[Senate Hearing 116-431]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 116-431
BORDER SECURITY-2019
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
----------
UNPRECEDENTED MIGRATION AT THE U.S. SOUTHERN BORDER: BY THE NUMBERS,
APRIL 4, 2019
UNPRECEDENTED MIGRATION AT THE U.S. SOUTHERN BORDER: PERSPECTIVES FROM
THE FRONTLINE, APRIL 9, 2019
UNPRECEDENTED MIGRATION AT THE U.S. SOUTHERN BORDER: THE EXPLOITATION
OF MIGRANTS THROUGH SMUGGLING, TRAFFICKING, AND INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE,
JUNE 26, 2019
ROUNDTABLE: UNPRECEDENTED MIGRATION AT THE U.S. SOUTHERN BORDER:
BIPARTISAN POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISORY
COUNCIL, JULY 17, 2019
UNPRECEDENTED MIGRATION AT THE U.S. SOUTHERN BORDER: WHAT IS REQUIRED
TO IMPROVE CONDITIONS?, JULY 30, 2019
UNPRECEDENTED MIGRATION AT THE U.S. SOUTHERN BORDER: THE YEAR IN
REVIEW, NOVEMBER 13, 2019
----------
Available via the World Wide Web: http://govinfo.gov
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
BORDER SECURITY--2019
S. Hrg. 116-431
BORDER SECURITY_2019
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
UNPRECEDENTED MIGRATION AT THE U.S. SOUTHERN BORDER: BY THE NUMBERS,
APRIL 4, 2019
UNPRECEDENTED MIGRATION AT THE U.S. SOUTHERN BORDER: PERSPECTIVES FROM
THE FRONTLINE, APRIL 9, 2019
UNPRECEDENTED MIGRATION AT THE U.S. SOUTHERN BORDER: THE EXPLOITATION
OF MIGRANTS THROUGH SMUGGLING, TRAFFICKING, AND INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE,
JUNE 26, 2019
ROUNDTABLE: UNPRECEDENTED MIGRATION AT THE U.S. SOUTHERN BORDER:
BIPARTISAN POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISORY
COUNCIL, JULY 17, 2019
UNPRECEDENTED MIGRATION AT THE U.S. SOUTHERN BORDER: WHAT IS REQUIRED
TO IMPROVE CONDITIONS?, JULY 30, 2019
UNPRECEDENTED MIGRATION AT THE U.S. SOUTHERN BORDER: THE YEAR IN
REVIEW, NOVEMBER 13, 2019
__________
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
37-003 PDF WASHINGTON : 2021
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin, Chairman
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio GARY C. PETERS, Michigan
RAND PAUL, Kentucky THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire
MITT ROMNEY, Utah KAMALA D. HARRIS, California
RICK SCOTT, Florida KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri
Gabrielle D'Adamo Singer, Staff Director
Brian P. Kennedy, Professional Staff Member
Melissa Egred, Professional Staff Member
Caroline Bender, Research Assistant
David M. Weinberg, Minority Staff Director
Zachary I. Schram, Minority Chief Counsel
Alexa E. Noruk, Minority Director of Homeland Security
Samuel Rodarte, Minority Professional Staff Member
Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
Thomas J. Spino, Hearing Clerk
C O N T E N T S
------
Opening statements:
Page
Senator Johnson 1,89,263,341,427,529
Senator Peters 3,91,267,350,429,532
Senator Hassan 20,109,276,443
Senator Portman 21,105,292,440,552
Senator Carper 25,121,295,454,556
Senator Rosen 27,126,279,448
Senator Sinema 30,123,298,451
Senator Hawley 37,287
Senator Lankford 111,290,445,549
Senator Romney............................................... 115
Senator Harris............................................... 117
Senator Scott................................................ 285
Prepared statements:
Senator Johnson 55,143,303,381,465,565
Senator Peters 56,145,305,467,566
Thursday, April 4, 2019
WITNESSES
Mark Morgan, Former Chief, U.S. Border Patrol (2016-2017), U.S.
Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Department of Homeland
Security....................................................... 5
John Daniel Davidson, Senior Correspondent, The Federalist....... 9
Andrew Selee, Ph.D., President, Migration Policy Institute....... 12
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Davidson, John Daniel:
Testimony.................................................... 9
Prepared statement........................................... 73
Morgan, Mark:
Testimony.................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 58
Selee, Ph.D., Andrew:
Testimony.................................................... 12
Prepared statement........................................... 78
APPENDIX
Minors, Families, Asylum Chart................................... 86
Statement submitted for the Record from Church World Service..... 87
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
WITNESSES
Rodolfo Karisch, Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Patrol Agent,
U.S. Border Patrol, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S.
Department of Homeland Security................................ 93
Randy Howe, Executive Director for Operations, Office of Field
Operations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Department
of Homeland Security........................................... 95
Timothy Tubbs, Deputy Special Agent in Charge-Laredo, Texas,
Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, U.S. Department of Homeland Security.............. 96
Commander Jonathan White, Ph.D., USPHS, Deputy Director for
Children's Program, Office of Emergency Management and Medical
Operations, Office of Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and
Response, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services......... 98
Greg Cherundolo, Chief of Operations, Drug Enforcement Agency,
U.S. Department of Justice..................................... 100
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Cherundolo, Greg:
Testimony.................................................... 100
Prepared statement........................................... 180
Howe, Randy:
Testimony.................................................... 95
Joint prepared statement..................................... 148
Karisch, Rodolfo:
Testimony.................................................... 93
Joint prepared statement..................................... 148
Tubbs, Timothy:
Testimony.................................................... 96
Prepared statement........................................... 157
White, Ph.D. Commander Jonathan:
Testimony.................................................... 98
Joint prepared statement..................................... 173
APPENDIX
Minors, Families, and Asylum Chart............................... 195
Detention Beds Required Chart.................................... 196
CRS Definition................................................... 197
ORR Statistics................................................... 203
Sponsor Status................................................... 205
Statement submitted for the Record from:
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service..................... 206
National Treasury Employees Union............................ 217
Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record:
Mr. Karisch and Mr. Howe..................................... 226
Mr. Tubbs.................................................... 242
Mr. White.................................................... 258
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
WITNESSES
Brian S. Hastings, Chief, Law Enforcement Operations Directorate,
U.S. Border Patrol, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S.
Department of Homeland Security................................ 269
Randy Howe, Executive Director for Operations, Office of Field
Operations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Department
of Homeland Security........................................... 271
Gregory Nevano, Assistant Director for Investigative Programs,
Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, U.S. Department of Homeland Security.............. 272
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Hastings, Brian S.:
Testimony.................................................... 269
Joint prepared statement..................................... 308
Howe, Randy:
Testimony.................................................... 271
Joint prepared statement..................................... 308
Nevano, Gregory:
Testimony.................................................... 272
Prepared statement........................................... 316
APPENDIX
Minors and Families chart........................................ 322
Statement for the Record from Church World Serive................ 323
Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record:
Mr. Hastings, Mr. Howe and Mr. Nevano........................ 324
Wednesday, July 17, 2019
WITNESSES
Hon. Karen Tandy, Chair, Customs and Border Protection Families
and Children Care Panel, Homeland Security Advisory Council.... 342
Jayson Ahern, Vice Chair, Customs and Border Protection Families
and Children Care Panel, Homeland Security Advisory Council.... 344
Leon Fresco, Member, Customs and Border Protection Families and
Children Care Panel, Homeland Security Advisory Council........ 348
Sharon W. Cooper, M.D., FAAP, Member, Customs and Border
Protection Families and Children Care Panel, Homeland Security
Advisory Council............................................... 348
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Ahern, Jayson:
Testimony.................................................... 344
Cooper, Sharon W. M.D., FAAP:
Testimony.................................................... 348
Fresco, Leon:
Testimony.................................................... 348
Tandy, Hon. Karen:
Testimony.................................................... 342
APPENDIX
Minors and Families chart........................................ 382
Letter submitted by Senator Hassan............................... 383
Final Emergency Interim report................................... 388
Tandy U.S. Border Patrol (Southwest Border) Chart................ 426
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
WITNESSES
Mark A, Morgan, Acting Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border
Protection, U.S. Department of Homeland Security............... 430
Jennifer L. Costello, Deputy Inspector General, U.S. Department
of Homeland Security........................................... 433
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Costello, Jennifer L.:
Testimony.................................................... 433
Prepared statement........................................... 475
Morgan, Mark A.:
Testimony.................................................... 430
Prepared statement........................................... 469
APPENDIX
Minors and Familes chart......................................... 485
Illegal Immigrant Arrests........................................ 486
Morgan chart and pictures........................................ 487
Statement for the Record from Church World Serive................ 495
Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record:
Mr. Morgan................................................... 496
Mr. Costello................................................. 527
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
WITNESSES
Mark A, Morgan, Acting Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border
Protection, U.S. Department of Homeland Security............... 534
Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, Acting Director, U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services, U.S. Department of Homeland Security..... 537
Derek N. Benner, Acting Deputy Director, U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, U.S. Department of Homeland Security...... 539
James McHenry, Director, Executive Office for Immigration Review,
U.S. Department of Justice..................................... 542
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Benner, Derek N.:
Testimony.................................................... 539
Prepared statement........................................... 585
Cuccinelli, Kenneth T.:
Testimony.................................................... 537
Prepared statement........................................... 580
McHenry, James:
Testimony.................................................... 542
Prepared statement........................................... 596
Morgan, Mark A.:
Testimony.................................................... 534
Prepared statement........................................... 568
APPENDIX
Minors and Families chart........................................ 601
Southwest Border Apprehensions/Asylum Claims chart............... 602
Human Rights First Report........................................ 603
ICE Statistics................................................... 619
Notice to Appear-REDACTED........................................ 620
Statement for the Record from Church World Serive................ 622
Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record:
Mr. Morgan................................................... 623
Mr. Cuccinelli............................................... 672
Mr. Benner................................................... 690
Mr. McHenry.................................................. 727
UNPRECEDENTED MIGRATION AT THE
U.S. SOUTHERN BORDER: BY THE NUMBERS
----------
THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2019
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:31 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Ron Johnson,
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Johnson, Portman, Lankford, Romney,
Scott, Hawley, Peters, Carper, Hassan, Sinema, and Rosen.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN JOHNSON
Chairman Johnson. Good morning. This hearing will come to
order.
I want to thank the witnesses for taking the time to
testify, for taking the time to write your testimony, by the
way. I have read it all. It is excellent, doing exactly what I
was hoping we could do in this hearing, the first step in the
problem-solving process, and we are well into many steps of
this first step, though. This is close to 30 hearings we have
held on some aspect of border security. But it is about
gathering information, describing reality, trying to define the
problem, do some root-cause analysis, and then the next step
would be to define an achievable goal. There are all kinds of
things we can try. What is an achievable goal before we really
start talking about solutions?
I want to thank Senator Peters, who I really look forward
to being a good partner in trying to go through that process
and actually starting to solve this problem. We are not going
to solve all the problems of the world, but I think this is one
we can get our arms around.
I do have a chart\1\ that is certainly describing the
magnitude of the problem. I have been building this over the
last couple years. It shows a number of things, but it shows
unaccompanied alien children (UAC) from Central America as well
as people coming to this country illegally and being
apprehended at the border as family units--two particular
groups where we have laws on the books that really are
loopholes that are being exploited. And you can see the
results.
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\1\ The chart referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the Appendix
on page 86.
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Prior to 2012, we only had about 3,000 or 4,000
unaccompanied children from Central America come to this
country illegally and were apprehended. In 2012, the Deferred
Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) memorandum, it does not
apply to anybody in the future, but it was used by coyotes as
an incentive. They said, ``Go to America. You get the permiso
slip,'' which is really the notice to appear (NTA). Again,
reasonable people can disagree. I personally think that kind of
sparked this, was a catalyst for what we see in the ensuing
years. You can see in 2013, 36,000 individuals in those two
categories. 2014, the year that President Obama declared a
humanitarian crisis and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was
overwhelmed at that point in time, 120,000 unaccompanied
children and individuals as family units came to this country
illegally.
And then the Obama Administration, obviously recognizing it
as a real problem, started detaining children with their
families, and that was a consequence. And you can see in 2015,
that consequence, I would argue, reduced the flow and cut it
almost in half.
But then the Obama Administration was taken to court, and I
think Secretary Jeh Johnson completely disagreed with the
ruling but said that the Flores Agreement applied to not only
unaccompanied children but accompanied children as well, and so
the Obama Administration had to make a choice. Are we going to
enforce the law, which would require us to separate children
from their families? They chose, no, we are not going to do
that, and that began what is commonly referred to as ``catch-
and-release,'' which sparked even further.
Candidate Trump obviously talked tough on the border. I
think maybe that might be a little bit of why you see a
downturn in 2017 when he first took office. But once the
cartels, once the coyotes, once the individuals who want to
come to this country realized that nothing had really changed
in American immigration laws, they could still be fully
exploited, the problem has really exploded.
What is interesting about this chart is you have to realize
this is all fiscal years (FY), and this exponential growth in
people coming in as unaccompanied children and family units,
the final year is not a full year. The approximately 240,000
individuals, now primarily people coming as family units,
primarily illegally--we have added a new category of people
coming in by the port of entry (POE) borders. That is the light
blue and the little green line up there. Very few are really
presenting at the ports of entry because it is a lot easier, it
is a more streamlined process to come in illegally. In just the
first 6 months of this year, not quite 6 months, we are over
240,000. We have doubled the full year figure from 2014 when
President Obama declared that legitimately a humanitarian
crisis. We have doubled that in less than the first 6 months.
I think by anybody's definition this is a real problem. I
was interested to see Secretary Jeh Johnson on ``Morning Joe''
last Friday describing when he came into work, if it was less
than 1,000 apprehensions, it was an OK day. But if detentions
or apprehensions were more than 1,000, it was going to be a
really bad day. We have had days over 4,000 apprehensions in
the recent weeks. This is a problem. We have to deal with it.
As you can see, in 2014 or 2015, a reduction, a consequence
actually has an effect. The Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) Secretary Michael Chertoff recognized the exact same
thing back in 2005. Back then, 2003, there were about 5,200
Brazilians getting into Mexico and coming into America
illegally through the Southwest Border. In 2004, it was 8,800.
In 2005, that more than tripled to 31,000. Secretary Chertoff
realized this was a problem and he had to do something about
it. In response, DHS dedicated bed space. They detained and
they initiated a program of expedited removal. Other Brazilians
called it ``Texas Hold 'Em.'' By doing that, the next year only
1,400 people came illegally. And to quote Secretary Chertoff,
he said, ``The word spread surprisingly swiftly; within its
first 30 days, the operation had already begun to deter illegal
border crossings by Brazilians. In fact, the number of
Brazilians apprehended dropped by 50 percent. After 60 days,
the rate of Brazilian illegal immigration through this sector
was down 90 percent, and it is still significantly depressed
all across the border. In short, we learned that a concentrated
effort of removal can actually discourage illegal entries by
non-Mexicans on the Southwest Border.''
I think my point in this problem-solving process is an
achievable goal is something that we have already achieved at
some point in time. The goal ought to be short term,
immediately. How do we reduce that flow? The 240,000
individuals in less than 6 months, how can we reduce that
number?
Listen, I am all for helping Central American countries
develop providing opportunity, but that is years in the future.
It is certainly going to be a bigger problem when you have the
drug cartels operating with impunity, destroying those public
institutions. That is a really heavy lift.
Michael Chertoff showed us there is a way for us to at
least achieve this short-term goal of reducing that flow, and
hopefully our witnesses will paint the picture that there is
nothing humane about incentivizing people to take a very
dangerous journey, reducing CBP, as I said last Friday, to a
mere speed bump along the path to long-term residency in this
country for unaccompanied children and people coming as family
units. There is nothing humane about those people basically
living in the shadows, potentially being exploited by
employers. This is a problem. We have to recognize it as such,
and we have to do something to fix it.
I do ask that my written statement be entered into the
record.\1\ Without objection, it will be.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Johnson appears in the
Appendix on page 55.
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With that, I will turn it over to Senator Peters.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PETERS\2\
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
holding this hearing today.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ The prepared statement of Senator Peters appears in the
Appendix on page 56.
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I appreciate the Chairman's focus on obtaining accurate,
timely data on migration and border security. Certainly, few
issues that we face today are as complex as this one or as
controversial. Far too often, harmful rhetoric drowns out
reasonable dialogue, and I hope that this hearing can cut
through that rhetoric and let us focus on the facts.
The situation on our Southern Border, in Mexico, and
throughout the Northern Triangle is dynamic. Our immigration
system and our infrastructure should reflect that fact.
The reality is that much of our current infrastructure was
built to address the challenges of the 1990s and early last
decade when the majority of unauthorized border crossings were
single men seeking economic opportunity.
That is not what the statistics show us today, and it is
not what our staff saw during a bipartisan delegation to the
Southern Border last month.
Overwhelmingly, they saw families from El Salvador,
Guatemala, and Honduras.
They saw parents with children. They saw children who had
made the journey to the border without their parents. They saw
our hardworking law enforcement officers, public servants,
volunteers, and civic leaders doing their best to manage what
is certainly a very difficult situation.
Many of these families are fleeing violence and extortion.
Homicide rates in the Northern Triangle are some of the highest
in the world. Corruption and impunity prevail.
Only three out of every 100 homicides lead to trial and
conviction.
This breakdown of the rule of law is a clear ``push
factor'' that drives migrants to flee these countries.
Unfortunately, our system has not been able to keep pace
with the increase in asylum claims.
Screening interviews are being delayed. The average wait to
appear before an immigration court is now over 2 years, and the
backlog is quickly approaching 1 million cases. This is simply
unacceptable.
We need to do more to decrease processing times while
increasing border security.
We absolutely need secure borders, but it will take
cooperation and credibility, not chaos and confusion.
This Administration will need to cooperate with Mexico,
Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and international
organizations to take on cartels and corruption. They will also
need to cooperate with Congress and build credibility.
Unfortunately, this Administration has provided too much
chaos and confusion and too little credibility. It has been one
step forward and two steps back.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) approved a plan to reduce
immigration court backlogs only to see backlogs grow as a
result of an unnecessary government shutdown.
We passed a bipartisan deal to make meaningful investments
in security for both our Northern and Southern Border, only to
see the President unilaterally declare a national emergency to
circumvent Congress and potentially pull away funds from
important military construction projects.
In February, the Department of Homeland Security announced
a Memorandum of Cooperation with the Northern Triangle nations
to combat human trafficking and organized crime, only to see
the President cutoff existing funding to these countries just 5
weeks later.
Chaos is not a strategy. We need bipartisan cooperation at
home and effective American leadership projected abroad.
This is still possible. Just yesterday, I introduced
bipartisan legislation with Senator Cornyn from Texas to
address staffing shortages at our ports of entry across the
Nation, both on the Northern Border and the Southern Border.
This is especially important now as DHS is potentially
moving upwards of 2,000 Customs and Border Protection officers
to the Southern Border.
I believe this legislation is an important first step we
can take to reduce the strain on our Southern Border while
improving the facilitation of trade, travel, and commerce
across the United States. But there is clearly much more to do,
and we will begin that journey today with your testimony. So we
appreciate you being here, and I look forward to the
discussion.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Peters.
It is the tradition of this Committee to swear in
witnesses, so if you will all stand and raise your right hand.
Do you swear that the testimony you will give before this
Committee today will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, so help you, God?
Mr. Morgan. I do.
Mr. Davidson. I do.
Mr. Selee. I do.
Chairman Johnson. Please be seated.
Let me first say that if the Committee Members have not
read the full testimony of all the witnesses, I would really
urge you to do so. It is excellent. As a result, what I have
decided to do is give all three witnesses 7 minutes--we
normally just give people 5--to summarize the excellent written
testimony.
Our first witness will be Mark Morgan. Mr. Morgan is the
former Chief of the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP). Prior to joining
the Border Patrol, Mr. Morgan spent 20 years in the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI), including nearly 3 years as a
Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's El Paso Division. Mr.
Morgan.
TESTIMONY OF MARK MORGAN,\1\ FORMER CHIEF, U.S. BORDER PATROL
(2016-17), U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION, U.S. DEPARTMENT
OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Morgan. Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Peters, and
Members of the Committee, it is a privilege to appear before
you today.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Morgan appears in the Appendix on
page 58.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I enthusiastically agreed to appear when I was asked
because I truly believe that our country is at a crossroads.
With more than 30 years of public service, I am extremely
concerned about the growing risks to our Nation's safety,
national security, and rule of law due to illegal and
uncontrolled immigration. We are experiencing a crisis at the
Southern Border at a magnitude never seen in modern times. It
is unprecedented. In the words of the former DHS Secretary Jeh
Johnson, ``By anyone's definition, by any measure, right now we
have a crisis at a border.'' I will say it is chaos.
Make no mistake: Our personnel resources are overwhelmed.
They are drowning. As each day passes, the threat to our
country and the rule of law worsens. The loopholes in our
asylum laws and nonsensical judicial precedent has driven what
has devolved into essentially an open-border policy for a
certain demographic. Central American families are incentivized
and rewarded to come here illegally, enter our Southwest Border
because they know DHS by law has to release them within 20 days
into the interior of the United States where they are going to
be allowed to remain indefinitely. It is simple. They know if
they set one foot on American soil, say the magic words, they
are allowed into the United States, and they know it.
Through social media, smugglers, and family members who
have successfully exploited our laws and remain in the United
States legally, they are well informed.
What should sound an additional alarm of concern is that
most of these family members we are allowing in, we cannot
properly vet. Let that soak in just for a second. We are
letting in tens of thousands of people in this country every
day who we know virtually nothing about. We must start being
intellectually honest. Those coming, they are not all bad, but
they are not all good.
What is happening is counterintuitive to the rule of law
and defies basic principles of sovereignty. Here are a couple
of false narratives quickly that I would like to address.
Only 15 percent of those coming in are found to have valid
asylum claims, which really debunks the uniform outrage often
used that immigrants are fleeing from extreme violence or
persecution. In fact, recent statistics that I have seen have
shown that the murder rate per capita has decline in the
Northern Triangle countries. Baltimore, for example, has a
higher murder rate per capita than Guatemala.
The fact is they are being pulled here for two reasons:
economic equality and family reunification. Neither are valid
claims under the asylum process. Nevertheless, we continue to
facilitate an abuse of our laws and the generosity of this
country. As a society, we cannot turn our backs and ignore the
law, especially Congress. We cannot selectively enforce the
laws based on political ideology or a personal sense of
morality.
There is another false narrative which goes something like
this: But the numbers of illegal immigrants are way down, so it
cannot possibly be a crisis.
It is essential to look at the context behind those numbers
to evaluate their true meaning. In the late 1990s and 2000s,
there was 1.5 million apprehensions at the border, but as
previously mentioned, the overwhelming majority were Mexican
adults, of which we deported 90 percent of them, sometimes
within hours of being apprehended. Additionally, one-third of
those apprehended were recidivism, meaning the same person
going back and forth. Those numbers are really about a million.
But back then, everyone agreed it was a crisis.
Today 60 to 65 percent of those illegally crossing are
family units and minors, and because of our broken laws and
policies, those individuals are allowed into the country. Let
us do the math: 1 million this year anticipated, that means we
are going to release 650,000 individuals into this country that
are going to remain here indefinitely.
This makes the current crisis, in my opinion, the worst we
have ever experienced. In 2016, as Chief, I estimated 15
percent of the agents' resources were being diverted from the
front lines to support humanitarian activities. I saw that as a
crisis, and so did everyone else. Now Border Patrol is
diverting 40 percent of their personnel away from the front
lines to provide humanitarian-related functions. Meanwhile, the
cartels are exploiting the resulting increased gaps because of
our resources being diverted. Simply put, more drugs and
criminal aliens are illegally entering the United States.
It is common sense. While the Border Patrol personnel are
at their breaking point supporting the humanitarian crisis, the
cartels are expanding the threat crisis while they are getting
rich. It is a multi-billion-dollar industry for the cartels.
Here is something else that is not discussed. We know the
unfathomable abuse suffered by those making a dangerous
journey. That has been talked about a lot. But the
victimization of this vulnerable category of people that are
coming in does not stop when they complete their entry into the
United States, nor does the criminal activity, those criminal
aliens making their way into the country. Many of those seeking
improved economic equality and family reunification continue to
be preyed upon and victimized long after they have made their
way into the United States.
I have seen firsthand the transition of countless youths
into gang membership, and the reasons are varied but have
remained consistent. The young immigrant population is
increasingly susceptible and vulnerable to gang recruitment.
That is a reality.
Additionally, the ability to interdict and seize illegal
narcotics is being negatively impacted as well--another cause
and effect of the unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Again, it
is common sense. Shut down interior checkpoints, divert 40
percent of your resources away from enforcement action. We
should not be surprised that smugglers are exploiting the wide
open border.
As far the talking point that more drugs are seized at the
POEs, simply false. Fifty percent of the border is wide open;
40 percent of your resources directed away from law
enforcement; we have no idea what is coming in our Southwest
Border.
How can we fix this? We need Congress to pass new
legislation to fix outdated laws and gaps in the DHS
authorities. We need to continue to work with Central American
countries to improve economic opportunities. We need to
continue to work with Mexico to eradicate the transnational
organizations as well as drive them to be partners in
addressing the humanitarian crisis.
We must continue to invest in border security, including
additional infrastructure, technology, and personnel, where it
makes sense, and we need increased support for appropriate
interior enforcement.
We must also confront our broken legal framework if we are
to achieve lasting and effective border security. We need
legislative answers to the Flores Settlement Agreement, which
really it stops the ability and impedes our ability to maintain
custody of families and minors.
We must have the authority to detain asylum seekers while
they are going through the immigration proceedings. We must
also reengineer our laws to ensure all minor children who are
not victims of trafficking or persecution are returned home and
reunited with their families, regardless of their country of
origin. These two fixes that I just mentioned eliminate catch-
and-release. Congress can do that.
The last fix that I want to talk about quickly--and I will
wrap up here--a crisis requires swift, immediate, and bold
action. It is chaotic. We have a crisis. I recommend a border-
wide implementation of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP)
which are being implemented currently in select locations
whereby certain immigrants entering or seeking admission to the
United States from Mexico--illegally or without proper
documentation--may be returned to Mexico and wait outside of
the United States for the duration of their immigration
proceedings. Mexico has to get off the sidelines and be a
proactive partner in this solution. Accompany this by port
courts, which means we are pushing resources to the front lines
to expedite all immigration proceedings.
In closing, I would like to talk about Drew. This is Drew
Rosenburg, a young man who died needlessly because of our
broken immigration system. For me, Drew's story, along with all
the other angel families, serves as a reminder, and it should
serve as a reminder for all of us. We have failed. Our
collective failure has resulted in the pain, suffering, and
irreparable harm of unfathomable numbers of people.
To be clear, this threat is not just to American citizens.
The incentives of knowing you will be allowed into the United
States outweighs any risk, harm, including death, for migrants.
It has become an acceptable risk. Thirty-one thousand medical
treatments are anticipated this year that Border Patrol will
ensure immigrants receive. Last year alone, Border Patrol
conducted 4,300 rescues of people trying to illegally enter
this country because the incentives are so strong.
This has to stop. No more Drew Rosenburgs. No more American
citizens should die from something that we can prevent. His
death was preventable along with thousands of American
citizens, as well as immigrants looking for a better
opportunity and a better life. The way it is being done now has
to stop. It is not right. It is not working. People are dying.
American citizens are dying; illegal immigrants coming here
illegally are dying. We have to fix this.
I thank you and I look forward to your questions.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Morgan.
Our next witness is John Davidson. Mr. Davidson is a senior
correspondent for The Federalist and a senior fellow at the
Texas Public Policy Foundation's Right on Immigration
Initiative. Mr. Davidson.
TESTIMONY OF JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON,\1\ SENIOR CORRESPONDENT, THE
FEDERALIST
Mr. Davidson. Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Peters,
Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me here to
testify today about some of what I have seen on the border. I
just want to highlight three key points from my written
testimony, which you all have.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Davidson appears in the Appendix
on page 73.
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The first is the scale of people coming across into Texas
communities and cities this year compared to last year and the
way that those communities are in crisis.
Second is what some of the migrants themselves say about
why they are coming and what their situation is.
The third is the vast, complicated black market that is
operating south of the border that is driving and facilitating
all of this illegal immigration and moving families up to and
across our Southern Border.
About this time last year, I visited a Catholic Charities
respite center in McAllen, Texas, which at that time was
receiving between 60 and 120 people a day, all of them families
from Central America that had been discharged from Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. The way it worked is
that ICE would drop them off at the Greyhound station in
downtown McAllen, and the Greyhound employees would call the
Catholic Charities respite center and say, ``ICE just dropped
off a bunch of people.'' The charity would send vans to pick
them up and bring them into their respite center, which is sort
of one-half of a rundown commercial building in downtown
McAllen. They would give the kids something to eat, and they
would help the adults find bus tickets and try to get them on a
bus that same night to get them out because another group of
people would be coming in the next afternoon, and there was not
space for everybody to stay the night there. It was not a
shelter. It was a respite center. It was not set up to be a
shelter.
Today the Catholic Charities respite center in McAllen is
receiving between 800 and 1,000 people a day. Last Sunday, they
received 1,300 people--way beyond their capacity. They are in a
new facility now, but it is a former nursing home. They are not
set up to receive this volume of people.
McAllen is a city of about 150,000 people, and according to
the mayor of the town and according to people that live there,
they are now facing the prospect of thousands of migrants
discharged from ICE custody wandering the streets and sleeping
in doorways and on park benches. By any measure, the situation
there is an emergency.
This is just one border town in Texas. Something similar is
playing out all up and down the border and all throughout
southern Texas.
I want to talk as well about some of the conversations and
the time I have spent talking with migrants themselves. If you
spend enough time down there and talk to enough people, a few
common characteristics will stand out.
The first is the majority of these family units are men
traveling with one or more children--usually just one. Many of
them will say they have a wife and other children back in their
home countries, that they are coming here to find work and send
money back home. They freely admit this. They are headed for
all points across the United States and often have networks of
family and relatives in those places. Many of them already have
jobs lined up.
Nearly all of them will say that they left their homes
because of gang violence, threats, extortion, etc., or that
they simply have nothing and they are claiming asylum.
At the same time, many of them will admit that they do not
plan to remain in the United States permanently and have a set
amount of time that they plan to stay and live here and work
before returning to their homes and their families--a year and
a half, 3 years, 5 years. It varies. But a lot of them will say
this.
They all say that they paid a smuggler to secure safe
passage across the border, anywhere from $2,000 to $6,000 per
person, on average, sometimes more. Generally, they take cars
or buses transiting through Mexico. Some of them will stay in
hotels along the way. A lot of the groups, especially those
showing up in downtown El Paso, appear to be in pretty good
shape, and they report that they got here with no problem and
were only on the road for 3 to 5 days, generally.
Despite the challenges and dangers they face in their home
countries, the vast majority of these people appear by all
accounts to be not refugees but economic migrants, and very few
of them appear to have what sound like valid asylum claims.
Part of what is driving this--and this is the third point I
want to emphasize especially--is that what is happening here is
not an accident. It is an industry. When we talk about the
migration pipeline through Mexico, we are talking about a very
large international smuggling black market that is worth
billions of dollars. A complex network of smugglers, local
officials, drivers, landowners, lookouts, loan sharks in
Central America, and Mexico drug cartels control the migration
flow through Mexico and have, over the past decade or so,
refined it into a lucrative business enterprise. The chief
beneficiaries of this pipeline are Mexican drug cartels and the
smuggling networks that work all throughout Mexico. Generally,
the cartels require every man, woman, and child who passes
across the border to pay a tax, which is usually included in
the fee that the smugglers will quote to Central American
families. Without paying this tax, migrants cannot cross the
Rio Grande Valley (RGV) and in many cases are at risk of being
kidnapped or otherwise exploited by these cartels in northern
Mexico. The amount of money that they bring in is substantial.
In the Gulf Region alone, cartel factions are making hundreds
of millions of dollars annually off illegal immigration, off
this tax that they charge per person. The numbers from last
year were very high. The numbers from this year will be orders
of magnitude higher.
This black market is sophisticated. The inception point is
in villages and towns across Central America, and it works
mostly, at the beginning through word of mouth. If you want to
migrate, you get hold of somebody whose family member or
neighbor migrated, and they put you in touch with a local
smuggler who quotes you a price. Adults who bring a child with
them get a cheaper price because it is easier for smugglers to
transport families claiming asylum than single adults who are
trying to evade detection. This is for the simple reason that
with asylum seekers, smugglers simply take them up to the U.S.
border and tell them when to cross. They do not go across the
border themselves, and, therefore, they are not putting
themselves at risk for being apprehended.
Smugglers themselves are telling potential migrant families
that if they claim asylum, they will be allowed to stay in the
United States and work. They do not have deep knowledge of
asylum policy, but they know enough to be able to sell the
services that they are trying to get families to buy. They are
incorporating this into their sales pitch, and they are
instructing them in what to say to U.S. authorities. It is part
of how they market their services.
I see my time is running out, so in conclusion, I will just
reiterate what the Chairman said and the Ranking Member said.
There is indeed a crisis at the border, and it is being driven
by three major factors. For those claiming asylum, it is easier
to enter the United States now than it was during the Obama
Administration because there is no capacity at Federal
detention facilities, and the families can expect to be
released after being detained.
Smugglers are marketing to people who do not want to
undertake an arduous or dangerous journey, like women and
families with small children. The smugglers have created an
efficient travel package that has proven popular in Central
America, and word has gotten back to these Central American
communities that, if they pay, the journey will be short, safe,
and you will not be detained in the United States.
Third, the conditions in Central America have not improved
enough to induce people to remain in their home countries.
Poverty, violence, and corruption, combined with the fear that
it is not going to be this easy to get into the United States
forever, is prompting families to come now.
I will reiterate what Mr. Morgan said. Only legislative
action can address this problem. The problem is not with CBP or
with Border Patrol. Those are not the institutions that have
failed here. Congress has failed by its inaction to address
this crisis. As long as Central American families know they can
gain entry to the United States by claiming asylum at the
border, the crisis will continue. As long as cartels and
criminal networks know they can profit by trafficking migrants
across the border, they will do so. As long as conditions in
Central America continue to fester, families who can afford it
will seek a better life for their children by traveling north.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I look
forward to your questions.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Davidson.
Our final witness is Dr. Andrew Selee. Dr. Selee has served
as the president of the Migration Policy Institute since August
2017. Previously, he spent 17 years at the Woodrow Wilson
Center. Dr. Selee.
TETIMONY OF ANDREW SELEE, PH.D.,\1\ PRESIDENT, MIGRATION POLICY
INSTITUTE
Mr. Selee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Ranking
Member Peters, thank you to all the Members of the Committee
for the opportunity to testify today. I am, as you know, with
the Migration Policy Institute, which is a nonpartisan,
independent organization that tries to do fact-based research
and look at pragmatic solutions for managing migration, both in
the United States and around the world.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Dr. Selee appears in the Appendix on
page 78.
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I just got back this morning from Phoenix, Arizona, and so
let me start off by saying, Arizona is deeply linked to Sonora,
Mexico. A lot of what goes on, when we talk about the border,
we are talking about a specific part, but it is worth starting
out by remembering that we actually have lots of legal commerce
and lots of legal transit across the border. Indeed, most of
what goes on between, Mexico and the United States is, in fact,
legal flow back and forth, and it works quite well.
We did have a long period of Mexican unauthorized
immigration into this country, and quite significant. Chief
Morgan made reference to it earlier, quite significant. It
started to slow down in 2008 and has slowed down considerably.
It has continued to slow down despite the current peak we are
seeing in unauthorized migration.
Mexicans have stopped coming, and hold that thought because
I will come back to that in a minute. Mexicans come legally, by
the way, to this country. Lots of Mexicans are still coming
through legal channels, but we have seen an enormous drop in
unauthorized migration from Mexico. An enormous drop.
We started to see in 2012 and in 2014, as you have seen on
this chart\2\ that the Chairman has given us, a spike in
Central American unauthorized migration. 2014, let me offer one
other explanation, which is the gang truce in El Salvador
ended, and El Salvador had a huge spike in murders. In 2014, it
became the most violent country in the world, either in 2014 or
2015, so there was both a push and a pull factor most likely. I
think that is something we need to keep in mind. There are push
and pull factors going on, as well as transit factors, as well
as smugglers are an actor here, as you heard from John.
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\2\ The chart referenced by Dr. Selee appears in the Appendix on
page 86.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
For a long time, we could continue to say that unauthorized
migration was dropping at the border, that illegal migration
was dropping at the border, because the Mexican numbers were
going down so much that it obscured the fact that the Central
American numbers had gone up. That has changed. In the past few
months, we have seen what is clearly a significant number of
people crossing the border. We are back to numbers we have not
seen in a decade. And particularly this is a substantially
different flow than we have seen before in its origins,
characteristics, and drivers, and as a result, we need
different policy solutions to address it. This flow is
predominantly Central American, not Mexican. It is
predominantly families and unaccompanied children, 61 percent
this year, mostly families, 51 percent, 10 percent
unaccompanied children, rather than adults traveling alone, and
it is driven by a complex set of factors that include not only
economic opportunity in the United States, but also the effects
of chronic violence and poor governance in the countries of
origin, and the incentives created by the ballooning backlog of
U.S. immigration courts.
There are at least four things that changed in the past
year that have created this spike. As with any wave, there is
not one cause. There are multiple things that interacted with
each other. But one of them is the smuggling patterns changed,
and they changed largely because of the caravans. The caravans
are not the reason for the spike in numbers. The caravans are a
small percentage of people that cross. The caravans got the
smugglers to respond. The caravans were an existential threat
to the smugglers. They were taking their business away. It is a
free way of crossing.
The smugglers innovated. They got creative about what they
offer, about their prices, about their modes of smuggling, some
of the things you just heard Mr. Davidson say. They got very
creative about how they sell their messages. Smugglers matter
in this.
Second, there was a lot of U.S. policy chaos. U.S. policy
chaos created the perception and created the awareness that was
then exploited by smugglers about where some of the ability was
for families to stay in this country. That information was not
generally available, and particularly the news cycle that drove
this was family separation. Family separation, which was then
abandoned, created a news cycle about the fact that families
could not be held, and this information has been used
effectively by smugglers to let people know, coupled with, as
you heard, the notion that at some point the border was
actually going to get shut down. It is going to become harder,
but right now you can actually be let loose. This is the
message people are getting.
Third, I think we do have to take seriously worsening
conditions in Guatemala and Honduras, and this is primarily a
crisis of Guatemalans and Hondurans coming to the United
States. Salvadorans have dropped in the past 2 years. I will
come back to that. Now, they have gone up a little bit this
year, actually, with the overall surge, but they are still way
below numbers of 2 years ago. This is primarily Guatemala and
Honduras. Something is going on in those two countries, and it
is tied in part to an ongoing drought, ongoing issues that have
affected about 5 million people in those two countries. It did
not start this year. It started about 4 years ago, almost 5
years ago, but it is something that has not gotten better, and
it has continued to impoverish people.
You have seen a movement of some of the organized gangs
from El Salvador into parts of Honduras and Guatemala where
they were not there before, so homicide statistics are going
down, but predatory violence is going down in some of these
communities. You are seeing a worsening governance situation in
both Guatemala and Honduras, unlike El Salvador. You are seeing
actually in Guatemala and Honduras significant backsliding in
democracy in the past year. The government is taking on
international bodies that were sent there to help the attorney
general's (AG) office take on corruption, and that is a big
issue.
In terms of people's sense of ``Is my country going to get
better?'' that matters.
There is one other possible explanation, which I would
almost discard but not quite, which is that Mexico's new
government sort of let everyone through. That does not seem to
be true. Looking at the numbers, Mexican enforcement has more
or less continued on autopilot, as it always did. The numbers
look very similar this year, the last 3 months, 4 months of
this new Administration versus a year before. However, there
was clearly--in the same ways in the United States a bit of
policy chaos, there has been a bit of policy chaos in Mexico
about what their message is. They have started talking about
creating legal pathways that they do not yet have. And so that
may have also been part of the smugglers' message, which is it
is easier to get through Mexico. It is not a drop in
enforcement, but it is a change in messaging.
So in the same way there is no single factor leading to the
rise in migration, there is no single way of fixing this. But
let me throw out three options that would actually help us deal
with this.
The first is to fix the asylum system. This is not a
question of trying to get around Flores or get around the
Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA).
This is a question of an asylum system that cannot make
decisions about who needs protection and who does not. This is
something in our power to do. It is something in your power to
do, and it is something in the Administration's power to do, is
to make the asylum system make timely decisions. If we can make
timely decisions, it would be both more fair to people who have
real asylum claims--and I have talked to a lot of people who
had pretty strong asylum claims, so out there I can tell you
there is a bunch of people that do, and we should be giving
them justice in real time and giving them protection in real
time.
But it would also discourage people that do not have asylum
claims, and there are a lot of people who are economic
migrants, and they should actually be returned because asylum
is not the pathway for people who are economic migrants. We can
talk later about labor migration and how we do this, but we do
not want the asylum system used for that.
There is a simple way of doing this, and nothing is
simple--right?--but there is a way that is actually doable,
which is instead of sending everything to the backlogged
immigration courts, we have asylum officers make the first
decision. DHS can actually have asylum officers make the first
decision. This is what we do with refugees. We have a pattern--
--
Senator Carper. In their native countries?
Mr. Selee. No. In the United States, but at the border.
Rather than sending--we can actually, have the asylum officers
make that--it would require a rule change or legislation, but
it is eminently doable. You could make decisions in months
instead of years. OK? We do not actually need to hold children
in detention centers either. We can actually make this--we can
do case management. There are lots of ways we can do this that
is both humane but also tough.
Second, we need to work with Mexico to strengthen their
migration system. They have said, the new government has said
that they want to strengthen their asylum system, give more
people asylum. They have said they want to create labor
migration. There are parts of Mexico with real labor needs. We
should help them do this. This is in our interest; it is in
their interest. I do not know if it is going to happen quickly
or effectively, and it is something in which we could be very
helpful as a partner in doing. We have some experience in doing
this as well. We could bring in the Canadians and others. But
this is something we should take advantage of the moment. The
more people stay in Mexico and the more they fill labor needs
and they receive protection in Mexico, the less pressure on our
border. It is time to take advantage of that.
Third, we should work with Mexico and Central America to
tackle the smuggling networks. We can talk about that, and we
should prioritize the predatory networks and the ones dealing
in special interest immigrants.
Finally, we do need to invest in governance, public
security, and youth employment in Central America. Mexico is
the case that shows us that over time some things do make a
difference. In Mexico's case, more Mexican investments, but it
was also tying the economy to the United States where people
stopped coming. The U.S. economy is really good, by the way. I
forget to mention that. The U.S. economy is really good.
Mexicans are not coming. Guatemalans and Hondurans are coming
because there is a push factor as well. Right? The pull factors
and the push factors work together. Salvadorans are not coming
in large numbers yet. I mean, we will see what the numbers look
like down the road. It tells you that if you invest in the
point of origin, it can make a difference over time. I agree
with the Chairman, it is not a fail-safe that works tomorrow.
But in a place like El Salvador where there seems to be a
virtuous cycle going on, where you actually have demographics
in your favor--it is an older population, more urbanized
population where security seems to be getting better, the kind
of investments we have made on the ground with local
governments in El Salvador as far as that seem to be making a
difference. You can actually tell in the 50 municipalities
where we have worked predominantly the kind of investments in
youth engagement, in community policing, as well as what we
have done on national level to support the attorney general's
office and go after corruption, these things make a difference.
It is going to be harder to do in Guatemala and Honduras. I
will not sell a bill of goods that we cannot come up with. It
will be harder. But it is something clearly we need to do
because that will be our long-term solution.
Just to conclude, because I know I am over time, let me say
that there is no magic formula to stop migration flows. We need
to think in terms of a range of policy strategies. We do need
to accept that there are legitimate asylum seekers out there. I
can tell you stories of--I spend a lot of time in women's
shelters and in youth shelters in Mexico. I can tell you, any
number of stories of a woman whose 3-year-old had a gun put to
his head and was told if they did not make their next payment
to the extortionist, to the local gang, they would kill her
son. The next time they could not make the payment, they left.
I can tell you about a young woman I met who left because
the gang leader in her neighborhood wanted her to be his woman,
whatever that means, and she decided to flee. As she fled
through Mexico, she got a call in every city. Every shelter she
landed in, someone from the gang called her to let her know
that he was following her, up until she got to Tijuana and
finally was able to disappear.
I can tell you about a young man who was told he had to
join the gang or they were coming for his mother, and he never
went home again. He had his brother go get his stuff and never
went home and has not seen his family since.
That said, that is not everyone. We are a country that
cares about protection. We are country that cares about
refugees. We need to have an asylum system that works. At the
same time, that asylum system should be timely enough that
people who are using it for other means than protection should
actually not make the cut and should be returned in a timely
way as well. We need to work with our partners in Mexico and
Central America. We should not be threatening them. We should
be working with them. We should be looking at the root causes
of migration because in the end that is the one thing that is
going to make a difference in the long term.
I would put out again the example of Mexico. This was
once--15 years ago, it would be impossible to think that people
would stop migrating from Mexico. I mean, even 10 years ago I
did not believe--5 years ago, I was not sure I believed this
was not going to start up again. I actually believe it now. El
Salvador, I think we may be at the beginning, cautiously, but I
think we may be at the beginning. Guatemala and Honduras, we
have to imagine that we have to get them to a place where
people do not want to leave, with both the incentives on our
side to leave, because I think there are incentives in our
policies, do not bring people, but also the causes on the
ground do not lead people to go. The smugglers, also, we have
actually dealt with in such a way that they are less of a
threat and less pernicious in their ability to convince people
to move when they should not.
Thanks.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Dr. Selee.
I am going to defer my questioning, but I want to make a
couple points.
First of all, we will definitely stipulate there are all
kinds of depredations; there are all kinds of people that are
fleeing unbelievable types of threats. But I do look at what is
probably our best information right now. About 15 percent of
people seeking asylum actually have those asylum claims
granted. So that would indicate to me about 15 percent of the
people coming in here are subject to those types of threats,
which, of course, we all want to grant asylum for those. But 85
percent are probably more in the category of economic migrants.
Now, those are not perfect stats, but it gives us some kind of
indication.
The other thing is, again, separate out achievable goals
short term versus long term. Right now, what I want this
Committee to work on is the short-term goal, which I would say
is what we need to concentrate on: reducing this flow of
illegal immigration. I am happy to talk about the long-term
goal, but recognize it is a long-term goal. We are not going to
improve the economies significantly to reduce this by
development dollars in Central America. Again, I just kind of
want that to inform our discussions and questions as we move
forward.
But, with that, I will turn it over to Senator Peters.
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to the
three of you for your testimony. You certainly gave us an awful
lot that we will now try to unpack through a series of
questions over the remaining time that we have in this hearing.
First, I want to deal with a short-term issue that you
mentioned, Chairman. According to the CBP's own workload
staffing model, the Office of Field Operations is understaffed
by nearly 4,000 CBP officers right now. Certainly we must
address the challenge of the Southern Border, which was laid
out quite extensively by the three of you gentlemen. But these
efforts should not create a large-scale disruption in the
legitimate trade and travel that is occurring across these
borders, and I remind everybody we have a Northern Border as
well as a Southern Border, and these trade relationships are
critical to the economic viability of our country.
Yesterday I introduced legislation with Senator Cornyn that
would fully staff our ports of entry, airports, seaports, and
land ports of entry. Dr. Selee, I appreciated that in your
December testimony before the Judiciary Committee you
specifically recommended investments in technology, customs
officials, asylum officers, and things that you have echoed
here today.
But could you discuss the potential negative impacts to our
economy of moving hundreds or even thousands of CBP officers
from our ports of entry to the Border Patrol sectors? What will
that potentially do?
Mr. Selee. I think it is hard to underestimate how much the
U.S. industrial base, our productions chains, are, in fact,
North American. They are not American anymore. I mean, the auto
industry relies on an integrated platform that is, Canada, the
United States, and Mexico. So I have, somewhat too poetically,
called it a ``murder-suicide'' to close down the border. We can
do it, but it actually comes back and boomerangs on us as well.
This is the kind of thing where we are deeply economically
interdependent. It is true in refrigerators; it is true in
cars; it is true in--run down the U.S. industrial production.
It is starting to be true in technology, some areas of
technology, but slightly less true. We are deeply integrated.
So even slowdowns have a huge impact on just-in-time
manufacturing, right? It has a huge impact on American workers,
right? We can sustain it for a week or two. We can sustain it--
American industry will survive for a short amount of time. If
we continue to disrupt commerce across the border, that will be
an issue for American workers, and Mexican and Canadian
workers, for the long term. It will have a huge impact on gross
domestic product (GDP) growth.
This is an area where I think we should not underestimate
how interdependent we have become. Actually, the Governor of
Arizona, talks about this quite eloquently. This really is a--
Sonora and Arizona are one tied-together entity, economic
entity. If you go to San Diego and Tijuana, Mayor Faulconer of
San Diego talks about Tijuana and San Diego now being one metro
area rather than two cities because they are economically
integrated in a way that was not true 10 or 20 years ago.
Senator Peters. Dr. Selee, you mentioned the impact on
manufacturing. Certainly we see that firsthand in Michigan with
the dependence of the auto industry, as you mentioned, of both
Mexico and Canada and the just-in-time delivery that we see
across the Canadian border in particular that, if disrupted,
creates a cascade of bad impacts that ultimately impact
American workers and impact our country, but agriculture as
well. If the agricultural inspections that we are taking CBP
officers away and sending them to the Southern Border, that
could have a devastating impact on agriculture, too, couldn't
it?
Mr. Selee. A huge agricultural market for the United
States, Mexico is one of our biggest markets for any number of
agricultural products, from soybeans to, wheat, corn, pork, and
beef. Actually, Mexico is one of the top, one, two, or three on
all of those. Yes, it is a huge market disruption, and,
obviously, is a source for strawberries and fresh fruits and
other things we consume as well. So huge impact.
Senator Peters. But having those officers in ports of entry
around the country, because we have imports coming in from
around the world----
Mr. Selee. We do.
Senator Peters [continuing]. If not screened properly, can
have a devastating impact on our agricultural industry.
Mr. Selee. Yes, very much so. We can miss this in the talk
about the tough things going on at the border, but I think one
of the things that we have actually achieved, to the credit of
CBP, actually, over the past few years and their counterparts
in Canada and Mexico, is we increasingly manage the border at
both the north and the south very collaboratively and with a
lot of minding the flows rather than just the line, how we
prescreen things before they get to the border. It has become
much more secure and much more efficient at the border than it
has ever been before.
Senator Peters. In 2016, to Senator Johnson, you included a
measure in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to
establish some baseline metrics for the DHS to measure security
along the borders, and I want to compliment you on that. I
think that is an important effort to understanding what exactly
we are dealing with, and data is critical. We want to make this
fact-based and data-driven as to what we do going forward.
I would like to ask the panel, is there additional data
that CBP should be collecting in your estimation so that we can
get a real true sense of what is happening here? I will start
with you, Mr. Morgan.
Mr. Morgan. I think if you look at the data right now, they
are doing a pretty good job--I mean, the data is not perfect,
and I do agree there is some improvement in some areas. I think
we saw in the past that, when you have taken action like
separation of families, we should do a better job of that data,
and I think we can all agree on that.
But if you look at what they are collecting, it clearly
paints a picture from 2014 to now. It clearly shows the
demographic changes from Mexican adults to Central American and
Northern Triangle countries. It clearly shows that in 2012--
really in 2014, how it was mainly unaccompanied minors, but now
it has shifted to family members. I mean, those are the key
essential elements of data that they are collecting that really
illustrates the critical crisis that we are in now.
Specifically, are there overall improvements? But I think
they are doing a pretty good job right now.
Senator Peters. Mr. Davidson, specifically, is there
anything additional--not what we are doing right now, I
appreciate that comment, but anything additional? I will go to
you afterwards, Dr. Selee.
Mr. Davidson. To my mind, the one area when it comes to
data that we do not have any and we may never have any is data
about the smuggling networks and the cartels and the kind of
money that they are making off of this. We can do back-of-the-
envelope approximations. An $800 tax per person to the gulf
cartels for everyone that crosses, that is hundreds of millions
of dollars on that part of the border. But the amount of money,
I think, is substantial, and I do not think that we quite have
gotten our minds around that yet, how big the industry is.
That does not really answer your question, but----
Senator Peters. Thank you. Dr. Selee?
Mr. Selee. Yes, I would agree. Actually, information on
smuggling networks and the fact that you have to really compile
that across agencies and across countries, which is
complicated.
I would say also making sure that the numbers that DHS has
are public in a timely way. I will actually throw out--just
since we have mentioned a couple times here the asylum numbers,
the latest asylum numbers we have are, by the way, 15 percent
approval rate for Guatemalans, but it goes up to about 21 or 22
percent for Hondurans, 25 percent for Salvadorans. It actually
goes up a lot depending--El Salvador has been much more of a
violence-driven flow. Guatemala has been a more economic flow.
Honduras is in between. But I mention that because those are
old numbers. OK? We do not actually have updated numbers. A lot
of the numbers that we deal with on the outside--but I suspect
a number that people on the inside are dealing with also have a
giant lag in them, and so investing in up-to-date--especially
when we are dealing with things that change in 2 months, right?
This would have been a different conversation 3 months ago than
it is right now. We have to have real-time numbers that can be
socialized across agencies to Congress and to the wider world.
Senator Peters. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Peters.
As the accountant on the Committee, it drives me nuts that
we do not have the kind of data that we really do need. But I
agree with Chief Morgan that we have done a pretty good job. We
kind of have this assessed. But I would like to know exactly
what it is in terms of percent of asylum claims right now that
are valid. That gives us information. Talking to the Secretary
last week, her sense was it is shifting more and more to an
economic migrant flow. But, again, you just do not have the
data on it. Senator Hassan.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HASSAN
Senator Hassan. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and Ranking
Member Peters, for this hearing. Thank you to our witnesses
today. I also wanted to thank the Ranking Member for his
opening comments and associate myself with them. Thank you for
that.
Dr. Selee, we have heard from all three of you today about
the impact of drug cartels at our Southern Border. Last year, I
was at the border myself, and one of the things that I heard
from agents on the front lines was the need to stem the flow of
illegal firearms and cash southbound from the United States to
Mexico, because that is, of course, feeding the cartels.
Firearms and cash make their way into the hands of these
cartels, empowering and driving them to commit more acts of
violence on both sides of the border.
Dr. Selee, in your opinion, what needs to be done to
improve our capacity to conduct southbound inspections at the
U.S.-Mexico border?
Mr. Selee. That is a tough one because you do not want to
gum up the system going south.
Senator Hassan. Right.
Mr. Selee. At the same time, it really is a problem. We
have a circular business here, right? The cartels are moving
narcotics northward across the border, but then the money that
is spent by American consumers of illegal narcotics is then
going back into Mexico, and some of it is used to purchase arms
and head back. We have a real circular trade going on here.
Senator Hassan. Yes.
Mr. Selee. Probably the best way of dealing with this is
not actually stopping people at the line, but it is looking at
the flows. It is what CBP is becoming increasingly adept at
doing, what the FBI does very well as well, which is
increasingly it is how do you follow the networks of people
that are involved in arms trafficking? How do you the kind of
investigations that allow you to figure out who are the people
that are moving the money? First of all, the financial side,
who is moving the money? Some of it still moves in cash, which
is hard to believe, this quantity of money. Some of it moves
through the financial system, some of it moves in cash, though.
Because those networks are there, right? People who are going
north are going south again.
So it is actually more in the investigation side. That is a
coordination issue among agencies, and it is a coordination
issue with Mexico as well.
Senator Hassan. And that assumes that, of course, if we can
have good investigations that follow the money and follow the
firearms, we will be able to disrupt the cartels, right?
Mr. Selee. That is right. The most we can hope for is
disrupting, to be honest with you. I mean, I do not think we
are going to stop the business by, stopping all the money, but
disrupting it enough that you create chaos. A little bit of
chaos and disruption and a big of degrading of their financial
logistical networks goes a long way.
Senator Hassan. Right, and working, obviously, with
governments south of the border, too.
Mr. Selee. Very much so. We did this right after--during
the Calderon administration in Mexico, both with the Bush
Administration and the beginning of the Obama Administration,
we were very active, actually, on the financial side. We have
moved a little bit away from it.
Senator Hassan. OK. That is helpful.
We have also heard from other witnesses here today and many
of us up on the dais about the migration that is happening
despite the President and the Administration's actions. If I
understand your testimony correctly, you indicate that actually
the opposite is true. In your view, are the actions and policy
decisions of this Administration contributing to the spike in
migration and border crossing at the Southern Border right now?
Mr. Selee. I think the answer is yes, although it would not
be the first Administration that has done that.
Senator Hassan. Right. Understood.
Mr. Selee. Being fully balanced on this. My sense is that
we have tried repeatedly to overreach and fix specific things.
We have actually been trying to limit people's access to
asylum, trying to separate families, we need to be actually
fixing our asylum system. There is one big thing we could do
that would actually make this easier. We keep doing sort of
overreaches. It was family separation, but then it was a DHS
order to not take asylum applications between ports of entry.
That was stopped in the courts. There have been a couple others
along the way. It is metering, frankly, also I think is another
piece of this, where it becomes very hard for people who have
legitimate claims to present those at the ports of entry, and
so the message from the smugglers is, ``Hey, come with me
between ports of entry.'' People who might actually have wanted
to do the right thing are not doing it.
We need to figure out, rather than trying to fix a lot of
small things, just do one big fix that actually makes sense
here.
Senator Hassan. Right. It seemed to me from your testimony
that in some ways we are playing--it is whack-a-mole, right? I
mean, we go after one problem; we create a ripple effect or a
side effect; then we have to go after that, when, in fact, we
have some systemic changes we need to do, including a lot more
judges, a lot more personnel at the border, something I heard
about when I was at the border, smart infrastructure, smart
deterrence and technology at the border.
Thank you very much, and I yield my time.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Portman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PORTMAN
Senator Portman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We appreciate all
of you being here.
Chief, I was doing a ride-along with the El Paso Sector,
probably 40 years ago, which dates me, and you indicated that
things have changed dramatically. At that time, it was
primarily men coming over from Mexico looking for work, and the
numbers were about a million, but I actually was working with
some of those men at that time, and some of them were
apprehended by the Border Patrol, and they were back that night
because they were sent back to Mexico and they simply crossed
again. There was not the families, there were not the kids, so
it is a very different concern.
On data, I could not agree with you all more. We want the
data. We want it in a timely fashion. We really do not have
good numbers. We do know that the vast majority, whether it is
15 or 20 percent, of asylum claims are turned down. I guess we
know that generally speaking.
We also know that of those, 10 percent, roughly, we are
told by the Secretary of DHS, who are now being sent back to
Mexico to await a hearing, which is a pilot program, in effect,
that there seems to be some indication that those individuals
are not staying in Mexico waiting for their hearing but going
back to their home country, which is primarily Northern
Triangle countries.
Does anybody have any data on that, any information on
that? Dr. Selee, you may know about that program. Chief or Mr.
Davidson, any thoughts on what those numbers are?
Mr. Morgan. I do not.
Senator Portman. Dr. Selee, do you know?
Mr. Selee. I can try and get that to the extent the Mexican
authorities may know something, but I have not seen that. My
sense from journalists that are following this--there is a set
of journalists that have been following this. Most people seem
to be staying and waiting to see how their case plays out. But
I would not doubt you get a few people headed back. It is still
too new. We are talking about 300 people, more or less, the
last number I saw earlier this week, so it is a small number.
Senator Portman. I do not think it is the solution to the
entire problem because I think you have to deal with the
broader issue, including, in my view dealing with the TVPRA
issue and the Flores decision, and, just coming up with a new
approach generally to immigration. But I think it is an
interesting short-term effort to try to encourage people to
stay in Mexico rather than coming over here and awaiting their
hearing.
What percentage of people who are released to the community
actually show up at the hearing? Do we have that number?
Mr. Morgan. We have a general number, so what they say, the
numbers that I understand--again, the numbers are not perfect,
but about 40 percent do not show up. They end up getting orders
of deportation in absentia, and then the remaining do show up.
Of course, the majority of those, the claim is found to be
unsubstantiated.
Senator Portman. Do you agree with that, Dr. Selee?
Mr. Selee. Yes, that is about right. It depends on what
group you are talking about. For families, it is fairly high.
People tend to show up--there are two places that people can
disappear, right? One is they get through--they are released.
They are either given a notice to appear , and they do not show
up or they do show up. They go through credible fear, and then
they have to apply for asylum. A lot of the disappearance comes
at that point. People do not apply for asylum--or they do not
show up for their NTA hearing.
Once people apply for asylum, the numbers are pretty good
about people carrying through their case, and people that have
lawyers actually overwhelmingly carry through their case. But I
would say the numbers I have seen are probably there, 40
percent probably do not, 60 percent do.
Senator Portman. I think most people who we represent would
be surprised by those numbers, and I think there is a broken
system here, and we just added a lot more judges, as you know,
in this latest appropriations bill, and we also added some
other things to border security, including more inspections at
the border for drugs. In Ohio, we are getting slammed by drugs
coming across that border. Most of the fentanyl, by the way,
comes through the mail from China, but some of it is coming
from Mexico now and in higher numbers. That number has
increased. But crystal meth, which is our new problem in Ohio,
is primarily, maybe exclusively even, being made in Mexico and
coming across. Of course, heroin has been coming across, about
90 percent through the border.
This inspection technology I hope will work better, and,
Chief, I do not know if you had much exposure to that at the
ports of entry, but do you feel as though this new technology
is going to make a big difference in terms of being able to
stop some of the flow of drugs?
Mr. Morgan. Absolutely. Unequivocally, we need more
technology. We need more technology at the ports. We need more
technology in between the ports, absolutely. But make no
mistake. One of the false narratives out there is that more
drugs are interdicted at the ports. First of all, just on its
facts, that is incorrect.
If you take into account, cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, and
methamphetamines, yes, at the ports. But if you take into
consideration all drugs, pound for pound, more is actually
interdicted in between the ports.
What is another element that is critically important in
that false narrative is 50 percent of the border is wide open,
and now that 40 percent of the Border Patrol resources are
diverted to do the humanitarian mission, the border is even
more unsecure. The real thing we should be focusing on and
talking about is we have no idea, sir, what is coming through
our border because it is unsecure. We have no idea.
Senator Portman. Again, going to data, hard to get to good
data when we do not have the ability to collect the data.
Let me ask you another question. One of the things we focus
on a lot is, the push factors, and I agree that the Northern
Triangle countries deserve to have more assistance from us that
is effective. We have tried different things. We tried the
Millennium Challenge approach, particularly in Honduras, which
I had great hope for. Frankly, it did not work out as I had
hoped. I was on that board at one point when I was U.S. Trade
Representative and was very supportive of trying to help change
some of the institutions in those countries to create more rule
of law and create the basis for economic development. I am not
sure we know how to do that, but we should do more of that.
On the pull factors, one of the things that I think is lost
sometimes is that these people are primarily coming here to
work. It is a magnet. The families and the kids, people might
say, ``Well, that is for another reason.'' Not really because
those adults are coming here to find a job. As was indicated
earlier, many have a job already lined up.
What do you all think of making E-Verify mandatory and
actually dealing with the magnet, the draw, which is a job
ultimately? Right now I think people would be surprised to
learn that with regard to E-Verify, which is an attempt to
authorize somebody to be able to work, to say whether they are
here legally or not, we do not have an effective system. We do
not have an effective system when someone shows up with a false
ID, fake Social Security card, fake driver's license, employer
is off the hook, and it is not mandatory.
Can you all talk about that as a pull factor and whether we
should do more on E-Verify?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir. So the answer to that is yes,
absolutely. Just like we should continue to, work with the
Mexican Government, just like we should continue to work with
the Northern Triangle countries, just like we need more
technology, just like we need increased barrier. All that is
true, and we need to get better at that. But make no mistake.
We can do all of that we are talking about, sir, all of that,
and nothing is going to change. The numbers are going to keep
coming because of challenges like the Flores Settlement and
TVPRA. If those two elements are not addressed, which is going
to take congressional action, if they are not fixed, the
incentives are there. That is the pull factor. The pull factor
is Flores and TVPRA.
We could do E-Verify. Yes, we need it. We can get more
technology. Yes, we need it. Physical barrier, yes. Continue to
work with Mexico, yes. Northern Triangle countries, yes. Those
numbers are not going to change, and the chart shows it. We
have been working with Mexico.
With all due respect, Mexico, the reason why adult Mexican
and the illegal entry of Mexicans went down was because we,
America, we applied consequences. We removed them. Now, you can
say that work with Mexico helped a little bit, but make no
mistake. Those numbers went down because we removed them and we
applied consequences.
So all this other stuff, while it is important, it is not
going to eliminate the Central American families and minors
from coming until we fix Flores, until we fix TVPRA. That will
remove the incentive. That will eliminate catch-and-release. I
promise you you will see those numbers go down dramatically.
Senator Portman. My time has expired. Again, I appreciate
all three of you and your service. I would say that even for
these families coming up from Central America, I believe the
primary pull factor is a job, is our economy, so I do think
there is a way for us to address that through legislation.
Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. So just real quick, one piece of data we
do collect is if we detain an individual versus if we do not
detain them, on final order of removal, if they are detained,
we remove about 77 percent. If we do not detain, we only remove
about 7 percent. So that kind of gives you the idea, that is
one stat we actually do keep track of.
I would also say in terms of Mexico, a lot of it is the
Mexican economy has really revved up. I think North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) worked, and as a result, Mexico
needs more workers, and if anything, we might even had an
outflow of that.
The next questioner is Senator Carper.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Our thanks to each of
you.
This is a little bit like Groundhog Day. I have been
sitting here for 18 years, and we have talked about this issue
a whole lot. I have said to my colleagues more times than they
want to remember that there is no silver bullet here. There are
a lot of silver BBs. Some of them are bigger than others. We
are hearing about Flores revisited. We are hearing about TVPRA.
I had the privilege of leading a congressional delegation
with Jeff Merkley and some of our House colleagues about a
month ago, and we were in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
We do not have an ambassador in Honduras. We have not had one
all year, did not have one last year, did not have one the year
before. That is crazy. That is crazy in this situation. We
could do something about that if we get a nominee. There was a
nominee 2 years ago, and he was held up and never allowed to go
through--not by us, not by our side, but by the other side.
I want to just mention a couple things about my trip to the
Northern Triangle. You mentioned, Dr. Selee, that something
interesting is going on in El Salvador, and you are right.
Fifty cities there, 50 town cities, have been targeted for
crime reduction successfully. We are complicit in those
actions, which is a good thing. For every $1 we put up through
the Alliance for Prosperity in El Salvador, they spend $7. It
is like Home Depot: ``You can do it. We can help.''
We have also just had an election several months ago. The
current leader of El Salvador is a 75-year-old guerrilla leader
with close ties to the Cubans, the Venezuelans, the Chinese. He
has been succeeded by a 37-year-old mayor of San Salvador who
gets economic development, understands the role of government
in creating a nurturing environment for job creation and job
preservation, understands why crime and corruption are
important elements in creating that nurturing environment. He
is the first candidate in El Salvadoran history to win an
outright election as President of his country.
Guatemala is going to have an election in June, and some of
the folks who helped put together the winning campaign in El
Salvador are helping to run their campaign of former Guatemalan
Attorney General Thelma Aldana. She is going to be a change
agent. If she is elected, she will be a change agent in terms
of crime and corruption.
There is something for us to learn from that election in El
Salvador, and the fact is that illegal immigration is not
dropping in El Salvador but it is not skyrocketing, and I think
it is in part because people who live there sense a renewed
sense of hope and opportunity.
We have talked a bit about what can Congress do, revisit
the Flores decision. It has been mentioned here that part of
the problem, a big problem, we have 157 million people who went
to work today in this country--157 million. There are about 3
or 4 million jobs that nobody showed up to do. Americans do not
want to do that work, cannot do that work, are not educated to
do that work. There are folks who want to come to this country
who can and are willing to do that work, and they will try real
hard to get here to have these opportunities.
We passed by a two-thirds margin immigration reform. How
many years ago was it--6, 7, or 8 years ago? Part of that was a
guest visitor worker program, which I think makes a lot of
sense in the world. I have talked to so many people in these
three countries of the Northern Triangle who say, ``We do not
want to come and live in America and stay here. We would
actually like to be able to come here and work some and go home
and eventually live full-time in our country.'' We hear that
again and again. That would work for us, and I think it would
work for them.
I interrupted one of your questioning, I think you
mentioned asylum, the ability to have access to asylum pleas
almost upon entering this country. Secretary Nielsen has been
pushing the idea of asylum hearings literally in our consulates
within Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, which I think
makes some sense. Let me just ask, just go down the line--Dr.
Selee, you can take it first--does that make any sense?
Mr. Selee. Thank you, Senator. I think it does make sense.
I think we would have to figure out how we structure it. The
devil is in the details a bit, but it is a good idea to think
of in-country processing. We have to have a way of protecting
people if they are making an asylum application in their own
country.
We had a pilot program, a very small pilot program in the
Obama Administration, the Central American Minors (CAM), where
we did this with minors. We can learn from that experience and
build on it. We did have a way of getting people to Costa Rica
to be protected while their asylum application was pending. It
was actually not asylum. It was done through a different
figure. But it was nonetheless the same idea.
We could also be talking with the Mexican Government about
doing asylum processing in southern Mexico. I am not sure
whether that would fly or not. It is not clear to me that it
would work, but it is also something we could be having a
productive conversation, people get into Mexico, have a safe
zone under international auspices where people can apply for
asylum, perhaps in both countries.
Senator Carper. Thank you.
Mr. Davidson, just very briefly, please.
Mr. Davidson. Yes, I would say to the point earlier about
the remain in Mexico pilot program that they are trotting out,
there is not a lot of information about it, about the numbers.
It is not high, a couple hundred, maybe 300 or so. But the
initial reports from that that I have seen is that it is very
chaotic and very difficult for people who are remaining in
Mexico to even know when their court date is here in the United
States and to get here in time for the court date to
communicate with attorneys. The idea that we are going to go
through like full asylum hearings for all these people that are
showing up I think is a losing proposition. Having expedited
evaluation of asylum claims at the border or shortly after
people come across, empowering CBP or somebody else, Federal
agents, along the border to be able to do that in a timely
fashion and not have this deal where they are going to have to
go through the court system and the backlogs and having them
come back and forth across the border multiple times to pursue
their asylum claims, I do not see how that is workable. So far
it has been very chaotic, and it has been a mess.
Senator Carper. Very briefly, Mr. Morgan, please. Same
question.
Mr. Morgan. I absolutely think it is a good idea, but both
in their country of origin and Mexico, I agree there is some
chaos. But whenever you are trying something new, there is
always some chaos. I think the devil will be in the details. I
think we could work that out.
But what I see from a law enforcement perspective, being in
charge of this issue on the border, what it does is it takes
away one of the important elements, the incentive to come here.
Again, we have to keep going back to the incentive. If they set
one foot on the soil, if they know they are not going to
automatically just be allowed in and stay here indefinitely,
that is going to reduce the flow. It is a good idea.
Senator Carper. Alright. Thanks.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Carper.
While we are on the subject, let me quickly ask, because we
talk about asylum in the country. That is really asking for
refugee status, correct? Asylum can only be applied for when
you are in the country. Or do we have to change that law? Also,
isn't there a distinction, too, that you really ought to be
claiming asylum in the first safe country? We are kind of the
second safe country, which would give us some latitude to
change how we deal with asylum with people from Central America
that are coming through Mexico?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, Chairman, that is--Mexico should be a safe
third country. Technically, the way the international asylum
laws are supposed to function is you should be claiming asylum
in the first country, the first border you come to. You have
left your country. That persecution or whatever you are facing
is now done. You are in that safe third country. That should
also be addressed. Mexico has to get involved in that.
Chairman Johnson. OK, but that is something this Committee
is going to have to explore. Exactly what are these treaties?
What are these laws? To Dr. Selee's point, what can we do to
expedite those initial determinations and people that simply do
not have the valid asylum claim where, again, a larger
percentage of these are really coming as economic migrants,
which we fully understand but it does not qualify and those
people need to be returned as a consequence. Senator Rosen.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROSEN
Senator Rosen. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you
for your testimony here today.
I want to hear your thoughts on the impact of aid cuts or
potential aid cuts to the Northern Triangle and some of our
South American countries. It has been stated here, of course,
it is a significant number of migrants arriving at the border.
They are children, they are young adults, many of whom claim a
fear of persecution or harm from gang activity, other criminal
groups.
Last year, I visited the tent city in Tornillo and heard
the stories of some of these young adults, just like you have,
who fled their home for safety in the United States.
So over the last several years, the United States has
provided millions of dollars in foreign aid to support
community-based crime and violence programs which aim to
provide services to youth who are at particular risk, can be
victims or recruited, and also to protect women from domestic
violence and other types of sexual violence.
And so we have done other things and addressed migration,
programs like nutrition assistance, training police officers.
The International Justice Mission has been working with local
authorities in Guatemala to increase the prosecution of child
sexual assault with support from a State Department grant.
So my question for you, Dr. Selee, is this: How do you feel
cutting aid to these programs and other programs like this will
impact the situation on the ground, including violence and
impunity, and that motivate people to come to the United
States?
Mr. Selee. I think it is important to note that most of
this aid--I mean, very little, if any aid actually goes to
governments themselves. This goes primarily to Non-governmental
organizations (NGOs), and some aid is actually within the U.S.
Government, obviously, itself. So the kind of things that we
have seen work on the ground--and, again, everything, when we
say work, Senator, everything is sort of--you have to take it
with a bit of a grain of salt because everything is a moving
target. But the things that seem to work, engaging--
particularly in El Salvador, has been engaging young people in
activities, both youth employment but also recreational
activities, building community policing, for example; investing
in agricultural areas in Guatemala and Honduras seems to have
had some payoff. Then there is a lot of support for the kinds
of prosecutions that you mentioned, and in El Salvador, we have
done a lot of work actually with the attorney general's office
on prosecution of corruption as well, on technical know-how to
be able to prosecute corruption.
So my fear is with aid cuts is you see a backsliding. The
governments will not be affected in this sense, but communities
will be affected, and people who are struggling to make their
governments less corrupt will be affected. The institutions and
the organizations that have been pushing for better governance
are the ones that are affected.
Senator Rosen. If we do this, to follow up, and we remove
some of our influence in the region, do you think other
international actors like China are going to come in and fill
this void, making us less safe and possibly increasing reasons
for people to come?
Mr. Selee. Senator, certainly in El Salvador the Chinese
have been pushing in very aggressively to try and do a major
development project and to become sort of the substitute for
the United States. I think the incoming government is more
skeptical about that, but I think that is--obviously, if we
withdraw our influence, the other actors will want to be
present. We have seen this elsewhere in the hemisphere, right?
Both China and Russia have been present in different countries
where the United States is less active.
Senator Rosen. So you would agree that increasing support,
trying to find good ways to support and, of course, measure how
that may have an impact, gathering the data after would be a
good investment for the United States?
Mr. Selee. It would be a good investment, and I think one
of the things that has been missing that we should do is
actually gather data on what works.
Senator Rosen. Right.
Mr. Selee. Both tangible and intangible. I mean, it is both
the programs that work but also what made it work. I think one
of the things that seems to have worked in El Salvador is that
you had buy-in from both main parties as well as civil society
and business groups at a real local level to make things
happen, and we really worked on that governance side. It is
harder to do that in Honduras and Guatemala. They are less sort
of developed. But those kind of intangible things that make a
program stick are as important as the tangible things about
whether the program reaches the right young people. You have to
measure both of those.
Senator Rosen. Do you think we could import programs from
other countries around the world that we may have had success
in supporting them and import those best practices to the
Northern Triangle?
Mr. Selee. I think we can do that, but I think we also need
to make sure we adapt it to the conditions on the ground. But
certainly we have a lot of know-how, and it is not just us in
some of these countries. We are also working with the European
Union, working with Canada. There are other governments. We
tend to be the catalyst, and I do not think we should forget
that. I think the U.S., part of our role in the world is not
doing everything ourselves, but we are the catalyst to get
other people involved.
Senator Rosen. Right, and just trying to stop it at the
core.
Mr. Selee. Yes, exactly. I think if we see that leadership,
others are going to also wonder--who have been trying to help
out are also going to wonder. But I think bringing in that
global knowledge, we could do a lot on the ground.
Senator Rosen. The last thing I want to say is, of course,
there are always bad actors. We know about the smugglers. You
have talked a lot about them. What do you think we could do
more to disrupt the smuggling networks?
