[Senate Hearing 117-573]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 117-573
SECURING AND ENSURING ORDER ON THE SOUTHWEST BORDER
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 5, 2022
__________
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
50-843 PDF WASHINGTON : 2023
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
GARY C. PETERS, Michigan, Chairman
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona RAND PAUL, Kentucky
JACKY ROSEN, Nevada JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
ALEX PADILLA, California MITT ROMNEY, Utah
JON OSSOFF, Georgia RICK SCOTT, Florida
JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri
David M. Weinberg, Staff Director
Zachary I. Schram, Chief Counsel
Sarah C. Pierce, Senior Counsel
Katie A. Conley, Professional Staff Member
Pamela Thiessen, Minority Staff Director
Sam J. Mulopulos, Minority Deputy Staff Director
Jeremy H. Hayes, Minority Senior Professional Staff Member
Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
Thomas J. Spino, Hearing Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Peters............................................... 1
Senator Portman.............................................. 3
Senator Carper............................................... 20
Senator Lankford............................................. 22
Senator Sinema............................................... 25
Senator Scott................................................ 29
Senator Rosen................................................ 32
Senator Johnson.............................................. 34
Senator Hassan............................................... 37
Senator Padilla.............................................. 40
Senator Ossoff............................................... 43
Senator Hawley............................................... 46
Prepared statements:
Senator Peters............................................... 59
Senator Portman.............................................. 61
WITNESSES
Thursday, May 5, 2022
Hon. January Contreras, Assistant Secretary, Administration for
Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services....................................................... 6
Blas Nunez-Neto, Acting Assistant Secretary for Border and
Immigration Policy, Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans, U.S.
Department of Homeland Security................................ 7
MaryAnn E. Tierney, Senior Coordinating Official, Southwest
Border Coordination Center, U.S. Department of Homeland
Security....................................................... 9
Benjamine ``Carry'' Huffman, Acting Chief Operating Officer, U.S.
Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Department of Homeland
Security....................................................... 11
Emily Mendrala, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Western
Hemisphere Affairs, U.S. Department of State................... 13
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Contreras, Hon. January:
Testimony.................................................... 6
Prepared statement........................................... 64
Huffman, Benjamine ``Carry'':
Testimony.................................................... 11
Prepared statement........................................... 90
Mendrala, Emily:
Testimony.................................................... 13
Prepared statement........................................... 97
Nunez-Neto- Blas:
Testimony.................................................... 7
Prepared statement........................................... 73
Tierney, MaryAnn E.:
Testimony.................................................... 9
Prepared statement........................................... 85
APPENDIX
Senator Peters Rate of Repeat Illegal Border Crossings at U.S.-
Mexico Border chart............................................ 101
Senator Portman Encounters at the Southwest Border chart......... 102
Senator Johnson SW Border Apprehensions chart.................... 103
Senator Scott The Border is Closed. The Border is Secure chart... 104
Senator Scott People Who Don't Want a Border Wall chart.......... 105
Senator Ossoff HHS OIG Report.................................... 106
Senator Ossoff Red Cross Letter.................................. 150
Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) Statement for the Record.......... 152
Response to post-hearing questions submitted for the Record
Ms. Contreras................................................ 158
Mr. Nunez-Neto............................................... 173
Ms. Tierney.................................................. 198
Mr. Huffman.................................................. 208
Ms. Mendrala................................................. 219
SECURING AND ENSURING ORDER ON THE SOUTHWEST BORDER
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THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2022
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:15 a.m., via
Webex and in room SD-106, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon.
Gary Peters, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Peters, Carper, Hassan, Sinema, Rosen,
Padilla, Ossoff, Portman, Johnson, Lankford, Scott, and Hawley.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN PETERS\1\
Chairman Peters. The Committee will come to order.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Peters appears in the
Appendix on page 59.
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I would certainly like to thank each of our witnesses for
joining us here today. Thank you for your dedicated service to
the American people, and for your work to address humanitarian
and security challenges at our Southern Border over the past
two years. Over the next few months, we know that these
challenges will persist, especially as the Administration moves
forward with its plans to end Title 42.
While ongoing litigation and shifting Coronavirus Disease
2019 (COVID-19) circumstances may impact the exact timing of
when the public health order is lifted, the Administration must
have a detailed, well-thought-out, and well-resourced plan to
secure our borders and address expected changes in migration
once this policy change goes into effect.
Yesterday, this Committee had an opportunity to hear
directly from Secretary Mayorkas on this, and other critical
issues. Today, we will have another opportunity to hear from
senior Administration officials and go into further detail
about how the Federal Government will secure our borders and
manage the proposed termination of this policy.
Title 42 is a temporary public health order, and it is not
a long-term solution to our border security needs. Today's
hearing is an important opportunity for the Administration to
detail both their short-term plans for addressing this expected
policy change as well as the long-term solutions that Congress
and the Administration must work on together to ensure that we
have secure borders.
In fact, since Title 42 was initiated to prevent the spread
of COVID-19 in March 2020, it has severely restricted the use
of proven enforcement mechanisms that prevent illegal border
crossings, and in turn has contributed to an increase in repeat
illegal crossings. Soon after this policy was implemented, the
number of single adults trying to illegally cross the Southern
Border doubled, and now, repeated attempts by individuals to
unlawfully enter the United States has reached a nearly 15-year
high, and that certainly is unsustainable and places
significant burdens on our border security professionals.
I look forward to discussing the Administration's plans to
reinstate proven border security enforcement methods, such as
escalating consequences for repeat offenders, that have been
shown to significantly reduce illegal crossings between ports
of entry (POE), and ensure Border Patrol agents can stay
focused on their border security mission.
Reinstating these kinds of consequences will hold
individuals who break the law accountable, while ensuring that
children, families, and other migrants fleeing persecution are
able to present themselves at ports of entry for a timely
review of their asylum claims.
In addition to addressing the humanitarian situation at the
Southern Border, the Administration must ensure they have the
personnel and resources needed to ensure the safe, secure, and
efficient facilitation of lawful trade and travel at our ports
of entry, and combat the flow of deadly illicit drugs like
fentanyl that continue to wreak havoc on communities in
Michigan and across the Nation.
I have long pressed for robust resources to ensure we have
enough personnel, as well as technology like nonintrusive
screening equipment, that improves Customs and Border
Protection (CBP) officers' ability to examine vehicles and
large amounts of cargo efficiently, and stop illegal drugs from
being smuggled across our borders. I look forward to discussing
what more the Administration needs to ensure that we can
prevent fentanyl and other illegal substances from harming our
communities.
Finally, this hearing is also an opportunity to discuss the
policies that Congress and the Administration must work
together on to address the long-term challenges at our borders,
and especially the southern border.
Over the past decade, we have seen a surge in the number of
migrants arriving at the Southern Border nearly every year, and
under both Republican and Democratic administrations. It is
clear that without bipartisan action to pass comprehensive
immigration reform and reforms to our asylum system, these
challenges will persist for years and for decades to come.
I look forward to hearing from today's panel about what
long-term solutions the Administration is proposing to address
the root causes of migration, increase regional cooperation
with our partners in South and Central America, and ensure
migrants receive humane treatment while streamlining the asylum
process.
Challenges at our Southern Border are not new, but they are
significant. Today's discussion will provide this Committee
with the opportunity to ensure our nation has sufficient tools,
resources, and personnel to take these issues head-on.
Ranking Member Portman, you are recognized for your opening
comments.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PORTMAN\1\
Senator Portman. Great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I
appreciate your holding this hearing on the Southwest Border,
which clearly is in a crisis situation now, and I think
everybody agrees with that. It is hard not to when you look at
the facts. We discussed this issue at length yesterday with
Secretary Mayorkas, and today we are going discuss it further
with our witnesses who I appreciate coming from the Department
of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of State (DOS), and the
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). I appreciate
your service to each of you, and thank you for, even though you
are at a distance, I can see you and we look forward to having
you.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Portman appears in the
Appendix on page 61.
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I will say that I requested for the Committee today to hear
from the Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, as well
as the Chief of Border Patrol. We have not heard from these
individuals in the 117th Congress, and I think that is wrong. I
think we have an oversight responsibility. With all due respect
to our witnesses here, we like having you, but we hope that
your bosses would have come, at least some of your bosses, to
be able to ensure that we are getting the Administration's view
on what is happening on the border and how it's going to be
fixed.
