
Project (``TCRP''). We are Texas lawyers for Texas communities, serving
the rising movement for equality and justice. Our Racial and Economic
Justice Program fights against discriminatory policies and practices
based on immutable characteristics and immigration status. Along the
Texas-Mexico border, our team works tirelessly to bring separated
families back together, to ensure accountability for wrongful acts by
immigration agents, and to defend landowners whose land the Federal
Government seeks to condemn in order to build a border wall. Through
litigation, education, and advocacy, TCRP fights to ensure that the
most vulnerable communities in our State, and especially along the
border, can live with dignity, freedom, and without fear.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Learn more at texascivilrightsproject.org.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am a lawyer and an advocate, and also a member of the border
community. My goal in this testimony is to highlight two significant
ways in which the border wall negatively impacts border communities.
First, I will discuss how the eminent domain process leaves affected
landowners with little recourse to challenge the Government's takings.
Eminent Domain law is extremely favorable to the Government, and when
compounded by the expansive waiver authority given to the Secretary of
Homeland Security, Texas landowners along the border are really left to
wonder whether due process of law means anything for them. Second, I
will touch upon some of the ways in which a border wall would forever
alter the way families and communities live in this part of the United
States. Families who have lived peacefully along the Rio Grande for
centuries--in some cases even before the United States existed as a
country--now stand to lose their land, their livelihood, and quite
literally their way of life.
i. the eminent domain process in border wall cases
Most of the land along the Texas-Mexico border where the Government
plans to build a border wall is owned by private landowners. Pursuant
to the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the Federal
Government can only take private land for public use if it pays the
owner ``just compensation.'' U.S. Const. amend. V.
a. Right of Entry (ROE) Requests
Once the Government identifies a piece of land where it plans to
build the border wall, agents approach the landowner seeking his or her
consent to survey the land, take soil samples, and conduct other
precursory work on privately owned land. This typically happens via a
letter, known as a Right of Entry (ROE) request. The letters are mailed
to the owner of record at the address of the owner on file with the
public property records.
These letters will often be followed by in-person visits by the
Army Corps of Engineers, who are accompanied by the Border Patrol
agents. Landowners describe the in-person visits as both persuasive and
misleading, where Government officials attempt to explain any intrusion
as minimal and unimportant. Landowners have reported that some of these
visitors have told them that the Government will eventually get
possession of the land anyway, so it is of no use to fight the process.
The maps attached as Appendix A show the status of ROE requests in
Starr County, Texas, as of December 2018.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Although reliable information is hard to come by, Customs and
Border Protection officials have indicated that over 90 percent of
ROE's in Hidalgo County, and around 85 percent in Starr County were
signed voluntarily. In Starr County, ownership of some tracts of land
has still not been ascertained.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
When a landowner does not consent to signing the ROE letter, DHS
refers the matter to the Department of Justice, and a lawsuit is filed
against the tract of land at issue in Federal district court. The
lawsuits have typically taken the form of a Complaint in Condemnation
and Declaration of Taking filed pursuant to the Declaration of Taking
Act, 40 USC 3114. These complaints consistently alleges that $100.00
constitutes just compensation for access to the land for surveying and
soil sampling purposes, regardless of the size of the land in question.
As of April 25, 2019, the Trump administration has filed 12 such cases
seeking access to survey land in South Texas, and dozens more, if not
hundreds, are expected in the coming months, in light of the
Congressional appropriations for fiscal year 2019. TCRP represents some
of these affected landowners.
b. Acquisition of the Land
After surveying is completed pursuant to the ROE, the Government
will then seek to buy the part of the property it needs. This will be
done by a letter requesting to buy the land for a price the Government
determines. Historically, these initial offers have been significantly
below market value.
If the landowner refuses to sell, the Government will initiate
eminent domain proceedings to take the land by filing a Complaint and
Declaration of Taking pursuant to its authority under the Declaration
of Taking Act (40 USC 3114) and acquisition by condemnation (40 USC
3113).\3\ Historically, the Government typically has also deposited
$100 as estimated ``just compensation''\4\ to acquire the property,
regardless of the size or quality of the land. If the landowner fails
to answer the lawsuit or challenge the alleged amount of just
compensation, the Government can take the land for that amount. This
happened in multiple cases in ``border fence'' cases filed by the
Federal Government in 2008. As an example of how far below market value
these initial offers are: In one case handled by TCRP, the initial
offer was $100.00 for 1.3 acres of land, and the case ultimately
settled for $56,000.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ In these initial filings, the Government argues that upon the
filing of the Complaint, Declaration of Taking, and the depositing of
the estimated ``just compensation,'' title of the subject property is
immediately vested to the United States. However, we have argued that
40 U.S. Code 3114(d) specifically authorizes the court to fix the
time and terms under which a landowner will transfer possession of
property to the Government. See 40 U.S. Code 3114(b)(1).
\4\ As required by the Declaration of Taking Act, 40 U.S. Code
3114.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
After filing the Complaint, the Government typically files a Motion
for Order of Immediate Possession and a Motion for Expedited Hearing,
seeking to obtain expedited access to the land. Importantly, the
Government consistently seeks to take physical possession of the land
before the issue of just compensation is resolved. As a result, there
are dozens of landowners who have lost their land to the Government,
the Government has built a border fence on their property years ago,
and as of today, they have not received a dime in compensation for
their land. Ms. Maria Garcia, in the city of San Benito, died years
after the border fence was built on her property, without ever being
compensated.
In some instances, landowners have also endured the Government's
indecision on border wall construction, leading to years of
negotiations, back and forth over portions of the property to be
condemned, with the uncertainty looming over their heads for over a
decade now. Pamela Rivas, a landowner in Los Ebanos, Texas, whose
property is situated by the last hand-drawn ferry on the United States-
Mexico border, has dealt with Government agents for well over 10 years
now. Some years the Government only wanted a small slice of the
property, others to bisect it in half, and now they want nearly all of
her property. She still has not been compensated, and she still does
not know how much of her land the Government wants. Our office
represents her, and we will ensure she is treated fairly, despite the
unconscionable amount of time this has taken.
In other eminent domain takings, the landowner can challenge the
authority for the taking, or the public use. In border wall cases,
however, it is difficult to challenge the authority for the taking,
since it is the Federal Government who takes it, pursuant to the Secure
Fence Act of 2006, Pub. L. 109-367, H.R. 6061, and subsequent
Congressional appropriations. Similarly, the Government alleges
``National security'' reasons as the public purpose for the taking, and
courts tend to defer to the Executive branch in matters of National
security. Landowners are left with the possibility of challenging only
the amount of just compensation.
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 71.1, a landowner may request
a jury trial to decide the issue of just compensation. Of the
approximately 334 eminent domain actions filed by the Federal
Government in 2008 in the Southern District of Texas, not a single one
went to trial. Most of them settled or were dismissed, and over 50 are
still pending as of today.
ii. the impact of the border wall on border communities
The Rio Grande Valley contains some of the poorest areas of the
country. The median incomes in the three southeastern-most counties in
Texas, where border wall construction is scheduled to take place, are:
$36,095 per year in Cameron County, $37,097 in Hidalgo County, $27,133
in Starr County.\5\ Approximately 95 percent of the population in the
region identifies as Latino or Hispanic.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ United States Census ``Quick Facts'' for Cameron, Hidalgo, and
Starr Counties, available at https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/
table/cameroncountytexas/PST045218, https://www.- census.gov/
quickfacts/fact/table/hidalgocountytexas/PST045218, and https://
www.census.- gov/quickfacts/fact/table/starrcountytexas/SEX255217.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
As we sit here today, construction--or, should I say, destruction--
activities have already begun. These activities have begun in
Federally-owned land in the city of Mission, in Hidalgo County, Texas.
Since this is Federally-owned land, the Government does not have to go
through the condemnation process described above. But, those Federally-
owned lands happen to be wildlife refuges, particularly the ``La
Parida'' Banco tract, part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National
Wildlife Refuge. As we sit here today, bulldozers have begun destroying
that formerly protected wildlife sanctuary.
a. Waiver authority under the Real ID Act of 2005
What allows the Government to build a wall on protected wildlife
property? The answer is simple: The waiver authority Congress conferred
on the Secretary of Homeland Security by the Real ID Act of 2005, Pub.
L. 109-12, 119 Stat. 302, enacted May 11, 2005. The Real ID Act grants
what has been described as the broadest waiver authority ever granted
by Congress. It allows the Secretary of Homeland Security ``to waive
all legal requirements such Secretary, in such Secretary's sole
discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of
barriers and roads'' along the border. Pub. L. 109-12, 119 Stat. 302,
Sec. 102(c). This waiver authority allows the Secretary of Homeland
Security to waive every conceivable law, save the Constitution and
treaties.
Such broad waiver authority compounds the already unfavorable legal
landscape that landowners face in these condemnation cases. Laws that
would have made it illegal to build a border wall--from the Endangered
Species Act to the Clean Water Act to the Religious Freedom Restoration
Act and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act--have been waived by
the Secretary, thereby depriving landowners of their rights under those
laws. Whether it is called a wall, a fence, or a barrier, it will
devastate border communities.
b. ``No man's land''--thousands of acres of U.S. soil walled off
Additionally, the proposed path of the border wall, as reflected in
Appendix B, is far away from the Rio Grande River. In some places, the
wall would be more than half a mile from the actual border. The
physical location of the proposed wall presents a series of problems.
First, it belies the Trump administration's claim that the wall
would stop people or contraband from entering the United States. People
will still be able to enter United States soil, and in some areas walk
hundreds of yards north before reaching the border wall. If criminal
activity does take place, the vast area between the border wall and the
river stands to become a ``staging area'' for such activity.
Second, there are families, businesses, communities that lie on the
area that will be walled off, the so-called ``no man's land'' between
the border wall and the river. Professor Kenneth Madsen, from Ohio
State University at Newark, has calculated that over 43,000 acres of
land will be in no-man's land in Texas.\6\ Over 42,000 of those acres
will be in the Rio Grande Valley alone. His maps depicting the
thousands of acres of United States land that will be walled off from
the rest of the country are attached as Appendix B.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Professor Madsen's maps are available at: http://u.osu.edu/
madsen.34/maps/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Every person and every property located south of the wall will be
blocked from access to public utilities, roads, public transportation,
and their families on the other side of wall. Getting public utilities
to the south side of the wall in the future will be prohibitively
expensive. Many families stand to lose their livelihoods, as it may
become impossible to raise cattle, farm, or lease out the riverfront
property. Some riverfront tenants have already expressed that they
intend not to renew their leases if the wall is built as planned.
Such is the case of the Cavazos family. The Cavazos family has
owned property along the Rio Grande in Mission, Texas, for decades. Mr.
Fred Cavazos is paralyzed from the waist down, so he uses a wheelchair
for mobility purposes. He makes a living by raising cattle and leasing
out riverfront properties for recreational purposes. Several of his
tenants have expressed that they may leave the premises if the wall is
built on Mr. Cavazos's property. Mr. Cavazos's cousin, Mr. Rey
Anzaldua, a Vietnam Veteran and retired U.S. Customs agent, also stands
to lose access to this family property.\7\ Simply getting into his
property will become a challenge for Mr. Cavazos: If the Government
decides to install a gate on his property, he will have to maneuver his
wheelchair-accessible van over the flood control levee, and into his
property.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ TCRP represents Mr. Cavazos and Mr. Anzaldua in their eminent
domain case.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Typically, wealthy, influential, or politically-connected land
owners have had gates installed on their property, to allow them access
to the north side of the wall. Even in those cases, landowners have to
negotiate whether they will receive a small, ``vehicle gate,'' or the
larger, ``farming gate,'' more suitable for RVs, farming equipment and
implements, cattle trailers, and other large vehicles. Unrepresented
landowners rarely have a gate installed on their property.
c. Wall design and flooding risks
According to the latest publicly-available plans, the Government
plans to build a wall consisting of a concrete base, with 18-foot high
steel bollards on top. In Hidalgo County, the Government plans to
insert the concrete base into the existing flood control levee, up to
the height of the levee, and then install the steel bollards atop that
base. The bollards would be 6 inches wide, set 4 inches apart. In Starr
County, where there are no flood-control levees, the Government plans
to install the steel bollards at the surface level, with the concrete
base buried into the ground.
In addition to the border wall, the Government has indicated its
intention to build an ``enforcement zone'' spanning 150 feet from the
wall on the river side, in which all vegetation and structures would be
cleared and demolished to make way for an all-weather road, 24/7
lighting, sensors, and other Border Patrol operations.
This wall design raises significant flooding concerns: (1) On the
south side of the wall into Mexico; (2) in the walled-off ``no man's
land;'' and (3) on the north side of the wall. The Rio Grande Valley is
a hurricane zone, seeing an average of one significant hurricane every
3 years, in addition to several tropical storms and tropical
depressions. The last significant hurricane to hit the Rio Grande
Valley was Hurricane Alex, in 2010, which flooded thousands of acres in
the area for months.
If the border wall is built as planned, it will unquestionably
exacerbate flooding risks. First, if the Rio Grande River overflows,
the wall will prevent water from flowing freely to the north, and it
will flow disproportionately into Mexico and stagnate in the ``no-man's
land.''
Although the top portion of the wall is designed to be made of
bollards, every flood carries with it debris, branches, and other solid
materials and will quickly clog up the wall, blocking water from
flowing freely.
Similarly, even if the river does not overflow, in case of
significant rain, the wall will prevent runoff water coming from the
north side of the wall from flowing into the river. The same clogging-
up phenomenon will keep the water from being able to drain into the
river, thereby flooding cities and towns where the wall is scheduled to
be built, particularly in Starr County. Appendix C shows a flooding
model of the expected effects of border wall construction in the city
of Roma, Texas.
iii. conclusion and recommendations
To those of us who live on the border, hearing the National debate
around the border wall and the so-called ``border crisis'' and
``National emergency'' is extremely frustrating. I am an advocate, but
I am also a member of this community, a community that has been
vilified, demonized, and constantly attacked by this President.
The border is a welcoming, vibrant place, full of hardworking and
resilient people from all walks of life. I am proud to live on the
border. And it pains me to see how often it appears that politicians
forget that the Rio Grande Valley is also part of the United States.