Mr. Morgan. I could take that. I did 20 years in the FBI,
and so we have talked a little bit about that, and I think that
is a great question, because we can address all these pull
factors and incentives, but we have to attack the cartels. What
I have been trying to say is we need to attack the cartels,
ma'am, with the same intensity, commitment, and ferocity that
we have terrorism. We have to. This has to be a whole-of-
government approach. This is not a CBP thing. This is the Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA), FBI, our intelligence----
Senator Rosen. Because there is a lot of money involved, so
they are going to put everything they have into it. They do not
want to lose it. If it is billions of dollars, they do not want
to lose that.
Mr. Morgan. Yes, ma'am. They are a multi-billion-dollar
industry, and they are a talented organization.
Senator Rosen. They are an industry. That is exactly right.
Mr. Morgan. Yes, ma'am. Every time we do something, when
law enforcement--we call it techniques, tactics and procedures
(TTP). The cartels change. As soon as we do something to get
them, they change. They continue to do that and history shows
that. So that is a significant issue.
As we are talking about these things, that is something
from the entire government, a whole-of-government approach, we
have to address. I agree with Andrew that, realistically, are
we going to totally decimate them? No. But we can hit them
hard, and we should.
Senator Rosen. This is where we can partner with those
countries on both ends to maybe capture them in the middle.
Mr. Morgan. Yes, ma'am.
Senator Rosen. Thank you. I appreciate your time.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Sinema.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SINEMA
Senator Sinema. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our
witnesses for being here today.
Our Nation faces a critical situation along the Southwest
Border with serious security, economic, and humanitarian
consequences for my State, Arizona. Today in Arizona, CBP and
ICE are releasing asylum seekers fleeing violence and
instability into our communities. One way we can protect our
communities and uphold our values is by treating these children
and families humanely and with dignity. I believe it is vitally
important that DHS work with our NGO partners to make this
asylum process as smooth as possible.
But our ports of entry also face uncertainty and
disruption. The decision to transfer officers from Arizona
ports threatens our security, including our ability to stop the
flow of drugs into the United States, which is why I have asked
CBP to reverse its decision and secure our ports of entry.
Our border security workforce is also stressed and tired. I
have heard stories of officers who are working 16-hour shifts
at our ports, leading to attrition and burnout amongst an
already overburdened force. As we heard from our witnesses
today, the number of migrants from Central American nations
coming to our borders and seeking safety is high. So we need to
tackle this issue with common-sense solutions.
I think Congress must focus on ideas and initiatives that
improve our security, strengthen our economy, and uphold our
values. I think we should oppose proposals with dangerous and
harmful consequences such as closing the entire Southwest
Border.
I am committed to working in a bipartisan way to finding
solutions that keep Arizona families and communities safe and
treat migrants humanely.
My first question is for Dr. Selee. The most important
assets and resources we have at our ports are men and women who
are working on the front lines. As I mentioned earlier, I
disagree with DHS' recent decisions to remove officers from
ports in Arizona. These ports were already struggling with
vacancies and are now further understaffed, and I am wondering
if you could talk about the impact of long-term and chronic
understaffing on security and trade at ports of entry.
Mr. Selee. Thank you, Senator. I actually arrived this
morning from Phoenix, Arizona, so I was talking with people
about the consequence----
Senator Sinema. I am very jealous.
Mr. Selee. Yes. Always lovely to be in Arizona, actually,
the great State of Arizona. It is a State--I have mentioned a
few times because it really is so deeply connected. The border
matters. It is 46 percent, I believe, of Arizona's exports that
go to----
Senator Sinema. That is right.
Mr. Selee. But these are actually, as we were talking
earlier, these are really production chains that span across
the border where you have things moving back and forth and
goods being made across--so I think the chronic understaffing
of ports of entry and the lack of technology, which Chief
Morgan mentioned earlier, the lack of investment in technology
at the ports of entry is a major issue. This is something that
we could fix, and it is something that it does not break the
budget to try and address it, actually. It would be very well
done.
I would disagree a little bit with Chief Morgan on one
thing, which is the statistics that come out of CBP do indicate
that if you take marijuana out of the equation, all other
narcotics, overwhelmingly 85 to 90 percent do come through
ports of entry. Now, marijuana does tend to move between ports
of entry, and there are some other drugs that move between
ports of entry, but they are fairly rare. Ports of entry is
where the greatest threats are, actually, and it is also where
the greatest opportunities are to make our country strong. We
really do need to be investing there. I am not saying we should
not invest between ports of entry. Clearly, we have urgent
needs to do that at this moment right now. But we also really
should not forget ports of entry. They tend to get missed, and
they are so key to our economy. They are key to our security.
Senator Sinema. Thank you. Speaking of that, Chief Morgan,
in your testimony you mentioned the need to do better at
stopping the flow of drugs between our ports of entry. What
type of additional technology or resources do you think that
the Border Patrol needs to meet that specific challenge?
Mr. Morgan. That is a great question, Senator, and actually
I agree that the majority of drugs are coming in in those
categories--meth, fentanyl, heroin. It was the marijuana that I
said. But here is the thing where I will depart, that the
reason my statement is that in between the ports, because 50
percent of the border is wide open and not secure, we do not
know what is coming through. At the ports of entry, we get to
stop every person, every vehicle, so, of course, we should be
interdicting more at the ports. We should really be afraid. The
ports, but also in between the ports.
The technology that we need, there is a whole list of
technology we need. We need fixed and mobile surveillance. We
need better surveillance. We need updated surveillance. We need
a capability to have that surveillance be interconnected from
sector to sector. The list goes on and on. We can use more
drones. All this stuff that has been talked about, right? All
that technology is absolutely needed, hands down, at the ports
and in between the ports.
But here is what I will say, Senator, that technology by
itself is not the answer, though. You still need
infrastructure.
Senator Sinema. That is right.
Mr. Morgan. You still need some barrier where it makes
sense--not sea to shining sea, and there is not an expert on
the border who will ever tell you that that is what you need.
You need more personnel. We call it the ``multi-layered
strategy,'' right? We need infrastructure, the wall, physical
barrier. We need technology and a lot of it, and we need
personnel where it makes sense. It makes sense in between the
ports and at the ports.
Senator Sinema. I could not agree more.
My next question is actually for both of you gentlemen. As
you know, charity organizations such as Lutheran Social
Services and Catholic Charities, along with many others, play a
critical role in helping manage the asylees who are entering
the United States. In Arizona, sometimes the communication
between DHS and these NGO's has not been as effective as it
could be.
What steps do you suggest that CBP and ICE take to ensure
that that coordination and cooperation with the NGO community
happens to help prevent these crises?
Mr. Morgan. Real quick, I will take this one, if you do not
mind. I think that is right. In 2016, I saw it firsthand. I
went down there, and I talked to a lot of NGO's, faith-based
organizations. They are doing an incredible job, and they are
very much an integral part of the solution, right? But where
that really goes, it is local. It is. Those organizations are
local, so it really is just a proactive--it is support from
headquarters, obviously, but it really is coming on to local
leaders to really interact with those local faith-based
organizations and the resources of the local NGO's to really
continue to establish those relationships.
What I saw in 2016 overall were really good relationships.
That does not mean that they do not need to improve. What I
have seen is they are continuing to improve, but I tell you,
CBP is drowning, but so are all the faith-based organizations
and the NGO's. They are tapped out, too, ma'am. They are all
drowning.
Senator Sinema. I have invited ICE Director Vitiello to
join me next week to have a roundtable meeting with the NGO's
to figure out how to better coordinate at least the
communication, because what we see happening every day in
Tucson, Yuma, and Phoenix are just influxes of these migrants
who are waiting sometimes years to get their asylum hearing and
showing up at bus stations. So the local communities are
overwhelmed, and our NGO's cannot get there fast enough and do
not have the resources to help everyone.
Mr. Morgan. I think that is a great point, and better
communication is always a good thing. I think what is happening
is it is a cause and effect. Border Patrol, they get a caravan
of 500 in that they did not expect. They are overwhelmed. ICE
is overwhelmed, and, ergo, then the faith-based organizations
and NGO's, they become overwhelmed. They may at times think
there is a lack of communication, and really what it is is just
everybody is overwhelmed and doing the best they can to adjust.
But more communication is always a good thing.
Senator Sinema. Mr. Chairman, my time has expired. May I
ask Mr. Selee if he wants to respond?
Chairman Johnson. Sure.
Senator Sinema. Thank you.
Mr. Selee. I will be very brief. I think what you are doing
with Director Vitiello is exactly the right thing. I think you
need to create those channels of communication. I agree with
Chief Morgan; everyone is overwhelmed. I mean, we do have a
humanitarian crisis. I think we can debate whether it is a
national crisis, but it is clearly a humanitarian crisis at the
border. Everyone is sort of, trying to figure out--it creates
issues of cooperation among agencies, but also civil society.
The more you can get people together and try and bridge those
communication gaps, it would be incredibly helpful.
Senator Sinema. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Sinema.
I have about 2 hours' worth of questions, but let us start
here. The major blue and red to the right of 2012 represents
more than 850,000 people. In terms of the red, the
unaccompanied children, I think it is important to note that
about 70 percent of those are male, about 70 percent are 15 or
older, 15, 16, to 17, certainly the profile of gangs.
The question I have is: Where have those 850,000 people
gone? What kind of records do we have? They get their notice to
appear, which the coyotes call their ``permiso.'' It permits
them to go into America. Are they by and large lost? I think
they had Operation Matador, a really focused operation on MS-13
gangs. I think the stat was 40 percent of those gang members
came in as either part of a family unit, as a minor, or as an
unaccompanied child. Where are the 850,000 people?
By the way, we talk about Dreamers. I would love to fix
that issue. But we understate the number there as well. 700,000
have signed up, 700,000 did not that qualified. There are a
couple million that are similar circumstance. They do not in
some way, shape, or form qualify. Now we have got 850,000
people here. This situation just continues to grow more and
more out of control. People in this country, really no legal
status, living in the shadows, potentially being exploited. So
anybody who can speak to what do we know about the 850,000
people, where are they, what are they doing, and what is their
status?
Mr. Morgan. Sir, let me back up even a little more. It
starts with when we allow them into the country. There is very
little that we actually know about them when we let them in.
They either have no documentation whatsoever, or the
documentation they have, it is impossible to do true vetting.
To a large degree, we again--and I said this before. We do
not even know who we are letting in. So that dramatically
reduces our ability to keep track of these people when we do
not even know who they are.
Chairman Johnson. Again, because of Flores, I mean, the
length we can really detain and lack of detention facilities,
literally CBP does not have the time--as hard as they try to
determine is that the father or the sex trafficker, is that his
daughter or is that his sex-trafficking victim?
Mr. Morgan. Right. They are overwhelmed right now, and so
Border Patrol now, instead of giving them to ICE, Border Patrol
is releasing them directly because, I think the Commissioner
said it accurately. He said 4,000 we are full, 6,000 is a
crisis; we are at 13,000.
Chairman Johnson. By the way, CBP is not trained to do
that, right? I mean, they are trained to hand them off to
either ICE or the Department of Health and Human Services
(HHS).
Mr. Morgan. Correct.
Chairman Johnson. Now they are because HHS cannot accept
them.
Mr. Morgan. Correct.
Chairman Johnson. Not the numbers that are coming in. Now
CBP is being tasked to do something it was never intended to do
and is not particularly trained to do.
Mr. Morgan. Correct. We give them that notice to appear,
right? That does not mean anything. That does not mean where
they stay they are going to go, that they actually go. We have
no way of verifying that to the largest degree. Sometimes we
give them ankle bracelets. They take them off. They all take
them off. We do not know where they are or where they are going
or what city they are going to, to a greatest extent. So we
talk about stats. That is probably what I should have told you
earlier. That is one of the stats that we should be doing a
heck of a lot better on, is keeping track of where these people
actually are. We do not know, Senator.
Chairman Johnson. Mr. Davidson, you spend a lot of time
talking to the immigrants themselves. Can you speak to this?
Mr. Davidson. I will tell you anecdotally they do take the
ankle bracelets off, and it just occurred to me, on your
earlier question about data, the ankle bracelet program is a
subcontractor with ICE, the company that makes them. Maybe we
could get information about how many of these ankle bracelets
get cutoff and thrown away.
As I said, anecdotally----
Chairman Johnson. We will send out a letter.
Mr. Davidson. When you go to the shelters, these people
will tell you, if you talk to them long enough, yes, they are
going to take it off once they get to where they are going.
There are also stories of seeing garbage cans full of these
things at bus stations all up and down the border as well. The
ankle bracelet does not seem to be an effective alternative to
detention.
We were discussing earlier the number of people who
actually file an asylum claim after they get a notice to appear
is half or less than half of those people actually follow
through and file that claim. Giving someone a notice to appear
and an ankle bracelet does not seem to be doing that much good
and does not seem to be very effective. So more data on that
would be, I think, revealing about just how common it is for
people to ignore their ankle bracelet and abscond.
Chairman Johnson. Dr. Selee, I have asked my staff to kind
of list for me the different categories of people in this
country, again, DACA recipients that signed up, that did not,
in similar situations but not eligible for DACA. Do you have
information on this?
Mr. Selee. We are working on it, actually. That is what I
am just looking for here on my phone because I have a bit of
breakdown of in absentia rates. But it is incredibly--but that
is a subset of that, actually, right? So we do not have good
data on this.
Let me point out one thing which I think gets missed in the
debate, which is sort of interesting. We used to talk--back
when we were talking about mostly Mexican men crossing the
border in the early 2000s, late 1990s, we were talking about
people getting caught and returned, but we were also--and
eventually consequence delivery, but we were also talking about
people actually getting through into the United States. Very
few people probably get through today. I mean, DHS did a study
in 2017 where they tried to estimate the number of people who
get caught. It is pretty high. It has gone way up, right? We
are actually pretty good at detecting people--not perfect, but
we have developed the capacity to detect a vast majority of
people who are trying to cross illegally.
Where people are getting into the country is through here,
right? I mean, this is the number, some of whom are
legitimately here. Some of these people have filed asylum
claims, in which case they are legally present in the United
States while they are waiting for their hearing. Those people
are, in fact, legally here, and we should treat them as legally
here. Other people did not show up.
On the other hand, if 40 percent of the people, which I
think is about right--I was looking for that number. It is a
little hard to figure out in the mix of statistics. If it is 40
percent of people do not show up, 60 percent do. I do not think
we should underestimate that people who we see as trying to
game the system, most of them actually do try and do the right
thing. People who may not even understand our system, most of
them do try and do the right--now, do they drop off along the
way? I do not know. Do some of them go back? Do people
eventually show up and get denied asylum and actually get
returned? We are missing a lot of these numbers.
Chairman Johnson. There is a lot we do not know.
Mr. Selee. There is a lot we do not know.
Chairman Johnson. Yale researchers, using some different
statistical methods, said somewhere between 16 and 30 million
people are in this country illegally, even though everybody
uses the 11 to 12 million estimate.
Chief Morgan, you are kind of shaking your head there.
Mr. Morgan. I am sorry, and, Doctor, with all due respect,
I have to agree on something, again, law enforcement on the
border. So we just heard the chief of patrol last night on
television say that of his 170 linear miles of border that he
has to support, he has surveillance and situational awareness
of less than 30 percent of that 170 miles. He has inadequate or
no physical barrier whatsoever, and he does not have enough
personnel to have and defend and have that operational
awareness along those 170 linear miles. He says now with the
humanitarian crisis, all his resources, personnel, are devoted
to that. With all due respect, absolutely we do not have any
idea what is going through. To say that we think the numbers of
criminal aliens and other people illegally entering that we do
not know, that is impossible to quantify. It is impossible to
say the numbers are lower than they used to be.
Chairman Johnson. Do you have an estimate of how much of
the border, however long, 1,700 miles or whatever, is tribal
lands?
Mr. Morgan. I do not have those exact linear----
Chairman Johnson. But it is true that we cannot put CBP
personnel there. Those are completely open, right?
Mr. Selee. There is an agreement with tribal authorities.
There are CBP personnel. Tohono O'odham is the primary one in
Arizona, right, Chief?
Mr. Morgan. Yes.
Mr. Selee. There are CBP personnel. There are some
restrictions. It has to be negotiated with the tribal
authorities.
Mr. Morgan. But I will tell you, sir, it is all done by
interpersonal skills, and I have been down there. I was talking
to one of the Border Patrol liaison agents, and the tribal
folks just happen to love them. I went and met with the tribal
leaders there, and it is a challenging, ongoing, kind of weird
dance that is going on there. It is difficult. We do not have
all the resources that we need on those tribal lands, though.
Chairman Johnson. I am going to let Senator Carper quickly
ask a question.
Senator Carper. Yes, thanks. Just a quick question. Dr.
Selee, revisiting the Flores decision, your wisdom on that,
please?
Mr. Selee. You could do it, but what Flores gets you is,
still a long process if they apply for asylum and detaining
unaccompanied children. Fixing the asylum system gets you a
process that is decided in months instead of years. It applies
to adults, to families, to children. It becomes a much more
expedited process. I would go with fixing the asylum system
between the two.
Senator Carper. Alright. Thanks. Is it possible to do both?
Mr. Selee. You could, but it depends on your feelings about
detaining children for long periods of time.
Senator Carper. OK.
Chairman Johnson. Again, define ``long.'' Right now it is
20 days, and you are saying months. Again, nobody wants to
detain any people any longer, if we can. As quickly as we can
adjudicate that first claim, not allow endless appeals, but fix
that, be able to detain them long enough, because if we do not,
we are not going to be able to remove them. So it is that
combination. I do not know what the right numbers are, but that
is what we need to work on in our Committee, and hopefully we
can come up with a bipartisan solution there.
Mr. Morgan. Sir, if I can just weigh in real quick on that,
what I would say is I agree, we need to do both. It is not one
or the other. We need to do both, because the challenge is when
we have influxes, right? We could have a system of this process
where we are going through the immigration process pretty fast,
and all of a sudden we get an influx of 5,000 in 1 month. Now
that system that works so well is overwhelmed. We have to have
the flexibility and ability to detain these people while we are
doing the best we can to expedite the process. We need both. We
cannot just have this arbitrary deadline, and when it ebbs and
flows, it is a crisis mode, and we have to let people into the
United States. We need to do both.
Mr. Selee. Could I add one more thing, Senator?
Chairman Johnson. Sure.
Mr. Selee. I think there are two other things we should
consider in addition to detention. By the way, detention is
always a legitimate option to make sure people get--but the
other question is case management systems, not just ankle
bracelets, which have been up and down--case management systems
where we actually monitor people have been much more effective.
They have only been pilot-tested, so we do not have enough data
points yet. But they have been very effective so far, about 99
percent effective in getting people to their hearings and
actually giving people counsel.
Chairman Johnson. That was a very limited study.
Mr. Selee. It was a limited study, right, so we have to
actually do more study. We should look at ankle bracelets and
figure out, at what time do people take these off immediately
or does it happen after 6 months when they kind of realize they
can get away with it? I mean, if it is a short period of time,
does it make a difference?
The second thing is actually giving people the right to
counsel, especially minors, because there is a lot of evidence
that people who have a lawyer are willing to try their day in
court. That is a lot cheaper, by the way, than detaining
people. So having people who are able to have access to asylum
counsel, people will show up and try their luck, actually.
Chairman Johnson. Just not that final one.
Mr. Selee. Right, and that is the thing to be--again, we
need to follow this and see what works. I mean, again, I do not
want to say this is an absolute either. What we know is people
now who have counsel, there also is selection bias there.
People who get counsel often think they have a good case,
right? I mean, if you give it to people who do not think they
have a good case, will it play out the same way? I do not know.
We need to try and study it.
Senator Carper. Alright. Thanks to all of you. Thank you
very much.
Chairman Johnson. Somewhere there are some things we can
agree on that will at least improve this. I am all for
continuous improvement. Senator Hawley.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HAWLEY
Senator Hawley. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Morgan, I was struck by something that you said in your
written testimony, that every city in the United States is a
border city when it comes to narcotics smuggling. That is
something, I think, that many people, especially in the media,
do not appreciate it, and I just want to amplify that.
In my own State of Missouri, in 2017, the State estimated
that 760 Missourians just in St. Louis lost their lives to
opioids. That is one in every 65 deaths. In 2016 that number
was higher. I know from law enforcement in my State where I was
recently Attorney General that we are awash with
methamphetamine. It is coming over the Southern Border. We have
a serious fentanyl problem. It is coming over the border. We
have a serious heroin problem. So is it safe to say that even
interior States like Missouri are border States for purposes of
narcotics smuggling?
Mr. Morgan. Absolutely. I am a Missourian myself. I was
born in Missouri. Absolutely, every single city in this country
is a border city. Every single major metropolitan city and
other rural are impacted by the crisis at the border. The drugs
coming through the Southwest Border are entering every city in
this country. That is not hyperbole. That is fact. Seventy-
thousand-plus deaths, 90 percent of heroin coming from Southern
Border, the Southwest Border crisis is everybody's problem in
this country.
Senator Hawley. Very well said, and I just want to
underscore that it is local communities, often rural
communities, as you point out, local law enforcement who are
left to pick up the pieces here. The costs really are
staggering.
Mr. Davidson, let me turn to you. Thank you for your
outstanding reporting on this issue over many months. I just
want to give you an opportunity to further tell this story
here. Put this on the record for us. Who is it who controls the
border on the southern side--not on the U.S. side but on the
southern side. Who effectively controls that border?
Mr. Davidson. Thank you, Senator. This circles back to
something we touched on earlier that I wanted to distinguish
between. There are smuggling networks, and there are cartels.
They are not necessarily the same organizations. The smugglers
are paying cartels as part of the package that migrants and
migrant families are providing. They have to include this tax,
right? But there is no question that the border is secure on
the southern side, and vast stretches of the border on the
southern side are controlled in an iron-fisted way by cartels
and cartel factions, especially when we are talking about the
gulf cartels. A lot of these cartels have broken up and
fragmented over the past decade or so, especially in the Gulf
Region across from the Rio Grande Valley, places like Reynosa
and, across the entire area south of there to Monterrey. So it
used to be that people would cross the border to work in South
Texas. They would literally put their clothes in a garbage bag,
swim across the Rio Grande, go to work, and swim back across at
the end of the day. That does not happen anymore. Nobody
crosses the border unless the cartels say so and unless they
get their payment.
Senator Hawley. OK. That I think is such a key point, that
the cartels effectively control the border, and nobody crosses
the border without their buy-in, their payoff, essentially, and
this is why you refer to this operation on the southern side as
a ``vast money-making machine.'' It is a money-making machine
for the cartels and their various spinoffs. Is that correct?
Explain that to us just a little bit more.
Mr. Davidson. It is a money-making machine for the cartels
because they are controlling who crosses, and nobody crosses
unless they pay. It is also a money-making machine for the
smuggling networks that begin in Central America. They are
essentially like travel agents. They are just arranging
logistics to get people from locations in Central America
across the Guatemala-Mexico border and then transiting through
Mexico and paying off different people along the way, local
officials, different cartel factions along the way; and then
when they arrive to the Northern Border, paying off the right
people so they can be allowed to cross the Rio Grande. It is a
controlled, intentional system along the Northern Border where
cartels are holding people and telling them who is going to go
across, how many people, what groups are going to cross where.
It is coordinated. It is organized. According to law
enforcement, it is also coordinated with other drug-smuggling
activities in some areas where they are sending a large group
across, tying up all of Border Patrol's resources, and a mile
or two down the line sending across drugs or sending across
people who are trying to evade detection who have paid a lot
more money. If you try to evade detection, you pay more, and
they cross you in a different area.
Senator Hawley. It is very strategic, is what you are
saying.
Mr. Davidson. Yes, absolutely.
Senator Hawley. You might get the sense from just looking
at news footage that, it is sort of chaos, folks who are coming
individually of their own accord.
Mr. Davidson. It is chaos on our side.
Senator Hawley. Right.
Mr. Davidson. It is organized on their side.
Senator Hawley. On their side. You also say that the
cartels are using kids as ``Get into the U.S. free'' cards.
Just explain that for us, if you would.
Mr. Davidson. It is hard to know for sure, right? A lot of
this is anecdotal. But if you have a child with you, you can
claim asylum, and people on the south side of the border
understand that, and they know that. So not all the minors that
are accompanying adults and that are presenting themselves as
family units are family units. I am sure Mr. Morgan can speak
to that in more detail. But it certainly is known that if you
cross with a child, you are going to be treated differently.
The smuggling networks, the travel agencies that I mentioned
earlier, they understand that, and they are incorporating that
into their sales pitch, saying, this is why a lot of people are
showing up with just one child where they have a wife and other
children back in their home countries that they did not bring
with them because they could only afford to bring one.
Senator Hawley. Mr. Morgan, do you want to add to that?
Mr. Morgan. Everything he just said was correct, and I
would say go back to the Chairman's chart,\1\ right? Big blue.
That is why you are seeing big blue. A lot of the stuff we are
talking about to some degree, with all due respect, it is white
noise. Now, I am not saying we do not need to do all this work
with Mexico and Northern Triangle countries. Yes, E-Verify, all
this stuff needs to be done. But until we fix Flores and until
we fix TVPRA, that blue line is going to keep growing and
growing because they know, grab a kid, come in, set one foot on
American soil, and you are in. If we do not fix that, it is not
going to stop.
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\1\ The chart referenced by Mr. Morgan appears in the Appendix on
page 86.
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Senator Hawley. I just want to make sure that we get
crystal clear and that the public understands that what is
happening in my home State of Missouri with the drugs that we
are facing, with the onslaught that we are facing, is directly
tied to the behavior and strategy of these cartels on the
border who control effectively the Southern Border, who have a
strategy for conducting their business operations and who are
making vast sums of money at our expense and at the cost of
lives in our home States.
Mr. Morgan. I will give you one more quick example. The
cartel will actually send in an old military term called
observation posts and listening posts (LP/OP). They will
actually send smugglers or cartel members miles into the
interior of the United States side--miles--with communications,
sophisticated communication devices, with surveillance
equipment, and they will actually monitor the activities of the
Border Patrol. They will actually then use the caravans--and
right now you are seeing some of these caravan, sir, actually
go to really remote areas. The cartels are forcing them to
transverse really adverse terrain. Why? The Border Patrol has
to take a long time to get there, and while they are, their LP/
OP says, ``Clear to go to this section,'' and stuff is coming
across.
Senator Hawley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. First of all, excellent line of
questioning. Our compassion is completely being exploited. It
is. We know how to secure the border, or somebody knows how to
secure the border. It is just not us. It is the drug cartels.
I did hear the Secretary--can everybody confirm this?--just
recently say that they are breaking up child recycling rings.
Apparently we do not take biometrics on children 14 or under
14, and so those children can be sent back over the border to
be hooked up with another adult to come in. Does anybody have--
again, I heard the Secretary talk about that, so I am assuming
it is true.
Mr. Morgan. I do not have any stats, and I do not think
they have those stats yet, but, again, anecdotal, absolutely
happening. The children are being recycled, and we are seeing--
again, I do not remember the exact stats, sir, but thousands--
Border Patrol has identified thousands of people that are
claiming to be a parent or guardian, and it turned out to be
completely false.
Chairman Johnson. Just real quick, before I turn it over to
Senator Peters, the drug cartels for years have been using
minors as mules; because they are minors, they do not get
prosecuted the same way. That will continue as well, correct?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir, absolutely. I would say it is going
to expand.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Peters.
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before my
question, I have a statement from Church World Service\1\ that
they would like to have in the record, and I would like to
enter it into the record by unanimous consent.
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\1\ The statement referenced by Senator Peters appears in the
Appendix on page 87.
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Chairman Johnson. Without objection.
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
One thing we have talked about--we have unpacked a lot of
issues related to dealing with the situation on the border, but
to me, as I listen, it is clear that Mexico is an important
player in all this, and I understand, Mr. Morgan, some of your
points about other things that we should look at. But,
nevertheless, folks, to get to the United States, have to go
through Mexico in order to get there. I remember being on the
border, actually on the trip that we were on a couple years
ago, on the border with Guatemala and Mexico, we walked across
the bridge where the officials were and where they had control.
But if you looked to your right and if you looked to your left,
there was basically a flotilla of boats going back across the
borders that were very porous, to say the least.
We need to actively engage the Mexican Government in this,
and it sounds as if they are, at least based on the testimony
we just heard, they are not in control of the Northern Border.
It is the cartels that are in charge of the border.
Dr. Selee, I would ask your assessment of that. Is Mexico
just unable or are they unwilling to address the large number
of folks? Or is it a combination of the two? How would you
assess the Mexican Government right now?
Mr. Selee. I would say two things, actually, on that, and
one is, I think we should also be mindful there are sort of two
other actors. American consumers of illegal narcotics are also
funding the cartels that control. We are actually the financers
of some of this. But the other actor that is in the play here
is the Mexican Government. It is particularly immigration
authorities in Mexico that are often in league with the
smugglers. I am sure you have run into this a lot as well. The
smugglers, the other people they pay off besides the cartels at
the border along the way is the Mexican immigration
authorities, both in southern Mexico and at checkpoints along
the way. The Mexican Government has said that they want to
clean this up. I think there is--at least in some levels of the
government, I believe that. I think there are some people they
have put in place that have a record of fighting corruption
that want to do this. I think it is a big question. It is not
the first time I have heard this said in the Mexican
Government, however. It is a tough thing to do. I think that is
one area where we could actually play a pivotal role in working
with the Mexican Government on how you actually begin to clean
this up because it goes very deep, and it is part of the
business model of how the immigration authority has worked for
a long time.
Senator Peters. I would like you to do a deeper dive into
that statement. What sort of leadership would we need to see
from the United States to make that kind of change and to work
with the Mexican Government for them to step up their actions?
Mr. Selee. I think there are sort of three things that
Mexico wants to do. One is to increase their legal pathways, so
their asylum system, they need to finance it. We could put in
some incentive money, but it is sort of like we heard earlier,
sort of you put in one--they put in seven, we put in one. We
can help them, but it is their job to do. They want to create
work-based visas. They need to do serious enforcement. They
have done--Mexico deports more people than we do. I mean, this
is to Central America. It is a little-known secret. The Mexican
Government actually does deport a lot of people, and they have
for years, since 2014. But that said, there is neither a real
structure around it to figure out sort of the consequence
delivery that we did in the United States, nor is it done with
respect for human rights. I mean, on both sides. Neither as an
enforcement question nor as a rights question is it great.
The third thing is cleaning up corruption, and there,
intelligence matters, and also law enforcement experience
matters. How do you cleanup an agency? We have a lot of
experience in this. How do you deal with a situation where your
agents can make three times as much money by being corrupt? How
do you actually keep them on the right--what are the sort of
incentives that keep people on the right path? How do you
recruit the right profile of people?
Look, we deal with this all the time at CBP. This is an
issue in ICE, right? We actually have a pretty good track
record. People have huge incentives to go off the right path,
and most people do not do it. Right? I mean, we have figured
this out. Mexico has only begun to start figuring--I think that
they need to figure this out. A lot of know-how and a little
bit of intelligence on what we know, because we know a lot of
stuff about where the smugglers are paying people off as well,
helping them figure out those specific points that are probably
of greatest concern.
Senator Peters. In a Judiciary Committee hearing,
previously you testified that there were some things that you
saw potential. I think you have highlighted a couple right now.
Only a few months have passed since that, but give us an
assessment. Have you seen them actually taking any action along
the lines that you thought had potential a few months ago?
Mr. Selee. I think they have not increased funding to the
asylum system. They keep talking about doing it, but they have
not done it as yet. They have not invested in the Immigration
Institute as yet, although I think the person in charge of the
Immigration Institute is someone who is serious about cleaning
it up. It is someone I have known for a while. I believe, his
previous job, he was someone who cleaned up an institution. I
think if anyone can do it, he can do it. But I think there is a
question mark, and we have not yet seen the kind of efforts
that would create work-based visas. But 4 months in, that is
probably unrealistic. I mean, the reality is that takes some
time to figure out how you are going to do it.
Mexico has work-based visas but for higher-skilled
individuals. What they do not have is work-based visas for the
kind of people that we are talking about in this flow who are
lower-skilled. You have to be able to match that where there
are actual job opportunities, so you are not creating conflict
in parts of Mexico where there really is a job competition.
It is probably too early for that. I see some good signs on
the corruption side. I see less yet on changing the structure
and changing the visa side. Enforcement is on autopilot. I
mean, they are not doing less--they did not drop their guard
and sort of let people cross the border, and at the same time
there has not been a lot of innovation also about how you do
enforcement as yet.
Senator Peters. But in a sense, active involvement by U.S.
officials with the Mexican Government you think is promising?
Mr. Selee. Yes, I think it is promising. I think there is a
lot of----
Senator Peters. Because we have not seen enough of that or
we have not seen nearly enough of that, is your contention?
Mr. Selee. Right. Senator, I think there there are some
good people there, and there is a willingness to do it. If we
partner with them, I think it will get done quicker than if we
threaten them.
Senator Peters. One final question, Mr. Chairman, and I
will let you take the rest here with your questions. You raise
an issue that Mexico deports more Central Americans than we
would otherwise suspect. Who are they deporting? We are still
seeing the flow north to the United States. Have they reduced
that flow? Or are they deporting a different set of
individuals?
Mr. Selee. Mexico deports, I believe it is, about 100,000
Central Americans more or less a year. I mean, it is actually a
large number. It is more or less steady. The numbers actually
rose in March. I think they deported actually 13,000 people.
They apprehended 13,000 people in March. I do not know the
deportation statistics--no, actually I do. It was 12,000. It
has actually gone up a little bit over the traditional number,
but it has sort of been a lag. But it is and Mexico does not
actually have some of the same limitations on detaining people.
They actually deport them fairly quickly.
Now, a lot of people are applying for asylum in Mexico as
well. So it has a significant--they are on target of about
50,000 applications this year from Central Americans.
Senator Peters. Central Americans see Mexico as the first
safe country?
Mr. Selee. Increasingly. By the way, I think, something
that Chief Morgan said, I do not think Mexico is yet in a
position to be a safe third country. But if I were--again, this
goes to policy overreach. I mean, we have wanted Mexico to
declare itself a safe third country and sign an agreement with
us. What would be more productive is actually starting a
conversation saying, ``We want you to be a safe third country.
Let us think about 5 years from now. How do we get to that
point where you meet international standards in terms of the
protections you give people? Let us see if we can get there.''
That actually might generate a productive conversation with
Mexico, the Mexican Government, about how they get to be a safe
third country, basically a country of first asylum, rather than
say, ``You have to do it tomorrow,'' because tomorrow, they
would throw up their hands and say, ``We cannot do it. We are
not in a position to do it. It is not safe for a lot of
migrants.'' They are right. But does that have to be the case
in 5 years? OK, what are the steps we follow? What do you
actually have to have in terms of your own procedures
internally? What do you have to have in terms of protections
for people who are applying for asylum? That is the kind of
thing they could get there. But we should get into that
virtuous conversation, virtuous cycle conversation with them.
Senator Peters. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Would it be a pretty good assumption that
the people that Mexico is deporting are the ones that do not
have the money to pay off the officials? Anybody want to chime
in on that one?
Mr. Selee. I would guess. I would say that is probably the
case. You may have some virtuous officials. I would not
discount that, and I have been surprised by this again and
again with Mexican law enforcement that you actually do have
people who do the right thing and people who are in very
corrupt structures who turn out to be incredibly law-abiding
and actually in it for the right reasons. I think there also
may be people who are not bribable, but I would guess it leans
heavily toward people who are trying to go on their own rather
than people who are organized.
Chairman Johnson. Again, I think I am trying to point out
again the lucrative nature for the drug cartels who are
businesses. They expand their product line into a more
profitable and less risky line of business with human
trafficking, correct?
Mr. Davidson. Sure, absolutely. I was going to add as well
that there is some reporting to suggest that what was once the
Gulf Cartel, the Zetas Cartel, which has sort of broken up into
a bunch of different cartels in Reynosa, across from McAllen,
that cartel faction is making more money off of migration now
than it is off of drugs, and that has become their chief
enterprise in that city, which is a very high-volume area, the
Rio Grande Valley, but McAllen in particular. Part of the
reason they are able to get people across is because the cities
come right up next to each other on the river. It is a matter
of minutes after crossing the Rio Grande that you can be in a
safe house or you can be in a vehicle on the freeway and gone.
It is an opportunity for them to move families that are seeking
asylum, but also people who are trying to evade detection who
are paying more. It has become very lucrative in the McAllen-
Reynosa area.
The other thing I would add to the question about Mexico,
there is a political problem in northern Mexico. Central
American migrants are not very popular there, and there is not
a lot of patience for having large numbers of Central American
migrants staying in these northern Mexican cities. The
incentives for politicians to do things to help migrants or to
keep them there is not very high. The incentives go the other
way. They want to move them along, either to deport them back
to Central America or to get them moving across in the United
States. But they do not want them to stay in these places in
northern Mexico, in these cities.
Chairman Johnson. I met with the Ambassador from Mexico,
the new administration here, a couple times. She has brought in
government officials. I personally think they seem to be pretty
sincere about wanting to work with us because they realize it
is a real problem for their country as well.
I was struck in my last meeting that they all talked about
development dollars, which, again, you have economic
opportunity, that reduces the draw. But they never mentioned
what I then brought up, the 800-pound gorilla, which is the
drug cartels. Part of the problem in terms of enforcement--and,
Senator Peters, I think you were with me in Guatemala when I
think we heard the story. A new police official in Guatemala
gets a little digital versatile disc (DVD) from the drug
cartels. It shows his wife and children going to church or
children going to school. I am not even going to tell the
stories of the horrific abuses in terms of the kind of
retributions. Of course, then those drug cartels create such a
level of impunity, which I was struck by that. They said, ``We
are dealing with two things: corruption and impunity.'' I
understand corruption. Impunity is the drug cartels are
untouchable because of our insatiable demand for drugs, which
we funded. They are untouchable, and that impunity bleeds into
the rest of society, which begins the extortionists, the
rackets, go to cab drive, $10 a week or we will put a bullet in
your brain and we will set the car on fire.
I do not see how these individual countries with that level
of brutality, that level of threat to any public official--and
they have had plenty of examples of people being horrifically
murdered--how they can do it on their own. I think the only
solution is some kind of multinational task force and an all-
out effort across the board. But even that, Chief Morgan, you
were with the FBI. These drug kingpins, it is not like they are
isolated in a little villa within a peaceful little village.
Those villages are dependent, their economies, on those drug
kingpins and the drug trade.
How can you even--again, it sounds nice that we need to
cooperate with Mexico to start disrupting these things. I mean,
I look at this as such a horrific problem. Can any of you speak
to that? Are my assumptions just wrong? We will start with
Chief Morgan.
Mr. Morgan. Chairman, you are 100 percent correct, and you
started off this hearing by saying long term/short term. What
you are talking about, what we are talking about dealing with
Mexico, look, I do not want my testimony to be
mischaracterized. I am not saying we should not continue to
work with them. What I am saying is that is a long-term--to
some degree you could make the argument to totally eradicate
the cartels is an unrealistic expectation. It does, it needs a
massive, whole-of-government approach, multinational approach
to target this, and, yes, but that is long term.
Chairman Johnson. By the way, we have tried that in
Colombia. We have had some success, but the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC) still exists.
Mr. Morgan. Exactly. That is the point. It took a long
time, too. I was attached to CBP in 2014. I know that they have
been working with Mexico for a long time. They are working
really hard with the Mexican officials. They have been talking
about safe third country for years, and we have gotten no
traction whatsoever.
Yes, we keep doing this, and we keep working this. We
target the cartels. That is long term. But guess what? Next
month there are probably going to be 115,000 people. Your chart
is going to continue to go like this----
Chairman Johnson. Oh, yes, by the end of the year it will
be up toward the ceiling.
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir. It is a crisis. In my law enforcement
experience, any crisis or emergency takes immediate need,
immediate swift and bold action to address the crisis. While we
are talking about all this stuff with Mexico and Northern
Triangle, that is great and it sounds good. But, one, in the
past it has not come to fruition. Two, that is long term.
Three, it is not going to stop the 115,000 coming next month.
We need to do something now, and I still stand behind my
testimony. A congressional fix of Flores, TVPRA, and we make
these individuals wait in Mexico, and we push resources to the
border to expedite the asylum process. If we do that, you are
going to take the incentives away.
Chairman Johnson. Just listening to Mr. Davidson and the
control of the Southern Border by the drug cartels and the kind
of dollars you are talking about, there are hundreds of
millions. What we are going to expend--I mean, I am not
suggesting this by any means, but the economics of this, they
are controlling the border for a couple hundred million
dollars.
Mr. Davidson. Yes, absolutely. I think this is in my
written testimony. By way of comparison, if you take $800 a
person as the tax for the cartels in the Gulf Region, that is,
$138, $135 million for fiscal year 2018 that would have gone to
the cartel factions in the Gulf Region. The entire amount, I
believe, that we have appropriated for the Merida Initiative
for Mexico for this fiscal year is $145 million. It is not
nearly enough. I would add, too----
Chairman Johnson. But what we are spending trying to get
some level of security over our border, with these broken laws,
which create the incentive, I mean, we have no hope.
Mr. Davidson. It is a drop in the bucket. I would add, too,
that this idea that we are going to close the ports of entry if
Mexico does not do more is not very productive because we are
asking Mexico to do something it cannot do. Mexico does not
exercise sovereignty over all of its territory, and we cannot
ask the Mexican Government and threaten the Mexican Government
with closed ports of entry to do something that it is not able
to do, which is to exercise sovereignty over these areas in
northern Mexico where sovereignty is effectively being
exercised by drug cartels.
Chairman Johnson. Again, my point is we have to recognize
the true reality, what we can actually accomplish versus what
is, if possible, a long way in the future with many speed bumps
along the way here.
I want to go back to what has happened to the 850,000. What
is their legal status? OK, they have claimed asylum. They have
a notice to appear. Their court date is sometime way out in the
future. What are they doing in the interim? Mr. Davidson, I
think you talked about a lot of them already have work, but
they are not working in this country legally. I believe it is
after 6 months they will get a work permit, but initially for
the 6 months, what are they doing?
Mr. Davidson. It was mentioned earlier that we are funding
the Mexican drug cartel profits. Because there is an appetite
for illegal narcotics in this country, there is also an
appetite for cheap labor. They are engaged in all kinds of
industries in all corners of the country. These folks are going
from points on the Texas border, they are going to Florida,
they are going to Virginia, they are going to Illinois, to
Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington. They are working in agriculture,
but they are also working in construction industries all across
the country. They are working in service industries all across
the country. They are coming here because people are hiring
them. Companies in the United States are hiring them and paying
them, likely in full knowledge of the fact that they are not
here in a legal capacity. So the appetite for narcotics is----
Chairman Johnson. That is how employers can really exploit
somebody. ``Oh, I am not paying you enough? Well, complain. I
will call ICE.''
Mr. Davidson. Absolutely. It happens all across the
country, as far north as--I have seen it personally happen in
fish-buying camps in Alaska that employ illegal labor. It is
endemic. It has been going on for decades and decades. I think
as part of the long-term solution, figuring out a way to get
people who want to come here to work, to come here in some
legal capacity, if it is a temporary guest worker program of
some kind, I think you would see a lot of the people who are in
this right-hand column who are coming here to work, but
claiming asylum and bringing a kid with them would move into a
legal framework where they are coming in legally to work
temporarily and go back home at some point.
Chairman Johnson. Again, that would be my suggestion. If
you have a rapid adjudication, is this going to be a valid
asylum claim or not, as soon as you say, OK, it is going to be
valid, here is your work permit and we talked about this
earlier. I have the guest worker permit governed by the States.
Then we actually know where people are going. We can kind of
keep track of them. The States would have some responsibility
for making sure we keep--so, again, the whole point of this
thing is this is out of control. We need to bring this system
under some level of control. This is unacceptable for
everybody. This is not humane. Senator Portman had a hearing on
this, but in Ohio, I think there were some minors that were
pretty much put into involuntary servitude on a farm? We have
had all this publicity on the sex workers in massage parlors
and stuff. These people are being exploited. There is nothing
humane or compassionate about that.
Mr. Selee. There are two questions--we have not talked
about it in these terms, but there are two questions that we
need to answer here. One is how you deal with a wave event,
right? What essentially is a tipping point where people start
coming in large numbers. How do you change that so there is
another tipping point and people--and that goes down?
The other question is how do you deal with the long-term
structural challenge, right? Those things are interrelated, but
they are not necessarily the same thing. Malcolm Gladwell has
this book, ``Tipping Point,'' where he says multiple things
interact to create a wave and then multiple things have to
interact to stop that.
Clearly, the legal changes is a big part of that. I agree.
That is clear. But, also, it makes sense to go after smugglers,
right? It makes sense to figure out if Mexico can begin to
absorb some people or at least create the expectation that they
are about to absorb some people. It makes some sense to see
what you do on the ground to give some people hope. Maybe you
try a pilot program on asylum or refugees or parole authority
in-country, which does not affect a lot of people because it is
a pilot, but it creates a hope that maybe you do not have to
make the journey. There is not going to be one thing that
changes everything. But there could be many things, and then
you have to figure out what you do long term.
Chairman Johnson. Yes. Again, I think you have to separate
out these potential solutions, again, the likelihood of them
having an immediate impact on a problem that is at crisis
levels right now versus something that in the future this will
have an impact, but it is going to take quite some time.
In questioning with Senator Hassan, you were talking about
some of the actions the Administration has taken could be a
signal saying, ``You better get in here quick because'' What
was going through my mind and I will make the point now. That
is the problem, and this is across all Administrations. There
are only limited things you can do administratively.
Mr. Selee. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. Whether it is the Obama Administration,
the Bush Administration, or the Trump administration trying to
grapple with this, with what they can do regulatorily, it does
not work. It is just simply not effective. We have to change
these laws.
Again, this is the responsibility of Congress. We have to
do the problem-solving process, identify the problem, look at
the root cause, identify an achievable solution, separate out
immediate effect versus long term, things we need to do long
term, but what do we need to do short term? Would people agree
with that?
Mr. Morgan. I completely agree, and here is a point,
Senator. Again, you reverse Flores and give CBP and ICE the
ability to detain these people and expedite the immigration
process, and you reverse TVPRA so that you apply the same
standard to everybody, you are going to end catch-and-release.
Congress can do that. Those two things will end catch-and-
release, and they will remove the incentive so that immigrants
will stop paying the cartels money to come here because they
know they are just going to turn around and be removed. The
cartels will come up with another scheme and adjust their TTPs
to start doing more stuff, more drugs, etc., but you are going
to cut that off. I cannot emphasize that enough.
Chairman Johnson. That is why I started with Michael
Chertoff's example.
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir.
Chairman Johnson. A much smaller size problem, but
significant, and the impact was almost immediately, and it
worked.
Mr. Morgan. We are clouding the issue--with receiving
100,000 last month alone, we are clouding the issue with all of
this other stuff, when right now reverse Flores, fix TVPRA, and
you are going to end catch-and-release dramatically, and you
are going to see the numbers go down. That could be done
immediately while we are doing everything else that needs to be
done.
Chairman Johnson. Dr. Selee.
Mr. Selee. I would throw in one thing. One thing that Mr.
Davidson has mentioned a couple times that I think is worth
noting is you were talking about what used to be the Zetas, the
groups that are left over from the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel.
These were two of the most powerful cartels in Mexico. The
Zetas, there was a time not long ago, 7 or 8 years ago when we
talked about the Zetas taking over Mexico because they were so
fearsome. They are gone. Now, they are gone relatively
speaking. There are lots of little groups that are little Zetas
hanging out there, and there are lots of little Gulf Cartel
groups. It is not perfect. Right? I mean, we did not solve the
drug-trafficking problem. We did not solve the question of
control. But we did create--and this was Mexico and the United
States working together to go after--really targeted the Zetas
and the Gulf Cartel at a time they were allied and said: ``This
is a group that is getting too powerful. We are going to
degrade them to the point where they are a local threat but no
longer a national security threat.''
We have never actually looked at this with smugglers in the
same way. We do actually have an ability--as much money as
there is in this, as much money as they can bribe local
officials and so on, there is actually a pretty good track
record when the United States and Mexican Governments share
intelligence and target to go after--and I am not suggesting,
by the way, that we go dismantle all the trafficking groups. I
think that is unrealistic, probably unnecessary, but throwing a
little bit of deterrence and throwing a little bit of a monkey
wrench in what has been a fairly smooth operation for smuggling
groups would not be a terrible idea.
Chairman Johnson. Again, all for it. Anything we can do to
degrade that evil would be good. How distinct are the drug
cartels from the human traffickers? Again, I just kind of
assumed that they just sort of spun--it is an increase in the
product line. Now, maybe they have split off in different
divisions. Are these totally separate groups, Chief Morgan.
Mr. Morgan. Look, I have been doing investigations for 25
years, and it is all well and good to target the traffickers
and smugglers, but you have to go to the head of the snake.
Right? If you go after one smuggling entity or one group of
traffickers, you eliminate them, and the other one will take
their place. You have to cut the head of the snake off, and so
you have to go after the leadership of the cartels.
But I think John explained it best, that they are like a
McDonald's franchise. They are independently operated and
owned, but they still belong and still have to pay to the over-
governing franchise. Yes, they do not own anything, the
smugglers or traffickers. They have to pay for their routes.
They have to pay to work in a certain plaza. They have to pay a
tax to the cartels to be able to facilitate what they are
doing.
Chairman Johnson. Mr. Davidson.
Mr. Davidson. I would just add to Andrew's comments and to
Mark's comments as well. The fracturing of the cartels that
happened, the Gulf and the Zetas Cartels, has also created a
diversification of what the cartels do, so you are now seeing
gas theft on a mass scale throughout Mexico, fishing theft, and
then, migration as a source of income as a way to diversify
income streams. The legalization of marijuana is part of this
in the United States. The profits that they made from selling
marijuana have gone down. They have sought to replace those
income streams through monetizing migration.
Putting pressure on them has these sort of ripple effects
that we do not always see. The spike of violence, Reynosa is
one of the most violent cities in the world right now, right
across from McAllen, Texas. It did not used to be that way, but
breaking up the cartels there, ending what they call the
``cartel peace,'' has caused an explosion of violence in
Reynosa as cartel factions fight, and fight over income streams
and over territory.
I have to agree that doing something to reduce the
incentives to the customer, to the families who are paying the
cartels is--you have to do that. That is not going to solve the
cartel problem in Mexico. But it might affect this part of it,
which is the monetization of illegal immigration.
Chairman Johnson. Right. Until we reduce our demand for
drugs, we will still keep funneling billions down there.
I believe it is true that we have authorized more CBP
officers than we have hired, because it is a real problem. I am
all for hiring more CBP officers, but how do you do it? I want
to talk to you, Chief. I come from a manufacturing background
where we operated 24/7. I am not sure there is any industry in
the private sector that operates 24/7 with three shifts. Again,
there are 168 hours in a week, and if you divide that by 3, I
think that is 56 hours per shift, versus divided by 4 it is 42.
And so you do not burn your people out.
What has amazed me is--and I think this is a true
statement--most government agencies that operate on a 24/7
continuous shift basis do it three shifts. Then they have to
work overtime and it fatigues people. It does not lead to, from
my standpoint, probably very good job satisfaction. If you like
working 56 hours a week--and there are not too many Americans
that like that day in and day out. Everybody likes the
overtime, but by and large, people kind of like to stick within
that 40-some-hour work week.
Can you speak to that in terms of your experience with CBP?
Mr. Morgan. I think we should be looking at all options to
address the issue, because the issue of not hiring enough
people, it is real. It was an issue when I was there in 2016,
it was an issue before that, and it is an issue now.
What I do think is there are a lot of other organic issues
that really is the issue. I am not disagreeing with you that
this is not something we should take a look at, and this may
assist. What I do not believe in my experience, though, is it
is going to really adjust the needle to any great degree, CBP's
ability to hire people.
Chairman Johnson. What is the number one thing we have to
do? We did kind of correct the lie detector, which was
disqualifying an awful lot of folks. What is the number one
thing that you think we need to do to make sure it is an
attractive enough job so we can actually hire up to the
authorized level?
Mr. Morgan. I think they need to continue to do what they
started a little bit after I left. We talked about it while I
was there. They really have to go out into the interior of the
United States, into the Midwest. When I was there, you would go
out to the Midwest, and a lot of people had no idea what CBP
even was. They were really concentrating on more the border
cities and the border areas, and they were really tapped out. I
really think if they go into the interior United States--they
have been, and I have seen that, and it is being effective. I
think they need to continue to do more of that.
Chairman Johnson. I just want to thank all of you. I really
think really your testimony was excellent. I think this was a
great exchange, a lot of good issues brought up by Members. I
will give each of you--and I will start with Dr. Selee, just
something that you want to get off your chest here that we did
not cover or, just kind of summarize what we need to do. Again,
right now I am thinking short term. What I want our Committee
to concentrate on is let us try and address this short-term
crisis as effectively as we can, because we have to change laws
and what is that going to look like. If you want to chime in on
that, I would be happy to hear your comments.
Mr. Selee. I will just repeat what I have said already. If
we want to change one thing legislatively, although it could
probably be done as a rule change administratively as well, I
would change the asylum system adjudication. It is the thing
that you can convince people is both fair to people who are
asylum seekers, but also tough-minded with people----
Chairman Johnson. Let us drill down on that. Do you think
we should have a higher hurdle rate--right now, my
understanding, the credible fear, the way that is interpreted
by the court is you have about a 10-percent chance of actually
proving your asylum claim.
Mr. Selee. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. If we increase that----
Mr. Selee. About 80 percent----
Chairman Johnson [continuing]. To a different standard,
again, I am not a lawyer. These types of things drive me nuts.
But, people seeing a significant chance, is that what you are
talking about?
Mr. Selee. No. I am talking about, I think, that you do not
send the cases to the immigration courts at all. You send them
straight to an asylum officer. The U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services (USCIS) has asylum officers. We do have to
make some investments, although we also have trained officers--
--
Chairman Johnson. Which I think people are happy--do you
believe that on a bipartisan basis people would accept the
determination of those individuals charged with making that
initial determination that would in effect be final?
Mr. Selee. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. The more people that do not meet that
initial bar and we remove them.
Mr. Selee. I think you could get a broader consensus around
it. I do not think you will get everyone on board. I think you
are going to get some people on both the left and the right
that will not be comfortable with it. But I think you will get
a broad spectrum of people who can agree that it is both fair
but tough-minded. It makes our asylum system have integrity.
The asylum system should not be used for labor migration. It
should be used for protection. That is the right thing to do.
So if we do that----
Chairman Johnson. It probably should be pointed out, those
people that get returned can always go to the U.S. embassy,
claim refugee status, and wait in line as an economic migrant.
Mr. Selee. Right. I mean, they could try and, get an
agricultural visa or do something else. I think we do need to
do some work with Mexico. I think that, frankly, the more the
Mexicans can send signals that they are going to try and make
their asylum system work and do some labor migration and they
do credible enforcement, it helps us. I think the worst thing
we could do is sort of pull out of Central America because I
think we will add to the wave. Right? I mean, it is a
perception thing, but it is also probably a real thing for some
people will add to the wave. I think we have to hold the line
on that.
Chairman Johnson. I have said repeatedly, of all the
causes, the number one root cause of our unsecured border is
America's insatiable demand for drugs.
Mr. Selee. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. But taking drugs, it is not a victimless
crime.
Mr. Selee. No.
Chairman Johnson. I tell young people all the time, if you
think that, come down with me to Guatemala, and I will show you
a shelter for sex-trafficked little girls that is kind of being
fueled by the drug trade as well. Mr. Davidson.
Mr. Davidson. I agree with everything Andrew said about
trying to streamline the asylum process. I cannot emphasize
enough how much this is driven by word of mouth. If word gets
back to these communities in Central America that you cannot
actually get in if you bring a child and you cannot just claim
asylum if you do not have a valid claim, that you will be
detained and deported, I think it will affect the wave quickly.
Chairman Johnson. Can I just point out, 850,000 people that
have these and people in Central America have these [indicating
phone], so it is not just--it is using technology.
Mr. Davidson. That is what I mean. They are in touch with
their families and their networks and their communities in
Central America. And so word will get back quickly that you
cannot, in fact, get in. People are pawning their houses and
going into debt to loan sharks to be able to pay the fare to
get in, to make it north to the border and to get across. They
are not going to do that if they have a strong reason to
believe that they are going to get detained or deported. I
think, that is the number one thing you can do to address this
problem.
Chairman Johnson. It is tough love, but it is, I think,
something we have to do. Chief Morgan.
Mr. Morgan. Just to recap what I have said, I think that,
again, I agree actually with everything both these gentlemen
said, specifically with streamlining the asylum process. But,
again, to reiterate, to fix this problem immediately, we have
to remove the incentives. If you do not remove the incentives,
in my opinion, everything else is a little bit of white noise.
The major things that we can do right now to remove the
incentive is to allow the border security experts to detain
these individuals, i.e., fix Flores, the Flores Settlement;
two, they absolutely need to reverse TVPRA and make sure that
it is applied to everybody so we do not have that mandate,
because right now, as I have said, grab a kid, enter illegally,
one foot on American soil, say the magic words, and you are
here indefinitely. If you fix those things, you remove--and you
end catch-and-release.
The last thing that I will say is that right now what we
also need to do to remove those incentives, to remove that
perception that once you get here you are going to remain
indefinitely, is we need to support and increase ICE
enforcement and interior enforcement. Right now we have over 1
million individuals who came here, the majority of them,
illegally, filed for asylum, and either in absentia or their
claim was denied, have received a deportation order of
removal--1 million, yet they still remain in this country
illegally. If we start an enforcement operation to remove those
individuals, you will also make a huge dent on the incentive.
Chairman Johnson. I will repeat, we had a hearing on MS-13,
unbelievably vicious gang, and that was pretty revealing. But
as I said, I think Operation Matador, 40 percent of those
people rounded up in that operation, MS-13, came in as
unaccompanied children or an unaccompanied child.
Again, I just want to thank all of you. This is exactly
what I was kind of hoping this hearing would be. I think we
have laid out some realities. I think you have certainly
informed this Committee. The next step is to utilize this
information to, again, develop--or agree on what is an
achievable goal, in particularly the short term, and work on
the policy suggestions. Again, I agree with you, Dr. Selee. I
think that is the basic, we have to attack that, the way we
come to that first conclusion, so if we can do it quickly--and,
by the way, if we do that, the number of detention beds we need
comes down, the length of time in detention comes down, and we
get this all under control. But right now part of the things
that offends the American consciousness, because we are an
incredibly compassionate Nation, is just these numbers and just
kind of what the government is trying to deal with and how they
are trying to grapple with it.
Of course, just one news story about a child who dies
because they come to this country with a 105-degree fever with
a large group and CBP just--you cannot save every life. That
offends the American public. But if we can get this under
control, we will see far fewer stories of that, and I think it
will be better for everyone.
Again, I just want to thank all of you for your testimony.
I want to continue to work with you in the future.
The hearing record will remain open for 15 days, until
April 19 at 5 p.m., for submission of statements and questions
for the record. This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:02 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
UNPRECEDENTED MIGRATION AT THE
U.S. SOUTHERN BORDER: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE FRONTLINE
----------
TUESDAY, APRIL 9, 2019
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:03 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Ron Johnson,
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Johnson, Portman, Lankford, Romney Scott,
Hawley, Peters, Carper, Hassan, Harris, Sinema, and Rosen.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN JOHNSON
Chairman Johnson. Good morning. This hearing will come to
order.
I want to welcome all our witnesses. Thank you for your
thoughtful testimony. As I said last week, I really encourage
all the committee Members, if you have not had a chance, please
read the testimony. I think these witnesses, again, have done a
very good job of laying out the reality of the crisis that we
face on the border.
I ask that my written statement be entered in the
record.\1\
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\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Johnson appears in the
Appendix on page 143.
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Let us quickly put up the chart\2\ that really describes
this.
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\2\ The chart referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the Appendix
on page 195.
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We do not have final numbers for the final week in March,
but again, I am not going to go through the full explanation of
this, but only to point out in less than 6 months, we have
apprehended more than 240,000 either unaccompanied alien
children (UAC) or people coming in this country as family
units, individuals who according to testimony last week are
part of a process, it is almost a well-oiled machine of the
human traffickers, the transnational criminal organizations
(TCOs), individuals that are moving people from Central America
into this country, completely exploiting our laws, but 240,000
people in less than 6 months, and that compares to 120,000 in
2014, the year that President Obama correctly labeled that a
``humanitarian crisis.'' Again, in less than half a year, we
are double the level of 2014.
We are going to be hearing from people in the Customs and
Border Protection (CBP), the folks that are trying to grapple
with this growing crisis, how it has completely overwhelmed our
system.
But, again, this is going to be a very full hearing. We
have representatives from the agencies that are grappling with
this crisis. I want to thank you, first of all, for your
service to this country, for trying to deal with it, but this
is up to Congress. We have laws on the books and court
decisions that need to be addressed through congressional
action, through passing laws. From my standpoint, the goal of
this is to reduce, if not stop, the flow of this illegal
immigration. That has to be the goal of our policy and
recognizing--I tried to make this point in the last hearing as
well. We have a short term--it is a long-term problem, but we
have a short-term crisis, and we have to address this with
short-term measures.
I am all for developing and sending dollars and trying to
help those nations whose public institutions have been
destroyed by an insatiable demand for drugs in Central America,
but that is not going to solve this problem anytime soon. We
have to enact the laws so we can address this problem right
now. We cannot afford to wait any longer.
One other chart\1\ I want to quickly put up here, I had my
staff take a look at this. If we are going to fix this--and Dr.
Selee last week talked about having a more rapid adjudication
process for that initial determination of an asylum claim, and
the reason that is important is if we do not detain
individuals, we only are able to remove about 7 percent. If we
detain people and they have an invalid asylum claim, we can
remove about 77 percent. So we have to be able to have an
adjudication process in a time period where we have the
detention facilities so we can actually remove them; otherwise,
it is kind of a moot point.
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\1\ The chart referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the Appendix
on page 196.
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We have to take a look at that initial hurdle in terms of
credible fear or a more likelihood that their asylum claim
would be viewed as valid. Eighty-five percent of asylum claims
are denied. So we have to come to that determination a lot
quicker.
This chart right here shows what type of facilities we
would need based on the number of people coming in this country
illegally on a monthly basis versus the number of days to
adjudicate that initial claim, and it is pretty shocking.
Right now we had about 100,000 individuals is what the
estimate is for March, about 100,000 people coming to this
country illegally. If it take 45 days--right now it is taking
about 40 days I think to get that initial determination--we are
looking at needing detention facilities. Somewhere about
125,000 beds is what this chart will show you because you are
right between 150- and 100,000 beds, 45 to 30 day adjudication
process. 125,000 beds. We got about 50.
So this chart also shows you the solution. Reduce the flow.
Reduce the number of days to adjudication, and then we will
have plenty of detention facilities.
Senator Hassan has been talking about this. I do not want
to detain people. It costs a lot of money. What I want to do is
I want to come to a very rapid conclusion, a rapid
determination: This is a valid asylum claim or an invalid one.
If it is an invalid asylum claim, we have to remove those
individuals back to their home country.
We know this works. Secretary Michael Chertoff in 2005 with
a surge of Brazilians, about 31,000 in that year came in from
Mexico into our Southern Border. He realized that was a
problem. So he initiated a process of rapid removal, and the
next year, it was 1,400. So we know that works. That is what we
need to do, but we have to pass the laws to do it.
Again, I will not go on any further, but I am just asking
this Committee. I will be proposing legislation, hopefully
working with Senator Peters and others on a bipartisan basis to
fix this problem. We have to address it, and it is a short-term
situation that we have to deal with this. We cannot wait for
the long-term fixes.
With that, Senator Peters.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PETERS\1\
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
holding this hearing today, and to all of our witnesses, thank
you for being here today.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Peters appears in the
Appendix on page 145.
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Last Thursday's hearing provided information about the
scope and the scale of the challenges that we are now facing on
our Southern Border. Important historical context was provided
and a chance to examine how we can better work with the
governments of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
During my opening statement, just 5 days ago in the hearing
that we had last week, I said that securing our borders will
take cooperation and credibility from this Administration and
not chaos and not confusion.
Unfortunately, in the days since, just the 5 days, we have
seen nothing but more chaos out of the Administration.
Since this first Southern Border hearing concluded, we have
seen the Administration withdraw their nominee to be Director
of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a nominee
who had a hearing before this Committee last year and was
approved during the Committee meeting last month.
We have seen the announcement of Homeland Security
Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen's resignation. We have seen the
President fire Secret Service Director Randolph Alles for
unknown reasons, creating another senior vacancy at the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS). We have seen reports
that the White House is potentially preparing to fire the
Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
It is, in a word, chaos.
The problems we face at our Southern Border will not be
fixed with high-profile firings or tweets or press conferences.
It is going to take leadership, and as I said last week, it is
going to take cooperation and credibility.
By the end of the week, the Department of Homeland Security
will have no Secretary, no Deputy Secretary, no Chief Financial
Officer (CFO), nobody leading multiple major bureaus and
therefore virtually no accountability to the American people.
We are looking at an absence of leadership at the top of
the third largest Department in our Federal Government, a
Department charged with preventing terrorism, securing our
borders, enforcing our immigration laws, safeguarding
cyberspace, and ensuring resilience to disasters.
Fortunately, the men and women of DHS and its component
agencies, career public servants, continue to show up to work,
and they continue to do their best across the Country in the
midst of a very difficult situation on our Southern Border.
Last week we heard that it is not just the number but the
composition of the migrant groups that is straining our
infrastructure. Specifically, the influx of families and
children seeking asylum from dangerous conditions in Northern
Triangle countries has created an unprecedented challenge for
our frontline personnel.
There are no easy answers or quick fixes here, but we know
that the trauma of detaining young children and separating them
from their parents puts these children at risk of irreparable
harm.
I have asked multiple officials from this Administration
who have testified before this committee. I have asked, ``How
long is too long to detain a child?'' I have yet to receive a
real answer. We must do better.
We need to reduce the backlogs in processing asylum claims.
Screening interviews are being delayed. The average wait to
appear before an immigration court is now over 2 years, and the
backlog is quickly approaching 1 million cases. This is simply
unacceptable.
We need to address root causes of mass migration, take on
the violence and impunity that regions across the Northern
Triangle experience and disrupt the transnational criminal
organizations that cash in on drug trafficking and human
smuggling.
This will take careful cooperation with regional
governments, law enforcement, and civil society, not cutting
off existing funding to nonprofit organizations operating in
the Northern Triangle.
We need Mexico to do more to address the flow of migrants
across their Southern Border, but it will take sustained
cooperation and American leadership, not baseless threats and
disengagement.
Finally, we need to secure our Southern Border, and I look
forward to hearing from our witnesses about what is working and
what is not.
I look forward to hearing how we can replicate your
successes and address your challenges, and I look forward to
discussing how we can improve the data that Congress and
Federal agencies rely on to make thoughtful decisions.
Thank you all for being here today.
Chairman Johnson. Thanks, Senator Peters.
Again, what it will take is legislation, and we need to act
now to address this situation. We cannot rely on long-term
fixes to address this situation now.
Again, that is why I want to work with you. That is why we
are holding these hearings is to determine what we need to do
now to fix this. So it does require legislation.
It is the tradition of this committee to swear in
witnesses, so if you all stand and raise your right hand. Do
you swear the testimony you will give before this Committee
will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help you, God?
Mr. Karisch. Yes.
Mr. Howe. Yes.
Mr. Tubbs. Yes.
Mr. White. Yes.
Mr. Cherundolo, Yes.
Chairman Johnson. Please be seated.
Our first witness is Rodolfo Karisch. Mr. Karisch is the
Chief Patrol Agent for the U.S. border patrols Rio Grande
Valley (RGV) Sector, and Commander of the Joint Task Force-West
(JTF-W), South Texas Corridor. He previously served as the
Chief Patrol Agent of the Tucson and Del Rio Sectors. He also
previously served as CBP Attache to Mexico. Mr. Karisch.
TESTIMONY OF RODOLFO KARISCH,\1\ RIO GRANDE VALLEY SECTOR CHIEF
PATROL, U.S. BORDER PATROL, U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Karisch. Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Peters, and
distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for the
chance to appear before you today.
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\1\ The joint prepared statement of Mr. Karisch appears in the
Appendix on page 148.
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I am proud to have served as a Border Patrol Agent for more
than 30 years, currently as the Chief Patrol Agent in the Rio
Grande Valley Sector, and also have served as the Chief Patrol
Agent of the Tucson Sector. In my 30 years as an agent, I have
never witnessed the conditions we are currently facing on the
Southwest Border. This is not a manufactured crisis created by
those of us who live and work in the border area.
The U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) continues to apprehend record
numbers of people who purposely violate U.S. immigration laws.
We are taken advantage of by gaps in our legal framework and
that undermine the rule of law.
Criminal organizations along the border capitalize on these
issues and make tremendous profits at the expense of both
migrants and the American people.
RGV is responsible for securing 277 miles of border. This
is a small fraction of the United States, but it accounts for
38 percent of all illegal immigration along the entire
Southwest Border.
To put things into perspective, last year agents in RGV
made 162,000 apprehensions. We are already at 147,000. At this
pace, my sector alone, we will have more than 260,000
apprehensions by the end of the fiscal year (FY). On average,
we apprehend more than a thousand people illegally crossing the
border every day. That is roughly the capacity of 17 commercial
buses.
Last week agents in my sector apprehended 1,766 people in a
single 24-hour period. We expect the numbers to continue to
climb as we enter the summer months, which will undoubtedly
place both migrants and our Border Patrol Agents at significant
risk.
Rescue missions will increase as a result of drawing
additional personnel from our frontline law enforcement
mission. Much media attention has focused on caravans from
Central America, but the fact is that RGV is receiving caravan-
equivalent numbers of migrants every 7 days.
The majority of people we are apprehending are family units
and unaccompanied children from the Northern Triangle countries
of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Many are extremely
vulnerable. Consequently, 30 to 40 percent of my daily
workforce is doing humanitarian work at any given point in
time. This includes processing, care and feeding, hospital
watch, and transportation. It also means that at any given
point in time, 30 to 40 percent of my workforce is not
available to secure the border.
An agent who has taken a migrant to a hospital is not
available to interdict narcotics, nor are we able to respond to
other smuggling events or border intrusions when we encounter
and apprehend large groups of people. The bad guys know this.
They know our resources are stretched thin in addressing the
humanitarian issue, which undermines our border security
operations. They direct the movement of large groups into
certain border areas as a diversion to facilitate the smuggling
of drugs. This is an issue of both national security and
officer safety.
In addition to the large groups of families and children
from Central American, other illegal aliens from all over the
world are caught trying to evade arrest. In my sector along, we
have encountered people from 50 different countries. That
includes Bangladesh, China, Turkey, Egypt, Romania, to name a
few. People are traveling across hemispheres to attempt to
illegally enter the United States, using the same pathways as
the Central Americans.
We also encounter known gang members from some of the most
violent gangs on earth, including MS-13 and 18th Street. Some
of these gang members are fraudulently posing as part of these
migrant families.
I would like to share with you a translation of a text
message that we intercepted from an MS-13 gang member who was
part of one of these fraudulent family units. He wrote, ``You
should see the amount of Hondurans that are traveling with a
child, and they pay less to the smugglers in order to be
delivered to the Border Patrol. It is a direct trip. They have
them a few days with Border Patrol, and afterwards they are
released. There are a lot of people with that law. That is the
easiest way right now. Entire families are coming.'' So make no
mistake about it. The world is getting out. If you are part of
a family, if you bring a child, you will be released.
Just last Friday, our agents apprehended an adult Honduran
male with a 1-year-old child. After questioning the man, the
man admitted the child was not in fact his.
Something has to change. The levels of mass migration we
are seeing profoundly impacts our ability to control the border
and stop dangerous people and drugs from entering the country.
I implore Congress to consider legislative action that restores
integrity to our immigration system.
Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your
questions.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Karisch. Again, thank you
for your service.
Our next witness is Randy Howe. Mr. Howe is the Executive
Director of Operations for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
In this role, he oversees 30 field offices and 328 ports of
entry (POE). Mr. Howe.
TESTIMONY OF RANDY HOWE,\1\ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FOR OPERATIONS,
OFFICE OF FIELD OPERATIONS, U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Howe. Good morning, Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member
Peters, and distinguished Members of the Committee. It is an
honor to appear before you today on behalf of CBP's Office of
Field Operations (OFO).
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\1\ The joint prepared statement of Mr. Howe appears in the
Appendix on page 148.
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection has four priority
missions: national security, counter-narcotics, economic
security, and the facilitation of lawful trade and travel. We
operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to
accomplish those missions.
Our job is to move people and cargo through our ports of
entry, while inspecting all of those for possible hazards and
stopping threats at the border. Our Nation's economy and our
national security relies on our vigilance.
It is an immense task even in the best circumstances. Our
officers report to duty never knowing what challenges they will
face or if their lives will be threatened. Factors like port
volume, resource constraints, and enforcement activities make
every day unpredictable.
In recent months, however, we have seen an unprecedented,
unsustainable trend in our daily operations. Inadmissible
migrants sometimes traveling in large groups are arriving at
our ports of entry without proper documentation. The majority
are family units, unaccompanied children, and nearly all of
them seeking asylum.
I would like to give you a snapshot of the daily operations
at one of our ports of entry. Just this past Saturday in
Nogales, Arizona, our officers made five separate trips
transporting migrants to medical facilities, including one trip
transporting a family of five. Four unaccompanied alien
children from Honduras arrived at our DeConcini Pedestrian Port
of Entry. All claimed asylum. A family from Cuba entering the
country by commercial bus then claimed asylum. A single vehicle
inspection yielded 70 packages of methamphetamine, weighing
more than 72 pounds; and a male imposter presenting someone
else's documents was encountered as a pedestrian and taken in
for processing.
Among all this activity, our offices are regularly
transporting migrants to coordinating centers or into ICE
custody or accepting detainees from other ports of entry to
alleviate overcrowding. This is in addition to our work to
process the people and cargo with a legitimate need to pass
through our ports of entry every day.
While the current migration flows have taxed our officers
at the ports of entry, the levels of migration between the
ports is catastrophic. To support our colleagues in the U.S.
Border Patrol, the Office of Field Operations has redirected
545 frontline officers from our southwest border ports of entry
to help process and care for the record number of migrants.
But these actions are not without consequences. Travelers
and shippers are experiencing increased wait times as they
approach our Southwest Border ports of entry. This is true
across all mods of travel: pedestrian, personal vehicles, and
commercial trucks.
In El Paso, Texas, just yesterday, passenger vehicle wait
times at the Bridge of the Americas were as long as 160
minutes. The peak time last year, same day, was 45 minutes.
The situation is even more dire in our cargo processing.
Last year wait times for cargo processing in El Paso were less
than 15 minutes. Yesterday wait times were as long as 250
minutes. That is about 4 hours. At the end of the day, 63
trucks were not processed. This is the direct result of the 545
CBP officers being reassigned to assist the Border Patrol with
the care and custody of the surging numbers of migrants.
I cannot overstate the importance of these operations. The
border security and humanitarian crisis at the Southwest Border
has ripple effects that impact the entire Nation. Suspended
services negatively affect the trade community, the supply
chain, businesses that rely on these products, and ultimately
the consumer.
Despite the challenges we face, our officers continue to
process migrants claiming asylum, facilitate legitimate trade
and travel, and interdict narcotics from entering the United
States.
I appreciate the support Congress has offered to our men
and women of the front lines, and I ask that you consider
legislative action that will address this crisis.
Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your
questions.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Howe.
Our next witness is Timothy Tubbs. Mr. Tubbs is the Deputy
Special Agent in Charge for the Homeland Security
Investigations (HSI), Laredo, Texas, office, which includes
McAllen and Brownsville, Texas. He previously served as the ICE
attache to Mexico. Mr. Tubbs.
TESTIMONY OF TIMOTHY TUBBS,\1\ DEPUTY SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE-
LAREDO, TEXAS, HOMELAND SECURITY INVESTIGATIONS, U.S.
IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Tubbs. Good morning, Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member
Peters, and distinguished Members of the Committee. I want to
thank you for the opportunity today to be here to discuss U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security
Investigations, and our frontline perspective on the
sophisticated smuggling threats that we face on the Southwest
Border, the approaches that lead up to the border, and some of
what we do to address transnational criminal organizations,
that threaten border security, homeland security, and public
safety by seeking to bring illicit goods, people, and proceeds
into the United States.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Tubbs appears in the Appendix on
page 157.
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HSI Special Agents use their vast authority to investigate
cross-border criminal activity and work in close collaboration
with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, our Office of Field
Operations, United States Border Patrol, as well as the Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA). We work in a unified effort
with domestic and international law enforcement partners to
combat that illicit activity.
Today I will highlight how HSI since our inception has
targeted, investigated, disrupted, dismantled, and brought to
justice transnational criminal organizations who threaten our
border security, our homeland security, and our public safety
through their cross-border illicit activity. HSI is grateful to
you for the continued congressional support that enables us to
successfully execute our complex investigative mission, both at
home and abroad, working with our domestic and international
partners.