Last year, about a million people came to the border
unlawfully and were allowed into the United States. Let me
repeat that. About a million people came to the border
unlawfully and were admitted into the United States. As you
know, we are talking a lot about whether these numbers are 10-
year high, 15-year high, or whatever they are. This year so
far, 2022, it is unprecedented. It is not a 15-year high. It is
an historic high. We will see what happens this summer because
typically we would expect more people to come. Also because of
Title 42 possibly ending, we are expecting a lot more people to
come. That is one of the big issues we talked about yesterday.
I mentioned that about a million people come to the border
unlawfully are allowed into the United States. Most of those
are asylees or applicants for asylum, about 85 percent of them
from Mexico or Central America-we do not have good numbers for
the other countries--are eventually turned down for that
asylum, but only a very small numbers, we heard yesterday, are
ever deported. So that is that part.
But with regard to Title 42, another roughly one million
people were turned away at the border under Title 42, meaning
they were processed, about 40 hours of processing, and then
they were sent back to their home country if they came from
other than Mexico or sent back to Mexico. That is two million
when you think about it, unlawfully coming to the border, a
million coming in, being released, a million being turned away.
If Title 42 no longer applies, math will tell you it looks like
that number may double in terms of those admitted into the
country, even though they came to the border without proper
documentation.
Some say it will be more because traffickers all over the
world are already telling people when Title 42 is gone, just
come on in because it will be relatively easy as long as you
say you have credible fear, you can then come in under our
asylum system. That is our challenge we have got. On top of
that, of course, we allow in about 750,000 people a year under
our legal immigration system, people who wait in line,
patiently go through the right channels.
I strongly support legal immigration. In fact, I believe we
could actually increase legal immigration to be able to address
our workforce challenges in this country and the need for us to
have people who come to the United States legally with skills.
But that makes us, in America, at least for a legal immigration
system, probably the most generous country in the world. There
are 750,000 people who come in through the legal system.
On top of that, we have people who evade the Border Patrol
at the border. We do not know how many that is, and we are
going to talk today to the Border Patrol about this number. But
what Rodney Scott says, who is the former Chief of the Border
Patrol, who I know is well-known by many of us, is that he
thinks that is about 400,000 people a year who evade the Border
Patrol, evade being apprehended, and are added to the one
million people who show up without papers and are allowed into
the country, typically under asylum, on top of that, around
400,000 people a year.
We will get some better numbers on that. But that gives us
some context of why there is such a deep concern, when we are
down there on the border and I think every one of us have been
there, on this panel, probably many times, and our staffs have
been down there many times, including very recently. This is
why the Border Patrol tells us that they believe that they will
lose, as they say, operational control--we can talk about what
that means today--over the border unless something is done.
This is a huge issue. On top of it, of course, we have an
unprecedented amount of illegal drugs coming into the country,
particularly this synthetic opioid called fentanyl, and it is
streaming in. We will talk about that today, why that is coming
in.
The Mexican transnational crime organizations (TCOs) are
now specializing in this. It used to come from China, as you
know, mostly through our U.S. mail system. Now it is mostly
coming in through Mexico, being produced in Mexico, often with
precursors from China, and often pressed into pills. Our
citizens that we represent are dying of overdoses, partly
because they do not know what these pills are. They may say
Xanax, they may say Percocet, something else, but in fact, they
are fentanyl. This is leading to a record number, again, not a
15-year high, but a record number, of overdose deaths in my
home State of Ohio and around the country. This is another
border crisis that we have to address, and we will talk more
about how we might do that.
This again is a situation where policymakes a huge
difference. President Obama deported or removed over 315,000
unlawful migrants in 2014 alone. In context, the Obama
Administration removed 65 percent of the migrants that entered
unlawfully that year. In contrast, President Biden has deported
or removed about 56,000, we heard yesterday, about five
percent, so 65 percent versus five percent. Of course, we have
many more people who are in the queue right now. The backlog is
about 1.6 million people for asylum, as an example.
Unfortunately, we have a situation where not only are we
allowing more people in, but we are not having people leave
once they are deemed not to be qualified to be asylees or
otherwise are here illegally. That is just a reality and people
know that and the traffickers know that. That is why they have
such success in getting people to come to our border, charging
them outrageous fees, often treating them very poorly, as we
know.
The Administration's response to all this is to say we will
have a plan in case the surge gets worse. In fact, the plan
states that the first pillar of border security is, ``We have
doubled our ability to transport noncitizens on a daily basis
with flexibility to increase further.'' So much of the plan is
about making it easier to get people into the interior, that
that is the response. The response is not to put deterrence in
place to deter people coming illegally. Rather it is to
facilitate the flow to make it easier, including processing
people as an example, on buses heading toward the interior of
the country rather than doing it at the border because the
facilities would be overwhelmed.
Again, I appreciate, Mr. Chairman, you allowing me to speak
a little bit today about this to sort of set the context. I
think it is important to understand what the numbers are, and I
really look forward to the opportunity of speaking with all of
you today and talking about solutions, not just what the crisis
is. I think we all recognize that. I hope so. But what do we do
going forward?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Peters. Thank you, Ranking Member Portman.
It is the practice to the Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) to swear in witnesses,
so if each of our witnesses would please 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?
Ms. Contreras. I do.
Ms. Tierney. I do.
Mr. Huffman. I do.
Mr. Nunez-Neto. I do.
Ms. Mendrala. I do.
Chairman Peters. Thank you. You may be seated.
Our first witness is January Contreras. Ms. Contreras
currently serves as the Assistant Secretary for the Department
of Health and Human Services Administration of Children and
Families (ACF), which is responsible for the care of
unaccompanied minors. Assistant Secretary Contreras, a native
of Arizona, previously served in the Department of Homeland
Security as an Ombudsman for citizenship and immigration
services and most recently served as the Chief Executive
Officer (CEO) and managing attorney for Arizona Legal Women and
Youth Services. Welcome, Ms. Contreras, to the Committee. You
may proceed with your opening remarks.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE JANUARY CONTRERAS,\1\ ASSISTANT
SECRETARY, ADMINISTRATION FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Ms. Contreras. Chair Peters, Ranking Member Portman, and
Members of the Committee, it is my privilege to appear on
behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services. I am
January Contreras, the Assistant Secretary at the
Administration for Children and Families.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Contreras appears in the Appendix
on page 64.
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At ACF we are responsible for the care of unaccompanied
children and for uniting them with family or a vetted sponsor.
We carry out this duty through our Office of Refugee
Resettlement (ORR), which administers our Unaccompanied
Children Program.
I was sworn in on March 31st, and while I have only been on
the job for one month, I am firmly committed to effectively
managing the Unaccompanied Children Program and prioritizing
the safety of each child who comes into our care.
During my first week on the job I visited Fort Bliss. I
wanted to see the children and our work up close. It was
important to me to also meet with frontline staff.
What I have witnessed in my role is the tireless work of
the dedicated and skilled team at ORR and the many partners who
have contributed to our mission. As I meet with you today I
believe we are prepared to continue safely serving all
unaccompanied children referred to us.
We currently have 8,392 children in our care, and we have
an overall capacity of 15,500 across our network. ORR is able
to promptly accept referrals and limit the amount of time
children spend in CBP facilities to an average of 23 hours.
Unaccompanied children have generally not been subject to
Title 42 since November 2020. However, we are planning and
preparing for any potential increase in referrals that might
result from the termination of Title 42 for adults and family
units. We have developed contingency plans that allow us to
build capacity as needed and deploy additional case management
supports should referrals significantly increase.
Today we have cooperative agreements for 13,613 beds in our
standard network for children. This is the highest number of
standard beds in the history of the Unaccompanied Children
Program. We have and continue to build greater capacity for
more standard beds for kids, including adding to existing
grants and funding new grants, authorizing hazard and incentive
pay to retain and recruit staff, and working closely with the
Center for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) on COVID
mitigation measures to keep children and staff safe.
In addition to our standard beds, ORR has also utilized
influx care facilities and emergency intake sites (EIS). Out of
the 14 emergency intake sites that were utilized last year only
two remain active: Pecos EIS and the ORR EIS at Fort Bliss.
Although emergency intake sites are temporary, they do allow us
to quickly add beds for children when we need them.
We also continuously work with our contractors to ensure
that emergency intake sites are safe and appropriate placements
for children, and that they provide key services, including
robust case management and mental health supports. We are in
the process of transitioning both of the remaining emergency
intake sites to influx care facilities, which are required to
provide the same services and supports as our standard
shelters.