Consider for a minute, if the Federal Government were planning to build
infrastructure that would take hundreds of acres of land from U.S.
citizens, not in South Texas, but in Washington or New York. How would
people react if the Government were about to wall off 43,000 acres of
United States soil, not along the Rio Grande, but along the Potomac or
the Hudson? It would be a scandal. Yet for us in South Texas, this
plunder and pillaging of our largely Latino and Mexican-American
communities is, sadly, all too familiar.
In light of the above, I recommend Congress take the following
actions:
1. Amend the Declaration of Taking Act, specifically 40 U.S.C.
3114(d), to require that a landowner receive full just
compensation, pursuant to a final judgment of a competent
court, before the Government can take physical possession of
the land;
2. Revoke the waiver authority granted by the Real ID Act of 2005,
by amending section 102(c) of the Illegal Immigration Reform
and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (8 U.S.C. 1103 note);
3. Do not appropriate any more money for the construction of border
walls, fences, barriers, ``enforcement zones,'' or any other
such infrastructure; and
4. Require the Federal Government to conduct comprehensive Yellow
Book appraisals before filing a condemnation action against a
landowner related to the border wall.
Miss Rice. Thank you, Mr. Olivares.
Mr. Seitz.
STATEMENT OF MARK SEITZ, MOST REVEREND BISHOP, CATHOLIC DIOCESE
OF EL PASO, TEXAS, U.S. CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS
Bishop Seitz. I am the Catholic bishop of the Diocese of El
Paso. I would like to thank the House Committee on Homeland
Security and this subcommittee, as well as the subcommittee
chair, Representative Rice, and Ranking Member Higgins, for the
opportunity to testify today.
In my Diocese of El Paso, I have witnessed an extraordinary
community response to the increasing number of asylum-seeking
families we have seen since November. Our community is being
led in our response to provide respite for arriving asylum-
seeking families by a local entity, Annunciation House, whom
you mentioned.
In November, my diocese also made the choice to open two
shelters, one on the grounds of the Diocesan Pastoral Center,
and one located in downtown El Paso. We realized that without
these shelters, asylum seekers would have no other option and
be released to the streets with no place to go.
We have seen many other parishes in El Paso and the
neighboring diocese of Las Cruces open their doors to shelter
immigrant families. These days, it is not unusual for our
network of service providers to assist up to 600 to 1,000
family members a day.
While the lack of collaboration we often see between CBP
and ICE makes our work that much more difficult, we welcome the
opportunity to assist the families.
I remember vividly when the first bus of asylum seekers
arrived at our shelter. The families didn't know where they
were going, many thinking that they were being transported to
another detention facility. When they realized that they were
being greeted and welcomed by shelter volunteers, I saw their
joy and relief.
I have seen first-hand through our work that the vast
majority of these arriving families are fleeing violence and
persecution, families forced to flee after receiving threats to
their children, when the parents are unable to pay the demanded
extortion fee, families threatened when sons and daughters
refuse to join the local gang or become gang girlfriends.
While there have been efforts to frame our existing laws
and policies as pull factors for arriving families and
children, this is not the case. Our efforts to treat these
asylum seekers with justice and compassion are not pull
factors, just as efforts to deter them are not dissuading
children and families from fleeing.
These families that we serve are extremely thankful for the
assistance and compassion that they receive at our community
respite centers. They are eager to comply with our laws in the
United States and do not want to be a burden or pitied. Rather,
they seek to be treated with dignity and given a chance to find
protection, contribute to our country, and provide for their
children.
Unfortunately, there are serious concerns about the
mistreatment families receive along the dangerous migration
journey, and sometimes at the hands of U.S. Border Patrol. My
brother bishops and I also remain deeply troubled by the
administration's recent efforts to curtail the ability of
asylum seekers arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border to seek
protection.
To be clear, the concern should not be primarily for the
NGO's or our community. We are certainly stressed, but we are
also blessed to be able to serve. The greater concern should be
for those vulnerable children and families who are suffering
greatly from the impact of our Government's often ill-conceived
and heartless policies.
Policies have consequences. The impact of the
administration's recent policies can be measured in the injury
and death of many whose only crime is that they fled here to
preserve the lives of their families.
I appreciate the subcommittee's attention to this important
issue. I would ask you to consider the recommendations set
forth in my written testimony. Our Nation has had a long and
proud history of providing humane treatment to and due process
for asylum seekers. We must reject policies and proposals that
would abandon this tradition. I ask our Government to remember
that those fleeing to our border are not the other, but people
possessed of the same human dignity as we.
The border wall and recent policy proposals focused on the
border are treating a symptom and not a cause. They are a
symbol of a failure on the part of our country to resolve the
issues that could be dealt with by a comprehensive immigration
reform.
They are a response to our affluent Nation's unwillingness
to love our neighbor, neighbor countries as well as the
immigrant and asylum seeker. They are a sign of our broken
relationship with God.
This reinforced wall and inhumane policies will heal no
wounds, solve no problems, but stand as a further scar on our
land, and dividing our families, our cities, and our nations.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Bishop Seitz follows:]
Prepared Statement of Mark Seitz
April 30, 2019
My name is Bishop Mark Seitz. I am the Catholic Bishop of the
Diocese of El Paso, Texas and work with the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops' (USCCB) Committee on Migration. The Committee on Migration
oversees the work of the Department of Migration and Refugee Services
(MRS) within USCCB. On behalf of USCCB/MRS, I would like to thank the
House Committee on Homeland Security and the Subcommittee on Border
Security, Facilitation, and Operations, as well as the Subcommittee
Chair Representative Kathleen Rice (D-NY) and Ranking Member
Representative Clay Higgins (R-LA) for the opportunity to testify
today.
USCCB/MRS has operated programs, working in a public/private
partnership with the U.S. Government, to help protect unaccompanied
children from all over the world for nearly 40 years. The Catholic
Church in the United States has also long worked to support immigrant
families who have experienced immigrant detention, providing legal
assistance and pastoral accompaniment and visitation within immigrant
detention facilities, as well as social assistance upon release. In
addition to the programmatic work of USCCB/MRS through its largely
Catholic Charities network, Catholic entities at the U.S./Mexico border
have long provided humanitarian assistance and respite for migrants and
refugees. For example, in my diocese of El Paso, Texas, our community
is currently being led in our response to provide respite for arriving
asylum-seeking families by a local entity, Annunciation House.
In this testimony, I will describe our recent experience in El Paso
assisting asylum-seeking families who have been released by the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS). I will also give context to what
we are seeing as the effects of recent policies on our community and
the primary factors leading to forced migration of children and
families, and offer recommendations to: (1) Address root causes of
migration; (2) help ensure that immigrant children and families are
protected and treated with dignity; and (3) ensure such children and
families are in compliance with their immigration proceedings, while
maintaining the existing legal and legislative protections such as the
Flores Settlement Agreement (Flores) and the Trafficking Victims
Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA).
1. catholic experience assisting immigrant families and children in
federal custody
Since 1994, USCCB/MRS has operated the ``Safe Passages'' program to
provide residential care and family reunification services to immigrant
children apprehended by DHS and placed in the custody and care of the
Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), within the Department of Health
and Human Services (HHS). In addition to providing programming and care
for unaccompanied children, the Catholic Church has been a leading
service provider for detained immigrant families. Immigrant detention,
particularly the detention of families and children, is an explicit and
long-standing concern of the Catholic Church. Each day, the Church
witnesses the baleful effects of immigrant detention in ministry,
through our pastoral and legal work with those in detention centers as
well as in our care for those who have been paroled. Catholic entities
serve separated families that struggle to maintain asemblance of normal
family life and host support groups for the spouses of detained and
deported immigrants. We have seen case after case of families who
represent no threat or danger, but who are nonetheless treated as
criminals and detained for reasons of enforcement. We further view
immigrant detention from the perspective of Biblical tradition, which
calls us to care for, act justly toward, and identify with persons on
the margins of society, including newcomers and imprisoned persons.
Besides advocating for reform of the existing detention system,
USCCB/MRS has operated several alternatives to detention programs to
assist immigrant families and other vulnerable populations. From 1999-
2002, INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service), the legacy DHS
department, collaborated with Catholic Charities of New Orleans to work
with 39 asylum seekers released from detention and 64 ``indefinite
detainees'' who could not be removed from the United States. The court
appearance rate for participants was 97 percent.\1\ From January 2014
to March 2015, the USCCB/MRS (in partnership with Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE)) ran a community support alternative to
detention program through its Catholic Charities partners in Baton
Rouge, Louisiana and in Boston, Massachusetts that utilized case
management and served individuals who would have not been ordinarily
released from detention. The program yielded an over 95 percent
appearance rate and included 4 family units.\2\ Additionally, Catholic
Charities participated in the Family Case Management Program, a 5-city
pilot family-based alternative to detention pilot program overseen by
ICE from 2015-2017.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ USCCB/MRS, et al.,The Real Alternatives to Detention 3 (2017),
available at https://justiceforimmigrants.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/
07/The-Real-Alternatives-to-Detention-FINAL-06.27.17.pdf.
\2\ Id.
\3\ GEOCARE, Family Case Management Program 9 (2017).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. recent experience of humanitarian service entities at the u.s./
mexico border
Family units have been arriving with increased frequency to the
U.S./Mexico Border since 2014.\4\ Until recently, a large number of
family units arriving and seeking asylum were released by ICE.
Generally, the adults were processed by ICE and were given a credible
fear interview, placed on an ankle monitor, and provided a ``Notice to
Appear'' for immigration court, as well as a date for an appointment or
``check-in'' with local ICE offices in their final destination city.
Many of these released families have been served in communities along
the border by humanitarian service providers, such as the coalition of
service providers led by Annunciation House in the El Paso area.
Annunciation House has worked to ensure that as many as these families
as possible receive a hot meal, a change of clothes, short-term respite
and assistance with arranging travel onward in the United States.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ During fiscal year 2018, the number of arriving family units
increased to roughly 107,000 members arriving at the U.S./Mexico
border, up from 76,000 in fiscal year 2017. As March 2019, the number
of arriving family units was already estimated at over 189,000 for
fiscal year 2019. U.S. Border Patrol Southwest Border Apprehensions by
Sector Fiscal Year 2017, U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION (Feb. 11,
2019), https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/usbp-sw-border-apprehensions-
fy2017; U.S. Border Patrol Southwest Border Apprehensions by Sector
Fiscal Year 2018, U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION (Oct. 23, 2018),
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/usbp-sw-border-apprehensions;
Southwest Border Migration, U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION (April
29, 2019), https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In recent months, in addition to ICE releasing families, Customs
Border Protection (CBP) has also begun releasing family units directly
to humanitarian service providers. In El Paso, we have particularly
seen, starting around Christmas, an increase in the number of families
arriving to our humanitarian shelters.\5\ The families released to
humanitarian service providers from CBP typically do not seem to have
received a credible fear interview, do not wear ankle monitors, and may
not have an ICE ``check in'' appointment in their destination city. The
recent addition of CBP releases and differences in the immigration
processing for the families (depending on release from ICE or CBP) has
created an additional coordination challenges for humanitarian service
providers. While these release practices differ depending on the
specific border community and level of engagement with local DHS
officers, a large number of the families are being released to
humanitarian reception centers and those centers are being operated on
a charitable and voluntary basis. Specifically, the areas that are
receiving the largest number of families releases are being led by
Catholic service providers in: (1) El Paso, Texas--coordinated by
Annunciation House with support from the El Paso diocese and other
religious organizations; (2) McAllen, Texas--coordinated by Catholic
Charities Rio Grande Valley with support from the Brownsville diocese;
and (3) Tucson and Yuma, Arizona--coordinated by Catholic Community
Services of Southern Arizona with support from the Tucson diocese and
other religious organizations.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ See e.g., Joseph D. Lyons, El Paso's Migrant Shelters are Full,
and Hundreds are Reportedly Being Released to the Streets, BUSTLE (Dec.
30, 2018), https://www.bustle.com/p/el-pasos-migrant-shelters-are-full-
hundreds-are-reportedly-being-released-to-the-streets-15577034; Aaron
Martinez, More Migrants Left by ICE in Downtown El Paso on Christmas;
2,000 Expected by Week's End, El Paso Times (Dec. 25, 2018), https://
www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/immigration/2018/12/25/more-migrants-
expected-left-el-paso-bus-station-christmas/2411407002/ (``The
announcement of the expected arrival of more than 1,200 migrants in the
next few days comes after hundreds of migrants were dropped off at the
Downtown El Paso Greyhound bus station over the weekend and on
Monday.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In El Paso, in collaboration with the work of Annunciation House,
my diocese is operating two shelters: One on the grounds of the
diocesan pastoral center and one located in downtown El Paso.
Additionally, parishes in El Paso and in the neighboring diocese of Las
Cruces, New Mexico have opened their doors to shelter immigrant
families. These days it is not unusual for our network of service
providers to assist up to 600-1,000 family members a day. The work that
is being undertaken is immediate and vital to ensuring the well-being
of the families and avoiding instances in which families are left
without any assistance, alone at the local bus station, and at risk for
exploitation.
The families that we serve are fleeing great violence and are
extremely thankful for the assistance and compassion that they receive
at our community respite centers. They are eager to comply with our
laws in the United States and do not want to be a burden or pitied;
rather, they seek to be treated with dignity and given a chance to find
protection, contribute to our country, and provide for their children.
Most often, they are looking to reunite with family or a friend, and
those sponsors pay for their transport onward and seek to leave our
community within 24-48 hours. Sometimes, we encounter particularly
vulnerable individuals, such as pregnant women or sick children who
need additional care and stay longer in El Paso.
Our community is exceptional, and it has come together to help
welcome asylum-seeking families and has shown strength and compassion
in this challenging moment. I am personally motivated and inspired by
the work of the community and by the migrant families that we are able
to serve and accompany. I believe the Government has a responsibility
to care for people who are arriving with credible claims for asylum and
a responsibility to assist anyone in desperate need within our borders.