HSI Laredo. So HSI Laredo is my current area of
responsibility. It is one of the most active areas of
responsibility for my agency. It covers approximately 300 miles
of U.S.-Mexico border, and it covers what is the Mexican State
of Tamaulipas with the United States border.
If you look at the HSI Special Agents that work in that
area, they are on the true forefront of what is border
security, and they truly live every single day what is border
security for we as the U.S. Government and the United States of
America.
Mexico is the front doorstep for transnational criminal
organizations to bring in illicit goods and people to the
United States.
Mexico is a major source country for the transit and
production of illicit drugs destined for the United States,
including marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines, heroin, and
most recently fentanyl. As a result of Mexico's dominant role,
both as a source and transit point for illicit drugs destined
for the United States, it is also a primary destination for
illicit proceeds that the cartel earns through their
distribution networks in the United States.
Mexico cartels use a variety of techniques to repatriate
illicit funds from bulk cash smuggling to sophisticated trade-
based money-laundering schemes. Many of these more complex
schemes use third-party money launderers. As such, HSI has
established an abundance of investigative tools in our arsenal
to disrupt and dismantle cartel money-laundering operations.
Also, HSI and the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Criminal
Division, we have established the Extraterritorial Criminal
Travel (ECT) Strike Force Program, which addresses U.S.
security risks posed by TCOs that smuggle special-interest
aliens, and these special-interest aliens could potentially
cause a threat to U.S. national security and public safety.
This ECT program is designated to disrupt and dismantle these
human-smuggling organizations worldwide through aggressive
investigations and criminal prosecutions, both domestically and
extraterritorially.
HSI works very close with our international partners to
disrupt and dismantle TCOs. HSI has 68 offices in 51 countries,
and we are positioned to utilize our established relationships
with those host-country law enforcement to include the
engagement in what we call ``Transnational Criminal
Investigative Units (TCIUs). These TCIUs are composed of DHS-
trained host-country officials who have the authority to
investigate and enforce violations of laws in respective
countries. The TCIUs enable both ICE and the host country to
conduct joint criminal investigations, joint prosecutions,
while meeting the common mission of both the host country and
ICE, also respecting the sovereignty of the host country and
cultivating that international relationship.
These efforts, often thousands of miles away from our U.S.
border in countries like the Dominican Republic and Mexico,
both of which I have had the opportunity to serve, essentially
act as an outer layer of security for our Southwest Border.
Mexico specifically, again, where I have served for 3\1/2\
years before going to Laredo, has proven to be an outstanding
partner in the right against TCOs, taking down cartel
leadership as well as taking down the leadership of these
organizations that smuggle special-interest aliens and
ultimately working with us cooperatively in efforts to
dismantle those organizations.
The ICE attache in Mexico is our largest ICE presence
outside the United States, and there, we have an established
TCIU with the government of Mexico. Through our attache, we
work well with the government of Mexico in combating TCOs and
combating the transnational drug smuggling, weapons smuggling,
human smuggling, and money laundering.
The spirit of cooperation and joint efforts between DHS
components and our counterparts in Mexico is unprecedented.
HSI will continue to work with our law enforcement
partners. We will continue to work with them both domestically
and foreign to improve our efficiency and effectiveness of
information sharing, operational coordination to combat TCOs
and their illicit border activity, which ultimately threatens
our border security, our national security, and our public
safety.
I want to thank you for having me here today, and I look
forward to answering any questions that you have.
Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Tubbs.
Our next witness is Commander Jonathan White. Commander
White serves in the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS)
Commissioned Corps. He is the Health and Human Services (HHS)
Senior Advisor in the Office of Emergency Management and
Medical Operations. He previously served as the Deputy Director
of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Commander White.
TESTIMONY OF COMMANDER JONATHAN WHITE, PhD,\1\ USPHS, DEPUTY
DIRECTOR FOR CHILDREN'S PROGRAMS, OFFICE OF EMERGENCY
MANAGEMENT AND MEDICAL OPERATIONS, OFFICE OF ASSISTANT
SECRETARY FOR PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES.
Mr. White. Good morning. Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member
Peters, and Members of the Committee, it is my honor to appear
today before you on behalf of the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Commander White appears in the
Appendix on page 173.
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As the Chairman noted, my name is Jonathan White. I am a
career officer in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned
Corps. I am also a clinical social worker and an emergency
manager, and most recently, I have been detailed as HHS's
operational lead in the effort to reunify children who were
separated from their parents at the Southwest Border.
I want to talk to you about the Unaccompanied Alien
Children's program in the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR)
in HHS.
ORR is responsible for the care and the temporary custody
of unaccompanied children referred to ORR by other Federal
agencies, and as a reminder, ORR does not apprehend migrants at
the border or enforce the immigration laws. HHS is not a law
enforcement agency.
As defined by the Homeland Security Act (HSA), if a child
under the age of 18 with no lawful immigration status is
apprehended by another Federal agency and there is no parent or
legal guardian with the child or available in the United States
to provide care and custody of the child, that child is
considered, the legal term, as an ``unaccompanied alien child''
and is transferred to ORR for care and custody.
ORR operates shelters nationwide that provide housing,
nutrition, routine medical care, mental health services,
educational services, and recreational activities, and these
provide an environment that has parity with facilities in the
child welfare systems that house children here domestically.
The facilities are operated by nonprofit grantees who are
licensed to provide care to children by State licensing
authorities, the same that would regulate such facilities
housing domestic children. The one exception is ORR's temporary
hard-sided influx care facility on the former U.S. Job Corps
site in Homestead, Florida, which is not required to obtain
State licensure because it is located on federally owned
property. However, children at that location generally receive
the same level of care and services as children who are in a
State-licensed facility.
The UAC program capacity has expanded and contracted over
the years, driven by the astonishing fluctuations over time and
the number of children referred and the average time children
remain in ORR care.
Currently, HHS maintains about 14,300 beds nationwide. That
is up from 6,500 beds on October 1, 2017, but it is also down
from 15,800 beds on November 15, 2018. HHS continues to adjust
its bed capacity constantly based on the most recent data,
including information from our interagency partners, to help us
prepare for changing needs.
HHS cares for all of these children until they are released
to a suitable sponsor, almost always a parent or close
relative, to provide care for them while they await their day
in immigration court. These children also leave HHS's care if
they return to their home countries pursuant to an immigration
judge's order or they turn 18 years of age or they gain legal
immigration status.
In fiscal 2018, 49,100 children were referred to ORR by
DHS. From October through February of this fiscal year, we have
received over 24,000 referrals.
In fiscal 2019 through February, children were discharged
from ORR custody. Ninety-two percent of them were released to
individual sponsors, and of those sponsors, 46 percent were
parents, 45 percent were close relatives, and 9 percent were
more distant relatives or nonrelatives.
On June 20, 2018, the President issued Executive Order (EO)
13841, and the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of
California in Ms. L v. ICE issued its preliminary injunction
and class certification orders on June 26.
Pursuant to those, Secretary Azar tasked the Assistant
Secretary for Preparedness and Response to help us comply with
that Executive Order and then subsequently with those judge's
orders, and to that end, we stood up an incident management
team to reunify children with their parents.
If the 2,814 children reported to the Ms. L court, as of
this morning we have reunified 2,160 of them with the parent
from whom they were separated. Another 595 children have left
ORR care through other appropriate discharges, in most cases
released to a family member sponsor.
There are 16 children still in our care who were separated
but cannot be reunified with their parent because we have made
a final determination that that parent poses an unacceptable
risk to the safety and well-being of that children.
There are 32 children still in ORR care whose parents,
after consulting with the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU), have waived reunification, and there are 9 children in
care whose subsequent review determined had not in fact been
separated from their parents but were truly unaccompanied
children.
As of this week, of the 2,814 children reported to the Ms.
L court, there are only two children remaining who might still
one day be reunified. We cannot reunify them at this time until
the parent conveys their wishes to the ACLU.
The UAC program's mission is a child welfare mission. We
seek to serve the best interest of each individual child. That
has guided us in everything we do, including in our work to
have each separated child back in his or her parent's arms or
discharged safely to another family member sponsor when that is
their parent's wish. We have done, and will continue to do, our
best as a Department to achieve that goal.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today, and
I will be happy to answer any questions that you have for me
about our program.
Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Commander White.
Our final witness is Greg Cherundolo. Mr. Cherundolo is the
Chief of Operators for the Drug Enforcement Agency. He leads
DEA's 222 domestic offices and 90 foreign offices. Mr.
Cherundolo.
TESTIMONY OF GREG CHERUNDOLO,\1\ CHIEF OF OPERATIONS, DRUG
ENFORCEMENT AGENCY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Mr. Cherundolo. Good morning, Chairman Johnson, Ranking
Member Peters, and distinguished Members of the Committee. It
is an honor to appear before you today to discuss Mexican
cartels, the extent of their influence to manufacture,
transport, and distribute illicit narcotics in our efforts to
combat this threat.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Cherundolo appears in the
Appendix on page 180.
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I have had the honor and privilege of serving as a law
enforcement official for 27 years, with the last 22 of those
years being as a DEA Special Agent. When I reflect on those 27
years of experience, the sophistication and capacity of Mexican
cartels is what worries me most.
Dangerous and highly sophisticated transnational criminal
organizations, or cartels, operating in both Mexico and the
United States have been, and will continue to be, the most
significant source of illicit narcotics trafficked inside the
United States. Whether it is heroin or synthetic opioids,
methamphetamine, or marijuana, the Mexican cartels are the
primary source of illicit drugs on our streets.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Mexican cartels has
been the confluence of three things: the synthetic drug threat;
the epidemic of opioid abuse; and the cartel's attempt to
expand their profits by intentionally mixing fentanyl and
fentanyl-related substances with heroin, counterfeit
prescription drugs, and other illicit drugs, including cocaine
and methamphetamine. This is done for one simple reason: greed.
This is a national threat and a public health emergency
fueled by fentanyl, which is cheap to make, hard to detect, and
dangerously potent.
Now consider this. Chinese and Mexican nationals are
increasingly operating in concert, resulting in an alignment
responsible for their proliferation of heroin, fentanyl, and
related synthetics coming across our Southwest Border.
Couple this with the fact that a kilogram of fentanyl can
be purchased for less than $5,000 for China, and potential
profits from the sale of that kilogram can exceed $1.5 million.
The cartels are deliberately seizing on the suffering of
thousands of individuals to generate profit.
The same organizations are transporting methamphetamine and
cocaine across the Southwest Border at an alarming rate. We
cannot afford to lose our focus on cocaine and methamphetamine.
The cartels are responsible for record amounts of
methamphetamine entering the United States, and recent
increases in coca cultivation and cocaine production are
particularly troubling, likely foreshadowing an increase in
importation and abuse and overdose deaths.
DEA anticipates that Mexican cartels, such as the Sinaloa
Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), as well as
others will continue to be the primary networks operating in
more than one country to plan and execute their criminal
enterprises. These cartels do not observe boundaries or laws in
Mexico, the United States, or any other country.
As you know, in 2017, Mexico extradited Joaquin ``El
Chapo'' Guzman to the United States, and he was just recently
convicted in the Eastern District of New York. This is a major
milestone, but more work needs to be done.
Now what is DEA doing to counter this threat? We recognize
this will take persistent efforts across a broad spectrum to
include interagency and global partnerships. For decades, we
have maintained a worldwide presence to address the source of
drugs.
In Mexico, DEA continues to synchronize and expand
capabilities to combat the growing epidemic. We have developed
a bilateral heroin strategy for intelligence sharing,
coordination of investigations, training, increased sharing of
forensic information, and the control of precursor chemicals.
We also participate in the North American Drug Dialogue,
which focuses on building a strategy to attack the production,
trafficking, consumption, and misuse of illicit narcotics in
North America.
DEA will continue to aggressively pursue criminals
trafficking in illicit drugs. Targeting the world's most
dangerous drug traffickers and their criminal organizations is
a dynamic and evolving mission, and it comes with a myriad of
challenges.
Throughout our history, DEA has aggressively met those
challenges and produced impressive results.
We look forward to continuing our work with you and your
Senate colleagues to identify resources and authorities
necessary to complete our mission, and I thank you for the
opportunity to testify before the committee today on this
important issue. I look forward to your questions.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Cherundolo.
Again, I really appreciate the attendance here by Members,
so I will defer my questioning until the end.
We do have a vote. We are going to deal with it at 11
o'clock. My intention will be to keep the hearing going. I hope
we can get some cooperation by committee Members.
With that, I will turn it over to Senator Peters.
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you
again to our witnesses for your testimony today.
Mr. Chairman, I also have a letter here from the National
Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) that I would like to submit for
the record.\1\
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\1\ The letter referenced by Senator Peters appear in the Appendix
on page 217.
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Chairman Johnson. Without objection.
Senator Peters. Thank you.
A big part of what we have been trying to accomplish in the
last hearing and this hearing is trying to get just a sense of
what are the facts on the ground that we can all agree on in a
bipartisan way, take the rhetoric, push that all aside, and
just figure out how we can deal with a significant problem.
Related to that, of course, is having good data. You need
to have the numbers, and the Chairman is a numbers person, like
I am. We want to make sure that we are getting that kind of
information and we are getting it on a timely basis, which has
not really been happening.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently
recommended that the DHS develop and implement a process to
systematically review and look at the reliability of the data
used in its Border Security Metrics Report and identify any
limitations in how it is used.
So my question is for all the witnesses. Are there any data
points that we are not collecting now that would provide
critical insight into these challenges that we are having in
the border?
I would like to ask all of you if you have anything to
share related to what we are not collecting now that you think
we should be.
Mr. Karisch, do you want to start us off?
Mr. Karisch. Senator, we collect a lot of information right
now, but I think we also need to go a little further in regards
to the finances of what exactly criminal organizations are
making. I think that that is key.
We all have our ideas on how much money flows into the
hands of criminal organizations, whether it is the brush guide,
whether it is the transportation cell, the stash house
operators. I think we collectively need to get better at
sharing that information to attack the finances. I do not think
that we are going to be able to interdict our way out of this
problem without attacking the finances. So I definitely would
think that more financial information in data shared between
the different agencies would be helpful.
Mr. Howe. I agree with everything that Chief Karisch said.
We are an information agency. We collect lots of data points.
Everything that we do, the migrants that we are intersecting,
the different modes of narcotics that are coming through our
border, working with our interagencies, just to continue to
work together with our interagencies and sharing information
and building on those trends so we continue to target the
narcotic threat.
Mr. Tubbs. I can tell you specifically for us as
Immigration and Customs Environment, Homeland Security
Investigations, that is very important to us in everything we
do, justifying our operations showing results for the end of
the year, staffing, etc., and we are very meticulous about our
stats.
I can tell you even today, coming forward to be here to
testify in front of you, we are very careful about the stats
that we report, the information that we report, and we want to
make sure that we report that correctly.
But we do look very closely at the money laundering, the
finances, every criminal investigation that we conduct, whether
it is human smuggling. Whether it is narcotics, weapons, child
exploitation, child pornography, intellectual property rights,
we have specific groups that just look at finances, and that is
information that we collect very closely and very carefully. I
think that is something we can share with our partners in DHS.
And just across DHS as far as sharing of information, if
there was a one-DHS information compile and share, I think that
would be beneficial to all of us.
Thank you.
Senator Peters. Great. Thank you. Commander.
Mr. White. I do not think we have sort of data points that
we are missing. I think the effectiveness of our agency is
sometimes challenged by the fact that we are a child welfare
agency in a surrounding law enforcement process, and I think
there continue to be challenges with exchange of information
because of the inherent challenges we have receiving some law
enforcement-sensitive information that would enable us to make
the safest placement decisions we could for a child, including
receiving 213 information on children and those accompanying
them.
Thank you, sir.
Senator Peters. Thank you.
Mr. Cherundolo. Senator, I do not think there is a data
point that my partners here at the table do not already collect
related to the specific border; however, the one data point
that we can point to at least from a perspective of Chinese and
Mexican trafficking groups trafficking in fentanyl is how the
class scheduling of fentanyl and fentanyl analogs has
affected--when we look at the data points we look at across our
seizures as a result of our investigations, we find that
anytime that our Chinese counterparts have controlled fentanyl
or fentanyl analogs, it has decreased the number of seizures in
us seeing that analog here in the United States.
Because those groups are working together to get fentanyl
into the United States, I think that has helped us to reduce
the amount of fentanyl that is leading to overdoses in the
United States.
But as far as the border-related data points, I think our
partners have covered down well on that, and we continue to
share information back and forth as a result of our
investigations and what they are doing as well.
Senator Peters. Thank you.
I have heard all of you talk about sharing of data. My
question to you, Commander White, in January the HHS Office of
Inspector General (OIG) concluded that the agency faced
significant challenges in identifying separated children--and
this is a quote--``including the lack of an existing integrated
data system to track separated families across HHS and DHS.''
So, Commander, based on your experience as the Federal
health coordinating official for the mission and reunifying
children who are separated, could you tell us more about that?
What are the gaps? What do we need to be doing to make sure
that we are able to identify where the separated children are?
Mr. White. So, as a reminder, we are able in ORR to tell
you for any child who has been in our care to whom we release
that child, what the relationship of that person to the child
was and the address that they had when we release them.
I think this is key, while we now know every child who was
in our care on June 26, of those 12,000 children, whether each
child was separated or not separated, what we do not know and
what HHS OIG correctly documented is that we still do not know
how many of the children we had already released to a family
member had been separated or referred to us.
But the problem is not one of interagency data sharing, per
se. The problem is that children were separated and no record
was kept of it. That is not a data exchange problem.
It is also more fundamentally the problem that the
unaccompanied alien children program is designed for
unaccompanied children, not separated children, and orderly
systems for exchange of data do not undo the harm caused by
separating children from their parents. That is the proper
focus for all congressional inquiries about separation. What
are the legitimate conditions under which a child may be
separated from a parent at the border? What are the appropriate
systems, including what kind of rights of remedy and appeal
does a parent have? How can ORR and DHS have equal power to
determine if a child is accompanied or unaccompanied, so that
ORR may refuse a referral of a child who is in fact
accompanied?
The issue is not how well it was tracked; the issue is that
it happened at all.
Senator Peters. Well said, Commander. Thank you for that
testimony. Appreciate it.
Chairman Johnson. Commander, as long as we are on this
topic, just real quick, reading your testimony, it seemed like
a real challenge was complying with a court order in terms of
what the definition was of a separated child.
There are real legitimate reasons to separate a child from
an adult. For example, we heard in testimony that an adult male
finally made it with a 1-year-old child who was not his. Could
you just speak to that?
Mr. White. We have always seen appropriate separations of
children, both from parents and from people who claim to be
their parents fraudulently, and it is our experience that our
colleagues in DHS very honorably attempt to confront a really
difficult set of challenges when they apprehend a minor.
The real problem is that there is no real legal--there is
no statutory guidance when a child may be separated, under what
conditions, what is a permissible reason. There will always be
some children separated from parents for reasons of the child's
safety or the need to immediately criminally prosecute someone
with, for example, felony warrants. There will always be
children separated from individuals who fraudulently claim to
be parents who are not. But that is different from what we saw
over the last year.
Chairman Johnson. Again, I just want to understand your
testimony.
Part of the problem and part of the confusion here is for
years, we have been doing legitimate separations for a host of
reasons, and part of complying with this was trying to figure
out exactly what matched the dictates of the court order,
correct?
Mr. White. The historical norm is that about 0.3 percent of
all referrals are separations. In the fall of 2017, that
increased tenfold to 3 percent. By the spring, it was much
higher than that as a percentage. So the issue is how do we
determine what are the reasonable standards for separation, and
that is a job for Congress.
Chairman Johnson. So, there again, we need some
legislation. Senator Portman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PORTMAN
Senator Portman. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you for holding
the hearing and for each of you for your service.
These are difficult times, are not they? All of you have
been in this business for a long time. I looked at your
resumes. You probably have never experienced something quite
like this, the influx of particularly families and kids. We are
in a crisis on the border. We certainly are, and it is worse in
terms of families and kids than it was when President Obama
called it so, a crisis. So I appreciate what you are doing.
I have focused a lot on the pull factors. The push factors
are also important, what we do with these Northern Triangle
countries--Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras--is incredibly
important, but that is going to be a longer-term prospect.
Short term, I want to ask, if you do not mind, Mr. Karisch,
Mr. Howe, and Mr. Tubbs, do you believe the people who are
coming here, family units and otherwise, are coming here
primarily for economic reasons and primarily to get a job that
pays better for their families?
Mr. Karisch. Sir, based on what I have seen out in the
field at this point in time, the vast majority are coming here
for economic reasons or, of course, for family reunification. I
am not saying that there are not credible fear claims or asylum
claims out there that are true.
Senator Portman. I am not either. I think that number is
about 85 percent of those who seek asylum are not getting
asylum because they cannot meet the criteria.
But my question to you is, Do you think most folks are
coming here for economic reasons to get a better job?
Mr. Karisch. Yes.
Senator Portman. Mr. Howe.
Mr. Howe. Agree, Senator, the same. The numbers prove that
out, the 85 percent that are being claimed.
Senator Portman. Mr. Tubbs.
Mr. Tubbs. Yes, sir. I would agree that they are coming
here for economic reasons. I mean, anytime we look at
unaccompanied children or family units, one of the things that
we look at specifically is HSI and doing our criminal
investigations to ensure that there is no family fraud, to look
at the welfare of the child, that there is no case where they
are put in a situation for child exploitation.
It is also a reason why we have increased our work site
enforcement, our interior enforcement, because that really is a
pull factor.
Senator Portman. Let me focus on that for a second. Would
it surprise you to know that under our current E-Verify system,
one, it is not mandatory; two, often people can use a fake ID,
a fraudulent ID, Social Security card or driver's license? And
so we do not have a system that is effective to know who is
legal or who is not so that the employer can make that
determination. I mean, that is what we have now, correct?
Would you support a mandatory E-Verify system so that we
can help to reduce the magnet, the pull?
Go ahead. Mr. Howe, you came to the mic first.
Mr. Howe. Yes. Absolutely, we would support that. Anything
that would reduce the pull factor.
Senator Portman. Mr. Karisch.
Mr. Karisch. Yes, sir.
Senator Portman. Mr. Tubbs.
Mr. Tubbs. Any tool that we get is going to help us
greatly.
Senator Portman. Yes. We have a bipartisan proposal to do
that, and I think that is something that sometimes we miss in
this conversation about the border, as important as it is to
have a secure border. When you have that kind of a pull factor,
that kind of magnet, people find a way, do not they, to get
through, over, or around the border?
Commander White, you and I kind of know each other. I
believe you are a compassionate person, and I think you care a
lot for these kids. I think you have been in a very tough
situation. You have talked about that today.
I know there is now a discussion about reinstating the
zero-tolerance policy, which led to the family separations you
talked about earlier.
What was the effect on ORR last year when the
Administration implemented the zero-tolerance policy?
Mr. White. So the effect of zero tolerance or of other
policies that resulted in separating children from family
units, as a reminder, the great majority of children who cross
our border each day are accompanied. They are part of family
units. Most typically, they are with a parent, and they are
accompanied.
So the first thing that happened to the program is that the
program's capacity was overwhelmed, but to say that sort of
understates the severity of the harm because it was overwhelmed
with children that we are not prepared to serve easily because
ordinarily the great majority of the children that we receive,
about 80 percent of them, are teenagers.
But when you separate children from their parents, we get
babies and toddlers and other very young children. So, as you
know, of the 2,814 children, 107 of them were 4 years of age or
younger.
Our specific capacity that States have licensed to serve
what we call tender age under 12 and very young 5-and-under
children was exceeded. This puts these children at significant
risk, and of course, it also bears repeating that separating
children from their parents entails very significant risk of
severe psychological harm to those children, and that is an
undisputed scientific fact.
Senator Portman. Commander, you also have a Ph.D., so you
have some credibility in terms of understanding that dynamic.
Let me ask you this. If we were to do it again tomorrow,
you have said earlier in your testimony there was a systems
breakdown. Do we have the infrastructure to handle it? Yes or
no.
Mr. White. We have made improvements to our tracking. We do
not have the capacity to receive that number of children, nor
do we have the capacity to serve them, nor is it possible to
build a system that would prevent the mass traumatization of
children.
Senator Portman. OK. Mr. Howe, I think you would agree that
your detention facilities are full right now. I am talking
about your broader detention facilities, not just for
unaccompanied kids or kids who are separated. So we do not have
the capacity right now, the infrastructure. Is that accurate?
Mr. Howe. At our ports of entry, we do not have long-term
detention, but at the end of the process through ICE
Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), yes, we are full.
Senator Portman. Yep, we are full.
By the way, Commander White, has anybody consulted with you
about the idea of reinstating the zero-tolerance policy?
Mr. White. No. No, sir.
Senator Portman. You get about 2 to 300 kids a day now
coming in, unaccompanied kids? You have about 12,000 kids in
your care. You are working on this court order to try to
reunify kids, but I am talking about just unaccompanied kids
who come in.
Let me ask you just briefly about your problem you have had
in getting sponsors. We are very concerned here in this
Committee and elsewhere that you were sending kids out to
sponsors who were traffickers.
In one case in Ohio, as you know, the Marion egg farm case,
we had kids who were literally given back to the traffickers
who had brought them up from Guatemala, and they abused these
kids. There have been, by the way, seven indictments now in
that case of traffickers.
But let me ask you. How are you doing now with sponsors? I
mean, we wanted to be sure that the sponsors were
fingerprinted, that there was a way to understand who these
people were, so you were not giving kids out to traffickers
again. You put that in place. My understanding is there was
concern about ICE and others following up with those
individuals, and therefore, your sponsorship pretty much dried
up. Now you have more sponsors coming back because in the
appropriations bill, I guess we said that ICE cannot follow up
from an immigration perspective. Is that accurate?
So tell us how this is working.
Mr. White. So we continually adjust our case management
vetting methods to try and find the right balance between
safety and discharge and timeliness and discharge.
We grossly failed in 2014, those children in that egg farm
case, and that led to a revolutionary change inside the program
about our standards. Our standards now are not comparable to
what they were then.
But in 2017, I would submit that we actually pushed safety
so far that it broke discharge, and children stayed in care an
unprecedented average length of time, and our discharge rate,
which is for every 100 children in care, how many get
discharged every day, that fell to below 1 percent. This is why
the Tornillo Temporary Influx Facility was stood up. That was a
direct consequence of the combination of separation and falling
discharge rate.
By making appropriate changes, including now we only--under
our current operational directive, we only do fingerprint
background checks. We do all the other kinds of background
checks on every sponsor, but we only do fingerprint background
checks on parents if there is another red flag, another
indication of danger.
Our discharge rate is back up to 2 percent. The average
length of time of children in care continues.
But I want to be clear. We studied every case where we
denied a discharge to a parent based on the fingerprints, and
we did not find cases where we did that on fingerprint only. We
found the identified threats to those children's safety through
the numerous other methods that we used at identify
verification, relationship verification, and child safety.
We are in a different world than we were in 2014, but we
will continue to make changes as we need to, to balance safety
and timeliness and discharge.
Thank you, sir.
Senator Portman. Thank you.
Thank you, Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. As long as we are talking about discharge
and sponsors, we just got some information from HHS, and I just
want you to confirm this, Commander.
Between July 2018 and January 2019, there were a total of
23,445 unaccompanied children or children discharged to a
sponsor. 18,459 of those were released, discharged to someone
without legal status. Is that a pretty accurate figure?
Mr. White. I do not have in front of me the numbers, but
those numbers would be consistent with general patterns. The
majority of sponsors, individual sponsors, are people without
immigration status.
Chairman Johnson. I will just ask for consent to enter this
into the record.\1\
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\1\ The information referenced by Mr. White appears in the Appendix
on page 205.
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It just shows again how completely out of control this
process is right now. Senator Hassan.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HASSAN
Senator Hassan. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I want to thank
you and the Ranking Member for this hearing today. I want to
particularly thank our witnesses. Thank you for your service.
Thank you as well to all the men and women who you work with
each and every day.
Before I begin my questions, though, I do also want to
express my profound concern about the turmoil at the top most
levels of the Department of Homeland Security. The Department
is tasked with the vital mission of securing the Nation from
the many threats we face, and the type of turnover we are
seeing right now presents a direct threat to the ability to
effectively carry out that mission.
We need to see qualified leaders put forward who have the
experience needed to keep Americans safe and who will also
stand up to the President, if necessary, to uphold the rule of
law and the values that make us strong.
I want to turn now to a question to Mr. Howe and Mr.
Cherundolo because last Congress we passed--and the President
signed--a bill that would provide more technology for border
agents to use so that they could detect fentanyl at the border.
Last spring when I was at the border, I heard during my
visit that the agents still did not have all the access to that
equipment.
Former Secretary Nielsen stated that this was unacceptable
when she testified before this Committee last May.
To both of you, can one of you update the Committee on how
the International Narcotics Trafficking Emergency Response by
Detecting Incoming Contraband with Technology (INTERDICT) Act
implementation is going now? Do our agents have the technology
they need to keep them safe as they are detecting fentanyl?
Mr. Howe. Thank you for the question, Senator.
The $564 million that you speak of, the non-instructive
inspection (NII) enhancements for FY19, that is going to really
change the way we do business on the Southwest Border. It is
really going to transform our capability to scan more vehicles
and more trucks, considerably more than we are doing today. So
it is going to take some time to work with the vendors, the
purchase, and to get them into place, but it really is going to
transform where we are doing the interdiction.
We know that through our mail facilities that we are seeing
fentanyl. So the $45 million that we received also in FY19 will
allow us to enhance our NII, or non-instructive inspection,
technology in both our mail facilities and our express
consignments.
Senator Hassan. OK. So it is still a work in progress is
what you are telling me. That we do not have all the technology
that is provided by the funding yet?
Mr. Howe. We are working through it. It is going to take
some time.
Senator Hassan. Mr. Cherundolo, do you have anything to
add?
Mr. Cherundolo. Senator, the only thing I would add, that
any of that is welcome to us because many times those seizures
at the border are the start of an investigation----
Senator Hassan. Right.
Mr. Cherundolo [continuing]. For both DEA and HSI, but we
would support any advanced technology that can be given to our
colleagues on the border. But those would not specifically
apply to DEA.
Senator Hassan. OK. Thank you.
I am still concerned that we do not have as much equipment
as we need. I am very concerned about the safety of the people
on the front lines. Fentanyl, as we all know, is so dangerous
even to the touch. So I will look forward to following up with
the agency about how we can accelerate this.
Commander White, I wanted to follow up a little bit with
you on the discussion that you have just been having about the
family separation policy and the efforts that your agency has
made to reunite families and children.
You talked about the numbers in the Ms. L case, that class
of individuals represented by the ACLU, but we also know that
there are other children--and you just mentioned it in your
testimony--who before the policy was announced were apparently
separated from their families.
When you appeared before this Committee last year and just
now, you were very clear about the impact of family separation
on children. That children are traumatized and can suffer long-
term psychological damage from this kind of separation, and I
thank you for your clarity and your honesty on that issue.
But that is why I was so troubled to see your statement a
few days ago stating that it could take 2 years to identify
what could be thousands of children who were separated from
their families. Can you tell me why it will take so long and
what we can do to speed this up?
Mr. White. Yes, Senator.
So what the Senator is referring to is my declaration and
the plan which I developed and which the government has
submitted to Judge Dana Sabraw in the Southern District of
California on how we would do that identification.
I want to be clear. The 1 to 2 year timeframe is if we
reviewed all of the approximately 47,000 children who were
referred by DHS starting on July 1, 2017, and had already been
discharged to a family member or otherwise appropriately
discharged by the date of the court hearing.
The plan--and this is in the declaration--is designed to
accelerate that process. I do not know that it will, but it
represents my personal belief if the best, most effective way
to find the children, to identify which of the children that
were discharged were separated, and to do so as fast as is
possible.
But the answer to your question is because it is 47,000
children. They have all been discharged, and there is no list.
This is the fundamental reality.
The reason that it is challenging now is because there is
no list of separated children. We must identify them. So we
will use, if the judge approves it, the methods that I have
outlined, and if he does not approve it, without getting too
much in litigation, then I guess we will all be back to the
drawing board.
I believe that the plan, which is in my declaration, is the
best way to identify who the kids were. That is why.
Senator Hassan. Yes or no. Would more staff help you do it
faster?
Mr. White. I do not believe that staffing is the key
variable.
Senator Hassan. Would you please commit to submitting to me
any recommendations you could make in terms of resources or
other things Congress could provide to you that would help you
speed that process up?
Mr. White. Yes, ma'am. I will make that commitment.
As a reminder, this is before the judge currently, and I am
awaiting his direction.
Senator Hassan. I understand that.
Commander White, I just also wanted to again thank you for
being clear about the impact of what has been an inhumane and
un-American policy of family separation, and I take it from
your comments earlier in your exchange with Senator Portman
that you do not support reinstating this policy?
Mr. White. I would never support the use of family
separation, the systematic traumatization of children as a tool
of immigration policy, but it is not about what I support.
Senator, it is about what you and your colleagues support,
and it is up to you to define the conditions under which a
child may be separated. Congress has not done that, and you
need to.
Senator Hassan. Thank you. I appreciate that very much, but
I also appreciate that I believe that this Administration
should not move forward with family separation. I believe there
are other ways we can secure our borders, and I appreciate very
much the input and the feedback that you have all provided to
us today.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Cherundolo, I have a question I will submit to the
record for you about southbound trafficking of guns and cash
going over from the United States to Mexico. I would like to
follow up with you about how we can slow that kind of traffic.
Mr. Cherundolo. We would be happy to get you the
information, Senator.
Senator Hassan. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Lankford.
I was told that the vote was delayed by about 10 minutes,
so we have plenty of time for both you and Senator Romney, if
you are sticking around.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LANKFORD
Senator Lankford. We will take it from there. Thank you,
Mr. Chairman.
Commander White, the children that are being placed in
homes, the UACs specifically, you said that vast majority of
those, you are placing in homes to someone who is also not
legally present in the United States. So this is typically
teenagers, and what percentage do you expect are being placed
in homes of someone who is not legally present in the United
States?
Mr. White. I do not know a percentage. I can say only that
it is the very great majority.
Senator Lankford. So are we talking 80 percent, or are we
talking 55 percent?
Mr. White. I would assume it would be closer to 80, but I
do not have an exact percent.
Senator Lankford. OK. How can we get that number?
Mr. White. We can work, to the extent that we have it, to
provide it to you.
Senator Lankford. So you are saying the vast majority, we
expect are not legally present or we know are not legally
present?
Mr. White. I would have to get back to you on that.
Senator Lankford. So, in the background check, are we
trying to verify if this person is legally present or not or
just if they have a criminal record in the United States?
Mr. White. The background check in many cases does, indeed,
look at immigration issues, subject to what we get from
interagency partners.
So, in each individual case, we would know the immigration
status of the sponsor, but that does not mean that we have
ready aggregate reporting. So that is why I do not have all
the----
Senator Lankford. OK. Wait. Hold on for a second. Help me
understand that. So you do know for each sponsor----
Mr. White. Yes.
Senator Lankford [continuing]. If they are legally present
or not?
Mr. White. Based on the records we receive from other
agencies, yes.
Senator Lankford. So then could not we just get a
percentage, then, of those individuals, the UACs that have been
placed, what percentage have been placed in homes of someone
who is not legally present?
Chairman Johnson. Senator Lankford, really quick, in front
of you, that is what I just entered in the record. Seventy-nine
percent from whatever the dates were, were placed with a
sponsor with no legal status.
Senator Lankford. Right.
Chairman Johnson. I think the other thing to point out is
fingerprints only tell you whether they have a criminal record
in America. They do not do----
Senator Lankford. Right.
Chairman Johnson. OK.
Senator Lankford. Right. So that is what I am trying to
figure out.
So the background check is verifying whether they have a
criminal record in the United States.
Mr. White. We seek, to the extent we can get it, to also
get information on criminal history in the country of origin.
Senator Lankford. This is just an ongoing issue because we
have parents or relatives that have come to the United States
illegally across the border, have worked here for years, who
have sent a message back home, and then they are out paying
someone to be able to transition then through Mexico to be able
to come here. And then we are delivering them the last mile
back to their families, to be able to reunite families, in that
sense, of someone who is not legally present here and then also
with a child that they transited with someone who is a
nonrelative through Mexico to get here. Is that the typical
story? Mostly teenagers?
Mr. White. It is mostly teenagers.
I do not have any way of knowing how many of them----
Senator Lankford. Yes, how they got here.
Mr. White [continuing]. Were with their parent that did the
transition.
But the scenario you described would not be uncommon.
Senator Lankford. Thank you.
In our hearing last week, Trafficking Victims Protection
Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA) and Flores came up as the
two biggest issues by far.
Mr. Howe, Mr. Karisch, you were very clear to just say
Congress needs to act. Last week it was very specific. What we
need Congress to do is to address Flores and TVPRA. Is that
your opinion of what needs to be addressed?
Mr. Howe. Yes. Agree to allow families to stay together
through the Flores Agreement and then the TVPRA to allow the
repatriation to noncontiguous countries.
Senator Lankford. OK. Mr. Karisch.
Mr. Karisch. I completely agree.
Senator Lankford. How many individuals do we have coming in
family groups that are coming from Mexico?
Mr. Karisch. Very small number right now, Senator. I mean,
the vast majority, 65----
Senator Lankford. Give me a ball-park guess. Is it 2
percent, or is this----
Mr. Karisch. I would have to get those numbers for you, but
65 percent on the Central American families that we are seeing
coming across the board, with a very small percentage of
Mexicans with families.
Senator Lankford. So you are saying 65 percent? Is that
what you said?
Mr. Karisch. Yes.
Senator Lankford. Those are families from Central America?
Mr. Karisch. Central America, Triangle countries.
Senator Lankford. So the other 35 percent of the folks are
coming from where?
Mr. Karisch. Mexico, but we are also seeing them from
different parts of the world in the people that we apprehend.
Senator Lankford. You had mentioned just in your region----
Mr. Karisch. Yes.
Senator Lankford [continuing]. There were 50 different
nations represented.
Mr. Karisch. Yes, sir.
Senator Lankford. I did not get the time period on that. Is
that this fiscal year?
Mr. Karisch. Just for this fiscal year, yes, sir.
Senator Lankford. So, in the last 6 months, you have seen
50 different countries----
Mr. Karisch. Yes.
Senator Lankford [continuing]. Coming that are family
units?
Mr. Karisch. Not family units. Single adults who are trying
to evade arrest.
Senator Lankford. OK. So the question becomes very
difficult here on how to be able to manage the personnel.
Mr. Howe, you had mentioned before, when you pull people
off of the land ports of entries to be able to manage what is
happening between ports of entries, it has a real effect--4
hours of wait time for a truck to be able to get in and going
all the way through an entire day and there are some trucks
that never got processed that go in the next day, makes the
next day even harder, obviously, as well to be able to move.
What do you see as the snowball effect of having to be able to
move people to between ports of entries to what is happening at
the land ports of entries for long-term shipping and trade?
Mr. Howe. Yes. Thank you, Senator. I think you have stated
it, and that is we have pulled 545 frontline officers that
normally work cargo and passenger vehicles. What we are seeing
is what I mentioned in my opening remarks. We are seeing double
the wait times in both privately-owned vehicle (POV) and cargo,
and this is an immediate response to the crisis that we are
seeing in between the ports of entry.
Senator Lankford. Mr. Karisch, the issue of fake families
was brought up, individuals that are coming with a child that
is not their own and not directly related to. How has that
changed in the last year or two in what you have seen?
Mr. Karisch. I will tell you that back in 2014, less than 1
percent of the males that were apprehended actually came with a
child. Right now it is 50 percent.
Senator Lankford. Fifty percent?
Mr. Karisch. Fifty percent of the males that are coming
into this Country right now have a child with them. They
recognize that because of the Flores settlement is that they
are not going to be kept in custody. So, I mean, that shows you
exactly how they are exploiting the system.
Right now because of volume, it is very difficult for us to
spend a great deal of time in interviewing every single person.
Senator Lankford. So our laws are incentivizing people to
be able to travel with a child. In other words, if you get in
with a child and put a child through this trauma of all the
travel and the transit, then you get a more expedited process
when you get here?
Mr. Karisch. Yes.
Senator Lankford. The question is on a child that is not
related to the person or is very distant related to the person
they are traveling with. What percentage of people or what kind
of numbers are we talking about? Is this 2,000? 3,000? How many
have we seen this year?
Mr. Karisch. Senator, I will have to take that one back for
the record. I do not have that offhand, but I can tell you that
we have seen the fraudulent family units. We have seen the
recycled children.
Senator Lankford. So when you say recycled children, that
is a child that has come, somehow they were sent back over, and
they are showing up again?
Mr. Karisch. Yes. We have also seen--I talked about it
earlier in the fact that the criminal organizations are making
significant profits out of the smuggling.
People that are released with documents from our
facilities, meaning that they can travel anywhere in the
country, have been found in stash houses in Houston because
they still have not paid off the criminal organization. So that
shows you just how much control the smuggling organizations
have.
In RGV, there are four specific areas where all family
units are routed to. Every other zone in the sector is reserved
for narcotics, so very controlled, very organized, very
structured.
Senator Lankford. Mr. Chairman, this is an area that if we
do not fix the law, we are continuing to look away from human
smuggling, and that is something we should not look away from
and should not ignore. What I keep hearing over and over again
from every panel is they need Congress to act on these areas,
or this never gets better.
Chairman Johnson. What I said in the opening statement,
this is a problem here and now, and we need to act now.
I thought it was interesting. In last week's hearing, the
witnesses said that the border is completely controlled on the
southern side by the drug cartels. Nobody is moving through
there without paying the fee, paying the ransom basically. So
we need to recognize this, and we need to act. Senator Romney.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROMNEY
Senator Romney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Ranking Member, as well for holding this
hearing.
I want to say thank you to the individuals that you serve
with. Your service and their service is a great tribute to our
Nation and is critical to our national security and to our
commitment to principles of human dignity.
I must admit that I am sure, like many people, deeply
troubled about the vacancies at the Department of Homeland
Security and the transition process that has been carried out
with regard to those vacancies. I think it is dangerous,
dangerous given what is happening at the border, dangerous
given the broad responsibility that the Department of Homeland
Security has for protecting our Nation. It is seriously
troubling.
Let me turn with that, with something specifically that
relates to your testimony. If there were no fence, if there
were no Border Patrol agents, if there were no ICE, and we just
said, ``Hey, anybody that wants to come to this country, come
on in,'' my expectation is you would have tens of millions, if
not hundreds of millions or more people who would say, ``I
would rather live in the United States of America than
somewhere else'' and for many reasons. We are certainly not
suggesting that, but I do believe that we need to put in place
processes and measures legislatively, as the Chairman has
indicated, but perhaps other ways as well to make sure that we
do secure our border and that we have systems that do not
attract people here in such huge numbers.
We have legislative fixes that need to come both short term
and long term, and like Senator Portman who described the
importance of E-Verify, I would underscore at least my personal
view that mandatory E-Verify for hiring in this country is
essential if we are going to turn off the magnet that draws
people into the Country illegally.
But the challenges that you have each described today have
suggested to me that we do need to have a legislative fix, and
I am going to ask you not for data about something with which
you have personally familiar, but instead with regards to
legislation. What should we do? If you had the opportunity to
counsel the entire Congress as to what action we should take to
make sure that our border is more secure, that our children
that are being separated are given better care, that we resolve
this extraordinary challenge that we face? What legislative
action do you think is action that we should be taking?
I will let you each, whichever order you would like to go
in, respond to that question. I may have to leave before all
your answers or given because of a vote that is under way that
will be over in just a few minutes, but, please, why do not we
begin with you, Mr. Karisch.
Mr. Karisch. So I think it is addressing Flores. It is
addressing TVPRA.
But I will also say this. We should have a system in place
that for somebody who has a credible fear or asylum, that they
walk into an embassy in those Triangle countries. Why not do
your claim there? We get them out of this dangerous journey,
whether it is come into the borders in Arizona or South Texas.
It is to do away with this problem because, unfortunately,
right now, as I previously mentioned, criminal organizations
are the only ones who are benefiting from what is happening.
They are making enormous amounts of money.
So we have to establish a process where we are continuing
to admit those people that truly have a fear but yet eliminate
a lot of the fraud that is going into some of the claims at
this time.
Senator Romney. Thank you.
Mr. Howe. Yes. Adjusting Flores so the families can be held
together and the TVPRA in order to allow return directly to
noncontiguous countries.
Senator Romney. Thank you.
Mr. Tubbs. I would absolutely support the same as far as
the Flores and the TVPRA. Immigration as a whole, from workers'
permits all the way up to obtaining U.S. citizenship, is
something the U.S. Government needs to look at, just because of
the history of our immigration laws. But I think besides the
legislative fix, we also absolutely need to have a secure
border. I mean, there is no reason--anything that crosses the
border between ports of entry is illegal, and we as a U.S.
Government should be able to control the border between the
ports of entry.
We are always going to facilitate the flow of commerce at
the port. We understand that, but between the ports of entry,
we should be able to control that, period.
Senator Romney. Yes. Thank you. Commander.
Mr. White. First, you should in statute define the
conditions under which it is permissible to remove a child from
a parent, and I would submit to you that that should only be
for the safety of the child or if the parent faces criminal
charges other than misdemeanor 1325 entry.
Second, there needs to be a requirement that there be a
process and documentation when children are separated from a
parent, and parents need to have a right to appeal that.
Third, ORR needs the legal authority along with DHS, equal
to DHS, to determine if a child is unaccompanied, so that if a
child is referred to us who is truly accompanied and has simply
been separated from a parent not for cause, we can refuse that
referral.
Senator Romney. Thank you.
Mr. Cherundolo. Senator, on top of what my partners from
DHS have already highlighted, I would say the one single piece
of legislation that DEA would say would be very important to us
is the class-wide scheduling of fentanyl.
We emergency-scheduled that fentanyl last year, and it
expires in 2020, which could have a significant impact on not
only DEA and our law enforcement partners in prosecuting those
analogs, where the chemical makeup of the fentanyl has changed
slightly, but it will also affect the Department of Justice
prosecuting of those cases and motions going forward if the
fentanyl were to come out of a scheduling, the emergency
scheduling in 2020.
Senator Romney. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I am going to go vote.
Chairman Johnson. Senator, before you go, I do want to
point out that if you claim asylum, if you come to this country
legally and you claim asylum, we give you a work permit after 6
months; is that correct? So I mean, E-Verify is, I guess, well
and good, but when we are actually granting a work permit for
somebody who comes into this country legally after 6 months, it
is another one of those rewards that we provide, which I think
we ought to seriously consider. Senator Harris.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HARRIS
Senator Harris. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Today's hearing takes on new significance, obviously, in
the wake of Secretary Nielsen's resignation. As I said in June
2018, I believe the government should be in the business of
keeping families together and not tearing them apart.
The outgoing Secretary's willingness to implement the
Administration's cruel and most counterproductive immigration
policies and her willingness to frankly not be honest with
Congress when questioned about these policies led me to call
back in June 2018 for her resignation.
The government should have a commitment to truth and
accountability. Under the Secretary's tenure, DHS had a track
record of neither. However, she was reportedly forced out
because she resisted the White House's desire to embrace even
more extreme tactics from defying a court order and reinstating
the cruel family separation policy to closing the Southern
Border, a political stunt that would cause dire economic
consequences to our country.
There are reports that even more turnover in DHS's
leadership is yet to come. I believe a well-functioning
Department of Homeland Security is vital to the safety and
security of our Nation. At moments like this, Congress must
exercise its duty to provide a check on the Executive Branch
through oversight, through the power of the purse, and through
our responsibility to provide advice and consent.
I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join
together in helping to restore some of the much needed
stability to the Department of Homeland Security and to respect
and honor the work of the men and women who work there.
Commander White, I have some questions for you.
Mr. White. Yes, ma'am.
Senator Harris. On March 6, CBP Commissioner Kevin
McAleenan, now the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security,
testified before the Judiciary Committee. I questioned him
about reports that immigrant children in the custody of HHS and
HHS's Office of Refugee Resettlement endured sexual harassment
and assault. ORR received 4,556 allegations between October
2014 and July 2018, nearly 200 of which included very serious
allegations such as staff watching children shower, fondling
and kissing them and rape.
According to Justice Department data, sexual abuse
allegations in shelters skyrocketed at the peak of the family
separation crisis last spring and summer.
The Acting Secretary said that he was not aware of the
allegations and that his colleagues at HHS and ORR are very
committed to the children in their care, but when I asked him
whether after learning of these allegations he believed he had
a duty to voice concern about the safety of the children before
transferring them to HHS's custody, he said that doing so was
``the duty of the management and leadership of Health and Human
Service.''
Commander White, you are obviously here today representing
the management and leadership of HHS. Do you agree with him,
and what, if any, concern do you have about the findings? What
are you prepared to do about it?
Mr. White. So three things. First of all, thank you,
Senator. I do want to talk--in fact, we probably should talk
much longer than this forum will allow--about the protection of
children in our care.
Let me start with one thing and be absolutely clear. If
even one child is abused in ORR care, we failed that child.
Senator Harris. Yes.
Mr. White. We failed that child. This is also true of every
child welfare system in the United States and every foster care
system in every State. Every time a child in care is abused,
the system failed that child.
I do not excuse it. I do not permit it. Every time it
happens, it is a call to do more.
Now, the statistics that have been reported do require
clarification because we have a strict policy of reporting
events, and many of these things that are reported as sexual
abuse under our Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA)
requirements are actually sexually inappropriate conduct by
minors. This could include if a minor makes a sexual gesture.
That is reportable. If a minor uses a sexually charged insult
for another minor, that is reportable.
There are, however, also cases at the upper end of the
spectrum that include allegations of abuse by minors of each
other and in some cases by grantee staff, never Federal staff.
Senator Harris. Sir, before you continue, are you
describing theoretically what happens in the Department? Are
you referring specifically to the 4,556 allegations that
occurred between October 2014 and July 2018? I really would be
interested and only am interested in the nature of the
allegations that occurred during that period of time.
Mr. White. Yes, Senator. I am talking about the actual
reports, and many of these PREA reports are not in fact
allegations of sexual abuse. They are allegations of sexually
inappropriate behavior.
We have a universal reporting standard for our programs.
They must report in writing within 4 hours of every reportable
event. These do include some cases which resulted in criminal
prosecution because we are required in every case to notify
State, local, and Federal law enforcement and licensure
authorities for full investigation.
Senator Harris. Can you tell me, sir, how many of the
allegations involved abuse by HHS employees or other staff or
adults working in these facilities whomever employed them? For
example, I know you have contractors and private entities that
are also handling or working with these children.
Mr. White. Yes. There are zero allegations against HHS
staff. If you give me just a moment----
Senator Harris. How many allegations are there against
adults?
Mr. White. There are allegations reported to ORR of staff
on minors in fiscal 2018, 49 reports and 6 reports of other
adults who were not staff--it could be someone who somehow got
in the building or something like that--non-staff adult on
minors for a total of 54 allegations in fiscal 2018.
These are among the cases that would have been reported to
the FBI, OIG----
Senator Harris. So this is 103 in 1 year. How about for the
total of those 4 years? How many adults on children allegations
are there?
Mr. White. No, that is, I believe, 55 in 1 year.
Senator Harris. You said 49 plus 54.
Mr. White. No. Fifty-four total, 49 and 6, 54 total.
Senator Harris. OK.
Mr. White. And 53 in fiscal 2017 of allegations of an adult
reported to DOJ. These are cases we reported to DOJ.
Senator Harris. How many in 2016?
Mr. White. In 2016 reported to DOJ, there were 62
allegations of an adult sexual abuse of a minor.
Senator Harris. OK. My time is running out. I would like
you to report to this Committee how many total allegations were
there between that 4-year period against adults, whomever
employed them, regardless of whether the case was referred to
DOJ or not.
I would also ask you right now to tell us whether you
informed the Department of Homeland Security that these
incidents were taking place in your facilities before or at any
time during the course of this family separation policy and
obviously because I am curious to know whether the Department
of Homeland Security was on notice that these things were
happening in your facilities before they transferred the
children to your care.
Mr. White. So we will be providing a fully detailed
accounting that will be forthcoming on our PREA reporting.
Second, I do not know whether our PREA reporting was
conveyed to leadership at DHS. As a reminder, our programs are
still safer than State foster care systems.
Senator Harris. Sir, I do not think that we want to compare
what you are doing to State foster care systems which are
notoriously horrendous conditions for many children.
Mr. White. Precisely what I am saying and I say it again is
that every time something happens to a child, we have failed
that child.
Senator Harris. I agree with you.
Mr. White. But the traumatization of children by separation
does not need any child to have been harmed criminally by an
adult. That act of the government entails harm to a child. So
these are two important problems, but they are separate
problems.
Senator Harris. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Harris, you raised the issue of
rumors of reinstitution of the zero-tolerance policy. I am not
aware of that as a policy. I am aware of the rumors in the
press.
Let me just state for the record, I would be completely
opposed to that. My guess, that is a majority, if not a
unanimous view of the Members of this Committee.
Let me just cite you some reasons. Commander White, I think
you would say that----
Senator Harris. I referred to a family separation policy.
Chairman Johnson. Yes, family, zero tolerance, whatever you
want to call it, results in family separation.
I think you had stated that during April, May, and June
when that zero-tolerance policy was in effect, HHS was pretty
well overwhelmed by this. Would you say that is true?
Mr. White. That is correct. Both our total capacity and
specifically our capacity to serve very young children, since
separation disproportionately results in our getting babies,
toddlers, and young children.
Chairman Johnson. So, again, I am hoping members of the
Administration, if they are actually considering this or
listening to that testimony--and as Senator Peters pointed out,
I like numbers. So here are the numbers. During April, May, or
June, on average, we apprehended about 9,500 individuals as a
family unit, about 9,500.
The last 3 months, which again shows the growing crisis at
our border, there has been 29,000.
So if HHS and CBP were overwhelmed back in April, May, or
June 2018 with 9,500 per month, this is three times worse, and
my guess is this is going to continue to increase in severity.
Again, this is a crisis in the here and now. We need
legislation, and I would like this committee to lead in that
effort. Certainly, as Chairman, I will be leading and hopefully
working with every member of the committee to pass the
legislation that actually fixes this problem in the here and
now. Senator Carper.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. Gentlemen, welcome. Thank you very much for
being here, for your work.
My colleagues have heard me say this before, so bear with
me, but we all have sources that provide us with guidance in
our lives and values that we hold and the way we try to behave
and act. There is, I believe, a bipartisan Bible study that
meets in the U.S. Senate every Thursday, about six or seven of
us who need the most help. We meet with the Chaplain of the
Senate who is a retired Navy admiral. He was chief of chaplains
for the Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC).
Almost every Thursday when we meet, he reminds us of a
passage in the Book of Matthew that deals with the least of
these. ``And when I was hungry, when I was thirsty, when I was
naked, when I was a stranger in your land, did you welcome
me?'' He reminds us of the moral obligation that we have to the
least of these, including the stranger in our land.
He also reminds us of the greatest commandment of all, and
that is the golden rule, treat other people the way we want to
be treated, which ironically is in every major religion on the
planet, every one in one form of the other.
So when I approach a dilemma, a challenge like we have on
our border, I try to keep those words in mind going forward.
I also am somebody who focuses like a laser on root causes,
not on symptoms or problems, but what are the root causes, and
as you know, the root causes for a lot of folks coming into our
country from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador are lack of
economic opportunity and hope and Northern Triangle, prevalence
of violence and crime in those three countries and also
corruption. Those are the three drivers.
The reason why we created the Alliance for Prosperity, with
those three buckets--lack of economic opportunity and hope,
crime and violence, and corruption--is because that is what we
gathered from people coming to us saying, ``This is why I am
leaving. This is why I do not want to stay in my country.''
Ironically, I was just down in a congressional delegation
(CODEL) about 6 weeks ago to see how we are doing with the
Alliance for Prosperity, and I was actually pretty encouraged
by the work that is being done. I think it is important that we
not walk away from it.
The President I think is intent on ending funding for those
programs, which would be a huge mistake.
I have been sitting up here writing some notes to myself
about how to reduce the likelihood that people will feel
compelled to leave their countries and to come to ours. For me,
a big answer is fully execute and execute well the Alliance for
Prosperity, modeled after Plan Colombia, which has worked, and
I like to say find out what works. Do more of that.
The second question I have for people who do leave--and we
have been messaging countries on those--leaders in those
countries have been messaging to their people about the horrors
of transiting Mexico and trying to get into this Country and
saying it is not going to work well and kind of discouraging
people from coming. That is not working so well because they
are coming in ever larger numbers, as you know.
So I am trying to figure out what is the most humane way to
deal with the families that make it to our borders, and is
there a way that we can actually keep the families together,
expedite the amount of time, reduce the amount of time that
they have to wait to make an initial judgment as to whether or
not someone who is seeking asylum, asking for asylum, really is
in that kind of danger back in their native land? There is a
way to do that, and while we are doing that, quickly, provide
for a safe place for these folks, for these families to stay.
So let me just start with that. Is that something that we
can do, to make that initial decision? Say a hundred families
are coming across. Making a decision, I do not think we could
do it like that. Maybe we could, but just to say is there
really a case for asylum? Are we really convinced maybe upon
initial screening that somebody is there really truly because
they need asylum or not? If they really and truly need to, they
are brought in for a more in-depth screening, and their
families are taken care of. We do not separate the kids from
the families.
Maybe that is something we are doing. I am not aware of it,
although I think there is the initial screening, but give me
some response to that, Greg.
Mr. Cherundolo. Senator, since Title 21 is our sole focus
on the enforcement of the drug laws, that probably would not be
best for me to answer that.
Senator Carper. Yep. Let me go to Commander White.
I used to be a commander in the Navy.
Mr. White. So I will have to defer to DHS colleagues on
family separations.
I can tell you that over the years, the reasons that
unaccompanied children give when they are in our care for why
did you come to the country as astonishingly the same over
time, and the top three reasons always are because they feared
violence in home country, because they lacked economic and
educational opportunities in home country, and because they had
parents or their family here in the United States they wanted
to be reunified with. This seems to be a standard.
But as regards family units, that is something the DHS
colleagues would need to speak to.
Senator Carper. Mr. Tubbs, any thoughts?
Mr. Tubbs. Absolutely. I agree with your statement that we
absolutely have to work with our foreign counterparts to work
at the root causes of why people are leaving the country.
I can also say that in my 24 years of working for Homeland
Security and its previous agencies that 9 of those years, I
spent foreign-stationed in the Dominican Republic and Mexico.
We do need to work at the root cause. We do need to work with
our foreign counterparts, but we control a very small portion
of that. Despite the help that we give them, we do control
everything here in the United States.
While we work with our counterparts, I think we also need
to focus very close on the laws that we have here and the
capabilities that we have to secure our border and we as HSI to
conduct our criminal investigations to dismantle those
organizations.
Senator Carper. All right. Mr. Howe.
Mr. Howe. Thank you, Senator.
Agree we should work to have families stay together. Of
course, the Flores Agreement, the longest being held in the 20
days, so adjusting the Flores Agreement allowing those family
units to stay together through the entire process is the way to
go.
Senator Carper. The entire process, I think the backlog is
like measured not in days, weeks, months, but actually maybe
even years, and that gets to be, as you know, pretty expensive
and frankly not very humane. but thank you. Mr. Karisch.
Mr. Karisch. Yes. But I will also add, Senator Carper, that
when you detain, you are going to expedite a hearing.
Ultimately, if the person is granted relief, they are
released into the country. If they are not, they are
immediately repatriated because at the end of the day, you do
need a consequence. Otherwise, you are just going to see that
flow increase.
During my oral testimony, I read off the claim from the
Central American who communicated back to his associated as
``This is the quickest way. Bring children. You are not going
to be detained.'' So we have to develop a process that we have
done in the past.
The Brazilians that were here in the 1990s, 2000s, the way
we stopped the problem is detaining families together. You had
your opportunity. You have to go before an asylum officer or
immigration judge. If you were granted relief, you stayed. If
you were not, you were immediately repatriated.
We can always improve efficiencies in the government. This
is an area for us to do it, but we also need to have that
consequence.
Senator Carper. Thank you.
I talked with the Chairman and the Ranking Member in the
last couple of days about the idea of people within these three
countries, the Northern Triangle, with asylum claims of being
able to bring those asylum claims not in the United States at
our border, not in Mexico, but within those three countries.
I am going to ask you to respond for the record as to
whether or not you think that Secretary Nielsen, has been an
advocate of doing that, as you probably know. But I am going to
ask you to respond for the record as to whether or not that is
an idea that makes sense. Thanks.
Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Carper. Senator
Sinema.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SINEMA
Senator Sinema. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
During this critical situation on our border, it is
important to hear directly from the Federal agencies who
protect Arizona's border and our family and community. So I
appreciate all of the witnesses for coming and speaking with us
today.
As I mentioned in our hearing last week, Arizona faces
significant security, economic, and humanitarian challenges
with these recent migration trends. Congress and the
Administration must focus on ideas and initiatives to help
improve the situation, and I am glad that the President heeded
the calls from me, from border experts, and many other Members
of Congress to not close the Southwest Border.
But last week, we heard from outside experts about their
ideas to secure our ports, improve coordination with local non-
governmental organizations (NGOs), deploy critical technology
between our ports, and improve workforce morale, and I look
forward to hearing more about a frontline perspective on those
ideas today.
As always, I am committed to working in a bipartisan way to
finding solutions that keep families and communities safe in
Arizona and to treat migrants humanely and fairly.
So my first question today is from Mr. Howe. I do not agree
with CBP's decision to transfer officers away from Arizona
ports of entry. Our ports have struggled with high vacancy
rates in recent years, and that has led to the assignment of
temporary duty officers. I understand that CBP faces
significant strain on its personnel, but our perspective is
that this decision hurts trade. We worry about it impacting
security.
So I want to know what analysis did CBP conduct regarding
removing these temporarily assigned officers from the ports of
Arizona. Can you share that analysis with my office?
And given that these ports were already understaffed, how
does this decision not negatively impact security or flow of
trade?
Mr. Howe. Thank you for the question.
The initial response that we provided, our Border Patrol
colleagues, was to support them in this migration crisis. They
were overwhelmed, are overwhelmed. So the decision was made to
provide them the officers that they could use to put their
agents back in their law enforcement activity.
So 545 officers from the frontline, a decision was made to
address this crisis. We knew there would be impact. When
Commissioner McAleenan had his press conference in El Paso, he
mentioned that, so 545 frontline officers, 300 from Laredo, 194
from El Paso, and then 51 from San Diego.
As you pointed out, we did not pull any from the Tucson
field office, but the 75 temporary duty travel (TDYs) that we
had identified, we did not send them for assistance.
So we know there is going to be impact. We see that every
day. We see the backups in both the personal vehicles and the
cargo, but this is a crisis that we are addressing with
assistance of Border Patrol.
Senator Sinema. Last week, we heard about the need for
additional surveillance and detection capacity between our
ports of entry. We know that the largest drug busts and
interdiction occur at our ports of entry, but there is still
significant trafficking for narcotics and other threats between
our ports of entry.
So my question for Mr. Karisch, what type of sensors do you
think are most useful for agents in the general patrol duties?
Do we need more cameras, more radars? Do we need more unarmed
aircraft systems (UAS) or something that I have not mentioned
yet?
Mr. Karisch. All technology has helped. CBP has made a
tremendous investment in technology over the last few years,
but we also need to have relocatable technology because traffic
patterns will shift from one area to another.
We saw it in Arizona where I was previously assigned. It is
having technology that is going to help us with greater
situational awareness.
Right now in South Texas, what I see the problem as is we
do not have any technology that is foliage penetrating. So
people get into the brush areas. Whether it is the creosote
cane, whether it is the sugarcane, whether it is the other
brush that is there, it makes it hard to detect. So it is a
combination of different systems that we can actually apply on
to the border is to act as that force multiplier for us.
But, ultimately, no fence, no piece of technology is going
to make an arrest or an interdiction. That is going to be done
by men and women who are out there. So it is important also as
to be able to bring on additional personnel who can actually
help us with that.
Senator Sinema. My next question is also for you, but I
would like to hear the thoughts of other witnesses if they have
ideas as well.
Last week when we were hearing from experts, they were
talking about the importance of local offices forging close
connections with the NGO's and local community leaders. As you
know, we are facing a struggle in Arizona with the release of
migrants and need to improve communication with our local
NGO's.
So my question is, in your experience, what do you find
works best to help build those close relationships at the local
level, and are there any tips that we could utilize when I am
able to go back to my State in the next 2 weeks to try and
figure out a better solution for the crisis we are facing?
Mr. Karisch. So I work closely with a lot of the NGO's out
there in Arizona at the time, Juanita Molina and a number of
other people who I had the privilege of working with, but also
even south of the border. During the time when they were
speaking about a caravan coming up either to Arizona or to
California at the time, it was sitting down with NGO's across
the borders to figuring out exactly how many shelters they
could open up, how they could help the ports of entry and
organizing the number of people that actually showed up at the
bridges. So that engagement does happen.
We have very strong programs in the Border Patrol, border
community liaison agents who get out there and speak to NGO's.
We work with them very closely in South Texas. Sister Norma,
right now she is helping us with the overflow and the people
that we are releasing from Border Patrol custody to the respite
centers. So it is working very closely with them to try to
figure out how they can help the Federal Government but also
expanding that into other areas.
Senator Sinema. I would like to follow up with you after
this hearing. I will be back home in my State over the next 2
weeks during the spring period and intend to host a meeting to
bring NGO's together with our local officers to help provide
more close communication.
As you know, we have had recent unexpected releases into
the community that have been troublesome in Phoenix, Yuma, and
in Tucson.
If there are others on the panel who have thoughts on this
question in particular, I would appreciate it.
Mr. Tubbs. I would like to provide a response to your
previous question, if I could.
Senator Sinema. Yes, that would be great.
Mr. Tubbs. I am stationed on the border. I am in Laredo,
Texas. Specifically, if you look at what DHS does on the
border, it is really a whole-of-DHS effort, and when we look at
the transnational criminal organizations that are responsible
for bringing aliens and narcotics, weapons across our border,
we have our uniform presence that deter, that detect, that do
the seizures. I know that you asked what equipment that they
might need and what personnel, but what I would ask is Homeland
Security Investigations because we do a great job in deterring
and detecting.
But, ultimately, if we want to dismantle those
transnational organizations and criminally prosecute them,
criminally detain them, criminally forfeit their illicit
proceeds, that whenever you look at providing personnel and
equipment to our uniform partners that we work with every day,
that you also look at Homeland Security Investigations because
ultimately we need to dismantle those organizations and have
them pay the ultimate price of prosecution and detention.
Senator Sinema. I appreciate that point. Thank you.
My time has expired. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Rosen.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROSEN
Senator Rosen. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and
thank you all for being here today.
This weekend, while I was visiting my home State of Nevada,
President Trump called the U.S. asylum process a ``scam.'' With
respect to immigrants, including asylum seekers, the President
said, ``We cannot take you anymore. Our country is full. So
turn around.'' Our country is full? Turn around? As a
granddaughter of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, I
cannot help but think about the time in the middle of the 20th
Century when the United States used security concerns as an
excuse to turn away thousands of refugees fleeing Europe or
about the MS St. Louis ocean liner in 1939 was made to turn
around upon reaching American shores.
I cannot help to think about the many families today from
El Salvador, Honduras, and elsewhere waiting in squalor outside
our ports of entry because they are fleeing unimaginable
violence and can find safety and freedom coming here to the
United States.
Yesterday Cable News Network (CNN) reported that the
President told agency personnel to close the ports of entry at
the Southern Border. The President told border agents in
Calexico, California, not to allow any migrants into the
country.
In my home State of Nevada, the University of Nevada, Las
Vegas (UNLV) Immigration Clinic has clients from Central
America who are teenage girls, teenage girls recruited as gang
girlfriends, as young as 12 and 13, meaning they face gang
rape, possible death on a regular basis.
Under U.S. law, our women and girls like this who are
fleeing violence, they are entitled to protection and to at
least apply for asylum. In fact, I know this to be true. A
person who can prove she would be persecuted because of race,
religion, nationality, political opinion, or particular social
group is entitled to asylum under U.S. law.
I assume, gentlemen, that you are aware that just
yesterday, a judge in California issued an order blocking the
Trump administration from requiring asylum seekers to remain in
Mexico.
So, Mr. Karisch and Mr. Howe, if the President were to
instruct you and your agents to deny entry to people seeking
asylum at the border, in your opinion do you think that
violates United States law?
Mr. Karisch. I will start, Senator Rosen, by saying this.
If they cross between the ports of entry, they are violating
U.S. immigration law, so they are going to be placed on arrest,
but that still will not stop them from making an asylum or
credible fear claim. But effecting an entry into the country
between the ports of entry, they are in violation of the law,
and they will be arrested.
Senator Rosen. Mr. Howe.
Mr. Howe. If they enter the United States across the
boundary line at the port of entry and they claim asylum, we
would be bound to hear that asylum claim.
Senator Rosen. So my follow up question is, Would you
follow instructions like those from the President even knowing,
Mr. Howe, that they are going to violate U.S. law?
Mr. Howe. We know what the law is, and our attorneys are
here to advise us. They work for Customs and Border Protection,
DHS, so I will follow the guidance that we receive from our
attorneys.
Senator Rosen. So knowing that we have this challenge, I
guess I will pose this in another way. Can you describe to me
the concerns you have with implementing this Administration's
current policies?
Mr. Karisch. Ma'am, we have taken an oath of office to
defend this country. Our officers every day go out there and
perform a job. It does not stop them from addressing the
asylum, the credible fear, the different things that they have.
We are parents. We are grandparents. Our officers do this,
our jobs, as humanely as we possibly can, but understanding is
that we do have laws in this country. People have to abide by
those laws. Otherwise, we stop being a sovereign country.
We still feel the heartfelt issues of everyone that we
encounter, but we still have to put them through the process.
It will not stop them if they do have, in fact, a credible
fear. That they will have an opportunity----
Senator Rosen. So you are saying if someone presents
themself for asylum, you will take them in, regardless of what
the President has instructed you to do?
Mr. Karisch. If they enter the United States between the
ports of entry, they will be apprehended. That will not stop
them from making an asylum claim.
Senator Rosen. Thank you.
I would like to follow up a little bit. Last year I toured
a tent city in Tornillo, Texas, of course, near El Paso, where
unaccompanied children and separated children were held. I saw
teenage children separated by gender, slept in barrack-like
conditions, access to legal services limited, and phone calls
to relatives or possible contacts were limited and monitored.
So, Mr. Howe, I guess I want to ask you again. Do you have
knowledge about the Tornillo facility that it was owned or
managed by a for-profit company?
Mr. Howe. I think I will defer to the Commander.
Senator Rosen. Commander.
Mr. White. Yes, ma'am. So the Tornillo Temporary Influx
Facility was operated by HHS, by the Office of Refugee
Resettlement. Temporary Influx Facilities, that one was
operated by a nonprofit grantee who also performed services for
us operating State-licensed permanent shelters around the
country.
Temporary Influx shelters, such as the one that is open now
in Homestead, are not our first choice. Our first choice is to
have State-licensed permanent shelter capacity. The
fluctuations that we see----
Senator Rosen. You are saying they are for-profit
institutions? Are they for-profit institutions that we are
leasing these services out to?
Mr. White. The Tornillo site was operated by a not-for-
profit grantee.
Senator Rosen. In your estimation or according to any
knowledge that you have currently, are some of our detainees
being held in for-profit institutions?
Mr. White. The Homestead facility, the children who are
sheltered at Homestead, we are getting staffing services there
by a Federal contract, and the entity that won in the
contracting process is a for-profit.
Senator Rosen. Thank you.
I yield back.
Chairman Johnson. Thanks, Senator Rosen.
Before I start my questions, certainly in my quest, and I
think in this Committee's quest, to develop the information
required to solve this problem without the reality, one of the
questions I have had is, What is asylum law? What is a valid
asylum claim?
What I would like to do is quickly read from--one of the
better explanations for this comes from Congressional Research
Service (CRS), a paper written in January of this year, and let
me just read it, and I will enter it into the record:\1\ To
qualify for asylum, an applicant has the burden of proving past
persecution or a well-founded fear of future persecution on
account of race, religion, nationality, member in a particular
social group, or a political opinion. The applicant must show
that one of these protected grounds ``was or will be at least
one central reason for persecuting the applicant.'' In the
absence of past persecution, an applicant can show a well-
founded fear by presenting evidence of a reasonable possibility
or future persecution.
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\1\ The paper referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the Appendix
on page 197.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is a key point: The applicant must also show
persecution by the government or groups that the government is
unable or unwilling to control, and for purposes of showing a
well-founded fear, that applicant could not reasonably relocate
within his country to avoid persecution.
Again, we will delve more into this, but I wanted to get
that on the record.
I am very sympathetic with a lot of people talking about
setting up asylum claims in the home country. I just find a
disconnect. First of all, from my knowledge, asylum can only be
claimed once you are in the asylum country, the safe haven. So
if you are asking for protection in your home country, that is
refugee status, and we have different laws and controls over a
number of refugees. There are no controls in terms of the
people we let in in terms of asylum.
Also, if you can claim safely asylum in your country and
stay there, you are basically not qualifying for asylum because
your--the government can protect you enough to have you claim
asylum.
So I am just trying to figure out the disconnect, what is
going to work, what is not going to work, but I think it is
extremely important that we understand exactly what these
asylum standards are. I would argue this is probably the main
reason why 85 percent of the claims are denied.
Commander White, you talked about in your testimony three
reasons. Feeling violence. There you go. There is a valid
asylum claim, but economic opportunity is not. Family
unification is not. As sympathetic as we all are for those
individuals, it is not a valid asylum claim, and we have a
process now that whether it is valid or not, we let you in the
country, and those individuals are staying, which is just
fueling the crisis. It gives you the numbers. We talked about
the 9,500 up to 29,000 over the 2018 period versus the last 3
months.
Again, this is a complex problem. The solution for the
here-and-now problem is we have to change these laws. We have
to reflect the asylum.
Again, I agree with Dr. Selee from last week, where if we
can rapidly adjudicate and make a determination is this a valid
asylum claim or not and then humanely return people, just like
we did with Texas Hold 'Em with Brazilians, that will
accomplish our short-term goal of reducing that flow and
hopefully converting this into a legal process.
I come from a position, certainly in Wisconsin, there is
not one manufacturer that can find enough workers. From my
standpoint, we need more legal immigration tied to work.
So, again, I just appreciate--and I will say again on the
record--the strong attendance of Members of this Committee, the
excellent questions. I think we are getting to the reality of
the situation. I think we are hopefully creating a desire to do
something about this, certainly a recognition that the
Administration cannot do it on their own. They are simply not
capable--what executive actions they take are overruled by the
court.
So this is on our lap. The ball is in our court. We have to
fix this, and I am really looking forward to dealing with all
the Members of this Committee to start solving the problem.
I would like to talk about the well-oiled machine because I
think it is really important that we recognize this is not just
a group of individuals deciding to wake up one morning and they
make their way into--this is a very organized effort.
So, Mr. Karisch, can you talk a little bit about your
knowledge of that? I will go to Mr. Tubbs because I think you
have probably done a lot of investigation on this. Really talk
about how well organized this is.
You asked one of the pieces of information. I think it was
the reporter had done an estimation, thinking it was probably
about $440 million worth of profits. That is just a back-of-
the-envelope calculation, the fee times the number of people
coming in here. And the drug cartels--or I guess it is a split-
off business now. Human traffickers kind of flowed from the
same process and realizing this is a higher profit in many
cases and a lower risk, form of trafficking than even drugs.
But can you just talk about the well-organized effort here?
Mr. Karisch. So very well organized, reaching back into
places like Central America, and of course, Mr. Tubbs will be
able to talk with a lot more certainty.
But from the brush guides to the people who move
individuals up to the border area, from the criminal
organizations that are making the tax--we call it ``el piso''-
--down on the Southwest Border, long gone are the days where
you can simply decide that I am going to cross in Juarez and
into El Paso.
Now you are told where to cross. You are charged money, and
refusal to pay money has consequences, so very orchestrated. I
would say that the smuggling of people has even become more
lucrative because it is an endless commodity. On the drug side,
if it sees it is going to be destroyed, you have to go produce
more. They have the abilities to continuously bring more
people, also recruiting younger smugglers, juveniles, because
they know that the Federal Government cannot prosecute them, so
a lot of money going into this.
But the cartels have the ability to shut down bridges, to
re-divert caravans. That is the type of control that they have
on the south end of the border at this time.
Chairman Johnson. So you agree with the testimony last week
that the Southern Border is completely controlled--or the
Southwest Border is completely controlled on the south side of
the border, on the Mexican side, basically completely
controlled----
Mr. Karisch. Correct.