Finally, we are conducting regular outreach to explore
potential use of public and private properties that could be
utilized as temporary influx care facilities, as needed, to
accommodate increased referrals.
As a child welfare agency we know that the best place for
children is with their family. Over the past year, ORR has
implemented policy and process changes to expedite the safe
placement of children and with vetted sponsors. Examples of
this work are in my written testimony.
ORR continues to focus on strengthening our work to carry
out our duty to unaccompanied children, and to ensure that ORR
can adapt its capacity for their care. The Unaccompanied
Children Contingency Fund included in the President's fiscal
year (FY) 2023 budget would help address this by providing a
reliable source of funding when referral require ORR to add new
capacity.
While I am new to this role, fulfilling our legal and moral
obligation to care for unaccompanied children will be my
highest priority. I know that many of you have been key
partners in supporting ORR's mission, and I look forward to
working with all of you.
I would be happy to answer any questions.
Chairman Peters. Thank you, Ms. Contreras.
Our next witness is Blas Nunez-Neto. Mr. Nunez-Neto serves
as the Acting Assistant Secretary for Border and Immigration
Policy at the Department of Homeland Security's Office of
Strategy, Policy, and Plans. Mr. Nunez-Neto, a former staffer
on this Committee, previously served as a senior advisor to the
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner and was most
recently a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation.
Welcome to the Committee. You may begin with your
statement.
TESTIMONY OF BLAS NUNEZ-NETO,\1\ ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR
BORDER AND IMMIGRATION POLICY, OFFICE OF STRATEGY, POLICY, AND
PLANS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Thank you very much, Chairman Peters,
Ranking Member Portman, distinguished Members of the Committee.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to come back home to
HSGAC to discuss these critical issues.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Nunez-Neto appears in the
Appendix on page 73.
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Migratory surges along the Southwest Border have,
unfortunately, become a regular occurrence over the past decade
under Presidents of both parties. Over this period we have
seen, as well, fundamental changes to the nature, scope, and
demographics of irregular migration, even as our counters along
the border have increased to unprecedented levels this year.
There are currently more people displaced from their homes
in the world than at any time since World War II, and in our
hemisphere alone there are significant diasporas of Venezuelans
and Haitians, and a growing number of Nicaraguans being
displaced to neighboring countries as well.
There is little doubt that a number of factors, including
endemic violence, dictatorships, food insecurity, the COVID-19
pandemic, and dire economic conditions are pushing people to
leave their countries, and this Administration is committed to
addressing the root causes of this migration.
At the same time, though, we must acknowledge that our
immigration system, and particularly our asylum system, are
outdated and were not built to contend with the populations and
volumes that we are now seeing at our border. For decades, the
vast majority of individuals encountered at the Southwest
Border were single adults from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador,
and Honduras.
Over the past two years, though, we have seen an
unprecedented increase in migration from countries we have not
traditionally encountered along our Southwest Border, which
accounted for more than half of our unique encounters thus far
this year when recidivism is factored in. In fact, roughly 25
percent, a full quarter of our encounters, are from Venezuela,
Nicaragua, and Cuba this year, countries that we generally
cannot return people to in large numbers due to the
dictatorships that are in power.
Over the past decade, as the Committee knows, we have also
seen a sharp increase in children and families encountered at
the border, more vulnerable populations that require additional
care.
These changes dramatically affect our ability to
efficiently and humanely apprehend, process, and remove
migrants encountered at the border. Our system was simply not
designed, historically, to handle these flows.
Despite these challenges, DHS has taken concrete steps
since last fall to prepare for the eventual lifting of the
CDC's Title 42 order. These preparations will help us to
address the challenges at our border more effectively while
protecting the safety and security of our communities.
The plan that was developed after many months of work has
six principal pillars, which I address in-depth in my written
testimony.
The first is surging resources to support our border
operations, and this includes deploying more than 1,000
additional law enforcement personnel to the border,
constructing additional soft-sided facilities, and implementing
robust public health protocols at the border, including our new
vaccination program for migrants processed under Title 8.
The second pillar is increasing the processing efficiency
within our border management and immigration systems. This
includes really innovative work to create digital A-files and
electronic notices to appear (NTA), which will realize
substantial savings and time at the border as well as enroute
processing in our Enhanced Central Processing Center (ECPC)
model.
The third pillar is our ongoing work to administer
consequences for unlawful entry. We will, and are committed to,
firmly but fairly enforcing our immigration laws, and this
includes applying an expedited removal to all non-citizens who
are, in fact, removable. It includes focusing prosecutions on
non-citizens whose conduct warrants it, including those who are
seeking to evade capture at the border, and it includes our
efforts to speed up the asylum system through executive action
for those who are not detained through the asylum officer rule
and through the dedicated docket.
The fourth pillar is our ongoing work to bolster non-
governmental organizations (NGO) capacity and support border
communities by working closely with and providing support for
NGO's and community stakeholders, efforts that Congress has
supported with funding, and for which we are deeply grateful.
The fifth pillar involves our efforts to target and disrupt
the transnational criminal organizations and the human
smugglers who spread misinformation and put migrants in harm's
way for profit.
The six pillar involves our efforts to work regionally and
collaborate with our partners in Mexico as well as throughout
the hemisphere to enhance legal avenues for protection and
opportunity throughout the hemisphere but also to ensure that
partner governments are, in fact, enforcing their borders and
not just letting people pass through on their way north.
As we prepare for the end of Title 42 on May 23rd, DHS is
working night and day to address the irregular migration
challenges at our Southwest Border. However, we recognize that
executive action will never be an adequate stand-in for
congressional action in this space, and we urge Congress to
work with us on a bipartisan basis to enact legislation that
can help this country modernize its immigration system,
streamline asylum processing, better secure its border, and
provide hope to migrants in the region that they will have
legal opportunities to come to the United States.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
Chairman Peters. Thank you, Mr. Nunez-Neto.
Our next witness is MaryAnn Tierney. Ms. Tierney is
currently serving as the Senior Coordinating Official for the
Department of Homeland Security's Southwest Border Coordination
Center (SBCC), leading efforts to establish operational plans
and secure resources.
Ms. Tierney comes from the Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA), where she served as the Regional Administrator
for FEMA Region III since 2010.
Ms. Tierney, welcome to the Committee. You may proceed with
your opening remarks.
TESTIMONY OF MARYANN E. TIERNEY,\1\ SENIOR COORDINATING
OFFICIAL, SOUTHWEST BORDER COORDINATION CENTER, U.S. DEPARTMENT
OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Ms. Tierney. Thank you. Good morning. Chairman Peters,
Ranking Member Portman, and distinguished Members of the
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My
full written testimony has been submitted into the record.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Tierney appears in the Appendix
on page 85.
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I would like to start by recognizing the thousands of men
and women of the Department of Homeland Security who work
tirelessly around the clock, often at significant peril and
personal sacrifice, to secure our borders, enforce our laws,
and ensure the fair and humane treatment of all, consistent
with our values as a department and as a Nation. I thank these
and the many thousands of other dedicated public servants of
DHS who serve and protect our country and the American people,
no matter the challenge.
I appear before you today having just completed my
assignment as the Senior Coordinating Official with the
Southwest Border Coordination Center on April 29th.
On April 1st, as we all know, the Center for Disease
Control and Prevention announced that as of May 23, 2022, Title
42 public health order will be terminated. Title 42 is not an
immigration authority but rather a public health authority used
by the CDC to protect against the spread of communicable
disease. I would like to discuss and share some of the steps
the SBCC has taken to prepare for the termination of Title 42.
First, the SBCC has implemented measures to secure
additional resources via agreements with other Federal agencies
and contracts across three lines of effort--transportation,
facilities, and personnel. This includes expanding holding,
ground, and airport capacity, increasing utilization of law
enforcement officers from across the Federal Government, adding
contract security guards, and processing support staff, and
expanding medical services. These efforts allow CBP officers
and agents to perform their vital national security mission, as
opposed to processing and other administrative work.