It is an honor for the Church and for Christians in general to serve
these vulnerable people. We do not begrudge the opportunity, but our
resources and our volunteers are being significantly strained by the
scope and duration of the high arrival numbers. The Church and other
humanitarian service providers and the local communities along the
border are key partners in this effort and need to be recognized by our
Federal Government as such.
The impacts of the administration's policies are having even more
concerning effects on the vulnerable populations of children and
families that are coming to our borders. There are serious concerns
about them is treatment families receive along the dangerous migration
journey and, sometimes, at the hands of U.S. Border Patrol. I worry
that with the continued dehumanizing rhetoric regarding immigrants and
refugees, a culture of disrespect and corresponding negative policies
for those who come seeking refuge has begun to take form. To this end,
my brother Bishops and I remain deeply troubled by the administration's
recent efforts to curtail the ability of asylum seekers arriving at the
U.S./Mexico border to seek protection. In November 2018, the
administration issued a Presidential Proclamation and corresponding
interim final rule that attempted to bar individuals from being able to
claim asylum if they enter the United States through the Southern
Border without going through an official Port of Entry.\6\
Subsequently, in January 2019, the administration issued the ``Migrant
Protection Protocols,'' or the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy, which
outlined instances where the U.S. Government would return certain
asylum seekers to Mexico to wait during the duration of their pending
cases in the United States immigration court system.\7\ As my brother
Bishops along the border between Texas and Northern Mexico have noted,
these policies harm our immigrant brothers and sisters in need.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ President Donald J. Trump, Presidential Proclamation Addressing
Mass Migration Through the Southern Border of the United States (Nov.
9, 2018), available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/Presidential-actions/
Presidential-proclamation-addressing-mass-migration-southern-border-
united-states/; Aliens Subject to a Bar on Entry Under Certain
Presidential Proclamations; Procedures for Protection Claims, 83 Fed.
Reg. 55,934 (Nov. 9, 2018).
\7\ DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Policy Guidance for
Implementation of the Migrant Protection Protocols (Jan. 25, 2019),
available at https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/
19_0129_OPA_migrant-protection-protocols-policy-guidance.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have toured the Casa del Migrante across the border in Juarez,
Mexico, run by Padre Javier Caldillo, and seen first-hand how
overwhelmed it is in recent months and especially with the
implementation of the Remain in Mexico policy in the El Paso sector.
The impact of this policy on vulnerable people forced to wait in
uncertain and dangerous conditions in Mexico poses grave safety,
humanitarian, and due process concerns. I urge the administration to
rethink this policy, particularly as it relates to the institutional
obstacles it places on humanitarian entities who operate along the
border trying to safely assist and provide respite for immigrants and
refugees and the dangerous situations it places asylum-seekers in as
they attempt to access legal protection in our country. And, I
reiterate the Texas and Northern Mexico bishops' appeal that, ``in the
name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that [governments] not adopt policies
that have the effect of increasing the suffering of the
vulnerable.''\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ Statement of the Bishops of the Border Between Texas and
Northern Mexico (March 4, 2019), available at https://www.cdob.org/3-4-
19-statement-from-tex-mex-border-bishops/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. understanding the root causes that cause families and children to
flee
Recent efforts have attempted \9\ to frame existing laws, such as
Flores and the TVPRA, as primary ``pull'' factors for arriving asylum-
seeking children and families coming to the United States. The reality,
however, is that violence and internal displacement continue within the
Northern Triangle countries (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras)
unabated and that much of the violence is targeted at the vulnerable
families and children who are subsequently forced to flee for safety.
Through our work on the ground with Catholic partners, we know that
entire families, not just children, are currently facing targeted
violence and displacement. It is these factors--gang and domestic
violence, impunity, and lack of opportunity related to displacement and
violence--that cause families to flee north for protection, not
awareness of the TVPRA and Flores and its legal litigation progeny.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC), Final Emergency
Interim Report--CBP Families and Children Care 2 (April 16, 2019),
available at https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/
19_0416_hsac-emergency-interim-report.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
To this point, a close look at the recent migration influx into
Mexico shows a similar pattern to what we are facing in the United
States. Mexico is no longer just as ending country, but a transit and
destination country for migration--particularly that from the Northern
Triangle. Similar to the United States, its asylum system has seen
large increases in requests for protection: From just over 1,000 in
2013 \10\ to nearly 30,000 in 2018.\11\ In the first 2 months of 2019,
there was a further 185 percent increase in the number of people
seeking asylum in Mexico compared to the same period in 2018.\12\ There
have been similar increases in asylum requests in Costa Rica as well.
These spiking numbers demonstrate that increased arrivals to the United
States are not a result of a hyper-awareness of U.S. immigration laws
by arriving families. Rather, there is a larger regional forced
migration situation related to violence, political instability, lack of
opportunity, climate change and criminal impunity. Due to conditions in
the Northern Triangle, families face forced migration; and, many of
these families are truly fleeing persecution. Looking at solutions that
are focused solely on changes to domestic laws will erode existing
protections for such asylum-seeking children and families, while
ignoring the larger holistic migration issue that must be addressed on
a regional level.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ Comision Mexicanade Ayuda A Refugiados, Boletin Estadistico de
Solicitantes de Refugio en Mexico (2013), available at https://
www.gob.mx/cms/uploads/attachment/file/413013/COMAR_2013.pdf.
\11\ Rachel Schmidtke, 2018 Migration To and Through Mexico Fact
Sheet, Wilson Center (March 15, 2019), https://www.wilsoncenter.org/
article/2018-migration-to-and-through-mexico-fact-sheet.
\12\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Church in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador is experiencing,
publicly reflecting on, and responding to the escalation of violence in
urban communities, in rural communities, and to family units. In his
pastoral letter, ``I See Violence and Strife in the City,'' Most
Reverend Jose Luis Escobar Alas, Archbishop of San Salvador, stated:
``[T]he faithful know that they are being monitored [by gangs] in their
comings and goings in the communities. The same applies to pastoral
agents who are constantly watched . . . The exodus of families is
heartbreaking . . . It is truly unfortunate and painful that the Church
cannot work because of this atmosphere of insecurity and anxiety that
shakes our beloved country.''\13\ The Archbishop describes one parish
alone that in one year was ``exposed to murder, persecution, exodus,
and extortion,'' including the murder of 6 active parishioners by
stabbing, dismemberment, or firearms.\14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ Most Reverend Jose Luis Escobar Alas, I See Violence and
Strife in the City: A Pastoral Letter on the Occasion of the Feast of
the Beloved Blessed Oscar Romero, 18 (March 24, 2016).
\14\ Id. at 15.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Catholic social teaching recognizes the right to migrate but also
recognizes the right not to migrate and that people can and do have the
right to remain in their homeland and be able to provide a decent life
for themselves and their families. Many programs that have been
implemented in Central America by the Church, our Federal Government
and other partners are working to help ensure people can actually have
a decent life and have access to a steady job and a safe community. We
as a global Church are always reminding people that they have the right
to remain in their home country. Unfortunately, due to increased
violence and lack of opportunity that is not always something that
families who are facing persecution feel is an option; sometimes
migration is seen as the only option to protect one's life.
4. recommendations to promote humane care and ensure immigration
compliance
In light of the increased number of asylum-seeking families we are
seeing in El Paso and other border communities, and in consideration of
the regional forced migration situation the Western Hemisphere is
facing due to violence, poverty, and other root causes, we recommend
the following ways in which our country can provide humane care to
immigrant children and families, promote secure borders and address the
migration flow, and ensure compliance with immigration laws:
Aggressively Address Smuggling, Trafficking, and Criminal
Networks Through Economic and Multilateral Efforts.--Many of
the families who are coming to the U.S./Mexico border have been
exploited. They have been left unprotected and vulnerable by
their home country and then have experienced dangerous
migration journeys that have left them in debt and vulnerable
to violence and death.
Short-Term.--Look to robustly implement existing recent
security cooperation arrangements and information-sharing
agreements regarding drug, human, and gun traffickers and
smugglers with Northern Triangle countries. Consider
implementing similar arrangements with Mexico.
Long-Term.--Develop more comprehensive regional
intelligence and data sharing mechanisms on transnational
criminal organizations and drug, human, and gun smuggling
networks to weaken and disband networks. Additionally, look
to utilize monetize the estimated $200 million-$2.3 billion
2017 smuggling network revenues thought to be collected
from smuggling migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and El
Salvador to combat existing criminal networks.\15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ Victoria A. Greenfield, et al., Rand Corp., Human Smuggling
from Central America to the United States (2019), available at https://
www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/
RB10057.html?utm_medium=rand_social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=oea.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Address Root Causes of Migration with Trauma-Informed and
Regional Responses--Congress should provide more funding for
interdisciplinary programming to address root causes of
migration in the Northern Triangle.--Programming must address
the actual social service needs of vulnerable children and
families who are currently in forced migration situations.
Special consideration should be given to funding initiatives
like safe repatriation services, home country needs assessments
and referrals, and aid that strengthens educational and work
opportunities. Both Congress and the administration should also
look to find ways to support regional asylum systems and
alternative avenues for seeking protection in the United
States.
Short-Term.--The administration should fully reinstate the
Central American Minors Program and not look to cut off aid
to the Northern Triangle. As noted above, the United States
should invest in expanded programming to address the needs
of vulnerable families and children in the region. The
United States should also look to expand investments in
anti-gang and anti-corruption programming, as well as
initiatives to promote human rights in the sending
countries.
Long-Term.--The United States should help to build
capacity of the Mexican and other regional asylum systems,
encourage consistency in Mexican immigration policy, and
address the on-going humanitarian crisis in Venezuela.
Improve Existing Border Processing Policies to Reflect
Humanitarian Needs and Retain Flexibility.--Migration is a
cyclical and dynamic phenomenon. Current DHS institutional
capacity to address influx periods of migration, however, is
limited. CBP and ICE need to take approaches from the emergency
management field and implement short- and long-term policies
that enable greater community stakeholder cooperation, as well
as communication and agency flexibility during influx migration
periods.
Short-Term.--DHS should acknowledge local community
partners on the ground and better coordinate with them to
address the current influx. DHS entities, both ICE and CBP,
need to better coordinate drop-offs of families and clearly
communicate the number of arriving families to humanitarian
service providers earlier in the day. Drop-offs need to be
made, when possible, during business hours. Local city and
county governments need to be kept informed of expected
number of arrivals and briefed regularly. Furthermore,
Congress needs to authorize DHS to have grant-making
authority to fund humanitarian service providers in influx
periods to increase capacity.
Long-Term.--Congress should fund DHS to build and staff
processing facilities along the border and increase Port of
Entry infrastructure to improve the orderly flow of goods
and the orderly processing of people. Processing facilities
should be designed to accommodate the needs of arriving
families, children, and other vulnerable populations.
Medical professionals and child welfare experts should be
staffed at processing centers that receive large numbers of
families and children.
Invest Robustly in a Variety of Alternatives to Detention
Programming for Families.--Congress should more robustly fund
alternatives to detention (ATDs) in the DHS budget. Congress
should also ensure that DHS is working to expand and pilot
diverse alternatives to detention programming--in the form of
the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP), as well as
alternatives to detention programming that utilize case
management and, in some cases, NGO civil society participation.
Congress should instruct DHS to publicly report on the outcomes
of these programs and ensure that a continual pilot period is
undertaken to secure transparent and viable data on the
effectiveness of such programs. There should be special
attention given to addressing the cost and due process concerns
for those on detained vs. non-detained docket.
Short-Term.--Congress should ensure DHS immediately begins
to implement a pilot of the Family Case Management Program
for the top 5 destination cities for families. Under the
fiscal year 2019 DHS Appropriations Agreement from February
2019, ICE is instructed to report within 90 days to
Congress about plans to implement some form of family case
management alternative to detention programming. DHS can
look to start implementing this program immediately by
engaging existing Government contractors, as well as NGO's
who have worked on similar programs in the past.
Long-Term.--Congress should require longitudinal studies
on the efficacy of alternatives to detention for families,
to be overseen by independent monitors. Studies should
focus on examining the range of ATDs employed, the cost per
day, the overall cost of the program, the ability to
effectuate outcomes such as removal or attainment of legal
status and demonstrated compliance as a means to ensure
future participation.
Maintain Family Unity and Family Reunification Principles.--
As Pope Francis has stated, the family ``is the foundation of
co-existence and a remedy against social fragmentation.''
Upholding and protecting the family unit, regardless of its
national origins and its size, is vital to our faith and to our
country.
Short-Term.--DHS must ensure that it utilizes family-
friendly processing procedures and does not separate family
units unless in situations of child endangerment. These
policies need to be robustly implemented and instances of
family separation must be documented.
Long-Term.--Congress must look to ensure that family-based
immigration principles and laws are maintained.
Ensure Efficient Due Process and Humane Policies for Asylum-
Seeking Families.
Short-Term.--Congress should urge the administration to
reverse its Remain in Mexico and November 2019 asylum
policies, which if permitted by the courts to proceed,
would needlessly increases the suffering of the most
vulnerable and violate international protocols.
Long-Term.--Congress should further invest in augmenting
the capacity of the immigration courts by hiring more
judges and providing additional funding for new courtroom
facilities. It should also consider making the immigration
courts independent Article I courts. Additionally, Congress
should ensure robust funding for legal information programs
such as the Legal Orientation Program, Legal Orientation
Programs for Custodians of Unaccompanied Children, and the
Information Help Desk, which do not fund immigration
counsel but help provide information to detained and
released immigrants to ensure they know more about
compliance requirements.
5. conclusion
Our Nation has had a long and proud history of providing humane
treatment to and due process for asylum seekers. I urge us to reject
policies and proposals that would abandon this tradition, and I ask our
Government to remember that those fleeing to our border are not the
``other'' but fellow children of God. I appreciate the subcommittee's
consideration of the recommendations set forth above, which seek to
address root causes of migration, promote asylum seekers' humane care,
and ensure immigration compliance. As always, the Catholic community of
El Paso and the larger Catholic Church stands ready to work with
Congress and the administration to develop and implement compassionate
and just policies and procedures relating to the arriving families and
children. And, we will continue to pray for these vulnerable migrants
and those working with them and on their behalf.