Chairman Johnson [continuing]. By the drug cartels.
Mr. Cherundolo, you talked about the enormous profits in
fentanyl. I think you said something like $5,000 is worth $1.5
million worth of profit. That kind of profit motive, if there
is a demand, there is going to be a supply for it, correct?
Mr. Cherundolo. That is correct, Senator.
Chairman Johnson. But cannot we almost say the exact same
thing of human trafficker as well, where we have a system that
is incentivizing and rewarding, that can be so easily exploited
by a really well-organized effort, people that understand our
laws, know exactly how they are working, setting up a
transportation system, using buses, other transportation? As
long as this remains profitable, it is going to continue and
probably grow, right? I mean, is not every business venture's
goal to grow and become more profitable?
Mr. Tubbs. Absolutely. Again, as we talked before, these
human smuggling organizations are very organized. You have
recruiters in the home country. You have transporters in the
transit countries. You have the stash houses along the way, the
individuals who get them across the border, plus their methods
of money remittances, laundering their proceeds as well. And
human smuggling has become almost or coming to the point as
profitable as narcotic smuggling.
We were specifically talking about human smuggling from
Central America, but I can tell you specifically in Laredo,
Texas, in 2017, we had an issue that Border Patrol had
intercepted approximately 200 Bangladeshis, and then in 2018,
almost 700, where we as HSI took on those numbers. We
investigated that organization, ultimately arrested the leader
of that organization in Monterrey, Mexico, the government of
Mexico, and returned him and brought him to the United States
to face prosecution. There has been zero Bangladeshis since,
but they were paying up to $27,000 per alien for Bangladeshis,
$2,000 to $7,000 for Central Americans. It is a very profitable
business, and they are coming here for a reason. They are
coming here because--specifically the Central Americans to
work, and that is one of the reasons that we are increasing our
work site enforcement on the interior to take away----
Chairman Johnson. I think the one thing, we had former CBP
Chief Morgan on our panel last week. You always hear 90 percent
of drugs flow through the ports of entry. My question has
always been, well, how do we know that? I mean, we do not even
know really what is coming through between the ports of entry.
And is not it true that when you have, again, over 100,
groups of 100 this year--and that is a dramatic increase from
prior years. Again, in a very well-organized effort, it just
makes sense you use those 100 people as a diversion over here.
You overwhelm the system. It requires all kinds of CBP officer
to converge and take care of sometimes six children and that
type of thing. It makes it pretty easy for somebody to sneak
across with either drugs or high-value or a higher-paying
customer in terms of human trafficking, correct?
Mr. Karisch. Senator, I will add to that. In January of
this year, we had a 705-pound seizure of cocaine coming into
the United States between the ports of entry. In close
proximity to that, there was a group that was sent across with
170 individuals. So that is definitely a tactic and technique
that the criminal organizations use. Once again, it is to tie
up our resources, and then they exploit the gaps on the line.
Chairman Johnson. Final point before I turn it over to
Senator Portman who has some more questions is--and I think,
Commander White, you talked about the death of any child, the
abuse of any child is a tragedy.
But I do want to give Mr. Karisch an opportunity to talk
about--because I know in your testimony, you talk about the
thousands of lives that CBP has saved because that is now your
mission as well, and the medical resources were surging to the
border. People are coming to the border having taken a very
dangerous journey, some of them almost on life support.
I just want to give you the opportunity to talk about how
much time and attention CBP is putting into saving every
person, the humane treatment that you are providing, and again
how this is an overwhelming task.
Mr. Karisch. I appreciate that, Senator.
Every summer especially, but even in the winter, from
Brownsville, Texas, all the way to San Diego, Border Patrol
agents are deployed into areas to rescue people.
I have seen agents in Del Rio jump in the rivers to save
children that their mothers had let go because they could not
keep up with the currents.
I have seen our agents rescue people off of mountaintops in
Arizona. I have seen our people rescue people in South Texas.
We do that on a regular basis.
Our most important thing is the preservation of life. A
great man once told me that simply entering the country illegal
should not equate to a death sentence. So we provide those
resources.
We have units of agents who have been out on the border,
our Border Patrol Search, Trauma, and Rescue (BORSTAR) units,
but we also have Emergency medical technician (EMTs). We deploy
a lot of EMTs out there, which is important because during the
summers, we will see an increase in the number of rescues that
our agents have to make out there, and it is a mission also
that we take with great responsibility. But that is in addition
to everything else we are doing, and what suffers is the fact
that you still have bad people and things that are coming
through the border.
Fifty-three percent of the marijuana that is intercepted
along the entire Southwest Border by Border Patrol is made in
RGV. We have had increases in heroin. We have had increases in
cocaine. So there are other commodities, illegal substances
also that are coming through between the border, but it is just
a heavy investment of all of the things that we have to do in
securing our border but also preserving life.
Chairman Johnson. Does anybody want to just confirm what
Mr. Karisch talked about in terms of the efforts of CBP to try
and save lives or rebut it? Mr. Howe.
Mr. Howe. We are seeing the same thing at our ports of
entry. We are seeing the migrants that are claiming asylum that
are medically in despair in most cases, and in my oral
testimony, we take them to the hospital right away. So we go
through great efforts to care for them and to ensure that they
are safe.
Chairman Johnson. Anybody else want to speak to that?
[No response.]
Senator Portman.
Senator Portman. Thanks.
I again want to start by thanking each of you for your
service. This is such a rare opportunity to speak to a bunch of
experts who are in the trenches every day dealing with these
issues that I wanted to come back for a second round, and I
appreciate the Chairman allowing me to do that.
First, on the drug issue, I did not have a chance to speak
to this earlier because there are so many topics, but, Mr.
Cherundolo, you talked about the fact that fentanyl is now
coming across the border, and we are having more seizures of
fentanyl.
Typically, as you know, it has been coming from China
through the mail. My understanding in talking to Customs and
Border Protection, that still is the preferred method for these
traffickers. So still most of it is coming in through our own
U.S. mail system because we do not have the tracking that the
United Parcel Service (UPS) and Federal Express (FedEx) and
others do.
We are now putting that in place under the Synthetics
Trafficking and Overdose Prevention (STOP) Act. I am
disappointed it has not been done more quickly, but it is
moving to the point where I think we will have about 100
percent from China within the next several months.
But do you think there is more fentanyl being shipped now
into Mexico then coming across the border, and if so, why is
that happening? Why would not they simply do what they have
been doing, which is send it to a Post Office box in the United
States? Is it partly because of the STOP Act, which now will
require the post office to have that data, where it is from,
where it is going, what is in the package, on all the packages,
which it had not had until now, or is there some other reason
that they would want to ship it into Mexico?
Again, my presumption is that it is not being produced in
Mexico. There were two instances I think where we have found
some production of it in the past, but my understanding is both
of those have been shut down. So what is going on? Can you give
us the dynamics of that, and how can we be more effective in
stopping it?
Mr. Cherundolo. So, Senator, certainly the STOP Act is a
welcome tool, and it has helped. The two primary methods of
fentanyl coming into the United States, one are by parcel
shipments into the United States, but again coming across the
Southwest Borders. Many seizures as a result of the
investigations DEA is conducting and the investigations our
counterparts are conducting, we are seeing an increase in the
number of instances where large seizures of fentanyl are coming
across the Southwest Border.
The purity levels that we look at differ slightly. What we
see coming from China tends to be a more pure form of fentanyl,
but certainly everything from the investigations we are
conducting indicates that Mexican cartel organizations are
increasingly dealing in fentanyl, particularly in the form of
making them into counterfeit drugs, into pills.
Senator Portman. That has been happening, but are you
telling me today that we are now seeing evidence of
manufacturing fentanyl, the synthetic opioid in Mexico, or is
this being manufactured still as chemical companies in China
and then shipped into Mexico?
Mr. Cherundolo. We are certainly looking at the production
of fentanyl in Mexico and fearful that the transition from
production of methamphetamine, which is very prevalent in
Mexico, to fentanyl will occur, and that is a----
Senator Portman. You have not seen it yet. You have not
proved it yet, but you are concerned about it?
Mr. Cherundolo. Certainly, the two instances that you
talked about are the instances we see, but the re-tableting and
the fentanyl being----
Senator Portman. Making it into a tablet that looks like a
prescription drug, an OxyContin or something?
Mr. Cherundolo. But the precursor chemical is coming into
Mexico too is what we are----
Senator Portman. Yes.
Mr. Cherundolo. We specifically started a sensitive
investigation unit with our Mexican counterparts that addresses
the precursor chemical flow into Mexico for the production of
fentanyl.
Senator Portman. It is something to keep an eye on because,
as we saw, it just overwhelmed us, and it is by far the number
one killer now among the opioids. And opioids are the number
one killer in the country. In my home State of Ohio, we are
getting devastated still by fentanyl.
I will say that in a lot of areas of Ohio, we have made
progress. We actually have the highest reduction of opioid
deaths from overdoses of any State in the Country in the last
year. That is not saying much because we started at such a high
level, but what we are seeing instead now is crystal meth
coming in from Mexico in a very pure form.
I was told by a law enforcement official recently, it is
less expensive than marijuana by weight on the street in
Columbus, Ohio.
That crystal meth is coming almost exclusively from Mexico;
is that correct?
Mr. Cherundolo. That is correct. The production of
methamphetamine in the United States is very limited to what we
call mom-and-pop or shake-and-bake labs that are lower amounts.
The larger seizures of methamphetamine we see coming into the
United States as a result of our investigations are coming from
labs that are producing the methamphetamine in Mexico.
Senator Portman. It is cheaper and more powerful than the
stuff that used to be made in the basement or the trailer, and
that is what we are seeing in Ohio too. We are not seeing any
environmental damage caused by that, but we are seeing a much
higher grade, higher quality, more devastating drug, cheaper.
Mr. Cherundolo. That is correct.
Senator Portman. So what do we do about it? In the
appropriations bill, we put unprecedented amount of money into
this screening technology to be able to look through a truck,
for instance.
We have also put in place the INTERDICT Act in addition to
the STOP Act. We are trying to get more funding into personnel
because the expertise that you guys need to have to be able to
identify these products and safely deal with it--how is that
going, and what should we be doing?
Mr. Cherundolo. Certainly, for all of us at the table--I do
not want to speak for everybody, but I think our resources from
the personnel standpoint is a critical issue, particularly from
the DEA standpoint. We continue to hire to fill vacancies, to
have additional agents to do the investigations.
But our relationships with our foreign counterparts are
critical. The developing relationship, like I said, with the
sensitive investigation unit to identify chemicals flows into
Mexico, particularly from China and from other countries
throughout the world, are critical and key issues for us, but
that partnership with our foreign counterparts is critical. And
it is ever evolving.
With the changeover in the Administration in Mexico, we are
still working our way through how our relationships will
develop, and continuing to strengthen those relationships is
critical for our way forward.
Senator Portman. Mr. Howe or Mr. Tubbs, thoughts on this? I
mean, my sense is 90 percent of the heroin coming into Ohio
comes across the Southern Border, almost 100 percent of the
crystal meth now coming in across the border, increasingly more
fentanyl, still mostly coming from the mail, but more of it now
coming in. What would you do with this funding we have
provided? What is the most effective way?
As the Chairman said, some of it is coming through the
ports of entry, no question about it. The majority has been
traditionally because it has been brought through with
vehicles, but once that is closed down, my sense is they are
now shifting more to places along the border where they can
have access between the ports of entry. Is that accurate? Can
you give us a rundown on what you are seeing?
Mr. Howe. Thank you, Senator.
Yes, the $564 million, giving us that Multi-Energy drive-
through system is going to increase our capability. We will be
able to stop the narcotics from coming in.
Thank you for the STOP Act. We are seeing improvement in
that advance, that information coming from China and other
countries. I think as we work to fully implement that and also
the money you provided, the $45 million, for NII for our mail
facilities and more canines, that is all going to be paying for
it.
Senator Portman. Excellent. Mr. Tubbs.
Mr. Tubbs. As I had said prior, as we look at the personnel
and the resources that go to CBP for the interdiction, as those
interdictions increase, our criminal investigations are going
to increase, our responses are going to increase, and we, as
HSI--ultimately what we are looking at along with working with
our counterparts with DEA is identifying those transnational
criminal organizations and working with our foreign
counterparts and our Sensitive Investigative Unit (SIUs) and
our TCIUs, so we can truly dismantle those organizations. And
that is working with our counterparts.
Senator Portman. We talked earlier about push and pull
factors, and there is no question we need to do more to keep
the demand down here in this country because the prevention
efforts are ultimately going to be most successful and getting
people into treatment and longer-term recovery. We are making
progress on that, as indicated, on opioids, but having this
interdiction is important too because the cost of this drug on
the streets will be higher. Some of it will be stopped, and
because of supply and demand, some of it will be higher. That
is one of our issues right now is it is not only so powerful,
it is so inexpensive relative to what it has been in the past.
So we thank you for what you are doing every day. You are
saving lives by doing that.
Finally, let me just say what you are doing on trafficking
is absolutely critical too. My sense is--and, Mr. Tubbs, you
see this, I know, coming across Laredo. More and more of these
traffickers are trafficking people in addition to drugs, and it
is a very lucrative business, just as you talked about earlier
about how lucrative the drug business is. So keeping a focus on
that is also much appreciated by those of us here on this
committee.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Portman, thank you for all the
work you have done on the STOP Act.
I think we received good news that it sounds like an
agreement that President Trump and President Xi had made is
going to be implemented in terms of China cracking down on
fentanyl.
My question for both Mr. Cherundolo and Mr. Tubbs is, how
soon are we going to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of
that, whether they are actually going to follow through on
that, and are we going to be able to notice it?
Mr. Cherundolo. So, Senator, my understanding is that May 1
is when the class-wide scheduling goes into effect, and we will
monitor the different analogs, the fentanyl analogs. Certainly
the groups, the trafficking groups that profit from this are
going to continue to produce it, but it has in the instances so
far, when they have scheduled analogs, has been a positive
thing for us, where we have seen less of those analogs.
In your home State of Wisconsin, where they have class-wide
schedule fentanyl, we are very positive about that. Again,
because of the number of people dying from fentanyl, we felt it
was important for us to emergency schedule it.
I think, again, only time will tell once we get past May 1
on the reduction in that, but certainly, there is still going
to be a black market for organizations, transnational criminal
organizations, both Chinese and Mexican, to traffic in
fentanyl, but I think anything we can do, any tool that we can
be given to strengthen similar to the Stopping Overdoses of
Fentanyl Analogues (SOFA) Act that was introduced last year by
you would be a helpful tool for law enforcement in prosecuting
those because it is not a technicality that the analog gets
switched by a slight chemical makeup and it makes it a legal
substance rather than a controlled substance.
Chairman Johnson. Unfortunately, we were not able to get
the SOFA Act across the finish line, even though every Attorney
General--I think it is the first time in history--wrote a
letter asking us to do that.
So your recommendation, please pursue that, and let us get
the SOFA Act passed.
Mr. Cherundolo. We will be glad to provide as much
technical assistance as necessary for that.
Chairman Johnson. OK. Appreciate it.
Mr. Tubbs, what is your sense of Chinese law enforcement in
terms of their effectiveness of cracking down in fentanyl. Are
we going to see a dent in that?
Mr. Tubbs. I think we should be able to measure that in two
ways. One is the number of intercepts that we have at our
parcel transport hubs, and if we start seeing fentanyl being
produced in Mexico, I think that will be a sure sign for us,
for both of those.
Chairman Johnson. With my remaining time here, what I would
like to do is just kind of close out the hearing, trying to lay
out the current reality, because, again, it is a growing
crisis.
Former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson was on
Microsoft National Broadcasting Company (MSNBC) two Fridays ago
and talks about how when he would come into the office, if
apprehensions--and this is a paraphrase--were less than 1,000,
they could deal with that. Over 1,000, it would be a really bad
day. And yet we have seen apprehensions over 4,000 in recent
weeks.
So, Mr. Karisch, I just really want to talk about what is
happening now. I issued a press release saying that through no
fault of CBPs, the law enforcement at the border has been
reduced to nothing more than a mere speed bump for
unaccompanied children and people coming in family units on
their path to long-term residency. I think that is a pretty
accurate assessment.
But just talk about functionally. We have heard reports
that HHS is full. The house is full. So HHS cannot accept the
flow, and so CBP now, even though they are not set up to do
this, CBP is set up to turn, for example, unaccompanied
children over to HHS, others to ICE. You are being forced to
release people in the general population, correct? Can you just
describe what is happening here?
Mr. Karisch. Yes. Of course, our facilities were not built
for this. We do not have the resources. I mean, we are law
enforcement officers who are dealing with a significant
challenge with the family units, something we do not want to
do. In one week in RGV, we had 7,000 apprehensions in a week.
Normally, our in-custody number for short-term housing
there is 3,300 in our short-term facilities that we have.
Chairman Johnson. Which is still massive.
Mr. Karisch. Yes. But I had days actually where I was
exceeding over 6,300 people in custody. We cannot keep people.
We could not keep people in those conditions. We were not built
to hold the families in the----
Chairman Johnson. So what is happening right now? What are
you doing?
Mr. Karisch. So what we had to do is issue a notice to
appear, order of recognizance, which basically they were
released with a promise to appear at a court date in the
future. So, once again, we are simply feeding a cycle that more
than likely people will not show up for a hearing. This is not
the way of doing business.
If you look at the Southwest Border, over 364,000
apprehensions as of April 1, over 100 percent increase, we are
all seeing this.
Chairman Johnson. Yes. I want to get in the details. So,
first of all, the notice to appear, back after Deferred Action
for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), those memoranda were issued,
that notice to appear was called by the coyotes, the
``permiso.''
Mr. Karisch. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. Again, mis-marketing. DACA applies to
none of the--that is about 800,000--850,000 people passed the
DACA line there. It did not apply to them, but it was used. So
that notice to appear was called a ``permiso.'' Is not that
correct?
Mr. Karisch. To them, yes, sir.
Chairman Johnson. So now CBP issues the notice to appear,
and then what happens? What do you do with these individuals?
You give them a notice to appear, which the coyotes call them
the ``permiso,'' which by and large is their permission to
enter the country and stay long term. But what specifically do
you do?
Mr. Karisch. We right now have worked with the NGO's. We
are getting a lot of respite centers in our areas to actually
help.
Chairman Johnson. NGO's like Catholic Charities.
Mr. Karisch. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. OK. Then what do you do?
Mr. Karisch. Catholic Charities. It is to help them out.
Some of them are actually taken right to bus stations, already
have relatives or sponsors in this country. We have to rely on
the fact is that they are providing us with a genuine address,
but we found in certain circumstances that after the fact, we
realized that we actually had criminals in our custody that we
did not know about at the time. When we tried to look for the,
many times those were fictitious addresses. So some of them
will be released in our communities, and we will never see them
again.
Chairman Johnson. Within how many days are--let us say you
got an adult male with a child, and you finally got the adult
to admit that that was not his 1-year-old child. But how many
days are they in your custody before you, CBP--you are not set
up to do this, but are releasing these individuals to--it was
described last week to the Greyhound bus station. You notified
Catholic Charities. Catholic Charities comes over and picks up
this group of people, and there are hundreds in a day. Then
they have to deal with it, get people on the phone, and then
give them a bus ticket--this is Catholic Charities providing
that bus ticket--to all points in America. I mean, that is what
is happening, right?
Mr. Karisch. Yes, sir.
Chairman Johnson. So how many days do you have somebody in
custody before you deliver them to that Greyhound bus station?
Mr. Karisch. Right now because of the overwhelming number
of people that we have in custody, as soon as we can get them
processed, we are releasing.
Chairman Johnson. Which is how many hours or days?
Mr. Karisch. It could be a matter of hours.
Chairman Johnson. So you really do not have the capacity--
and this is kind of getting to what Senator Lankford was
talking about--to determine is that the father or is that a sex
trafficker. Is that his daughter, or is that his sexual traffic
victim?
Mr. Karisch. That is correct.
Chairman Johnson. That is a pretty accurate assessment?
Mr. Karisch. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. Commander White, this is not the way the
system is supposed to work, correct?
Mr. White. I think it is safe to say that right now, all of
the lead Federal agencies in this process--CBP, ICE, and HHS,
ORR--are at or close to their operational capacity. I can say
that----
Chairman Johnson. I mean, would not you say it is beyond
their operation?
Mr. White. We are at 97 percent, but the system----
Chairman Johnson. Is it not true--is it not true that----
Mr. White. The system is over capacity.
Chairman Johnson [continuing]. HHS is not accepting all the
individuals that CBP would like to send your way?
Mr. White. That is actually not true, but let me clarify
that. We are 97 percent occupancy, and over the last 7 days, we
received an average of 279 children a day, and we discharged
267. So over the last 7 days, referrals in have exceeded
discharges out, and we are at 97 percent.
Chairman Johnson. Again, you would only be getting
unaccompanied children, though, at this point in time.
Mr. White. We only receive unaccompanied.
Chairman Johnson. So the problem is with family units, and
is it true, then, that ICE is beyond its capability of
accepting the number of people in family units, pretty well
forcing CBP into doing the releasing? Mr. Howe.
Mr. Howe. We are not releasing from the port of entry. So
we will be waiting until ERO has that capacity to take, and
oftentimes Border Patrol will assist us. Some of our ports like
Hidalgo have the capacity for 30 people, and once we get to
that number--and if we get overrun where aliens are crossing
the boundary line, then the number could go up to 95 or 100. So
then Border Patrol assists us and takes them into custody, and
if they meet the criteria, to have them released.
Chairman Johnson. A couple of years ago, the stats I had--
and everything is changing, so nothing is static. But,
approximately, 20 percent of family units presenting themselves
or coming in this country or legally apprehended were headed by
a male.
The last stats I had--and they are old--about 40 percent. I
thought in testimony, you were saying about 50 percent now are
headed by a male?
Mr. Karisch. Fifty percent in the RGV sector, sir.
Chairman Johnson. OK. So, again, what you are seeing is--
and by the way, the kind of average number of people in the
family unit is basically two, correct?
Mr. Karisch. On average. I mean, we tend to see different
groups come in to our custody, but it could be one or two. Yes,
sir.
Chairman Johnson. To me, that just indicates this is a
shifting problem. Gone are the days where you are primarily
dealing with a Mexican economic migrant. That was back in 2000
and prior to that. Now you are really dealing with
unaccompanied children and people coming in, family units, and
they are not trying to avoid apprehension, correct? They are
turning themselves in.
Mr. Karisch. Yes, sir.
Chairman Johnson. When I was down touring with the Border
Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley, I remember one story of a
large group of families coming in and starting a campfire and
then complaining to the CBP officers that it took them an hour
to get to their location. Is that an unusual story?
Mr. Karisch. No. Because, first of all, anytime you have a
large group--we do not have buses staged at every location, so
it takes time. But I think our agents actually call it them
apprehending us.
Chairman Johnson. So, Commander White, real quick, just to
confirm also some other stats I have, unaccompanied children,
historically about 70 percent have been male. Is that basically
true?
Mr. White. Prior to 2014, they were about two-thirds male.
The proportion that are girls has grown.
Chairman Johnson. So what would you estimate now?
Mr. White. I could look up the exact number, but over
recent years, girls have at times grown to be as much as a
third, and among separated children, a larger proportion.
Chairman Johnson. OK. A third is still leaving two-thirds,
67 percent, so my stats said about 70 percent, real close, are
male, and about 70 percent are 15 or older, correct, 15, 16,
and 17?
Mr. White. I am sorry. I have the numbers with me. I just
have to look them up.
The great majority historically have been over 12. Over
time, it is trending younger, and those trends come and go.
Chairman Johnson. OK. I will give all the witnesses an
opportunity. If there is something that you have not been able
to make, a point you have not been able to make in response to
questions, I will let you do it right now. We will start with
Mr. Cherundolo.
Mr. Cherundolo. Chairman, the only thing I would point out,
circling back around to your question about China, hopefully by
June of this year, our law enforcement to law enforcement
relationships, we continue to develop those. In June of this
year, we are hopeful to open another office in the Guangzhou
Province in China. So that relationship and building upon the
class scheduling and hopefully being able to provide technical
support for our class scheduling is something we continue to
work forward on and with our counterparts throughout the world,
not just in China.
Chairman Johnson. You have seen a great deal of interest on
this committee. So we are going to want to be updated on,
hopefully, progress. Again, I view this as a really good sign.
This is exactly what China needs to do, and I am glad they are.
We just have to monitor and verify this is going to be
happening. Commander White.
Mr. White. Thank you, Senator.
So, Senator Johnson, as you have noted, the current levels
of migration of migration, including for UACs, are much higher
than historical norms. We just completed the biggest march in
the history of the program in terms of number of children
coming in. This not only speaks to our continuing requirement
to expand temporary and permanent capacity so that we have a
bed for every child. It also speaks to the imperative of
Congress and the Administration working together to prevent
future separations of children from family units. The program
cannot support that.
Chairman Johnson. Again, I stated my thoughts on that for
the record.
I think if you do take a look at that chart, you can see
that the biggest problem right now, the growing problem is
people coming as family units. Mr. Tubbs.
Mr. Tubbs. Yes, sir. Again, I appreciate you having me here
today.
For myself as an HSI Special Agent and specifically being
one assigned to the border, I can attest to myself and OFO and
Border Patrol, our agents work 24/7. I mean, they are at a tax
point that we are on the border. They are very passionate about
what they do. They are very professional about what they do,
and we look forward to continuing support from our legislators
and our appropriators, so thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Mr. Howe.
Mr. Howe. Thank you for the opportunity to be here, and
thank you for all of the funding that you have provided us to
improve our NII capability. I think it is going to really prove
to be very worthwhile, and I thank you for your leadership and
taking on the necessary legislation changes that we talked
about today to fix the crisis.
Chairman Johnson. Mr. Karisch.
Mr. Karisch. Senator Johnson, thank you for raising
awareness in a very important issue to this country. This is
not a manufactured crisis. We are living it every day.
My men and women are exhausted. They are frustrated, and
the fact is they are having to release people, but they also
understand that this is a reality of what we are facing today.
And this is only a portion.
I worry about places like Venezuela in what we might see
from immigration from those countries. So it is a very real
issue that we are facing, and I appreciate the opportunity
today.
Chairman Johnson. OK. Again, I want to thank all five of
you for your service to this Nation.
You should not have to be dealing with this. The ball is
squarely in Congress' court. We have to recognize this problem.
The first step in solving a problem is admit you have one, and
we have a problem in the here and now that requires legislative
action.
So I want to work with each and every one of you. I want to
work with the Administration. I want to work across the aisle.
This should be a nonpartisan issue, and we ought to be doing
the root-cause analysis. That is exactly what we are trying to
do here is lay out the reality, going through the problem-
solving process, gathering that information, defining the
problem properly, the problem we are trying to solve, defining
what is a solvable problem. What is an achievable goal? From my
standpoint, that achievable goal is reducing that flow by
having a consequence.
We have seen time and time again where there is a
consequence to illegal activity, it gets reduced, and until we
enact that consequence in absolutely humane fashion, this is
going to continue to explode.
So, again, the ball is in our court. I thank you all for
your service, for your testimony. Again, I hope all the
Committee members carefully read it, and I am looking forward
to working with them.
The hearing record will remain open for 15 days until April
24 at 5 p.m. for the submission of statements and questions for
the record.
This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:38 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
UNPRECEDENTED MIGRATION AT THE
U.S. SOUTHERN BORDER: THE EXPLOITATION
OF MIGRANTS THROUGH SMUGGLING, TRAFFICKING, AND INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE
----------
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26, 2019
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m., in
room 342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Ron Johnson
presiding.
Present: Senators Johnson, Portman, Lankford, Scott,
Hawley, Peters, Carper, Hassan, Sinema, and Rosen.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN JOHNSON
Chairman Johnson. Good morning. This hearing will come to
order. I want to welcome everybody for attending. I want to
thank the witnesses, first of all, for your service to this
country.
The issues we are dealing with here are challenging, to say
the least. I was at the opening ceremony with Senator Carper,
opening up St. Elizabeth's, and the comment I made there is it
is pretty easy, from the dais here, to criticize, take
potshots, to detail out what problems are not being addressed
as perfectly as we would like to see, but I am thoroughly
convinced, from all the contact I have had, quite honestly, the
honor and privilege in working with the men and women of the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), I am thoroughly
convinced that the men and women are showing a great deal of
integrity, dedication, dignity, and courage in trying to deal
with this horrific situation. We will talk a little bit more
about that.
I would ask that my written statement be entered into the
record.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Johnson appears in the
Appendix on page 303.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This hearing, and it is called ``Unprecedented Migration at
the U.S. Southern Border: The Exploitation of Migrants through
Smuggling, Trafficking, and Involuntary Servitude,'' really
started a couple of years ago with Senator Portman holding a
hearing through his Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
(PSI) on an example of involuntary servitude at an Ohio egg
farm. More recent news stories after the Robert Kraft massage
parlor scandal, The New York Times wrote a really good
investigative story, just laying out the reality of these
massage parlors, and often Asian women that had been smuggled,
trafficked into this Nation, they come into this country with a
$30,000 or $40,000 debt owed to their human traffickers, and,
of course, they pay it off through prostitution. Disgusting
reality, but that is the reality.
My most recent trip to McAllen--I made a couple in the last
couple of months with Senator Hassan and Senator Peters--there
were a couple of things that got my antenna definitely
twitching. First of all, we were briefed and were told about
the detection of a number of fraudulent families, and we really
do not know how large that is. I have seen different things--
13, 25, and 33 percent. We just really do not know. We were
told about a 3-year-old boy left in a hot cornfield with just a
nonworking telephone number and his name supplied, written out.
The telephone number was written on his sandal and we saw a
picture of that.
Senator Hassan, Senator Peters, and I, when we went through
the McAllen facility, saw an 18-month-old little girl
struggling to get away from, I do not know, a 40-or 50-year-old
man. Having just been briefed about fraudulent families, I
mean, I do not know the truth there but it did not look like
that was the daughter of that man. I could be wrong, but I
could not help but wonder what was going to happen to that 18-
month-old girl if that was not her father.
At the border, the last two trips I have made, I have been
surprised in talking to the people who just crossed--women,
men, with tender-aged children. None of them are admitting to
paying their human traffickers any money, which is a concern
for me when you also tack on the evidence that we are seeing of
these family units showing up at stash houses.
The process is, again, completely out of control,
overwhelmed. People are turning themselves in to U.S. Border
Patrol (USBP), Border Patrol is overwhelmed in their
facilities--I think something like 19,000 people held at border
patrol facilities, that according to the now former director of
the Customs and Border Protection (CBP), or of Border Patrol,
the capacity is only 4,000.
But trying to process people as quickly as possible, the
largest group on record now, 1,000 people coming in through El
Paso, and trying to process them, complete their file, turn
them over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
There is a backlog there because ICE does not have enough beds
to hold them, and then for unaccompanied alien children (UAC),
trying to turn them over to the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS), where there is not enough capacity, or into
non-governmental organizations (NGO) to find family members,
help them buy tickets to just get dispersed all over America.
You would think they would be dispersed all over America but
instead, some of them are showing up at some of these stash
houses, and of course, in testimony we will hear stories of
those people, probably about ready to be put into involuntary
servitude, but we have records of people being beaten, videos
taken of that, videos sent back down to their home countries,
demanding payment.
Once we got back from that trip, a story broke in
Wisconsin. I am going to read you some excerpts from a story
that just ran in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on June 20.
``Five people were indicted in late May, in a Georgia-based
human trafficking scheme that Federal authorities say illegally
brought dozens of Mexican workers to work on Wisconsin farms.
``The defendants, through two companies they operated,
received U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) approval to bring the
Mexican nationals to the United States to work on Georgia farms
through a program that allows employers to hire seasonal
foreign workers if they cannot find domestic workers to
cultivate and harvest crops. Thus, the workers were in the
country legally.
``But according to the indictment, the defendants who
illegally brought the employees to work on Wisconsin farms gave
them false IDs and took away their passports so they could not
leave. The workers faced threats and were made to believe they
would suffer serious harm if they left. All but one of the
workers identified as victims told authorities they had to pay
recruiting fees ranging from $200 to more than $600, to be
placed on a list to come to work in the United States. Some say
they also had to turn over titles to their properties in
Mexico, their families' homes or land, as collateral to get the
job.
``The workers said they were left without medical attention
when they got sick and were forced to work more than 10-hour
days without being allowed to take breaks other than lunch.
Some workers said they were not always provided water, even on
hot days. They were told not to talk with anyone outside the
company, not to leave their Wisconsin motel without supervision
or permission. Two workers said they were threatened with
deportation if they left. Another feared not ever being able to
return to work legally in the United States if he was
deported.''
Now again, this is the exploitation of migrant workers in
the country legally. I have no idea. I was hoping this hearing
would give us some sense of how prevalent this is. I do not
think we are going to get that. I think we will hear some other
examples. Maybe it is not that big of a problem. I have a sense
that it is a huge problem.
I think we should get our chart up here.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The chart referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the Appendix
on page 322.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
You have all seen this. I have had to turn the piece of
paper the long way. Through May, through 8 months of this
fiscal year (FY), more than 400,000 unaccompanied children or
people coming in as families--generally one adult, one child--
have crossed the border illegally and been apprehended, and
processed and basically dispersed. If we are to maintain May's
rate, that number would exceed 800,000 by the end of the fiscal
year, in just four more months.
I think we have seen a slight decline, based on the weekly
numbers. It is getting hot. Mexico seems to be doing more, so
hopefully we will not hit that 800,000 number. But, I do not
see how anybody can take a look at this and not realize, this
is a huge problem that must be addressed, and we are simply not
addressing it, not effectively.
I did not have time to have a picture blown up but we have
all seen it, of Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his 23-
month-old daughter, Valeria. Now I realize tragedies occur all
over this country, all over the world. I do not want to see
another picture like that on the U.S. border. I hope that
picture alone will catalyze this Congress, this Senate, this
Committee to do something.
I called up Senator Peters earlier this morning. I said I
had half a mind to canceling this hearing and instead just have
a discussion between what I believe are U.S. Senators of good
faith, that have sat through 30 or more hearings of this
problem on the border, and start coming to some conclusions.
What can we agree on to actually start improving this
situation?
What I have found, in 8\1/2\ years here in the U.S. Senate,
there is not much of a problem-solving capability, not for the
big ones, not for the big problems. This Committee has actually
demonstrated pretty good capacity for solving smaller problems,
on a totally nonpartisan basis, quite honestly. I am pretty
proud of that. We should all be proud of that. Our staffs ought
to be proud of that.
Just last week, in our mark-up, we addressed the problem of
government shutdowns, and Senator Lankford, Senator Hassan, and
I know Senator Portman, Senator Paul had other bills, but we
passed a bill to end government shutdown. Hopefully the rest of
the Senate will pick that up. Hopefully the House will pass
that and we will never have to have another shutdown again.
This is a much more difficult problem we are dealing with
here. What I proposed to Senator Peters--and again, I
appreciate the Senators we have here at the dais, and I am also
talking to the other Senators' staffs, and I am dead serious
about this. I want to set up our table down there, like a mark-
up, but it is not going to be a mark-up, and in a very
organized process, an organized fashion, I want to go through a
problem-solving process. That is what we have been doing with
all these hearings. We have been gathering a lot of
information. We still need more information.
But I want to have an open and honest and genuine
discussion about the scope of the problem, the root causes of
this problem, and what we can do to start solving it.
Continuous improvement. We are not going to solve this
overnight, but we can make some
improvement in the situation. We have to start doing
something--Congress. The men and women at DHS are doing what
you can do, with limited resources. Congress has to act, and it
has to start with an honest and open discussion and
conversation.
We will go back and forth, find the areas of agreement. I
do not know if that ends up in an overall piece of legislation
or elements that could be tacked onto a piece of legislation
that would probably be under some other committee's
jurisdiction, but we need to start doing something. It is well
past time. And that picture that all Americans woke up this
morning looking at, again, should be used as a catalyst for
that kind of action.
So again, one thing that we are going to try and do--and
Senator Peters has been great working with me on this--but
hopefully we can sign a letter in support of Operation Safe
Return, a pilot program, very small in scope, but a program
that is designed to rapidly and more accurately determine those
families that clearly do not have a valid asylum claim and
safely return them to their home country, as a message to
people in Central America--do not indebt yourself to these
human traffickers. Do not mortgage your home. Do not pay them a
year's worth of salary. Because on a bipartisan basis, we are
not going to let the human traffickers exploit our broken
system. And then the next step would be to actually start
fixing that system.
But I think the beauty of the pilot program, Operation Safe
Return, is while it is being implemented we are going to be
tracking its effectiveness. We are going to find out how many
people actually do have a valid asylum claim. We will be giving
them interpreters. They will have access to counsel. And that
is something, on a bipartisan basis, we can send a strong
signal and message that we want to fix this problem.
So again, I have yammered on a lot longer than I normally
do in an opening statement, but if there was ever a moment that
requires that the nonpartisan effort of the Members of this
Committee, I would say it is now. And so that is what I am
asking for, for every Senator, every Staff member in this
Committee. Let's come together. Let's have these discussions.
These will be multiple meetings, a number of hours. But I am
asking for full involvement and a very open and genuine
discussion.
With that, Senator Peters.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PETERS\1\
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I can assure
you all of us on this side of the aisle also want to work on
this issue. It is an important issue and I think we can
hopefully come together and have some solutions to what is a
very vexing problem impacting our country and people right now.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Peters appears in the
Appendix on page 305.
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But I also want to thank you for convening this
particularly hearing here today, and I look forward to
discussing with our witnesses how we can combat human
trafficking. It is a horrific criminal enterprise that exploits
vulnerable people arriving at the Southern Border, and really
all across our country.
Desperation drives people into the hands of human
traffickers, and that same desperation drives some families to
attempt a journey to the north on their own. And like the
Chairman and, I think, everybody on this Committee--I speak for
all of us--we were devastated by the photo showing Oscar
Martinez Ramirez and his daughter, Valeria, who drowned
clinging together in the final moments as they attempted to
cross the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) for asylum here in the United
States.
No one is more vulnerable than a child, and like most
Americans I am heartbroken that migrant children in U.S.
custody, including toddlers and infants, have been subjected to
unsafe conditions and sometimes denied basic necessities. It is
unconscionable that the Administration would argue in court
that it should not be required to provide soap and a toothbrush
for a child in its custody. Even prisoners of war are provided
with soap, under the Geneva Conventions. There is no question
that children in Federal custody deserve basic necessities,
including warm meals, blankets, and access to medical care. We
must prioritize keeping families together and keeping our
children safe and healthy.
I have made inquiries to the Customs and Border Protection,
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Office of Refugee
Resettlement (ORR) to learn more about these reports and the
conditions experienced by children in U.S. custody, and I will
continue working with my colleagues to ensure that they are
treated with dignity and receive appropriate care.
We cannot fully address this situation on our Southern
Border and keep children safe without disrupting smuggling
networks and combating the scourge of human trafficking. Human
trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal enterprise in the
world, and it is a serious issue along both the Northern as
well as the Southern Borders. My home State of Michigan has the
sixth-highest number of reported cases of human trafficking in
the country, and despite the scope of this problem there is a
lot we do not know about the illicit business of human
trafficking.
We need a better understanding of how transnational
criminal organizations (TCOs) operate, finance, and profit from
these smuggling rings. We need to work with Mexico and the
Northern Triangle countries to address corruption, lawlessness,
and other root causes of immigration. We need strong, stable
border security policies.
Traffickers thrive on chaos and leverage American threats
of future crackdowns to induce families to quickly embark on
this dangerous journey. We need less chaos. We can all agree
that the status quo is both unacceptable and unsustainable. We
all share the goal of protecting vulnerable people from human
traffickers.
That bipartisan support is reflected in the supplemental
funding bill the Senate will soon be considering. This
legislation was approved last week by the Appropriations
Committee by a vote of 30-1. It includes critical resources to
help offices like Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) root
out smuggling networks. We must provide the right resources in
addressing the challenges we face at our Southern Border and we
need a full understanding of the facts on the ground to
properly align efforts across the Federal Government.
Chairman Johnson and I share an appreciation for data-
driven discussions. We need to improve the Department of
Homeland Security's data analytics in order to better combat
transnational criminal organizations, disrupt human
trafficking, and deliver long-term solutions to secure our
borders to protect vulnerable populations.
So I want to thank our witnesses for being here today. I
look forward to your testimony and hearing more about how we
can stamp out human trafficking.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Peters.
It is the tradition of this Committee to swear in
witnesses, so if you will all stand and raise your right hand.
Do you swear the testimony you will give before this
Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth, so help you, God?
Mr. Hastings. I do.
Mr. Howe. I do.
Mr. Nevano. I do.
Chairman Johnson. Please be seated.
Our first witness is Brian Hastings. Mr. Hastings currently
serves as the Chief of Law Enforcement Operations in the U.S.
Border Patrol Headquarters in Washington, DC. Previously he was
the Chief Patrol Agent of the Buffalo Sector Office in New
York. Mr. Hastings.
TESTIMONY OF BRIAN S. HASTINGS,\1\ CHIEF, LAW ENFORCEMENT
OPERATIONS DIRECTORATE, U.S. BORDER PATROL, U.S. CUSTOMS AND
BORDER PROTECTION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Hastings. Thank you, Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member
Peters, and Members of the Committee. It is my honor to
represent the men and women of the Border Patrol before you
today, as they are hard at work addressing the current crisis
on the border.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Hastings appear in the Appendix
on page 308.
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Interdicting illegal aliens, drugs, cash, and weapons at
the border is a key component of U.S. border security, and by
extension, our national security. Cartels and other
transnational criminal organizations, are a threat that
requires comprehensive strategy and an aggressive approach
across government.
I am sorry to report that Border Patrol's contribution to
this whole-of-government effort is currently strained, as we
are forced to devote 40 to 60 percent of our manpower to the
humanitarian flow that serves as a lucrative line of business
for smuggling organizations.
We are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of apprehensions and
cannot conduct in-depth interviews that provide vital
intelligence on smuggling and trafficking networks. While
agents are distracted with the nearly 200 large groups
apprehended this year, trafficking organizations are using
these opportunities to move illicit narcotics and aliens
seeking to evade apprehension. Simply put, the current
humanitarian crisis has forced us to put border security and
national security at risk.
TCOs conduct their illicit operations without regard to
human life. Smugglers control where and how aliens cross our
border, putting lives at risk. In the Del Rio Sector alone,
Border Patrol rescues have risen from 44 individuals all of
last year to over 400 so far this year.
Smugglers are often placing children in nothing more than
makeshift rafts or on pool toys to cross the dangerous Rio
Grande River. On multiple occasions, smugglers have pushed
adults and children out of these rafts, knowing that agents
would prioritize the preservation of life while the smugglers
swam back to Mexico to evade arrest.
So far this fiscal year, Border Patrol agents have rescued
more than 3,400 people in distress along the border and saved
nearly 2,500 people crammed into tractor-trailers. Earlier this
month, agents freed 14 people from a locked and unventilated
trailer compartment that measured 124 degrees. All of these
people paid smugglers to bring them into this country and
nearly paid with their lives.
Others were not so fortunate. This past weekend, in the Rio
Grande Valley, they mounted an extensive search effort when
subjects reported that they had left several children who had
died just north of the border. Sadly, on Sunday night, agents
recovered the bodies of three children and one adult in the
thick brush.
Unfortunately, I know that these will not be the last
tragic deaths that we encounter. Summer temperatures are
increasing and we continue to see high volume of families and
children cross the border. Border Patrol has apprehended more
than 664,000 illegal aliens on our Southwest Border so far this
year, a nearly 140 percent increase compared to the same
timeframe last year.
While June is beginning to show signs of seasonal decline
that we expect in the summer months, we are still setting
record highs. Just 3 weeks into the month we have already
surpassed the apprehension level of every June since 2007.
The flow continues to overwhelm resources throughout the
immigration system. Border Patrol has made significant
investments in humanitarian care, including consumables, soft-
sided facilities, medical support, and transportation. We have
requested additional funds for this purpose in the supplemental
as well.
We have been forced to direct manpower away from the border
security mission to alien processing, simply to keep pace with
the high level of apprehensions. We have detailed agents, we
have shut down checkpoints, pulled agents from task forces,
canceled leave, canceled training to address this crisis.
Since we began direct releasing non-processed criminal
family units on March 19, we have significantly reduced the
time families spend in our custody after processing. With more
than 96,000 family members released so far, this currently
represents over 60 percent of the apprehensions but only about
25 percent of those in custody. Together with our partners we
have reduced the number of people in Border Patrol custody from
the peak of 19,000 in May to 12,000 to 13,000 today.
Of significant concern are the single adults and
unaccompanied children that are spending extended time in
custody. Our facilities simply were not designed for long-term
care in custody. I cannot stress enough the immediate impact of
funding for ICE and HHS bed space would have on the Border
Patrol's in-custody population, for both numbers and the
duration.
In the immediate term, we need Congress to provide
supplemental funds requested by CBP and our partners, but the
funding will only do so much without a long-term fix. I urge
Congress to pass legislative changes. that we have repeatedly
requested, to stop the draw of UACs and families.
I thank you for your time and I look forward to your
questions.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Chief Hastings. Our next
witness is Randy Howe. Mr. Howe is the Executive Director for
Operations for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In this
role, he oversees 30 field offices and 328 ports of entry. Mr.
Howe.
TESTIMONY OF RANDY HOWE,\1\ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FOR OPERATIONS,
OFFICE OF FIELD OPERATIONS, U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Howe. Good morning, Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member
Peters, and distinguished Members of the Committee. It is an
honor to appear before you today on behalf of CBP's Office of
Field Operations (OFO).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Howe appears in the Appendix on
page 308.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
When I last appeared before this Committee in April, I
described the challenging conditions at our ports of entry
(POEs). I mentioned long wait times for cargo processing and
ballooning passenger wait times. I explained the ripple effects
that redirecting CBP personnel would have on the trade
community, the supply chain, and the American consumer, and I
asked that you consider legislation action that would help
address this crisis.
I wish I could say that conditions at the ports of entry
have improved or that our Border Patrol colleagues no longer
require additional manpower. I also wish I could say that CBP's
Office of Field Operations at our ports of entry were able to
dedicate all of its energies toward our priority missions--
national security, counternarcotics, economic security, and the
facilitation of lawful trade and travel.
But the fact is that the conditions at our ports of entry
have not improved. Most every statistic is higher. More
inadmissible migrants are at our Southwest ports of entry, long
wait times, more detainees in custody, and more officers from
our ports of entry have been redirected to assist the Border
Patrol.
The variables driving this crisis are the same--
unprecedented numbers of family units and unaccompanied
children from Central America, many in large groups, and nearly
all of them seeking asylum and arriving without proper
documentation. And spikes in migration, like the one we are
experiencing on the Southwest Border, can both fuel and conceal
human trafficking.
The International Labor Organization estimates that there
are over 40 million victims of human trafficking globally. In
terms of population, that is more than the State of California.
Seventy-five percent of them are female and a quarter are
children.
Due to our unique position at our ports of entry, CBP
officers play a critical role in our country's efforts to stop
human trafficking. Earlier this month, CBP officers and ICE
Homeland Security Investigation agents arrested Naason Joaquin
Garcia, the leader of an international religious organization
at Los Angeles International Airport. He was charged with human
trafficking, production of child pornography, and forcible rape
of a minor, among other felonies.
Because our officers are among the first people travelers
encounter when they enter the United States, we are trained to
detect the signs of human trafficking. In addition, our
interviews are crucial for identifying victims of trafficking
because the interview determines the purpose of their travel.
For example, in 2017, CBP officers at Dulles Airport
interviewed a woman from Spain who had arrived from Paris with
her minor child. The woman stated she was a victim of human
trafficking and that a Russian criminal organization was
forcing her to work as a maid and have sex with men against her
will to pay off a debt.
The traveler added that the Russian organization had grown
impatient at the rate that the debt was being paid off, and
were sending her to the United States to earn money more
quickly. Alerted by CBP and ICE's Human Trafficking Division,
we were able to take the woman and child to a shelter for
further processing and interviews.
Not every trafficking situation is so straightforward. That
is why education is important. In 2013, CBP launched the Blue
Lightning Initiative to boost awareness about human trafficking
in the airline industry. Together with the Department of
Transportation (DOT), the Blue Lightning Initiative provides
training on how to recognize indicators of trafficking and how
to report this suspected trafficking to law enforcement.
We do everything we can to recognize and intercept human
traffickers and hopefully rescue their victims, but we cannot
do it alone. We work closely in collaboration with ICE and
other law enforcement partners.
I thank you for your time and I look forward to your
questions.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Howe.
Our final witness is Gregory Nevano. Mr. Nevano is the
Assistant Director with Homeland Security Investigations. He
previously served as Chief of Staff to the Deputy Director of
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Mr. Nevano.
TESTIMONY OF GREGORY NEVANO,\1\ ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR
INVESTIGATIVE PROGRAMS, HOMELAND SECURITY INVESTIGATIONS, U.S.
IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Nevano. Good morning, Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member
Peters, and distinguished Members of the Committee. I am
honored to appear before you today to represent the more than
8,500 brave men and women from U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations to provide an
update on our efforts to combat human smuggling and human
trafficking and the ongoing security and humanitarian crisis at
our Southern Border.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Nevano appears in the Appendix on
page 316.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Throughout my nearly three-decade career, I have witnessed
firsthand the perils individuals are willing to endure to seek
a better life in the United States. There is no better
illustration of this than in June 1994, when I encountered 11
remaining stowaways hidden in a container on a vessel in South
Boston, Massachusetts. The stowaways spent nearly 2 weeks in
the container with limited food and water and only a small hole
cut in the side of for them to breathe.
As a young officer, this incident made me appreciate the
freedoms we often take for granted as well as to treat every
person I encounter in the line of duty with dignity and
respect.
Human smuggling and human trafficking are often conflated
as one in the same type of crime. I would like to take a few
moments to explain the key differences between them. Human
smuggling involves the provision of a service for a fee,
typically transportation to an individual who voluntarily seeks
to enter a foreign country illegally. In fiscal year 2018, HSI
initiated 1,671 cases, made 4,081 criminal arrests, and 2,987
administrative arrests for human smuggling.
Human trafficking, however, is a crime involving the
exploitation of someone for the purposes of compelled labor or
a commercial sex act, either a minor or through the use of
fraud, force, or coercion. Often a dream for a better life in
the United States starts off as a human smuggling event, where
the person is complicit to the act but turns quickly into a
human trafficking event. In fiscal year 2018, HSI initiated 849
cases, made 1,588 criminal arrests, and rescued 308 victims of
human trafficking.
Our intelligence indicates desperate migrants pay smugglers
upwards of $8,000 to be smuggled from the Northern Triangle
countries and over $70,000 to be smuggled from an Eastern
Hemisphere country on their illegal journey. To put this in
perspective, consider a kilogram of cocaine is estimated at
just about $30,000 U.S. dollars, and therefore it is more
lucrative for a transnational criminal organization to smuggle
a person than it is narcotics.
A key component of HSI's efforts to combat human
trafficking is the Victim Assistance Program, which employs a
victim-centered approach whereby equal value is placed on the
identification, rescue, stabilization of the victims, and on
the deterrence, investigation, and prosecution of the
trafficker. I would like to thank Congress for appropriating
$7.5 million to HSI in February 2019. This funding will be used
to enhance our Victim Assistance Program by hiring nearly 60
employees. These employees will significantly assist HSI in
dealing with the humanitarian crisis along our Southern Border.
In response to this crisis, beginning in April 2019, HSI
dedicated over 400 personnel to assist CBP in combating this
issue. HSI deployed teams to interview persons suspected of
attempting entry by fraud, including as part of a fraudulent
family unit. To date, HSI has identified 316 fraudulent
families, 599 fraudulent documents, and presented 629
individuals to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for various
criminal violations.
In furtherance of our efforts to combat this crisis, in
early May 2019, HSI initiated a rapid Deoxyribonucleic acid
(DNA) pilot program in El Paso and McAllen, Texas. During this
operation, a total of 84 family units were DNA tested, after
providing consent. Sixteen family units were found to be
fraudulent during the testing. About half of the confirmed
fraudulent family units were identified prior to DNA testing,
when the adult alien recanted their claim of a familial
relationship when asked to consent to the test.
There is no better case illustration but when a 51-year-old
Honduran male confessed prior to testing that he was not the
father of the infant child he initially claimed to be his son,
and purchased the child for $84.
In addition to DNA testing, in early May 2019, HSI and CBP
began identifying adult migrants and accompanying children that
entered the United States as alleged family units along our
Southern Border. However, the children have subsequently
departed the United States with unrelated adults via commercial
airlines to the Northern Triangle. HSI is currently
investigating these incidents to determine if these children
are being used and recycled by adult migrants for the purposes
of defrauding the United States.
HSI is committed to augmenting CBP's resources at our
Southern Border to ensure the safety of children and to prevent
them from being utilized by criminal enterprises to exploit our
immigration laws. However, without additional congressional
support we will be unable to sustain this effort.
I thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today
and I look forward to answering your questions.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Nevano. Normally I would
throw questions out to our Committee Members right away but I
have a couple I want to go over quickly.
Mr. Hastings, you talked about current levels, 12,000 to
13,000 being held in CBP custody. John Sanders quoted, in the
newspaper today, said the capacity of Border Patrol stations is
about 4,000. Is that pretty accurate?
Mr. Hastings. Yes, sir. That is accurate, and that is
across the entire Southwest Border. So 4,000 is a healthy
number. So even though we have brought those levels from 19,000
in May, as I talked about earlier, we are still sitting at
12,000 to 13,000 every day, which is well above the capacity
level.
Chairman Johnson. Again, that is the capacity of the
standard stations, correct? You have put up things like PGA
tents, we saw those, other types of military tents, the types
used by our military in Iraq, that type of thing. Correct? Is
that how you have expanded capacity?
Mr. Hastings. That is, sir. So, I mean, you have seen, in
multiple areas, primarily RGV in El Paso, where we have been
forced to move bodies out, transport them out, because we are
over capacity in that location. We have transported them to
either Del Rio Sector to process or to Laredo Sector to
process.
To your point, we have stood up additional soft-sided
facilities. We have stood up two at Donna in RGV, and we have
stood up one in El Paso as well, to assist, and there is one
currently being stood up at Yuma to assist.
Chairman Johnson. So talk about the roadblock, because I
know Border Patrol, you are trying to process, create the A-
file as quickly as possible and then turn them over to ICE.
Correct? I mean, that is the process. You apprehend them,
develop the--screen them for medical conditions, take them to
hospitals, do anything you can to treat them with as much
compassion as possible, but your job is really to turn them
over to ICE as quickly as possible. Correct?
Mr. Hastings. So two things. One, yes, we process the
family units and the single adults as quickly as possible, and
the job is to turn them over to Enforcement and Removal
Operations (ERO) ICE. The UAC, they are our top priority. We
process them first, so we can get them entered into the system
to be turned over to HHS.
Chairman Johnson. So what is the roadblock in terms of why
you are so over capacity?
Mr. Hastings. So one is sheer volume. The system is
overwhelmed, so just sheer volume alone. If you look back,
historically, demographically, 70 to 90 percent of who we
arrested we could easily repatriate immediately back to Mexico.
Today we are seeing 82 percent of those that we arrest are from
other than Mexico, and that population is very difficult to
repatriate under the current laws that we have going.
Chairman Johnson. So one of the complaints I hear on the
border, from Border Patrol, is ICE does not have the capacity,
so Border Patrol is saying, ``ICE, take these individuals'' and
ICE is saying, ``We do not have the capacity.'' And then, of
course, ICE, particularly the children, go to HHS, and we do
not have the capacity either. It is just kind of backing them
right up to Border Patrol, right?
Mr. Hastings. It is. So I think everyone in the system, the
entire system, is overwhelmed right now. That is absolutely
correct. We are holding these individuals longer than we want
to. We do not want to be holding these individuals for longer
than 72 hours. If we could get rid of them quicker than that,
that would be great as well. But we do not want to be holding
kids in detention facilities, our detention facilities, which
were not designed for that. If we had zero in custody that
would be great.
Chairman Johnson. Yes, again, there is no incentive. You
are not trying to hold children longer than 72 hours. You would
just like to turn them over to ICE and to HHS as quickly as
possible. It is just not possible right now.
Mr. Hastings. As I understand it, HHS is at max capacity,
as is ICE ERO, and they need additional funding for bed spaces.
Chairman Johnson. Mr. Nevano, you talked about a case where
a child was purchased for $84.
Mr. Nevano. That is correct, Senator.
Chairman Johnson. You also listed a number of different
stats in terms of how many people had been apprehended, the
number of fraudulent families, fraudulent documents, that type
of thing.
In the scheme of things, where you are looking at over
400,000 accompanied children, primarily people coming in as
family units, one of the things I was trying to get a sense of
in this hearing is how prevalent the human trafficking element,
the sex trafficking, the involuntary servitude is within this
process. You obviously have limited resources in terms of how
many things you can investigate. I mean, I have heard
statistics in terms of how many crimes are actually ever
detected or prosecuted or arrests made.
What is your sense of how prevalent this is? I mean, do you
have any sense, whatsoever? Are you as suspicious as I am that
there is a lot of this going on?
Mr. Nevano. Senator, keep in mind that a lot of times you
do not need a border nexus to have human trafficking. So a lot
of times it is very difficult for our CBP counterparts at the
border to actually identify a human trafficking element or
crime. Usually the human trafficking element occurs once they
make it into the United States, and that is when we are seeing
more of the human trafficking element. So a smuggling event
starts off at the border, but once the person gets into the
interior, as you mentioned in your opening comments, it often
turns into a situation of exploitation where that migrant is
then charged, held against their will, their families are
exported back home to pay more money to pay off their smuggling
debt.
Chairman Johnson. So let's go back to the process. Border
Patrol apprehends, processes, turns over to ICE. ICE then--
again, when I was, for example, in El Paso--turns them over to
an organization like the Annunciation House, who also helps
allocate them to other churches to further care for
individuals, but try and identify family members or relatives
or some place where they can be sent to. People buy plane
tickets, buy bus tickets, and these individuals are sent all
over the country. Is that basically what is happening? Again,
as rapidly as possible. That is occurring within 6, 7, 8, or 9
days, general.
Mr. Hastings. Yes, sir, that is occurring very quickly. In
March we began releasing non-criminal, processed families,
because we were at 19,000. So we began releasing them, working
closely with our NGO partners to provide service for them after
release.
Chairman Johnson. Now when you say you began releasing,
Border Patrol began releasing them, right, bypassing the step
with ICE, right into non-government organizations.
Mr. Hastings. That is correct, sir. Our capacity levels at
19,000 and climbing, for the safety of our officers, our
agents, and for those that we detained, we began releasing.
Chairman Johnson. So my final point is, in part of that
processing, I think the migrants give you an address where they
think they are going to go. Correct?
Mr. Hastings. Yes, sir.
Chairman Johnson. But once you turn them over to non-
government organizations you have no idea where they really go.
Mr. Hastings. That is correct. They are provided with a
change-of-address form, in case they go someplace else, but
where they ultimately go after we release them, or on an order
of recognizance, we do not control where they go or how they
get there.
Chairman Johnson. Again, the assumption is they are going
to meet up with some relative? A lot of people have come in
during the Central American wars from the 1980s, so there are a
lot of people they know, and they have social media. But we
still are finding families in stash houses.
Mr. Hastings. That is correct. Yes, sir.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Peters.
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know two of our
Members, Senator Hassan and Senator Rosen, have a mark-up so I
would defer my questioning and defer to Senator Hassan.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HASSAN
Senator Hassan. Thank you very much, Senator Peters, for
the courtesy. Thank you to Chairman Johnson and Ranking Member
Peters for this hearing. Thank you to all of our witnesses for
being here to testify as well as for your service to our
country, and please thank all the men and women you work with
on our behalf as well.
We all want to make sure that those of you on the front
lines have the resources you need. We also want to make sure
that you are doing your jobs consistent with American values,
and I think that is something we all share.
Mr. Howe, I wanted to start with a question to you. It
would be great if we could have a brief update on drug seizures
at our land ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border. Have
we seen an increase in trafficking of any particular narcotic
over the past 6 months?
Mr. Howe. Thank you, Senator, for the question, and thank
you for visiting McAllen in May.
Our narcotics users are on track to match our numbers from
last year. Year to date we have seized more than 39,000 pounds
of methamphetamine, which is tracking a little bit higher than
normal; 38,000 pounds of cocaine; 3,200 pounds of heroin; and
nearly 2,000 pounds of fentanyl.
Senator Hassan. Thank you. In particular, have fentanyl
seizures increased or decreased over the past 6 months, and
what does that tell you about the drug cartels' plans for the
trade of fentanyl?
Mr. Howe. I think we are seeing less through our mail
facilities and is trending up slightly on the Southern Border
with the fentanyl.
Senator Hassan. Right. Of course, while the size of the
seizures of fentanyl that you just recounted sounds smaller
than the other drugs, 2,000 pounds of fentanyl is an awful lot
of fentanyl, given its lethality.
Mr. Howe. Absolutely.
Senator Hassan. Mr. Hastings, how do Border Patrol's drug
seizure numbers compare with CBP's seizures at ports of entry?
Mr. Hastings. Thank you for the question. So we have a
noticed the hard narcotics generally trending up, and what I
mean specifically, cocaine seizures are up, methamphetamine
seizures are up, and heroin seizures are up. Cocaine, about
9,700 pounds of cocaine seized so far this fiscal year between
the ports of entry.
Senator Hassan. Right.
Mr. Hastings. About 9,800 pounds of methamphetamine seized
between the ports of entry. Heroin, 448 pounds of heroin seized
so far between the ports of entry. Marijuana is slightly down
at about 200,000 pounds, and fentanyl, although down a little
bit at 149 pounds, still obviously very highly concerning.
Senator Hassan. Thank you for the information.
Mr. Hastings, I want to turn to another topic. I understand
very clearly, from my visits to the border, the one I just did
with Senators Johnson and Peters and the one I did last year,
that we are facing a humanitarian and security crisis along the
Southwestern Border. I agree with you that we need
comprehensive immigration reform in order to help relieve some
of the flow of migrants into the United States. However, there
is absolutely no excuse for the reported conditions at Border
Patrol facilities that house child migrants.
Outside lawyers recently visited a Border Patrol facility
in Clint, Texas, where they reported widespread instances of
children living in squalor, being denied the ability to shower
for weeks at a time, caring for infants just a few years
younger than themselves, and being locked in cages for the vast
majority of the day.
Similar reports of gross mismanagement and horrible
conditions have come to light at the Border Patrol facilities
at McAllen and El Paso, as well as a private facility in
Homestead, Florida.
I truly understand how overwhelmed Border Patrol is. I
think you have done a very good job of highlighting it in your
testimony. I certainly saw a great deal of it when I was down
at the border just last month. I also understand that CBP needs
funding to address this crisis. Hopefully we will be able to
take action here in the Senate on an emergency aid package in
the coming days.
However, when dealing with children, your first and
foremost priority is to ensure that the children in the Federal
Government's custody are treated with the same kind of care,
dignity, and support that we would want and expect for any
child.
To that end, Mr. Hastings, I would like a very clear answer
on these questions. First, does CBP have an obligation to
provide toothpaste and soap to children in your custody? Yes or
no.
Mr. Hastings. We are providing that in El Paso, in Clint
Station.
Senator Hassan. The news reports say otherwise, but you now
say you do have an obligation to do that.
Mr. Hastings. We have been at the Clint Station, and
generally all of our stations across the Southwest Border are
provided with a variety of hygiene products. Even though our
facilities were not constructed for the demographic we are
seeing----
Senator Hassan. I understand that, and my time is limited
so I do understand that you are dealing with difficult
facilities. I do understand that there is a backup with HHS,
which I think HHS could do more to solve. But at the end of the
day, what I am hearing you say is that you agree that children
should be provided soap and toothbrush if they are in your
custody, which is a different position than what the
Administration has been saying in court.
Mr. Hastings. We are providing those things now. We have
been and we will continue to.
Senator Hassan. Do you have an obligation to feed, clothe,
and clean the children in your custody?
Mr. Hastings. We provide three hot meals a day and snacks
are unlimited to those in our care.
Senator Hassan. You do understand that that is in direct
contradiction with the news reports that we have been reading,
and from what lawyers who have been visiting these children and
interviewing them are telling us.
Mr. Hastings. I would ask that you understand that those
are the plaintiffs' attorneys who have a case against the
government.
Senator Hassan. You should understand that I am a member of
the bar of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and I hold
attorneys to very high standards, and I doubt very strongly
that any attorney would be fabricating this information.
Mr. Hastings. I understand, ma'am.
Senator Hassan. What steps is the Border Patrol taking
right now to ensure that the mismanagement of child migrants in
Clint, Texas, is not occurring at every other border patrol
facility along the Southern Border?
Mr. Hastings. So all of the allegations that you have
mentioned above that were made have all been reported to the
Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and will be thoroughly
investigated. They have also been reported to the Office of
Professional Responsibility (OPR) within CBP. They will be
thoroughly investigated.
Senator Hassan. I am pleased that they will be
investigated, but my question is what are you actually doing to
make sure that as you are dealing with an unprecedented number
of migrant children that you are ensuring that there is enough
soap and toothbrushes, that there is enough food and enough
time for them to be outside and out of very confined spaces?
What I am asking is, what are you operationally doing to change
the circumstances?
We are hearing reports, not just from one facility, not
just from two facilities, not just from one source, that these
children are living in terrible conditions that would violate
any standard of any institution that we all would expect in
this country. What are you doing to actually make sure that
children are getting the care and the sanitary conditions and
the food that they need?
Mr. Hastings. So we have done a great deal. As I mentioned
earlier, we have brought in shower facilities just for this
population and for others, due to the new demographic and how
long we are holding them. We have increased our medical
contract across the Southwest Border for medical assessments
and medical care. We have increased, as I mentioned in my oral
statement, the amount of operational funding that we are
spending on consumables, diapers, food, formula, all of those
things.
If you walk into many of our locations on the Southwest
Border, including Clint, you will see an area, a storeroom,
that frankly looks like Costco, with these supplies that are
available, and when agents are providing these supplies they
are documenting what they are providing.
So we have those supplies readily available and we are
offering and providing those supplies now.
Senator Hassan. I am over time. I thank the Chairman for
his indulgence. There is a huge disconnect between your
testimony and between what we are getting as reports from the
facilities. I hope very much that we can just focus on making
sure the children are clean, well cared for, safe, and released
as quickly as possible.
Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Hassan, we will work with you to
get those answers. One thing I do know that Border Patrol is
doing, for example, in El Paso, instead of 28 Border Patrol
agents on the border, 25 are caring for children and families
and we have 2 or 3 of them over an 11-mile stretch, and we are
taking OFO officers from ports of entry and also putting them
on the border.
Senator Hassan. We saw that at the border. My issue is not
with how hard the men and women on the front lines are trying.
My issue is what we are doing operationally to change the
circumstance on the ground so that these children are well
cared for and safe. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Right. Senator Rosen.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROSEN
Senator Rosen. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank
you, Senator Peters, for deferring to our committee, and thank
you for the service and work that you all do. It is difficult,
it is challenging, and oftentimes heartbreaking, so we do
appreciate that.
And like the Chairman said, we all saw that awful and
heartbreaking photo of the toddler who drowned while clutching
her father's neck. I cannot even begin to imagine, as a mother,
what those last moments for that father and daughter were like,
and I believe the mother was on the other side of the river,
and I do pray, like the Chairman, that this photo, and what we
talk about today, moves this body into action.
So let's talk about the Remain in Mexico policy. According
to the State Department's Trafficking in Persons June 2019
report, over the past 5 years we know that human traffickers,
as was said, have exploited numerous victims in Mexico. We know
the vulnerable groups--women, children. The vast majority of
foreign victims are forced into labor, sex trafficking, mostly
from countries in the Northern Triangle. They are on their way
to the United States.
But against this backdrop, in January 2019, DHS issued a
new policy guidance on Migrant Protection Protocols, known as
the Remain in Mexico policy. Under this policy, certain asylum-
seekers, including families, are sent back to Mexico to wait in
that country for the entire duration of their U.S. immigration
court proceedings. That could take months; it could take years.
And so we do know that there is a challenge in Federal
court, but I am concerned that this policy is going to drive
more and more people into the arms of those who wish to exploit
them, making the problem worse, and I can tell you that the
State Department's own annual report backs me up on this.
So my question to you, and I am hoping that you can provide
us the numbers if you do not have them, do you know how many
individuals seeking asylum, that DHS has returned to Mexico
under the Migrant Protocols Policy (MPP)? Any of you?
Mr. Howe. Thank you, Senator, for the question. I have the
numbers for Office of Field Operation, so for the ports of
entry we are running MPP in San Diego, and to date we have
returned 665; in Calexico, 96; in El Paso, 539. So 1,300.
Senator Rosen. How many families were arriving as family
unit? Excuse me.
Mr. Howe. I will have to get back to you on that number. I
do not have that.
Senator Rosen. Also, do you know the number of
unaccompanied minors?
Mr. Howe. Minors would not be a part of the program. They
are not considered for MPP.
Senator Rosen. To your knowledge, are these programs--are
there plans to expand these policies beyond San Isidro,
Calexico, and the El Paso ports of entry?
Mr. Howe. We are in ongoing discussions internally and with
the Mexican authorities on expansion.
Senator Rosen. So you do not have a timeline for when----
Mr. Howe. I do not.
Senator Rosen. You can report back to us when you do?
Mr. Howe. Yes, ma'am.
Senator Rosen. Thank you. I also want to say that reports
have indicated that DHS has returned to Mexico asylum-seekers
who are pregnant or children with neurological disorders. That
is despite guidance that clearly states individuals with known
medical issues should not be subject to this policy. Have we
been investigating these cases? Do you know of any?
Mr. Howe. I am not aware of the allegations but we
generally do not include migrants that have a known physical or
mental illness, if there is any criminality, history of
violence.
Senator Rosen. What about pregnant women?
Mr. Howe. If a migrant is in a long-term pregnancy or there
are sensitivities to the pregnancy----
Senator Rosen. They are all long-term pregnancies. They
have an end to the term. We know the term of that.
Mr. Howe. Yes. They would not be considered.
Senator Rosen. Thank you. I have a couple of minutes. I
want to go back and talk about metering at the ports of entry.
Of course, again, CBP, you have a practice of metering, queue
management, as you call it, at the ports of entry all along the
U.S.-Mexico border, where asylum-seekers are required to wait
for indefinite periods for the opportunity just to be
processed.
Can you talk to me about why you are employing the process
of metering or queue management, and is it happening across all
ports of entry?
Mr. Howe. Thank you, Senator. Yes, it is. It is a
discretionary balance used by our port managers to really
balance and assess our mission requirements--our
counternarcotic, our facilitation of trade and travel, and the
processing of migrants, and balancing our resources against
that. So putting them in all those different areas, and without
focusing them in any one particular area.
Senator Rosen. So how could we help? As Congress, how can
we help you speed up this process so you do not have to manage
this queue and you can get through----
Mr. Howe. I think it is the whole process, Senator. It is
our facilities that were not designed to house large groups of
individuals, and then ICE ERO is not in a position to be able
to take them. So if we did increase and we would be holding
them longer, and ERO would have an increased difficulty in
finding bed space.
So it is a balance that right now, with ERO and HHS's
capacity issues, it is adequate.
Senator Rosen. So we need to have people talking to each
other to increase the flow and the capacity of what we can do,
and, of course, to Senator Hassan's point, doing it in a human
and kind way.
Can you tell me, too, the numbers, quickly before I end
here, how many migrants you are processing at CBP daily?
Mr. Howe. At our ports of entry?
Senator Rosen. Yes.
Mr. Howe. It varies across the Southwest Border, based on
that balance, as I mentioned, the discretionary balance of what
we are----
Senator Rosen. Can you give me a rough estimate?
Mr. Howe. Three hundred.
Senator Rosen. Do you know how many are currently in line
waiting in Mexico?
Mr. Howe. That is difficult to nail down because those
numbers come from the Mexican authorities. But we have been
told in each one of the areas roughly 3,000 to 4,000.
Senator Rosen. And so based on what you know, what do you
know to be the average time an asylum-seeker will have to wait?
Mr. Howe. It has been some time since I have checked with
San Diego but what I last heard, a few months ago, was 5 to 6
weeks.
Senator Rosen. Five to 6 weeks. I hope that, again, we can
do something about this, that we can help. I have so many more
questions that I will submit for the record about the
conditions for children, young families, and we want to be sure
that we stop the exploitation because nothing in my mind is
more heartbreaking, and I can only imagine when you opened that
trailer what it did to you, and the nightmares you probably
have remembering that. So I want that to motivate us to do the
right things.
Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. So, Senator Rosen, because we asked a
similar question. I have to respond to get it in the record.
Currently, as of June 16 of this year, 11,575 individuals
have been returned to remain in Mexico. 1,109 came from the
ports of entry, 10,466 came from Border Patrol. So about 10
percent come through the ports of entry and the rest have come
into this country illegally and then they are returned. So
again, the total number is 11,575. Senator Peters.
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to pick up
on those questions of Senator Rosen and the numbers. So is that
the number of individuals turned away at the port of entry
under the current metering practices? If you can give me a
number of that, I just want to clarify that, either Mr.
Hastings or Mr. Howe? Yes. How many have been turned away
because of the metering process?
Mr. Howe. That is extremely difficult, if not impossible,
to identify the number that are not crossing the boundary line.
In many cases, the NGO's are holding them in Mexico or caring
for them until there is an opportunity for us to take on more
migrants. That is a communication between us, the Mexican
authorities, and the NGO. So it is nearly impossible.
Senator Peters. There are not folks coming across and you
are saying, ``You cannot come across today because of the
metering process?'' You are saying you do not know that number?
Mr. Howe. We do not.
Senator Peters. Obviously the tragic situation we have all
talked about, with this father and his young daughter, the
story is that he died after attempting to seek asylum at a port
of entry and he waited for over 2 months in Mexico. To both Mr.
Hastings and Mr. Howe, what do you think is the relationship
between the metering at the ports of entry and an increase in
families that we are seeing that are trying to cross between
ports of entry?
Mr. Hastings. Sir, I just know that--I mean, we have seen
an increase in the volume of family units continue to build
month after month. I am not sure what the result is with the
queue management. When we are interviewing these individuals,
quite frankly, what they are telling us is ``we have heard on
social media or we have heard from folks who are already in the
country, bring a child and you will be set free.'' I mean, that
is what we are hearing.
Senator Peters. That is not my question. My question is
what is the relationship? You are metering folks that are
coming across the port of entry, so they cannot. We know this
gentleman, who tragically died with his daughter, was waiting 2
months and said was turned away from the metering, and so then
decided to go not in a port of entry--and we are seeing more
and more folks. What is the relationship of people who, if they
cannot come through a port of entry they are now trying to
cross at other places on the border?
Mr. Howe. I think it is difficult for me to speculate,
Senator, what numbers that occur. I mean, as I said to Senator
Rosen, it is that delicate balance of managing our resources at
all our different mission sets and processing migrants is
important, but if we were to process more migrants it is going
to have to come from something. It is not going to come from
our counternarcotic mission. It is not going to come from our
international security initiative. So it would have from
facilitation. We do not want to have U.S. citizens waiting
longer to return to the United States. So that balance is what
we are trying to strike.
Senator Peters. We are discussing, also, trafficking and
smugglers and the problem related to that. Does it make sense
that if it is more difficult to come across a port of entry and
just present yourself at a port of entry to the legal process,
and then you want to go then, or attempt to get into the
country a different way? That might actually increase the
business for smugglers and cartels who will say, ``We will take
care of the situation for you. Just pay us and we will get you
in some other way.'' Is there a correlation there? Is there or
not?
Mr. Howe. Again, I think it is difficult to speculate. We
do have smuggling attempts that occur at our ports of entry. We
have over 400 a year across the Southwest Border, where
migrants are either presenting somebody else's documents or
they are hidden in a vehicle. So it is difficult for me to
know.
Senator Peters. Is there anything being done at the Mexican
border to ensure the migrants who are waiting to cross are not
being recruited by smugglers at the border, that are being
approached to use their services? Are either we or the Mexican
government engaged in attempting to disrupt that kind of
business connection?
Mr. Howe. I do not have first-hand knowledge of that but
the Mexican authorities would have that responsibility.
Senator Peters. Would we want to know what the Mexican
authorities are doing, and wouldn't we encourage them to do
something along those lines?
Mr. Howe. Absolutely.
Senator Peters. Why has that not been done?
Mr. Howe. I am sure it has been done at the local level.
Senator Peters. Can we find out? Is it possible to get that
information?
Mr. Howe. Absolutely.
Senator Peters. I would appreciate that.
CBP has said that between mid-April and June 14, over 1,800
family units were interviewed who presented indications of
fraud, with 275 fraudulent families identified, as based on the
data that I have. Chief Hastings, how many total migrants
crossed the Southern Border during that timeframe? I believe it
was roughly over 200,000. Is that accurate?