Second, the SBCC and Customs and Border Protection field
leadership have established recurring and operationally focused
engagements with State, local, tribal, and law enforcement
officials to share information, understand challenges, and
coordinate actions on the ground. Additionally, in April, FEMA
awarded $150 million in humanitarian funding to the National
Board for the Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP). The
National Board will award these funds to eligible State and
local governments and nonprofit organizations that have aided
or will aid individuals and families encountered by DHS at the
Southern Border. These funds can be used for food, lodging, and
transportation costs. Organizations will have the opportunity
to request reimbursement on a quarterly basis as well as to
request advanced funding. Organizations can apply for
reimbursement of expenses back to January 1, 2022.
Third, DHS launched the Southwest Border Technology
Integration Program to digitize and automate non-citizen
processing. Today over 70 percent of Title 8 cases are reviewed
and signed digitally by Customs and Border Protection, which
saves up to 14 minutes per case. We project this has saved over
20,000 hours of agent time already.
Additional efficiencies are being implemented, specifically
targeted at expedited removal so non-citizens encountered at
the border can be quickly removed. Everything possible is being
done to enable officers and agents to spend less time
processing arrests and more time in the field.
Fourth, the SBCC is rapidly developing and testing
innovative models that will co-locate Customs and Border
Protection, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),
HHS, and non-governmental organizations at enhanced centralized
processing centers to eliminate inefficiencies and process non-
citizens. This model will allow CBP to swiftly triage non-
citizens and encounters based on risk, ensuring that higher-
risk individuals are held in secured, hardened facilities until
they are placed in detention, pending expedited removal.
Fifth, the SBCC is working to alleviate overcrowding at CBP
facilities by employing mobile, en route processing. Border
Patrol is outfitting busses with necessary technology to
support processing non-citizens while in transit. CBP can move
non-citizens out of their facilities faster while retaining the
integrity of biometric and biographic screening processes and
ensuring non-citizens apprehended at the border are placed
expeditiously into removal proceedings, ultimately, the goal of
these steps and other efforts focused on longer-term strategies
to create lasting, scalable, repeatable structures to respond
to irregular migration events.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I look forward to
your questions.
Chairman Peters. Thank you, Ms. Tierney.
Our next witness is Chief Carry Huffman. Chief Huffman
currently serves as the Acting Chief Operating Officer (COO)
for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, ensuring that CBP
is equipped with the personnel and resources necessary to carry
out their frontline duties at and between ports of entry.
Chief Huffman, who has served in the U.S. Border Patrol for
over three decades previously served as CBP's Acting Deputy
Commissioner and Executive Assistant Commissioner of Enterprise
Services.
Chief Huffman, welcome to our Committee. You may proceed
with your opening remarks.
TESTIMONY OF BENJAMINE ``CARRY'' HUFFMAN,\1\ ACTING CHIEF
OPERATING OFFICER, U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Huffman. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Peters,
Ranking Member Portman, and Members of the Committee. It is an
honor to testify on behalf of U.S. Customs and Border
Protection and discuss CBP's efforts to secure our borders and
promote safe and efficient flow of lawful trade and travel.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Huffman appears in the Appendix
on page 90.
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I currently serve as CBP's Acting Chief Operating Officer.
However, my career in border security has spanned 37 years in
the entire Western Hemisphere. While the border has always been
a dynamic environment, there is one constant I am reminded of
every day. The men and women of CBP have a complex, important,
and frequently dangerous mission, one we are called to perform
within the spirit of vigilance, service, integrity, and honor.
It is in this spirit that CBP, while conducting our border
security mission, remains the most humanitarian law enforcement
agency in the country. Our border protection mission and ethos
necessitates that we provide lifesaving rescues, shelter,
medical treatment, nourishment, and clothing to those we
encounter. We regularly conduct rescue missions, deliver
babies, feed children, and work with childcare providers to
ensure proper medical care.
Notably, through extensive DHS and CBP efforts, we have
created an unprecedented medical support and health care system
inside a law enforcement agency. That is an unprecedented feat.
Simultaneously, we remain vigilant and responsive to other
border challenges and responsibility. Last year, CBP conducted
more than 13,000 lifesaving rescues in often extremely
dangerous conditions and terrain. We continue to interdict
hundreds of thousands of pounds of illicit narcotics, prevent
dangerous people and goods from crossing our borders, enforce
our nation's laws, and ensure the efficient flow of lawful
trade and travel that is vital to our economy.
These critical functions will continue when and if the CDC,
what we generally refer to as Title 42, comes to an end. CBP's
operational response will be, as it is now, grounded in three
key principles: first, enforce the law and implement
administrative policies; second, ensure individuals in our
custody are provided care and afforded rights; and third, work
collaboratively with our interagency and private sector
partners.
First, CBS is a law enforcement organization. We are
committed to enforcing our nation's laws and implementing the
policies of the Executive Branch. To that end, CBP will
continue to utilize our immigration authorities under Title 8
as we have done throughout our agency's history. These
authorities include a rage of enforcement options to hold
individuals accountable for entering the United States
illegally, including placing individuals into appropriate
removal proceedings. They also allow non-citizens appropriate
access to make asylum claims and provide for urgent port of
entry humanitarian parole on a case-by-case basis.
Which brings me to our second principle, the commitment to
provide care and affording right to individuals in our
temporary custody. From the moment of initial contact with an
individual, CBP procedures are designed to identify the correct
processing pathway for that person, including appropriate
options for those in vulnerable populations. Thanks to the
support provided by Congress with fiscal year 2022 funding, CBP
is expanding temporary holding capacity, increasing the
transportation of migrants away from overcrowded sectors for
processing, and providing additional medical resources to
protect the health and safety of migrants, and by extension,
our personnel and our communities.
Third, it is important to recognize the interagency efforts
in this area. CBP is one of many organizations involved in
addressing border security mission. Working together with our
partners, CBP is making numerous preparations to ensure we can
scale our operations as necessary to respond to the areas of
greatest need.
While I am here today representing one agency, I cannot
stress enough the importance of Congress' continued support to
the missions of not only CBP but also ICE, U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services (USCIS), FEMA, HHS, the Department of
State, the Department of Justice, and others. We are all part
of a great number of efforts collaborating across the
immigration spectrum. As evidenced by all the witnesses
present, collaboration is key, and support from Congress is
vital.
The border has always been a dynamic and complex
environment. For CBP, we will continue to do our part in
enforcing the law, ensuring individuals are properly cared for,
and being a trusted partner to all other entities working on
this effort.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear here today, and I
look forward to your questions.
Chairman Peters. Thank you, Chief Huffman.
Our final witness is Emily Mendrala. Ms. Mendrala serves as
the Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Department of State's
Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, covering Cuba and
regional migration.
Ms. Mendrala previously served as Director of Legislative
Affairs for the National Security Council (NSC), and most
recently served as Executive Director for the Center for
Democracy in the Americas.
Ms. Mendrala, welcome to the Committee. You may proceed
with your opening remarks.
TESTIMONY OF EMILY MENDRALA,\1\ DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY,
BUREAU OF WESTERN HEMISPHERE AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Ms. Mendrala. Thank you, Chairman Peters, Ranking Member
Portman, distinguished Members of the Committee. I welcome the
opportunity to testify regarding the Biden-Harris
administration's priorities on regional migration.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Mendrala appears in the Appendix
on page 97.
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This is a pivotal moment for our hemisphere as we broaden
the shared responsibility on human migration management across
the region. The Department of State is actively working with
governments, the private sector, civil society, and
international organization partners throughout the region to
increases cooperation and address our shared responsibility to
humanely manage migration and to provide protection for those
fleeing persecution or torture.
Regional leaders recently concluded a Hemispheric
Ministerial meeting on Migration and Protection, co-hosted by
Secretary Blinken in Panama, April 19th and 20th. Secretary
Blinken urged collaboration on stabilization of migrant-and
refugee-receiving communities. The ministerial shined a light
on the need to work together with international organizations
and multilateral development banks to stabilize those host
communities.
President Biden will host the Ninth Summit of the Americas,
June 8-10, in Los Angeles. As the only meeting of leaders from
across the Americas, the summit serves as the most important
forum to address our region's shared challenges and
opportunities. The Ninth Summit marks the first time the United
States will host the event since the inaugural gathering in
Miami in 1994.
The theme of the Ninth Summit, ``Building a Sustainable,
Resilient, and Equitable Future,'' represented a shared vision
developed with the region's governments, civil society, and
private sector. The Summit will produce concrete outcomes,
including and responding to the pandemic, building strong and
inclusive democracies, addressing irregular migration, and
increasing equity and inclusion. The President announced our
intent to adopt the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and
Protection as an expression of leaders' commitments to
addressing irregular migration and forced displacement.