Miss Rice. Thank you, Bishop.
Sheriff.
STATEMENT OF SHERIFF MARK D. NAPIER, SHERIFF OF PIMA COUNTY,
SOUTHWESTERN BORDER SHERIFFS COALITION
Sheriff Napier. Good morning, Subcommittee Chairman Rice,
Ranking Member Higgins. It is an honor to have the opportunity
to testify before the subcommittee this morning.
Pima County, Arizona is the largest of the 31 border
counties, with 125-mile linear exposure to the international
border, in a population of just over 1 million.
In many places, the international border is
nondistinguishable, meaning there is literally nothing there to
secure or otherwise define our international border.
To suggest that there does not exist a crisis on our
Southern Border is intellectually dishonest. To be steadfast in
that assertion despite clear evidence to the contrary is to be
intellectually dishonest with malice.
To promulgate the idea that this is a crisis created or
manufactured by the current administration is simply false. No
reasonable-thinking person could assume the current
administration has sought to entice families with children and
unaccompanied minors to come in caravans to our border, or in
some manner sought an escalation of the trafficking of hard
narcotics into our country.
I have been in Pima County for 32 years. We have had a
border crisis for all 32 years that I have been in Pima County.
The nuances and the elements of that crisis have evolved over
time. But nonetheless, we have had a crisis all this while.
The unprecedented increase in family unit migration and the
public health emergency associated with drug addiction are
real, not manufactured or the product of some nefarious
political scheme.
Prior administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have
recognized and affirmed the existence of a crisis on the border
and the need for border security.
There are three unimpeachable reasons that without respect
to political ideology, we should embrace as reasons to address
this crisis and secure our border with Mexico. They are public
safety, National security, and human rights.
With respect to public safety, the lack of a secure border
presents a public safety crisis, not only for border counties
but also for our Nation. The porous border is being exploited
by drug and human traffickers. We are interdicting
unprecedented amounts of methamphetamine, heroin, and fentanyl.
According to Arizona HIDTA, in 2018 alone, 113,286 pounds
of methamphetamine, 7,949 pounds of heroin, 204,932 fentanyl
pills were seized just along the Southwest Border of the United
States. These are absolutely shocking numbers.
Migrants are being victimized financially, criminally, and
sexually as they make the journey from Mexico and Central
America to our border. The lack of a border security is an
undeniable public safety crisis.
With respect to human rights, tacitly encouraging people in
Mexico and Central America to make the dangerous journey to our
border is not compassionate public policy. Southwest Border
sheriff deputies recover more than 100 bodies a year in the
remote areas of our counties. Migrants are dying in our
deserts.
The composition of migrants has changed significantly over
the past several years. Previously, the majority were single
males from Mexico traveling as individuals or in small groups.
Now, the majority are other than Mexican, and comprised of
family units, women, children, and unaccompanied minors.
As Federal resources have been strained past the breaking
point, asylum seekers are being released into border
communities. An estimated 7,000 people have been released into
Pima County just over the past several months, pending asylum
hearings. Just this past week, 213 people were released, of
which 112, or 53 percent, were children.
Once released into our community, we are obligated to
provide adequate care for them. This has nearly collapsed our
local social services network. Our NGO's and their volunteers
are stressed to the breaking point and beyond. Social service
resources that should address local issues of hunger and
homelessness are now unable to do so.
The lack of a secure border is an undeniable humanitarian
crisis. The humanitarian crisis is compelling, and should bring
leaders of both parties together to find solutions.
The border crisis is real. I know as a border sheriff; I
live with it every day. However, to caption it as a border
crisis, while true, is misleading. There were 70,000 opioid-
related overdose deaths last year, more than from motor vehicle
traffic accidents. Law enforcement officers now carry medicine,
Narcan, on their persons like they might a flashlight or a
radio, in the hope of saving just a few lives. This was
unimaginable but a few years ago.
Without a doubt, these drugs are coming through our
Southern Border. Gang members and hardened criminals are using
this crisis to enter our country undetected to prey upon our
citizens and make our communities less safe. Migrants are being
victimized on both sides of the border, and our inability to
care for them once here, despite the best efforts of my Federal
partners, only serve to compound their misery.
Human traffickers and drug traffickers are profiteering
from this crisis, and only seek to escalate it. We need action
from Washington, DC, not partisan politics. We need significant
and meaningful additional resources to bolster both our public
safety and our humanitarian efforts to address this crisis.
Finally, we need comprehensive, thoughtful, and detailed
legislative action to address a permanent resolution to this
crisis. I have lived and worked in a border county for more
than 30 years. All that time, leadership in Washington, DC,
have acknowledged the challenge of border security and sought
to some varying degrees to address it. Yet, here we are. Let us
affirm today that no sheriff will sit before Congress 30 years
from now and say: We should do something.
Honorable Members of this committee, we must do something
now. The degradation of public safety, the humanitarian crisis,
and the concern for National security mandate that we do so.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you, and I
welcome questions from the subcommittee. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Sheriff Napier follows:]
Prepared Statement of Mark D. Napier
April 30, 2019
introduction
Subcommittee Chairwoman Rice and Ranking Member Higgins, it is an
honor to have the opportunity to testify before the Border Security,
Facilitation, and Operations Subcommittee. I serve as the elected
Sheriff of Pima County, Arizona. I am a member of the Southwest Border
Sheriffs' Coalition, vice president of the Arizona Sheriffs'
Association and serve as the chair of the Border Security Committee of
the Major County Sheriffs of America. I possess a Master's Degree in
Criminal Justice from Boston University and have 3 decades of law
enforcement experience.
Pima County, Arizona is the largest of the 31 border counties
abutting the U.S./Mexico international border. Pima County has a 125-
mile linear exposure to the international border and a population of
just over 1 million. In many places in our county, the international
border is non-distinguishable; meaning there is literally nothing there
to secure or otherwise define the border. This makes our county
vulnerable to drug and human trafficking. With this comes humanitarian
and public safety challenges that strain our resources and negatively
affects our community.
Border counties take the issue of the crisis on our border
seriously. We do so because we live it and see it first-hand. This
crisis affects our home, our safety, and our economy.
denial of a crisis on our border
To suggest that there does not exist a crisis on our Southern
Border is intellectually dishonest. To be steadfast in that assertion
despite clear evidence to the contrary is to be intellectually
dishonest with malice. To promulgate the idea that this is a crisis
created or manufactured by the current administration is simply false.
No reasonable thinking person could assume that in some way the current
administration has enticed families with children and unaccompanied
minors in Central America to come in caravans to our border or in some
manner sought an escalation of the trafficking of hard narcotics into
our country. The unprecedented increase in family unit migration and
the public health emergency associated with drug addiction are real,
not manufactured or the product of some nefarious political scheme.
This is not stated with a partisan heart or in blind defense of a
political party, current administration, or ideology. Rather, it is
stated as a person with decades of law enforcement experience and who
has resided in the border region for more than 30 years. There has been
a crisis on our border all this time. The nature and nuances of that
crisis have changed/evolved over the years, but it has always existed.
Prior administrations from both political parties have recognized and
affirmed the existence of a crisis on the border. To varying degrees
leaders of both political parties have attempted to address it over the
proceeding decades.
In Washington, DC, the border crisis has become fodder for
seemingly endless debate and political gamesmanship. It appears to be
more important who wins, than actually solving the problem. The
ascribing of blame for the current conditions on the border is more in
focus than a bipartisan effort to find solutions. For those of us who
live along the border who wins and the application of blame are of
complete disinterest. This crisis impacts our safety, our community,
and our economy. We do not read about the degradation of public safety
with passive interest from afar. We do not learn of the humanitarian
costs with casual concern. We experience both in concrete and objective
terms every day. We look to our elected officials in Washington to
address this crisis in a meaningful manner. It is time to do so. First,
we must secure our border.
we must secure our southern border with mexico
There has been and will likely continue to be much debate about
border security and how to achieve it. Sheriffs stand united and are
crystal clear in stating; our Southern Border with Mexico must be
secured. As the chief law enforcement officers in our respective
counties, we have witnessed the societal and public safety costs
resulting from the lack of border security. We have heard political
leaders of all stripes talk about securing the border with little
consequence. Today, many portions of our border with Mexico are still
not secure in any meaningful way. Our ports of entry lack the
sufficient staffing and technology necessary to be effective deterrents
to transnational crime. Fundamentally problematic is allowing such a
significant issue to be mired in endless political debate and partisan
divide. It is time, past time, to move forward with meaningful border
security.
Some argue that efforts to secure the border are somehow immoral.
What is immoral is a system that incentivizes migrant families in
Central America to undertake the long and dangerous journey to our
Southern Border in the belief it is possible to walk easily across.
These people are victimized criminally, financially, and sexually
during this journey. Many also suffer due to environmental exposure.
Once in the United States, there is further victimization as they are
thrust into a system that of no fault of our Federal Government is
unable to care for them properly. Securing the border should rationally
be viewed as moral. It serves as a disincentive to engage in what is a
very dangerous behavior.
the reason for border security
The desire to secure the border is not driven by hate or disdain
for people in Mexico and Central America. The people of those countries
are not our enemies. In Arizona, we see them as our friends, our
neighbors, and our trading partners.
There are three unimpeachable reasons that without respect to
political ideology we should all embrace as valid reasons to secure
immediately our border with Mexico. They are public safety, National
security, and human rights
Public Safety.--The lack of a secure border presents a public
safety crisis, not only for border counties but also for our Nation.
The porous border is exploited by transnational criminal organizations
to engage in drug and human trafficking.
We have a public health crisis with respect to illicit drug use
that is leading to overdose deaths and lifetime addiction. The public
safety threat of drug trafficking is significant and the societal costs
are staggering. Overdose deaths exceeded those of traffic accidents
last year. No one would have believed this could occur even a few years
ago. An estimated 70,000 people died because of opioid overdose in
2018.
Deputies in my county are interdicting unprecedented quantities of
hard drugs. Large seizures are almost a daily occurrence. For every
interdiction we make we know that we miss far more. Traffickers
continue to use these methods because they are more often successful
than not. They have become increasingly sophisticated with respect to
how to conceal drugs in vehicles. This has made interdiction efforts
more difficult as we now have to ferret out complicated concealed
compartments in vehicles. Drugs we miss in Pima County (we believe
despite our best efforts is substantial) are distributed throughout the
country to the detriment of public safety and public health.
Methamphetamine.--Seizures of 20 to 50 pounds of methamphetamine
have become common. We know that this drug is not being manufactured
locally. The manufacturing labs are in Mexico. Meth is coming up from
the border in previously unimaginable amounts. Quantities of this size
are not destined for consumption locally. This methamphetamine is
destined for locations across the country. The collateral criminality
associated with methamphetamine intoxication is very pronounced.
A few examples of seizures just from Pima County, Arizona:
November 2018 (140.75 pounds of methamphetamine)
December 13, 2018 (25.15 pounds of methamphetamine)
December 18, 2018 (20.35 pounds of methamphetamine)
December 21, 2018 (16.05 pounds of methamphetamine)
January 7, 2019 (10.22 pounds of methamphetamine)
Opioids.--In our county, we are interdicting thousands of fentanyl
pills. These too are not being manufactured locally and are being
trafficked from the border. The potency of these pills varies widely
and they often have fictitious labeling. As a result, communities
across the country are facing a staggering number of overdoses and
deaths. The costs to families, emergency services, and to our public
health system are staggering.
On November 7, 2018, Pima County deputies interdicted 13,000
fentanyl pills on a single traffic stop. This was clearly destine for
distribution across the country. It is reasonable to assume that this
would have resulted in a significant number of overdose deaths
affecting communities far removed from the border.
So significant is the opioid problem that many law enforcement
agencies are now deploying Narcan in the hope of saving some from
overdose deaths. We should pause to consider this for a moment. This
has become such a crisis that law enforcement officers are now carrying
medicine on their person as they might a radio or a flashlight.
Drug trafficking across the Southern Border facilitated by a lack
of border security is a public safety and a public health crisis the
scale of which we have never experienced in my more than 30 years here.
Human traffickers exploit migrants criminally, sexually, and
financially. Most people seeking to enter this country without proper
documentation are otherwise good people in pursuit of a better life.
However, smugglers require large sums of money to transport or shepherd
them across the border financially victimize them. They are frequently
the victim of criminality in the remote desert areas of the SW where
they have little protection and are reticent to seek law enforcement
protection. We know that about 30 percent of migrant women suffer
sexual abuse. Most likely, this is significantly underreported. Some
are sexually trafficked once inside the United States for a protracted
period.
Criminals and gang members posing as migrants can and do use the
lack of border security to enter our country to further their criminal
behavior. We have ample evidence of this occurring that is beyond
refute. Criminals exploit the influx of asylum-seeking migrants to mask
their illegal entry into the United States. In recent weeks, gang
members and other persons with serious criminal histories have been
detained after entering the country. Some of these people had
previously been deported multiple times. It is reasonable to assume
that had these individuals avoided capture they would have posed a
public safety threat to our communities. Moreover, it is also
reasonable to assume that many similar persons have evaded capture due
to the system being overwhelmed.
This week heavily-armed persons were observed escorting a migrant
woman and child to the border. These individuals were wearing tactical
gear and possessing military-style weaponry. The public safety threat
of this is significant. It is demonstrative of an escalation in the
level of potential violence associated with human trafficking.
We are beginning to see a rise in quasi-militia groups operating
along the border. These armed individuals are detaining persons
suspected of being in the country illegally without training or legal
authority to do so. This provides a significant potential for conflict
between local or Federal law enforcement and these groups. Further, it
imperils the safety and human rights of migrants. It is also
disquieting to people along the border as they have unfamiliar heavily-
armed people traversing their community. These groups are born in part
out of frustration over the apparent inability of the Federal
Government to secure our border.
The lack of a secure border is an undeniable public safety crisis.
National Security.--We simply do not know who is coming across our
border. We do know there are bad actors from hostile nations that wish
us harm. This is not a political statement, but rather a factual one.