Mr. Hastings. Sir, what was the timeframe again? I am
sorry.
Senator Peters. Mid-April to June 14, so 2 months.
Mr. Hastings. April to June? So we have had a high volume,
I think 132,000 last month. I can tell you, for the year, that
we have had 5,100 fraudulent claims so far, fraudulent family
claims that we know of.
Senator Peters. What timeframe is that?
Mr. Hastings. That is for the fiscal year.
Senator Peters. Oh, fiscal year. Yes, I am looking at a 2-
month period here.
Mr. Hastings. I do not have that specific information but I
think the biggest thing, and one of the most important things
is you heard Chief Rodolfo Karisch testify last time, it is due
to the volume that we are seeing. It is very difficult to spend
time interviewing and getting in-depth with these individuals.
Senator Peters. So my question also is, what do you
consider--how do you define a fraudulent family? Is a
grandmother and a grandson considered a fraudulent family? Or
is an aunt or nephew, an adult sibling of a minor sibling? What
is a fraudulent family?
Mr. Hastings. So by Trafficking Victims Protection
Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) definition it is a parent or a
legal guardian or one that is less than 18 years old.
Senator Peters. A parent or legal guardian. So a
grandmother bringing a grandson would be a fraudulent family.
Mr. Hastings. It is not necessarily counted as fraudulent.
They are just not a family unit. They will be--in other words--
--
Senator Peters. So it would show a non-family unit as
coming across. A grandmother with her grandson or granddaughter
would be considered not a family unit----
Mr. Hastings. That is correct.
Senator Peters [continuing]. Based on your definition.
Mr. Hastings. Yes, sir.
Senator Peters. Could you give some examples of the
indicators that you would use to warrant them being interviewed
as a possible fraudulent family?
Mr. Hastings. A lot of times we will see just the sheer
reaction between the child and the adult. The agents will see
that and notice that, and they will start questioning further
to try to determine if, indeed, it looks like there is true
familial relationship. We also saw quite a bit of false
documentation, specifically from Honduras and Guatemala as
well, birth certificates.
Senator Peters. Could you also describe the way the CBP
officers identified the migrants that participated specifically
in the DNA pilot double helix? These were not random sample of
families. Is that correct, that these are folks that agents
suspected as unlikely to be with a parent before you did the
DNA testing?
Mr. Nevano. Thank you for your question, Senator. We sent a
team down to McAllen and El Paso, Texas, and the referrals were
given to us after Border Patrol had an opportunity to interview
those individuals. If there were individuals that they had been
suspected of being in a fraudulent family unit they would refer
it to the team that was down there to conduct the DNA testing.
This was after interviews, a review of their documents, and as
my colleague stated, if the behaviors did not appear to be in a
familial relationship, where there seemed to be some distance
between them, they used those factors to refer that family unit
over for a DNA test.
Senator Peters. I am out of time, Mr. Chairman, but just
one last question. Do you have an after-action report that you
could share with Congress to assess the viability of
implementing DNA testing on a wider scale?
Mr. Nevano. Senator, we did do an after-action report and
we will see about allowing you to see that report.
Senator Peters. I would appreciate it if you could get that
to me. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. A couple of points. Those DNA tests are
about $200 a test. If we had 150,000 family units that is about
$30 million to do DNA testing. Also, according to the chart,\1\
93 percent of the family units and UACs have crossed between
the ports of entry; 7 percent, 30,000 of those have come
through the ports of entry. I mean, the vast volume really is
coming illegally between the ports of entry, because that is
the easier ticket in.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The chart referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the Appendix
on page 322.
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So I understand the point you are making but I think it is
just so widely known that the way to cross is coming across
illegally, because within 6, 7, 8 days you will be set free.
Senator Scott.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SCOTT
Senator Scott. Thank you, Chief, for being here, and thank
you for what you are doing. I am disgusted with how Congress
has handled all that. I mean, you could not make this up. We
know we want a secure border. Then people want to complain that
you are not doing your job. I think it is disgusting what
people are doing.
So Mr. Hastings, what do you need Congress to do to allow
you to do the job you were actually hired to do, rather than
the job you are having to do today because Congress has not
acted?
Mr. Hastings. Thank you for the question, sir. So as I said
in my opening, first and foremost, short-term, we need
additional funding for the supplemental, as do our partners,
because, as I mentioned again, the volume of what we have in
our custody right now, that 13,000 is primarily unaccompanied
alien children, approximately 1,000 today, and then in addition
to that it is single adults that we have in custody as well. So
HHS and ERO need funding for bed space to get those out of
Border Patrol custody and into the care of those who are set up
for long-term detention. That is short-term.
Long-term, we need a fix that quits allowing this draw for
family units and unaccompanied alien children to come to the
United States. We have to stop this draw.
Senator Scott. Mr. Howe.
Mr. Howe. I agree. Thank you, Senator. I agree with
everything that Chief Hastings said, but in addition, just to
underscore the importance of ICE ERO to get the proper funding
and bed space and HHS so that they can relieve our facilities
that were not designed for the long-term detention, so we are
not in that situation.
Senator Scott. OK. Do either of you believe we need to have
more border protection? I mean, so far you have talked about
supplemental, and the Flores decision, primarily, so what
about--do we need any funding to secure the border? I mean,
this would not be happening if we had a secure border.
Mr. Hastings. Right now I think we absolutely need more
funding for border security, but our biggest issue now is
pulling away from that 40 to 60 percent of agents that we are
pulling off the line to deal with the humanitarian crisis, the
families, and the UACs. That is the biggest problem that we
have right now, and in the meantime, while we are dealing with
that demographic, a large number of single adults are still
trying to evade arrest, to your point. A large dynamic of drugs
as well, trying to evade. They are using these family units who
are trying to cross as a diversion tactic, in a lot of cases,
to be able to make money on drugs and single adults trying to
evade arrest.
Senator Scott. Mr. Nevano, would you like to add anything?
Mr. Nevano. Sure. Thank you for your question. We are the
investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, and
the concern that we would have is the more resources we take
away from conducting the complex criminal investigation,
targeting the transnational criminal organizations that are
actually organizing these smuggling loads and human trafficking
by putting people on the border to augment the need that CBP
has taken away, potentially, from conducting our mission, which
is, protecting the homeland via investigations and trying to
target these transnational criminal organizations.
Senator Scott. Mr. Hastings, how does it make you feel when
you get asked questions to suggest that you or your team does
not care about these children that you are taking care of? How
do you all feel every day when you get up and you read the
papers or see the news where somebody suggests that you are not
doing your job?
Mr. Hastings. So it is disgusting to me and it is hurtful
to me because daily, I see our agents doing just the opposite.
Yesterday I saw our agents in Carrizo Springs jump out of the
water, save a 13-year-old child who was unconscious, give him
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), give him mouth-to-mouth,
and essentially bring him back to life. That happened yesterday
on our border and that happens quite often, time and time
again. Our men and women are out there risking their lives
every day to save those migrants that are either put into a bad
position by smugglers or put themselves into a bad position.
So above and beyond that, our agents go to the maximum to
care for these children. You have seen pictures, as well, of
our agents holding these children, trying to comfort them. So
it is very hurtful for us, for our agents who are out there
trying to do the best they can at securing our border and
dealing with this humanitarian crisis.
Senator Scott. How has it impacted your ability to recruit
and retain your team to do this job?
Mr. Hastings. So our workforce is doing well right now but
they want to see a light at the end of the tunnel, quite
frankly, to be able to go back to their primary national
security mission, and that is what we are hopeful for, that we
go back to a primarily national security mission and we see
legislative changes that allow us to do that, that quit the
draw for the family units and the unaccompanied alien children.
Senator Scott. So do you have concerns when you do your job
every day that because of how much time you are having to spend
because Congress will not act that we have individuals that are
crossing the border that want to harm Americans?
Mr. Hastings. I am concerned with that. I am concerned with
recruiting individuals in this current state that we are in
right now, recruiting good agents to do this in the future, and
I am worried when we are diverted by the humanitarian crisis
what is coming through our border.
The best example I could give is about 2 months ago we had
a large group come across in Rio Grande Valley. This was broad
daylight. At the same time we had 791 pounds of cocaine a mile
away, cross the border in broad daylight. That tells me that
there is very little fear in the minds of the smuggling
organizations and the narcotics traffickers because they know
we are tied up with other things, humanitarian mission.
Senator Scott. Anybody else?
Mr. Nevano. Senator, I have been around for almost three
decades and I have been use to this, via my career, but I would
like to put it in perspective. Can you imagine a new agent that
has just come on, that just went out and had a very successful
day. They seize enough fentanyl that could kill hundreds and
millions of people, or they arrested a potential terrorist
suspect, or a gang member, or they rescued a child from an
exploitation.
They get home and they turn on the nightly news, and there
is information on the news saying abolish certain agencies. Can
you imagine how that agent feels? I know, personally, when I
come home I do not even want to watch that because it is very
hurtful, as my colleague stated. So it is very hurtful, and the
men and women of ICE, HSI, ERO are out there every day trying
to make this country safe.
Mr. Howe. I will just add, Senator, it is an unnecessary
distraction. Our officers want to be mission-focused. They want
to be doing what they were hired to do, enforcing our laws and
facilitating lawful trade and travel. We do not want to be
distracted with processing migrants to the numbers we are.
Senator Scott. I have been here 6 months. I am disgusted
that we sit here, and you watch on the news, people who are
trying to do their jobs are getting attacked and Congress sits
here and does not do their job. It is the most disgusting thing
I have ever seen in my entire career, my business career. You
would not do this in your business career. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Hawley.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HAWLEY
Senator Hawley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can I just agree
with what Senator Scott just said? I mean, the behavior of this
Congress is absolutely pathetic. I mean, it is just pathetic.
People up here should be apologizing to you for the total
dereliction of duty that this Congress has undertaken. I have
never seen anything like it in my life. This is, by my count,
the sixth hearing, full hearing, I have sat through in 4 months
on the border, which is great. I am glad we are paying some
attention to it. The problem is this Congress never does
anything. This Congress refuses to do anything. We know what
the facts are. You have outlined them again today. CBP is over
capacity, underfunded, undermanned. ICE, over capacity,
underfunded. HHS, over capacity, underfunded. Yet this Congress
will do nothing.
Meanwhile, the cartels and the smuggling rings, what are
they doing? They are lying to vulnerable families, exploiting
children in order to turn profits and abuse our broken asylum
system. We know it needs to happen. We know we need to reform
the asylum system. We know we have to stop the pull factors, as
well as address the push factors. We know all that, but this
Congress will not do anything.
This morning I have heard, just from my colleagues across
the aisle this morning I have heard statements like, ``I am
heartbroken,'' ``No one is more vulnerable than a child,''
``The status quo is unacceptable, it is unsustainable,'' but
yet we do not do anything to change it. There is no will to
change it. Children are being exploited.
This morning we woke up to the picture of the man from El
Salvador and his young daughter dead, face-down in the water.
Why? Because they were exploited. Who knows how much that poor
gentleman paid to some smuggling ring who told him that if he
just came to the United States, to our border, and claimed
asylum he would automatically get in. That was a lie. Who knows
what lies he was told? And here he ends up, he and his little
baby, dead, and this Congress still refuses to act.
It is absolutely unconscionable. We know what needs to be
done. Nobody will do it. My view is we can talk and talk and
talk, but until this Congress is willing to take some action--I
am sorry for what it is you have to deal with. I am sorry that
this Congress has left you without the resources you need. I am
sorry that this Congress has not done its duty. I am sorry that
this Congress has left not only our Southern Border exposed and
vulnerable but has left children exploited, day after day after
day. And until this wretched Congress decides to do something I
do not know why we even bother to have these hearings. I do not
know why it even matters, because this Congress will not act.
This Congress refuses to act, and it is a complete dereliction
of duty.
So thank you, gentlemen, for your service. Thank you for
what you are doing. I would just say to the President, I would
encourage the President to take every action that he possibly
can, within the bounds of the law, to address this crisis and
secure the border, because it is clear to me that this Congress
will not act in any meaningful way. And so long as this
Congress refuses to act, the President needs to act. I would
urge him and urge the Administration to do everything within
their lawful authority to address this crisis, because this
Congress is not going to.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Hawley, you missed the opening,
when I described the process that this Committee is going to
undertake. Obviously the reason we hold these hearings it is a
problem-solving process to lay out the reality. And so what I
proposed, in talking to Senator Peters, and hopefully we can do
this, is in as nonpartisan and uninflamed way as possible, but
sit down at those tables, like we did last week, where we
passed the End Government Shutdown Act, a smaller problem but
one that, I think that legislation solves, Senator Lankford's
legislation, Senator Hassan's legislation, but start working
through this problem in a very organized fashion, have open
meetings where we discuss these things, and we talk about what
do we need to do? I come from a manufacturing background,
continuous improvement--what can we do to start the process?
Senator Peters is working right now with me, other Members,
on the letter of support of Operation Safe Return, a pilot
program where we can gather information, where we can surge
resources to--I am not going to repeat it. But, we are working
on that.
But I am hoping that you will participate, and I hope every
Member of this Committee will participate in this process, a
number of meetings, hours long, where we thoroughly discuss
these problems, the different elements of the problem, and
start coming up with solutions. Again, I do not know if that
ends up in a complete piece of legislation or in those
discussions, in an organized fashion, we come up with different
elements that can be tacked onto a piece of legislation.
So again, this place does not work. It does not have much
of a problem-solving capacity. That is a frustration, Senator
Scott, that you are certainly relaying. We all experience it.
And so we are going to do something different, do something
paradigm-shifting. Again, whether we do accomplish something or
not, at least we have had a very, hopefully a thorough
discussion.
Senator Scott, did you want to----
Senator Scott. I do not believe any of it. I sit here and
preside. I sit here and preside this week and I hear people,
Democrats, get up there, and all they do is complain about
these people. They do not come up there and say, ``We ought to
fix the Flores decision.'' They do not come up there and say,
``We ought to secure the border.'' All they do is try to
embarrass these individuals sitting here. It is disgusting what
they are doing.
I watched it yesterday presiding, that somebody did it, for
15 minutes, just sit there and lambast them about what they are
doing. I mean, what--Mr. Hastings, how many people have you
ever worked with that, ``I do not care about children? I want
to do the wrong thing today.''
Mr. Hastings. Just the opposite. I have seen agents, on
their own, go out and purchase toys, bring them in for the
children to play with. I have personally stopped by and bought
meals for those that I had arrested. I have seen agents do the
same thing. I have seen agents give up their lunches so people
can eat. I mean, I have seen the humane professionalism and
outstanding work by our agents since I have been in this
agency, and long before that.
Chairman Johnson. So Senator Scott----
Senator Scott. Do you know what they are doing today? The
people that are going down to debate are going to the Homestead
facility just to make news, not to solve a problem. They are
not going to appear to solve a problem. They are appearing--how
do I make some news?
Chairman Johnson. I fully understand that. I am as
frustrated as you are with the process. I am hoping this
Committee will be different. I am hoping this process will be
different.
So engage in it. Let's give everybody a chance.
So let us get around the table like we did last week and
let's see what we can make of this. I mean, again, you have to
be tenacious. We have to start moving the football forward, or
we can throw up our hands and say we will never fix this
problem. I am saying that photograph ought to catalyze us and
we ought to try something different and start trying to solve
the problem, OK? Senator Lankford.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LANKFORD
Senator Lankford. So I want to join my colleagues in the
frustration of this day. I think what we are experiencing today
is some pent-up, abject, total frustration. March 28th of this
year, at that time Secretary of DHS came to this hearing, and
then followed up with a letter, and this was the exact quote
from her: ``We now face a system-wide meltdown. DHS facilities
are overflowing. Agents and officers are stretched too thin,
and the magnitude of arriving and detained aliens has increased
the risk of life-threatening incidents.''
Then she said: ``My greatest concern is for the children
who are put at high risk by this emergency, who are arriving
sicker than ever before after traveling on the treacherous
trek.'' But instead of actually providing funding during that
time period, this Congress delayed and did not provide the
funding, did not engage, did not try to solve it.
That same secretary, over and over and over again, said
none of this gets better until the Flores agreement is settled.
I have had personal conversations with Democrat and Republican
Members on this Committee and said at what point do we finally
admit the obvious statement that the Obama Administration made,
that the Trump administration made, that if we do not resolve
the Flores settlement none of this ever gets better because
traffickers will continue to move children across our border.
The children are currently being used as pawns now on the
border, to try to hurt the Trump administration. My Democratic
colleagues are trying to identify children that are not getting
care at the same time slowing down the process of getting
humanitarian aid to try to hurt this Presidential election.
These kids are not pawns, and the Administration has said
for month after month after month, we need additional
humanitarian assistance. But here is what has happened. Nothing
happened after that meeting in March. On May 1st, HHS sent us a
protracted letter to try to get additional assistance and
saying that we are at a crisis moment. On May 17th, they
contacted us again and said we are a critical moment. Secretary
Alex Azar, from HHS, came back and said, in that same time
period, we are at a critical moment.
We tried to move a humanitarian relief package with the
disaster relief package on May 22, and Leader Schumer came to
the floor and made this statement: ``The Democrats are ready to
pass the bipartisan disaster relief package that has already
been agreed to and written but we should pass disaster
agreement as is and return to unrelated issues at a later
date.'' ``Unrelated issues'' is this humanitarian issue. To say
these unrelated issues are slowing our disaster work so we will
put the humanitarian work off until later. And then yesterday
Senator Schumer was back on the floor, criticizing the
President and criticizing all of these folks and their
agencies, saying why aren't you taking better care of the kids?
When this Committee has talked about it for months, you all
have asked for it for months, and all we have gotten to is we
will get to unrelated issues later.
Now, I am tired of people calling my office and saying,
``How come you do not care about the kids?'' I am sure you are
tired of reading it in the media every day, ``How come you do
not care about the kids?''
If 500 people showed up at your house tomorrow and said,
``I am going to stay here for a week,'' would your house be
ready to take 500 people? What would you do if 500 people came
to your house tomorrow and said, ``I need to stay here?'' You
all are having to manage thousands of people showing up at
facilities that are not prepared for thousands of people, that
never have been, and that are certainly not set up for kids,
and the whole time we argue about what are we going to do when
everyone knows the issue. It is the Flores settlement. Every
smuggler uses that, and we will not acknowledge it, and there
has been a dramatic slowdown on trying to actually get
humanitarian aid.
Now the Senate comes to an agreement, finally, on a
humanitarian aid, and the House response with a solely partisan
bill, and says, ``No, we are going to try to do a partisan
bill,'' and then the conversation this week was, ``We may not
get to the humanitarian bill this week, if we do not get a
certain vote want on the National Defense Authorization Act
(NDAA). As Democrats, we may hold off the humanitarian bill and
NDAA for 2 weeks from now.'' Yet another delay because it is an
unrelated bill.
So I do not know if we get the humanitarian vote again this
week, because Democratic leadership is postponing, again, while
going to the floor, and saying, ``Why isn't the Trump
administration doing more about this?'' You cannot have it both
ways. This is not about hurting the President and his
Presidential election hopes for next year. This is about a
group of kids that we need to reduce the incentive for them to
be able to come illegally across our border, and we need to
take care of the folks that are already here. This is not that
hard. But it has become this horrible partisan issue that I
think all of us are really frustrated with, to say this has
been discussed to death. We have to be able to act on this.
So I want to ask just a couple of stats. How many folks are
coming across as males at this point and claiming to be 17
years old? Is there a disproportionate amount of males crossing
the border and saying ``I am 17?''
Mr. Hastings. Sir, I do not have the exact numbers but I
can tell you that we are seeing a higher number of families
with fathers as they are the primary parent that is coming
across. So we are seeing an increase in fathers with children.
I do not have the exact numbers with me.
Senator Lankford. How many countries have you seen crossing
our border with minors?
Mr. Hastings. So 140 different countries that we have seen
apprehensions, that we have made, from 140 countries, 52
countries for family units. So we have family units from 52
different countries that have crossed into the United States
this fiscal year.
Senator Lankford. And that is just this fiscal year, so
that would be since October 1 of last year.
Mr. Hastings. That is correct, sir.
Senator Lankford. Eighty-two percent of the people, you
testified, of people that are crossing the border, are coming
from countries other than Mexico, at this point. Is that
correct?
Mr. Hastings. That is correct, sir.
Senator Lankford. Guatemalan authorities that I met with
this week have stated that DHS has worked very hard with them,
and that Guatemalan authorities are continuing to be able to
work because, quite frankly, the Guatemalan authorities do not
want those kids also making this trek and they are trying to do
what they can to be able to slow down the flow from their side
as well. They were very appreciative of the work that DHS has
done to be able to partner with Guatemala, specifically.
Now I am sure if I talked to the Honduran authorities, and
the El Salvadoran authorities, they would say the same. But the
Guatemalan authorities, this week, were very grateful to our
government and the work that they are doing to be able to help
not only protect those kids but, quite frankly, they want their
kids back home, to be able to be there, and they are a little
frustrated by this whole journey as well.
As a country, we have put hundreds of millions of dollars
into Central America, into the Northern Triangle for quite a
while, to help stabilize those governments, and continue to be
able to do that, to be able to provide a safe place that is
there.
So all of this conversation about we are doing nothing to
be able to help the issues there really is we are doing a lot
of things to be able to help the issues in Central America.
What is not being done is dealing with the pull factors here,
in the Flores settlement, and frustratingly enough, also not
the humanitarian assistance.
With that I yield back.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Portman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PORTMAN
Senator Portman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was here
earlier and had the opportunity to hear you, Mr. Hastings, and
hear some of the discussion with my colleagues, Senator
Johnson, in particular, on what is going on at the border and
also from Senator Peters. I think there is now a consensus--I
certainly hope so--that we are facing a crisis. It is an
immigration crisis. It is also, by the way, a drug crisis,
impacting my home State of Ohio and every State represented on
this dais. Crystal meth is now coming in in unprecedented
numbers, as an example. We already knew that heroin was coming
in. Crystal meth is coming in entirely from the Mexican border
now, we are told.
It is also a humanitarian crisis. There is no question
about it. The men and women who you represent are being put in
an impossible position, and I hope that every member of this
body protects the right of American law enforcement to do their
job. It is a tough job, but I think you are doing it in a
professional way, and I know it is difficult.
I guess what I would like to focus on is solutions. I do
think there are some potentially bipartisan solutions, and I
want to hear from you on them. One that has always struck me as
a reasonable approach that we should be taking, which we have
done during the Obama Administration, is to have people apply
from their home country. They would apply, technically, as
refugees from their home country because you claim asylum when
you come into the United States. The criteria are the same. The
criteria that have to be met are the same that are eventually
adjudicated over here. We are finding about 15 percent of those
who apply for asylum actually receive asylum. That number, may
not be entirely accurate going forward, but the point is most
people who are applying are not receiving it. Why? Because they
are deemed, through our judicial system, to be economic
refugees, probably, and not meeting the criteria.
But what if we set up a system, as was done, again, in the
Obama Administration, where people, instead of being told by
the traffickers you have to come on this arduous journey, and
we are going to mortgage your house for you, and we are going
to take your paycheck for the next half year, and we are going
to take your kids because if you are a kid, under the Flores
decision, then you cannot be held in detention for more than 20
days. Instead, the traffickers had to say, ``You have to apply
here. You have to apply from country.''
Now two things would have to happen. One, we would have to
raise the cap on refugees, which has been lowered during this
Administration, and that should be acknowledged. It would
require, specifically, a cap to be raised for Central American
countries.
Second, we would have to provide the resources, although,
as you know, with refugee resettlement, primarily that is done
through international bodies, including the United Nation (UN)
refugee resettlement operations. So this is something that
could be internationalized.
I have talked to a number of my colleagues on the
Democratic side of the aisle about this. They have not said no.
It certainly makes sense, as part of an overall strategy, in my
view. The pull factor is the fact that you can misuse our
asylum system now. It is also the fact that you can get a job
here in America and make 10 to 20 times more than you can make
in your home country. If I was in that situation, or you were,
you would be tempted to do the same thing. It does not make it
right.
One way to do this is to have people, instead of being told
you have to make this journey up north is to say you have to
apply right here. And let's adjudicate these cases. Let us
provide the funding for it. Let us use the United Nations and
other international bodies. That reduces the flow in a
substantial way.
I just wondered if any of you, Assistant Director Nevano,
you may have some thoughts on this, Mr. Howe, Mr. Hastings, if
you had any thoughts on this idea of going back to a system
where people apply from their home country.
Mr. Nevano. Thank you for your question. I am not as versed
in that area, but the argument that you make seems to make
sense. I am familiar, back in my younger career, I actually did
process refugees, and a lot of Vietnamese, Russians back in the
early 1990s, and it was an effective system that worked. So I
could see the merits of that system and look forward to working
Congress, working with our partners if that is something that
is decided to try that out and see if it something that can
help stop this crisis.
Senator Portman. Yes, and I know you are familiar with
this, but the criteria you use to determine whether somebody
was eligible for refugee status is the same criteria we used
for the asylum status.
Mr. Nevano. Yes. It is just a difference of the section of
law. I believe it is Section 207 of the Immigration and
Nationality Act (INA) and Section 208 of the INA is the
difference, but the statutes are very similar, like you
mentioned, whether they apply here in the United States or
apply outside of the United States.
Senator Portman. There is also a requirement, should
somebody receive refugee status, that there is assistance
provided. Usually it is through a private sector entity, but
the Federal Government plays a role. Refugee resettlement we
are all familiar with. So it is a little different process but
it keeps people from coming up to this border. It keeps the
numbers we see here, hundreds a day, thousands a week, hundreds
of thousands a month, from coming up to our border. Instead,
they are told if you want to apply for this status you have to
do it back home.
Mr. Howe, Mr. Hastings, any thought on this--is this common
sense?
Mr. Howe. Senator, I am very intrigued by it. I think, yes,
this is probably common sense. It reduces the pull factors. We
will let our lawyers work out the details, but if it can be
done, if it has been done before, and working with the State
Department, and our international partners, it just makes
sense.
Senator Portman. Mr. Hastings.
Mr. Hastings. Thank you, sir. I would welcome anything that
allows our Border Patrol agents to get back to their primary
mission of securing our borders and reduces the flow.
Senator Portman. Yes. Your testimony earlier was striking
to me, when you talked about the fact that 40 to 60 percent of
your people have been pulled off their jobs, essentially, to
deal with the humanitarian crisis. I understand why they are
doing it, and they have to do it. We want to be sure that we
are providing the emergency care that so many of these migrants
need. But that is not their job.
And that leads me to my final question, which is about the
drug issue. When the Border Patrol is not on the border trying
to detect and stop these illegal drugs from coming into our
country that are killing the people I represent, that creates a
whole other crisis. It is not on the border; it is in Ohio. It
is in every State represented on this dais. And maybe, Mr.
Nevano, you can talk a little about these transnational
trafficking groups that are smuggling people but also smuggling
drugs at the same time. What can we do better to be able to
detect and stop this poison from coming into our country?
Crystal meth--back in the day we had meth labs in our States,
people made meth in their basements or their homes, and
environmental problems with that, obviously, in addition to
this poison being made that was harming our communities. We do
not see that anymore. Why? Because the crystal meth from
Mexico, pure crystal meth, is so cheap and so powerful. I am
told by law enforcement in Columbus, Ohio, it is less expensive
than buying marijuana on the streets now. And it is killing
people.
So, Mr. Nevano, what can we do to stop some of these drugs
from coming in, and how are they related to these transnational
gangs that also get involved with trafficking people?
Mr. Nevano. I had the opportunity to testify before your
Committee before about the opioid addiction in the United
States, and I know you are very well aware that we initiated a
Border Enforcement Security Team (BEST) in the State of Ohio,
and I know you were present for. That is a recent occurrence
that we are trying to stop the opioid flow into the State of
Ohio.
But our Border Enforcement Security Teams, we have 65 of
them across the country, and those teams are crucial because it
takes resources from State, local, and Federal authorities to
attack a problem, and the more Border Enforcement Security
Teams that we have to tackle the drug problem, I think the
better we can identify it.
Also, too, continue our capacity-building overseas. We have
trained what we call Transnational Criminal Investigative Units
(TCIU). We have 16 of those stationed all across the country,
and all over the world, and those individuals are dedicated and
are eyes and ears overseas to help provide us the intelligence,
the information, and execute the laws that we do not have the
authority to do so in the Central America area, in Mexico, and
the drug-producing countries. So we rely very heavily on our
trained partners and our Transnational Criminal Investigative
Units.
Senator Portman. Thank you for your service. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Carper.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. Thanks very much. Normally we just ask
questions of our witnesses. I am going to use this as a chance
to have a colloquy with two of my colleagues who I have a lot
of high regard and affection for. I might ask you questions but
I may not.
But it seems peculiar to me, as I was putting together a
congressional delegation earlier this year, and we looked at
the flow of folks coming here from Mexico over the last, I do
not know, 15 or 20 years. As you know, there are more Mexicans
going back into Mexico these days than there are Mexicans
coming into the United States.
And getting ready for our CODEL we looked at illegal
immigration numbers through the end of last October, and this
was about maybe the very beginning of this year. But we looked
at immigration numbers through the end of October. My
recollection was that in the previous 15 years, illegal
immigration from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador had
dropped by--actually, illegal immigration across our Southern
Border, over this last 15 years, through the end of October, it
was down by just a little over 80 percent. I was almost ready
to declare victory.
In the months since then, 5, 6 months since then--actually,
7, 8 months since then--we have seen this surge, this
incredible surge of illegal immigration from Honduras,
Guatemala, and El Salvador. What has happened with Mexico?
Pretty much the same. When I say ``pretty much,'' it has been
pretty much what it has been for years. They are not surging
from Mexico. There are still, I am told, more Mexicans going
back into Mexico than there are Mexican Americans coming into
the United States.
Why is it these three countries, but we are not seeing this
kind of surge from Mexico? They have property there, they have
crime there, and so forth. Why aren't they coming?
There is a great need for leadership on this issue, and I
think it has to come from this Committee. I have heard the
Chairman say, any number of times, this Committee has a great
record, history of bipartisanship, and frankly, I think this
Committee attracts people who like to get things done, work
across the aisle, and look to build consensus. We really see an
opportunity here. It is a very sad situation but we also see an
opportunity to fix it.
I would like for us to be the committee that provides that
kind of leadership. I am not interested in pointing blame. I
could easily say, in response to some of our colleagues at this
point that this Administration, point out all of their sins. I
am not going to do that. But let's see what we can do to fix
this problem. I want to sign up to do that. And, see, I look at
the four of us and if the four of us cannot work this out,
nobody can. I mean, this is just ripe for our working on it.
Do you all have anything else you want to say with that
spirit that I have just tried to kindle here? Anything you want
to say in response to that? First of all, I just thank you all
for what you do with your lives. When I was Chairman of this
Committee I used to go to the floor every month and talk about
different units of the Department of Homeland Security and
praise the men and women for the work that they do. The
Chairman and I were just out there for the opening of the new
Department of Homeland Security at St. Elizabeth's. It was a
very exciting day.
But just in the spirit of what I have just said, I would
like for you guys to say something.
Mr. Howe. Thank you, Senator, for what you said and your
commitment to work together, to work out legislation or
whatever needs to be done to address the crisis. The men and
women on the border work hard, they are proud of what they do,
and let's mission-focus them on what they need to do.
Senator Carper. Alright. Thanks. Anybody else want to say
something?
Mr. Hastings. Sir, I appreciate it, and again, for the men
and women of the Border Patrol we would just ask to work on the
legislative fixes, please, to allow them to get back to doing
their primary mission.
Senator Carper. Mr. Nevano.
Mr. Nevano. I would reiterate what my colleague said. Thank
you for addressing the issue, whatever you can do to help us
out. Again, we want to focus on the transnational criminal
organizations and focus on the large criminal networks that are
actually exploiting these individuals. Whatever you can do to
make us get back to doing that type of work and less dealing
with the border crisis, we would greatly appreciate it. Thank
you very much for bringing that up.
Senator Carper. The Chairman and I have oftentimes said, in
this room, that we have to focus on root causes. It is pull
factors and push factors. Some of the situations we have seen
in visits down to Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, if we
were living down there we would want to get our kids and our
families out of there too. Somehow it has gotten a lot easier.
People used to have to walk 1,500 miles, in all kinds of
bad weather and danger and so forth. They still do it but now
they can get in a bus and come on up, an air-conditioned bus,
and get dropped off at the border, and a lot of people are
doing it. The coyotes, the folks that are running these
operations, they are very entrepreneurial. They can find all
kinds of ways to make money, including on the bus service
business. We have to be smart enough to figure out how to shut
down. We cannot do it by ourselves, which the Mexicans--if we
are ever going to get this United States-Mexico-Canada
Agreement (USMCA) confirmed, I am not going to say that should
be one of the conditions, that they work with us to shut down
those buses. That would be part of it. There are all kinds of
things we could do.
The other thing I would say is, we have been working now
for about 3 years on Alliance for Prosperity, as you know, and
it is not the whole answer. It is part of the answer. I like to
say there is no silver bullet. There are a lot of silver BBs
and some are bigger than others. I think one of the big BBs is
making sure that we address the root causes of why people are
trying to get up here--lack of economic opportunity, and crime
and violence and corruption. What we are trying to do with the
Alliance for Prosperity is to address all three of those.
Sadly, when we look at the supplemental--and the President
has cutoff that funding to the Alliance for Prosperity,
suspended it. When we look at the legislation, the supplemental
focuses on the border and illegal immigration, we do not
restore it, which I think is a mistake. So we have to be able
to--I would like to say walk and chew gum at the same time. We
have to address those root causes and we have to address the
pull factors as well. I would sign up for doing that, and I
suspect my colleagues to my left would do so as well. Thank
you.
Chairman Johnson. First of all, Senator Carper, let me say
I appreciate your willingness to participate in this process,
and it is going to be a different kind of process. It is going
to take advantage of, I think, the nonpartisan attitude by so
many Members of this Committee. We have spent more than 30
hearings gathering information, trying to define the many root
causes of this problem. I continue to say the primary root
cause is America's insatiable demand for drugs, which has given
rise to drug cartels, destroyed these public institutions. But
having been a manufacturer, having solved a lot of problems,
there is a process you go through, and that is what I want to
see this Committee engaged in, not here at the dais but down
there, with genuine conversations, and we will do it in a very
organized process, trying to address all the complexities of
this, but also then trying to find the priorities. What are the
things we have to fix now, in the here and now, and what are
the longer-term solutions as well?
So I am absolutely dedicated to doing this, and it is going
to be a completely different process than this Senate has been
participating in as long as I have been a Senator. It is going
to be genuine conversation, it is going to be, I think,
Senators with goodwill who recognize the problem and working
toward real solutions. So again, I appreciate that. All you
have to do is show up, but we are going to be holding multiple
meetings, and they will go on for quite some time. You know how
tenacious I am.
With that, Senator Sinema.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SINEMA
Senator Sinema. Thank you, Chairman. Our Nation faces a
crisis along the Southern Border. I am committed to continuing
our bipartisan work to strengthen border security, stop the
flow of migrants to our Southern Border, and ensure fair and
humane treatment of the migrants who do come.
The situation on the ground in Arizona with our
communities, our NGO's, and our border workforce is not
sustainable, so I want to make sure that we are working
together to develop bipartisan and common-sense solutions.
These solutions have to include measures that push back against
the human traffickers and the criminal organizations who prey
on migrants, and I am pleased that we are having this hearing
and I look forward to our discussion.
My first question today is for Mr. Nevano. According to
recent data, over 590,000 migrants have crossed our borders
just this fiscal year, and all along the over 2,000-mile
journey from Central America to Arizona migrants are targeted
by criminal elements--human traffickers, smugglers who
transport migrants through Mexico for a fee, and other
criminals who are seeking to hurt these families.
Of the migrants who are coming to our border, approximately
how many have had some interaction with a criminal element
during their journey to the United States, and how many of
those migrants received assistance on their journey from
smugglers?
Mr. Nevano. Senator, thank you for your question. I am not
sure that anyone can give you the exact numbers as far as the
estimates that you are asking for. However, I would say to make
that 1,500-mile journey it is very difficult to do that on your
own. These smuggling organizations are recruiting these
individuals, making false promises to them about getting into
the United States, making a better life, promising them
lucrative jobs when they get here, and once they get here the
traffickers take over and put them in totally different
circumstances.
I will say that in order to make that journey a very high
percentage of these individuals are seeking assistance, paying
upwards of $7,000 to $8,000 for that journey, to make it to the
border, thinking they are coming for a better life, only to be
exploited once they pass the border, whether it is between
ports of entry or through a port of entry.
Senator Sinema. Mr. Nevano, regarding these smugglers who
are, quote, ``assisting'' individuals to come to this country,
do you have any information about how closely linked they are
to transnational criminal organizations that work to ship drugs
as well as people across the border?
Mr. Nevano. Sure. That is a very excellent question. What
we term ``illicit pathways,'' these illicit pathways are
controlled by the cartels. They are used to bring narcotics
through those pathways and they will use them to bring people.
Those smugglers, the transnational organizations, criminal
organizations, do not care what the product is, whether it is a
commodity, whether it is a person. They use those same
pathways. The human smugglers may have to pay a fee to the
cartels to use those pathways to come up, but there is a direct
correlation between the pathways used for smuggling narcotics
as those for smuggling persons.
Senator Sinema. Thank you. My next question is actually for
all of the panel. I would welcome all of your thoughts. It is
clear to me, and to many Arizonans, that our Nation faces a
direct threat from these smuggling operations, and, of course,
they are taking advantage of people in Central America. I would
like to hear a little bit more about what our national strategy
is to defeat this threat, and what are some of the steps that
your agencies are taking to counteract these criminal
transnational organizations?
Mr. Hastings. Thank you, ma'am. So for the Border Patrol,
again, I do not want to sound like a broken record but I will
say it is very hard to delve in, to interview, and to follow
through with getting the proper intelligence when we are just
trying to get the throughput. When we are overwhelmed by the
mass amount of UACs and families that are coming into our
facilities, it is very difficult to take the time to delve into
a smuggling case. We try to the best of our ability but we also
are trying to balance that with the humanitarian crisis that we
currently have.
So it is very difficult, and that is why we would, again,
ask for the legislative changes that stop this draw, so we can
go back and focus on the smuggling, focus on the trafficking,
focus on the DTOs that are bringing thousands of pounds of
narcotics into our country through the ports of entry and in
between the ports of entry.
Mr. Howe. Thank you, Senator. Similar to Chief Hastings,
were are in the interdiction phase, so we are identifying the
smuggling attempt and stopping it. I mentioned earlier, on
average, there are about 400 criminal prosecutions on the
Southwest Border, for people that are trying to be smuggled
into the United States. We are on that front end of it. The
back end, that investigation, really is through our ICE
partners, to get into the details of the DTOs.
Mr. Nevano. Senator, the paradigm of effective border
security starts 1,500 miles out with capacity-building and
training foreign police officers to interdict, train them,
provide them the equipment, and that is something that Homeland
Security is doing to attack the foreign problem. We know that
does not always work, and our brothers and sisters at Customs
and Border Protection are the interdictors, so there is
definitely a border security at our borders.
But interior enforcement is equally as part of that three-
pronged approach to the paradigm of border security, and that
is taking the pull factor, the magnet, away from them, by
having an effective worksite enforcement strategy. Because
worksite enforcement bleeds several other collateral crimes.
These individuals, once they get here, they know they are
promised a job, and that is where the human trafficking, the
fraudulent documents, the identity benefit fraud, that is where
all that happens, the false promise of a job.
So it has to be a three-pronged approach to effective
border security.
Senator Sinema. I appreciate that. A quick follow up
question. Director Hastings, you mentioned changing American
laws, which I think we could all agree is difficult in our
current political climate. What I am looking for, and really am
grateful to be working with the Chairman and others on this, is
ways to help the Administration improve the credible fear
process. That is something that we are working on, to try and
figure out how can we do that, given the difficult partisan
political climate that we are living in.
I am also really interested in figuring out how do we
disrupt these smuggling networks, so that they no longer see a
financial benefit, and they do not see this as a smart business
plan to bring groups to the United States and try to exploit
the so-called loophole?
Mr. Hastings. So for us, and what we hear in the field, and
I shared this earlier, but it is from those who we interview,
time and time again, frankly, what we are told is from social
media or from a family member here or from a friend here, ``I
have heard bring a child and I will be released within 10 to 20
days.'' Until there is something that can address that flow,
allow us to keep that family unit together, and allow us to run
them through the proper cycle, to allow them to have their due
process and due rights, and then return them if there is no
credible fear, and apply a consequence. If we are not applying
a consequence then we are going to continue to see this issue.
Senator Sinema. I am glad you mentioned that. That is the
exact issue that we are working on, to try and figure out how
do we get folks and families--I am talking about legitimate
families, not the illegitimate ones that we see--how do we help
process families in a timely manner to address the Flores
issue, while also sending a clear message to those Northern
Triangle countries that this is not an effective strategy to
get into the United States of America. It is going to be
difficult, I understand, but that is something that we are very
interested in doing, is figuring out how do we help process
families and folks faster, to actually get folks back home if
they do not qualify for asylum or for some other legal status
of entry to our country.
Mr. Chairman, I see that my time has expired.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Sinema, first of all, thank you
for working and cooperating with me and my staff on Operation
Safe Return, along with Senator Peters, so hopefully we can get
that letter of support and DHS can implement that, as just a
first step, to provide that consequence, with real care and
compassion. So thank you for your efforts there.
I want to thank, again, the witnesses for just your service
to this country. Chief Hastings, thank you for providing that
example of a Border Patrol officer pulling somebody out of the
river, applying CPR, saving their life. That is just an example
of, I am sure, thousands of examples of compassion, the type of
care that the Border Patrol, ICE, the DHS really provides
people.
We saw passion today at the hearing. That is good. It shows
that the Members of this Committee are deeply concerned and
want to get to a solution. So that will be my job is turn that
passion into commitment to actually act.
I want to thank all of you for your service. I want to
thank Senator Sinema, my colleagues on the Committee, and
again, my commitment. We will start holding these meetings
where we will have a genuine and robust discussion in that
problem-solving process, and it will result in good ideas,
areas of agreement, and possibly a full piece of legislation,
or, if not, elements, components that can be added to other
legislation, that other committees may take up as well.
But this Committee has led on this issue. I do not think
any committee has held more hearings, gathered more
information, shocked to understand this problem and all its
complexities more than this Committee has over the last 4\1/2\
years, and now it is time to turn that into action. Again, I
think we have the Members of this Committee, Senator Sinema is
one of them, that really will come to that table, right here in
this committee room, probably starting the week after we
return, and have those robust discussions to come to some
agreement and start solving this problem.
So again, thank you all.
The hearing record will remain open for 15 days, until July
11 at 5 p.m., for the submission of statements and questions
for the record.
This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:27 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
ROUNDTABLE UNPRECEDENTED MIGRATION
AT THE U.S. SOUTHERN BORDER:
BIPARTISAN POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
FROM THE HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISORY COUNCIL
----------
WEDNESDAY, JULY 17, 2019
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:18 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Ron Johnson,
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Johnson, Portman, Lankford, Scott,
Hawley, Peters, Carper, Hassan, and Rosen.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN JOHNSON\1\
Chairman Johnson. Good morning. I want to call this
business roundtable to order.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Johnson appears in the
Appendix on page 381.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I want to thank the participants for taking your time and,
first of all, for just working on the Homeland Security
Advisory Council (HSAC) and, from my perspective, producing a
really good report, a really good basis for, hopefully,
legislation that we could pass on a bipartisan basis, but prior
to that working with us to try and accomplish something to
start addressing this tremendous problem.
We just keep upping this thing. The top-line number is down
a little bit because June is reduced a little bit from May
because I was projecting this out based on the most recent
month. Based on May's numbers, the total number of individuals
coming in here is either an unaccompanied alien child (UAC) but
primarily as a family unit. It was over 800,000 projection. Now
it is just over 700,000.
But one thing I have been pointing out, since 2014, these
bars represent currently 5 years, 9 months, 1,086,000 people
coming in this country illegally, being apprehended. Most of
them are coming as a family unit, about 822,000, and of that
822,000, we have returned a whopping 12,021 individuals, even
though I know in your report, you talk about 15 percent of
people having a valid asylum claim.
So this is a clearly broken system. We are trying to
grapple with it. That is what you are trying to do.
I am really pleased to have at the roundtable, four
individuals who have been working on the Homeland Security
Advisory Council. I will quickly read your names and a quick
bio here, and then we will just go.
Do you want to start with----
Mr. Ahern. Start with Karen.
Chairman Johnson. Start with Karen? OK. So you have it all
worked out, and again, take the time you need, but we have
Karen Tandy.
By the way, the reason we do this in a roundtable too is it
is just a more free flow of information. Feel free to
interrupt, but I want to stay on the same theme. If you do it
in a hearing form, it is one Senator, 7 minutes, and they kind
of go through their own questions. And you just get disjointed.
I just think this is a better way of opening up the discussion
here.
But we have Karen Tandy, who formerly served as
Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Ms.
Tandy also is a former Associate Deputy Attorney General (AG)
for the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Sitting to her right is Jay Ahern. Mr. Ahern is Principal
and Head of the Security Services at The Chertoff Group. Mr.
Ahern also served as a former Acting Commissioner of U.S.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Sitting to the left of Ms. Tandy is Dr. Sharon Cooper, a
development and forensic pediatrician at the Womack Army
Medical Center. Dr. Cooper also holds faculty positions at the
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Department of
Pediatrics and the Uniformed Services University of Health
Sciences.
And then last but not least, Leon Fresco. Mr. Fresco is a
partner and immigration attorney at Holland & Knight law firm.
Mr. Fresco also served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General
for the Office of Immigration and Litigation at the Department
of Justice Civil Division.
My final comment is the Homeland Security Advisory Council
literally is a bipartisan group. I think you have members--
first of all, policy experts in a variety of areas but also
spans the political spectrum, and you have come together and
produced a solid product.
So, with that, I will turn it over to Ms. Tandy.
Oh, I am sorry. Gary, do you have any comments?
Senator Peters. No, that is fine.
Chairman Johnson. Are you sure?
Senator Peters. Yes. Let us hear from the panel.
Chairman Johnson. OK.
TESTIMONY OF HONORABLE KAREN TANDY, CHAIR, CUSTOMS AND BORDER
PROTECTION FAMILIES AND CHILDREN CARE PANEL, HOMELAND SECURITY
ADVISORY COUNCIL
Ms. Tandy. Thank you, Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member
Peters, and Senators of the Committee. We are grateful for the
opportunity to share our interim report\1\ and to have that
discussion today.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The interim report referenced by Ms. Tandy appears in the
Appendix on page 388.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
You have before you 4 members of the 10-member Homeland
Security Advisory Panel that was created in October 2018. At
that time, the 10 of us were given direction by then Secretary
Nielsen of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to make
findings and recommendations on CBP's care of families and
children at the border, recommendations on best practices,
training, policy changes, and any legal changes that were
needed for the care of families and children at the border.
From December through March, this panel went to multiple
places along the Southwest Border. We spent multiple days on
each trip. We went to every State along the Southwest Border
and to six of the nine Border Patrol sectors. That included 10
U.S. Border Patrol stations, four ports of entry (POE), as well
as a variety of facilities where children were being cared for.
Over the period of our work leading from October up to
April, we received briefings from 109 subject-matter experts.
We reviewed a prodigious amount of material and data and spoke
to non-government organizations (NGOs), medical professionals,
government officials, and a variety of other experts.
Very early on, this panel certainly drew the conclusion
that the immigration system is overwhelmed and fractured at
every critical point. The tender-age children, especially
children below the age of 12, are at the heart of this crisis.
The primary issue that was clear to this panel was the
result of a shift in immigration, one that went from what was
predominantly single males and processing and facilities for
predominantly single males that completely shifted to a more
than 600 percent increase of children, and family units.
Typically, a family unit would be one adult and a tender-age
child, 12 and under. That is a family unit. The shift was for
these family units and unaccompanied children to come from
Central America. That was the critical stage of what became the
ultimate major stress in the immigration system and our crisis
at the border.
What happened was children were endangered. They were
endangered during the 1,200 to 2,000 mile journey to our
Country. They were endangered during the crossing, and children
were preyed upon. They were preyed upon by smuggling
organizations. They were preyed upon by drug trafficking
organizations and by others who were benefiting and making
money off of their attempt to get into the country.
The overwhelmed DHS and the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) capacity to care for these children was another
result of the fractured system. Customs and Border Protection
exercised and continues to exercise valiant efforts to deal
with this crisis. It is outside of their training. The
humanitarian piece of this is outside of their training. It is
beyond the capacity of their facilities and until recently
beyond their funding.
As a result, our national security has been endangered
with, at any given time, as many as 4 out of 10 Border Patrol
agents who are no longer performing their border law
enforcement mission. They are instead doing the things they
were not trained to do, which is providing the humanitarian
relief to the best of their capacity.
At this time, if I could have the graph presented?\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The chart referenced by Ms. Tandy appears in the Appendix on
page 426.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think this depicts, more closely than anything, the
crisis. This is a graph of family units that were apprehended
by Border Patrol.
When this panel started in October, there were less than
17,000 family units apprehended at the border, and I am talking
about between the ports of entry, the remote areas of the
border, the uninhabited parts of the border. That went from
October to April, instead of less than 17,000 family units that
were apprehended, we were now up to 58,000 a month that were
apprehended. By the next month, it was peaking at 84,000.
Why that graph is so important is that it shows you how the
crisis escalated and the surge of these family units that
require such special care and attention.
You can see currently in June, the numbers have actually
dropped. Even at the June numbers, if is at the same level as
when this panel filed our report in April, and we deemed it an
emergency then. This is not our final report. We did not plan
to file an interim report. We were so alarmed at what we saw at
the border, the conditions at the border, that we determined an
emergency report was required.
During this fiscal year (FY)--again, the number of children
who are apprehended between the ports of entry in these remote
areas was 266,657. These children have illegally crossed the
border in between the ports of entry. That is a staggering
number and why this is so important that changes are made, and
made quickly.
This panel, all 10 of us, parked our politics at the door.
We are bipartisan, as the Chairman pointed out. We parked our
politics and unanimously arrived at our recommendations in this
report. Each recommendation is integrated with the others, and
standing alone, any one of them is not a panacea to turning
this crisis around.
But we do urge the Congress to take action. We are pleased
that Congress took action on supplemental funding at the end of
June. It was critical, and now we urge Congress to make the
other changes that we recommended in the report.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Karen.
Who is going to go next? Jay. My recommendation is just
bring that microphone a little bit closer to you, and then you
can turn them off because I think only so many work at the same
time.
TESTIMONY OF JAYSON AHERN, VICE CHAIR, CUSTOMS AND BORDER
PROTECTION FAMILIES AND CHILDREN CARE PANEL, HOMELAND SECURITY
ADVISORY COUNCIL
Mr. Ahern. Got it. I may not be quite as soft-spoken as
Madam Chair.
Ms. Tandy. Oh, I have never been accused of that.
Mr. Ahern. But thank you for the opportunity to be here
this morning.
I have the opportunity and the pleasure to serve as Karen's
vice chair of this panel and was appointed to the Homeland
Security Advisory Committee by Secretary Nielsen almost a year
ago.
I come from perhaps a different perspective than many
others on our panel. I actually served in Customs and Border
Protection for 33 years and predecessor organizations as well.
When I look back over the 33 years that I actually spent in
government before I ended up leading the agency for the last 4
years as the Deputy Commissioner, then as the Acting
Commissioner at the end of the Bush Administration and through
the first full year of the Obama Administration, I must say
that I am just very stunned and very concerned about the
transformation that happened at our border.
When I take a look back at what we used to deal with years
ago, starting in the mid-70s when I first came on board, we
were confronted with challenging environments of dealing with
people who try to escape and evade and avoid apprehension.
Today we are seeing people that are rushing to the first
person they see in a uniform to surrender themselves. You have
to ask yourself why is that. Why is that? I think the answer is
pretty obvious. It is because of the broken immigration system
that we have to go ahead and deal with today that need some
other changes.
When you take a look at some of the family units that we
have seen and unaccompanied children--by the way, I have not
seen the recent numbers, but they are well into the 4- and
5,000 range of unaccompanied children who have actually been
recycled by smuggling organizations for the purpose of being
able to be conveyed across the border so that they will have an
advantage in the process to be able to go ahead and be put into
quick release proceedings, to be able to set up for a hearing
that may happen years later. That is a concern.
When you take a look at the challenges that many of these
families have as they are making their way to the border and
all the challenges and all the horror stories that have
actually been conveyed, I think those are certainly significant
issues that need to be addressed, and we will talk about some
of those things on the push factors that are occurring in some
of those countries where we will have an opportunity to go in a
couple of weeks to spend a few days in each one of the Northern
Triangle countries.
But we have dealt with some of these challenges in the
past. We have dealt with immigration surges over the years,
whether it be some of the Cuban migration issues in South
Florida with the Mariel Boatlift right at 1980, or some of the
challenges we had when I was still working over 10 year ago in
government with the Brazilian crisis, when we were surging in
the amount of Brazilians that were trying to gain entry
illegally in the United States.
It kind of shifted from the traditional Mexican population
of people trying to gain entry to a group of Brazilians, and
some of the same expedited removal proceedings and return-to-
Mexico proceedings that were allowed under law at the time were
not the same for people from other than Mexico and dealing with
the Brazilian population. There needed to be swift action to go
ahead and put them in removal proceedings, and guess what? It
stopped.
I think those types of circumstances, we need to consider
today because the challenges that we focus on today,
unfortunately, are the things that get characterized in the
media every night, and there are some very tragic
circumstances. You can see each one of those, but
unfortunately, the agency I had the opportunity to lead for
many years gets judged by the one-off circumstances that occur,
not the daily circumstances and the challenges they have to
deal with on a daily basis.
Some of those things are very important, and that is where
I get very concerned about the mission of Homeland Security.
I had the pleasure and the honor to serve with Tom Ridge
and Governor Hutchinson when we started to stand up the
Department of Homeland Security, right after the President
signed the Homeland Security Act in 2002, and we had all of
4\1/2\ months to stand it up on March 1, 2003. It is still
maturing years later, but it was brought about to go ahead and
secure the homeland. What deeply troubles me today is that it
has actually turned into the immigration agency of this
Country, and that is a concern. It should be a concern for all
the Members of Congress, both sides of the House and both
parties, because what deeply concerns me is what is happening
to the rest of the mission.
I really applaud a lot of the efforts that are going on
with the frontline officers and agents securing the homeland as
best they can but having to consume their time dealing with the
humanitarian crisis that is right in their face and they have
to deal with.
But what else is happening? We saw when we were there,
right at the shift change, where migrant families were coming
in surges to go ahead and distract the Border Patrol from the
drug interdiction mission, as the cartel members, who also are
profiting by moving these people across the border, take
advantage of that surging and capitalizing on the agents being
consumed with having to manage that with them running their
drugs right to the left and to the right.
We cannot let that happen as a country. We have to continue
to focus on all aspects of the mission. There are still bad
people trying to get into this country. Many of them do come
across the Southwest Border. It is not all people from the
Northern Triangle countries. These are issues we need to deal
with as a body, whether it be the administrative branch, the
legislative branch, and certainly, we need to make sure that
those who are charged with setting the laws and executing those
laws have the best capabilities they have to be successful.
Ms. Tandy mentioned that the supplemental was certainly
very helpful. I would say it came too late. The agencies within
DHS and many within DOJ and HHS had to exhaust their budgets
just to be able to keep up with some of the challenges that
they needed to be able to procure things for people.
They are hundreds of millions of dollars in debt before the
supplemental, and I hope that it actually helps recover some of
the budget so that none of them are anti-deficient. As an
agency head, that is the last thing you ever want to have
happen, but there was the challenges they were doing to deal
with the mission. That was first and foremost for them.
When you see and hear the stories of they are given warmed-
up burritos in a microwave, why is that? The procurement laws,
that they had to go and acquire things, and the budget was not
there to support what they needed for the mission, and the
frontline people actually went out and procured it with their
own funds, with their own capabilities to be able to do the
best they could, given the circumstances they had.
The processing facilities at a border patrol station--for
those of you that are here, you know that; for those that are
listening and watching here in the audience--think of it as a
police station. There are cells to do immediate processing
after somebody has been arrested, not for long-term detention,
but given the entire process, take a look at it as a continuum
or as a supply chain is broken because every step of that
process needs to be reevaluated, reassessed, and improved.
So, yes, it is a process improvement, but also legislative
change needs to occur to be able to make it better. It is not
just what happens at the Border Patrol station with the intake
and they have up to 72 hours, but as you take a look at then
when one moves into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
detention and then all the other things that have to happen
with HHS housing for family units or the administrative judges
that need to provide the hearings, this system just backs up
tremendously. The most obvious point and the visible point is
at those Border Patrol stations and then at the ICE detention
facilities.
Every step of this process needs to have review, and it is
not just more about adding more Border Patrol agents or
building a wall or things of that nature. It is taking a look
at the entire process end to end, giving them laws to be able
to be effective, giving the appropriate level of support for
the administrative judges, the bed space that is needed to be
able to house people throughout the entire process, but also
evaluating what is the cause and effect here.
The push factors are very important. As we have looked at
intelligence reports and some of the data from people that have
actually been interviewed upon arrival, it is not for fear of
persecution. I am sure there are many people that are, but we
have had intelligence briefings from people that are involved
with doing deep study and analysis.
The murder rates, the violence rates have not changed that
dramatically in the last 5 years. The agricultural situation
because of the drought has. The economic situation has because
of corrupt governments in those Northern Triangle countries
where people have lost complete confidence in their country,
and they are looking to go ahead and find better opportunities
elsewhere. When you flip to then the interviews of why here,
education, medical, the opportunity to be reunited with family
that is already here illegally, and also more confidence in our
government.
Building the capacity and the trust and confidence in those
locations where they live and where they likely want to be, if
it were not for those other circumstances, is a key part of
this going forward, but at the same time, we got to fix some of
the push, the pull factors on our end. That is the legal
system, and that is some of the things that required statutory
change.
So I will end there.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Jay.
TESTIMONY OF LEON FRESCO, MEMBER, CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION
FAMILIES AND CHILDREN CARE PANEL, HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISORY
COUNCIL
Mr. Fresco. You want me? OK. Thank you, Senator. Thank you,
everybody.
I will just be very brief and just say I think I associate
myself with the comments of my colleagues, and this was a
bipartisan report.
I think one of the key things to focus on moving forward
into how we get to actual solutions is to say I think we need
to define the problem. I think people are disagreeing on what
the problem is, and it is valid to disagree because depending
on how you view this, there could be three different problems.
Problem one could be I want to eliminate the total number
of crossings, period, through the border. I do not care what
the purpose is of the person who is crossing. I just want it to
all go away. That is one way to define the problem.
A second way to define the problem would be I want to take
the group that is coming into the United States and
successfully vet who is coming here as a refugee, and if you
are a legitimate refugee, allow you to come and enter the
United States, or if you are not a legitimate refugee, then
remove you from the United States. So that would be a second
way of defining this.
A third way would be it does not matter to me why you are
coming. I just want that bad things do not happen to you when
you arrive in our custody, and that is it. That is a third way
of looking at this.
And so at least from my point of view, I was working with
my colleagues to try to come up with this second option of how
we successfully vet people in a manner where people who are
coming with legitimate refugee claims can come in a very quick
fashion, be assessed. We know who is coming for the purposes
that the law permits and who is coming for the purposes the law
does not permit, and that they are treated compassionately
while that vetting process is occurring. I think if you have
that as your goal, it is easiest to get to a bipartisan
consensus. Whereas, if your goals are the others, this is where
it becomes a more problematic formulation.
So that is the frame of approach that at least if people
want to ask me questions where I am coming from on this, it is
how do we take the population that is coming, make sure that
they are treated in a compassionate manner while we vet, to
decide if the reasons they are coming are reasons permitted
under our law or reasons not permitted under our law.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Leon.
Doctor, again, get the microphone as closest as you can.
There you go.
TESTIMONY OF SHARON W. COOPER, M.D., FAAP, MEMBER, CUSTOMS AND
BORDER PROTECTION FAMILIES AND CHILDREN CARE PANEL, HOMELAND
SECURITY ADVISORY COUNCIL
Dr. Cooper. Thank you very much.
As a pediatrician of now more than 40 years and who worked
first as a military officer retiring from Fort Bragg, where we
have the largest pediatric population in the Army, it was an
honor to serve with this Committee.
I must say that the challenges for children are severe and
significant. At this particular time, there are more than
67,000 minors who have been present at the CBP station and have
come across the border in that manner.
As our report reflects, many of these challenges reflect
the fact that there are communicable diseases, which can be
fatal and have been fatal for several of the children who have
come across the border.
Whenever you have children that are in groups such as this,
the risk for influenza, for example, which has been one of the
primary causes of death for many of the children who have come
across the border, has been very difficult and great.
I think it is very relevant that in reviewing the mortality
cases that we have already seen, the overwhelming majority of
these children were seen at medical treatment facilities and
were sent back to the border stations and unfortunately
succumbed to diagnoses that were not clear when they were seen
by medical treatment facilities.
Another part of our report has to do with the
identification of these children as being biologically related
to the parents, the individuals who are cited as parents when
they come in as a family unit. Having appropriate biometrics
was a real challenge in our discussion as a committee because
of some of the existing restrictions with respect to facial
photographs and things of that nature.
So we have made some recommendations in our report on
trying to make sure that the children who are going to be
coming across the border and released to the interior are going
to, in fact, be children who are going to be cared for.
The issue of recycling of children brings us to the risk
for sex trafficking and labor trafficking of children and
trafficking in general.
Because I am a forensic pediatrician, I work quite a bit
with trafficking victims and circumstances of that nature, and
that was one of my greatest concerns, which was affirmed when
we had our first meetings regarding the risk of children who
would be brought into the United States and then sent back to
Central America to come back into the United States with
different people posing as their parents. That kind of stress
and trauma for children is untenable and will have, without a
doubt, far-reaching psychological impact over the time that
they are going to be continuing through their childhood.
Finally, I would want to say that the recommendations by
the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) are excellent. They
are relevant. They are available to any health care provider,
free on the Internet, on all of the different medical problems
and means of surveillance that should be taken, and that is
really very helpful.
What we would really like to see as was recommended in our
report, that there be onsite health care providers, rather than
individuals who are not versed in the care of young children
and adolescents. Because of the nature of the concentration of
these children in these settings, it is very important that
they not only be screened within the first 24 hours by a health
care provider upon arrival, but also may require rescreening,
sometimes daily, if there are soft signs of potential
infectious problems that we see in order to make sure that they
can survive this last part of the journey that they have taken.
Thank you very much.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Doctor.
Just real quick on the point of health professionals,
pediatricians at the border, both Senator Peters and I talked
to Dr. Sally Goza, who is the incoming head of that
organization, and I had talked to Mark Morgan that same day or
the day after about facilitating whatever professionals want to
get down there are willing to serve in that capacity to get
that done. The Acting CBP Commissioner was very open to trying
to work within the rules and laws, and who knows what
bureaucratic hurdles may exist on that? But, again, very
receptive to getting those pediatricians and those types of
medical experts down there at the border to help alleviate or
mitigate some of the problems.
Dr. Cooper. Yes. You are quite correct about that, and
thank you very much.
One thing that I noticed--and we made recommendations for--
was that initially in the smaller CBP stations, there was not
really a location that was available for the right kinds of
equipment, etc, but I think that that can be modified very
readily.
In fact, when we got to the Clint Station, there was
already a contract provider who had been hired to help
facilitate evaluation of patients.
Chairman Johnson. Great.
Again, I want this pretty free flowing, but the order was
Peters, Scott, Hassan, Rosen, Portman, Carper, Hawley. I really
do want this free flowing because I totally schlepped over
Senator Peters' opening.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PETERS
Senator Peters. That is all right.
Chairman Johnson. I will just turn it over to you. If you
want to make any comments or state the questioning, go ahead.
Senator Peters. Just the questioning. I want to pick up on,
Dr. Cooper, your comments. The question I have been asking at
all these hearings of folks is really how long is too long to
detain a child, and I have never gotten a straightforward
answer. What is your view, and what is the view of the folks
here?
Dr. Cooper. The American Academy of Pediatrics feels and
states that no time is a good time----
Senator Peters. Right.
Dr. Cooper [continuing]. As far as detention is concerned.
Senator Peters. Do you agree with that?
Dr. Cooper. My feeling is that you have to make sure once
children have crossed the border that there is going to be a
safe place for them to land.
You want to make sure that they are not going to be a risk
of still being under the power and control of smugglers, for
example, or people who are falsifying their identifications to
increase the risk for these children. So once that has been
ascertained, it would be very good not to have them in the herd
circumstance, that you have within detention because it will
really foster a higher risk for infectious disease
complications.
Chairman Johnson. Do you not have to define detention,
though? What is harmful depends on what the facility is, right?
Dr. Cooper. Yes. Let me respond to that.
I have visited two detention settings. In one particular
detention setting, the setting was with families, family and
children, and what we found was that at that particular
setting, which was in Dilley, Texas, it was an extraordinarily
excellent location.
These families had their own individual apartments, if you
will. There was a dining facility with very excellent food.
There was education, a school situation from kindergarten to
12th grade, provided for them. There was recreational space for
them, and there was also medical care, extremely good medical
care that was provided by the United States Public Health
Service onsite. That is a setting that would be the most ideal.
Senator Peters. But that is not typical what folks are
confronting right now.
Dr. Cooper. No, that has not been what we have seen in----
Senator Peters. What I have seen looks very different from
what you just described.
Dr. Cooper. Right. The Inspector General's (IG) report
certainly revealed that that was not the typical, but that
would be the desired type of setting.
Senator Peters. That has to be the goal.
You talk about screening of folks, which is important to
have professionals there onsite.
Dr. Cooper. Yes.
Senator Peters. I know the report talks about telemedicine
as a possibility, but talk to me about that. There has to be
some limitations to telemedicine.
Dr. Cooper. Yes.
Senator Peters. We need to have professionals actually
onsite not doing it via telemedicine. I have some concerns
about that, what I read in the report.
Dr. Cooper. So telehealth is a very acceptable method of
care, depending upon the condition.
If you are looking at a child with respect to a potential
infectious disease problem, your telehealth capability has to
be very good because many of these children present with
rashes, for example, that will indicate that there is an
infectious problem, such as measles or they may have mumps,
etc., but influenza, which is our greatest concern, is going to
only be diagnosed by febrile reaction and soft symptoms, even
softer the younger the child. So those children by definition
need not to remain in a detention setting nor should they
remain in a CBP setting. They need to be taken to a medical
treatment facility without doubt.
Other types of telehealth capability will offer itself as
long as you have a good health care provider to describe what
is going on or a para health professional extender, such as a
nurse or a paramedic who can give other information; for
example, trauma injuries that may have occurred to a child.
Some of the other children who have died--at least one
child died from really severe congenital heart disease, and in
that situation, telehealth will not be beneficial, except to
affirm the need for immediate transfer for a patient like that.
Senator Rosen. Can I ask a question about this? So we know
that health screenings are supposed to go on, but right now
they are going on by CBP officers instead of health
professionals.
Dr. Cooper. Definitely not the right outcome.
Senator Rosen. So is not a medical professional what we
need to provide these screenings as often as they need to be
done on a daily basis?
I can tell you I am suffering from a summer cold. Two days
ago, I did not have it, and today I am taking all kinds of
medication and trying not to spread my germs.
Chairman Johnson. Josh, if you want to move---- [Laughter.]
Senator Rosen. Right. So we know how rapidly.
How quickly do you think the American Academy of
Pediatrics--I had them in my office. We know that we have
health care professionals willing to go down, willing to go to
the border, willing to volunteer their time at these
facilities. What do we need to do to facilitate that for the
safety of our children?
Dr. Cooper. Absolutely, Senator Rosen. I agree with you 100
percent.
To have a pediatrician would be the very best
recommendation that I could make, and you are absolutely right.
Daily evaluation of children is indicated because they are in a
high-risk setting.
Senator Rosen. Keeping them in these crowded conditions is
not something that is safe, even for the CBP workers that are
working there.
Dr. Cooper. But especially for the very young children, you
do not want to have them----
Senator Rosen. Right.
Dr. Cooper [continuing]. In that setting. You would like to
get them out of those settings, and you would like to make sure
that you are going to have health care providers who can see
them on a regular basis.
Chairman Johnson. Real quick, when we were down at the
border, it was the Coast Guard corpsmen that were doing the
initial testing. Is that your evaluation as well? Is that what
you saw?
Mr. Ahern. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. Not the attritions, but their----
Mr. Ahern. Right. It is a mix, and depending as far as what
facilities you are talking about, there are certainly some
variances. I think, again, making the distinction between a
Border Patrol station where the initial arrest processing,
before they go into detention facilities, there are
distinctions and differences that need to be recognized, like
the particular type of stage or facility--and stage in the
process.
I think I would also point to one of the key
recommendations of our report, which is the regional processing
centers, where you have the ability to have the right kind of
facility with first, the right type of caregivers available to
be able to have a triage upon entry into it by medical
professionals, who would be stationed there, all the way
through the court and the hearing procedures and second, the
provisions for providing attorneys for people who need to go
and appear before an immigration judge.
Being able to have that all in one concentrated location
and probably three or four locations along the border and one
in Guatemala is what we recommended.
Senator Rosen. How quickly do you think that you can ramp
up and do this? Because we have children suffering now, tender-
age children, that they will suffer for the rest of their lives
because of this, who came here--we cannot let children suffer
because of whatever we may think of how they got there, who
brought them here, or why they brought them here. The fact is
they are here, especially the tender-age ones, not of their own
choice, and so while all of the adults--we want to work
together. We can talk about policy and procedure and all those
things, but in the meantime, how quickly can we do something to
protect these children who----
Mr. Ahern. It takes funding, and I would just ask you all
to look at how long it took to get the supplemental funding
approved. Those were months that were lost.
Senator Rosen. But we did not have the funding because
these children are risk.
Senator Carper. But they did not.
Senator Hassan. Right. But can I wanted to take a step
back, and first of all, thank you all for being here and for
your work.
I appreciate the work that the panel has done, and I
understand as well that the Administration wants the ability to
indefinitely detain families, and that the CBP Families and
Children Care Panel prioritized that as a recommendation.
Doctor, I understand the concern about vetting families and
making sure children are, in fact, related to the adults they
come with, but let us just start with a fundamental
proposition. Do you believe that the indefinite detention of
children is harmful to children? And let us just go right down
the line, all four of you.
Mr. Fresco. Yes. Indefinite detention, I do not think would
be any of our goals.
Senator Hassan. Yes or no. Is indefinite----
Mr. Fresco. Yes. Indefinite detention is harmful to
children.
Senator Hassan [continuing]. Detention is harmful to
children? Yes or no.
Mr. Ahern. Certainly, it would.
Senator Hassan. OK. Ma'am?
Ms. Tandy. We did not recommend indefinite detention.
Senator Hassan. What I am trying to get is a shared set of
values and understanding that we can then have a discussion
based on, because if you lift the Flores limit, you are talking
about the possibility of indefinite detention.
So is it or is it not? I am not just talking about exposure
to communicable diseases here. Is it or is it not harmful to
children?
Ms. Tandy. This panel found that a period of detention in
the proper setting--which is not the current setting--was an
important balance of the Nation's security, Customs and Border
Protection's processing requirements, and the care of these
children who arrive often ill and traumatized and----
Senator Hassan. I understand that, but----
Ms. Tandy [continuing]. Being provided with health
facilities and health care in a center that could be a
detention center, but it is not parked in a detention center.
Senator Hassan. So I would like to submit, Mr. Chair, for
the record, a letter that a group of medical and child advocacy
organizations led by the American Academy for Pediatrics sent
to the panel.\1\ The letter from these child health experts
expresses strong opposition to the panel's recommendation to
allow for the indefinite detention of children.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The letter referenced by Senator Hassan appears in the Appendix
on page 383.
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Here is what the letter said. This is just a quote:
``Detention of children for even brief periods causes known and
well-documented developmental, physical, and psychological
harm. These impacts may be particularly pronounced for asylum
seekers who have frequently fled severe violence and trauma in
their countries of origin. Detention also poses significant
barriers to accessing legal counsel to assist families in
preparing and presenting their claims for legal protection.''
So what is the response to this medical advice, and why
does not your report reflect those findings? That is the
question.
I will also say this is not an either/or. We can be secure
and not harm children by indefinite detention, and both are
really important priorities. This is a security issue and a
humanitarian one.
Chairman Johnson. Let me first ask because I think----
Senator Hassan. Yes.
Chairman Johnson [continuing]. It is incredibly important
to make this point again. I do not know what definition
``detention'' that group is----
Senator Hassan. Exactly.
Chairman Johnson. If they are looking at the Border Patrol
stations, absolutely. I do not think anybody would say that
that is not going to create harm, but if you are talking about
Dilley, if you are talking about Donna facility, where you have
the families there, that is a different type of situation.
Senator Hassan. Senator, that is----
Chairman Johnson. But, anyway, we will enter that in the
record.
Senator Hassan. Detention of children, indefinite
detention, putting them in an institutional facility, period,
according to pediatricians and experts, causes them harm. It
does not matter--obviously, better conditions are better, but
it does not undo the harm. That is why in this country, unless
we find an adolescent who has committed a crime or is harmful
to themselves or others, we do not detain them because any
detention is harmful.
What I am concerned about is we keep presenting this as
either we have to detain kids or we are not going to have
secure borders, and that is a polarity I reject and I think the
U.S. Government could easily address.
Senator Portman. Senator Hassan, can I speak briefly?
Senator Hassan. Yes.
Senator Portman. I just got back from the border on Friday,
and I know that you are looking for a practical solution here.
Senator Hassan. Right.
Senator Portman. But I think what we are missing is why
these children are coming in the first place, and under Flores,
which is the recommendation----
Senator Hassan. Right.
Senator Portman [continuing]. You think Flores should still
apply to unaccompanied children but not to the families with
children.
It is definitely an incentive to come to America, and so
you are--frankly, if you are focused on having a solution to
the long-term detention, you should be focused on keeping these
children from coming in the first place.
Senator Hassan. Right.
Senator Portman. There is no good solution here.
Senator Hassan. Actually, there are----
Senator Rosen. But what about the children who are there
now?
Senator Portman. Wait. Let me finish. Let me finish because
you had a long time to talk.
Senator Hassan. Right.
Senator Portman. There is no good solution here unless you
deal with the incentives because you are encouraging these
children to leave their homes in Central America and to join
traffickers to come to our border, or you are encouraging
children--this report has said 4- to 5,000 kids have been
recycled already. When I was down at the border, they had
numbers that were higher than that.
They know who these kids are because they process them, and
they process them again and process them again.
So I could not agree with you more. We do not want kids to
be detained at all. That is not good for kids.
Senator Hassan. Right.
Senator Portman. But what is really bad for the kids is the
U.S. Congress refusing to do the things that we all know that
should be done--and I know you know should be done--to
discourage them from making this long and dangerous journey in
the first place, and that is what this report is getting at is
as long as you have this notion that under Flores that a 20-day
limit is place, and as long as you have a situation now where
partly because they are overwhelmed, there is no way you can
process these children or families within those 20 days. They
are simply permitted to go into the United States.
They go to a nonprofit. The nonprofit gets them on a bus or
an airplane, and they are in New Hampshire. They are in Ohio.
Again, 15 percent at the end of the day according to this
report and according to all the data we have are getting their
asylum claims granted, if they do claim asylum. It is on
average over 2 years, but really, as the report indicates, it
is 4 to 5 years. The report also indicates that very few people
are ever removed. That is what you said in your report.
So if you are a trafficker, this provides you the perfect
opportunity to say to these kids and families, ``If you pay me
$5,000 or $10,000,'' somewhere in between there, ``we will take
you up to the border and, frankly, just dump you at the
border.'' As we know, 30 percent of the women and girls, based
on the best data we have, are sexually assaulted during that
journey. I mean, this is the problem.
So we can talk about detention, and I could not agree with
you more. We do not want to detain anybody, but the real issue
is how do you keep these kids from making this dangerous
journey in the first place.
Senator Hassan. That is right.
Chairman Johnson. You want to detain them to prevent them
from going to a stash house or getting put in a sex trade
situation or the egg farm. One of the alternates of detention
is teaming back up with the human traffickers, who they have
not paid their debt to, who are controlling their families down
in Central America. So we have not focused enough on the human
trafficking element and the danger these children are in if we
do not try and protect them in some form.
Senator Hassan. There are other solutions. There is short-
term detention, which we process them through, and I do not
want to dominate the discussion. But I do feel a couple of
things that I want to clarify.
One is I would not say that it is the children themselves
who are being incentivized to make these decisions. They are
being exploited by a lot of different people, a lot of
different conditions. So let us focus on----
Senator Portman. But it is the laws and the rules.