The Department of State has worked diligently to implement
the Administration's comprehensive approach to migration, which
includes, in addition to elements managed by my colleagues on
the dais, the U.S. Strategy for Addressing Root Causes of
Migration in Central America and the Collaboration Migration
Management Strategy. The Biden-Harris administration's
comprehensive approach builds on both significant U.S.
Government resources and substantial private sector investments
to support the long-term development of Central America.
To advance the Root Causes strategy, the Vice President
brought together private sector leaders through the U.S.
government's Call to Action initiative, that has generated more
than $1.2 billion in commitments to create new jobs and
opportunities for people in the region.
As part of the Vice President's Call to Action, Microsoft
is connecting 4 million people to broadband access across the
region, with nearly 1 million already connected to date.
Nespresso will invest $150 million to double the number of
farmers it works with in the region, and Mastercard is bringing
5 million people into the formal financial economy while
digitizing 1 million micro and small businesses.
Parkdale Mills is investing $150 million to support a new
yarn-spinning facility in Honduras and an existing facility in
Virginia, supporting 500 jobs in each location, demonstrating
the effect that these efforts can bring benefits to the U.S.
economy as well.
Through these long-term efforts, the Biden-Harris
administration continues to make significant progress toward
creating hope for people in El Salvador, Guatemala, and
Honduras that a better life can be found at home. Highlights to
date include the U.S. government's $300 million Centroamerica
Local initiative, empowering local organizations to address the
drivers of irregular migration in their own communities, and
also delivery of more than 15 million COVID-19 vaccines to
northern Central America.
We also continue helping to hold migrant smugglers
accountable and conduct programs to support victims of gender-
based violence, survivors of human trafficking, and
unaccompanied migrant children. New U.S. Government programs
and scholarships improve access to education for nearly 18,000
returning or potential migrants and at-risk youth.
The Administration is doing its due diligence to prepare
for potential challenges at the border. We have alerted
countries to the upcoming changes in processing and requested
flexibility and cooperation with regional partners as regional
migration flows change, including repatriating individuals
without a legal basis to remain in the United States.
The Department actively seeks to identify and respond to
disinformation about migration. We work with interagency
partners to track and combat disinformation, especially that
circulated by smugglers about U.S. migration and border policy.
I will conclude again by underscoring the growing sense of
shared responsibility across the region to work together with
partners on a new approach to regional migration.
Chairman Peters, Ranking Member Portman, and Members of the
Committee, thanks for the opportunity to testify, and I look
forward to your questions.
Chairman Peters. Thank you, Ms. Mendrala, and thank you to
each of our witnesses for your opening comments.
I am going to start the questioning with discussion of
Title 42, which I am sure will be discussed quite extensively
during this Committee, and we will have some other issues.
We know that Title 42 has severely limited border security
enforcement strategies like the Consequence Delivery System
(CDS). The Consequence Delivery System started back in 2008,
and was designed to impose escalating consequences on
individuals who are crossing the border illegally. Quite
frankly, it worked, and I have this chart\1\ to show how
Consequence Delivery System worked.
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\1\ The chart referenced by Senator Peters appears in the Appendix
on page 101.
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As you can see here, from 2008, when it went into effect,
these are folks that are coming cross the border on a repeated
basis, but it significantly decreased the number of folks
coming across the border until, you can see there, in 2019,
where we have a huge increase. That is when the Trump
administration suspended the Consequence Delivery System to
implement Title 42. So you can see once that happens, with
Title 42, a major spike, once again, going up, of folks that
are coming repeatedly over the border.
Under Title 42, migrants are pushed back to Mexico, with no
consequences, and they have no reason not to keep trying, and
they keep trying. They come back many times, as you can see
that increase, and then it levels off. That flattening is with
the Biden administration. It then flattened at that point.
But you see this huge increase, going back to the days
before Consequence was put in place. Now we have incredible
strain because of folks coming over constantly. In fact, since
the start of fiscal year 2021, the Border Patrol has
encountered more than 900,000 migrants that they have seen at
least once before, but they have probably seen them many times,
as they keep trying, over and over again. There are no
consequences. That has been eliminated with Title 42. So they
keep trying until they get through.
When Title 42 is terminated it is my sense that
consequences need to be in place, like expedited removal and
prosecution, to decrease these illegal crossings and these
repeat offenders, which are skewing the numbers we see over
here. Just because people are coming over so many times the
numbers are up, and that is a consequence. Because the
Consequence system is gone, with Title 42 you start seeing a
big increase there because of repeat offenders.
My question for Mr. Nunez-Neto, does the Department plan to
reinstate consequences to reduce the rate of repeat crossers
who have taken advantage of Title 42 public health order?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Thank you for that question, Chairman, and
you are exactly right that under Title 42 any real consequences
leads to roughly half of individuals being re-encountered
subsequently. We are committed to imposing consequences as part
of the Administration's plan that, again, is in my written
testimony. Part of those consequences is really ramping up our
use of expedited removal for those who are removable and also
doing a focused prosecution campaign on individuals whose
conduct warrants it, and that includes individuals who are
recidivists, who cross multiple times. It also includes
individuals who may seek to evade capture.
I would note one thing, Chairman, which is we have actually
already begun implementing consequences for recidivists.
Starting about two months ago we began an effort to identify
Title 42 recidivists and start imposing expedited removal on
them to levy a consequence. We plan to continue to increase
that in the coming weeks.
Chairman Peters. If I can paraphrase, without these
consequences we are putting a real strain on our folks at the
border because we have people just coming over, sent back to
Mexico, they come back later that day, they come back the next
week, and for two weeks constantly. Huge strain. Once
consequences are in place we can reinstate that. Title 42 is
allowing people to keep coming over and over again, constantly
inflating these numbers. Once consequence is put into place you
would expect to start seeing a decrease again, like we saw in
the past, which seemed to be pretty successful prior to Title
42?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. I think that is absolutely correct, sir.
Chairman Peters. Great. Title 42 has also eliminated the
safest and most orderly pathway for asylum seekers to apply for
protections. When asylum seekers are turned away at the ports
of entry, which they are with the situation right now, then
they are forced to cross between the ports, instead of coming
in the ports of entry. This clearly endangers themselves but is
also strains our border security folks because we are pushing
folks away from the ports of entry to try other ways to get in.
My question for you, Chief Huffman, could you please
describe the specific steps that the Administration is
undertaking to increase our capacity at ports of entry so we
can safely process asylum seekers, ensure efficient processing
of trade and travel, and then allow the Border Patrol agents to
carry out their law enforcement duties in between ports of
entry?
Mr. Huffman. Thank you for that question. I would be glad
to address that. Yes, it is part of the process to encourage
asylum seekers to go back through the ports of entry if
possible to do that. But in order to do that we have to have
the capacity to be able to process them as much as we can.
To that end we are doing a number of things to get ready of
that and do that. We have actually processed, over the last few
months, several exceptions to the Title 42 already in
preparation of this also. But we have detailed so far up to 255
additional personnel to the ports of entry on the Southwest
Border to do that. We are working also to establish, leverage
better technology to do that with, using the CBP One app, to
encourage people to apply, to get as much advanced processing
information as possible as they arrive to the port of entry, to
increase the efficiency.
Because in order to increase efficiency there are really
two ways: you either increase your footprint or you improves
your processes, and the footprint is what it is at a port of
entry. We are going to have to work on improving our processes
to improve our efficiencies. The Office of Field Operations
(OFO) is working diligently to do that in preparation for that.
But it is not without some concerns when the volumes
arrive. There is a good likelihood there will be longer lines.
There could be some delays, slow things down. But the port
directors have the authority to make the decisions, to form the
lines as they need to, and do the process to move as
efficiently as they can. We are going to build on a lot of the
past lessons we learned when this was going on previously and
continue to process them through that way.
Chairman Peters. Thank you. Ranking Member Portman, you are
recognized for your questions.
Senator Portman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Look, I think we
need to be straight with the American people as to what is
happening here, and let me just comment, if I could, on your
suggestion that there be consequences for people who enter
multiple times and how that would address the problem.
I think it is fine to have consequences, but that is not
the issue. Agent, you just told us that you are preparing,
post-Title 42, not for people to have consequences for multiple
entries but for more asylum seekers, did you not? That is what
you just told us, right?
Mr. Huffman. For those that come to the port of entry and
make an application for asylum, yes, sir.