The lack of border security can be leveraged by those wishing us harm
to come into our country undetected. Engaging in debate about whether 1
suspected terrorist or 50 enter our country through our insecure
Southern Border is both unproductive and meritless. The salient point
is that we do not know who is coming into our country, which is
rationally a National security concern. International terrorism is a
threat that must be taken seriously.
The National security threat is compounded by how it has evolved.
We have diminished concern about complex and well-coordinated attacks
such as we experienced on 9/11. The current concern is more toward low-
tech lone wolf-type attacks, such as physical attacks with hand weapons
in crowded areas, suicide bombings, and the weaponization of common
vehicles. These single bad actors could easily enter our country
undetected through Southern Border. No-Fly lists or other law
enforcement methods of detecting/intercepting these persons are
ineffective if the person enters the country in this manner. We have
ample evidence of the lethality that a single motivated person can
possess through a very low-tech random attack. One of these people
entering our country undetected is too many.
The lack of border security is an undeniable National security
concern.
Human Rights.--Encouraging migrants to make the dangerous journey
to our border and then attempt to cross into remote areas of our
country is not compassionate public policy. Southwest Border deputies
recover hundreds of bodies a year in remote areas of our counties.
Migrants die due to the harsh environment or at the hands of alien
smugglers. Often all we recover are bones that are scattered about by
animals. It is frequently impossible to know who the person was or what
led to death. Many walk hundreds of miles from Central America, some
with children in tow, to get to the border in hope of a better life.
They are led to believe they can simply walk in to the United States.
This leads to human rights issues/abuses on both sides of the border
and too often deaths.
The composition of migrants has changed significantly over the past
several years. Previously, the majority were single males from Mexico
traveling as individuals or in small groups. Now, the majority are
other than Mexican and are comprised of family units, women, children,
and unaccompanied minors. They now travel in larger groups and
caravans. This does not serve to diminish the victimization of them on
either side of the border. The ability of Federal resources to address
the volume and changing nature of the migrants is a significant
concern. The system is strained beyond capacity. Once in the United
States there is further hardship faced by migrants because, at no fault
of the system, it is not capable or designed to provide sufficient care
or housing for them.
As Federal resources have been strained past the breaking point
asylum seekers have been released into border communities. An estimated
7,000 people have been released into Pima County over the past several
months. Once released into the community we are obligated to provide
adequate care for them until they transition to other locations across
the United States pending asylum hearings. This has nearly collapsed
our local social services network. My detention facility is currently
providing sack lunches for up to 150 persons per day to help with
feeding. Social service resources that should address local issues of
hunger and homelessness are now completely unable to do so, as we now
must provide care for people that really are the responsibility of the
Federal Government.
The Rand Corporation recently published a study indicating that
human smugglers may make as much as $2.3 billion per year smuggling
people into the United States. While the drug cartels may not be
directly involved in human trafficking, they profit from human
smuggling by requiring a tax for traveling through cartel-controlled
avenues into the United States. Many migrants pay as much as $7,000 to
smugglers to be brought into our country. Too often they are abandoned
a short distance into the United States without sufficient water or
resources. This frequently leads to death due to environmental
exposure. Women frequently pay by being sexually victimized. Being
smuggled into this country is not a harmless or benign activity. It
leads to financial, criminal, and sexual victimization of migrants and
tragically death.
People in many parts of the world face desperate conditions
Americans can hardly imagine. They seek a better life for themselves
and their families. A secure border, along with more sensible legal
immigration policies, would dissuade the dangerous and often deadly
behavior of engaging smugglers and traversing hundreds of miles of
remote areas.
The lack of border security is an undeniable human rights issue.
Sheriffs have been, and will remain, consistent in their stance on
border security. Let us reiterate and be absolutely clear, we need to
secure our Southern Border with Mexico immediately for public safety,
National security, and human rights reasons.
how to secure the border
There has been much focus on ``The Wall.'' The term ``The Wall''
has become synonymous with border security. This term has become a
lightning rod of division that has detracted, more than added, to
thoughtful approaches to securing our border. ``The Wall'' alone is a
sound bite, not a cogent public policy position.
The U.S./Mexico border is nearly 2,000 linear miles. It presents
topography, environmental and land use challenges to what might be
considered a traditional wall. There are mountains, waterways, Native
American Reservations, and environmentally sensitive areas where
traditional physical barriers will be difficult, if not impossible, to
construct. Some areas are very remote and lack the supporting
infrastructure to facilitate a massive construction project of this
scale. Even if properly funded and enjoying wide-spread public support,
it would take many years to construct a wall across the entire border
with Mexico. We cannot wait for years and be hostage to the future
whims of subsequent political leadership to secure our border. The time
is now.
There are many places where physical barriers make sense and are in
fact the best solution to securing the border. They should be
constructed immediately. The strategic deployment of physical barriers
along our Southern Border is not racist, not partisan, and not the
result of imagined threat; it is good public policy. In fact, at one
time or another doing so has been embraced by both political parties.
In other locations, we need to turn to technology, which thanks to
modern advances is robust and effective. In other areas, we need more
human resources closer to the border to ensure security. Likely, in all
locations we will need some blend of physical barriers, technology, and
human resources to be successful.
The ultimate goal of these efforts should be the complete and total
operational security of our Southern Border. Endless debate about what
constitutes a ``wall'' and how it is paid for it do little to advance
this element of much-needed border security.
As we discuss border security, we need to remember the importance
of addressing our Ports of Entry (POE). POEs are not being discussed
enough and remain a major vulnerability for drug trafficking. We have
to ensure security while still supporting the effective flow of
legitimate transnational commerce. Commerce with Mexico through the
POEs is vital to Border States and pumps billions into our economy.
Allowing Mexican citizens the ability to cross into the United States
to engage in legitimate commerce is also vital to the economy of border
regions. The POEs need better staffing and technology to support the
efficient flow of legitimate transnational commerce while having the
ability to detect and interdict illegitimate/criminal transnational
activity.
POE's are a current vulnerability for the trafficking of drugs
concealed in vehicles or upon persons. Some argue that the drug problem
could be solved by simply shoring up the POEs and that other border
securing measures would therefore be unnecessary. While it is true that
the majority of drugs trafficked into the United States are currently
coming through the POEs, rather than between them, this assertion is
logically nonsensical. To believe otherwise one would have to assume
that if it became impossible to traffic drugs through the POEs that the
drug cartels would fold up operations and find legitimate employment.
This, of course, is absurd. The cartels are the ultimate
entrepreneurial organizations. They will simply exploit the next
vulnerability. Addressing POEs will increase, not decrease, the need
for security between the POEs to address the issue of drug trafficking.
We should not let partisan politics stand in the way of securing
the border. It is clear we have done so for many decades and through
several administrations. We need to secure the border for public
safety, National security, and human rights reasons. The mechanism of
how this is done is far less important to sheriffs than getting it
done. The idea that a wall is the only solution because it is permanent
is misguided. A wall that is not monitored, enforced, or maintained is
only an impediment not real security.
proactive immigration enforcement
Sheriffs support the increased attention given to the border and
welcome additional Federal resources to handle the immigration
situation. However, sheriffs neither have the capacity to engage in
proactive enforcement of Federal immigration laws, nor the
responsibility to do so. Federal authorities best address these
violations of Federal law. That being stated, sheriffs are steadfastly
committed to cooperation and collaboration with all our Federal law
enforcement partners. We value these relationships and we remain
committed to working together for the safety and security of the
citizens that we serve.
closing
Sheriffs know first-hand that there is in fact a crisis on our
border. We live with the impacts of this crisis every day. We fully
support efforts to secure our border. Moreover, we demand action on
this issue. There are compelling and undeniable reasons to do so. We
need to move forward and secure our border immediately. The investment
made in doing so will be returned many times over in reduced crime,
reduced illegal drug use, and a reduction of other societal and
humanitarian costs. Sheriffs are committed to providing the highest
level of public safety services to all people of our counties. We
proactively attack crime problems and criminal behavior without regard
to the immigration status of the criminals involved and will continue
to do so.
I am grateful of the opportunity to provide testimony to this
subcommittee. It is important, if not critical, that you hear from
border county sheriffs who are local experts on these matters with no
agenda other than providing public safety to our respective
communities.
Miss Rice. I want to thank all the witnesses for their
testimony, and I will remind each Member that he or she will
have 5 minutes to question the panel.
I will now recognize myself for questions.
Bishop, I would like to start with you. There has been a
lot of heated rhetoric coming from this administration, and
specifically, the President, but others in the administration
regarding the type of people who are coming here and requesting
asylum.
I think it is really important if we are going to have an
honest conversation here for us to agree that we are going to
deal with the facts. So what I would like to ask you to do is
if you could just talk more about the people that you are
servicing--asylum seekers, the family units.
Can you just talk more about what brought them here, what
they are fleeing, their character, what they are like? I mean,
if you listen to this administration, these are all murderers
and rapists and drug dealers, and I just don't think that that
is factually accurate. But tell me if I am wrong.
Bishop Seitz. We who work with the asylum seekers every day
wish that those who speak about them have the chance to simply
meet them and talk to them, and we invite people to come and
visit our border area and to spend a few moments with them.
We have been receiving, for instance, at the shelter on my
property around 80 a day, as an average, and I have the
opportunity just about every day to go by and visit. I find
people that are extremely humble, very grateful, good moms and
dads who have loving relationships with their children.
I think that if that relationship wasn't there, it would be
pretty obvious to us, but we see the way that they care for
them and their concern for them, for instance, when they have a
cold or a fever or something like that. They are people of
tremendous faith, and they are often asking us to pray and to
pray with them.
I have been inspired by my opportunity to be with them. We
have--in the months since November that we have opened, had
this shelter. We have not had a single experience of violence
or any kind of expression like that--of anger, even. All we
have found is people humbly trying to escape very, very
difficult situations in their home countries. Some of their
children show signs of malnutrition that they just--because of
the chaos and violence in their countries, they can't make a
living anymore.
Miss Rice. Thank you, Bishop.
Mr. Olivares, I want to talk to you because I have to say
that I was--I was really well-educated being recently down at
the border, and I wish that every single American, and
certainly--well, at the very least, every Member of Congress
could go and look.
We happened to be in McAllen, and I would just like to see
if you could kind-of expound on where the wall is going up, and
how--to just explain a little bit more about this no-man's-
land, because I didn't understand it until I actually saw it;
that the wall is not actually preventing anyone from coming to
this country and claiming asylum. It literally is just walling
off all those thousands of acres and taking property from
people without just compensation.
When I--you know, I am from New York. I knew the President
before he was President, and I would--I feel safe saying that
if anyone tried to take any part of his real estate empire away
from him, he would not allow that to happen. But he didn't have
to worry about that because he had an army of lawyers, and he
could afford to pay for it. These people don't.
So I think it is really important for the American people,
and certainly Members of Congress, to understand where this
wall--I mean, we met with a CBP officer, and we said: What is
the No. 1 thing that we can give you that will help you here?
They didn't say a wall, he didn't say a wall, he said we need
more personnel, which is what Congress allotted $65 million
for.
So having said all of that, if you could just explain a
little more about what--just if you can, what is going to be
created by putting this wall in a place that is--really just
going to create, as you said, a no-man's-land?
Mr. Olivares. Thank you, Madam Chair. That is right. In
Hidalgo County, there is a flood control levee that runs
parallel to the river, more or less. Now it is not exactly
parallel because the river turns and twists, but on that border
control levee, that is where the Government is planning to
build the border wall.
Now that levee is, in some places, half a mile from the
river, three-quarters of a mile, over a mile from the river,
and all of that area is going to be walled off completely. Now,
who lives in that area? One of our clients, Mr. Cavazos, he is
a 69-year-old man, he is paralyzed from the waist down.
He makes a living by raising cattle and leasing some of his
riverfront property for recreational purposes. Now his entire
property is going to be walled off. His tenants have already
explained that if the wall is built as planned, they are not
going to renew their lease, so he is going to lose his
livelihood, him and his family.
These are communities that have been there for a long time.
I wish these were, you know, individuals concerned about losing
their empire. They are losing their livelihood, it is changing
their way of life, and this stretches along the southeast tip
of Texas, Cameron County, Hidalgo County, and Starr Counties.
Another concern there is the flooding concerns. We are in a
hurricane zone. Every summer, we get tropical depressions,
tropical storms, and hurricanes most summers. Now, what is
going to happen when you wall that off?
If the river overflows, the wall is going to prevent water
from running over. Even though there are still borders, still
posts that are going to make up the wall, that gets clogged up
with any flooding, with debris and branches and trash and what
not.
So that is going to do two things. It is--the water is
going to stagnate in the no-man's-land and is going to divert
disproportionately to the Mexican side.
On the northern side of the wall, especially in the more
populated areas in Starr County, such as Rio Grande City and
Roma, Texas, the water that would normally run off into the
river and drain into the Gulf of Mexico is going to be
prevented from draining into the river because of the wall.
It is literally going to create a dam effect and it is
going to flood those cities. In my written submission, I have
included some of the flooding models that have been developed
about it and I worry seriously that 1 day, when the next
serious hurricane hits our area, if this wall is built, we are
going to be crying over the deaths of people quite literally.
Miss Rice. Well, it is also not going to prevent anyone
from crossing and reaching American soil. Thank you. Mr.
Higgins, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Let us clarify that the layered security that we describe
as called for on our Southern Border, calls for enhanced
technology to detect a pending illegal crossing, enhanced
physical barrier to delay and deter that illegal crossing,
enhance capacity to respond to the detected and delayed or
deterred illegal crossing, with all-weather roads, additional
vehicles, manpower, et cetera, and enhanced capacity to process
those that have been apprehended once they have crossed into
our country, if they do so successfully.
So did the concept of a--that has been sort-of presented to
America, let us be solid with this, my friends. I thank you for
appearing, I appreciate your passion and I recognize our
differences in ideological perspective of this challenge we
face.
But we are at a point of collapse in our Southern Border.
The sovereignty of our Nation is at stake. We have to move
forward with a cautious focus on what it is to maintain the
America that we serve.
This layer of security that we are describing is not the
Great Wall of China. The--I would ask Sheriff Napier, regarding
manpower and humanitarian crisis--there is a crisis on the law
enforcement side of this patch. If you had more money, could
you hire more deputies, sheriff?