Senator Hassan. Let us focus on the incentives.
Senator Portman. It is the laws and the rules.
Senator Hassan. Let us focus on the incentives to the
adults who then bring the children.
Second, the notion that the only way, then, to deal with
this is to extend the Flores limit beyond 20 days or to let
them go is a false choice.
There are other recommendations that other groups have made
that indicate that we could in fact keep track of these
families. We could case manage these families. We could surge
our capacity so that the hearings could be held within 20 days.
Those are all things we are capable of doing if we will provide
the resources to do it, and that is my concern.
Chairman Johnson. Of course, that rapid adjudication is the
whole goal of Operation Safe Return.
Mr. Fresco. Right.
Chairman Johnson. But I would like to turn it over to Leon
because you actually are an immigration lawyer. I think your
proposed solution as part of this was that rapid adjudication,
but we are also being told too that--and Operation Safe Return
is only going to evaluate based on a credible fear standard
because we do not have the time in 20 days to do the full
adjudication process. Can you just talk about it?
Mr. Fresco. Right.
Chairman Johnson. Also, talk about the basic asylum law and
asylum standard.
Mr. Fresco. So what is complicated is there are two
completely different case tracks. There is what is called an
``expedited removal track,'' and there is a ``normal track.''
So the attempts to solve this problem have all been geared
currently around the expedited removal track, which is where
the government, if you do not express a credible fear, can
immediately remove you.
The issue is most people express a fear of removal. So then
you have to make this adjudication. Is that fear credible? And
if it is, you can stay, and if it is not, then you can be
removed.
The question that our panel had put to ICE--because this
had been tried, both in the Obama Administration and in this
Administration. We asked has any family, not 20, 30, or 1,000.
Has any family been removed that has been placed in the
expedited removal process? And their answer that they gave us
was no.
I mean, I do not know if you guys remember that question.
Chairman Johnson. Let me quickly give you the numbers.
Mr. Fresco. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. So since 2014, 822,000 individuals coming
in as a family member, we have removed 12,021. That is 15
percent.
Mr. Fresco. Yes. That is after they were--I am talking
about through----
Chairman Johnson. It could be voluntary.
Mr. Fresco [continuing]. Context of what they used the
Family Removal Centers that they are using now.
So what we started to think about when we were thinking
about that is, well, then what you are doing is if you are
detaining anybody for any amount of time, you are wasting the
time because you are not actually accomplishing a removal. The
whole point of a detention would be to accomplish a removal in
that situation, and you are not accomplishing a removal. Why
are you doing the detention?
So there are two alternatives. You can either make changes
to the expedited removal system, which I am not a big fan of--
others are--or you can actually move people toward the real
removal system, and it is my belief that the biggest delays you
have in the normal removal system are you have to give people
time to find counsel, which takes many months. And that is why
you blow through all of these time limits, and you have to give
people opportunities to get documents, which a lot of times
they cannot get because they are fleeing their country.
In my view, if you give the people counsel on day one and
you expedite the hearing and you establish the courts right
there on the site and you say, ``Unless the claim sounds
incredible, we will deem it as credible. You do not need to get
these documents,'' because the underlying theory is that a lot
of these cases do not qualify legally anyway for asylum. Then
you can actually get these proceedings done in 20 or 30 days.
That is why when you say Flores extended, we will not
saying extended from 20 days to 1,000 days. The question is if
it will take 24 days, 26 days, something like that to get the
proceeding done and you are holding someone in a facility that
we can all agree is a facility that will meet whatever
standards the policymakers thinks are good standards, then a
lot of people will get asylum and will be able to stay in. A
lot of people will not get asylum and----
Senator Rosen. Can I ask one question? This is about
adults. Who does the credible fear screening for minors,
especially those tender-age minors?
Mr. Fresco. The same U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services (USCIS) officer who does the family, they do the whole
family.
Senator Rosen. But if they are unaccompanied?
Mr. Fresco. Oh. If the child is unaccompanied, they cannot
be put in expedited removal proceedings at all.
Senator Rosen. So they are just held in these conditions?
Mr. Fresco. No. What happens is they then go through the
normal regular proceeding that I have talked about, which means
CBP can only hold them for 72 hours, and after those 72 hours,
they have a legal obligation to send them into the custody of
the Department of Health and Human Services until that
Department can find an adult who is capable of being their
custodian.
And then the removal proceeding that I have just spoken
about, the second track, will play out, and either they will
win and they will be able to stay, or they will lose and they
will be ordered----
Chairman Johnson. But they almost all stay.
Because I want to drill down this while we are on it. Talk
about the disparity between the vast majority being granted the
credible fear versus your report saying about 15 percent
actually have a valid asylum claim and really would be subject
to removal, although we are removing none. Just talk about that
disparity and how that plays out in the few cases that actually
are adjudicated, where it is not granted asylum.
Mr. Fresco. Do you want me to?
Ms. Tandy. Go for it, Leon.
Mr. Fresco. OK. So the problem is, you have different legal
standards, and so the standard for achieving a credible fear
standard, which is what you have to establish to get yourself
out of expedited removal and into the normal removal process,
is that there is a significant possibility that you have an
asylum claim.
Asylum is defined, although in dicta, but in dicta that
people talk about all the time in the Supreme Court law, about
having a 10 percent chance you will be persecuted.
So what you have to show is you have a significant
possibility of having a 10 percent chance of being persecuted,
so it is a generous standard.
Chairman Johnson. Basically, you say, ``I am afraid to go
home'' and----
Mr. Fresco. It is a generous standard because that is the
standard that was written. I mean, you can do that.
Chairman Johnson. I understand. So that is why they call it
``credible fear.'' They say, ``Hey, I am afraid to go home.''
OK, that is credible. Now you are into the process.
Mr. Fresco. That is correct.
Chairman Johnson. How long is it, and what kind of
evidence? What do they have to provide, and then why then at
the very tail end only 15 percent would be granted asylum?
Mr. Fresco. Let me say this. Having come from the
Department of Justice where we were constantly having to re-
correct our statistics in court, I am a little suspect on all
of our statistics.
Chairman Johnson. I agree.
Mr. Fresco. So let us just say I do not know what the
statistics are, and if anybody claims to know what the
statistics are.
Chairman Johnson. You are correct.
Mr. Fresco. So we do not know what we do not know, but
having said that, let me just say that it is a fair point that
there are a large number of asylum claims that once presented
do not meet the standard, and the problem is because we do not
know what the standard is currently being adjudicated in the
courts right now.
It is unclear. We have no idea. The Supreme Court will
eventually decide this.
Chairman Johnson. Just lay out the basic premise.
Mr. Fresco. The basic premise is that people are making
claims right now that they are going to be persecuted in their
home country because of domestic violence concerns or gang
concerns that their country is--and that is a different two.
So it is not clear whether those claims qualify or not for
asylum. That is being worked on right now.
Chairman Johnson. That is what is being----
Mr. Fresco. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. There are five basic----
Mr. Fresco. Right. The five basic ways of getting asylum
are race, religion, national origin, social group, or political
opinion.
Chairman Johnson. As a social group, it is the----
Mr. Fresco. Social group is the one that they are claiming,
correct.
Chairman Johnson. Contentious one. I want to just lay this
thing out.
Senator Portman. One thing just quickly. Again, being down
there on Friday, I learned something I guess I should have
known, which is I talked to five or six families. At one point,
I worked down along the border, so I used the best Spanish I
had, and it was exactly what you would expect. People are
saying they cannot get a job in Central America, the drought.
Most of them were working in agricultural. One was not. A
mechanic. One was in the tourist business. But they were saying
they want a better life for their kids. Not a single family was
saying anything about a credible fear.
I probed a little bit, and they did not. But I am told--and
I guess I should realize this--that along the process--so these
families will all be released within a couple of days of being
in the processing center. I mean, there were a thousand
families there. This was at Donna.
They will be released on their own recognizance. Along the
process here, they can claim asylum at different points. So if
they do get counsel, 6 months from now, they can claim asylum.
Mr. Fresco. You would hope in every area where you have an
officer of the court who is bound by law, not to produce fake
asylum claims that they would not be producing--that a lawyer
would not help someone to make----
Senator Portman. Right.
Mr. Fresco [continuing]. A fake asylum claim.
Senator Portman. But is it true that some of them do claim
asylum later in the process?
Mr. Fresco. Well, you can. So here is what is complicated,
what people do not realize about the expedited removal process.
It is in order to use the expedited removal process, you
actually have to have detention capability and USCIS officers
who can do the credible fear screening. We do not have
sufficient of either of those right now, which is what you are
describing when people are released without even having the
credible fear screening. They are released to do what I called
``track two,'' the normal removal hearing.
When you have a normal removal hearing, at that point, the
system does not know anything about you. It asks you, ``OK. Do
you concede to removal or not?'' and if you say, ``No,'' they
ask you what is your defense to removal. At that point, you
could introduce a defense of asylum.
Senator Portman. Which is at what time during the process?
Mr. Fresco. That would be whenever you get that hearing. It
could be 2 months or 3 months later.
Chairman Johnson. But, the process is so overwhelmed.
Senator Portman. Is it typically 2 or 3 months later?
Mr. Fresco. Yes, for the first hearing.
Senator Portman. OK. That is what I thought.
Mr. Fresco. And then depending on when the next trial is--
--
Senator Rosen. Can I interject here, though? It seems to me
we have two different issues. We have an immediate issue with
all these children----
Mr. Fresco. Sure.
Senator Rosen [continuing]. At the border detained, whether
you want to say cages or holding areas, whatever your
definition is.
Chairman Johnson. There are 200 right now in Border Patrol
stations, 200.
Senator Rosen. That is the total number of children that
are detained.
Chairman Johnson. Once they finally got the funding, it
went from 2,000 down to a couple hundred, and again, they
turned them--I just want to ask you. Do you have an average
number of days in those Border Patrol facilities? And they are
trying to do it in a couple of days, right?
Ms. Tandy. It is very hard to get a correct answer to that.
The standard is 72 hours. If it is children, it should be 24
hours.
Senator Rosen. So children are moved out of these cages in
24 hours?
Ms. Tandy. No.
Mr. Fresco. No. That is the law. The law is 72 hours, and
their goal is 24 hours. Yes.
Ms. Tandy. But bear with me in terms of the reality. Forget
the standards because that is not what is happening.
Senator Hassan. Right.
Ms. Tandy. What is happening is the surges of these people
who are coming across, principally family units and children,
have overwhelmed a facility meant to keep people for hours, not
days, not weeks, and longer.
But what has happened is to move people out of these
facilities. It is very difficult for Border Patrol to do full
processing that they should be doing. They are attempting and
they are trying very hard. But what is typically happening is
that these people are given notices to appear (NTA). And they
are released.
What used to happen is that, first of all, every part of
the chain had the funding and space requirements to meet their
obligations. So they did move in 24 and 72 hours, a year ago.
What happened now is that it is backed up. HHS does not have
the bed space. ICE cannot take the people from Border Patrol
unless they have someplace to put them through HHS.
Previously, there were travel plans that were actually
accomplished by ICE. They would determine where the people were
going. They would confirm the receiving entity at the other
end.
Senator Rosen. No, I appreciate it, but you are actually
making my point that we have an immediate issue with children
and families, how they are being held, and then we have a long-
term policy issue of what we do going forward, either to deter
it or to take care of them or to move it. So there are two
different issues, one very immediate for the health, safety,
and care particularly of tender-age children and families, and
then we have the long-term policy issues that are----
Chairman Johnson. But what you are describing is that
health care is all about the overwhelming nature of the flow.
You have so many people----
Senator Rosen. But you are not going to stop the flow in a
day, Senator. So we have to get through what we are doing now
to take care of--they are not these people. They are human
beings.
Chairman Johnson. That is their recommendations. Jay.
Mr. Ahern. I think that is the point. You cannot
disassociate the two. There is no one who would argue they do
not need to do a better job in handling the kids within that
first 24 hours, without question.
But the capacity of the system is so exceeded by the surge
of people that have occurred because of the broken immigration
this country allows to continue to happen. That becomes the
focus that people want to look at, and not looking at what
actually is happening in a Central American location. What
happens in the interior of the United States?
Senator Rosen. So even if we put a law in place today----
Mr. Ahern. In the interior of the United States, one of the
things again----
Senator Rosen. There is a backup.
Mr. Ahern [continuing]. This body would be questioning ICE
is if they were releasing kids to sponsors here in the United
States who were using them for sex trafficking or human
trafficking.
Senator Hassan. Right.
Mr. Ahern. There is a very deliberate exercise that goes on
to make sure that they are not putting them back into the hands
of those who are going to create more concern and more
exploitation for these kids in the country.
No one is satisfied with the processing time. We can
understand all the different influencing factors here that are
causing challenges.
Chairman Johnson. But we were told these families are
showing up at stash houses, and they are being beaten. The
videotapes are being taken----
Senator Hassan. Some of them, yes.
Chairman Johnson [continuing]. Down to Central America for
ransom.
Mr. Fresco. That is why we recommend these regional
processing centers. That would have, in the short term, the
medical, the legal, everything in there. So you could move them
out of these CBP facilities. That is why we recommended that we
stand up these large regional processing centers as soon as
possible to get people out of CBP and start moving the rest of
this process.
Senator Hassan. Which----
Senator Lankford. Mr. Chairman, can I jump in with a quick
statement as well?
Chairman Johnson. Yes.
Senator Lankford. So reading through your recommendations
on the Flores issue. Did you all have any conversation about
what to do with 17 year old males? Because the highest number
of people coming in right now as far as percentage are single
males that are coming across the border claiming to be 17. I
assume that they have been coached that if you claim you are
17, you will be treated differently. There is no papers or
documentation, we do not know if they are 25 or if they are 17.
They just come across and say they are 17. Did you all have any
conversation on that? And then I have one more follow-up
question on that as well.
Ms. Tandy. We had some. But the emergency nature of our
report focused on fixing the biggest problem, which is the
family units----
Senator Lankford. Right.
Ms. Tandy [continuing]. Not the unaccompanied, and 17-year-
olds would be in the mix. So, we had some recommendations.
Our final report will address those types of concerns.
Senator Lankford. So the Trafficking Victims Protection
Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), when I talked to foreign ministers
and leaders in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, they all
say the same thing to me, ``We want our kids back.'' It is a
very odd statement to say--these kids cross the border, and if
we had an American that entered into Guatemala, Americans would
demand their child back. We have a child from El Salvador that
comes, and we say, ``No, we are going to keep them.''
Salvadoran minister was in my office yesterday saying, ``We
would like our kids back.'' If they are an unaccompanied child
from El Salvador, why cannot the Salvadoran government say,
``Send them back to us. We will then repatriate them with their
families''? We actually created a barrier on that instead of
allowing them to be able to return back to their own country.
Did you all have any conversation about that?
Ms. Tandy. The subject of one of our recommendations was to
amend the TVPRA----
Senator Lankford. Right.
Ms. Tandy [continuing]. To permit----
Senator Lankford. I saw it, but it had a parent to be able
to----
Ms. Tandy. The United States to send them back to the
custodial parent or a parent in their home country who wants
them back.
Senator Lankford. Right. But what about the country itself
as far as their embassy, there as a national entity to be able
to say please send the child back? It is the same thing we
would do. If a parent was here, a parent was not here, we would
reach out to another country and say, ``Send that American
child back to us. We will take care of it.''
Dr. Cooper. But would not you have to make sure that child
was going to be safe? If a child says the reason they are not
there in the first place is because they are not safe,
certainly we would not want to send them back.
Senator Hassan. If a gang is coercing the parent to
requesting the child back.
Chairman Johnson. We are not ensuring they are safe here in
America. We release about 79 percent of unaccompanied children
to an undocumented person in America.
Dr. Cooper. But I would venture to say that our laws are
such that they would be more likely to be safe.
Chairman Johnson. Oh, I completely agree, but I am saying
this is no guarantee here in terms of what is happening.
Senator Lankford. It is just a strange anomaly that if a
country says we want our child back, we basically tell them no
at this point.
Mr. Fresco. The complication, Senator Lankford, is the
question is whether you are doing this systemically or
individually, and what I mean by that is if you are doing it
individually, what you have is you have a child presenting
themselves individually saying, ``I cannot go back to my
family's home because my dad beats me''----
Senator Lankford. Right.
Mr. Fresco [continuing]. ``And it is an unsafe home.'' So
even if the government is saying, ``I want the child back,''
well, OK, government. Where are you going to put this child if
we send them back to you? And so that is the problem. How do
you deal with that individual claim versus how do you deal with
a systemic claim?
I am not giving a recommendation. I am just going to say
what the law says now is you have to then do a proceeding on
what is in the best interest of that child. Is it to remain
here with a guardian, or is it to be removed back?
Mr. Ahern. You will get a different answer from a foreign
minister versus a parent who is kind of encouraging some of the
kids to come north.
Senator Lankford. To come because they have a brother that
is already here.
Mr. Ahern. The reasons to come north are for education
opportunity, better health care, and whatnot.
Also, one of the other reasons for why, there is an awful
lot of kids, thousands who are going back, is because sometimes
as many as four or five kids at a time come north in the hands
of a smuggler.
Senator Hassan. Right.
Mr. Ahern [continuing]. These kids go back, then put at the
starting line, and then brought back to the country again.
Senator Lankford. To come back again.
Senator Hassan. Yes.
Mr. Ahern. That is unconscionable.
Senator Hassan. Yes.
Mr. Ahern [continuing]. That is something we cannot let
continue to happen in our country.
Senator Hassan. That is true.
Chairman Johnson. So just real quick, Leon, when you made
your opening statement, you defined the problem, and to a
certain extent, you were kind of defining solutions.
The way I continue to talk about this is the problem is in
the chart,\1\ OK? From my standpoint, the initial--and this is
the first step. The initial goal should be to reduce the
illegal flow, to dis-incentivize families and children taking
that dangerous journey.
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\1\ The chart referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the Appendix
on page 382.
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What I am trying to do with Operation Safe Return is, first
of all, tell human smugglers, on a bipartisan basis, ``We are
not going to allow you to exploit our laws anymore. It is going
to take some time, but here is the initial first step.'' The
message to Central American families is ``Do not. Please do not
indebt yourself to the human smugglers. Do not mortgage your
house. Do not pay them a year's worth of salary.''
When I talk about indebting, one thing, we had the same
conversation with the families on the border, and I was
surprised at how many--and, again, you do not know what they
are being told by the human traffickers, but I have not paid a
human trafficker anything, which is a little concerning because
they will have to pay, which is why they end up at stash
houses, and they are going to have to work out their debt.
We had the Robert Kraft, the massage parlor story. The New
York Times did a great job talking about Asian women, $30,000
to $40,000 indebted to human traffickers, and how are they
paying it off? In the sex business.
So from my standpoint, the goal of our policy initially,
the first step is we need to reduce that flow, and that is
where I go to your recommendations in terms of how do we do
that. Is that kind of what you are saying is the first step and
why this is an emergency in your report?
Ms. Tandy. Absolutely, Senator. Integrated in all of our
recommendations is to stem the flow so that these children are
not placed in danger to begin with. Part of the recommendation
to stem the flow is to give them a safe place to assert their
claims in Central America, in Guatemala at a processing center.
If they continue to flow to the border and move with a
notice to appear, if they file their claims, we may not see
them again for years. So if that continues, it will just
continue to pull these families in.
So we want them to be able to assert their claims and to do
it in a humane setting. The best place to do that is in a safe
place down there that we establish with international
cooperation like Guatemala. So that we can save them from a
terrible journey and terrible crossing into this country.
Chairman Johnson. Gary.
Senator Peters. Yes. I want to pursue that because,
obviously, we do not want to send folks back, children back to
an unsafe place, they are fleeing. But now you are saying,
``You have to stay in that place that you are fleeing while we
process your claims,'' which could take a long time.
Tell me more about the international effort to put them
someplace. You are talking about a refugee camp in Guatemala
for folks? Because if they believe that they are being
persecuted, attacked, or threatened by drug cartels, we have to
keep them safe while we go through this process, I would think.
Ms. Tandy. So one of the panel members is a former U.S.
Ambassador to Mexico in the Clinton Administration, and he was
one of the principal proponents of establishing such a center.
It does no good for the center to be on unsafe ground in
Guatemala. So it has to be a center where there is an agreement
with the government of Guatemala, where there is security
provided, and where you would have all of the other types of
support such as medical, security, welfare, asylum officers who
would do the processing, judges, additional judges who would
take care of the back end of the claim. All of that would have
to be a concentrated effort.
Such a center does not exist, but there is a belief that it
could exist with an international agreement with the government
of Guatemala. It could be created, and it could stop the danger
to these kids who are going through Mexico to get up here and
then all of the ills that we have talked about that happened to
them.
Mr. Ahern. Just to add to that, I think one of the things
that, again, we get so focused on is what is happening at the
initial Border Patrol station during that first 72 hours;
whether it be 24 hours for children or 72 hours for adults, in
the time they spend in ICE detention centers or before they go
off to the HHS family centers.
We lose sight of the fact, first, the conditions that they
lived with before they started this trek to the United States,
and second, the horrific stories we have heard and seen from
people along the way. Those things are really of concern. While
certainly somebody could be cared for better, I do not agree
with any of the current standards, and I think they all need to
be improved.
Senator Hassan. Yes.
Mr. Ahern. But let us not lose sight of the fact of what is
happening in transit and the exploitation. We cannot scoff at
that. That is something we have to go ahead and look at.
Chairman Johnson. I have never published on our website the
folders I have of the dead, desiccated animal-chewed bodies----
Senator Peters. We all understand that, that is horrible.
Chairman Johnson [continuing]. In counties both in Texas
and----
Mr. Ahern. So what can we do to go ahead and stop the flow?
What can we do to stop the push factors that occurred?
Senator Peters. Right.
Mr. Ahern. That is going to take more patience than
oftentimes the U.S. Government tends to show because that is an
effort of capacity building.
Senator Hassan. I think some of this is a discussion about
capacity building--former Assistant Secretary of Homeland
Security Juliette Kayyem wrote a piece yesterday saying you
meet a surge with a surge.
Now, it does not mean that we do not also work on the pull
factors and the push factors, which are important. It does not
mean we also do not fix our immigration standards.
But I will go back to Flores for a second, not because I
want to beat a dead horse here, but because I think it is
important. I was a Governor. I ran a number of systems. My own
view is that every time you give human beings deadlines and
limits, they go right up to them, and then they go a little
past them and a little past them.
So my concern is not--I am not critical of the personnel
trying to do their best at the border, given how overwhelmed
they are and the fact that those time limits are very hard for
us to meet right now, given the lack of capacity at the border
on our side and the numbers that are coming to our border.
My concern is instead of changing the standard, we change
it to 25 days, because it is human nature, now it is going to
be 28 days or 35 days before kids get out.
If you instead change the focus to the capacity of what we
need at the border as the United States of America to keep
children safe within the standards we already have--that is the
surge capacity that I would like to see us focus on--while we
are fixing the long-term problems, I think there is a lot of
agreement for it at this table.
Chairman Johnson. The problem is we do not know what
capacities--is it from the last 3 years, or is it this year?
And is next year going to be even worse?
There was a study done in Guatemala that said a third of
Guatemalans intend to migrate to the United States. That would
be 5.8 million people. If they start coming through quickly, we
will not have anywhere near enough facilities.
Ms. Tandy. If I could just address----
Senator Rosen. I understand that work on legislation that
will stop the push or the pull, and so if you do them both
simultaneously----
Chairman Johnson. That is a long-term solution. We have a
problem in the here and now.
Ms. Tandy. If I could just address, Senator Hassan, your
points that this panel only recommended a change in Flores for
children who are accompanied by a parent. We did not recommend
changing any of the time limits that Flores applied originally
in 1997.
The extension of those time limits a few years ago by the
Flores courts to push that into the family units is where this
crisis really took off.
Senator Hassan. Right. I understand that, and I have the
footnote with your recommendation on Flores in front of me
because I wanted to reread it before we had this discussion.
But the issue is this. We know separating children from
families is not only wrong but unacceptable to Americans
everywhere, on all sides of the aisle, and we know that
detention of children is harmful.
What I have been trying to focus on is just our capacity as
a country, the greatest country on earth, with more resources
than any country on earth, to do the right things by kids,
which I believe we have the ability to do while we are working
on these other issues.
I understand why the recommendation is there. I just think
we are seeing it as a false choice, and I think we can do
better. I would look forward to continuing to have that
conversation with all of you because I know you are trying to
do your best by kids too.
Dr. Cooper. Senator Hassan, if I could respond to what you
said about building capacity at the border or wherever these
either unaccompanied children or children with families are
going to be, from a medical perspective, there needs to be a
fixed location at every border station separate from the border
detention environment, so that health care providers can
humanely evaluate and treat children and monitor them, even
keep them overnight if necessary in a safe and appropriate
manner. That would be a very achievable and not extraordinarily
expensive intervention that I think should be present at every
one of those sites.
Senator Hassan. Thank you very much.
Senator Peters. So part of--and I want to get back to,
Leon, your point about the choice, the number two choice where
you try to process quickly.
So that was part of the aspects of your report is to have
this rocket docket at the regional center where you bring folks
together. I guess my question is, How realistic is it to
actually get the kind of due process necessary to do it in 20
or 30 days?
I know the Acting Secretary said 20 days is not enough. I
mean, what are the practical aspects associated with it? How
many immigration judges are you going to need? You said the
difficulties of getting documents, of really getting full.
Mr. Fresco. Sure.
Senator Peters. Give me some substance behind that.
Mr. Fresco. Yes. Under the current system, it could not
work because under the current system, if you are not providing
people with counsel, you have to give them time. If you are not
providing people with an opportunity to get documents, you have
to give them time.
Senator Peters. So you are recommending that counsel be
provided?
Mr. Fresco. I am recommending you give them counsel on day
one, so you are not spending a lot of time with people saying,
``I need time to find counsel,'' because you already have it.
Senator Peters. So they get it. On day one, they get
counsel provided to them.
Mr. Fresco. Yes, exactly. The issue of the documents was
something that was just added in the Real ID Act in, I think
2004. Before, if you had a claim that sounded credible, then
what the court would do is they would decide, ``Does this claim
sound credible?'' If you say, ``I flew on a magic unicorn
here,'' that is not a credible-sounding claim. But if you give
a claim that sounds credible, they used to not make you
corroborate that with documents because it wasted a lot of
time. This is what happens now, and what you do is you can just
plug in the legal factor. Is this still a cognizable asylum
claim?
There is a lot of people who are making the assertion that
this is not a value social group, and other people say it is a
valid social group. Let us get to those claims without wasting
all the time. The entire waste of the asylum hearing is forcing
people to go get documents that they do not have already
because they fled the country, and they are not going to be
able to get those documents. If you take those two things out
of it and just move to the nuts and bolts of the adjudication,
you can in fact do it very quickly.
Senator Peters. In 20 days.
Mr. Fresco. In 20 days if you had a significant number of
judges that you added to the courts and you gave people
counsel.
Senator Peters. What would we need? Did you do any analysis
on how many?
Chairman Johnson. It depends on what the flow is.
Senator Peters. Yes. But, I mean, per person.
Ms. Tandy. When in April, Senator, we recommended doubling
the current number of judges--so that would be, at that time,
an additional 30 judges, who in a way, the last in/first out
(LIFO), so that the judges would have no other docket except
for the border surge. And they would address that first instead
of the entire backlog of these asylum claims.
Mr. Ahern. Which actually is the right way to do them
because, with the current number, if you can believe the number
as being accurate, it is somewhere around 800,000 cases
currently backlogged before Executive Office for Immigration
Review (EOIR).
Senator Peters. Right.
Mr. Ahern. So if you just put the most recent one at the
end of that list, the individuals coming here, if their
objective is economic interest, they are going to achieve that
over the several years it will take before they actually get
their appearance notice to come before a judge for a hearing.
So the last in, first out is a critical component.
Chairman Johnson. The system is tracking people----
Mr. Ahern. That is right.
Chairman Johnson [continuing]. Which is why the numbers are
growing.
Mr. Ahern. That is right.
Mr. Fresco. Many times, the lawyer will advise the person,
in my view, if the whole system is running the way it is
supposed to, ethically, ``Sir or ma'am, you are not
articulating an asylum claim. You have to concede to
removability here,'' if they are not.
If they are a genuine refugee, then they will say, ``OK.
You can move forward in this situation.''
Chairman Johnson. So I am still trying to twist these two
Senator arms to help sign the letter of support for Operation
Safe Return.
As imperfect as that is, I still believe--because you are
talking about changing the law, and I am not seeing that happen
anytime soon, unfortunately.
We may be able to pass something in Senate, but again, I
think we still have a pretty high hurdle in the House.
So, again, my assumption is we are not going to be changing
any law anytime soon. So within existing authorities, the
letter of support for Operation Safe Return would use
authorities in use as of June 30, so nothing further. It is
just what authorities, laws, regulations are in place there.
I mean, is that something you could continue to work with
us on to try and hone--a really good idea by Senator Peters
where you are trying to go through this was real-time
evaluation through the Inspector General Office and the
Government Accountability Office (GAO) in terms of getting the
individuals in, evaluating why they are coming in, how many are
reaching that credible fear claim, how many being adjudicated--
again, real-time information to inform future public policy,
future law changes.
Again, it is not the solution----
Mr. Ahern. Right.
Chairman Johnson [continuing]. But it is a step that can
maybe make an improvement. If we could return people that do
not even achieve that initial credible fear claim, start
returning those people in a credible fashion to send that
signal--``Do not take this risk. You are going to go home.''
You might be able to see that floor reduced as you said with
the Brazilians when you had the process of expat removal.
So, again, just kind of get your----
Mr. Ahern. Sure. So I think the first response to that is
any movement that will go ahead and add consequences to the
current flow that would then result in it being reduced is a
positive step, without question. The question becomes is how
much of a material impact will it have on the overall body and
the numbers.
But you have to start. Please understand that does not take
the Congress off the hook for some of the legislative changes
needed.
Chairman Johnson. Not even close, but it is something.
Mr. Ahern. The funding that is needed as well. It is all
about the messaging as well because there is a tremendous
amount of narrative that goes down in those Northern Triangle
countries. A lot of it is controlled by traffickers and even by
almost quasi-travel agencies. These things start----
Chairman Johnson. They have cards like a travel agency is
what we have been told.
Mr. Ahern. I know. We have seen them, and we will see them
when we go back down in a couple of weeks.
Say it is $200 a week or a day. I believe that they can be
a multiplication factor for the numbers that would actually
decide not to go if they start to realize as a consequence that
it is not just a free pathway to being able to stay in the
United States for a number of years while they wait for their
hearing.
So if the number is small--I wish it would be bigger, but
it is small. But it is a start.
Chairman Johnson. You publicize it.
Mr. Ahern. But the consequences could be more significant
if that messaging factor goes down to the Northern Triangle
countries.
Senator Peters. The rub here--and I just want to--because
the kind of issues we have worked through this is having not
just access to counsel, but actually having counsel. So if
there was a program that says you have access to a counsel, how
realistic is that to really get counsel for these folks? So
what is the timeline versus what you are proposing, Leon, which
is actually providing that government attorney? Is that the
standard we should be looking at?
Mr. Fresco. I mean, here is the issue that makes things
complicated for me is if you are trying to do a pure expedited
removal-based solution, I actually feel like that was--for
better or for worse, that was what the Dilley, Karnes
facilities were created to do.
The problem is the expedited removal solution did not
engender a lot of removals. I do not know what the number is so
I will not quote any more numbers, but I think that is why--and
the reason it does not is because of the legal standard you
have to apply, and so that is why I think----
Chairman Johnson. By the way, that alone in terms of
Operation Safe Return would be good information to have----
Mr. Fresco. Yes.
Chairman Johnson [continuing]. So we have the numbers and
say, ``That is why this is not working.''
Mr. Fresco. Right. I mean, that is what I think. The
complication is twofold, or here is what my concern would be.
But I think you are on the right track. I just think the
concern would be if you end up detaining people for the entire
time necessary to try to accomplish this and you cannot because
you keep hitting the 20 days of Flores and you have not
accomplished the removal, then the whole thing fell apart.
Chairman Johnson. It is a pilot program.
Mr. Fresco. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. Again, we would learn from that, then.
Mr. Fresco. Yes. Oh, of course.
Chairman Johnson. Again, in our phone conversation, I agree
with you. I originally said it as those include that have a
valid asylum claim, and we realized, well, that is not going to
be possible. We have to do it based on credible fear, but you
do what you can do. Right now, this is the only thing we really
can do within existing law, existing authority, but it will
inform the process.
Trust me. I realize it is not a panacea. I realize it is
not the solution, but if we can do something in a bipartisan
fashion that literally communicates to human traffickers,
again, on a bipartisan fashion, ``We are not going to allow you
to exploit our laws anymore. We are going to start moving in
that direction on a bipartisan basis,'' recognizing this is not
acceptable.
This is causing harm to people, and we want to dissuade it.
We want to deter it. That is what we are trying to accomplish
here is just a first little baby step toward bringing a
solution.
Again, I will make the appeal publicly. Please sign on the
letter of support, and work with us and DHS to do it.
Senator Hassan. You gave it in last----
Chairman Johnson. OK.
Ms. Tandy. If I could just add, Senator, Operation Safe
Return, is a baby step. If the laws are not going to be
changed, as this panel has recommended, there is nothing else.
There is nothing that is going to stop these children from
getting harmed. There is nothing that is going to stop the
dangers that we are seeing right now. It will just continue,
and it will increase.
A baby step is better than nothing. But having said that,
this Operation Safe Return is not an act of Congress. It is
within current authorities and funding. So there is no reason
that the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland
Security, and HHS cannot just do it and do it yesterday.
So I realize that----
Chairman Johnson. Here is the problem is anything the
administration does it challenged in court, and what I am
trying to do is----
Ms. Tandy. No, I understand.
Chairman Johnson [continuing]. To at least try and provide
bipartisan support saying we actually want the administration
to do this. Maybe not bad, but this.
Ms. Tandy. You will give beleaguered agencies the cover
that they need to do this. I do not know that it is enough to
keep courts from intervening, but nonetheless, we do applaud
doing something.
The real critical factor that is going to change these
numbers is rolling back Flores to what it was originally
intended for so that we can get these processes with funding,
with judges, with a rocket docket, and get this stopped.
Without that, this is what will happen.
Chairman Johnson. I want a quick----
Ms. Tandy. Can I just finish my point, Senator? This is
what will happen. You know these criminal elements on the other
side of the border, and what will happen is the Operation Safe
Return will be the point of no return for these criminal
traffickers. They will move elsewhere on the border and push
people elsewhere on the border, and some of the worst places on
the border for these sick children is in New Mexico. Border
Patrol stations are not even open 24 hours. They are so remote.
So there is a risk that it will divert the flow.
Chairman Johnson. You can go from all over the border and
then be accumulated in Dilley.
Ms. Tandy. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. You can do it so that that is not an
incentive.
Ms. Tandy. So, ideally, Senator, this toe in the water is
not just in Dilley. It starts, and it starts all over the
border to prevent that from happening.
Chairman Johnson. But that would be like your regional
processing center, though, OK?
Ms. Tandy. It would be.
Chairman Johnson. So anybody from the border, any part of
the border could go there and have this process.
Ms. Tandy. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. But I did want to quickly talk to Leon,
because you are on the other--oh God, I totally lost my train
of thought. I will come back to you. Sorry.
Ms. Tandy. Sorry about that.
Dr. Cooper. One thing I would also like to encourage is
that we increase the funding to DHS because these children and
families that are coming into the interior are all going to
have to go into public school settings, and for the
unaccompanied children, they are going to have to go through
our out-of-home care settings and child welfare settings.
Having spoken to several directors of various communities,
where large groups of children have been brought, it is
obviously very overwhelming for them, and so I think that that
would be the other thing that we should do to try to
accommodate those children who are already in the interior.
Chairman Johnson. I remembered. Again, you are a Democrat,
right?
Mr. Fresco. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. OK.
Mr. Fresco. A Schumer staffer.
Chairman Johnson. Do you agree with Secretary Johnson, who
vehemently disagreed with the Flores reinterpretation, that
Flores settlement agreement did not apply to accompanied
children?
Mr. Fresco. The specific problem with asking me that
question, I was actually the attorney who was arguing that
Flores would not apply.
Chairman Johnson. Oh, I did not----
Mr. Fresco. That was my job in the Department of Justice.
Chairman Johnson. Sorry. I did not----
Mr. Fresco. I actually argued that in court about the
Flores agreement did not apply to families.
Chairman Johnson. OK.
Mr. Fresco. We did not win that. We did not win that
argument.
Chairman Johnson. Rats. I wish you were a better witness
for that.
Mr. Fresco. Yes. [Laughter.]
Chairman Johnson. That is the first thing. I would tell you
to take a look at what we are trying to do with Flores is just
go back to the intent of the Flores agreement, which was for
unaccompanied children, and the fact that some courts somehow
decided, that it applies to accompanied children as well----
Mr. Fresco. There is an hour YouTube clip. You can watch me
making that argument.
Senator Hassan. But let me be practical for a second, which
is most of the people, as you have heard me articulate, there
are a lot of us who believe the reinterpretation was correct,
given what happens to kids in detention.
So if that is where the House is going to be, the question
becomes whether you all have looked at the alternatives that
have been suggested. They have not been piloted in any
meaningful way, and whether there are other things we can do--
because, again, if we go back to the fact that none of us want
to have what happens here unnecessarily add to the trauma that
children experience, what other things can we do in terms of
access immediately to attorneys, penalizing smugglers who are
faking their relationship to the child or exploiting that? What
are the--and case managing families so that they show up and
having enough judges so that they are not here for years
waiting for their process?
There are a lot of suggestions that have been made that,
yes, require resources, but I think, again, in a bipartisan
way, targeted resources of some of that could begin to impact
numbers too.
I think that is where the practical piece is. We could try
to re-litigate the Flores reinterpretation. Some of us agree
with it; some of us do not. But it is what it is.
Chairman Johnson. Here is my concern about resources is
that at the current level, I mean, the resources we are going
to have to employ here, I am not sure we have enough, OK?
So, you can maybe resource this if we are down a couple
hundred thousand people a year, but now we are starting to
approach a million. So that is a concern.
One question I had, because we have not talked about this,
I am starting to read news accounts on how schools are having
to deal with the dispersion. You have children coming in from
the mountains of Guatemala, completely different dialect. You
do not have people that speak their language.
Plus, as James was talking about, the large number of 17-
year-olds. Unaccompanied children, 70 percent are male, 70
percent are over 15, the perfect population, if they are not
already a gang member coming out of El Salvador or out of
Guatemala. You do not speak the language. You are going to
gravitate toward people that do. Got a pretty good chance of
joining a gang.
So we are really not focusing enough, from my standpoint,
on the human trafficking element, but also the societal
challenges, whether it is in our school systems or whether it
is in our inner cities where those gangs might operate, is that
something the council took a look at in any meaningful way?
Mr. Ahern. The panel probably did not review the issue to
the extent that you are suggesting. But I think one of the
things, as I mentioned in my beginning statement, we need to
look at this as a continuum. We need to look at is this process
as a complete supply chain. What is happening down south in the
Northern Triangle countries? What is Mexico doing to control
its border?
There have been some recent changes. It will be
interesting. Their history has not been good at being able to
sustain efforts.
What then happens at our border, and unfortunately what
gets on the nightly news are the horrific situations that is
being dealt with at the border.
Chairman Johnson. Right.
Mr. Ahern. That is a piece of it. People do lose sight of
the fact of what then happens when it goes off to detention, to
HHS----
Chairman Johnson. Actually, it is a very short piece.
Mr. Ahern. It is.
Chairman Johnson. You are literally talking days.
Mr. Ahern. When you add the amount of time it takes for
them to go ahead and come in transit, to make it to the border,
beyond the time they spend at the border and in detention,
there is more at the other ends. But looking at the
consequences after arrival is not being looked at.
Ms. Tandy. To that point, we are now receiving information
and briefings that are being scheduled on the consequences. So
it is the interior consequences, as you suggest, schools,
communities, and the impact of not stemming this flow and what
it is doing on the interior and will continue to do. So that
will be part of our final report, which we expect to have at
the end of September.
But, Dr. Cooper, I know that you are very focused on the
maltreatment and a national expert on the maltreatment of
children.
Dr. Cooper. Yes, very much so. What I was going to say is
17 is a magic number, but we do have the medical capability
with x-rays to have a better determination about whether an
individual is a fully grown or completely mature adult versus
an adolescent. We have that capability. It has not been used
because we do not have x-ray machines available, but it is
usually a radiographic evaluation, one of the things that could
be beneficial for all these individuals.
Chairman Johnson. We have Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
testing. You are talking about the fraud aspect of this, which
is----
Dr. Cooper. I am talking about the age.
Chairman Johnson. The age, the age fraud, but also
fraudulent parents too.
Dr. Cooper. Yes, that is correct.
Senator Peters. You mentioned Mexico and the issues there,
but yet the report recommends the safe third country agreement
with Mexico. How realistic do you think that is, panel?
Mr. Ahern. I think if you can actually take the current
president of Mexico at his campaign promises, he is pretty
strongly against it. So if he is going to stay true to that
promise, it is going to be a real challenge.
I think something that perhaps has all the elements of a
safe third country, perhaps it will remain in Mexico type of a
protocol, some of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) things
that were being considered may be achieving some of the same
objectives without having that label of a ``safe third,''
because I think signing a safe third is probably not likely.
Chairman Johnson. Did you see the public opinion poll of
Mexicans that came out today?
Mr. Ahern. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. It is pretty negative against the
immigrants. People coming into Mexico are taking Mexican jobs,
potentially if they are going to stay. So they really have very
little publically or I would say----
Mr. Ahern. Over the last few years, the Mexican economy has
stabilized pretty well. That was one of the impacting factors
about slowing the flow here to the United States. There was no
need to come here for economic reasons. So they were able to
stay in Mexico. Now that is putting a new dimension into the
challenge within Mexico.
Mr. Fresco. In an ideal world, what you would have, in my
view, is one or two staging facilities where you would make
these claims, and then you would have an entire western
hemispheric refugee resettlement program. We would take some.
Brazil would take some. Chile would take some. Argentina would
take people. We would take refugees from all over, and we would
do burden sharing. I think that is, in my view, a much better,
longer-term----
Chairman Johnson. In an idea world, America would not have
an insatiable demand for drugs.
Mr. Fresco. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. So you would not have the drug cartels
which have destroyed public institutions, the impunity and the
breakdown of so many aspects.
Mr. Fresco. There is a lot of factors.
Chairman Johnson. I think America bears responsibility, but
that is a very long-term project right there because, as I have
tried to explore, how do you get to the drug cartels, well,
they control a large percentage of communities in Central
America, even in Mexico. Those communities are supported by the
drug cartels. It is not like you can go in there with surgical
strikes and get rid of a drug cartel. This is a pervasive
problem, again, because of our insatiable demand for drugs.
Senator Carper, you missed all the solutions. We have it
all figured out.
Senator Carper. You solved the problem.
Chairman Johnson. Without you.
Senator Carper. What did Winston Churchill used to say?
``Success is never final. Failure is never fatal.'' There you
go.
We have simultaneously a hearing going on in the
Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee focused on climate
change, sea level rise and all that, and the role that electric
vehicles are playing in that and how we need to recycle the
batteries from electric vehicles and we generate all of these
employment opportunities by doing so, so pretty good stuff.
I am sorry I had to slip out and missed part of what you
were saying.
I understand from my staff that--Abby gave me this notice.
I understand I missed some discussion around Operation Safe
Return. For my benefit, would you please summarize?
Chairman Johnson. Yes. Twisting your arm too.
Senator Carper. There you go.
What are some of the risks and some of the benefits of that
pilot, and what are three things that we need to do to make it
better?
Leon, do you want to start?
Mr. Fresco. Sure. I did not either endorse or not endorse
Operation Safe Return. I personally do not view the expedited
removal process as the ideal way to go through this because I
think the legal standard is an illegal standard that if you are
doing it correctly will lead to high credible fear
determinations, and if you are doing it incorrectly, it will
lead to litigation, which will not also create the returns you
want.
So what my focus----
Chairman Johnson. But I am not saying it is ideally----
Mr. Fresco. Oh, no, no, no. Fair enough. We have all
options that are suboptimal. I am totally with you there,
Senator.
So my only point is I--this is just me. So I am not
speaking for the Homeland Security Advisory Committee, but I
would want to say you have resources now. Congress does not
have to change the law. You could actually get people lawyers
on day one, put them in the normal removal process, not the
expedited removal process, and see if we can actually get
removal hearings done as quickly as possible, not expedited
removal hearings, because the expedited removal hearing will
end--we have seen this 80 or 90 percent of the time--with a
credible fear determination saying yes, and now what? Now we
are back, so we have wasted all of those 20 days.
Chairman Johnson. If we do not do anything----
Mr. Fresco. No. I agree.
Chairman Johnson. I guess what I would say is I am happy to
have Operation Safe Return morph into something that works
better and better. I mean manufacture it, incremental and
continuous improvement. I look at that as a first step, and I
want to move in that exact same direction. I am just not sure
whether we can, but Operation Safe Return would allow us to
have a program that can morph into something that is more
effective.
Now are you in support of it?
Senator Carper. Let me go back to----
Mr. Fresco. Supportive or not supportive. I want to keep
talking to your staff, with everybody----
Chairman Johnson. I am a salesman. I am trying to get----
Mr. Fresco. I hate saying anything to not be supportive but
we need to work on it.
Mr. Ahern. I can tell you something from a historical and
operational perspective for over 30 years. Anything you do that
is going to have a consequence on the flow is a positive. For
that, I think this body really needs to take a strong look at
beginning that as a pilot.
It is a very small first step. Make no mistake, the
legislative fixes still are required. But anything that will
start to go ahead and send a different message than the message
currently sent by this Country down to those Northern Triangle
countries is an important step. It is going to yield a very
small number. But again, let us look beyond just the numbers of
who would actually be physically put into removal proceedings.
The impact that could have on the messaging down in the
countries of origin could be more significant. But, again, we
need to start. It is a beginning of a process. It is not a huge
step forward.
I think the other thing that will be very interesting to
see is how the interim final rule that came out from DHS and
DOJ in the last 24 hours on asylum is going to have the impact
on flow as well.
So staying close to those factors are important. But to
really impact those pull factors that this country has put out
there is going to be important to manage the flow.
As we talked about children, for a large part of this
hearing, a lot of those issues go away and the situation
becomes a lot easier to manage if we manage that flow and
reduce it substantially back to a more normalized number. These
are the steps that need to be taken going forward.
Ms. Tandy. I would just add, Senator, that if Congress is
unable to change the law and put Flores back to where it was
with only unaccompanied children addressed and if TVPRA is not
going to be amended, Operation Safe Return, to the extent that
it is within existing authorities and within existing
resources, is something that absolutely should be pursued.
It is a step, and to the extent that it is described as a
research and opportunity to--as an experiment, if you will, to
see if it will work, I think it could provide very valuable
data.
There is a facility in Texas at Dilley where it is
underutilized right now, and it has all of the capability of
implementing Operation Safe Return.
Our colleagues, Dr. Cooper and Jay Ahern, were there just a
couple of weeks ago.
Senator Carper. Where is it?
Ms. Tandy. Texas.
Mr. Ahern. It is in Dilley.
Senator Carper. Where is that?
Mr. Ahern. It is 65 miles south of San Antonio, and it has
four or five courtrooms already established, with video
capability to get the administrative judges to be able to go
ahead and actually video in if they are not actually physically
there. It is currently a 2,400-person capacity.
Sharon, what was it? 600 people were there at the time?
Dr. Cooper. Yes. It has excellent medical facilities,
everything, x-ray, everything you could need to handle any
health care issues that would arise, even in a group setting
such as that manner.
Chairman Johnson. Jay and Karen convinced me. Come on,
Leon. [Laughter.]
Ms. Tandy. So it is not a panacea, Senator. It is not a
panacea, but I think it is an important step. If the other
things are not going to happen that we have recommended, it is
a very important step and will give you some kind of data to
know how to factor in the laws, the legal changes that should
be made and what the legal framework should be.
So to that extent and because it is something that could be
done right now, I do think it is an important first step.
Chairman Johnson. That data collection, by the way, that
was Senator Peters that put in process.
Ms. Tandy. Excellent input.
Mr. Fresco. Yes. You would need to know if it worked for
sure.
Mr. Ahern. One final point, obviously.
Senator Peters. There is just a dearth of data on this
whole process, which is really frustrating trying to come up
with policy.
Chairman Johnson. Your fingerprints are all over that
thing, so you might as well sign on.
Mr. Ahern. One of the key questions too as you go forward
is to consider obviously how you operationalize it. The issue
of how to operate becomes always a question in dealing with the
operational agencies like CBP and ICE on what will be the
operational impacts. As Karen mentioned a few minutes ago, you
do not want to necessarily forecast to the trafficking
organizations what corridor you are going to be running during
that particular day and week.
They can all go to Dilley. That is fine. But where you
actually are operating and what population of people you are
going to be using----
Chairman Johnson. They want to keep that----
Mr. Ahern. We did this in our drug days together.
Ms. Tandy. Right.
Mr. Ahern. You want to be able to have jump capability to
move around. So you are trying to play a more unpredictable
game with a very adaptable adversary, like the cartels, and the
same people you are dealing with today. So being able to go
ahead and have a good operational program that is attached on
how they would do the implementation----
Chairman Johnson. That is something we have to implement
from day one.
Anybody? Any other comments?
Senator Carper. If I could, my colleagues may recall I led
a congressional delegation down to the Honduras, Guatemala, and
El Salvador back at the very beginning of this year, and we
were looking at numbers through really beginning of November in
terms of illegal immigration. The numbers were pretty flat, and
as you look at that chart\1\ back there, pretty flat right up
until the beginning of November. It sort of exploded.
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\1\ The chart referenced by Senator Carper appears in the Appendix
on page 426.
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Among the things, we focus a lot--and it is important that
we do focus--on symptoms of the problems at the border, what we
see at the border, but it is also critically important, as my
colleagues know, that we try to figure out what is going on
down in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador sending all those
people up here.
It turns out El Salvador, the surge has been a lot less
dramatic, and one of the reasons why is they had an election
there. They elected a new president. His name is Bukele. He is
like 37 years old. He is the former mayor of San Salvador, and
people have hope. People have hope that there is going to be a
better day.
Meanwhile, in Honduras last year, Juan Hernandez, the
president of the country, got the Supreme Court to declare that
their constitution was unconstitutional and he could run again,
and he won a razor-thin reelection that just really rubbed a
lot of people the wrong way. I mean really made people angry.
They are still angry.
Over in Guatemala, Jimmy Morales, who is the president, who
everybody had very high hopes for 4 years ago when he was
elected, it has turned out to be a bitter disappointment. He
tried to chase out of the country, the United Nation (UN)
entity that is there to try to go after the corruption and so
forth. When they had their Presidential election, the best
person that could have been on the ballot was not even allowed
to come into the country and campaign, Thelma Aldana, the
former Attorney General who was like death on corruption when
she was Attorney General. And so people are just really like
fed up.
Plus, you have the situation with climate, climate problems
and situations that people cannot grow coffee up in the
highlands, and there is a real surge of people there. There is
a lot going on there. So it is important that we focus on the
stuff that we are talking about here today but also be mindful
of some of the things that I just mentioned.
There is one of my favorite songs. I love music. One of my
favorite songs is a song called ``Hope in a Hopeless World,''
and this is not an easy problem to solve. But there is hope,
and the work the four of you and your presence here and our
Chairman and Ranking Member hosting this roundtable today gives
me hope and what for many people is an all too hopeless world.
Ms. Tandy. Thank you, Senator.
I would add----
Senator Carper. I will not sing.
Ms. Tandy. I am sorry?
Senator Carper. I will not sing today.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you. [Laughter.]
Ms. Tandy. That would probably keep people here.
Senator, we are looking at those push factors and traveling
to the Northern Triangle to Guatemala and Honduras as a panel.
That is coming up next month.
In the meantime, we are receiving a number of briefings
from the State Department, NGO's, and others regarding the very
matters that you just talked about with regard to corruption,
extortion, and other issues in the Northern Triangle that are
affecting these flows.
So our report was an emergency report focusing on the pull
factors and trying to stem the flow quickly on the family unit
side. We are yet to address the push factors, which will be in
our final report in September.
Senator Carper. Good. We as a body, the Congress, House and
Senate, in a bipartisan way have been supporting, focusing on
the three major causes for people that want to get out of those
countries: one, lack of economic hope and opportunity; two,
crime and violence; and three, corruption that is just endemic.
Ms. Tandy. Absolutely.
Senator Carper. What we are doing with Alliance for
Prosperity, which we get about--for every dollar we invest, we
get $5, $6, or $7 from other sources invested to address those
three major push factors.
Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Peters.
Senator Peters. All set.
Chairman Johnson. Anybody else want to make any further
comments?
Ms. Tandy. On behalf of the panel, we sincerely appreciate
the opportunity to talk about the issues in our interim report
as we saw them and are grateful for your focus. We have high
hopes as well, Senator, and look forward to the outcome.
Chairman Johnson. Let me just say I want to echo what
Senator Carper was talking about, how much we appreciate what
you have done.
Oftentimes Congress will set up a commission. This was done
by the Department of Homeland Security, but a really well-
designed council from my standpoint. I think really well
staffed, talking about the members, and the fact that you do
have a broad spectrum, and you are coming together. You are
accommodating each other's views and really doing a very
thoughtful job of problem solving. We talk about it all the
time, gathering the information, defining the problem, root-
cause analysis, and then establishing achievable goals and then
start designing solutions. Everything I am reading, everything,
all of our discussions, you are going through that very
thoughtful process.
I appreciate the fact that you recognize this was an
emergency and you had to issue an emergency interim report, and
I am just looking forward to September, a final report, but
also continue to work with you because I think this council can
really have an impact.
Again, because the bipartisan--I actually prefer using the
term ``nonpartisan nature.'' I think it is what this Committee
has a pretty good track record under Tom's chairmanship and
Susan and Joe Lieberman. It is just a tradition here.
I think working together, we really can move the needle on
this. I will take the incremental. I will keep twisting Leon's
arm to get support fetches, that baby first step, but it is a
step. Otherwise, we just sit back and we do nothing and we just
keep yacking about this.
Again, I think we were all pretty well moved by that
picture of that father and his daughter. I called up Gary that
morning and said, ``OK. Are not you sick of this? Let us start
doing something different. Let us start having these
discussions,'' and I thought this was a very good discussion,
kind of wide-ranging, maybe not as focused as I would have it,
but that is the nature of the beast.
So we will continue to have these discussions with a very
sincere desire of starting to develop solutions, improve the
situation on a continuous basis, and again, I just cannot sing
your council's praises enough and all of your involvement.
Thank you for doing it.
So, with that, the hearing record will remain open for 15
days until August 1, 5 p.m., for the submission of statements
and questions for the record.
This hearing roundtable is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:07 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
UNPRECEDENTED MIGRATION AT THE
U.S. SOUTHERN BORDER: WHAT IS REQUIRED TO IMPROVE CONDITIONS?
----------
TUESDAY, JULY 30, 2019
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Ron Johnson,
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Johnson, Portman, Lankford, Romney,
Scott, Hawley, Peters, Carper, Hassan, Sinema, and Rosen.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN JOHNSON
Chairman Johnson. Good morning. This hearing will come to
order.
I want to welcome our witnesses. The title of this hearing,
``The Unprecedented Migration at the U.S. Southern Border: What
Is Required to Improve Conditions?'' I think it is incredibly
important that we concentrate on what we can do to improve
conditions. Continuous improvement. I have a manufacturing
background. That is what we seek to do.
I will say at the outset that nobody is satisfied with the
conditions on the border. Nobody is. This is unprecedented what
is happening on the border. It is overwhelming. It is out of
control.
I was talking to the Acting Commissioner before the hearing
here and mentioned how former Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson was on MSNBC a couple months ago,
and he talked about how, when he came to the office, if
apprehensions for the day were under 1,000, it was not too bad
a day. If they were over 1,000, he knew he was going to have a
really bad day.
The fact of the matter is in May the average daily number
of apprehensions and people presenting themselves at the port
of entry (POE) without proper documentation claiming asylum was
4,652--4.6 times 1,000 a day. In June that number dropped to
3,476. For a number of reasons, I think the Acting Commissioner
will be getting into that. Currently we are probably less than
3,000 a day, but we are still close to 3,000 a day.
Everybody has seen my chart.\1\ We continue to update it.
That chart only shows unaccompanied alien children (UAC) and
people coming in as a family unit. You can see how it has
exploded here in fiscal year (FY) 2019. As of June, the first 9
months of this fiscal year, 495,000 children and family units
have come to this country. If June's pace continues, we will be
over 700,000, again, primarily people coming in as family
units, generally one adult, one child. In total, through June
we have had 780,000 people cross the border legally or present
themselves to a port of entry without proper documentation
claiming asylum. Again, if June's pace continues, we will be
about 1.1 million.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The chart referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the Appendix
on page 485.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
So those are the numbers that we are having to deal with.
That is what Border Patrol is having to deal with on a daily
basis. I ask my colleagues, I ask anybody criticizing the
conditions down there: How would you handle 4,652 people a day,
then wake up the next day and handle another 4,652 people? By
the way, it does not stop at 5 o'clock at night. It continues
24/7. It is overwhelming.
I had an earlier interview with a reporter from the
Washington Post, a real good interview, very interested in kind
of the full complexity of this problem, the reporter asked me
my evaluation of Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan. My point was
if you are looking to see criticism from me, you will not get
any. I will not criticize any former Secretary, Acting
Secretary, or current Secretary of Homeland Security. It is an
overwhelming task. We are not only talking about the border. We
are talking about natural disasters and the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA), so many responsibilities of that
position. First of all, I am just grateful anybody would take
the position.
Commissioner, I am grateful you stepped up to the plate in
your capacity. I am particularly grateful to the men and women
of DHS, of the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) that have kind of
rallied to try and deal with this overwhelming situation.
There may be some instances, there may be a few bad apples,
but the men and women that I talk to, that I see, dealing with
this humanitarian crisis on the border are doing everything
they can to treat these individuals with care and compassion.
But they are overwhelmed by the situation.
I just want everybody to keep in mind what the reality of
the situation is. Ask yourself, how would you handle it? How
would you manage this? What I would suggest is the solution
which we have been suggesting all along is in this case, with
this problem in the here and now, is let us address the root
cause, this uncontrolled flow of individuals. I would argue
that the goal of our policy, the first goal--and we have so
many different problems associated with this illegal flow. But
the first goal of our policy should be to reduce that flow,
which is what the letter we sent to DHS, working with them to
design a pilot program called ``Operation Safe Return,'' whose
goal would be to rapidly and more accurately determine those
individuals that clearly do not have a legal claim to stay in
this country and safely return them to their home country to
the safe regions of Central America. There are safe regions in
Central America. That is important to point out.
So, again, the focus on this Committee hearing is what can
we do with this overwhelming situation to improve the
conditions. We all want to do that. I am not particularly
interested in placing blame. I am interested in what can we do
to address this overwhelming and out-of-control situation.
I would ask that my written statement be entered into the
record.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Johnson appears in the
Appendix on page 465.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
With that, I will turn it over to Senator Peters.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PETERS\2\
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ The prepared statement of Senator Peters appears in the
Appendix on page 467.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
At the end of May, Chairman Johnson, Senator Hassan, and I
were together visiting the U.S.-Mexican border, and on that
trip we saw firsthand the tremendous challenges that the
Department of Homeland Security personnel and local communities
are facing at the Southern Border. It is clear that our
infrastructure and our personnel are overwhelmed. Resources are
stretched thin and are being shifted away from other priorities
like the Northern Border. Our capacity to address the
humanitarian needs of children and families is overburdened.
Despite those difficulties, we witnessed hardworking law
enforcement officers, public servants, volunteers, and civic
leaders all doing their very best to manage a very difficult
situation. At the same time, it is impossible to ignore the
reports and the images that have emerged regarding substandard
conditions and unacceptable treatment and tragic deaths of
children at some Customs and Border Protection (CBP) locations.
I am also alarmed at the reports that we have seen regarding
unprofessional and unacceptable conduct from a small number of
Border Patrol agents.
The situation at our Southern Border is, of course,
incredibly challenging. It is clear that our current system is
not equipped to process and care for the unprecedented number
of families and children seeking asylum at the Southern Border.
Some of the images that we have seen and the stories we have
heard I believe do not reflect the overall efforts of the
Customs and Border Protection folks, the hardworking men and
women who secure our borders. They certainly do not reflect the
values of this great Nation.
But it is clear that there are significant challenges on
the ground and to some extent problems within the agency's
culture that must be swiftly and adequately addressed. In
recent weeks we have seen a decline in the number of migrants
arriving along the Southern Border. The pressure appears to be
decreasing, at least temporarily. This drop has helped ease
overcrowding at many border facilities.
Billions of dollars in supplemental funding has enabled DHS
to improve their response to these challenges, and today I hope
this Committee will hear specifics on how those additional
taxpayer dollars are being used. However, as Members of this
Committee know, much of the migration that occurs from Mexico
and the Northern Triangle countries is seasonal. This fall we
can expect to see the number of arrivals rise again.
We now have an opportunity to examine where we have failed
and where we have succeeded and put lessons into practice. We
need innovative ideas to improve migrant processing to relieve
the strain on our front-line border security professionals and
other agencies that have provided support services in recent
months and to keep our border secure and our country safe.
Few issues we face are as complex as this one, but today I
hope we can find common ground, identify bipartisan solutions,
and deliver real comprehensive results for the American people.
I would like to thank our witnesses for being here today,
and I look forward to your testimony and responding to our
questions.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Peters.
It is the tradition of this Committee to swear in
witnesses, so if you will both stand and raise your right hand.
Do you swear that the testimony you will give before this
Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth, so help you, God?
Mr. Morgan. I do.
Ms. Costello. I do.
Chairman Johnson. Our first witness is Acting Commissioner
Mark Morgan. Commissioner Morgan began serving his country as a
U.S. Marine and his community in local law enforcement. After
completing a 20-year career in the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI), he began service at the Department of
Homeland Security as the Acting Assistant Commissioner for
Internal Affairs before being appointed by President Obama as
Chief of the U.S. Border Patrol. He served as Chief until
January 2017. He returned to DHS as the Acting Director of
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in May of this year
and began his current role as Acting Commissioner of U.S.
Customs and Border Protection on July 7th. Commissioner Morgan.
TESTIMONY OF MARK MORGAN,\1\ ACTING COMMISSIONER, U.S. CUSTOMS
AND BORDER PROTECTION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Morgan. Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Peters, and
Members of the Committee, thank you for this opportunity to
appear before you today.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Morgan appears in the Appendix on
page 469.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would like to begin with a story. On May 30th Border
Patrol agents from the Del Rio Sector saw a group of
undocumented migrants crossing the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) in
Texas. The agents watched as smugglers carried a paraplegic man
to the river and then callously threw him in. The paraplegic
man, of course, immediately began to drown. Fighting the strong
river current, agents were able to reach the drowning victim
and safely bring him to shore. Had agents not been there, he
would have added to the 172 deaths discovered along the
Southwest Border in desolate locations and rivers resulting
from the dangerous trek and complete disregard for human life
at the hands of smugglers.
This is one of more than 4,000 rescues performed by CBP
this year, with Border Patrol leading the way. This is who the
men and women of the United States Customs and Border
Protection are. They risk their lives every single day to help
and protect whoever is in distress. They do not ask what the
person's nationality is or whether they are trying to illegally
enter this country. They simply see a human being needing help,
and that is exactly what they provide them.
The men and women of the CBP are not running concentration
camps, making those in our custody drink from toilets, nor
denying them access to toothbrushes. That is simply not true.
This is the kind of irresponsible rhetoric that they have to
endure from both the media and even some of our own
congressional leaders. It is unjust and does nothing to bring
us closer to resolving one of the most divisive issues that we
face in our country.
Stories of agents saving lives from drowning in the Rio
Grande, dying of dehydration in the desert, and suffering in
stash houses or at the hands of smugglers, that goes
unreported. The demonizing of law enforcement professionals
must stop. These false, misinformed, and overheated attacks are
demoralizing and serve to further deteriorate the public's
understanding and perception of what the true issues are and
what needs to be done to end this crisis.
We should be coming together to focus our efforts on the
real enemy--the cartels and smugglers who make billions of
dollars at the expense of an extremely vulnerable population
while exploiting loopholes in our immigration legal framework
to facilitate their operation.
Over the past year, Homeland Security leadership has
repeatedly told Congress and the press that we have an
emergency on our hands. We have provided some statistics about
the alarming and unprecedented increase in apprehensions. That
number is over 800,000 year to date. We have explained how the
demographics of this mass migration are unlike previous
arrivals and how families and children from Central America
present significantly different challenges with regard to their
care and processing. Over 450,000 of these apprehensions were
family units, and over 80,000 were unaccompanied children.
Combined, that is over 300,000 children have entered our
custody since October 1 of last year. These numbers are
staggering, unprecedented, and have overwhelmed every aspect of
our border and immigration enforcement system.
Last week I met with the Ministers of Security from the
Northern Triangle countries who all--all of them--expressed
their collective frustration that ``the future of [their]
countries are leaving for America'' and ``they want their
children back.''
We at CBP, at DHS, we are comforting infants. We are taking
the sick to the hospital, averaging over 800 hospital visits
per day. We are expanding our medical care, ensuring children
are provided medical screenings. We are building soft-sided
facilities to provide a more adequate environment for families
and children, costing tens of millions of dollars per month to
operate. We are providing food, clothing, and other basic
necessities.
We have pulled agents from the border security mission to
help process the massive volume of migrants. In some sectors,
up to 50 percent of agents are pulled off the line to support
the extraordinary humanitarian effort along our Southwest
Border. We have pulled agents from our northern and coastal
duty stations. We have pulled more than 700 officers away from
ports. We have called for volunteers from all across the
government to help us manage this surge of humanity.
The recent supplemental, it helped. But as we have been
saying, this is merely treating the symptoms of this crisis. It
does not cure the cause.
It looks like I have about run out of time. If I could have
just a few more seconds?
Chairman Johnson. Take the time and finish your statement.
Mr. Morgan. Smugglers openly advertise a safe and legal
journey to the United States. They tell migrants and their
families that there is a policy in the United States that
anyone who arrives with a child will not be deported. We have
stats and facts to show that is exactly what is being
communicate, and our laws support that perception.
If there are not specific and meaningful changes in our
laws, our detention facilities will continue to be overwhelmed.
Our personnel will continue to be diverted from their primary
missions to safeguard this country. Legitimate trade and travel
will continue to suffer. Our ability to prevent dangerous
narcotics and criminals illegally entering our country will
continue to be greatly diminished. And smugglers, like the ones
who threw the paraplegic man into the Rio Grande, they will
continue to profit.
Although we are seeing the numbers across all demographics
decreasing at the moment, due in large part to the efforts of
this current Administration, working with the Government of
Mexico as well as our Northern Triangle countries to address
this as a true regional crisis and concern, this is not a
durable, long-term solution concerning the national security
and humanitarian crisis we are facing. Congress must
acknowledge this is a crisis and pass meaningful legislation to
address the loopholes in our current legal framework.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to answering your
questions.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Commissioner.
Our next witness is Jennifer Costello. Ms. Costello is now
the Deputy Inspector General (IG) for the Department of
Homeland Security. Prior to Thursday, when we actually did get
confirmed Inspector General Cuffari, she was the Acting
Inspector General, and we appreciate your service from that
standpoint. Ms. Costello has been at the Department of Homeland
Security Office of Inspector General (OIG) since 2017, and
prior to her experiences at DHS, she spent over 13 years as
Assistant Director in the Forensic Audits and Special
Investigations Unit at the Government Accountability Office
(GAO).
Again, I appreciate you spending some time in my office
where we talked a little bit about how GAO can help get the
metrics on Operation Safe Return. Ms.Costello, welcome.
TESTIMONY OF JENNIFER L. COSTELLO,\1\ DEPUTY INSPECTOR GENERAL,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Ms. Costello. Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Peters, and
Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me here today
to discuss DHS OIG's recent work on conditions at Customs and
Border Protection holding facilities at the Southern Border. My
testimony today will focus on our two recent Management Alerts
regarding the dangerous overcrowding and prolonged detention
observed by DHS OIG inspectors at the El Paso Del Norte
Processing Center in May of this year and facilities in the Rio
Grande Valley in June. We issued these alerts because the
conditions we observed posed a serious and imminent threat to
both the health and safety of DHS personnel and detainees.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Costello appears in the Appendix
on page 475.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
DHS OIG conducts unannounced inspections of CBP facilities
to evaluate compliance with CBP's Transport, Escort, Detention,
and Search (TEDS) standards. TEDS standards govern CBP's
interactions with detainees, providing guidance on things like
duration of detention, access to medical care, access to food
and water, and hygiene.
Our unannounced inspections enable us to identify instances
of noncompliance with TEDS standards and to propose appropriate
corrective action to the Department. In doing so, we seek to
drive transparency and accountability at the Department of
Homeland Security.
Although CBP has struggled at times to achieve full
compliance with detention standards, our recent unannounced
inspections revealed a situation far more grievous than those
previously encountered by our inspectors. For instance, when
our team arrived at the El Paso Del Norte Processing Center,
they found that the facility, which has a maximum capacity of
125 detainees, had more than 750 detainees onsite. The
following day, that number increased to 900.
Additionally, at all the Border Patrol facilities we
visited in the Rio Grande Valley, we observed serious
overcrowding among unaccompanied alien children. We also found
that individuals, including children, were being detained well
beyond the 72 hours generally permitted under TEDS standards
and the Flores Agreement.
For instance, at the centralized processing center in
McAllen, Texas, many children had been in custody longer than a
week, and some UACs under the age of 7 had been in custody for
more than 2 weeks.
Under these circumstances, CBP has struggled to comply with
TEDS standards. For instance, although all facilities we
visited in the Rio Grande Valley had infant formula, diapers,
baby wipes, and juice and snacks for children, two facilities
had not provided children access to hot meals as required until
the week we arrived. Additionally, children at three of the
five facilities we visited had no access to showers, limited
access to a change of clothes, and no access to laundry
facilities.
Space limitations also affect single adults. The lack of
space has restricted CBP's ability to separate detainees with
infectious diseases such as chicken pox, scabies, and
influenza, from each other and from the general population.
According to CBP management, these conditions also affect the
health of Border Patrol agents who are experiencing high
incidence of illness. Further, there is a concern that the
overcrowding and prolonged detention may be contributing to
rising tensions among detainees. A senior manager at one
facility in the Rio Grande Valley called the situation ``a
ticking time bomb.''
Despite these immense challenges, we observed CBP staff
interacting with the detainees in a professional and respectful
manner and attempting to comply with standards to the extent
possible. Notwithstanding these efforts, Border Patrol requires
immediate assistance to manage the overcrowding in its
facilities. CBP is not responsible for providing long-term
detention, and CBP facilities like those we visited are not
designed to hold individuals for lengthy periods of time.
However, with limited bed space available in ICE facilities and
the Department of Health of Human Services (HHS) facilities
nationwide, detainees are left in CBP custody until a placement
can be found.
In its response to our recent Management Alerts, DHS
described the situation on the Southern Border as an ``acute
and worsening crisis.'' Our observations comport with that
characterization, which is why we have called on the Department
to take immediate action to begin to remedy the situation.
DHS OIG will continue to monitor and report on the
situation at the border. In the meantime, the Department's
leadership must develop a strategic coordinated approach that
will allow it to make good on its commitment to ensure the
safety, security, and care of those in its custody.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement. I am happy to
answer any questions the Committee has.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Ms. Costello.
I want to throw a couple numbers out on some of these
issues that have been raised. We talked a little bit about the
capacity of the border stations. First of all, generally,
except for the McAllen, Texas, facilities and some of the
temporary facilities, these Border Patrol stations are
basically police stations, correct? They are not designed
whatsoever to really house any volume of people.
Ms. Costello. No, not at all, and that I think is the
problem. What we are seeing in the overcrowding is simply not
designed to house the capacity of migrants that they are
getting at this time.
Chairman Johnson. Commissioner Morgan, I think we got
information from you that the basic capacity of the hard-sided
facilities is about 4,000?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir, that is correct. During this time
period that the reviews were being done by the OIG, which we
appreciate, welcome, and enjoy their partnership, at that time
we reached the highest apprehensions in the month of May, over
140,000. At that time our detention capacity of those we had in
custody reached 19,000, and our capacity was 4,000.
Chairman Johnson. I have 19,699 on June 3rd. Even at that
4,000 capacity, is that fire code capacity or is that just how
many we can generally chock in one facility?
Mr. Morgan. That is all across the Southwest Border,
including the sectors and approximately 70 stations. That is
what we refer to as--4,000 to 4,500, we refer to that as ``a
manageable population.''
Chairman Johnson. Senator Peters made the comment and asked
the question about how have the dollars been spent. It was
unfortunate it took 2 months for that emergency funding request
to be passed, but, my information I have received, I think from
you and others, is that prior to the funding, we had about
2,700 unaccompanied children in the custody of Border Patrol
beyond 72 hours, up to as many as 10 days, a few outliers
beyond that. But within a couple weeks we were down to a little
bit more than a day's intake, about 300, with an average stay
of about 30 hours. Is that pretty accurate in terms of what the
conditions were and what they are currently?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir. Again, during the time of the OIG
review, we were topped out at about 2,700 unaccompanied minors,
and today we are averaging in the past week between 250 to 300,
with less than 20 over 72 hours. Several of those are due to
medical conditions.
Chairman Johnson. The reason you were backlogged so much is
there simply was not the bed space or detention facilities open
in HHS until they had the funding. Is that correct?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir, that is correct. I think she
represented it well, that we have interdependencies. When it
comes to UACs, we are reliant on HHS Office of Refugee
Resettlement (ORR) to take those children. And then for single
adults and families, we rely on ICE to remove those from our
custody.
Chairman Johnson. So Border Patrol had really no option
other than to continue to hold those children until bed space
opened up in HHS. You could not just let them into the
communities. You were responsible for them, and you had to keep
them in your custody, in obviously crowded conditions because
you a capacity of 4,000, and you had more than 19,000 people in
custody.
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir, that is correct. In both El Paso and
RGV at the time, and still RGV to this day, they were two of
the sector that were getting inundated the most. El Paso, and I
am sure you have already heard, one day, one single large group
of over 1,000, of which 90 percent of them were families and
kids, hit the El Paso Sector in a single day.
Chairman Johnson. Ms. Costello, I appreciate the fact that
you made the comment that the Border Patrol personnel that your
inspectors talked to were professional, they were respectful.
They were doing everything they could do to take care of these
children and family members in their custody that they have
been basically given the responsibility to take care of. Is
that accurate?
Ms. Costello. That is a fair assessment, Senator, and those
are our experiences. Obviously, OIG would never discount
anybody else's experience, but our inspectors have been doing
this for a while and have always encountered very professional
CBP staff.
Chairman Johnson. It has certainly been my experience when
I have encountered them at the borders. I have talked to Border
Patrol personnel. They are trying to cope with the situation
with as much humanity and compassion as they possibly can
muster.
So, again, there may be a few outliers. There may be a few
instances--we saw the texts or the whatever. Those are
obviously unacceptable and regrettable. But the vast majority
of the men and women of DHS and Border Patrol are trying to
cope with this.
In your testimony you were talking about Border Patrol
agents becoming ill, the illnesses coming across the border. We
have a pretty long list of them. I am concerned about drug-
resistant strains of tuberculosis, those types of things. I am
concerned about Border Patrol attrition. Is that something that
you are really taking a look at in your inspections, basically
the basic morale of Border Patrol personnel trying to cope with
this?
Ms. Costello. Morale in and of itself is not a specific
focus of our work, but we are looking into the drivers behind
that prolonged detention to see, as Mr. Morgan was suggesting,
what is going on with ICE and HHS that is leading to some of
these problems.
Chairman Johnson. The Commissioner talked about the larger
aspect, a dimension that I do not think is reported on enough,
the whole human-trafficking element. We had an Homeland
Security Investigations (HSI) witness here talking about a
child sold for $84, when we were down at the border, a child, a
3-year-old boy, left in a field, his name and a phone number
written on his shoe, the fact that we are finding these
families in stash houses that are being beaten, the beatings
being videotaped, being sent back to Central America demanding
ransom, the involuntary servitude that Senator Portman had an
investigation a couple of years ago on unaccompanied children
showing up in involuntary servitude, a situation in an egg
farm.
Are you looking at that aspect in the Inspector General's
office?
Ms. Costello. No, not at this time, and we would have to be
careful about jurisdictional issues related to some of that.
Having said that, we are very open to considering all sorts of
issues on the table. But, what we actually have authority and
purview over is one of the first questions we ask.