Senator Portman. You are expanding your capacity to deal
with asylum. That is what is going to happen. The alternative
to Title 42 is not that people are going to stay home. The
alternative to Title 42 is that they are going to do what they
cannot do now, because of Title 42, which is apply for asylum.
Do you disagree with that, Agent?
Mr. Huffman. Sir, I do not think I understood your
question.
Senator Portman. What is the alternative to Title 42? It
was suggested by Mr. Nunez-Neto a second ago that the
alternative to Title 42 is that repeat offenders, in
particular, are not going to come over because they will have
consequences. The alternative that you stated is that you are
going to have more people coming and applying for asylum. That
is what you are preparing for, right?
Mr. Huffman. Sir, we are prepared to allow whoever comes to
the country, they can afford access to our asylum system if
they have a right to do so.
Senator Portman. Right.
Mr. Huffman. That is what we are required by law to do.
Senator Portman. You are going to increase your capacity
for it. That is what is going to happen, right?
Mr. Huffman. Yes, sir. We intend to increase our capacity
to process----
Senator Portman. No, but answer my question, and let us be
honest here with the American people. Right now Title 42 is the
ability for you to say, to about a million people a year, we
are going to turn you back. By the way, they are not turned
back to Mexico, in cases where they are not from Mexico. You
actually process them for roughly 40 hours and then you send
them back to their country of origin. It may be Ecuador. It is
not what was described, and those people, obviously, are less
likely to be repeat offenders because they are thousands of
miles away.
But what you are saying is that without Title 42 you are
going to have a lot more people who comes to the border and
say, ``I have a credible fear,'' and, like others, they will be
allowed to come into the correct. Is that correct?
Mr. Huffman. Yes, sir. That is correct.
Senator Portman. OK. Guys, we can talk about this and try
to play politics with it and say the Administration has all
these plans and consequences matter. But the reality is we have
an asylum system that is broken, and until we fix that it is
not going to be solvable post-Title 42. That Title 42 is not
sustainable. I get that. It is a public health authority. It is
not meant to be an immigration law. But it is all we have right
now to keep the system from being totally overwhelmed and to
keep not just a million people being released into the country
every year, who come unlawfully, claim asylum.
Remember, 85 percent at the end, at least, of Mexicans and
Central Americans that we know of are not given asylum, and yet
they are not deported. The numbers that we have are that there
are 1.2 million migrants who have received a final order of
removal, and we are removing 56,000 a year right now. That was
the number in 2021, and that is less than five percent.
That is the issue, is it not? I do not know. I wish it were
easier, but it is hard because we have to deal with the asylum
issue.
Mr. Nunez-Neto, you were on this Committee. You know this
issue well. Do you disagree with anything that I have said?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Sir, I think it is clear that under current
law migrants who arrive at the border have the opportunity to
claim asylum, and as a department and as a country we enforce
those laws.
Senator Portman. Let us back up for a second, if you could,
please, and I apologize. But we do not enforce the laws in the
sense that what the laws say is that we are supposed to detain
people pending the process of asylum, and we do not do that. We
do not have the beds to do that. The expedited removals, in
fact, in the budget for this year are reduced even further,
specifically with regard to detention, which is mandated by
law.
We do not do that and we cannot do that. You know you
cannot do that. We do not have the space, right? We have 24,000
beds. We are talking 1.2 million people who have been put into
expedited removal. Is that correct?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. I do not think we have ever had enough beds
to put everybody through the process, sir.
Senator Portman. Maybe we have not ever had enough beds but
is that not the reality?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Yes, sir.
Senator Portman. According to Secretary Mayorkas, not even
close. We have 7,000 or 8,000 people a day coming to the border
right now, unlawfully, and we have 24,000 beds. Because of
social distancing, because of COVID, we have fewer beds even
than that, I am told, even though Title 42 is about to expire.
With regard to COVID we are still applying it to the beds, but
that is another issue.
The problem, I guess, that I am trying to get at is that
unless we fix the asylum system there is no way to allow you,
Agent Huffman, to do your job, and your men and women who I
have talked to, and they are the ones that tell me they are
scared to death of what is going to happen when Title 42 goes
away, because there is no alternative.
The six pillars that were just talked about, again, we can
go through this. But 1,000 new Border Patrol agents, my
understanding is the budget asked for 300, something like that,
so I guess you are going to take them from other places,
including the border with Canada, and making processing work
faster, enhanced processing on buses while people go into the
interior, working with non-governmental organizations to
process people faster.
All that is fine but it does not deal with the problem. It
just puts more people into the system. Secretary Mayorkas tells
us there is a six-to eight-year wait right now. In other words,
the backlog is 1.6 million people waiting for their asylum
claims to be adjudicated, and they are in the United States for
six to eight years before their case is resolved. Is that
correct?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Sir, it is correct that people who are not
detained, on average, take five or six years to go through the
process.
I would note sir, if I may, that we have tried to tackle
the asylum process through the asylum officer rules by
executive action, but we would welcome a bipartisan effort on
the Hill to work on this important issue.
Senator Portman. I would too, and there are ideas out there
that are, I think, very promising. One would be to have an
expedited adjudication process at the border. Senator Sinema
was here earlier. She and Senator Cornyn have a proposal along
those lines with processing centers. I think that makes a lot
of sense. It is going to be expensive but it absolutely crucial
to me that the last people coming in are the first people who
are told, we understand that your country has issues and that
the economics are a real problem.
You look at the Migration Policy Institute here indicates
that between 75 percent and 91 percent of migrants who are
coming to the border are coming for economic reasons. We get
that. That is why the asylum policy is leading to adjudications
of only 15 percent being accepted from the majority of these
countries.
We have to make that decision early, send people back home
if they do not qualify, allow them in if they do, and that is
what will send a message to the traffickers and to these
families that it does not make sense to make this arduous and
dangerous journey north.
I would love to work on that, but that is not what is being
proposed here.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Peters. Thank you, Ranking Member Portman.
I want to, if I could, to clarify, maybe to simplify this a
little bit as we discuss some solutions here, is when we talked
about the consequence system, that really deals with the single
adults that are coming across, who are not going to apply for
asylum. They are trying to get across the border. Under 42 they
just get sent back, no consequences. They keep coming back. It
drives those numbers up for those individuals.
Senator Portman. They can apply for asylum.
Chairman Peters. Most of them do not. They are just coming
across from Mexico and they are not going to be able to go
through that process. It is going to be very difficult.
Then there are the asylum seekers. You are absolutely right
about that, that we have to deal with that process. That is
something Congress has to deal with. We have to come together
and fix this, and I am committed to working with you and others
on that. I think we are reviewing some legislation together
right now related to that so that we can deal with that, and I
look forward to working with you to deal with that aspect of
the problem.
We have to deal with both of these problems together. I
totally agree with you in that respect.
I need to go to an Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC)
to ask some questions, so I am going to turn the gavel over to
Senator Carper and recognize Senator Carper for his questions.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper [presiding.] Thanks so much. If you give me
the gavel I may not want to give it back to you.
I want to welcome back to this Committee a number of folks
who are here as witnesses and staff and the witnesses. Welcome
back and thank you again for the great work you did here with
our Committee and for the work that you are doing today.
My first question, actually two questions, are going to
Secretary Mendrala.
Everyone on this committee, ma'am, just about everybody
knows I am a pretty big root cause guy. I always focus on what
is the root cause, not just the symptoms of problems. It is a
topic I bring up frequently when talking about migration at our
Southern Border, and that is because until we address the root
causes of migration, like crime, like corruption, like lack of
economic opportunity, we are going to continue to see folks
arriving at our border for the next 10 years, 20 years, 30
years to come.
I believe that building strong diplomatic relations with
countries in the Western Hemisphere is a critical part to
stemming the flow of migration. I just ran into Ken Salazar,
former Secretary of Interior. He is in town, and he is now an
ambassador to Mexico. He was in the Dirksen Building, in the
cafeteria, having breakfast. I had a chance to talk with him a
little bit yesterday, and I said, ``I want to come down to
Mexico and the Northern Triangle sometime later this year and
maybe bring some of our colleagues with me.''
But anyway, we talked a bit about root causes. I am still a
big root cause guy.
I think building strong diplomatic relations with countries
in the Western Hemisphere is a critical part to stemming the
flow of migration in the long term--not just the short term but
the long term. We have to work in lockstep with countries in
the region to ensure that we are doing all we can to address
the pull factors that force so many of them to flee.