Sheriff Napier. Ranking Member Higgins, it is very
difficult right now to hire law enforcement officers. If we had
more money--currently struggling, as most law enforcement
executives are, with hiring good people. It is a very difficult
environment right now to hire people in the law enforcement,
whether they be on the Federal side or the local side. We need
some----
Mr. Higgins. How long have you been a sheriff on the
border, sir? Just to clarify?
Sheriff Napier. I have been in law enforcement at the
border area for 30 years and----
Mr. Higgins. Have you ever seen anything like this right
now?
Sheriff Napier. I have never seen anything like our current
crisis. The crisis has always existed. The current crisis is
staggering.
Mr. Higgins. Are there locations along the border that you
could refer to that would benefit from enhanced physical
barriers with 21st Century technology to detect and with
enhanced capacity to respond? Are there areas that--of our
Southern Border that would be more secure should we make this
investment?
Sheriff Napier. This strategic deployment of physical
barriers along our Southern Border will always be part of a
total border security package and administrations, both
Republican and Democrat, have realized that in the past and
supported physical barrier deployment.
It will always be just one part of this total picture of
border security. We will always need to buttress that with
technology and human resources. So it is going to have to be a
very comprehensive solution because the border is not a single
thing, it is 2,000 linear miles and varying topography, varying
land use----
Mr. Higgins. Exactly.
Sheriff Napier. Issues. So we are going to have to look at
a very comprehensive solution.
Mr. Higgins. Thank you for that. Bishop, I thank you for
your service to the church and to our fellow man, sir. The sun
does not set upon the glory of God through the church and I
thank you for your service and your compassion.
I would ask you, does the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops work with its counterparts in Central America to warn
parents and children of the dangers of this trek? You talked
about malnutrition, and I am certainly concerned, as a
compassionate man, about these families.
What is the church doing in Central America to stem this
flow before we reach this humanitarian crisis that you are
encountering in your shelters?
Bishop Seitz. Right. Thank you very much for that question.
I have had the opportunity to serve for a short time in Central
America and to visit, and I have friends who are members of the
clergy there. They have been working very hard since my first
exposure to the life there to dissuade people from leaving
their home and to begin to address to the degree that----
Mr. Higgins. Just in the interest of time, bishop, I don't
mean to cut you off. So is there an active engagement between
the church and authorities and organizations in Central America
to deter this trafficking of humans?
Bishop Seitz. There is an active engagement. But the
problem is that the governments are so weak and so corrupt that
there is no authority on the governmental level that people can
go to. The church is about the only one.
Mr. Higgins. Thank you for that answer. I have one brief
question, Madam, if you will indulge me, for the bishop.
Regarding the sovereignty of the church and as it relates
and compares with the sovereignty of our Nation, the church has
been a light for the world for 2,000 years, a place of refuge,
a place where any child of God could seek spiritual prosperity.
But the sovereignty of the church has been protected by the
security of the church. One of the most famous walls in history
is the wall around the Vatican.
I would ask you, Bishop, in the area that you serve, do
your churches lock their doors after hours?
Bishop Seitz. Many of them do. I would point out that that
wall you refer to at the Vatican also has arms embracing and
opening to the world. If you have been at the----
Mr. Higgins. Yes, as we do. So we have 328 ports of entry
for legal entry into our country in the United States of
America.
Madam Chairwoman, I thank you for your indulgence. My time
has expired.
Thank you all for appearing today.
Miss Rice. The Chair recognizes for 5 minutes the gentleman
from New Jersey, Mr. Payne.
Mr. Payne. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Bishop, can you discuss the long-term impacts of the
President's policies on immigrant families? How will the
continuation of these policies affect the ability of
organizations such as yours to care for families?
We see that we have gotten into this habit of locking
children in cages, in fences, and feeling that that will deter
people from coming here.
But there has to be something that is pushing these people
to come here, irrespective of the dangers that they know,
irrespective of the plight that they might face, that they are
willing to take that chance.
You know, Moses was put in a cradle and pushed down a river
in order to save him. That must have been dangerous to do. But
the options that his mother had at that time, she was willing
to take that chance. Talk to me about the impacts of these
policies of the President.
Bishop Seitz. Well, one of the most important points that I
think I could share today is that if we really want to address
border security, we need to look at the sending countries and
their circumstances there.
Mr. Payne. Right.
Bishop Seitz. Which are beyond what most Americans can even
imagine. People are fleeing. They are not simply coming because
they want a better car. They are fleeing for their lives and
for their children's lives.
We as a country can do much to support the improvement of
the situations in those countries, as we worked with Colombia,
for instance, to improve their circumstances.
What we are creating here in this country now is extremely
concerning. The incarceration that many of these asylum seekers
are receiving is having long-term effects on their health,
especially the health of their children. I talked to kids who
were incarcerated at Tornillo and they are still having
nightmares and having to deal with their experience.
Families that, even with documents, very often are living
in fear when they see Border Patrol vehicles and so on, because
they believe that simply because they look like they are coming
from that place and might not have documents, they are already
under suspicion.
Mr. Payne. Absolutely. We know in a lot of the cities and
areas along the border that have American citizens that might
look like the people, the immigrants that are coming up, in
cities, they are stopped on the streets and asked, you know,
Are you legal? Who are you--what are you--I mean, you know, I
am just concerned about the road that this country is going
down.
I mean, you know, when was asylum right now that it--like,
wants to be vilified? It makes me ask what people are allowed,
you know, to come here, give us your tired, your poor, your
huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Now the borders are
locked. No entrance. We don't want anyone.
Bishop Seitz. Yes. It is also interesting that we helped
write those asylum laws. We have held other countries
accountable, who have received a much higher percentage than we
are beginning to look at here in this country.
Mr. Payne. Yes. Well, thank you. It just makes me wonder
what it is about these people, that now we are--want to shut
our borders.
With that, I will yield back.
Miss Rice. Chair recognizes for 5 minutes the gentleman
from Pennsylvania, Mr. Joyce.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for having
this hearing today.
Sheriff Napier, thank you for coming before the
subcommittee. I would specifically like to thank you for a
portion of your written statement where you said: ``To suggest
that there does not exist a crisis on our Southern Border is
intellectually dishonest. To be steadfast in that assertion,
despite clear evidence to the contrary, is to be intellectually
dishonest with malice. To promulgate this idea that it is a
crisis created or manufactured by the current administration is
simply false.''
I recently was part of a Congressional delegation, the trip
to Yuma, Arizona, a neighbor of yours. I must say, I could not
agree with you any more, that your assessment reflects that
this clearly is a crisis, sir.
While I was there, I witnessed first-hand the lack of a
secure border in areas along the Colorado River, which allows
the cartels to smuggle drugs into our country, drugs that end
up affecting all of American citizens on one level or another.
There is also a newer problem, with a surge of people who
seek to be apprehended, seek to be brought into custody and say
the prescribed words and be allowed to have access to American
jobs, American health care, education, like they are law-
abiding Americans, with no ability to verify their claims.
Is the experience that I recently had while I was in
Arizona with a delegation of Congressmen and women, is this
experience what you see on a daily basis, sir?
Sheriff Napier. Thank you for the question. It is clear
that we have a public safety and humanitarian crisis on our
Southern Border. We know that the escalation of the trafficking
of hard narcotics into our country is unprecedented.
I don't say that as a partisan statement or a political
statement. It is a factual one. We have never seen quantities
of methamphetamine coming into our country or heroin in the
quantities that it is coming in now.
When we interdict 58 pounds of methamphetamine, we know two
things: One, that methamphetamine is not being cooked in the
United States, and furthermore, that is not going to be
consumed in my county, it is going all over our Nation.
When we interdicted 13,000 fentanyl pills, we know they
were not manufactured in the United States and they were not
destined for consumption in Pima County, this is a National
problem. The public safety aspect of our border crisis is
compelling.
It is not a political statement. I am charged with public
safety in my county, not partisan politics. The humanitarian
crisis is also compelling. Deputies recover dozens of bodies a
year in the deserts of my county.
How we cannot think of that as a humanitarian crisis--and
as the bishop points out, people in Central America, El
Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras are facing desperate life
conditions that we, in this room, with food in our stomachs, a
roof over our head and safety, cannot imagine and they are
coming here out of desperation.
But that journey is arduous, it is dangerous, it is--it is
fraught with all kinds of perils, criminality, sexual abuse,
financial abuse. This is a humanitarian and public safety
crisis of compelling and unprecedented nature. It is not a
manufactured crisis or a partisan crisis.
I hope that the people in Washington, DC, can come across
the aisle, both Republican and Democrat, and look for solutions
to this problem, because long after this is not fodder for
political debate in Washington DC, Pima County and the border
region will be my home. That is my home, it is where my family
lives, it is where my granddaughter lives.
So this is significantly important to me and the people of
my county.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you, sir. Like you, I do believe it is
necessary to build protective barriers where it makes sense. We
do have the ability, with some companies like I saw, to deploy
a mile of new barrier every single day.
In the interim, CBP has a critical shortage of manpower,
which has already resulted in agents being pulled from their
primary role in order to protect the border. DHS and the
President have explored the option of increasing the National
Guard presence to alleviate personnel shortages.
In your experience, Sheriff, do you believe that that would
be helpful?
Sheriff Napier. It does have great efficacy when we can
take military assets, military personnel, and deploy them to
non-enforcement, non-contact-type activities that otherwise
Border Patrol or CBP would be tasked with doing.
That allows them to deploy their resources on a front-line
basis to bolster their capacity. So it makes perfect sense from
a public policy standpoint and from an operational deployment
of personnel to bolster those resources with military personnel
in non-enforcement, non-contact roles, yes.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you, sir. Thank you for protecting our
country. Thank you for protecting the sovereignty of our
country.
Sheriff Napier. Thank you.
Mr. Joyce. Madam Chair, I yield.
Miss Rice. Thank you. The Chair recognizes for 5 minutes
the gentlewoman from New Mexico, Ms. Torres Small.
Ms. Torres Small. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Barela, it is great to see a fellow Las Crucen at the
witness panel and thank you so much for your work in border
life, border trade, and border opportunity, I deeply appreciate
it.
As you know, last month CBP reassigned hundreds of port
officers to Border Patrol sectors along the Southwestern
Border, and in my district in Santa Teresa port of entry, which
with you are well familiar, we lost an estimated 20 percent of
our work force, resulting in the closure of multiple commercial
lanes and a wait time of up to 6 hours for trucks to cross the
border.
Can you just please describe how these wait times are
affecting the business of local companies that depend on a
stable supply chain?
Mr. Barela. Congresswoman, it is great to see you, as well,
and also a fellow Georgetown grad, so--if I might be digressing
a bit. But I want to be very clear about what is happening with
the wait times, and they are indeed starting to have a very
devastating impact on the Borderplex region.
Between 15 percent and 30 percent of the retail trade on a
given time, any time of the year in our Borderplex region, is
done by Mexican nationals. Frankly, we don't have the bricks
and mortar problem that many, many communities have because
Mexican nationals, with the burgeoning middle class, because of
trade--and I mentioned in my comments that the unemployment
rate has dropped, is creating this type of opportunity.
So, yes, we are also experiencing problems with individuals
crossing to support retail trade in our area on the U.S. side
of the border. The manufacturing sector, the logistics sector,
all of the other sectors that are into the symbiotic
relationship between the two countries are beginning to have a
severe and very, very adverse impact.
We represent over 250 businesses in our region, and we have
had dozens of people call us in the last couple of weeks
describing the very hard, very difficult impact, adverse impact
that they have experienced.
In many cases, there have been temporary layoffs, there
have been shuttering of businesses, there have been trucking
companies that have been idling for up to 24 hours, not only in
Santa Teresa but on the El Paso side of the border, and that is
simply unacceptable.
There are businesses in each and every one of your
districts and in States that rely upon this very sophisticated
supply chain that will have to come to a closure situation
sooner than later if we don't resolve this issue.
Ms. Torres Small. Thank you, Mr. Barela. I would love to
let you go on, I have a few more questions----
Mr. Barela. Sure.
Ms. Torres Small. But I deeply appreciate your testimony
there.
You mentioned some of the modernization that we have
experienced in Santa Teresa. But would you say--do you believe
that there are more Federal investments that could be made to
allow Santa Teresa port of entry to continue to increase trade
to Mexico?
Mr. Barela. Absolutely.
Ms. Torres Small. Thank you.
Mr. Barela. Thank you, Congresswoman. The----
Ms. Torres Small. Thank you. I think just a yes or no on
this one, sir.
Mr. Barela. Yes, absolutely.
Ms. Torres Small. Thank you. I would like to move on now
because, as you know last month, CBP began releasing thousands
of individuals, mostly families, into border communities with a
notice to appear at immigration hearings.
In my district, CBP has at times released hundreds of
people a day. Our local and county governments, non-profit
organizations, and faith-based organizations have stepped up
with empathy, care, and compassion, but the administration has
failed in assisting these local communities with this Federal
issue.
Bishop Seitz, how is your organization affected when CBP
does not notify you in advance of releasing hundreds of
individuals and family members into your community?
Bishop Seitz. It has a tremendous effect on us because we
are dealing, as I mentioned, with something like 800 to 1,000
people a day. We are capable of receiving them and providing
them a place, but if they are simply--it is simply announced
that they are going to be released at the last moment or, you
know, without any preparation, it is difficult.
Border Patrol hasn't had experience in that. They used to
hand them off to ICE, but now that is not always happening.
Ms. Torres Small. I appreciate you bringing up that point.
What are the challenges you see with helping migrants reach
their final destinations and arranging travel arrangements that
the sponsors are paying for?
Bishop Seitz. Well, very often, we are finding that people
are being released without having been processed, without
receiving the papers that they need, without the documents that
they would need to travel further, and also sometimes to the
streets.
So we are unable to connect them with that network we have
created to assist them.
Ms. Torres Small. Thank you, Bishop.
I yield back.
Miss Rice. Thank you. The Chair now recognizes the
gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Guest.