Chairman Johnson. Commissioner Morgan, let me throw it to
you in terms of your concern over just basic attrition. I do
not think anybody would want to spend the night in those
facilities. I am highly concerned. Again, I went down there,
and you can see the holding cells for scabies, for chicken pox,
and for flu. I would be concerned about Border Patrol personnel
kind of giving up and trying to take a position elsewhere,
either in the Federal Government or in the private sector. Can
you just kind of talk to your generally assessment--you have
been on the job now for a few weeks--of the Border Patrol?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir, and I harken back to my time as Chief
of the Border Patrol in 2016. I think the IG's report captures
it well, and the Border Patrol, CBP personnel, all those
entities are helping us, they are mothers, fathers, brothers,
and sisters. The overcrowding that you see, we have all said
that we have to do better, that children and families should
not be held in police stations for a long-term period of time.
We all agree with that. So, absolutely, it affects them every
single day. I worry about their health and their morale, and I
think absolutely it is being impacted.
Along with the frustrations, they also know Congress could
do some things if they could work together to pass meaningful
legislation. That is equally as frustrating for them as well.
Right now, though, the hiring numbers for us are OK. They
are not going in a downward departure. But I am concerned about
the future.
Chairman Johnson. That is good to hear. I have run out of
time. I do want to talk about the solution in terms of reducing
that flow, but we will save that for later on. Senator Peters.
Senator Peters. Mr. Chairman, my office has received a
statement from Church World Services (CWS), and I would like to
ask unanimous consent that it be entered into the hearing
record.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The statement referenced by Senator Peters appears in the
Appendix on page 495.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chairman Johnson. Without objection.
Senator Peters. Thank you.
Mr. Morgan, it is clear that we are confronted with a
significant problem on the Southern Border, and the challenges
are wide-ranging and require, I think, significant coordination
from a number of Federal agencies coming together, and that
means also Federal, State, and local. Truly a whole-of-
government approach is necessary to confront this.
So could you describe how CBP is coordinating with other
DHS components, including U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services (USCIS), ICE, and CBP, as well as HHS and ORR?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir. So the coordination specifically with
USCIS and ICE, that is really done on a daily basis. For
example, we talked about the interdependencies that we have
specifically with respect to ICE. One of the largest challenges
we have right now are single adults. Again, ICE does not have
adequate bed space, and so it is a constant struggle with the
number of apprehensions we have to be able to ensure and get
them out of our custody as fast as possible to ICE.
So we are coordinating with ICE on a daily basis with
respect to how we can expeditiously get those single adults out
of custody into ICE. USCIS, obviously we work with them on a
daily basis. They are the asylum officers. They are the ones
that actually determine and adjudicate someone's credible fear
claim as they go through the process. They are at our stations.
We work with them constantly. DHS, again, this is not just a
CBP issues, this is not just an ICE issue. It really is a DHS
issue. It is even outside of DHS. Right now we have hundreds of
volunteers from across DHS that have been deployed to the
Southwest Border to help us specifically with the humanitarian
crisis.
Senator Peters. So you talk about daily coordination, but
is there an interagency group in a formalized way that is
actually coordinating this on a regular basis? Or is this ad
hoc as you are just talking to other agencies?
Mr. Morgan. No, it is both. So we both have working groups
at the local level in each field. So each field has their own
entity that they work, whether it is El Paso, RGV, with those
entities. And then at DHS there is also a working group that is
led by DHS that has a lot of different subgroups and
subcommittees. But we are doing it on a formal basis.
Senator Peters. Because that is important. When we are
trying to think about how we coordinate all these activities,
which it is going to require, I am always frustrated as to
knowing who is actually in charge. Who is actually responsible
for making sure all of these pieces are working together? I
never seem to get a real good answer about that, and that has
me concerned.
I guess, that leads to the question: Is anyone at the White
House facilitating the coordination of these activities?
Mr. Morgan. They are absolutely involved in every aspect of
this crisis.
Senator Peters. Who is doing that at the White House?
Mr. Morgan. Different entities. It depends on what lane
it----
Senator Peters. Different entities are coordinating. Is
there one entity that is really responsible for coordinating
all this?
Mr. Morgan. I would say it depends, sir, on what element
you are talking about with respect to the certain conditions
you are talking about. I mean, we could talk about media. That
could be held by a different individual. If you are talking
about what we can do within the current legal framework to stem
the flow of migration, then we would be talking to different
people within the White House.
Senator Peters. Is there someone who is in charge of
coordinating State and local governments as well as Non-
governmental organizations (NGO's), which are a critical
component of all this?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir. DHS has a State and local partner
coordinator, yes, sir.
Senator Peters. So that person is in charge that we could
ask how is that coordination going?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir.
Senator Peters. Mr. Morgan, the fiscal year 2019
appropriations bill has included $128 million for CBP to
contract with medical professionals, and a recent emergency
supplemental included roughly $112 million for medical care and
consumables.
Given the number of children who are arriving at our
Southern Border, how much of the fiscal year 2019 and
supplemental funding has been spent on pediatric medical
professionals?
Mr. Morgan. So on specific pediatric care, I do not have
those numbers in front of me. But we are looking at $63 million
for continued additional medical assets and high-risk support
across the Southwest Border. That was contained in the
supplemental moving forward.
Senator Peters. But we want to know how it is being spent,
how many folks are involved. Part of our oversight function
here is to understand exactly how that money is being spent. It
is the intent of Congress to make sure we are providing medical
services to those folks who need it, and we are accountable to
the taxpayers for that money and how it is spent. So I would
certainly like to do a deeper dive with you to have a better
sense of that.
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir, and I have that data. I will be able
to provide that, sir.
Senator Peters. Where these professionals are being sent,
any shortfalls, challenges, all of that is going to be
important for all of us to do our work.
Mr. Morgan. We have all that data, sir.
Senator Peters. Thank you.
Senator Peters. While the recent Management Alert is
certainly the main discussion point for us today, it is my
understanding that this alert, Ms. Costello, is part of a much
larger oversight effort that is related to the CBP and ICE
detention facilities. I think it is important for this
Committee to hear you describe what other reviews are currently
in progress. More importantly, when do you expect those reports
to actually be released?
Ms. Costello. Senator, we have a lot in this space.
Following on the Management Alerts, I think in my written
testimony you may have seen this is part of a larger series of
unannounced inspections that we did all along the Southern
Border. So these two alerts were issued because of the serious
nature of what we found, but we will be issuing a Capping
Report this fall to identify the findings in all the
facilities.
We are also looking at, since you were asking Mr. Morgan
about it, we are going to audit how that aid is being spent,
not all of it but the consumables, the medical access, things
of that nature. We are looking at asylum seekers at the
Southern Border, separating families at ports of entry, whether
or not families were given the opportunity to be removed with
their children, things of that nature.
We are looking at the underlying causes of the prolonged
detention, so why 72, why are we going beyond the 72 hours?
Between HHS, ICE, CBP, and some of the other folks in play what
are the factors at play in driving that?
We have a data analysis audit underway looking specifically
at the tracking of children during zero tolerance. We are also
looking at ICE's ability to quickly and easily remove criminal
aliens. It is a lot of work in this space.
I think the first job that will be issued will be the data
tracking work. We will follow shortly with most likely the
Capping Report on all these inspections and perhaps some asylum
seekers work this fall.
Senator Peters. When you say ``this fall,'' when do you
expect that to be?
Ms. Costello. You are going to pin me down, aren't you?
Senator Peters. Broadly speaking.
Ms. Costello. I think the reports will start coming out
September and roll out toward the end of the year.
Senator Peters. That is great. Mr. Morgan, as we talked
about in my office on other occasions, transparency is
critically important. I would certainly hope that we have your
commitment to ensure that the OIG retains access to unannounced
facility visits and anything else necessary to conduct
oversight, which is absolutely critical to maintaining
transparency.
Mr. Morgan. Absolutely, sir. There is an old saying. I
think great agencies remain great because they believe they can
get better, and I believe that the OIG is one significant step
in how we maintain that.
Senator Peters. Great. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Peters.
Before I turn it over to Senator Portman, because you
raised the issue of pediatricians, Commissioner Morgan, I have
spoken with you about the fact that I met with both the
representatives from the American Academy of Pediatricians
(AAP) as well as nurse practitioners who are offering, I guess,
individuals who want to go down and help, and you said you
would do everything to facilitate that. Do you want to just
make that kind of public commitment?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir, absolutely. There are some challenges
with that, obviously, but anyone who wants to come and assist
us with our continuing expanding medical care, it is
absolutely--I would be more than welcome to work with them. We
have done a lot. We are hiring four pediatric advisers and a
patient safety officer at this time. Just last week I
authorized for CBP to go forth with hiring our own chief
medical officer. We have expanded our medical contract now to
almost, I think, a little under 300 medical professionals that
we are sending out across seven sectors and 20 of the stations,
and we are expanding more every single day.
Chairman Johnson. I do not want to just have people show up
at the border, so it has to be coordinated. I guess I would
just suggest if you would be willing to meet with those same
representatives and you can kind of hash out a coordinated
technique or method for those individuals to help out.
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir, and we have two physicians right now,
one at DHS that is coordinating the overall Southwest Border
medical initiatives. We have one that is detailed specifically
to CBP. I think it would be a great idea to include the
pediatricians into the fold with these physicians and have some
meaningful dialogue on how we can get better.
Chairman Johnson. We will try and facilitate that. Senator
Portman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PORTMAN
Senator Portman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you
both for being here today.
This is a tough issue, and what we have been trying to do
in this Committee is to look at it from an objective point of
view and try to get some bipartisan solutions, particularly on
the root causes. It has been hard. Obviously, we do not have
consensus yet, and that is frustrating because I was down there
on July 12th, as I think you know, Commissioner, and had the
opportunity to go to the McAllen Sector and see what was going
on, went to the Donna processing facility and also the Customs
and Border Protection processing facility there, the station.
It is a bad situation. There is obviously a huge influx of
individuals, but what is really tough is the influx of families
and kids, and that is unprecedented. There has been no previous
time in our Nation's history we have had this many people
coming across the border who are in family units and have to be
taken care of differently.
One of the things that was interesting at the Donna
processing facility--and I think this is something that some of
my constituents have found surprising--the families I talked
to--and I spoke to five or six families. My Spanish is good
enough to get by, and I asked them, why are they here and how
long they plan to be here. I also talked to the Border Patrol
about that, of course, Customs and Border Protection. The
honest answer is they expected to be released into the United
States, and the Customs and Border Protection people expected
to release them within a few days--in fact, for some of them,
within a couple days, I was told. And so that is the
understanding on both sides, and the reason is that they cannot
be processed during the time period that we have, particularly
if they have, again, a minor child with them.
It is pretty common sense. Unless we fix those laws, change
those laws, we are not going to be able to keep people in any
kind of detention facility or processing facility long enough
to be able to assess whether it is appropriate for them to come
into the United States legally. We are simply releasing them
into the community and the nonprofits are helping to ensure
people have what they need when they leave the processing
facility and get them on the buses and get them on the
airplanes and take them to communities around the country.
These people have been processed, and they have been told to
show up at a court hearing, and some of them do and some of
them do not. Typically, it takes a couple years, actually
between 2 and 3 years, for the first hearing, and then
typically 5 or 6 years, we were told, before the case is
finally resolved. You can imagine during that time period a lot
of folks tend to stay in the United States and not show up at
those hearings.
Those numbers are hard to get in terms of how many show up.
I do not know if you have anything on that today, either one of
you. The numbers I have heard, fewer than half actually show up
for the final hearing to be able to determine their status. Is
that still accurate?
Mr. Morgan. That is accurate, sir. That is the information
that I have.
Senator Portman. Ms. Costello.
Ms. Costello. We do not have any information on that. That
would be a Justice statistic.
Senator Portman. So today we are focused on the conditions
at the border, but I guess my point is this will continue, and
we are not going to be able to resolve it unless we come up
with some common-sense solutions to a very obvious problem,
which is traffickers going to poor families in Central America
and saying, ``If you come, if you are willing to pay us 5,000
to 10,000 bucks and come with us, we can get you into the
country. In fact, we do not even have to do anything else other
than leave you at the border, and you walk across a bridge,''
or in the case of some of the families I met, across the river,
``and present yourself and you can go into America.'' When you
can make 10 to 20 times more here in America than you can in
your home country, it makes sense. You and I would do the same
thing, probably, if we were given the opportunity to help our
families. But we have a legal immigration system, and there are
people waiting not just for months but for years in those same
countries to come legally.
I do not think the problem is really that hard to
understand. The asylum issue on top of it, obviously, adds some
complexity.
In terms of the overcrowding and what I saw was
overcrowding in the men's facility at the Customs and Border
Protection processing facility. The analogy that the Customs
and Border Protection people were telling me, which I think
makes sense, is this is more like the police station where you
process people, but it is not a detention facility. The
detention facilities ICE runs. Congress in the $4.6 billion
that we sent down to the border--which I think was absolutely
necessary, and I am glad it is there, and it is being used to
help with the humanitarian crisis on the border. But Congress
said, no, we are not going to fund these ICE beds. I saw the
report from the Inspector General, the OIG finding from your
trip to the border, I imagine, Ms. Costello, and your
colleagues, it says, ``Due to shortage of ICE beds, Border
Patrol has had to hold detainees longer than 72 hours.'' That
was one of your findings.
Ms. Costello. Yes, that is accurate.
Senator Portman. So it is not that complicated. If we are
not willing to fund ICE beds and under Flores you cannot hold
people for more than 20 days and you cannot process people
during that time period, it leads to a bad situation. Is
everything perfect on the border? No, it is not. There is
overcrowding.
Now, I will say at the Donna facility, which is a soft-
sided facility, we did not see the overcrowding. It is a new
facility. My understanding is you have a new processing
facility for adult males. Is that up and going yet? I know you
are talking about putting a new one in place.
Mr. Morgan. It should be in the next 10 days, sir.
Senator Portman. In the McAllen----
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir.
Senator Portman [continuing]. District as well. I think
that Congress has a pretty obvious choice here, which is, one,
how to deal with the immediate crisis, provide the ICE beds,
provide more judges, expedite these processes as much as you
can, take away the ability for traffickers to say if you just
walk in, you get in; otherwise, this continues. Second, we have
to look at the root causes, and that does include our asylum
system. I have been promoting this idea, and some Democrats
have expressed interest in this, in having people processed in
their home country or in a third country. United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations, does it
all over the world, and they have four or five processing
centers in Central America. They have one in Mexico. They have
expressed some interest in working with us on that. That to me
makes a lot of sense. It is the same criteria as the asylum
criteria, the credible fear. And then what the Chairman has
talked about in terms of expediting the processing, Operation
Safe Return. And then, finally, more effective aid to these
countries, because we have spent a lot of taxpayer dollars in
the Northern Triangle, and, obviously, the results have not
been impressive in terms of the socioeconomic conditions and
the great poverty that is down there. There is no question
about that. We can do a better job.
But we cannot address that problem and expect that someone,
again, who can make 10 to 20 times more coming to this country
is not going to continue to have that incentive if, in fact, we
have a system in place that allows them to come into our
country.
On the asylum front, of course, people that have a credible
fear ought to be taken care of, but when you get to the end of
that process we talked about earlier, after the 4 or 5 years,
only 15 percent of those migrants are granted asylum. And that
can be determined much earlier in the process, and preferably
earlier in the process so they do not have to make the long and
arduous and dangerous journey north, which so many traffickers
are exploiting so many poor families in Central America to take
that journey.
Anyway, thank you for your service, both of you. Thank you,
Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Hassan.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HASSAN
Senator Hassan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
Peters, for this hearing, and thank you to both of our
witnesses for being here today.
I also want to take a minute to thank the men and women of
the Border Patrol for their hard work and to thank so many of
them who I know work to save lives on the border every day.
I also want to note that we can absolutely address the root
causes of this crisis, which are multiple, and improve
conditions for migrants and secure our border without taking up
controversial issues like the Flores decision.
Mr. Morgan, 3 weeks ago I asked CBP's Chief of Law
Enforcement Operations Directorate, Brian Hastings, about the
conditions at the Clint, Texas, Border Patrol facility
following reports by a group of lawyers sent to inspect the
facility describing the horrid conditions endured by migrants
detained there. Mr. Hastings repeatedly dismissed the reports
as not true, and he implied that the lawyers were exaggerating
solely to advance the case of their clients. Only 6 days later,
Ms. Costello issued a report about facilities in the Rio Grande
Valley depicting some of the same troubling conditions as
reported by the group of lawyers that inspected the Clint
facility.
Mr. Morgan, I have been to the border twice, and I get that
the Border Patrol is overwhelmed and that its agents feel like
they are under fire. However, our job in Congress is to conduct
extensive oversight and to use that oversight as a way to help
drive our funding decisions and to uphold our values.
When senior officials from the Border Patrol refuse to be
transparent or seek to mislead Congress, it does serious damage
to the credibility of the entire Border Patrol. It exacerbates
agents feeling as if they are under fire. Most importantly, it
undermines the security and humanitarian mission that we are
all grappling with. It keeps us from addressing the root causes
in the way we need to.
So to that end, Mr. Morgan, please answer yes or no to the
following: Will you commit to giving Congress full visibility
into the Border Patrol, its detention practices, its treatment
of all migrants, and any credible allegations made by
detainees?
Mr. Morgan. Yes.
Senator Hassan. Do you have the support of your superiors,
namely, the Acting Homeland Security Secretary and the
President, to be fully transparent with Congress as you deal
with this crisis?
Mr. Morgan. Unquestionably I do.
Senator Hassan. Thank you. Will you take appropriate action
if any CBP or Border Patrol subordinate seeks to mislead or
deceive Congress or the American public?
Mr. Morgan. Yes.
Senator Hassan. Thank you. Mr. Morgan, there really are two
different crises occurring at our border facilities. The first
is the lack of supplies and space driven by the huge surge in
migrants. Congress has passed an aid package to address the
surge with our own surge of resources. More needs to be done,
and it will be.
However, the second crisis is much deeper. Allegations of
cruel and the illegal treatment of migrants in Border Patrol's
custody have plagued the agency in recent weeks. These
allegations include the sexual assault of an underage migrant,
the attempt to humiliate a migrant by forcing him to wear a
sign that says, ``I like men,'' and intentional deprivation of
basic necessities of migrants, including children, as a way to
punish them.
Mr. Morgan, this troubling pattern of the Border Patrol's
culture--and I know it is not everybody in Border Patrol--has
to be addressed immediately. What steps are you taking right
now to change this culture?
Mr. Morgan. First of all, I think we have to be cautious
about, when there are allegations that have not been fully
adjudicated yet, to refer to this as a pattern or part of the
culture. I do not believe that, ma'am. I served as Chief of the
United States Border Patrol, and I would not say what you
described is a culture within the Border Patrol or a pattern.
But what I will say--and I promise and commit to you--is that
any allegation will be thoroughly and completely investigated,
and anybody, any man or woman, in the United States Border
Patrol or CBP that violates their oath and violates what they
swore to do and uphold, I assure you that they will be held
accountable for and properly disciplined.
Senator Hassan. I thank you for that. I will note that the
revelation about the Facebook page and the number of people
participating in that tends to give credence to the notion that
there is a troubling culture, at least among some of the
officers. What I am trying to just get at is what you are doing
to make sure that you are disrupting that culture and improving
it.
Mr. Morgan. Yes, ma'am. On the Facebook, the 1015, I would
be more than happy to, offline, come to your office and provide
you an extensive brief of exactly what we are doing in that
matter as well. But I will say it is one of those posts that we
all know about is horrendous.
Senator Hassan. Yes.
Mr. Morgan. Absolutely, hands down. But I can assure you
that overall this is a very small group of Border Patrol
agents.
Senator Hassan. Ms. Costello, do you think CBP is doing
enough in terms of addressing the issues of culture that I just
outlined?
Ms. Costello. So we do not really have any information on
what they are doing in the culture, but I can tell you that we
are also looking into that Facebook issue, not so much the
conduct of the specific agents themselves, which is better
investigated by CBP's Office of Professional Responsibility
(OPR). But what we are looking into is the allegations that
leadership knew and was using the sight for information, so who
knew what when and was appropriate action taken when it needed
to be. I think perhaps in the course of that review, some
information about culture might be elicited.
Senator Hassan. Thank you.
Mr. Morgan. If I could add, ma'am, we are working with the
IG every day. On Facebook, for example, right away we got with
the IG, and we continue to work with them.
Senator Hassan. I appreciate this. I just do want to point
out that it is going to be very important that you all are
transparent about what you do and do not know. As you
investigate allegations, you have to be transparent with us and
the American public so we can improve, because these kinds of
reports and these kinds of behaviors that are reported and the
conditions are really hampering our capacity to address a
security and humanitarian crisis at our border, and that is
something we all need to do together.
Mr. Morgan. You have my absolute commitment to full
transparency.
Senator Hassan. Thank you.
I have one other issue, and I am going to touch on it very
briefly because I am just about out of time, but it has come to
my attention, Mr. Morgan, that in May a Customs and Border
Protection subcontractor, a company called ``Perceptics,'' was
a victim of a cybersecurity breach. Hackers stole tens of
thousands of photos of travelers' faces and license plates
collected by CBP on the U.S.-Mexico border from the
subcontractor's network and then leaked these images publicly.
This breach has serious implications not only in cyberspace but
also for the security of our borders.
It is my understanding that this data was not supposed to
be present on the subcontractor's network to begin with and
that CBP has since terminated this contract. However, this begs
a bigger question about the vulnerability of CBP because its
subcontractors seem not to be taking cybersecurity seriously.
So realizing my time is about up or over, what I would like
to do is work with you and follow up with questions about this
to ensure that the contractors and subcontractors adhere to the
highest cybersecurity standards.
Mr. Morgan. Absolutely.
Senator Hassan. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Lankford.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LANKFORD
Senator Lankford. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Both of you,
thank you for the work.
I just returned back from the border last weekend, spending
last weekend at five different facilities in the Rio Grande
Valley area and then spent much of the night riding along with
members of the Border Patrol as they did night patrols to get a
feel for what is really going on on the ground.
I went into each facility and asked to be able to see their
supply room, to see food, water, hygiene products, diapers,
clothing, toothbrushes. In every facility that I went into, all
of those supplies were there in ample supply. I also found in
some of the facilities a couple of pieces of used equipment
like car seats, and I asked about that and said, ``These seem
like used car seats. Where did they come from?'' And they said
some of the children have to be moved to different places, and
so Border Patrol agents have brought their own car seats for
their kids here to be able to make sure these kids have car
seats when they actually move from facility to facility.
What I found was a tremendous number of very professional
people trying to be able to find a way to be able to manage a
problem where they have thousands upon thousands of people
coming at them.
In the McAllen station, in that area alone they have 1,500
to 2,000 people a day that are coming across the border
illegally, and they are trying to figure out ways to process
them. When I asked the agents, ``What would help you the
most?'' the first response I got from everyone was, ``Allow ICE
to be able to detain people. That is what they do, not what we
do.'' What I heard as a pretty clear statement was when this
whole movement on abolish ICE or defund ICE came about and the
push to not allow ICE to get more funding and the adamant
pushback we have had on adding additional funding to ICE, it is
backing up thousands of individuals into Customs and Border
Patrol facilities to be able to be held while they are waiting
for a place for them to go. We have almost 50,000 beds in ICE
facilities but 4,000 beds in Customs and Border Patrol. When
you have thousands of people a day coming at them with nowhere
to go, you are not going to just release them on the street.
That is not the obligation of Federal law enforcement just to
release people. It is to be able to process and find out who is
a risk and who is not a risk and then to figure out how to be
able to transition them.
So my simple question to you is: Are your facilities
designed and set up to hold thousands of people? Is that the
mission of Customs and Border Patrol?
Mr. Morgan. Absolutely not, Senator. We have stated that
again and again and again.
Senator Lankford. I have heard it, and so much of our
conversation at this dais and through Congress is what we are
going to do to get Customs and Border Patrol in a better
position to hold more people, ignoring the obvious question:
Why are we not adding additional funding to ICE? That is what
they do. They do have the facilities. They do have the
contracts. They do have all of the oversight there to be able
to allow a lot more people to be held as they are trying to
process them.
So I am a little frustrated that our conversation seems to
be what can we do to help Customs and Border Patrol be better
at detaining people when that is not even the mission of
Customs and Border Patrol.
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir, and that is correct. Right now, just
in the past 60 days since the IG review, we have done so much.
We have created four soft-sided facilities for family units
alone, a capacity of over 2,000; two more soft-sided facilities
are coming on for single adults, a capacity of 4,500. I could
keep going. Modular systems we are setting up. I could keep
going on and on. This is tens of millions of dollars a month we
are spending on this. We are talking about for us to do more
and for CBP to get more for these temporary facilities, when
you just outlined the answer, we fund ICE. We asked for $200
million in the supplement. It was denied. And then we question
why we are overcrowded. We are overcrowded because ICE does not
have the funding to have the bed space as the system is
designed. We are interdependent. We are overcrowded in part
because HHS was overcrowded, because ICE was overcrowded. It
was not being properly funded, and ICE is still not being
properly funded.
Senator Lankford. No, it is not, and that is part of our
challenge that we have to be able to break through this. We are
spending over $200 million on one soft-sided facility this
years instead of giving $200 million to ICE to be able to
manage all of those. So it is not only wasteful to the
taxpayer; it is not fair to those men and women that are
serving Customs and Border Patrol to be able to help do
something that they were not first set up and trained to do to
try to do makeshift facilities rather than actually to have
better facility for folks to be able to go through this
process.
I had lots of questions there about the Flores settlement,
and we have even heard some conversation on this dais that the
Flores settlement is not the issue. What I heard when I was at
the border was adults that are traveling with a child, when
they arrive with a child and there is a 20-day clock that is
ticking at that point, are we able to get criminal records from
countries outside of the United States, obviously, from other
countries within 20 days of who this adult is traveling with
this child?
Mr. Morgan. Not efficiently.
Senator Lankford. So some countries can, some countries
cannot. Is that correct?
Mr. Morgan. That is correct.
Senator Lankford. So do you have situations where you have
had to release an adult because of this time period, this
Flores Agreement time period, where you have released an adult
traveling with a child and later discovered that that adult is
a felon from that country?
Mr. Morgan. I do not have those statistics, sir.
Senator Lankford. I will tell you what I heard this past
weekend from some of the Border Patrol folks that I talked to
there on the border. They gave me two specific examples that
have happened recently: that they released an adult and then
found out after they released an adult with a child and then
found out 2 weeks later that that adult had a murder warrant in
their home country, and they just released them into the
country, and they could do nothing about it.
I also found out that--one of the agents was telling me
they had released an adult traveling with a child, and then
found out after they were released when they got the criminal
records in from the home country that that was a convicted
pedophile from that country now traveling with a child
somewhere in our country. Because we could not detain them for
longer than 20 days and we could not get those criminal
records, they are released in the country, and they are
traveling with a child.
The other thing that I heard that I thought was interesting
was it was children that were maybe 7 to 10 years old that were
traveling with adult males. But when I got to the facility in
McAllen last week, it was almost all infants and very young
children. When I asked about that, they said, ``We were able to
pull people out and separate the child from the adult,
interview the child, and the child could often tell us, `That
is not my dad.'"
Now, with infants, you cannot do that anymore. Have the
cartels changed methods?
Mr. Morgan. Absolutely. That is why they are a multi-
billion-dollar organization, because they change and they
profit from it every single time. Border Patrol alone has
identified 5,800 fake families. HSI, an investigative element
of ICE, has put resources down there. They discovered hundreds
of fake families. The stories are happening every single day,
and it is very clear. It is very clear, Senator, that they
know, you grab a kid, that is your passport into the United
States because of the Flores Settlement Agreement. That has to
be changed, and it is going to take a legislative fix to do
that.
If that does not happen, all this other stuff we are
talking about, the care which we absolutely have to do, it does
nothing, though, to stem the flow. If we do not address the
Flores Settlement Agreement, they are going to keep coming.
Senator Lankford. OK. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Lankford. Excellent
line of questioning.
I want to quick follow up before I turn it over to Senator
Rosen. Where are we at in terms of Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
tests? Because when we were down there, there were some pilot
tests of that. It is about $200 per DNA test. Are we doing more
of those or is that on hold?
Mr. Morgan. So ICE is in charge of that program, so they
did do a pilot program. It was very successful, and they asked
for additional funding in the supplemental, which they were
granted. So they are going to begin to expand that program. But
right now I do not know the specific details of where and when.
I would have to defer to ICE.
Chairman Johnson. Because we are really releasing right out
of CBP, in many cases bypassing ICE. Won't Border Patrol have
to do the DNA tests to try and get some handle on the
fraudulent families?
Mr. Morgan. Right now what is happening is ICE is actually
deploying HSI agents to the Southwest Border to actually be in
the stations to do that.
Chairman Johnson. OK. Senator Rosen.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROSEN
Senator Rosen. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Johnson,
Ranking Member Peters, for considering my request to hold a
hearing on conditions of migrant children at CBP facilities
today on this critically important topic.
It is vital that we work together to ensure the safety and
well-being of children, so I want to thank you, Commissioner
Morgan and Deputy Inspector General Costello, for your
testimony, for your work, and your commitment to doing the
right thing here.
I asked last month for three needed reforms. I placed a
hold on two DHS nominees. I am going to keep my hold in place
until the facilities drastically improve. As you know, a couple
of weeks ago, we went down and we visited Donna, McAllen, and
Ursula, saw the conditions of the detention centers holding
migrant children. They are slightly better than what was
reported weeks prior, and those facilities are still no place
for children to stay for prolonged periods of time--or really
any amount of time.
I have been advised by child welfare advocates from various
nonprofit organizations that there are three immediate changes
needed at CBP: one, more medical professionals with pediatric
experience at CBP facilities; two, the hiring of trauma-
informed child welfare professionals to ensure the best
interests of the children are being met; and, three, providing
NGO access to CBP facilities to assist with humanitarian
efforts.
Last week I sent a letter to Secretary McAleenan outlining
these needs, and in spite of the urgent situation at the
border, I have yet to hear back from him. So I am asking in the
interest of time if you would answer these similar questions in
yes-or-no fashion.
So, Commissioner Morgan, who currently--well, this is not a
yes-or-no. Who currently screens children for illnesses or
injury after apprehension by CBP? Is it a medically trained
professional?
Mr. Morgan. So we have a couple areas, ma'am, that I will
not quickly. So we have Border Patrol agents who, when they are
first apprehended, do a first layer of screening, whether an
emergency medical technician (EMT) or advanced EMT. Once they
get to the processing center or the place where they are going
to be held, then they are also screened. The majority of the
children right now are screened by a medical professional, such
as a nurse practitioner.
Senator Rosen. Are they using standardized screening tools?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, ma'am. The protocols were actually
developed by a physician that we have at DHS that has designed
those protocols with respect to medical standards and industry.
Senator Rosen. So they are taking vital signs such as body
temperature, blood pressure, and heart rate?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, ma'am, every single one. They actually
have a range of temperature they file as part of the protocol.
If it falls within that range, that means immediate transport
to a hospital.
Senator Rosen. Do all CBP facilities have adequate working
medical equipment for children?
Mr. Morgan. No, all do not. We are doing it by flow and
threat and need right now, but we are expanding that every
single day. Seven of the nine sectors have it. Over 20 of the
70 stations have it. Every day we are putting more medical
resources online.
Senator Rosen. Thank you.
Mr. Morgan. Supplemental health.
Senator Rosen. If a child is found to be injured or sick,
is there a process for them to receive additional evaluation by
a health care professional?
Mr. Morgan. Yes. We work with local emergency medical
services (EMS), local medical facilities as well. Again, based
on those protocols, if the individual is meeting those
standards, we transport them immediately to a hospital.
Senator Rosen. Do your medical professionals onsite at
those facilities walk into pods or cells to look for sick
individuals who may be too young to voice their needs, unable
to ask for help, or are too afraid to ask for medical
attention?
Mr. Morgan. So we do do welfare checks. Whether each one of
those welfare checks they actually go into the holding
facilities, I would need some more fidelity on that. But there
are welfare checks that are mandated by TEDS every 15 minutes.
Senator Rosen. Approximately how many more medical
professionals with pediatric experience and child welfare
professionals do you plan to hire?
Mr. Morgan. That is a good question. I would say I am
welcome to anyone that you just described that continue to work
with us to help us come up with that strategy and end game. We
are welcome to any ideas and suggestions. But those numbers are
being worked right now, again, from the physician that DHS has
as the overall medical coordinator as well as other, I would
say, health care provider associations.
Senator Rosen. I am going to ask, is there pediatric mental
health screening in detention?
Mr. Morgan. Not at this time. Again, I would just say that
I understand, but, I want these children out of--even the soft-
sided facilities, I agree with you, ma'am, that is not where
kids should be. I want them out of there as fast as possible to
a more adequate environment.
Senator Rosen. So who is ensuring that very young children
have their basic needs met, such as diaper changing, feeding,
bathing or brushing teeth?
Mr. Morgan. We actually have coordinators in every one of
those facilities, and the Border Patrol and other agencies that
are helping with this are responsible for that. We actually
have detailed logs when someone is fed, whether they receive a
hot meal, a cold meal, how many times they receive a shower,
etc. We have detailed logs on that.
Senator Rosen. So you have expressed just now interest in
working with me to make some things happen, so are you
developing a policy to provide access for NGO's to CBP
facilities to assist with these humanitarian efforts?
Mr. Morgan. So what I can say is those have been ongoing
discussions, and, Senator, I am absolutely willing to work with
you to come up with a workable solution.
Senator Rosen. Because we do have people willing to come in
to help alleviate some of the situation and provide comfort
care specifically for children.
Mr. Morgan. Yes, ma'am, what I can say, in the 115th and
116th Congress, you have had over 100 codels, staff dels almost
the same number. We have had countless numbers of IG reports
and other access and reviews. So we are not shying away from--
--
Senator Rosen. But we would like to see NGO's have better
access, to be sure they can evaluate children who oftentimes
cannot express concern or express what is happening to them. So
I would like to be sure that we are able to do that and can
work with you. I have people ready, willing, and able to come
to your facilities.
Mr. Morgan. Yes, ma'am.
Senator Rosen. I just have a short time left. I want to be
sure that--Senator Hassan talked about abuse. Can you talk a
little bit about the process for migrants to safely report any
abuse that they have and if they are aware of that?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, again, from the start, they have the
ability from the moment that they are apprehended to report
anything. What we have found, though, is once they leave Border
Patrol custody, CBP custody, and they go to HHS, specifically
for the children, that is when we found that most of the
reporting is being done after they leave our custody.
Senator Rosen. So they are not reporting there. They are
reporting after they leave.
Mr. Morgan. That is what the statistics show, yes, ma'am.
Senator Rosen. To your knowledge, is there a confidential
process there for them to report so they do not receive
retaliation wherever they go in the future?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, ma'am. It is hard to have that
confidentiality when you are in a central processing center or
the soft-sided Donna facility that you saw. That is why it
opened. But we absolutely take every allegation seriously and
do everything that we can to make sure that it is followed
through and we coordinate with the appropriate entity, whether
it is the IG, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), or any
other appropriate entity.
Senator Rosen. Do you have a specific place where the logs
are kept once abuse is reported, do you have a central location
where that is kept so that NGO's or other places can take a
look and see what is going on?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, ma'am. So we have a Joint Information
Center (JIC). So anytime there is a complaint or alleged
complaint, that goes to the JIC that OPR from CBP manages, and
that database is kept.
Senator Rosen. So if NGO's want to come in and represent
someone, there will be transparency with these records?
Mr. Morgan. So there is some privacy concerns with respect
to ongoing investigations, but I would be more than happy to
work with you offline to see where we can reach an appropriate
compromise for transparency. But there are privacy concerns
with respect to investigations.
Senator Rosen. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Sinema.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SINEMA
Senator Sinema. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate
our witnesses being here today.
I remain extremely concerned about the recent allegations
regarding the treatment of migrants at the Yuma Border Patrol
station. I am committed to fixing our broken immigration
system, finding solutions to the ongoing crisis at our Southern
Border, and ensuring that migrants are treated fairly and
humanely.
The recent reports regarding what happened in Yuma clearly
indicate we need to do better on all those fronts, so I look
forward to our witnesses shedding light on how CBP can do
better and how Congress can help do better.
My first questions are for Mr. Morgan. As you know, a big
part of the problem at Yuma seems to be communication between
HHS and CBP. The news of the Yuma allegation broke because NBC
News obtained incident reports put together by HHS case
managers after migrant children had left CBP custody. But it is
unclear to me if the HHS information flowed into CBP in an
efficient manner and in a way that CBP could then take
immediate action to ensure the well-being of these children.
What steps is CBP taking or have you already taken to
improve the response and ability to respond in a timely fashion
to allegations that come through HHS?
Mr. Morgan. Senator, you are right, I think there is
definitely an area where we can improve the flow. There is an
old saying: ``Justice delayed is justice denied.'' And so I
think we can get better at that.
Once we saw that article, we actually immediate worked with
the IG. There were three separate allegations contained in the
article. One of them had already been opened and was already
being worked by the IG. The other two, based on the article, we
opened up our own investigations. And then we went to HHS ORR
to ask them about the alleged 30 that were contained in the
article. What we found is that on a consistent basis ORR sends
those to CRCL Division, which is good. It is another layer of
oversight, because some of the allegations are not always
specific misconduct of employees and may say, ``Our cell was
too cold or too hot,'' which still needs to be looked upon and
action.
And so then we coordinated with CRCL. We found out through
this process that 381 entries had been made by ORR with respect
to a series of allegations. We actually obtained all 381. OPR
triaged those, and because of that, we opened up 23 additional
investigations.
Now, having said that, the bottom line is what we are
trying to do is work with CRCL and HHS ORR, and what we asked
them to do and they have agreed is, as they sent it to CRCL,
they also send those significant activity reports directly to
CBP OPR so we can action them right away.
Senator Sinema. So then, Commissioner, you are getting them
in real time as of today?
Mr. Morgan. I cannot speak as of today, but that is the end
state, and we are working with them.
Senator Sinema. OK. My second question is: As I understand,
the information from HHS, as you said, enters DHS through the
CRCL or through the OPR. But when OPR receives the series of
allegations, how do they use that information to prevent
additional incidents? So what do they do to take action, one,
to protect the alleged victims at the time and then also to
prevent that same behavior from allegedly occurring to other
individuals? And what mistakes were made in this overall
communications process that you all have learned from that you
can fix and change for the future?
Mr. Morgan. So through OPR--we also work with them, and so
it is not just about the investigations, but then it is also--
once it has been adjudicated and effective discipline has been
handed down, we also look at that and analyze that and then
take that back to the field to see, hey, are there other areas
that we can improve upon. So it is not just about handing down
the discipline, as you said. It is about taking corrective
actions to get better at what we do to try to prevent any other
incident from happening in the future.
As far as the coordination and control, again, as I
explained, it is continuing to work with CRCL, it is continuing
to work with HHS ORR to make sure we have a streamlined system
as far as reporting. What we have asked them to do is give
that, and that goes directly into our JIC that I talked about a
minute ago, and then it gets actioned immediately.
Senator Sinema. For children who have alleged sexual abuse,
that obviously is quite different than an allegation that a
cell is too cold or someone does not have a blanket. One you
rectify by changing the temperature and providing a blanket.
The other, alleged harm may have already occurred with the
resulting trauma that comes from that. What actions are taken
to provide appropriate mental health care to children who may
have been traumatized by these alleged sexual assaults?
Mr. Morgan. Again, I would have to refer to HHS ORR because
once they are released from our custody and the allegation is
made, as far as continued care for that child, it is really
outside our purview.
Senator Sinema. OK. My next question is for Ms. Costello.
According to the news reports--and we just mentioned there were
30 allegations of issues at the Yuma facility that flowed from
HHS to DHS. Did your office get to see all these complaints
right when HHS transmitted them to DHS? From your perspective,
how could the information sharing between HHS and DHS as well
as between components of DHS be improved?
Ms. Costello. Thanks for the question, Senator. We did get
your letter on this matter. I think Mr. Morgan has accurately
described this process, and your letter and the news reports
caused us to go back and take a look as to how this was
working, and he is correct. HHS is getting the allegations to
the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Office, who is passing
them on to CBP. And then because of our right of first refusal,
they are coming to us.
We are going to start taking a look into that as a result
of your letter. I think my staff is scheduling a meeting with
your office to see can that be improved. There was such a large
number of allegations here, and I know we knew about some of
them. As Mr. Morgan said, we actually opened on one of them.
But it does seem to be a more systemic issue--right?--that is
more appropriate for one of our other offices to start taking a
look at as opposed to individual investigations.
So we are going to be following up with your staff and to
try to get some answers to those questions that you posed in
that letter.
Senator Sinema. Thank you.
Back to Mr. Morgan, strictly from a personnel perspective,
what changes need to be made so that CBP can more effectively
manage he overcrowding that we are experiencing at some of
these facilities? Do we need a different mix of people working
at these facilities? More training? Do we need more social
workers, more medical personnel? What is it that we need in
order to address allegations and prevent them from occurring in
the future?
Mr. Morgan. Ma'am, two different things, allegations and
overcrowding. The overcrowding, I will continue to go back to
we need Congress to pass meaningful legislation to stem the
flow, and that will impact the overcrowding.
But specifically to allegations of misconduct, again, I
will go back. I think that these allegations are rare
instances, although one is more than enough. We are committed
to working with CRCL, IG, to make sure that those cases are
investigated thoroughly and that appropriate disciplinary
action is taken, and that those individuals, to the best of our
ability, are removed from those areas right away.
Senator Sinema. OK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My time has
expired.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Carper.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. My thanks to you and
our Ranking Member for calling this hearing, and our thanks to
both Mr. Morgan and Ms. Costello for your work and your
presence.
My colleagues to my left have heard me talk about root
causes so often that I am sure they are sick of it, and perhaps
some of the folks in the audience are as well. But we are going
to be sitting here asking these same questions 5 years from
now, 10 years from now, unless we address the root causes for
why these hundreds of thousands of people want to get out of
their countries and get into our country.
We have asked questions of a lot of people in Honduras,
Guatemala, and El Salvador, ``Why are you trying to leave your
country and make it to the United States?'' They basically say
three things. They say, one, lack of hope, lack of economic
opportunity in their native country; two, crime and violence;
three, endemic corruption. Endemic corruption. Until we help
them satisfactorily address those causes, they are going to
keep coming.
The Chairman has heard me say this before. We traveled
together in Central America and on the border, and it is a
little bit like Home Depot. What they say at Home Depot: ``You
can do it. We can help.'' We cannot do this for them, but we
are responsible for it by virtue of our addiction to drugs. We
are largely--not entirely but largely responsible for the
conditions that force a lot of people, compel a lot of people
to come to our country. So I would just say this as a
predicate.
A couple questions, if I could, for Mr. Morgan. Ms.
Costello, if you want to correct him, you are welcome to do
that. But, Mr. Morgan, can asylum seekers currently apply for
asylum or refuge protection in the United States without
leaving their home countries?
Mr. Morgan. No.
Senator Carper. Alright. Would you support the creation of
an in-country processing program to allow asylum seekers to
avoid making the dangerous journey to our Southern Border?
Mr. Morgan. Yes.
Senator Carper. Why?
Mr. Morgan. So we talk about and you talk about, sir, the
root cause, identifying the root cause of this. We have to stem
the flow. Asking someone to either claim asylum, apply for
asylum in their home country, or the first country they come to
outside of the country that they are alleging they are fleeing
persecution from will do just that. It will stem the flow.
Again, the overwhelming majority of the individuals that come
to our border that are claiming fear are found to be
unsubstantiated, meaning they came here as an economic migrant
and they did not come here with respect to the technical
definition of asylum, persecution, and fear of persecution
based on race, ethnicity, and religion. It would absolutely,
almost overnight, begin to stem the flow.
Senator Carper. Ms. Costello, would you approve this
message? I know this is not necessarily your area of expertise,
but go ahead.
Ms. Costello. That is what I was going to respond. As the
IG, the situations outside this country, the push-pull factors,
are really beyond our jurisdiction.
Senator Carper. I understand.
Ms. Costello. So we cannot----
Senator Carper. I just thought I would give it a shot.
Ms. Costello. Thank you very much, Senator. But we cannot
comment also on those policy decisions, but what we can commit
to is evaluating the effectiveness of the programs once they
have been established.
Senator Carper. That is good. Thank you.
Mr. Morgan, another question for you if I could. You
recently served as the Director of ICE, and I just would ask:
Is it reasonable to think that ICE could detain every
undocumented immigrant in this country through their removal
proceedings? Are there other programs like alternatives to
detention that are less costly and could be expanded for non-
criminal immigrants?
Mr. Morgan. So I do not think it is reasonable to say that
every single individual that is here illegally in the United
States would ICE be able to detain. No, I do not think that is
realistic, although I still think they need enhanced funding to
increase their ability to detain a greater population.
With respect to other innovative ideas, I think we need to
continue to talk, I think we need to continue to come to the
table to talk about other effective ways besides detention. But
what I will say is, though, the stats will show that if they
are detained, it is more efficient, more effective, the entire
process. In the non-detained docket, to include alternative
detention, it has not proven to be fruitful, and it is actually
quite costly, and the end result, we are having people that
remain in this country illegally.
Senator Carper. Would you support expanding alternatives to
detention in order to reduce the strain on CBP resources at the
border?
Mr. Morgan. Again, sir, I think my response to that is I
would be committed to having a discussion with you about,
continued alternatives, because we are overwhelmed, ICE does
not have the appropriate funding. What I would like to be able
to have a discussion about is where can we come maybe to a
happy medium, to increase funding to ICE, to increase the bed
space immediately, so that we can get some relief at CBP, while
at the same time maybe come up and discuss alternatives to
detention.
Senator Carper. We would call that a ``compromise'' around
here.
Mr. Morgan. It is hard to see that sometimes, sir.
Senator Carper. Actually, we reported out a bipartisan
compromise, a 5-year surface transportation bill this morning
on a 21-0 vote, and so there is hope in a hopeless world.
My colleagues and I have traveled to Central America
together, and I look forward to going back down there again.
One, if you look at the flow of folks coming out of those three
countries--Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador--a big part of
the problem in Guatemala is agriculture-related, people who
grow coffee in the highlands. And they have had drought after
drought after drought, year after year after year. They are
bailing out of there to try to get out of there so they can
make a living, and they see they have some opportunities here.
But if you look at what is--the outflow from El Salvador is
not as great as it has been from Guatemala and Honduras. What
is happening, one of the things that has happened--this is a
lesson for them and for us. They have elected a new President
in El Salvador who is, I think, 37 or 38 years old. Bukele is
his name, and he was mayor of San Salvador, a city of 2 million
people, for a number of years and ran for office. He succeeded
a 75-year-old former guerrilla leader. I think the people in
that country feel a sense of hope.
Meanwhile, in Honduras, Juan Hernandez, the President,
about a year or so ago basically asked his supreme court,
appointed by him, to declare their constitution
unconstitutional so he could run for another term. He won,
allegedly, reelection by a narrow margin. The people there are
still outraged, up in arms, and they have had it.
If you go over to Guatemala, Jimmy Morales, the President
there, for whom I had high hopes, has turned out to be an
enormous disappointment with respect to corruption, family
corruption, all kinds of things, and he is basically going to
be done, gone, by the end of this year. But the people in that
country are just fed up with the corruption that is going on,
and we cannot be silent about--our administration and we in
Congress, and when we go there, we need to speak out. We need
to speak truth to power.
Mr. Chairman, I look forward to traveling perhaps later
this year with you and Senator Peters to go down there and get
a fresh look at what is going on.
The last thing I will say, things are really galling in
Guatemala. The former attorney general there, Thelma Aldana,
who is highly regarded--she was attorney general for a number
of years. She was death on corruption, and when she wanted to
run for President, they basically would not let her in the
country. They kept her out of the country. She could not run.
Just shameful.
Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Carper, I think we are going to
be traveling down to Central America in October, so I would
love to have you join us.
I think it was interesting, Commissioner Morgan's comments
about his meeting with the government officials down there, the
same comment we heard in 2015 from both Presidents of Honduras
and Guatemala. ``Fix your laws that are attracting young
people. Really, we are losing our future to America, so fix
those laws.'' That has been a consistent theme.
Now, I think at the same time Central America does like the
remittances, but I think they are starting to realize that
depopulating their countries is not a real good deal for the
long-term future of those nations. So hopefully we will be on
the same page. You talk about compromise. I am always looking
for areas of agreement. It is a lot easier.
Senator Peters, do you have a couple questions?
Senator Peters. I do. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Morgan, it is my understanding that CBP is conducting a
pilot program to train Border Patrol agents as asylum officers
to conduct credible fear interviews, and I would just like to
have a little bit more information on the pilot program. How
long is the training for these participating agents?
Mr. Morgan. I am not sure what the duration is. That is
really set by USCIS and their standards.
Senator Peters. So could we get that information? I would
like to have that.
Mr. Morgan. Absolutely.
Senator Peters. How many of these agents have been deployed
to date and to what locations?
Mr. Morgan. I do not have those numbers.
Senator Peters. You will get those for me as well?
Mr. Morgan. Absolutely.
Senator Peters. So you probably do not have the answer to
this as well. Once deployed, what percentage of their time is
spent conducting interviews?
Mr. Morgan. Again, I do not have that information, but I
will get that to you.
Senator Peters. Do you know why this pilot was initiated?
Was it because of a lack of asylum officers at USCIS? Or was it
for the goal of reaching different outcomes?
Mr. Morgan. My understanding, it was a lack of USCIS asylum
officers.
Senator Peters. If that is the case, would you agree that
we should be investing in the hiring and training of additional
USCIS asylum officers?
Mr. Morgan. Yes.
Senator Peters. If the USCIS had additional capacity and
these Border Patrol agents no longer are needed to conduct
these credible fear interviews, would the agents in the pilot
program be able to return back to line and patrol duties?
Mr. Morgan. I would like that very much.
Senator Peters. That would be your intent if that happened?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir.
Senator Peters. Is the officer wearing a uniform and
carrying a gun when they conduct these interviews?
Mr. Morgan. They would be wearing a uniform and carrying a
gun.
Senator Peters. They would be? They would be in
traditional--or their regular uniform?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir.
Senator Peters. Do you know if the CBP is seeking to expand
this program and train additional officers to conduct credible
fear interviews?
Mr. Morgan. My understanding is we are, but I will get back
to confirm that for you.
Senator Peters. So in addition to that, we would need to
know how many officers that you are expecting. I do not believe
you would know that at this point, either, so----
Mr. Morgan. Absolutely.
Senator Peters. So we would need to have more detailed
information on this, and I appreciate working with you and your
staff on that.
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir.
Senator Peters. What has been striking to me in the
discussion about detention standards is that there seems to be
a great deal of variability in the experience that lawmakers
have when they go to the border. We hear different stories from
different lawmakers, administration officials, lawyers,
advocates, and perhaps all these experiences could be true
because the situation on the ground obviously changes on a
daily basis, and conditions can deteriorate very rapidly.
So, Ms. Costello, my question to you is: What is your take
on the variability across sectors and even detention locations
within a sector? What type of challenges does this pose for you
as the OIG in identifying recommendations for an enterprise
improvement program across the entire enterprise?
Ms. Costello. So the experience of our inspectors has been
that it changes rapidly, and I can give you an example,
although we have not publicly reported yet on our observations
in Clint. We actually went there in April, and we did not see
some of the things that were reported on later on. I am not
saying that they did not happen. It is just I think that is a
good illustration of how quickly things can change.
Another example from our reporting is what I testified to
earlier, that on one day we had a facility with 125 maximum
capacity at 750. The next day it was up to 900. So I think that
is absolutely accurate, that you can go down and visit a
facility and have a very different experience the next day.
In terms of pinpointing root causes, that is going to make
it difficult, and it is part of the reason why this effort has
led us to look not at the push-pull factors outside the
country, but led us to initiate work that is going to look at
those drivers behind the 72 hours and why we are not meeting
that standard currently.
Senator Peters. Mr. Morgan, given this is a rapidly
changing environment, could you describe how CBP retains
visibility into facility standards and standards of care across
these sectors given the rapid change that we can sometimes see?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir. So TEDS is our guiding factor, just
as it was for the OIG during the review. So every single
facility uses that standard that was developed in 2015 for the
care and feeding with respect to anyone in our custody.
Senator Peters. Ms. Costello, the Council of Inspectors
General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), plays an often
overlooked role in facilitating the collaboration between
multiple IGs. We have heard in testimony today this has to be a
whole-of-government approach across a variety of agencies and
IGs.
Has CIGIE made any changes to how the OIG community
coordinates various oversight of border security efforts in
particular that you are aware of?
Ms. Costello. Not CIGIE in particular, but we have a very
solid relationship with HHS OIG, with GAO, and with the
Department of Justice (DOJ). As we have been doing our work on
the border starting last summer, we have been in close contact
with them. Now, we cannot share specific findings if they have
not alerted their own departments yet and reported to you, but
in terms of how we are doing our work, exploring opportunities
for joint efforts and the like.
Senator Peters. Is there more you can do and help that you
might need from this Committee to do it?
Ms. Costello. Let me think about that, Senator, and we will
get back to you. I think right now we have a positive
relationship with the other IGs, and everybody is really
committed to working together in space. But we can take that
back to the office and think about if there is any other
avenues that we could pursue and any help you could provide.
Senator Peters. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks to both
of you for your testimony today.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Peters. By the way, if
you have to go vote, I am happy to close out the hearing.
I have two lines of questioning here before we close out
the hearing. I kind of want to go back to a line that Senator
Lankford was talking about, the problems of releasing people
that come across the border illegally rapidly into our country
without really knowing who they are. It is just a reality. Our
laws prevent us from holding people more than 20 days, and
because we cannot get the information, we are probably
releasing them even sooner than that in many cases. Correct?
Mr. Morgan. That is absolutely correct. With respect to
family units, since March of this year, the United States
Border Patrol has been releasing family units directly. So in
some cases, they are being released in under 48 hours into the
interior United States.
Chairman Johnson. Because it really does not make a whole
lot of sense to try and find the facilities to hold them for 20
days with this overwhelming flow. So instead of Border Patrol
turning them over to ICE for a more thorough vetting process
and then ICE releasing them, Border Patrol is doing it
directly.
Mr. Morgan. That is correct.
Chairman Johnson. That represents a real danger to not only
potentially our country but to those individuals.
Mr. Morgan. Especially with the amount of fake families
that we are uncovering every single day.
Chairman Johnson. It is true that we really do not have
time to determine is that the father or is that the human
trafficker? Is that his daughter or is that his trafficking
victim?
Mr. Morgan. It is a challenge.
Chairman Johnson. So our broken laws are creating risks for
these migrants, and so we do focus on that time in custody.
Again, nobody would say these are really pleasant surroundings,
this is exactly where you would want to spend the night. Nobody
would want to spend the night in those conditions. But the
reason we hold people in custody is we do need to take some
kind of precaution in terms of where they are released, but
even with the precautions we are trying to take, it is
overwhelming the system, and people are put in danger, correct?
Mr. Morgan. Not only are they put in danger, sir, but,
again, that is one of the largest pull factors, and it is not
going to stop. We have been talking a lot of stuff. Should we
improve on our care and quality of that? Absolutely. But we are
still not addressing--that is addressing the symptoms. That is
not addressing the actual disease. We need to stem the flow,
and as long as our laws are where they are, you are going to
grab a kid, that is your passport into the United States. They
know that in the Northern Triangle countries, and they are
exploiting that every single day.
Chairman Johnson. So let us talk about in my mind there are
really three categories of people coming to this country
illegally and being apprehended or port of entry claiming
asylum. You have single adult males, which used to be the
problem, the vast majority. Then you had people coming in as a
family unit, generally one adult, one child. And then you have
unaccompanied children. Let us start with the unaccompanied
children. My information shows me of the 780,000 people that
have come in illegally at the ports of entry, about 67,000 are
unaccompanied children this year.
Mr. Morgan. That is correct. The number is even a little
bit higher.
Chairman Johnson. In the past, the composition of those
unaccompanied children would be 70 percent are male, 70 percent
are 15 or older. Is that composition holding largely true of
the unaccompanied children?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, and the majority of them are between 14
and 17.
Chairman Johnson. So, again, if they are more than 15, is
they are male, certainly that would be the profile of an
individual that might already be a member of a gang from
Central America. Correct?
Mr. Morgan. That is correct.
Chairman Johnson. Or if you come into this country, you
cannot speak the language, you probably gravitate toward those
areas, those pockets of other immigrants that speak your
language that would be gravitating toward gang activity.
Correct?
Mr. Morgan. Your vulnerability to be recruited by a gang is
exponentially higher under those circumstances.
Chairman Johnson. I am reading reports of the issues that
schools are having to cope with. It is not just bilingual
education. Now it is not only bilingual but different dialects
from some of the mountain regions of Guatemala. Is that a
problem?
Mr. Morgan. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. In terms of the family units, the
children coming in--and, again, you talked about 300,000
children, so you have 67,000 is unaccompanied children. Then
you have over 200,000 is part of a family unit. Those would be
children more of tender age, right? Which would be defined as,
what, 12 and under or 14 and under?
Mr. Morgan. It is changing on a regular basis, but we do
find them to be a little bit younger. But I will have to follow
up on the stats.
Chairman Johnson. I asked a question earlier about DNA
testing. The few pilots or the few tests we have had show what
percentage of people coming in that we determine are a
fraudulent family? Do you have any sense for that right now?
Mr. Morgan. I do not have the overall percentage, but we do
have the numbers. Right now, Border Patrol, 5,800; and HSI,
part of ICE, they have identified hundreds since their pilot
program of pushing agents forward.
Chairman Johnson. When I was down with Senator Peters and
Senator Hassan, I saw about a 40- or 50-year-old man with about
an 18-month-old girl, and, listen, I know children can be
fussy. Having just talked about the fraudulent families, I have
to admit I just looked at that situation right there, and that
is not his daughter. And then we heard testimony from HSI of a
child being sold for $84 to be used by an adult to get in this
country and exploit our laws.
Mr. Morgan. That is correct.
Chairman Johnson. I mean, those are just the realities that
are occurring here.
When we talk about how do we improve the situation, one of
the questions you have to ask, what do you design the
facilities to hold? What number do you use? Do we use 1.1
million people coming in here annually? Do we go back a couple
years and have it be a couple hundred thousands?
Ms. Costello, what would your advice on that? Do we just
assume that this is going to hold at 1.1 million people per
year or potentially grow?
Ms. Costello. I do not think you can assume that. Even just
looking at the past statistics over the past years, it
fluctuates. We are experiencing a rise in families this year
based on the Department's statistics. So, without being able to
really concretely weigh in on that, I would say that relying on
any one of these numbers is probably not a sound idea.
Chairman Johnson. Commissioner Morgan, what numbers are you
using as you are looking forward? You are obviously putting up
temporary facilities. That Donna facility--by the way, those
are, for temporary facilities, very nice facilities. That gives
people, I think, a fair amount of comfort that Border Patrol is
really actively working to improve conditions. But that is not
cheap.
Mr. Morgan. We are spending tens of millions of dollars; we
are probably on target to spend around $700 million, which a
lot of that came from the supplement, on those soft-sided
facilities.
Sir, if I could, Senator Peters asked me a question about
whether the pilot program for Border Patrol agents, whether
they were uniformed or not when they were doing the credible
fear interview, and I misspoke. My staff actually told me that
they are actually not uniformed and they do not carry a gun.
Chairman Johnson. OK. I will actually inform Senator Peters
of that.
Mr. Morgan. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Again, just going back to my question in
terms of how are you designing the system, are you assuming the
1.1 million flow? Do you think that is the smart thing to do?
Or do we just design a system where it really can be flexible,
that if the flow is reduced, we can adjust?
Mr. Morgan. So that is a tough question because, again,
CBP, sir, as you well know, has so many interdependencies, both
on HHS for the unaccompanied minors and then ICE for all the
other demographics. It really does depend on how we come
together to address this problem. If we are not going to have
meaningful legislative fixes and we are not going to fund ICE
for beds, well, then I have a different solution. But if you
are going to tell me that Congress is going to fund more bed
space for ICE to include family residential centers, now we
have a different proposal. That is the conundrum we are in
right now. We say we are a police station and we say we are not
a long-term holding facility, but we are somewhere in the
middle. We are interim custody. We are not short term or long
term, but a lot of it depends on what Congress is going to do.
Chairman Johnson. So alternative to detention sounds good,
but isn't it true that an ankle bracelet on somebody who does
not really have a permanent address, we do not know where they
really came from, we do not know where they are really going,
those are easily cutoff and that is basically what people do?
Mr. Morgan. That is exactly right. Again, I do not want to
speak for another agency, although I was there for a short
period of time, but statistics will show that alternatives to
detention, it is not productive, and it actually costs
exponentially more per removal on the non-detained docket, on
alternatives to detention, than it does to detain them. So
financially it is also a challenge.
Chairman Johnson. I would call that ``counterintuitive,''
but there is the reality.
You talked about funding. As a fiscal conservative, I was a
leading proponent early on of providing government agencies
with the funding they need to take care of the situation. On a
telephone town hall last week, I realized that was not a real
popular position. Again, very legitimate concerns on people on
the call saying, ``That is $4.6 billion to close out the fiscal
year. How better could we spend that money?'' People need to
understand the cost of apprehending, processing, and dispersing
this overwhelming, out-of-control flow of illegal immigrants?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir, and I think the American people need
to understand, $3.5 billion of that supplemental funding went
to HHS for children, 300,000 this year. So what the
supplemental did, and people need to understand, is it did not
address the crisis at all. It did not stem the flow at all.
What it did is it just improved our ability to more equitably
and efficiently bring these kinds into the interior United
States in a humane way.
Chairman Johnson. Again, that supplemental emergency
spending does not cover the full fiscal year. It is not going
to cover the costs for 2020. It just filled in the gap to
address the situation.
So let us just very quickly, before I have to go vote, talk
about really what the solution needs to be. First of all, what
is the first goal of our policy? I would argue it is to reduce
that flow. Would you both agree with that?
Mr. Morgan. Absolutely.
Chairman Johnson. When I was down at the border, I talked
to the Border Patrol and asked them, ``What is the solution?''
You get a pretty consistent answer: ``We have to remove people
that do not have a valid claim.'' And to be a consequence, to
be a deterrent, so that others will not indebt themselves to
human traffickers, will not mortgage their home, will not pay a
year's worth of salary to these, let us face it, evil people.
OK? Evil people.
We talk about the Feinstein amendment to the Trafficking
Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), which creates a
disparity in how we handle unaccompanied children. We cannot
voluntarily return them in a safe situation to their--because
we just cannot do that. We also talk about the Flores
reinterpretation where--the Flores Settlement really applied to
an unaccompanied child. I think her name was Jenny Flores?--
back in 1985. It took a long time to come up with the
settlement and how we handle unaccompanied children. Then in
2015, because of a lawsuit, the Obama Administration--and you
were probably there--decided to detain children with their
families, and a court said, no, the Flores standards apply to
accompanied children as well.
If you take a look at our chart\1\--it is not up there
now--that is really the moment where this was really sparked,
and once people realized if you came into America with a family
unit, you are going to get to stay. Even though Deferred Action
on Childhood Admissions (DACA) does not apply to any people in
the future, that was used by coyotes to say we have changed our
laws, come on it as an unaccompanied child or as a member of a
family unit, you get to stay. And that has been the reality.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The chart referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the Appendix
on page 485.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would argue the thing that we really have to address is
that gap between--in terms of our asylum laws--the credible
fear standard, which lets people in the front door, takes them
into this adjudication process where, I hear different numbers,
but at least 800,000 backlogged cases in the immigration
courts, correct?
Mr. Morgan. Correct.
Chairman Johnson. I was told that we adjudicated last year
a little more than 30,000 immigration cases of people coming in
as family units from Central America, about 30,000. About 3,000
were granted asylum; the others were denied. So that is about a
10-percent rate.
There is a real problem when we let all these people in and
only--and, again, nobody really knows the number here. We
really do not know. But somewhere around 10, probably no more
than 20 percent, actually had a valid asylum claim.
I would argue the law change--and it is going to require
Congress to act. The law change has to close that gap, has to
be to close that gap. Would you both agree with that?
Mr. Morgan. 100 percent, Senator. You hit all three major
elements that Congress must do to fix this crisis and stem the
flow. It is a credible fear, as you just described. It is TVPRA
where we treat kids different from Mexico and Canada than other
countries, and the Flores Settlement Agreement which says we
mandated we have to release unaccompanied minors and children
within 20 days. Those are the three fixes.
Chairman Johnson. It is also true that we are releasing I
think 79 percent of unaccompanied children to a person in the
United States that is undocumented. Correct?
Mr. Morgan. I do not know the specific stat, but that is
happening every single day.
Chairman Johnson. We are only able to remove 70 percent of
people that we do not detain. We just do not know where they
are. Correct?
Mr. Morgan. Sir, that is another reason why we want to
detain, is on the non-detained docket it is extremely
difficult, once these individuals have a final order of
removal, to go and apprehend them.
Chairman Johnson. The solution is we have to look at that
credible fear standard. We have to raise the bar on that
initial hurdle. We need to squeeze all the inefficiencies out
of that initial adjudication process so that we can, again,
more rapidly, but I would argue more accurately and fairly--
because we do not want to deny asylum to people who really
qualify.
Mr. Morgan. Sir, I would even say that by streamlining this
process, as you just described, that is exactly what we will
do, is that we will actually be able to more efficiently
actually find those that have actual valid asylum claims and
take care of them appropriately. Right now they are getting
lost in the system with all the false and fraudulent claims.
Chairman Johnson. So that is the goal of this first step,
Operation Safe Return. Again, I do not know what is going to
happen with the safe third country. With Guatemala, I think
they have to approve that through their legislature. Who knows
what kind of court challenges both here and in Guatemala may
occur? Operation Safe Return uses existing authorities--we have
spoken with you and the other component heads within DHS--to
implement that program, to start it, again, to rapidly and more
accurately determine those individuals that clearly do not have
a legal claim to stay and safely return. From my standpoint,
that is what we are going to continue to work on. We have
bipartisan support for that initiative. I just ask you to do
everything you can to work with us on that, implement it, take
a look at is it working, are we able to remove those
individuals, to be a deterrent to reduce that flow. Assess how
it is working, make adjustments, and move forward, and
hopefully at some point in time we can get the bipartisan
support to change our laws to actually fix this once and for
all.
Anyway, I want to thank both of you for your service. I
want to thank the men and women of DHS and Border Patrol and
ICE, all of these individuals trying to cope with this out-of-
control situation. I view them personally as heroes, and I hope
they stay on the job. I hope they continue doing a good job,
and I truly am grateful. I think this Committee is as well. I
think you heard that voiced by most members. So if you will
convey that back to your component, I would appreciate that.
Mr. Morgan. I will. They absolutely are heroes, and I thank
you for that, and I will make sure that they know that,
Senator.
Chairman Johnson. Again, I am glad in your testimony you
pointed out some of the heroic actions. We have heard other
similar situations as well.
The hearing record will remain open for 15 days until
August 14th at 5 p.m. for the submission of statements and
questions for the record.
This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:54 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
UNPRECEDENTED MIGRATION AT THE
U.S SOUTHERN BORDER: THE YEAR IN REVIEW
----------
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2019
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:32 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Ron Johnson,
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Johnson, Portman, Lankford, Scott,
Hawley, Peters, Carper, Hassan, and Rosen.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN JOHNSON\1\
Chairman Johnson. Good morning. This hearing will come to
order.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Johnson appear in the
Appendix on page 565.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I want to first thank the witnesses for taking the time for
your thoughtful testimony. I want to thank the audience
members. I am not sure why you are not over on the House side,
but we appreciate--it must have been paid staff. But I
appreciate everybody coming here.
This is, from my standpoint--the hearing title is
``Unprecedented Migration at the U.S. Southern Border: The Year
in Review.'' But what I would like to do is I would like to
actually start with the decade in review. I would refer
everybody to my chart.\2\ This is a chart that I have been
really updating for probably the last 3 or 4 years, I think as
long as you have been on the Committee. I think it is important
to kind of lay out what the history has been, certainly from my
standpoint some key moments, key policy changes that I would
certainly argue contributed to what I do consider an ongoing
crisis, even though we have made some progress. But that chart
reflects all minors and people coming into this country as
family units. Earlier versions only focused on Central American
children and family members. So initially, in 2009, 2010, and
2011, we had 3,000, 4,000, and 4,000 unaccompanied alien
children (UAC). We were not even keeping track of families
because it was not a problem.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ The chart referenced by Senator Johnson appear in the Appendix
on page 601.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 2012--and, again, I would consider that a pretty seminal
moment--was the issuance of the Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals (DACA) memorandum, which I would argue by testimony
was used by the coyotes, by the human traffickers, to help
incentivize people. They would tell them, ``The United States
has changed its policy. You come to America, you get a piece of
paper called a `permiso,' '' which was a notice to appear
(NTA). Again, I know others may dispute this, but I think it is
pretty obvious that that certainly started something.
Fast forward to 2014. 2014 was really the year when
President Obama very accurately described a humanitarian crisis
on the border when 137,000 unaccompanied children but also
people coming as a family unit crossed the border and
overwhelmed Customs and Border Protection (CBP). I remember
leading a congressional delegation down there in early 2015,
down into McAllen, Texas, and we were all singing the praises
of Customs and U.S. Border Patrol (USBP), the humanity they
were showing, the ingenuity they were showing in setting up a
facility to separate children from adults, to make sure the
children stayed safe. Now those same facilities are called
``cages,'' very improperly so, because I think, if anything, we
have gotten better at it. It is just the problem has grown so
much more severely, as the chart shows.
In reaction to the humanitarian crisis of 2014, the Obama
Administration said that they had to do something. There had to
be a consequence. So they began detaining those families and
those children together to adjudicate their claims, and it
worked. You can see we went from 137,000 in 2014 down to 80,000
in 2016. But then a court intervened, as courts are continuing
to intervene in this problem, and reinterpreted the Flores
Settlement Agreement (FSA) I think clearly incorrectly. The
Flores settlement dealt with unaccompanied minors, and now for
the first time a court said, oh, no, it also includes
accompanied minors. So now the government was faced with the
fact that if we want to enforce the law, we are going to have
to either detain the adults and release the children, or we
have to release the families. What the Obama Administration
decided to do is they released the families, and that began
what was referred to as ``catch and release,'' and you see the
results. It went from 80,000 in 2015 to 137,000 in 2016,
117,000 in 2017, and 181,000 in fiscal year (FY) 2018. It was
ramping up.
We started talking about caravans. Unfortunately, folks on
the other side of the aisle started referring to it as a
``manufactured crisis.'' I started producing this chart on a
monthly basis. I actually went so far as to put it on a cup so
I could distribute this to the news media so they would not
just take my sheet, crumple it up, and throw it away, to start
pointing out, no, this is not a manufactured crisis, this is
something real. This is something overwhelming the courageous
men and women of Border Patrol, the compassionate men and women
of Border Patrol, who are just trying to deal with something
that is, again, overwhelming.
In May, we hit the high-water mark of the current crisis:
4,651 individuals per day were crossing the border illegally.
Now, that is the total number. That is not just women and
children but families. Four thousand six hundred fifty-one per
day. We no longer heard people talking about manufactured
crisis. In May, what I started doing with my chart is I started
extrapolating, saying if this continues at May's levels, we
would end up with over 800,000 unaccompanied children, people
crossing the border as a family unit, 800,000.
Now, the final results--and that is what this is all about,
the year end in review. What was the final accounting? In the
end it was 608,000 people who came to this country either as an
unaccompanied child or as a family unit compared to 137,000
when President Obama declared it a ``humanitarian crisis.''
I think we have hopefully laid to rest that this is a
manufactured crisis. We have brought it down in terms of the
averages--why don't you put up the next sheet here? This is
kind of my weekly report. I come from a manufacturing
background, so I like to see what my daily, my weekly, my
monthly, and my annual statistics are. So, again, we went from
May of 4,651 per day to in September we went down to 1,749 on
average.
Now, what is not shown here because for some unknown reason
this is law enforcement sensitive, but members on the Committee
have this in front of them, the last week I have figures on--
and I can say this figure--it averaged about 1,372. So we have
gone from 4,651 to less than 1,400. But I will never forget an
interview that Secretary Jeh Johnson, the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary under President Obama, gave
to MSNBC a few months ago. He said when he would come to the
office and the numbers were more than 1,000, he knew he had a
really bad day. So we are still 372 on average in one day over
Secretary Jeh Johnson's ``really bad day.''
So, again, the purpose of this hearing is to lay out the
reality, talk about where we were, where we have come, but I
would also say describe what happened. Why did we go from--how
did we get from 4,651 a day, how have we come down to less than
1,400? What else needs to be done? Maybe an even more important
question, what threatens the progress we have already made?
I have to say I go down to the border, the individuals
coming across here, the vast majority just want what we want.
They want safety and security, and they want to take advantage
of the opportunity. I am highly sympathetic with that, but it
has to be a legal process. We have to get the illegal flow
under control, and it is far from under control.
My last point, I want to thank Senator Peters and other
Members of the Committee and some other colleagues on the other
side of the aisle that worked with me. In the end, Senator
Peters decided not to sign the letter of support for Operation
Safe Return. There is a program initiated right now--hopefully
Mr. Morgan will talk a little bit about that--of basically how
can we more rapidly and more accurately determine those
individuals that have come to this country illegally or without
documentation that clearly do not have a valid asylum claim and
safely return them back to their home country? The big
contribution that Senator Peters made to that conversation was,
well, if we are going to do something with that, let us gather
the data. Let us figure out what is happening.
And so what I am hoping we are going to get out of this
hearing is certainly some of the data. How many of these claims
have been adjudicated from Central America? How many of those
individuals actually have a valid asylum claim? Because if we
are going to address this problem, from my standpoint the
biggest problem is we have such a low hurdle, that credible
fear standard, that we just wave everybody in. The courts are
completely backlogged, and a very low percentage of those
individuals that we wave in that just end up melting into our
society, we do not know where they go. By and large, we do not
know where they are. But in the end, they do not have a valid
asylum claim. We should not have ever waved them in. We have to
increase that initial hurdle rate. But we need the data in
order to actually enact public policy.
So, again, what I am hoping is going to come out of this
hearing is better data, but then also, as we move forward with
some of these programs that have shown some success--not
enough, but some success--let us develop the data that will
inform public policy, and then hopefully, in any problem-
solving process, you gather the information, you define the
problem, you define the root cause analysis, you set an
achievable goal. Hopefully we can come together on a bipartisan
basis and develop some real solutions on a bipartisan,
hopefully nonpartisan basis. That is the whole purpose of all
of these hearings on border security, but in particular, it is
the purpose and the goal of this hearing.
So, with that, I will turn it over to Senator Peters.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PETERS\1\
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our
witnesses here today.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Peters appear in the Appendix
on page 566.
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I am proud to say that, over the past year, our Committee
has been able to come together on a bipartisan basis to examine
the migration and humanitarian challenges that we are facing at
our border.
We have found compromise and passed common-sense
legislation to address staffing shortages at the borders and
ports of entry (POEs), strengthen security at both our Northern
and Southern borders, and ultimately make our country safer.
In June, we came together to unanimously advance my
bipartisan bill to strengthen border security and address law
enforcement shortages at ports of entry throughout the country.
Last month, the full Senate approved my bill to hire more
agricultural inspectors and canine units to protect the
Nation's food supply from harmful contraband.
Last week, our Committee approved important legislation led
by Chairman Johnson to support the U.S. Border Patrol by hiring
new agents and support staff, improving retention, and
providing medic training to agents that could save lives.
And just yesterday, I had a chance to see CBP officers and
canines in action at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, and I was
stunned to hear the number of seizures that they make to keep
our country safe every day. I am proud that the men and women
of CBP at Detroit Metro are leading the Nation when it comes to
the interdiction of harmful biological material that is coming
across the border.
In fact, Detroit Metro has been the number one intercepting
port for the last 2 fiscal years with more than half of all
interceptions at ports of entry nationwide.
Detroit Metro has also pioneered training programs that
have been deployed nationally with positive results being
generated in Boston, Newark, and Dulles.
They also told me that, among all airports nationwide,
Detroit Metro is second in the Nation for discovery of wood
packing material containing very harmful pests that can damage
the lumber industry and agriculture across the board. These
species pose certainly a significant threat.
The CBP officers and canines in Detroit are doing
phenomenal work to protect Michigan and the rest of the country
from harm, and I am proud to support their efforts every day.
This past year, however, has posed many challenges for our
border security professionals. The situation on our Southern
Border and throughout Central America is dynamic. Our border
security efforts should certainly reflect that fact.
Often this administration's border security policies have
been shortsighted. If we are going to successfully address both
the conditions on our border and the root causes that are
driving this migration, we need to take a comprehensive
approach that looks at the data and finds common-sense
solutions to address these very serious challenges.