With that in mind, Secretary Mendrala, could you please
take a moment to update us on the State Department's diplomatic
efforts to tackle some of the root causes, and engage with
countries in the region? Go right ahead.
Ms. Mendrala. Thank you, Senator, and thank you for your
leadership on this issue.
President Biden, through an Executive Order (EO) in
February of last year, directed the Department of State to work
across the interagency to draft a strategy to address root
causes of migration. Recognizing that we have engaged in
efforts to address root causes in Central America before, he
directed us to learn lessons, apply those lessons, and to put
in place a strategy to do it better.
He directed that alongside several other aspects of a
comprehensive approach to regional migration, including reforms
at the border and another line of effort that we call the
Collaborative Migration Management Strategy. This is a strategy
to manage migration along with regional partners, to strengthen
border enforcement in the region, promote a sense of shared
responsibility, strengthen protection systems in countries
throughout the region as well.
On the root causes strategy we drafted and published a
strategy last summer to address root causes of migration such
as insecurity, lack of economic opportunity, and governance
issues. We have been working in partnership with governments in
the region, civil society, private sector actors, as well, to
implement that.
I will share with you a few highlights of the first year of
our work. I mentioned in my testimony the Vice President
announced, and is working with private sector leaders on the
Call to Action, promoting investment from private sector
entities in Central America that can create jobs and improve
standards of governance as well.
The Call to Action has secured $1.2 billion in commitments
from private sector actors to invest in Central America. Those
commitments will generate 70,000 jobs in Guatemala, El
Salvador, and Honduras.
Additionally, two other highlights I will share is that we
have allowed for access to education for 18,000 young people in
Central America through scholarship opportunities, and 70,000
business owners access to credit. This is in addition to
efforts that we are conducting through the Bureau of
International Narcotics and Law Enforcement to train police on
better and more humane security tactics, more efficient
security tactics as well.
It is a commitment of the Biden-Harris administration, as
we are working to address root causes of migration, to make
sure that our efforts to promote strong governance is a
through-line, underpinning everything that we do, recognizing
that without gains in governance, without governments that can
provide for their people, gains in the security realm and the
economic realm will not be sustained.
Senator Carper. Other than that, though? That is a pretty
good list, really.
Ms. Mendrala. Thank you.
Senator Carper. Other than that, very briefly, are there
any additional pathways available to expand in-country
processing to other migrants groups, especially those that
would inevitably end up at our border? that would be for Mr.
Nunez-Neto and again for you, Madam Secretary. That question,
please. Go ahead. Any additional pathways to expand in-country
processing to other migrant groups, especially those that might
end up at our border. Please, go ahead.
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Thank you, Senator. We have been working to
expand our ability to issue H-2A and B visas in the region. I
think also enhancing refugee processing in the region.
That said, I do think we do have, under current law,
limited legal pathways, and one of the things that I think we
would really want to work with Congress on is the ability to
better match workers in the region with the badly needed jobs
that we have in the United States.
Senator Carper. All right. Thank you. Secretary Mendrala,
anything else you would add? Additional pathways to expanding
in-country processing to other migrant groups?
Ms. Mendrala. We recognize that legal pathways is a
critical component of the strategy to effectively manage
migration throughout the region, and these are pathways to the
United States as well as to elsewhere, other countries, that
are standing up legal pathways, temporary work opportunities,
et cetera.
I will mention a program run by my colleagues in the Bureau
of Population, Refugees, and Migration, and it is the Central
America Minors (CAM) Program. In September 2021, the State
Department and Department of Homeland Security expanded the
eligibility categories for U.S.-based relatives who can apply
for their children in northern Central America to access the
Central America Minors Program. This is a legal pathway for
individuals to apply from their home country to access the
United States.
Then as Assistant Secretary Nunez-Neto mentioned, we are
also working to expand temporary work visas to the United
States and encouraging countries around the world to also stand
up and augment their own temporary work opportunities for
individuals from northern Central America.
Senator Carper. My thanks to both of you for those
responses. I think the next person in line is from Oklahoma,
James Lankford. Senator Lankford, you are next, and if she
returns I think Senator Sinema would follow you. Go ahead,
please.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LANKFORD
Senator Lankford. Thank, Senator Carper. Thanks to all of
you for being here. I have a bunch of questions and so if I
could ask everyone to be brief in your responses. Let me try to
go through several things on this. Let me start with Assistant
Secretary Mendrala.
There are ads that are up, radio ads and such, encouraging
folks not to do migration in the United States. Did the State
Department actually run those? Yes or no.
Ms. Mendrala. Encouraging individuals not to migrate to the
United States?
Senator Lankford. Yes.
Ms. Mendrala. The State Department does have robust
messaging efforts throughout the region. It depends on where
you are talking about, but some of them, yes.
Senator Lankford. The Northern Triangle, as far as
Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador. Could we get the budget for
those and also the copy, the text for those? That would be very
helpful for us to be able to see what is actually being used.
Ms. Mendrala. I would be happy to follow up.\1\
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\1\ Ms. Mendrala follow up response to Senator Lankford appears in
the Appendix on page 239.
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Senator Lankford. Thank you. I talked to Secretary Mayorkas
recently and we were talking his six-point plan that he has put
out, which I have some significant questions on. There is a
section of it, in the six-point plan, that says they are going
to work with countries in Central America for them to be able
to enforce their borders as well and also have asylum seekers
there. I asked him the question of what leverage are you using
on those countries to encourage them to actually enforce their
borders. His response to me was State Department actually is in
charge of that.
So let me ask State Department, what leverage are you using
to encourage countries in Central America for them to enforce
their borders? What are you doing there for them to stop
regular migration that is just passing through their country
and heading north?
Ms. Mendrala. We have strong partnerships with countries in
Central America, and many of them are enforcing their borders
for their own reasons and to protect their own national
interests. During COVID-19, the height of the pandemic, many of
the countries imposed public health requirements, additional
document checks, and additional public health requirements that
prevented transit through their borders for public health
reasons, for example.
We are supporting, thorough our foreign assistance,
training of border personnel, for example, to train them on
more effective and more humane enforcement tactics. But I would
say that most of the countries in the region are conducting
those enforcement actions out of their own national self-
interest.
Senator Lankford. There is no increased engagement with
them to be able to put leverage on them? Because obviously we
had two million people ``encountered,'' quote/unquote, coming
across our border last year, many of those from literally all
over the world, many of them coming through Central America. Is
there an additional effort that is coming to be able to slow
down that quantity? The six-point plan implies there is
something new.
Ms. Mendrala. Oh, absolutely. We are engaging with them on
a regular basis out of Washington, trips down to the region
through our embassies on a range of priorities, including
border enforcement, including accepting back repatriations of
their nationals who have no legal basis to remain in the United
States, and also to identify emerging trends and identify needs
associated with those emerging trends.
Senator Lankford. But that is not additional border
enforcement. That is repatriation and others. I am asking
specifically what is in the plan, what State Department is
doing to put leverage on countries to enforce their own
borders. You talked about training that you have done in the
past, things that they did during COVID, years ago. We still
had two million people last year, many of those crossing
through those borders. What are we doing now to encourage those
countries to enforce their borders?
Ms. Mendrala. For example, when we noticed a trend, working
with interagency partners, of a certain nationality that is
arriving in larger numbers at our border we will carry that
information, including the routes that those individuals are
transition, to countries throughout the region and look for
areas of partnership. If they are arriving by air, countries
may decide, through their own sovereign decisionmaking process,
to impose visas on those nationalities that are arriving by air
and that have been proven to be conduits to large flows of
irregular migration, to impose visas on those nationalities to
make sure that those who are arriving by air are not intending
migrants to the United States.
And we also know that if one country imposes a visa
requirement it is very easy for those routes to be diverted
elsewhere, so we make sure that we are alerting and working in
partnership with countries throughout the region so that that
route is not diverted.
Senator Lankford. Great. Could you get us that plan,
because again, I go back to that is helpful, by the way, on the
visa piece, and people flying in, but people that are walking
across borders, and we are seeing that border to border to
border to border at times--we have all talked about this for
years. If they would only enforce their borders, it is much
harder to enforce ours.
What I am trying to get to is what is State Department
doing to provide leverage to countries to say ``Stop. Actually
enforce your border.'' It is different than training. It is
different than visas and all that. If we could just get that in
writing that would be very helpful to me.