Mr. Guest. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
To each of you, I want to thank you for taking time away
from your families, for traveling to be with us today to
discuss these important issues.
I believe that what we are talking about today is the most
pressing issue that we face as a Nation. It is something that
we are grappling with each and every day as Members of
Congress.
Sheriff, I want to thank you for your 30-plus years of
service to the people of your State, the people of your
district. I want to ask you--you have--throughout your
testimony, I see that you speak of what appear to be multiple
crises that exist along our Southwest Border.
You speak of a drug trafficking crisis. I see here that you
have listed, over a period of just over a year, 5 different
seizures of methamphetamine that total over 200 pounds of
methamphetamine.
You talk about seizures of fentanyl. You talk about 1
seizure alone in 2018 being 13,000 dosage units. I don't see
anything here about cocaine. I am assuming that we have not
stopped the flow of cocaine into the country and that we are
continuing to see that drug flow. Would that be correct?
Sheriff Napier. That is correct. Cocaine is less pronounced
right now, but methamphetamine and fentanyl, the opiate-based
drugs, are our major concern. But cocaine has not gone away by
a long stretch.
Mr. Guest. Sheriff, you talked about, or touched on it very
briefly, the amount of narcotics that you are seeing coming
across our border, that is not personal use. Those are drugs
that are intended to be introduced first into the country and
then those are drugs that are going to be shipped across our
country and sold in each of our communities to our families and
friends. Is that correct?
Sheriff Napier. That is correct. Shocking is the fact that
there were 70,000 opioid-related overdose deaths last year.
That is more significant in number than the number of deaths
from automobile accidents. Deputies now carry medicine on their
person--medicine--like they would a flashlight or a radio--in
the hope of saving some lives.
This is unthinkable. To not caption this as a crisis, I
don't understand.
Mr. Guest. Sheriff, I want to talk very briefly also--you
talk on page 4 of your report about the human trafficking
crisis. Can you talk about that just very briefly, what you are
seeing along the Southwest Border?
Sheriff Napier. Well, we know that the migrants are being
exploited both financially and sexually, criminally, in their
journey from Central America, in Mexico and in the United
States. Estimates say that some of these migrants are paying
upwards of $7,000 to be shepherded into the United States and
then brought a very short distance into the United States and
then abandoned. As a result, they don't have sufficient water
or food to care for themselves and that ends in death in the
desert.
We know that the human smuggling--the RAND Corporation just
did a study that says human smuggling may be upward of a $2
billion industry, operating in collaboration with the drug
cartels, so they may not be actually involved, but they control
the avenues of ingress into the United States.
So this is a very serious public safety problem that--the
profiteering off of the migrants is a very significant problem,
and to the tune of probably upward of $1 billion a year.
Mr. Guest. Sheriff, you also said in your report there on
page 4 that just this week--and that is the week that you wrote
the report--that there were heavily-armed persons who were
observed escorting a migrant woman and child at the border. You
say in your report these individuals were wearing tactical gear
and possessing military-style equipment. The public safety
threat of this is significant. Could you expound on that just a
little bit, please?
Sheriff Napier. This is a relatively new phenomenon, but we
had on video surveillance a woman and an 8-year-old child being
escorted by 5 heavily armed military-style-equipped persons,
shepherded them to the border and then crossed the border,
which obviously presents a public safety challenge to us in law
enforcement that might have confronted these people.
They were heavily armed. They were very, very serious
criminals. We don't know what engagement this woman and her
child made with these armed persons to get there, which ought
to give anybody pause from a humanitarian standpoint of what
agreement was made between that woman and an 8-year-old child
to be brought into the United States in that manner?
Mr. Guest. So we have operating to some extent across our
Southwest Border heavily-armed individuals who are wearing
tactical gear and using military equipment that are involved in
both human trafficking and drug trafficking. Is that your
testimony, Sheriff?
Sheriff Napier. That is my testimony and that is also
something that is not new. It has been going on for 30 years.
It was marijuana trade prior to this, and it has been going on
for decades.
Mr. Guest. Then, finally, you speak about the immigration
crisis and the effect that it has on your community, on page 5
and then page 6, about the near-collapse of social services
networks and the ability to handle the increase in immigration.
Can you speak on that very briefly?
Sheriff Napier. Yes, after the asylum seekers are granted
an asylum hearing, they are being released into our community.
We have, as compassionate Christian people, an affirmative
responsibility to provide adequate care for them. That has
really strained our NGO's and our social service network, to
the point of collapse.
We had 7,000 people released just over the last several
months, more than 200 just in the past week. It is very
straining to our social service networks.
We need some support out of Washington, DC, to our NGO's,
our local nonprofits and our law enforcement and be able to
confront this crisis. We need real relief. We need real
resources. We need meaningful action out of Washington, DC, to
confront this crisis that is not academic in our part of the
world. It is a very real thing that we live with every day.
Mr. Guest. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I yield back.
Miss Rice. Thank you.
The Chair recognizes for 5 minutes the gentleman from
Texas, Mr. Green.
Mr. Green of Texas. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I thank the witnesses for appearing.
Bishop, with your consent and permission, may I call you
Father?
Bishop Seitz. You may.
Mr. Green of Texas. My grandfather was a preacher, and I
have great reverence and respect for persons who are what, in
my community, we call men of God.
Bishop, you may not be familiar with this, so I will call
it to your attention more specifically. Voltaire, the great
writer, philosopher, intellectual, reminded us that those who
can make you believe absurdities can make you commit
atrocities.
Bishop, would you agree with Voltaire?
Bishop Seitz. Certainly.
Mr. Green of Texas. Father, if I may ask, do you believe
that the women and children who are paying these inordinate
amounts of money, who are putting their children at risk of
being harmed, or the term sexually assaulted--do you believe
that they are an invading force?
Bishop Seitz. I think it is unfortunate when they are
characterized in that kind of manner, when people speak in
generalities to the very small percentage who are taking
advantage of the situation, as though that characterizes the
whole.
Mr. Green of Texas. May I assume that you do not consider
them an invading force?
Bishop Seitz. I don't think we have ever seen an invasion
like that before.
Mr. Green of Texas. Bishop, Father, if I may say so, do you
think that these persons should pay a fee to be processed, who
are coming? Traditionally our law has not required a fee of
them. Do you think they should pay a fee?
Bishop Seitz. Well, it is something I would have to give
more thought to, to give you a complete answer. Certainly they
can be part of that process. But unfortunately, the fees that I
know many people are facing are extraordinary right now. I have
talked to people from Canada who received citizenship here, it
cost them $10,000.
Mr. Green of Texas. Well, we are talking about now those
who are seeking asylum, who have traditionally not had to do
this in the sense that I am hearing now? I just heard a report
about some desire to affix a fee.
But moving right along. You mentioned Canada. Now, Father,
this question goes to the heart. Do you believe that if these
were white babies coming from Canada, we would separate them
from their mothers to the extent that we have? That we would
lose them, such that we cannot reconnect them to their parents?
Dear Father, do you believe this?
Bishop Seitz. I am concerned that, at least unconsciously,
there may well be a bias against people of color that sometimes
expresses itself among some.
Mr. Green of Texas. Dear Sheriff, my dear brother, I assure
you, I concur with you and I think that there is more than a
humanitarian crisis. But I ask you candidly, do you believe
that, just as it relates to the humanitarian crisis you have
identified, do you believe that a wall alone will solve the
humanitarian crisis? A simple yes or no will do for starters,
given that I have little time left.
Sheriff Napier. If you are limiting me to a yes or no
answer, the answer is no, it will not solve the problem by
itself.
Mr. Green of Texas. I thank you. I believe you have the
intellect to explain further that there are other aspects of
this that have to be dealt with. I concur with you.
But I also know this. A great country is not going to be
measured--its greatness is not going to be measured by how we
treat the people who live in the suites of life. It will be
measured by how we treat people in the streets of life, people
who are coming, people who should be allowed to benefit from
the Golden Rule that we would apply to ourselves, Father. Do
unto others.
My time is up and I thank the Chair for the additional
seconds. I yield back.
Miss Rice. Thank you.
The Chair recognizes for 5 minutes the gentleman from
California, Mr. Correa.
Mr. Correa. Chairwoman Rice and Ranking Member Higgins,
thank you very much, both of you, for holding this most
important hearing.
Gentlemen, thank you for being here, as well. It is a very
interesting issue we have before us. I just got back from
Mexico City. I was there, Thursday, talking to Mexican
officials about NAFTA, NAFTA II.
While I was there, the United States became--I should say
Mexico became America's biggest trading partner, to a great
extent because of the tariffs on Canadian and Chinese products.
But you begin to see the patterns here.
If you were to take a pencil and draw a circle, plus, minus
200 miles on each side of the border, you would probably have
the 10th-largest economy in the world. Just that border region.
A lot of economic activity.
Two months ago, I was in--took a tour, Honduras, Guatemala,
El Salvador. Wanted to look at what was going on at just where
folks lived, try to live, and where people immigrate from.
Saw a lot of eye-openers. The biggest thing that I came
back with, the a-ha, was that all of our drug money, people,
our insatiable thirst for drugs in this country, it doesn't
matter how you get it here. This society consumes drugs at an
alarming rate.
Those dollars over there are creating so much chaos, so
much corruption that there isn't anybody there who can resist
that. They tell the folks over there: Either you take the gold,
or we are going to put some lead in your head.
That is what is creating a lot of the chaos. There are no
institutions of law. You don't have predictability so
businesses can set up to create jobs because there is so much
corruption.
At the same time, I did find some silver linings in those
dark clouds. In El Salvador, I got to visit a fusion center.
Sheriff, you might know what a fusion center is, where we had
the USDA, U.S. FBI, U.S. authorities, local authorities working
together to identify the bad guys, the bad girls coming in and
out of Central America and the United States.
Sheriff, you mentioned a couple of things. You know, I am
trying to figure out the big picture. We can talk about the
refugee crisis. We can talk about records. But the fact of the
matter is, we have had a refugee crisis from Central America in
this country since the 1980's. Yet we have ignored it.
Now, because these caravans--7,000 people--and I asked
people in Honduras, I said, Mr. President, who is putting these
caravans together? Could never get a straight answer. I know
social media had something to do with it.
But I look at it from a political perspective. Both sides
have something to gain. You got a TV camera show 7,000 people,
it is an invasion. But 20 years ago, it was quiet. Unless we
create economic development in Central America, you are not
going to stop this crisis.
It is interesting, because the Chinese--talking to El
Salvador's president, the Chinese want to build a deep water
port in El Salvador. They want to buy 75 percent of the
Salvadoran coastline to bring them economic development.
I propose to you gentlemen, folks, this is our economic
sphere of influence. It is to our best interest to stabilize
Central America.
Great speakers, I have heard your comments. We do have a
crisis. It is a humanitarian crisis driven by people that are
desperate. My district is 200 miles from the border. The other
day, my local priest from one of my local churches came to me
with a refugee candidate, both hands chopped off. Is this a
person who would be a refugee? We are going to have to figure
it out.
But, Sheriff, you did have an interesting thought, which
was to open up centers to apply for refugee status in Central
America. I hope we figure this out. Try to put the politics out
of this issue and work on a, for lack of a better term, a
Marshall plan from Central America.
Because 70 years ago, it was to our best interest to
stabilize Europe. It is to our best interest today to stabilize
the Americas. It is common sense. Mexico is kind-of stable. Now
we have got to figure out Central America. By the way, the
Mexicans are also addressing this issue because it is causing
them challenges, as well.
Madam Secretary, I am running out of--or, Madam
Chairperson, I am running out of time. I yield the remainder of
my 2 seconds.
Miss Rice. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Correa.
I thank the witnesses for their valuable testimony and the
Members for their questions. The Members of the subcommittee
may have additional questions for the witnesses, and we ask
that you respond expeditiously in writing to those questions.
With that, I ask unanimous consent to insert a statement
from Church World Service into the hearing record. Without
objection.
[The information follows:]
Statement of the Church World Service (CWS)
April 30, 2019
As a 73-year-old humanitarian organization representing 37
Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox communions and 23 refugee
resettlement offices across 17 States, Church World Service urges
Congress to cut funding for immigration detention, deportation, and
border militarization and to demand accountability over the Department
of Homeland Security (OHS). We urge Congress to reduce funding for
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border
Protection (CBP) that has fueled family separation and the immoral and
illegal treatment of asylum seekers and other immigrants.
CWS urges the administration to rescind its April 2018 information-
sharing agreement between DHS and the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) that turns HHS into an immigration enforcement agency
and prolongs family separation. The agreement ``requires HHS to share
the immigration status of potential sponsors and other adults in their
households with OHS to facilitate HHS's background checks.'' The
population of detained unaccompanied children ballooned, and although
HHS announced that it would stop requiring fingerprints from all
household members of sponsors, ORR continues to share information about
all potential sponsors with OHS, needlessly prolonging child detention.
CWS is strongly opposed to any proposal that would undermine Flores
protections or increase family incarceration, which is plagued with
systemic abuse and inadequate access to medical care. These conditions
are unacceptable, especially for children, pregnant and nursing
mothers, and individuals with serious medical conditions. The American
Association of Pediatrics has found that family detention facilities do
not meet basic standards for children and ``no child should be in
detention centers or separated from parents.'' CWS urges Congress to
reject any proposal that would expand family detention or violate the
Flores agreement's long-standing consensus that children should not be
detained for longer than 20 days.
CWS is equally troubled by proposals to weaken or eliminate
provisions in the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act
(TVPRA), which provides important procedural protections for
unaccompanied children in order to accurately determine if they are
eligible for relief as victims of trafficking or persecution. Weakening
existing legal protections, especially for children, undermines the
United States' moral authority as a leader in combating human
trafficking and increases vulnerabilities for trafficking victims by
curtailing access to due process, legal representation, and child-
appropriate services.
Congress and the administration should utilize community-based,
least-restrictive alternatives to detention (ATDs) that connect
individuals with family members, faith-based hospitality communities,
and local services to help them navigate the legal system. For example,
the Family Case Management Program (FCMP) is effective and less
expensive than detention, allowing people to be released, connecting
them with legal counsel, providing case supervision, and helping with
child care. The program is 99 percent effective at having families show
up for check-ins and court appearances and also ensures departure from
the United States for those who are not granted protection.