I appreciate our witnesses for joining us here today and
for their commitment to serve our country. I also recognize
that addressing border security and humanitarian challenges
requires stable and effective leadership.
I am deeply concerned--I think that concern is shared by
the Chair and everyone on the Committee as well--by the lack of
Senate-confirmed leaders in nearly all of the top leadership
positions at the Department of Homeland Security. In fact, we
have three Senate-confirmed positions before us, and all three
of you are Acting, not Senate-confirmed. I will continue to
call on this administration to nominate qualified leaders for
these vacant positions who can gain broad, bipartisan support
in the Senate.
The men and women of DHS and the American people deserve
stability; they deserve accountability that comes from
nominating and confirming qualified leaders that can ensure
that the Department can carry out this national security
mission in a Senate-confirmed position. That permanence and
stability is absolutely critical.
I look forward to hearing your testimony. Thank you again
for your service.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Peters, and you know I
completely agree with you in terms of getting individuals
nominated and confirmed. The good news here is I think we do
have some very highly qualified individuals in these acting
positions, so that is also a bit of good news.
It is the tradition of this Committee to swear in
witnesses, so if you will all stand and raise your right hand?
Do you swear that the testimony you will give before this
Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth, so help you. God?
Mr. Morgan. I do.
Mr. Cuccinelli. I do.
Mr. Benner. I do.
Mr. McHenry. I do.
Chairman Johnson. Please be seated.
Our first witness is Mark Morgan, who is the Acting
Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. Acting
Commissioner Morgan began serving his country as a U.S. Marine
and his community in local law enforcement. After completing a
20-year career in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), he
began service in the Department of Homeland Security as the
Acting Assistant Commissioner for Internal Affairs before being
appointed by President Obama as Chief of the U.S. Border
Patrol. He served as Chief until 2017. He returned to DHS as
the Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) in May of this year and began his current role as Acting
Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection on July 7.
Mr. Morgan.
TESTIMONY OF MARK A. MORGAN,\1\ ACTING COMMISSIONER, U.S.
CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND
SECURITY
Mr. Morgan. Good morning. Thank you, Chairman Johnson,
Ranking Member Peters, and Members of the Committee. I
appreciate the opportunity to be here today to be able to
inform the American people the truth about the unprecedented
crisis we have experienced along the Southwest Border during
fiscal year 2019, as well as the remarkable and noteworthy
successes by the current administration and the incredible men
and women of the United States Customs and Border Protection. I
am honored to speak on behalf of the men and women of CBP who
are on the front lines of our Nation's borders defending the
rule of law, maintaining the integrity of the immigration
system, and protecting the safety and security of this great
country, all while simultaneously playing a critical role in
ensuring our economic security as well.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Morgan appear in the Appendix on
page 568.
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If you will recall, earlier this year we sounded the alarm
at the border crisis and asked Congress repeatedly to act to
fix the loopholes in our broken immigration system and close
the gaps driving the crisis. Unfortunately, not a single piece
of meaningful legislation has been brought forward to address
this crisis. As a result, the country watched as the crisis
worsened.
Although we have made great progress, I am here today to
respectfully remind this Committee and the American people that
there continues to be a humanitarian crisis and, importantly, a
national security crisis. In fiscal year 2019, CBP's
enforcement actions exceeded 1.1 million nationwide, an
increase of 68 percent over the previous year. The total number
of apprehensions along our Southwest Border exceeded 978,000,
an 88-percent increase over the previous year's apprehensions.
The United States Border Patrol alone apprehended more than
473,000 family units, representing the highest number for any
year on record. The number of unaccompanied children
encountered between the ports totaled more than 76,000, 52
percent higher than any other year. There is no immigration
system in the world designed to handle such massive migration
numbers, not even the United States.
Challenging still is the demographics of those illegally
entering our Southern Border, as the Chairman discussed. In
2019, 71 percent of all Southwest Border apprehensions came
from the Northern Triangle countries, the vast majority being
families and unaccompanied children. They are being pulled into
the United States by the loopholes in our current legal
framework. They know if you grab a kid, that is your passport
into the United States, and it was working, all while the human
smuggling organizations and cartels exploited them, placed them
in life-threatening situations, and treated them as nothing
more than a money-making commodity, a multi-billion-dollar
scheme.
The impact was real. As the Chairman stated, in May of this
year we saw our highest numbers, more than 140,000
apprehensions in a single month. CBP had to divert resources
away from their mission-critical duties to care for the
children and families. At times, up to 50 percent of Border
Patrol resources were pulled off the line to care for the
families and children, leaving areas of the border increasingly
vulnerable.
Meanwhile, the cartels and smuggling organizations were
exploiting those law enforcement gaps, increasing the threat to
our national security. Last year, more than 150,000 migrants
who illegally entered the United States got away. The
transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) are not only
exploiting the migrants themselves, but also flooding the
United States with illicit narcotics making their way into
every town, city, and State in this great Nation. Make no
mistake: If you have a methamphetamine in your town or city, it
came from the Southwest Border.
In the absence of congressional action, the administration
has taken action. Through engagement with the government of
Mexico and Northern Triangle countries, we have initiated a
network of initiatives, policies, and regulations to stem the
flow of migration. Together we are approaching this as the
regional crisis that it is, and we have seen incredible
success. The last 4 months in fiscal year 2019 we saw an almost
65-percent reduction in the apprehensions, with September
marking the lowest number of enforcement actions during the
entire year at just over 52,000. By mid-year, CBP was holding
almost 20,000 detainees in custody. Now we are averaging less
than 3,500 a day in custody. At the height of the crisis, CBP
apprehensions at times exceeded 5,000 in a single day. Now we
are averaging less than 1,400. We have all but ended catch and
release.
But our success at addressing the humanitarian crisis
should not overshadow the national security crisis. Last year,
CBP officers and Border Patrol agents seized more than 750,000
pounds of illicit narcotics. CBP's air and marine operations
(AMO) contributed to the seizure of an additional 285,000
pounds of cocaine. Seizures of the four hard narcotics--
fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine--all increased.
Last year, there were more than 68,000 overdose deaths in the
United States. We know that methamphetamine has seen
significant resurgence as super labs in Mexico are taking over
production and flooding the United States with cheaper and
purer forms of meth.
Additionally, CBP seized nearly 3,000 weapons, 1,000 gang
members, $75 million of illicit currency, and apprehended
16,000 criminal aliens, and this is just what we caught.
Chairman, I know I am running over time, but if I could
just make a couple more comments?
Chairman Johnson. Go ahead.
Mr. Morgan. The apprehension numbers are still at
unacceptable levels. Chairman Johnson, as you stated, the
former Secretary of DHS, Jeh Johnson, stated, ``One thousand
apprehensions was a bad day.'' He was absolutely correct, and
that still stands today. I am concerned that the good story I
am able to tell this morning regarding the migration crisis has
allowed some to take their eye off the ball, but this crisis is
not over. Due in part to the judicial activism encountered from
the lower courts, we are one bad court decision away from
losing a significant ability to continue to mitigate the
current crisis.
Additionally, we cannot rely solely on our partner nations
to resolve our broken immigration system. To obtain a lasting
and durable solution, Congress must act.
As I sit here today as a law enforcement professional, over
30 years of service to this country, I am absolutely perplexed
why Congress cannot come together in a bipartisan manner to fix
this. We know the cartels and human smuggling organizations are
exploiting the migrants as they make their journey here. They
are giving up their life savings, turning themselves over and
often their children over to the hands of the smugglers, often
abused and deprived of adequate food, water, and medical
attention during their trip. We know because we averaged 71
hospital visits per day in 2019. Add that up, I think that is
roughly over 25,000 hospital visits. They leave them--the
smugglers and cartels leave these immigrants in rivers to die.
They leave them in open harsh terrain to die, in tractor-
trailers to die. The Border Patrol last year conducted 4,900
rescues of immigrants who the smugglers abandoned to die. We
also encountered 24 bodies along the Southern Border, including
skeletal remains.
I have told this story before, and I think I told it in
front of this very Committee, of a paraplegic man whom
smugglers threw in the water to avoid apprehension without
giving it a second thought.
We know children are being rented and recycled and
presented as fake families. Last fiscal year, CBP identified
over 6,000 fake family members, impacting over 1,834 juveniles.
We had a Honduran man who bought a child for $80. Why did he do
it? Because the loopholes in our system told him and the
smugglers made sure he understood you grab a child, that is
your passport into the United States.
It is our broken immigration legal framework which is
providing an incentive, driving the crisis. We have been
asking--I feel like I have been begging--for Congress to act.
If Congress continues to fail to come together across the
aisle, more children and families will be placed in harm's way
by the cartels, and the criminal networks, both domestic and
abroad, will continue to negatively impact the public safety
throughout this Nation as bad people and drugs make their way
into our Nation every day.
We need your help. We are asking for your help. We have
been asking for your help. The only winners here by inaction,
by not passing meaningful legislation, are the cartels as they
continue to thrive and increase their multi-billion-dollar
business on the backs of migrants.
Please, join us in doing everything we can to target these
smuggling organizations, to target the cartels, and to put them
out of business. We can start by eliminating their ability to
advance their multi-billion-dollar business on the backs of
migrants and at the cost of American lives.
I sincerely thank you for this opportunity, and I am
looking forward to addressing any of your questions. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you for that testimony, and it is
certainly my intention and I think hopefully the intention of
Members of this Committee to do everything we can. We need the
information, so, please, help us get this information. I think
you have done a good job of laying out that reality, which is
the first step. We need to acknowledge the reality, and then we
need to work with real information in terms of how we actually
do fix this problem. So, again, I appreciate your testimony.
Our next witness is Ken Cuccinelli. Mr. Cuccinelli is the
Acting Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
(USCIS) at the Department of Homeland Security. From 2010 to
2014, Mr. Cuccinelli served as Virginia's Attorney General
(AG), where he led the State's fight against human trafficking.
He also previously served in the Virginia Senate from 2002 to
2010. Mr. Cuccinelli.
TESTIMONY OF KENNETH T. CUCCINELLI,\1\ ACTING DIRECTOR, U.S.
CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION SERVICES, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Cuccinelli. Good morning, Chairman Johnson, Ranking
Member Peters, and distinguished Members of the Committee.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today regarding the
incredible and important work the men and women of U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services have been doing over the
last year.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Cuccinelli appear in the Appendix
on page 580.
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In fiscal year 2019, USCIS achieved many of President
Trump's goals to make our immigration system work better for
America. As an agency, we have tirelessly worked hand in hand
with our fellow DHS components to answer President Trump's call
to address the ongoing crisis at the border.
In the absence of congressional action to close the
loopholes that are being exploited and have led to the crisis
at the Southern Border, we have taken significant steps to
mitigate the loopholes in our asylum system, to combat
fraudulent and frivolous claims, and to strengthen the
protections we have in place to preserve humanitarian
assistance for those who are truly eligible for it.
USCIS had a historic year in fiscal year 2019. I am proud
of the agency's work over the fiscal year and want to mention a
few of the agency's notable accomplishments.
USCIS adjudicated more than 8.2 million requests for
immigration benefits, and we have seen a rising level of
complexity in those adjudications as well. This workload
represents the full spectrum of benefits that our laws provide
to those who seek to come to the United States--whether
temporarily or permanently--as well as those who seek to become
citizens of this Nation. It also includes work continuing to
process Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and DACA after courts
have interfered with our lawful attempts to terminate these
programs, time and resources that should be spent adjudicating
lawful immigration benefits instead.
USCIS naturalized approximately 833,000 new citizens last
year--the most in more than a decade. USCIS granted lawful
permanent residence to 582,000 individuals and completed more
than 78,000 affirmative asylum applications. The agency also
performed more than 40 million verifications of employment
eligibility through the E-Verify program.
On the Southern Border, USCIS felt the impact of the
crisis, receiving more than 105,000 credible fear referrals--
5,000 more than the previous year and a new record high. To put
that in some perspective, just 5 years ago, still on the front
edge of what is considered the crisis, 2014, USCIS received
approximately 51,000 credible fear referrals, and just 10 years
ago, USCIS received approximately 5,000 credible fear
referrals. So you can see the nonlinear rise in that measure of
the crisis at the border.
During any given week in fiscal year 2019, 150 to 200 of
our officers were assigned to process cases arising from the
Southern Border, including approximately 40 to 60 assigned to
process cases in person at the Southern Border.
USCIS took significant actions that will result in
protecting American taxpayers by publishing a Final Rule on
Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds, a rule that enforces
the longstanding law to better ensure that those who come to,
or remain in, the United States are self-sufficient and not
dependent on public benefits. Public charge has been a part of
our immigration statute since 1882.
Unfortunately, DHS was preliminarily enjoined from
implementing and enforcing this final rule. The Department of
Justice (DOJ) and DHS are vigorously defending the final rule
in litigation before Federal courts, and I am confident that,
as we continue to do as these things go through courts, we will
prevail in that.
USCIS continues to expand our online filing capabilities
with over 1.2 million applications filed last year, a 10-
percent increase from the previous year. USCIS added four of
our important forms for a total of eight now available for
online filing with additional forms planned to be added this
year.
The men and women of USCIS are working extremely hard to
transform a paper-based agency into an electronic agency that
takes full advantage of the capabilities of the 21st Century,
all while maintaining our records in a secure fashion, even as
our threats evolve.
In the coming year, USCIS will continue to use every tool
available to us to fulfill President Trump's goals to
strengthen our Nation's strained immigration system and
alleviate the crisis at our border while continuing to fairly
and efficiently adjudicate applications and petitions of those
seeking lawful status in the United States.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify, and I look
forward to answering any questions that you might have.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Director Cuccinelli.
Our next witness is Derek Benner. Mr. Benner is the Acting
Deputy Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the
Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Benner has served in a
variety of positions within ICE since he began his law
enforcement career with the U.S. Customs Service in 1991.
Before becoming Acting Deputy Director, he served as the
Executive Associate Director for Homeland Security
Investigations (HSI), a position in which he oversaw the
investigative component of ICE that combats transnational
criminal organizations. Mr. Benner.
TESTIMONY OF DEREK BENNER,\1\ ACTING DEPUTY DIRECTOR, U.S.
IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Benner. Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Peters, and
distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today to review U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement's efforts for fiscal year
2019.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Benner appear in the Appendix on
page 585.
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I will echo my colleagues when I say that the unprecedented
crisis we saw on the Southwest Border certainly stressed our
immigration system to its breaking point, and the
administration clearly took necessary actions to address it.
The face of this breaking point, though, is an example
which tragically illuminates the humanitarian cost of an
unsecure border. It involves an adult Guatemalan male who
presented at the border with a minor female whom he
fraudulently claimed to be his child. Since law enforcement
could not detain as a result of the Flores Settlement
Agreement, they were released into the interior of the United
States. He then moved the minor female to the southeastern
United States where he repeatedly sexually abused and beat her
on a regular basis until she was, luckily, rescued by law
enforcement. Sadly, this is just one of many examples of this
fraud, exploitation, and violence associated with this
unprecedented crisis.
Like any crisis, we are certainly not measured by the
crisis itself but how we respond. I appear before you today
proud to represent the men and women of ICE who responded to
the call and whose efforts significantly curbed the migrant
influx which overwhelmed our borders.
Our response to this crisis was not without consequence.
The sustained increase in illegal migration has stretched
resources thin across the U.S. Government. The administration
was faced this year with responding to the humanitarian crisis
at the border at the expense of other vital law enforcement
missions.
While the border dominated the headlines, the achievements
of ICE over the last year were not defined by the crisis, nor
were they limited to the border. Across the country and around
the globe, ICE personnel remain steadfast in their critical
mission--protecting America from cross-border crime and illegal
immigration that threatens national security and public safety.
Today I will highlight ICE's two robust operational
directorates responsible for protecting the people of this
great Nation.
ICE's Homeland Security Investigations investigates and
enforces more than 400 Federal criminal statutes, and we work
in close coordination with U.S. Customs and Border Protection
and our State, local, tribal, and Federal partners in a unified
effort to target transnational organized crime. Over the past
year, HSI's special agents arrested over 46,000 individuals,
with more than 37,500 of them being criminal arrests, exceeding
last year's record by over 3,000 criminal arrests. HSI made
4,000 arrests of gang leaders, members, and associates,
including over 400 arrests of MS-13 members.
HSI continued to be at the forefront in the fight against
the opioid epidemic and prioritized the investigation,
disruption, and dismantlement of TCOs involved in introducing
fentanyl, heroin, and other dangerous opioids into the United
States.
In fiscal year 2019, HSI and our CBP partners seized over
11,000 pounds of opioids, including over 3,600 pounds of
fentanyl, while at the same time making over 2,000 fentanyl-
related arrests, which was an increase of nearly 175 percent
from the prior year.
HSI also continued to protect our citizens from crimes of
exploitation by arresting over 3,600 child predators and over
1,800 human traffickers, while at the same time identifying and
assisting more than 1,400 victims of these heinous crimes.
These efforts pay immediate dividends when considering the
long-term damage these criminals can inflict upon their
vulnerable victims.
All of these accomplishments were achieved despite the fact
that HSI sent 400 personnel to the border to assist with
combating the migrant influx. Agents who would otherwise be
investigating criminal organizations were deployed to initiate
a rapid deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) pilot utilizing
supplemental appropriations from Congress that allowed for over
10,000 DNA tests at seven locations along the Southwest Border.
During this deployment, agents conducted interviews of members
of suspected fraudulent family units to disrupt the disturbing
practice of children being used as pawns by ruthless human
smuggling and trafficking organizations. These efforts resulted
in the identification of over 1,000 incidents of family unit
fraud and false UAC claims, which also led to over 1,000
criminal prosecutions. As a result of these efforts, HSI has
seen a marked decrease in the number of fraudulent family
incidents over the past few months, indicating that our joint
efforts have impacted the use of the fraudulent families to
circumvent our Nation's immigration laws.
ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) ensures the
integrity of our immigration system and enhances our national
security and public safety by enforcing the Nation's
immigration laws in a fair and effective manner. While ERO's
targeted immigration enforcement operations focus on the
interior of the country, changes in migration flows at the
border directly impact nearly every area of the agency's
operations, including interior enforcement resources and
detention capacity.
As a result of the activity at the border, much of ERO's
limited detention capacity has been dedicated to housing aliens
arrested by CBP at the border, many of whom are subject to
mandatory detention under U.S. immigration laws. Certainly this
shift in resources and ERO's arrest of aliens in the interior
decreased by almost 15 percent, to include a decrease in the
number of criminal aliens arrested. Simply put, more criminals
who would otherwise be in ICE custody or removed from the
country are at large in our communities, many of them violent
recidivists, as a direct result of the border crisis.
Despite the operational environment of extremely limited
resources, ERO has continued to focus on its public safety
mission. In fiscal year 2019, ERO officers arrested nearly
140,000 aliens of which 86 percent were convicted criminals or
had pending criminal charges.
The safety of the courageous and dedicated men and women of
ICE is paramount to our agency. When local jurisdictions refuse
to work with us or obstruct our lawful enforcement of the laws
that this body has passed, it increases the risk to every
community in this country. In just one example from Boulder
County, Colorado, ICE officers recently found and arrested a
56-year-old illegal alien who had been released from local
custody twice after ICE detainers were ignored. The alien was
arrested on local charges and then released, subsequently
arrested for felony sexual assault on a child and again
released. He was convicted of sexual assault in July of this
year and remained at-large until ICE apprehended him in August
2019.
Not only do these policies impact public safety by
releasing criminals back onto the streets to reoffend, but also
the safety of both the individuals we are arresting and our own
officers and agents whose goal it is to effectively enforce the
law in a manner that is safest for all parties involved. It is
much safer for officers and the public to have ICE apprehending
aliens in the secure environment of a jail or police station
rather than in a residence in the presence of family and
friends.
Unfortunately, despite our collaborative efforts at the
border, the crisis does not start and stop at the border. It
extends into the interior of the United States. Between the
illicit flows of opioids and the mass influx of aliens, almost
every community in this country is now a border community.
While our partners at CBP appreciate a temporary decrease in
the migrant flow, ICE is not so fortunate, as our personnel,
particularly our attorneys and deportation officers, will be
managing this unprecedented increase in immigration cases for
years to come.
An already overburdened immigration system now must deal
with the massive influx of aliens and their immigration court
proceedings, The ICE ERO docket is now over 3 million, a
population managed by a workforce that is short thousands of
deportation officers and hundreds of attorneys.
Contrary to some public opinion and in the face of those
who wish to attack those of us that represent the men and women
of DHS, we remain vigilant enforcing the laws that Congress has
passed. The extraordinary men and women of ICE will continue to
reinforce our efforts in protecting the communities each of you
represent from criminal aliens, terrorists, drug dealers, human
trafficking, gang members, and organizations who attempt to
exploit our borders.
Thank you again for the opportunity to appear this morning,
and I look forward to answering your questions.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Benner.
Our final witness is James McHenry. Mr. McHenry is the
Director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR)
at the Department of Justice. Mr. McHenry previously served as
Acting Director from May 2017 to January 2018. He previously
served in a variety of positions throughout the Federal
Government, including an administration law judge (ALJ) for
immigration matters, and is a Deputy Associate Attorney General
for immigration-related litigation matters. Mr. McHenry.
TESTIMONY OF JAMES MCHENRY,\1\ DIRECTOR, EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR
IMMIGRATION REVIEW, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Mr. McHenry. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Peters, and other
distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for the
opportunity to speak with you today. As the Director of the
Executive Office for Immigration Review at the Department of
Justice, I welcome this opportunity to share with you the
progress that EOIR has made in adjudicating cases, the
continuing challenges it faces, and the overall impact of the
unprecedented levels of illegal immigration on its operations.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. McHenry appear in the Appendix on
page 596.
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The primary mission of EOIR is to adjudicate immigration
cases by fairly, expeditiously, and uniformly interpreting and
administering the Nation's immigration laws. Our employees are
firmly committed to this mission, they have performed
commendably in improving the functioning of our immigration
courts, and I am honored to lead them.
After 8 consecutive years of declining or stagnant
productivity between fiscal year 2009 and fiscal year 2016,
EOIR recently concluded its third consecutive year of increased
immigration court case completions. In fiscal year 2019, EOIR
completed over 275,000 cases at the immigration court level.
This represents the second-highest total in the agency's
history, an increase of roughly 80,000 case completions from
the prior year 2018, and is almost double the number of cases
it completed just 3 years ago. Even accounting for factors such
as hiring recency, 150 of our immigration judges completed at
least 700 cases last fiscal year, and the average immigration
judge completed 708 cases, despite losing 5 weeks to the
government shutdown. Perhaps most importantly, this increase in
productivity did not lead to an increase in allegations of
judicial misconduct.
Although we have solved some of our more intractable
problems of the past decade, including hiring, productivity,
and technology, our progress is, nevertheless, threatened by
challenges emanating from the continued surge of illegal
immigration at the Southern Border.
For many years, the immigration court caseload, which
currently stands just under 1 million, increased due to factors
primarily within EOIR's control, namely declining productivity
by immigration judges, insufficient hiring, and a lack of
institutional emphasis on the importance of completing cases in
a timely manner. Those factors, however, are now being
successfully addressed. More recent increases to the caseload,
though, have been driven largely by external factors.
More specifically, in fiscal year 2019, the Department of
Homeland Security filed approximately 443,000 new cases with
the immigration courts. That is the highest single year number
in EOIR's history.
On average, four out of every five removal cases filed in
immigration court will conclude with the alien required to
leave the United States through either an order of removal or
an order of voluntary departure. This means that statistically
the majority of cases may not involve a viable claim that
allows an alien to lawfully remain in the United States.
However, the presence of these cases on EOIR's already crowded
dockets diverts resources from more effectively addressing
those claims that are meritorious. In particular, significant
increases in recent years in cases involving asylum
applications, unaccompanied alien children, credible fear
claims, and aliens who fail to appear at their hearings have
taxed our resources to an unprecedented degree.
Our immigration system faces numerous challenges, and the
current level of illegal immigration is foremost among them.
EOIR shoulders significant downstream effects of surges of
illegal immigration at the border, and those effects in recent
years have placed a marked strain on its resources. To combat
these effects, the Attorney General has brought important
clarity to the law through case adjudications, and the
Department of Justice is actively defending against challenges
that would otherwise erode the integrity of our immigration
laws. EOIR continues to adjudicate cases fairly and
expeditiously at unprecedented levels, but fair and efficient
adjudication alone will not resolve the crisis at the border.
It is imperative that Congress act as well.
The Department has proposed numerous changes that would
strengthen the immigration system as a whole, including
consolidating Federal appeals in one circuit, clarifying the
so-called categorical approach, and revising statutory language
that the Supreme Court has found unconstitutionally vague. We
stand ready to continue to work with Congress to strengthen
existing laws and to more effectively address the many
challenges facing our immigration system today.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I
would be pleased to answer any questions the Committee may
have.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. McHenry. I am going to
actually do some questioning. Normally, I defer, but there are
a couple things that popped out of me.
Mr. Benner, you talked about an ERO docket of 3 million.
Mr. McHenry, you talked about a 482,000 pending caseload but a
little under a million backlog. Can we start reconciling what
these numbers are, what they exactly mean?
Mr. McHenry. I will defer to Mr. Benner regarding the 3
million ERO caseload, but my understanding is that would
include cases that are already final but still have to be
processed or reviewed.
On our side, as you know, the caseload has increased almost
exponentially over the past decade, but it has increased
considerably in the past 3 years. Most of that increase appears
to be driven by changes to the border. Our judges are
adjudicating cases as efficiently as they possibly can, and as
I alluded to, we have made significant improvements in that
area.
Chairman Johnson. But, again, the pending caseload or just
the most recent ones, that is about half of the million. What
are the other half a million?
Mr. McHenry. Those are cases that were filed in a prior
fiscal year. Those are cases--some of them may have been up on
appeal and have come back, or they are cases that are just
taking that long to adjudicate.
Chairman Johnson. OK. So pending is just this year's cases?
Mr. McHenry. No, pending is all cases that were pending as
of the end of the fiscal year.
Chairman Johnson. OK.
Mr. McHenry. They could have been filed that year or filed
in a prior year.
Chairman Johnson. We have also over time--I think we
stopped doing this, administratively closing some of these
cases. I think there were hundreds of thousands of those that
have been administratively closed over the years. Is that true?
Mr. McHenry. There are right now approximately 320,000
cases that are still administratively closed. They are not
included in that 1 million total.
Chairman Johnson. OK. And then, Mr. Benner, the 3 million
cases, those have been adjudicated, so those are off the
Department of Justice docket, kind of in your lap. So they have
been adjudicated, and they have basically been ordered for
removal, correct?
Mr. Benner. Correct. So it is a little confusing saying
``on the docket,'' but the 3 million would be inclusive of EOIR
numbers plus the added--the delta, the difference there is
people that maybe have already been through their adjudication
process; they have already been in front of an immigration
judge (IJ); they have an order of final removal, a lot of them
in absentia. Recently, with the expedited docket of the family
units, 86 percent of the final orders of removal were ordered
in absentia, meaning no one showed up.
Chairman Johnson. Which brings me to the next question. To
what extent do we know where the 608,000 people are from that
chart.\1\ I guess the chart is not up there anymore. Now,
again, I am just talking about the children and family units
that came in last year. Do we know where those people are?
Again, when I was down on the border, I realized they give
addresses, but then they do not necessarily show up. So can we
comment on the extent that we actually keep track of where they
are that have come in illegally?
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\1\ The chart referenced by Senator Johnson appear in the appendix
on page 601.
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Mr. Benner. So, no, we do not, largely, as evidenced by the
fact that those families were issued a notice to appear; unless
they are put on some form of alternative to detention or
monitoring system, we have a higher rate of knowing where
people are.
Chairman Johnson. But that is a very low percentage that
are on alternatives to detention (ATDs), correct?
Mr. Benner. Right. Our capacity I think is around--I want
to say 160,000 people in fiscal year 2019 went through the ATD
process, whether it was ankle bracelet monitoring, phone check-
ins, and other technology. So, no, smaller percentage.
Chairman Johnson. Do we have some feel, Mr. McHenry, in
terms of the successful asylum claims after the adjudication
process? Because I have heard different things, as low as 9
percent, 15, or 20 percent. What is the best information we
have in terms of these family units coming in? Again, I am
really focusing on that problem in terms of successful asylum
claims.
Mr. McHenry. The overall asylum grant rate right now is
about 20 percent. Historically, it has been below 25 percent
for the past 4 or 5 years. The rates for some of the Northern
Triangle countries are even lower, but it is basically one out
of five at this point.
Chairman Johnson. OK. Again, that makes sense to me. People
are coming to improve their lot in life. I am highly
sympathetic with that, but that is not a valid asylum claim.
I was surprised but not shocked in our threat hearing last
week where we had the Director of the FBI, somebody from DHS,
and somebody from the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC).
Not one of those three individuals even mentioned gangs in
their written testimony. I brought it up, so there was some
oral testimony about that.
In light of what we saw in Culiacan with El Chapo's son
being arrested and then the Mexican Government just having to
give him back because of what the drug cartels did, the murder
of the nine Mormons, to what extent is that drug cartel, that
kind of violence, how has that already spilled over the border?
I would think it is certainly, in terms of gangs, the drug
distribution where--again, those people just turn themselves
in. They overwhelm the system, which allows a lot of people to
get away. I would think those would be gang members, maybe drug
kingpins, maybe, people that are going to--so as soon as we put
somebody away, they can bring somebody else in to manage an
operation.
So can you describe to what extent is that spilling over
the border? Are we at a greater risk for that spilling over the
border in a more extensive manner? Whoever wants to--Mr.
Morgan?
Mr. Morgan. Sir, I can address a little bit just from a
statistics standpoint. I mentioned in my opening in fiscal year
2019 Customs and Border Protection apprehended over 1,200 gang
member from 20 different gangs, the majority of them being MS-
13. So we know and every local law enforcement in this country
knows that the main tool that the drug-smuggling organizations
use are gang members to distribute their drugs throughout----
Chairman Johnson. That is who you apprehended. Any estimate
of how many you did not?
Mr. Morgan. That is the question that we do not talk about
enough. We conservatively, sir, estimated 150,000 individuals
illegally into this country that we did not catch. And you just
think about----
Chairman Johnson. In one year?
Mr. Morgan. In one year, 150,000. Those are the individuals
who are running from the Border Patrol agents, who are trying
to avoid apprehension. So the intellectually honest
conversation we need to have is there is a good chunk of those
people, that 150,000, are bad people, criminal aliens coming
in, gang members coming in. The numbers are staggering, and
everybody in this country should be alarmed by that.
Chairman Johnson. Do we have within law enforcement--again,
I could not get this out of the FBI Director or the witnesses
last week. Do we have some estimate of how many gang members
are in this country? And is that a growing number? Are we
successfully battling that? I could not get that answer. Can
anybody here offer one? I am out of time, but----
Mr. Morgan. I would say I would hand it over to Derek from
the domestic law enforcement.
Mr. Benner. So we do not, sir, have really good statistical
reporting on the number of specific types of gang members. So
MS-13, for example, we have been focusing on for the last 2
years in particular, and the estimates have been in the range
of 8,000 to 10,000 MS-13 members. We have been working with the
El Salvadoran national police, though, to try to get a better
understanding of the flows both out of the United States
through DHS and ICE's removals and investigations, but then
also understand what the population is in El Salvador that may
be looking to travel.
Chairman Johnson. So just a quick response. Is it your
sense that this is a growing number, a growing problem?
Something that is contained? I just want some kind of sense in
terms of the threat level.
Mr. Morgan. It is not, from our perspective it is not
contained, and it is growing. Again, the cartels, specifically
the Mexican cartels, they thrive off the gang members as part
of their distribution node and network throughout this United
States. They need those gang members to infiltrate every town,
city, and State in this country to further their drug scheme
that they do. So from our perspective, the numbers are not
getting better, and, again, we need to talk more, Chairman. You
mentioned about the numbers we do not catch. So that is why it
is a little bit harder to----
Chairman Johnson. We will pick up on that. I am way over
time. Senator Peters.
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Morgan, effective training ensures that our Border
Patrol agents execute their mission with the highest degree of
professionalism. Both initial and continuing training sessions
I think keep them out of costly and very time-consuming
disciplinary investigations. When they are in those
investigations, they are not on the line, and that is what we
want them to do, is to be on the line and be able to do that
professionally. I do not see the need for training as a
criticism in any way for the men and women who serve in these
critical roles; rather, I think it is a recognition that they
are in a very challenging environment and an environment that
is highly dynamic as well.
If you look at the Department of Defense (DOD), they do not
put folks out into harm's way without extensive training.
Certainly when it comes to private industry, they regularly
train so their employees understand that is the best way to
increase productivity, is having training schedules as well.
So my question to you is: How many hours of training do new
Border Patrol agents receive?
Mr. Morgan. So we have two major topics. One is Custom
Border Protection Officers (CBPOs), and then United States
Border Patrol agents. So Border Patrol agents get in excess of
about 700 hours of training. CBPOs get a little bit less than
that, but only because some of the areas' requirement for the
Spanish language is not as great. If they are going to be
assigned to those ports, then they get additional, I believe,
around 80 hours, so that gets them up about equivalent to the
Border Patrol. So you are looking at in excess of 700 hours of
basic training.
Senator Peters. That is prior to them going out, they get
700 hours. Is there a continuing education every year for them?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir. It is really two different facets.
One is specific to their continuing education specific to their
job skills and duties. And then there is another which we have
all employees do. A couple of those would be continuing ethics
training, annual integrity training. We just developed some new
social media training, training on Trafficking Victims
Protection Reauthorization Act of 2018 (TVPRA), et cetera.
Senator Peters. How many agents have faced disciplinary
action in the last 2 years, approximately?
Mr. Morgan. So approximately in the last 2 years--it has
been consistent. Around 3,500 have received some form of
disciplinary action. That is a long list and it varies, but
about 3,500.
Senator Peters. Would you agree that effective training
programs can help reduce the incidence of misconduct and the
disciplinary action that takes them off the line?
Mr. Morgan. Absolutely. I always say, great organizations
remain great because they obsess over two things: leadership
and training. I will say training is part of that, but I also
think that well-thought-out and articulately communicated
policies and plans and tools. I think another big area is
resiliency training and programs as well that helps that.
Senator Peters. What enhanced training do the agents
receive or reforms did CBP undertake after the widely reported
misconduct involving inappropriate social media use and
harassment that I know you are aware of?
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir. That is a good question. So shortly
after that, I am really proud of the CBP team. They really got
together across the board, across all different components, and
developed a first-time ever social media training package that
was mandatory for every single CBP employee, and that course
was launched on July 22 of this year, and I am happy to say
that we had a 99-percent completion rate of that training.
Senator Peters. All right. Thank you.
The next question is really for the whole panel. If they
would interject, I would appreciate it.
The administration has implemented a number of policy and
operational changes that have had significant effects on
individuals attempting to seek asylum in the country. These
changes include metering and the Migrant Protection Protocols
(MPP), which have forced thousands of families and their
children to wait in some pretty dangerous areas in Mexico while
they wait for their claims to be heard.
In addition, the administration implemented the asylum ban
for non-Mexican migrants who transit through Mexico, rapid
deportation pilots, and has allowed Border Patrol agents to do
asylum screening interviews.
I want to say first off our most important responsibility
is always to keep our Nation safe. That has to be number one,
and I know all of you four gentlemen share that. But we can
also secure our borders and ensure that families fleeing
persecution and violence also have a fair process. I think we
can do both. That is something that we can do as a country.
So in light of the many reports detailing kidnappings,
sexual violence, extortion, disappearance, and murder targeting
at migrants returned to these areas, my question is: Is DHS
considering revisiting the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPPs)?
Any thoughts about that given some of the things that we have
been seeing? Who wants to take that? Mr. Morgan and then
anybody else after.
Mr. Morgan. So, sir, I can speak to that briefly. On the
MPP, first I think we have to quickly--what are the reasons why
that started? So at one point, CBP, we had over 20,000
individuals in our custody. Our capacity is about 4,000. It was
overcrowded. It was unbelievable. Now, and largely because of
MPP, we have about 3,500 people in our facilities. The
overcrowding issue has all but evaporated.
So now let's look at MPP. What I can tell you the facts
are, just recently the Department of State along with the
International Office of Migration (IOM), other advocacy groups,
as well as Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) actually went
to Mexico and visited several shelters. Two of those shelters
were found to have persistent law enforcement presence. One had
National Guard. One was run by a church organization, the other
by the government. They were under capacity. They did not have
adequate food and medical attention, et cetera.
What we are hearing--so those are some facts. The other
facts, IOM, who has a more methodical and structured approach
to the information and intelligence they are gathering, because
they actually interview the migrants, their MPP, and ask them
if they want to voluntarily return. They are saying that if
they stay in the shelter environment, those things are not
happening. The issue that we are receiving, yet still somewhat
anecdotal, is that the issue becomes when the individuals in
MPP leave the shelter environment and either go out in the
economy on their own and/or what we are seeing is they are
reengaging the human-smuggling organizations to then come back
and reenter illegally. We have about a 9-percent recidivism
rate. The information we are getting is that is the area where
they are being exploited again with respect to that.
Senator Peters. Does anybody else want to add to that?
[No response.]
Do we have data there or are these anecdotal stories? These
are certainly very troubling reports that come out, and again,
back to our point--and you and I have spoken about this a lot.
Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir.
Senator Peters. What is the data to actually support what
you are saying?
Mr. Morgan. So that is the tough part, and I think you are
spot-on. We should try everything we can, sir, to get that
data. That is what makes this tough, is that the data just is
not there because we are dealing with another country. A lot of
the information we are talking about is anecdotal. Again, we
are trying to go and revisit these shelters. Again, an
interagency group of nonprofit organizations were dealing on a
daily basis in the field level with our Mexican counterparts to
get that data. The data is just not there. Those reports are
not being substantiated by the Mexican military or the National
Guard, so it is hard for us to get the data.
The data that we can get is that, again, we were at 20,000
in May and now we are down to 3,500 in custody. The data was in
May 140,000 apprehensions. Now we are averaging 1,400 a day. A
large reason for that is because of MPP, and Mexico has for the
first time stepped up and agreed to really meet us as partners
and see this as a regional crisis. Because of that partnership,
we are seeing our capacity go down. We are seeing our
apprehensions go down. That data I have that shows MPP is
effective.
Senator Peters. All right. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. I will just add, I was handed a note by
staff. Apparently a group--and I do not know anything about
this group, Human Rights First--issued a report and said there
were 343 cases of violence or threats out of 57,000 individuals
that have gone through the MPP program. So, again, every one is
a problem, but 343 out of 57,000 kind of ties into what I think
Mr. Morgan was talking about. But, again, I would like to enter
that report into the record,\1\ and we will check and see the
veracity of it.
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\1\ The report referenced by Senator Johnson appear in the Appendix
on page 603.
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Mr. Morgan. And just real quickly--and this is important--
anytime anybody, any person that is enrolled in MPP, if they
have any concern, any fear at all, all they have to do is come
to a port of entry and express that, and they will be given due
process.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Lankford.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LANKFORD
Senator Lankford. Gentlemen, thank you. Thanks for the work
that you are doing. Thanks for standing up for the laws of the
United States. You do not hear enough, and so let me add a
voice that I hear a lot in my State, that people are incredibly
grateful for the work that is happening, and understand we have
laws in our country, and you and your teams are stepping up and
enforcing the laws that are on the books. So thank you for
doing that.
I listened to some of the current debate nationally, and
there is a move to be able to transition DHS to being more like
greeters at the border than they are law enforcement at the
border, and I am grateful that we have law enforcement folks
there and for the stories that you have already told about some
of the dangers and the risks that are there.
I have a whole series of questions, but I want to start
first talking about with ICE. When I was down at the border
last July and talking to CBP folks that were there, I said,
``What do you need?'' The very first thing that most of them
said is, ``We need ICE to get more funding. We need ICE help.''
They are doing soft-sided facilities, which I want to be able
to speak to you about, where we are on that status right now.
But there was a pretty big push to say that the biggest issue
that CBP has is not enough capacity with ICE.
I understand there are some battles. There is a whole group
of folks saying they want to abolish ICE or de-fund ICE and not
have it at all. But what do you need at this point to greater
be able to manage a surge of people coming at us next summer?
Mr. Benner. So two things, Senator. Number one, detention
beds. Detention capacity is a really big issue that affects the
whole ecosystem of enforcement of our immigration laws, and as
Commissioner Morgan can attest, the funding levels of beds, for
example, in fiscal year 2019 was 45,000 and change, including
2,500 beds for family residential centers (FRCs). We were
operating at a high of almost 58,000, well over our
appropriated levels, and, of course, we do want to live within
our means. However, the operational reality in responding to
the crisis really forced us to make some decisions about, how
to acquire more beds----
Senator Lankford. Do you have the capability to be able to
surge up numbers if you were given additional funding to be
able to do that, as far as the location of facilities that are
quality facilities? What they are managing right now on the
border when they had up to 20,000 people with 4,000-bed
capacity, they are trying to be able to manage, they are not
going to just release people on the street, which we thank you
for doing that, to be able to help manage what you get. But do
you have the capability at ICE to be able to surge facilities
up?
Mr. Benner. Yes, sir, and we will not bring a bed online
unless it meets all of our high standards for ICE. So sometimes
the challenge in identifying beds is making sure that they meet
the standards that we are committed to putting detainees into.
I will say one example of some proactive planning would be the
ability to have a certain number of beds available and empty in
almost like an emergency preparedness posture, so like Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), for example, stores
supplies and assets and things that they would need to respond
to a natural disaster. We should have 5,000 beds that are ready
to go to immediately address a spike in numbers at the border.
And so those beds, that is going to cost money, but they are
empty and they are available and they are ready to go in the
case of an emergency.
Senator Lankford. So let me push that cost money. Do you
have a guess of what that might on cost? Have you all started
looking at that?
Mr. Benner. I do have estimates, Senator, and I am happy to
provide those to you or actually come----
Senator Lankford. Glad to be able to talk about it. Let me
switch over. The soft-sided facilities that CBP had to do to be
able to ramp up, to be able to manage the capacity, they are
around $200 million a year to be able to ramp--that is a pretty
big cost on it. But there was no place to be able to go to be
able to ramp up. What is the status on those? How many soft-
sided facilities do we have? I have visited some of those
facilities. They are great facilities, and they are well
managed, they are well run, they are fully stocked. How many of
those do we still have and what is the capacity on those soft-
sided facilities?
Mr. Morgan. So we still have multiple facilities
independent of what they are. So we have facilities that are
designed for families. We have families designed for single
adults. And we also have facilities for the temporary hearing
facilities to support MPP. It is costing a tremendous amount of
money every single month. You and I have talked about this,
sir. What I am concerned about, though, is I do not want to
look up the definition of insanity in the dictionary and have a
picture of a soft-sided facility. We have to change how we do
this. I think Acting Deputy Director Benner said it best. We
need a surge capacity. We are looking for bipartisan support in
the future, to establish permanent hard-sided facilities in
strategic locations along the Southwest Border that are multi-
use, multi-purpose buildings, that gives us that capability to
instantaneously turn on the lights and give us that surge
capacity, so, one, we are not in a position we were this year
where we did have to release individuals into the cities and
towns, tens of thousands on a regular basis, and we are
avoiding the definition of insanity of just having to ramp up
soft-sided facilities only to tear them down again.
Senator Lankford. Mr. Benner.
Mr. Benner. Senator, so this year ICE had 503,000 book-ins
into custody; 75 percent of those were from CBP. So, ERO and
ICE and the infrastructure of transportation and all of those
efforts were doing their level best to relieve the pressure at
the border for Commissioner Morgan's folks.
There is one other aspect, though, here. On the other end
of the equation is attorneys that represent the government in
immigration court. While it has been hugely helpful to have
more judges and more capacity for EOIR, the ICE attorney levels
have remained flat. And so with that docket of around a million
at any given point, we need to look at the ability to surge our
attorney population to service the increase at EOIR. I think
that is a hand-in-glove kind of asset----
Senator Lankford. They have to all go together.
Mr. Benner. Yes.
Senator Lankford. Mr. Cuccinelli, let me ask you a
question. ICE did a raid in Mississippi this past year that got
a lot of publicity on that. I think, Mr. Benner, you had
mentioned that for ICE in the interior picking up 86 percent of
those folks that were picked up had a criminal record already.
Is that correct?
Mr. Benner. Yes.
Senator Lankford. OK. So that is important to be able to
know, that 86 percent of the folks already have a criminal
record on this. When ICE carried out that raid, there were a
lot of questions, because E-Verify is mandatory in Mississippi,
yet there were hundreds of people there that were not legally
present that had employment in Mississippi. So help us
understand, in States that have chosen to do E-Verify as
mandatory, how we had that many people illegally employed
there.
Mr. Cuccinelli. Thank you, Senator. So in the instance of
the operations that ICE executed there in Mississippi at a
number of different locations, you had multiple companies
claiming to be participants in E-Verify and they had registered
with E-Verify. But when we investigated with our partners at
ICE how many of the individuals they had utilized E-Verify on,
it literally came to a handful, less than 20, if recollection
serves. And you know the hundreds that were identified by ICE
as working there illegally.
So we have instituted for the first time a consequence for
businesses who participate in E-Verify or nominally participate
in E-Verify, but do not comply with the terms of that
participation, such as the businesses in Mississippi would be
an example, that we will terminate them from the E-Verify
program. So for the first time, we are bringing a consequence
to those businesses so they cannot shield, as they did--you
heard in the press, ``Oh, well, we use E-Verify.'' Right, we
used it once last year on one guy. And they cannot do that any
longer.
Senator Lankford. OK. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Portman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PORTMAN
Senator Portman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To each of you,
thank you for your service, and to the men and women who work
for you.
It is a tough job, isn't it? It looks like from the numbers
that there has been enormous success in reducing the number of
people crossing the border, but we have to put it in
perspective. It is still a lot of people relative to the
historical numbers. So a 64-percent decrease, as I read it,
from May to September. That is positive. In terms of the
pressure that you all feel and the infrastructure feels that I
saw when I was down there a few months ago, it is better.
I still do not think we quite understand what happened,
although, Commissioner Morgan, you talked a little about the
Remain in Mexico program and how that is working. Can you tell
us a little more about what you think the other factors are,
and if you could give what you think the top three reasons are
you have seen a reduction, in order? And then also how has the
makeup changed? We have seen reports, as an example, that there
are fewer Central Americans crossing but more from Mexico. Is
that accurate? Do they tend to be family members? I understand
some are claiming asylum, so a similar fact pattern. If you
could give us just a little sense of what is going on and why.
Mr. Morgan. I will take the latter first. So the changed
demographics, this is key. So the demographics, you are spot-
on, have changed. Again, all of last year we had about 71
percent came from the Northern Triangle countries, and the
overwhelming majority of those were families and unaccompanied
minors. For the first time this year, now what we are seeing is
actually Mexican nationals now are taking over a larger
percentage than those individuals from Northern Triangle
countries, and the specific families and unaccompanied minors
numbers, those are drastically being reduced for the first
time. That is a game changer. That is very important. It is the
families and kids that really task our system because of the
broken legal framework.
To your point, hands down the Government of Mexico, their
efforts, is number one. I would call Mexico number one and
number two because they are really doing two important things.
One is with the formation of the National Guard, over 25,000
troops. They strengthened their Southern Border. They
strengthened the border between Mexico and the United States.
They have also targeted interior enforcement operations,
specifically the human-smuggling routes. In fiscal year 2019,
we had 213 large groups, one group of over 1,000, I believe it
was in May in El Paso. Last month, we had two. So Mexico is
absolutely strengthening interior enforcement and their
enforcement on both borders.
The second thing is that they are supporting MPP. I think I
described that. That has been a game changer as well.
I would say the third element that is really impacting is
what we have done with the Northern Triangle countries. So they
have joined us. They are trying to strengthen their interior
enforcement as well. They are trying to increase their asylum
capacity. They have worked with us and other agencies sitting
here to expedite the removal of their individuals through
different electronic document verification and other
techniques. That has been able to allow us to expeditiously
return those individuals.
The last thing real quick that I would say is this
administration. This administration has continued to work
within the current legal framework and continued to push.
Although the judicial activism of lower courts has hindered us
time and time again, we are continuing to push.
The asylum Interim Final Rule (IFR) that is out there, that
is another significant initiative that we are able to use, too,
to expeditiously return individuals.
Senator Portman. As the weather gets warmer, there are
fewer people who tend to cross. So I am not suggesting we do
not need to have the surge capacity again, but this does give
us a little breather. One of the things that I have been
concerned about going back to 2015 when we first held hearings
about this in one of our Subcommittees is the issue of kids and
the lack of communication between the Office of Refugee
Resettlement (ORR) at the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) and DHS. And my sense is that we are doing a
little better now, but with this law, I would hope that we can
do a better job of providing information about these children
to, ORR with two goals: one, just to understand what is
happening with these kids, where they are, why they are where
they are--and these are children; but, second, to get them
reunited with their families. I think it is in everybody's
interest, by the way, including the administration, given what
happened at a time when there was this surge, and we kind of
lost kids.
Can you tell us where we are on that in terms of providing
information? You mentioned MPP earlier. The same issue, if you
come over as a family unit and the kids get separated some are
in the United States, the kids, and the parents are in Mexico.
How are we doing there to provide that information? Again, I
think this is something that is in everybody's interest,
including the children.
Mr. Morgan. So I will turn to my colleagues on the former
question about the ORR issue, but specifically MPP, so we would
not return an individual, like a parent, to Mexico and keep the
child. So if we decide to separate based on a specific
criteria, like, for example, the parent is a convicted
murderer, rapist, et cetera, convicted of a violent crime, yes,
for the safety of the child we would separate that child from
the parent. But the child then would be provided to HHS ORR,
and then we would keep the parent in our process in the United
States.
Senator Portman. OK. We will follow up on that because I do
have some additional questions, because we are hearing some
other things about MPP and separation and I want to be sure we
understand it well.
To the drug issue, I mean, as Director Benner said, I think
accurately, we are all border States. Ohio is hit hard with
crystal meth right now as an example, and it is coming from one
place. It is coming from Mexico. We were already hit hard with
opioids coming over, primarily heroin; now we see more fentanyl
coming. It used to be almost exclusively from China through our
mail system into our communities. Now we see it coming through
Mexico. The cartels are very involved in this. There is a lot
of money in it.
As the number of crossings has gone down, we get a sense
that the drug flow has not. I asked this question of Under
Secretary Glawe last week. We did our annual threats to the
homeland hearing, and we had the right people there to talk
about what was happening in the interior of the United States
in terms of the drug threat. He indicated that even though
there is a 64-percent decrease in people coming across, there
is no a decrease--in fact, an increase--in the flow of drugs.
Is that accurate?
Mr. Benner. Yes, Senator, that is accurate, and I will tell
you what our concern is right now. The number of seizures of
fentanyl from China are way down, so coming through, the small
quantities coming through the mail facilities. But HSI seized
over 1,000 pounds more fentanyl in 2019 than we did in 2018.
That delta, that increase, is Mexico. The Mexican cartels have
jumped into that fentanyl space.
My concern is that the trend of the super labs, which we
have seen with the methamphetamine phenomenon for 3 years now,
is that the fentanyl problem translates into the same super lab
problem that we are facing with methamphetamine.
Senator Portman. I know my time is expiring here, but what
do you mean by that precisely? Everybody would be interested,
because for us to address this issue properly, we have to
understand it better. I hear different things from different
law enforcement individuals, but it seems to me, you are right,
the Synthetics Trafficking and Overdose Prevention (STOP) Act
and other things have helped us with regard to the mail. In
other words, this deadliest drug, fentanyl, which kills more
people with overdoses than any other drugs--all drugs combined,
in fact. But with Mexico, it is going, as I understand it,
primarily from China to Mexico. It is not being produced in
Mexico at this point. There were two labs, you all think it is
shut down by the Mexican authorities. But it is being processed
there often into pills. Is that accurate?
Mr. Benner. Yes, and so what we saw, for example, sir, in
Ohio was the domestic pill press operations where an individual
orders relatively pure fentanyl from China through the dark
web. They produced pills that were killing people.
Senator Portman. Right.
Mr. Benner. What we are seeing now is the precursor
chemicals to make fentanyl essentially going from China to
Mexico where it is being processed and assembled in Mexico in
bulk. So the number of seizure incidents has gone down, but the
amounts and the weights have gone up. So we are seeing bigger
shipments, bigger capacity, better quality, higher purity, and
much more productivity.
Senator Portman. Yes.
Mr. Benner. And so it is really Manufacturing 101. This is
a supply chain kind of economy, and we can apply the same
lessons and the same rules----
Senator Portman. Director Benner, my time is expiring. I
would love to follow up with you on this. We met with the
Mexican ambassador last week about this and talked about a
trilateral approach here--China, Mexico, and the United
States--because you still have this flow, as you said, coming
in from China.
Can you follow up with me on that and see how we can better
target the cartels and the real problem here?
Mr. Benner. Absolutely. As you know, HSI opened an office
in Dayton and in Toledo. We doubled our footprint in Ohio to
combat both the meth and----
Senator Portman. We thank you for that.
Mr. Benner. So we look forward to getting together.
Senator Portman. Yes, thank you.
Chairman Johnson. I just want to point out there was an
excellent article written by Mary Anastasia O'Grady in the Wall
Street Journal just this week where she reports that a Council
on Foreign Relations paper says that in 2016, Americans spent
nearly $150 billion on cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and
marijuana. One hundred and fifty billion dollars. That is
fueling these drug cartels, which are operating with impunity,
taking over a large number of communities inside Mexico,
certainly in Central America. They are untouchable. That
impunity bleeds over into other parts of society in terms of
extortion. I mean, this is America's insatiable demand for
drugs, $150 billion. Mr. Cuccinelli?.
Mr. Cuccinelli. I want to seize on your word ``impunity,''
and we cannot go too deep on it here, but they do not have to.
And, you all in your capacity can help make sure that does not
happen. I think that is a longer discussion for another day.
There is a major difference between the gangs we are
talking about and the cartels we are talking about, and it
rises to literally at every level, from the street all the way
up to the kind of manufacturing that Mr. Benner is talking
about and the nature of the structure of the organizations and
what they are willing and capable of doing. They do not have to
be able to act the way they are acting if we take unified
action as a Nation to counter that.
Chairman Johnson. The challenge is in Mexico or in Central
America, we have these drug kingpins basically controlling
communities, the economies of the communities. Let us say you
have a community of 10,000 people that is completely dependent
on the drug trade. It is going to be very difficult to take out
that drug kingpin, and, by the way, there are plenty of people
just standing right behind him.
So this has grown into such a massive problem, which is why
it is so difficult for governments in Central America and
Mexico to really deal with it. But, again, the point I am
making, this is America's insatiable demand for drugs. But I do
have some questions here.
Actually, what I will do is I will defer to Senator Carper
before I start my second round. Senator Carper.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. Gentleman, welcome. Thank you all. It is
good to see you.
Let me just begin by saying that my colleagues have heard
me say over the years, ad nauseam, everything I do I know I can
do better. I think the same is true of all of us. I think one
of the keys to making progress is to point toward perfection.
Our Constitution starts off with these words: ``We, the people
of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union . .
.'' It does not say ``perfect union.'' It says ``more
perfect.'' The goal is toward perfection--knowing we are not
going to get there, but at least we know where our goal is, and
we are going to aim high.
The other thing, we have recently had testimony before the
Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee. A fellow had been
nominated to be a top official at the Commerce Department, Rob
Wallace from Wyoming, and he is in charge of national parks, he
is charge of the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). He said in
his testimony--he used to work for Malcolm Wallop, a Republican
Senator from Wyoming. He is a close friend of John Barrasso. He
said in his testimony, he said the most lasting solutions are
bipartisan solutions, and what you have are some people on this
Committee who are pretty good at that, and we need to have
partners in the administration who are pretty good at that as
well.
I am bouncing back and forth between this hearing and the
hearing in my other committee that deals with nuclear safety,
nuclear power plant safety, which is important. As an old naval
flight officer (NFO) guy, I chased Russian subs all over the
world for many years. I have a real appreciation for nuclear
safety.
I want to come back to some of what, Mr. Morgan, I heard
you say. I think one of the things--I wrote this down--was
``not a single piece of legislation,'' I think, passed by this
Congress to do much to fight this battle. I would just remind
us all that we could build a wall from sea to shining sea. I
support barriers. I voted for billions and billions of dollars
of money for barriers--some walls, in other cases barriers. I
voted for money, we have voted for money, billions of dollars,
for roads, for vehicles to go along those roads. We have voted
to raise the authorization for the number of Border Patrol
officials we have, for Customs and Border Patrol. We have, I
think, a ceiling of about 21,000 Border Patrol officers right
now. I do not think we are up to that ceiling. I think we are
at about 20,000. I think we are looking toward raising it
again, and we provide the money to fully fund those positions.
I have voted for money for fixed-wing aircraft, for
helicopters, for improving our intelligence, intelligence
sharing. We have provided money for boats, for boat ramps. We
provided money for horses, all kinds of force multipliers. For
us to suggest that the Congress has not been a good partner I
think is just unfair and I think untrue. I would have us just
keep that in mind.
We are pretty good in Delaware with the letter ``C''--
communicate, compromise, collaborate, and civility. I think we
need to keep those words in mind here. I would add another
``C''--comprehensive immigration reform, which we passed with
bipartisan support led by John McCain and others, 6, 7, or 8
years ago, a two-thirds vote in the Senate. And that is not a
cure-all, but that is part of what the solution is. It would be
nice to have a President who would be our partner, a fellow who
at times talked about the need for comprehensive immigration
reform, and then just walks it back. We need him to endorse the
idea and engage on that and not walk it back.
The other thing I would say is that the Chairman and I and
Senator Peters and I have been down to Central America together
a number of times, and I have always been struck by how folks
down there live lives of misery. You have seen it, I have seen
it. If I lived down there with my family, I would want to get
out of there, too, and go to a place where there is better
opportunity.
Through the Alliance for Prosperity, as you know, we have
put several billions of dollars now into three buckets. One of
those buckets is hope and economic opportunity. That is one of
the main drivers that cause people to leave those countries.
Second is crime and violence. The third is corruption, which is
endemic in those countries.
I will just give you a tale of two cities only this is a
tale of three countries. You have, on the one hand, El
Salvador--a new President, Bukele. You have probably met him; I
have met him several times. Impressive guy, former mayor of San
Salvador. A young guy, not even 40 years old. A different kind
of a generation. He replaced a 75-year-old former leftist
guerrilla leader. The money that we are putting in those three
buckets in El Salvador is very well used. If you look at the
murder rates and crime rates in El Salvador, it is very
encouraging.
If you look at what has happened in Honduras, not so
encouraging. I have known Juan Hernandez since before he was
actually elected President, and he ran for President a second
time. The Constitution of that country says you can only be
President for 4 years. He ran again, and he had the Supreme
Court, which he appointed, basically say their Constitution was
unconstitutional so he could run a second time for President.
Huge uproar in the country, and it has really just destroyed a
lot of the progress that was being made in that country. The
thing that is noteworthy there, for the last 2 years, maybe 3
years now, we have not had an ambassador in that country. If we
had had an ambassador in that country, somebody like Jean Manes
or some other people that are as accomplished as she is and
others are, that would have never happened. We would never have
allowed that to happen.
I was present, and I think maybe our chairman was actually
present, when Jimmy Morales was actually sworn in as President
of Guatemala. Very encouraging. He ran on basically a platform
that says--what was his motto? Neither a thief nor corrupt. He
has just so disappointed, his family has disappointed us, and
served as a terrible role model for that country. Now they had
a new election, they have new leadership, and we need to be
fully engaged through U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID), through our Ambassadors, in some cases the Senate
leader, in some cases President or Vice President, the leaders
of those countries do know that we have high expectations. The
idea of putting the money that we have put into the Alliance
for Prosperity is not money that is just U.S. money. We are
leveraging other money. In El Salvador, for every dollar we put
in, we leverage seven. They put in money, foundations put in
money, private companies put in money, and that is the
expectation. We have criteria that measure that they are
getting done what they ought to get done, and sadly, our
current President basically earlier this year suspended money
to all of them. The last thing that Secretary McAleenan did as
he was leaving was at least restore the funding that we had
authorized and appropriated for the security side to those
three countries.
I do not go through this kind of statement when addressing
the witnesses. But I just want to say we need to be on the same
page where we can. We need to agree on principles and as often
as we can on the policies. The idea of suggesting that we have
done pretty much nothing is just not fair, and it is just not
true.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield the floor.
Mr. Morgan. Mr. Chairman, could I just respond to----
Chairman Johnson. Very quickly.
Senator Carper. No, you have had a lot of time to speak
already----
Chairman Johnson. We do have a vote called, but----
Senator Carper [continuing]. Let us let somebody else talk,
OK? Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. If you want to quick respond, but----
Senator Carper. I do not.
Chairman Johnson. Oh, you do not want them to respond? OK.
So, Mr. Cuccinelli, I have a number of things here, and we
do have a vote called, and so we will be closing this hearing
out here.
In terms of credible fear, the numbers, you talked about
referral. I just have a question. You said 5,000 10 years ago,
51,000 5 years ago. I was surprised that only, 105 this year.
We had over 600,000 families, and I thought they were pretty
much all claiming credible fear. Why such a low number in
comparison to the number of family units and unaccompanied
children that came in?
Mr. Cuccinelli. So the children typically flow right into
HHS when they are unaccompanied. They are not typically
participating----
Chairman Johnson. That is a relatively low percentage of
the overall number.
Mr. Cuccinelli. Of the overall number, that is right. You
also do not have the MPP pieces in that credible fear number,
so----
Chairman Johnson. But, again, that is a pretty small
amount, too. That is 57,000 or something like that. So you
still have hundreds of thousand versus only 105. Can anybody
explain that discrepancy? Again, I would have thought you would
have had hundreds of thousands of referrals.
Mr. Cuccinelli. Right. You would expect perhaps to see the
numbers matching at least the family----
Chairman Johnson. So, again, why don't they?
Mr. Cuccinelli. I do not have an answer as to why they do
not. I can tell you it is an overwhelming number.
Chairman Johnson. Does anybody? Mr. McHenry.
Mr. McHenry. The credible fear process is only triggered
typically when someone is subject to an expedited removal
order. So if they do not go through the expedited removal
process, they would not have----
Chairman Johnson. So the bottom line is we literally let
hundreds of thousands of people in, and they did not even have
to claim credible fear?
Mr. Cuccinelli. That is correct.
Chairman Johnson. That is pretty noteworthy. I want people
to understand that. We just let people in. They did not even
have to claim that unbelievably low standard that, by and
large, you said 20 percent, I think under Central America it
was lower than that.
Mr. Cuccinelli. That is correct.
Chairman Johnson. People claim that, and they still do not
have a valid asylum claim.
Mr. Morgan. And that is one of the parts, sir, that I was
talking about, about the legislation that does need to get
passed with respect to this crisis, is the Flores Settlement
Agreement which says we can only detain people for 20 days.
That is what is driving us. There is not time to do the proper
vetting that we need to do to complete that process, so we have
to release them.
Chairman Johnson. Mr. Cuccinelli, do you know of another
nation on Earth other than Germany over the couple years with
the Syrian migrant flow that grants legal permanent residency
to more than a million people per year?
Mr. Cuccinelli. Absolutely not. We are the most generous
Nation in the world by far.
Chairman Johnson. Is there anybody that comes even close?
Mr. Cuccinelli. Not even close.
Chairman Johnson. And we do that. On an annual basis we are
granting legal permanent residency----
Mr. Cuccinelli. In the humanitarian space, America is
number one way beyond two, three, and four combined.
Chairman Johnson. I have had people come up and basically
lobby me and say it is just outrageous that we have reduced the
number of refugees from 70,000 to 50,000 to now 15,000. I point
out to them, well, that is the official total, but you are kind
of ignoring the 608,000 people that come here that would
basically be refugees as well. I mean, that is the problem with
the illegal flow. It absolutely affects the legal flow.
Correct?
Mr. Cuccinelli. Absolutely, and we had almost 80,000 asylum
cases last year, same legal standard as refugees. It is the
same type of population, but they are landing at our border and
on our soil, and so we are shifting resources to contend with
that. And that backlog continues to grow. We are at over
340,000 cases and growing.
Chairman Johnson. When you said or somebody said 87 percent
of the people that we are taking enforcement action against
have a criminal record, define ``criminal record.'' Is that
criminal because they have overstayed their visas? I mean,
define ``criminal.'' Or is that literally--is that felonious,
other than immigration felonious behavior?
Mr. Benner. Yes, it could include felony immigration
charges. Typically it is not a visa overstay. It is somebody
with a criminal conviction or a pending criminal charge make up
that 86 percent of the 140,000 the ERO officers arrested in the
interior.
Chairman Johnson. It would be nice to separate--again, I am
not understating the concern of breaking our immigration laws,
but it would be nice to have that split out in terms of
felonious behavior. Is it immigration related? Or is it
literally rape, assault, or murder? That would be good data to
have.
Mr. Benner. I do have some data, sir, and I am happy to
provide this to you after the hearing, the breakout of weapons,
assault, sexual----
Chairman Johnson. OK, good. We will take that and enter it
into the record.
DNA testing, not being done by CBP, that is being done by
ICE, correct? Because, we are hearing these children being used
time and time again. I cannot help but think of a little girl
who gets used as a false family, goes through that dangerous
journey once, gets sent back down to Central America, goes
through that dangerous journey again. When she gets old enough,
is she just then put in the sex trade? But what are we finding
in terms of data in terms of false families?
Mr. Benner. So the rapid DNA was by far the most critical
investigative tool for our fraudulent family units that went to
the border this spring and this summer. We found with rapid DNA
about a 13-to 15-percent hit rate on fraudulent families.
Now, initially, Senator, when we first got there during the
height of the crisis, we were showing percentages that were
above 20 percent, 25 percent, because the amount of fraud was
rampant. Word spreads. The cartels are the best advertisers of
what works and what does not. Within a short period of time, it
was getting back to the organizations that needed to pivot
their operations.
You also mentioned Operation Noble Guardian, and this was
the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) efforts to look at
kind of the back end of the equation of where fraudulent
families were released into the interior, and then the children
were separated from those unrelated adults, and they were taken
to an airport and flown back to the Northern Triangle. We have
identified over 600 children that have been recycled in this
methodology.
We interviewed several of the children as they were
departing the United States, and some of them had indicated
that they had made the trip as many as eight times with
separate unrelated adults every time.
Chairman Johnson. Again, I always have to point out the 600
are people we catch, and we do not even know how many we do
not. We do not understand the magnitude of this problem.
I am running out of time. I just want to make a final
point. I want to have Mr. Morgan comment on this. We have a
completely unsecure border on our side of the border. But the
Southwest Border is 100 percent secure, basically, or close to
100 percent secure on the southern side, right? I mean, nothing
is passing--migrants are not passing, drugs are not passing. It
is completely controlled, so it is possible if we actually have
the will to do so. Mr. Morgan.
Mr. Morgan. I agree on both fronts. One is that the Mexico
side of the border is absolutely 100 percent controlled by the
cartels. Nothing passes through without the cartels charging a
tax, controlling it and letting that through. So I think you
are absolutely 100 percent correct. I think it is important
when we talk about securing the border, I think part of the
narrative, sir, that we need to get better at, securing the
border is not just about the immigration issue. It is also
about the humanitarian issue and the national security issue.
Again, drugs are pouring into this country. CBP alone, over
750,000 pounds of drugs, illicit drugs, all for the hard
narcotics went up last year; 68,000 deaths due to overdose of
illicit narcotics in this country, 70,000 the year before. We
absolutely need to secure this border. People are dying every
single day because our border is not secure.
Chairman Johnson. As long as we have laws that are so
easily exploitable by the human traffickers, where they
literally can surge in one time in El Paso a thousand people,
it is pretty easy for six or seven or a hundred to get through,
whether it is to replenish the gang members who are trafficking
the drugs, that type of thing. That is a reality we have to
recognize.
Mr. Morgan. That is absolutely right, and when we talk
about the security of the Southern Border, we cannot separate
the migration flow from the national security side. They are
too interconnected. Smuggling organizations, they do not care
whether they smuggle humans, bad people, or drugs. They do not
care. They are all interconnected.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Peters.
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to talk a little bit about the in absentia
cases, if I may. Mr. McHenry, you indicated that ``aliens who
fail to appear at their hearings have taxed EOIR's resources to
an unprecedented degree.'' I think you testified that orally as
well.
So, Mr. Chairman, I am holding a redacted Notice to Appear
that was issued earlier this year. I will ask unanimous consent
(UC) that this be entered into the record.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The redacted Notice referenced by Senator Peters appear in the
Appendix on page 620.
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Chairman Johnson. Without objection.
Senator Peters. Thank you.
It clearly shows that a 7-year-old child, unaccompanied
child, was given an NTA without specific hearing dates or
locations, thus making it difficult to avoid an in absentia
ruling, and you agree that taxes our resources. So my question
is: How is a 7-year-old supposed to navigate the immigration
court system if basic information is not provided in the form
that you give to a 7-year-old child?
Mr. McHenry. Senator, I am not familiar with this specific
form, and I have not seen it so I cannot necessarily guarantee
that it was filed, it was not rejected by the court, or
anything like that.
What I can say is that there are regulations that dictate
how service must be accomplished on someone who is underage.
Typically if someone is under the age of 14, it has to be
served on a custodian, a parent, someone else other than the 7-
year-old him-or herself. But, again, I am not familiar with
this specific case, so I am not sure exactly what happened.
Senator Peters. I would like to go through what those
procedures are. It may beyond our scope of what we can do right
now, but I think our office would like to talk to you as to
what are the procedures in place to ensure that hearing notices
indeed have the information that a migrant is going to need to
have in order to appear.
Mr. McHenry. Sure, the regulations do typically spell out
what is required, and I notice there has been some litigation
on that, as you may be aware, in the past year following a
Supreme Court decision. But there are requirements. We also
have our own internal guidance for when we reject notices for
not having sufficient or correct information.
Senator Peters. We would like data on all that as well,
back to our data-focused hearing here to take a look at that.
The DHS Office of Inspector General reported that
participants in the Family Case Management Program (FCMP),
which is, as you know, an Alternative to Detention Program, had
a 100-percent attendance at court hearings. What are your
agencies doing to expand on these programs under the recently
provided appropriations that were provided to your agencies? If
we could have some comment, either Mr. Morgan or Mr. McHenry.
Mr. Morgan.
Mr. Morgan. So we do not participate in any alternative
detentions. That would be ICE or ERO that would handle that.
Senator Peters. So if you could answer that, please?
Mr. Benner. Yes, Senator, so it is my understanding--I did
not know it was quite 100 percent. I thought it was in the high
90s.
Senator Peters. That is still pretty good.
Mr. Benner. Excellent. The challenge with alternative to
detention is the limited amount of those resources to keep that
monitoring on throughout the pendency of a total hearing
process. The FCMP provided for that, so we were continually
monitoring and providing that level of engagement that
certainly increased the level of participation and showing up
for hearings and check-ins at a higher rate.
So my understanding is that that was a pilot and that we
are not currently running FCMP at the moment. I want to go
back, though, and double-check that so I am providing accurate
information and making sure that I am getting this right.
Senator Peters. We would like that. You say it is a pilot
that had in the high 90s, if it was not 100. That seems like a
pretty successful pilot, so why isn't the pilot expanded? That
is the whole idea of having pilots. If they work, we expand
them.
Mr. Benner. So the challenge, though, is the bandwidth of
our ATD Program, which I think was capped in 2019 at about
100,000. Of course, those assets are recycled; as people go off
of ATD, they have new people come in. I think I mentioned
earlier the number was about 160,000 that had gone through it.
But, certainly, it is just a dedication of a lot more resources
in a more intensive way. So I would be happy to bring our folks
that manage that program and come and talk about it more
specifically.
Senator Peters. We would like that. You have to look at the
alternative. Having them not show up also is a tax on the
system, as Mr. McHenry has said. So we have to take a
comprehensive look at that, and I look forward to doing that.
Mr. McHenry, our current immigration court backlog,
including asylum backlog, has ballooned, I think as you
mentioned, to approximately a million cases now. One of the
stated causes is a lack of immigration judges and staff, and
under our recent border supplemental funding bill, EOIR was
appropriated $45 million for the hiring of 30 immigration judge
teams, $10 million for additional court space, and $10 million
for the Legal Orientation Program.
What is the progress in implementing this funding as of
now?
Mr. McHenry. I believe we implemented all of it except
maybe 0.1 percent by the end of the fiscal year as we were
directed to.
Senator Peters. How many immigration judge teams are on
board now with law clerks?
Mr. McHenry. There are currently 439 immigration judges. We
brought a class on in September, actually.
Senator Peters. That is the hiring of the additional
immigration judge teams? That has all been accomplished?
Mr. McHenry. It has. We have another class coming in
approximately 2 weeks, and right now we are averaging one new
class per quarter. Our formal authorization is 534, so we still
have more room to go.
Senator Peters. You have identified new courtroom spaces as
well?
Mr. McHenry. Yes, we are expanding courtroom space. We have
a plan out through at least 2021 right now.
Senator Peters. Have any Legal Orientation Program sites
been highlighted for expansion under the program?
Mr. McHenry. Not to my knowledge, but that is an issue with
the contractor and not us. It is up to the contractor to
identify locations they think may work best.
Senator Peters. Very good. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Just a quick follow-up on that. So if we
have 534 times 708 cases per judge per year, that is 378,000
cases we could adjudicate per year. Is that possible? And then
I will ask you, Mr. Benner, but we also need ICE attorneys to
be able to adjudicate those cases, correct?
Mr. McHenry. We certainly believe it is possible to
adjudicate them.
Mr. Benner. Yes, absolutely, Senator. So, looking at the
current docket, detained, non-detained, we are about 800
attorneys short in the Office of Legal Representative, and as
EOIR expands even to areas where we have no attorneys, so you
can imagine the challenge of now finding space for the Office
of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA) attorneys and then
getting folks into that to represent the government in
immigration court.
Second, ERO needs deportation officers and staff to
facilitate the movement of people in and out of courts as well.
So the ecosystem, it needs to be equally resourced in order to
be effective.
Chairman Johnson. So, Mr. McHenry, would you kind of agree
with that, that this was well intentioned, we are plussing up
the judges, which, from the standpoint of the number of judges
it looks like we may be able to start knocking down this
backlog and handling the flow. By the way, I hate to staff up
for that kind of flow. That is putting a Band-Aid on a problem.
We have to solve the problem. But that being the case, do you
agree with Mr. Benner that we really do need the full team? So
we need to fund the adjudicators from ICE as well.
Mr. McHenry. I do. Historically, it has sort of been one or
the other. For a while DHS was getting funding and immigration
judges were not. More recently, immigration judges have been
getting funding, but OPLA attorneys have not. They do go
together, as someone said, hand-in-glove.
Chairman Johnson. We need to make that a really important
point. A a lot of things that Senator Peters was just talking
about, this whole adjudication process, this is, I think, open
for a hearing in and of itself. So I will ask all of you to be
thinking about what information, what kind of data, the
caseload, the percentage of people getting valid asylum claims.
This is data that we absolutely need if we are going to craft
legislation to solve that problem.
Again, I want to thank the witnesses for appearing before
us, for your thoughtful testimony, and your answers to our
questions. I particularly want to thank the men and women that
serve with you in your agencies and departments. It is
unbelievable to me that law enforcement has come under such
attack. It is completely uncalled for. Secretary Kelly, when he
was serving as Secretary of Homeland Security, came before us
and said, ``I am not going to apologize for the men and women
of my Department that are enforcing the law. That is their job.
It is Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It is border
protection. Nobody should apologize for that.''
I thank the men and women who, the people I talk to, show a
great deal of compassion to those individuals seeking better
opportunity. They are trying to deal with an overwhelming
problem. As Secretary Kelly said at that point in time, too,
``If we do not like the law, it is our responsibility to have
the skill and courage to change it.'' I do not have colleagues
up here, but that is the message I have for my colleagues on
this Committee. Let us have the skill and courage to admit we
have a problem, go through this process, identify the problem,
identify the root causes, establish an achievable goal or
goals, and then let us craft legislation on a nonpartisan
basis, because I cannot imagine anybody is satisfied with the
current situation. We simply cannot. We can argue about how
many legal immigrants should come in here to the extent that
that depresses American wages. I mean, those are legitimate
concerns. But nobody should be arguing that we should allow
this uncontrolled flow with all the human suffering that is
associated with it and the billions of dollars we are allowing
to flow into the pockets of some of the most evil human beings
on the planet, these human traffickers. So, again, thank you,
thank you to the men and women you serve.
With that, the hearing record will remain open for 15 days
until November 28th at 5 o'clock p.m. for the submission of
statements and questions for the record.
This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:24 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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