Immigration policies that repeatedly result in death do not make us
secure. The death of two children in CSP custody pointedly highlights
the urgent need for shifts in policy. Border crossings have declined to
near-record levels; the uptick in arrivals this year stems from
families fleeing violence, persecution, and desperation from El
Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Militarizing the border and
separating families undermine our moral and legal obligations and are
ineffective, as families continue to seek safety. The United States can
humanely process all families and individuals who arrive at our borders
seeking protection.
CWS strongly opposes sending troops to the border and any other
policy that further militarizes our border. Border communities are some
of the safest in the country. The most recent data available shows each
Border Patrol agent along the Southwest Border apprehended on average
about 3 migrants per month, far below fiscal year 2000 levels
(approximately 16 migrants per month). With CBP's all-time high funding
for border security procurement and development alone, legislators
should be looking for ways to rein in CBP's draconian enforcement
efforts.
As a faith-based organization, we urge Congress to hold the
administration respecting the humanity and dignity of all asylum
seekers, unaccompanied children, and others seeking protection.
Miss Rice. The subcommittee record shall be kept open for
10 days.
Mr. Higgins. Madam Chair, I ask unanimous consent to enter
into the record the following items--a brief from the Rand
Corporation on human smuggling, and the January statement on
border security from the Southwestern Border Sheriffs.
Miss Rice. Without objection.
[The information follows:]
RESEARCH BRIEF, HOMELAND SECURITY OPERATIONAL ANALYSIS CENTER (An FFRDC
operated by the RAND Corporation under contract with DHS)
Human Smuggling from Central America to the United States
what is known or knowable about smugglers' operations and revenues?
Each year, thousands of unlawful migrants from Central America are
apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border. Many or most of these migrants
hire smugglers for assistance or pay others for rights of way at some
point during their journey north.
Of particular concern to policy makers is the possibility that a
substantial share of migrants' expenditures on smuggling services is
flowing to transnational criminal organizations (TCOs). TCOs that
benefit from smuggling migrants from Central America to the United
States across the U.S.-Mexico border represent a potential threat to
homeland security. They can create, contribute to, or help to shape a
criminal industry that exploits and harms the people smuggled,
challenges the rule of law in U.S. border States and the countries
along transit routes, and degrades confidence in U.S. immigration laws.
To date, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (OHS) and larger
policy community have lacked evidence on the full extent and
distribution of migrants' expenditures and the characteristics of the
smugglers, whether they are TCOs or other types of actors. To fill some
of these knowledge gaps, the Homeland Security Operational Analysis
Center (HSOAC), a Federally-funded research and development center
operated by the RAND Corporation, conducted a scoping study to
understand how TCOs and other actors participating in human smuggling
along routes from Central America (specifically, Guatemala, Honduras,
and El Salvador) to the United States are structured, do business, and
are financed. The quick-turn effort involved interviews with subject-
matter experts, a literature review, and an analysis of governmental
and non-governmental data on migration and human smuggling.
findings
Types and Roles of Human Smugglers
Many different types of actors are involved in moving unlawful
migrants from Central America to the United States. These smugglers
range from independent operators, to ad hoc groups, to loose or more-
formal networks, such as TCOs. However, only some of these networks
appear to meet the statutory definition of a TCO, which describes a
``self-perpetuating'' association that systematically uses violence and
corruption and is structured transnationally. The table characterizes
the spectrum of actors engaged in human smuggling.
Smugglers commonly move between levels or can operate at more than
one level along the spectrum, depending on their opportunities.
Moreover, they offer a wide array of services to unlawful migrants,
from ``pay-as-you-go'' arrangements (i.e., services provided by
different individuals or groups, as needed, along the route) to ``all-
inclusive'' or ``end-to-end'' packages that cover migrants' travel from
their point of origin to their final destination in the United States.
A combination of organizational flexibility, fluid marker arrangements,
and pervasive subcontracting suggests resilience that makes human
smuggling hard to target. Facilitators--individuals who coordinate
human smuggling--might be less replaceable and present a more fruitful
avenue for intervention, but going after them might be challenging,
especially when they are based in foreign countries, as is typical.
THE SPECTRUM OF ACTORS ENGAGED IN HUMAN SMUGGLING
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Organizational
Type of Actor Structure Services Group Membership Geographic Reach
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Independent operators........... One ``cell'' Provide a discrete Do not generally Generally work in
composed of one service (e.g., work with other one location, or
or a few transportation or cells or actors. between two
individuals. lodging). locations.
Ad hoc groups................... Two or more Provide multiple, Generally unaware Work in one, two,
independent complementary of other actors or more
operators that services. and groups more locations.
may not always than one degree
work together. of separation
removed.
Loose networks.................. A larger number of May provide end-to- Members may know Working in many
small groups that end service along only a limited locations,
usually work the full route or number of other potentially the
together. a portion of the members. full route.
route.
More-formal networks............ A central figure Provide end-to-end Members generally Working along the
who coordinates services. know each other. full route.
groups that
consistently work
together.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Relationship Between Human Smuggling and Drug Trafficking
Human smugglers and drug traffickers conduct similar activities--
providing illicit transportation services across international
borders--and do so along common smuggling corridors, suggesting
opportunities for overlapping business. However, the researchers found
little evidence that drug-trafficking TCOs engage directly in human
smuggling.
Drug-trafficking TCOs do control primary smuggling corridors into
the United States and charge migrants a ``tax,'' known as a piso, to
pass through their territories. In addition, drug-trafficking TCOs may
also coordinate some unlawful migrants' border crossings to divert
attention from other illicit activities, and recruit or coerce some to
carry drugs.
Preliminary Estimate of Revenues Associated with Human Smuggling
Most TCOs' activities and revenues, apart from the piso, cannot be
separated credibly from those of other actors that engage in human
smuggling. However, the researchers were able to use data from OHS and
other sources to construct a range of preliminary estimates of total
revenue to all types of smugglers operating along routes from
Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador to the United States.
The researchers' preliminary estimate of those revenues ranged from
about $200 million to about $2.3 billion in 2017. The breadth of that
range reflects the uncertainty of the underlying estimates of unlawful
migrant flows, migrants' use of smugglers, and smuggling fees.
Separately, the researchers produced a preliminary estimate of the
taxes, or pisos, that migrants pay to drug-trafficking TCOs to pass
through their territories. Those payments could have ranged from about
$30 million to $180 million in 2017.
A lack of reliable data contributes to substantial uncertainty in
both estimates.
recommendations
HSOAC made three main recommendations for how OHS might use
findings from this research to target human smuggling, allocate
resources, and improve data collection.
Target vulnerabilities of human smugglers.--OHS might consider
expanding existing efforts to investigate payments to human smugglers,
especially in the United States, and working more closely with formal
and informal banking services to identify suspicious payments. DHS
could also consider expanding current efforts to work with foreign law
enforcement partners to disrupt smuggling operations.
Use information from these revenue estimates to inform funding
decisions.--DHS could draw on information on the value of the human
smuggling market, including comparisons with other illicit or analogous
markets, to help guide decisions about allocating resources to efforts
to target and disrupt human smuggling.
Improve data collection.--DHS could consider standardizing and
expanding the range of questions that border officials ask migrants
during interviews to seek more consistent and detailed information from
migrants about smugglers, routes, and payments. Other options include a
shared portal for data entry chat screens for errors and a randomized
survey process to facilitate data collection and reduce the burden on
front-line personnel.
This brief describes research conducted within the Homeland
Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC) and documented in ``Human
Smuggling and Associated Revenues: What Do or Can We Know About Routes
From Central America to the United States?'', by Victoria A.
Greenfield, Blas Nunez-Neto, Ian Mitch, Joseph C. Chang, and Etienne
Rosas, RR-2852-DHS, 2019 (available at www.rand.org/t/RR2852). To view
this brief online, visit www.rand.org/t/RB10057. HSOAC is an FFRDC
operated by the RAND Corporation under contract with the Department of
Homeland Security. The results presented here do not necessarily
reffect official DHS opinion or policy. For more information on HSOAC,
see www.rand.org/hsoac.
______
Statement of Leon N. Wilmot, Chairman, Southwestern Border Sheriffs
Coalition
we must secure our southern border with mexico
There has been and will likely continue to be much debate about
border security and how to achieve it. Sheriffs stand united and are
crystal clear in stating; our Southern Border with Mexico must be
secured. As the chief law enforcement officers in our respective
counties, we have witnessed the societal costs of the lack of border
security. We have heard political leaders of all stripes talk about
securing the border with little consequence. Today, many portions of
our border with Mexico are not secure in any meaningful way. Our Ports
of Entry lack the staffing and technology necessary to be effective
deterrents to transnational crime. Equally problematic is allowing such
a significant issue to be mired in endless political debate and
partisan divide. It is time, past time, to move forward with meaningful
border security.
the case for border security
There are three unimpeachable reasons that without respect to
political ideology we should embrace in support of the need to secure
immediately our border with Mexico. They are public safety, National
security, and human rights.
Public Safety.--The lack of a secure border presents a public
safety problem, not only for our counties but also for our Nation. The
porous border is exploited by transnational crime organizations to
engage in drug and human trafficking. We have a public health crisis
with respect to illicit drug use that is leading to overdose deaths and
lifetime addiction. The public safety threat of drug trafficking is
significant and the societal costs are staggering. Human traffickers
exploit migrants criminally, sexually, and financially. Criminals and
gang members posing as migrants can and do use the lack of border
security to enter our country to further their criminal behavior. We
have ample evidence of this occurring. The lack of a secure border is
an undeniable public safety crisis.
National Security.--We simply do not know who is coming across our
border. We know there are bad actors from hostile nations that wish us
harm. This is not a political statement, but rather a factual one. The
lack of border security can be leveraged by those wishing us harm to
come into our country undetected. The lack of border security is an
undeniable National security concern.
Human Rights.--Encouraging migrants to make the dangerous journey
to our border and then attempt to cross into remote areas of our
country is not compassionate public policy. Southwest Border deputies
recover hundreds of bodies a year in remote areas of our counties.
Migrants die due to the harsh environment or at the hands of alien
smugglers. Many walk hundreds of miles from Central America, some with
children in tow, to get to the border in hope of a better life. They
are led to believe they can simply walk in to the United States. This
leads to human rights issues along the border and even deaths. People
in many parts of the world face desperate conditions Americans can
hardly imagine. They seek a better life for themselves and their
families. A secure border, along with more sensible legal immigration
policies, would dissuade this dangerous and often deadly behavior. The
lack of border security is an undeniable human rights issue.
Sheriffs have been, and will remain, consistent in their stance on
border security. Let us reiterate and be absolutely clear, we need to
secure our Southern Border with Mexico immediately for public safety,
National security, and human rights.
how to secure the border
There has been much focus on ``The Wall.'' The term ``The Wall''
has become synonymous with border security. This term has become a
lightning rod of division that has detracted, more than added, to
thoughtful approaches to securing our border. ``The Wall'' is a sound
bite, not a cogent public policy position.
The U.S./Mexico border is nearly 2,000 linear miles. It presents
topography, environmental and land use challenges to what might be
considered a traditional wall. There are mountains, waterways, Native
American Reservations, and environmentally sensitive areas where
traditional physical barriers will be difficult, if not impossible, to
construct. Some areas are very remote and lack the supporting
infrastructure to facilitate a massive construction project of this
scale. Even if properly funded and enjoying wide-spread public support,
it would take many years to construct a wall across the entire border
with Mexico. We cannot wait for years and be hostage to the future
whims of subsequent political leadership to secure our border. The time
is now.
There are many places where physical barriers make sense and are in
fact the best solution to securing the border. They should be
constructed without delay. In other locations, we need to turn to
technology, which thanks to modern advances is robust and effective. In
other areas, we need more human resources to ensure security. Likely,
in all locations we will need some blend of physical barriers,
technology, and human resources to be successful.
The ultimate goal of these efforts should be the complete and total
operational security of our Southern Border. Endless debate about what
constitutes a ``wall'' and who pays for it does little to advance much-
needed border security.
As we discuss border security, we need to remember the importance
of addressing our Ports of Entry (POE). POEs are not being discussed
enough and are a major vulnerability. We have to ensure security while
still supporting the effective flow of legitimate transnational
commerce. Commerce with Mexico through the POEs is vital to the economy
of the United States and pumps billions into our economy. Allowing
citizens the ability to cross into the United States to engage in
legitimate commerce is also vital to the economy of border regions. The
POEs need better staffing and technology to support the efficient flow
of legitimate transnational commerce while having the ability to detect
and interdict illegitimate/criminal transnational activity.
We should not let partisan politics stand in the way of securing
the border. It is clear we have done so for many decades and through
several administrations. We need to secure the border for public
safety, National security, and human rights reasons. The mechanism of
how this is done is far less important to sheriffs than getting it
done. The idea that a wall is the only solution because it is permanent
is misguided. A wall that is not monitored, enforced, or maintained is
only an impediment, not real security.
proactive immigration enforcement
We support the increased attention given to the border and welcome
additional Federal resources to handle the immigration situation.
However, sheriffs neither have the capacity to engage in proactive
enforcement of Federal immigration laws, nor is it the responsibility
of local law enforcement to engage in enforcement of Federal
immigration violations. Federal authorities best address these
violations of Federal law. That being stated, sheriffs are committed to
cooperation and collaboration with all our Federal law enforcement
partners.
We value these relationships with our Federal partners and we
remain steadfast in working together for the safety and security of our
citizens that we serve.
closing
Sheriffs fully support efforts to secure our border. Moreover, we
demand action on this issue. There are compelling and undeniable
reasons to do so. We need to move forward and secure our border
immediately. The investment made in doing so will be returned many
times over in reduced crime, reduced illegal drug use, and a reduction
of other societal and humanitarian costs. Sheriffs are committed to
providing the highest level of public safety services to all people of
our counties. We proactively attack crime problems and criminal
behavior without regard to the immigration status of the criminals
involved and will continue to do so.
Miss Rice. Hearing no further business, the subcommittee
stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:25 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[all]