Ms. Mendrala. Happy to follow up.\1\
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\1\ Ms. Mendrala follow up response to Senator Lankford appears in
the Appendix on page 241.
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Senator Lankford. We will follow up with that.
Assistant Secretary Nunez-Neto, it is good to see you
again. When you and I visited in February, I believe, when you
were in my office, we had talked back and forth about the
guidance that you provided to Border Patrol agents, USCIS
asylum officers, to evaluate claimed vulnerabilities during the
screenings to determine whether a migrant should be placed in
Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). I asked for that and you
said, ``No problem.'' Just as a heads up, it is May. I do not
have that yet.
If I could get that. My office will follow up with you on
that request again, but that would be very helpful to be able
to get that. We are trying to be able to figure out the
usefulness of the MPP and the way that screening is actually
done. The officers, when I was there in February, getting a
chance, in January, to be able to visit with the officers on
the ground, they were fuzzy about it. I came back to ask what
is being handed and you said, ``Yes, there is guidance.'' I
just have not seen it yet.
So can I get that?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. We will certainly follow up with your
office on that, sir, and I am happy to provide a briefing and
the documents we are able to.
Senator Lankford. The documents would be great, to be able
to get on that.
You had mentioned earlier, to Senator Portman, in your
conversation, that we do not have enough bed space. It is
interesting to me, in the budget proposal that DHS has put out
they actually request 5,000 fewer beds for single adults and
2,500 fewer beds for family units. Your testimony is we do not
have enough beds, the budget request is we need even fewer, and
I am trying to figure out, still, when there is the ongoing
discussion about May 23rd, that on May 23rd the plan is to end
Title 42 at the border because there is no COVID at the border,
but we still have restrictions on our detention facilities that
we cannot use every bed because there is still COVID in the
detention facilities but not COVID at the border. Title 42 is
going away at the border but we cannot hold them. We have to
just wave them through to be able to come through, and cannot
do detention.
It is a double hit here. You are still limiting the number
of people that can be held in detention and you are asking for
fewer beds while you are saying, ``We need more bed space.'' I
am just trying to figure this out.
Mr. Nunez-Neto. To be clear, Senator Portman asked whether
we had the ability to detain everybody we encountered, and my
response was that the Department has actually never had enough
beds to do that.
We are focused right now on reviewing every step of the
expedited removal process to try to compress the timeline. It
takes, historically, six to eight weeks to remove people in
expedited removal who either are found not to have a fear or
who appeal that decision and have the no-fear finding upheld by
an immigration judge. That is just too long, frankly, and it
has been the historical average. We are really working to
maximize the beds we have by getting people through the process
much faster.
But, one of the challenges we have, frankly, is that a
quarter of our encounters right now are from countries we
really cannot remove people to, and we do not have good options
for individuals from Venezuela, from Cuba, and from Nicaragua,
where we do not have the agreements in place with those
governments to remove people, even if an immigration judge does
find that they do not merit asylum.
Senator Carper. Senator Lankford, I am going to ask you to
hold it at that point. There will be a second round, I
understand, and you may want to take advantage of that.
All right, Senator Sinema has joined us, and you are
recognized for seven minutes.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SINEMA
Senator Sinema. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to
the witnesses for being here today.
Yesterday this committee heard from Secretary Mayorkas
regarding the DHS plan for handling the expected influx of
migrants. I have not heard the detail I need to be confident in
the government's plan. In order to meet this moment, DHS needs
to be able to share operational details regarding how they plan
to move migrants through the processing system in a manner that
will keep Arizona communities safe and treat migrants fairly
and humanely.
Ms. Tierney, Arizona communities, NGO's, and local and
Federal law enforcement officers have been struggling to keep
up with the flow of migrants for years. Yesterday Secretary
Mayorkas indicated that work to get resources on the ground in
Arizona are well underway. I have not yet received specific
details that allow me to be confident the government will be
prepared.
On which date will Arizona border sectors have all the
necessary resources, including sufficient infrastructure,
transportation, and staffing to implement the Administration's
plan and avoid further burdening Arizona's local communities?
Ms. Tierney. Thank you for that question, Senator. What I
want to do is talk a little bit about the three lines of effort
that you referenced. The first thing I want to discuss is
personnel. We are in the process of moving additional Federal
law enforcement officers across the Southwest Border, to
include Arizona, in particular, the Yuma and Tucson sectors,
which, as you know, have seen substantial increases in
migration flows.
There is also an effort to provide civilian contract
processing staff, in particular to Yuma. That will allow Border
Patrol agents to then go back out on the line. Then the third
piece is the medical piece, to plus-up the medical resources in
Arizona as well.
That is a mix of interagency support and contracting
support that is online and coming online with the goal of
having things in place prior to May 23rd. So that is for
personnel.
The second piece is transportation. Customs and Border
Protection has undertaken several efforts to address
transportation, in particular air and ground transport. This
again is a mix of interagency agreements and contracts. One of
the biggest pieces of air transport is an interagency agreement
with ICE to use their air transport to move migrants either
laterally or to decompress those stations in particular, again,
I will focus on Yuma because that is a consistently over-
capacity sector in the Border Patrol, Southwest Border system.
Also ground transport. Currently CBP has the capacity to
move about 4,900 people a day. That is being plussed-up to be
almost 9,000 people per day, again through a mix of interagency
agreements and contracts. The one I will particularly note is a
blanket purchase agreement that was awarded on April 29th, and
task orders are already being issued against that, based on
sector requirements.
I also want to note a part of that blanket purchase
agreement includes contract security guard services. This is
important because a lot of the things that Border Patrol agents
do while people are in holding do not have to be done by Border
Patrol agents, and so swapping out contract security services
for a Border Patrol agent will allow those agents to go back
out on the line. That is another part of that blanket purchase
agreement. Again, task orders are being issued against that
right now.
Then the last thing is facilities. There has been a plus-up
in holding capacity across the Southwest Border. Previously it
was about 13,000. Now, as of today, it is 17,161, and on May
23rd there will be an additional 500 soft-sided facility
holding spaces available in Del Rio, Texas--I know not
specifically to Yuma or Tucson, Arizona, but you have to think
about this kind of a system where there is an opportunity to do
lateral movements to decompress overcrowded stations.
In closing, again, things are in place now. Things are
coming online with the goal of having more resources available
on May 23rd, but additional capability to scale up after May
23rd, based on actual flows.
Senator Sinema. I appreciate what you just said, but to be
clear we have read all of this in your report. What I am asking
for are specific details regarding Arizona. Telling me what is
happening in Texas and saying that you can move people from
Arizona to Texas does not actually solve the problem. Do you
have specific Arizona details?
Ms. Tierney. I have topline details here. I do not have
specific Arizona details but we can certainly get you that
offline. I do want to note again it is a system, and so Yuma
and Tucson are a part of a network of sectors on the Southwest
Border, and I do encourage you to look at the whole system, not
just specifically what is in Arizona, and particularly with
holding capacity, because that is where the air and ground
transport contracts and plussing-up those contracts will help
with the lateral decompression.
Senator Sinema. I appreciate that. As you are aware, we
have had significant problems with transport in Arizona
already, with continuing concerns around migrants showing up at
the Sky Harbor Airport, for instance, without appropriate
travel plans, and airport personnel have been taken away from
their duties of helping passengers get safely from one
destination to another to provide assistance to migrants.
As you mentioned before the hearing, some of that has been
alleviated. It has not been solved. It does not sound like
there is a very specific plan with actionable items to address
this prior to May 23rd.
Ms. Tierney. Senator, thank you for that comment and
question. I do want to highlight some of the things that have
happened, and specifically around the Sky Harbor Airport, which
I know is a particular pain point for the airport, and the
county, and something that you have raised multiple times.
Our lead field coordination, which is the senior CBP
official on the ground in Arizona, has convened detailed
operational discussions with both the jurisdiction in which Sky
Harbor Airport is as well as the airport to discuss how they
can better coordinate their actions. From that a few things
have happened. The first one is the identification of a site
for drop-offs that is not specific to the airport, working with
the primary NGO that provides the drop-off services there.
There is also then work with Transportation Security
Administration (TSA) to discuss security clearance processes,
to ensure that people who do arrive have the right
documentation and that TSA has access to the right system so
that they can properly screen people without delay, avoiding
people missing their flight and then having to be stuck at the
airport for several hours or a day or two.
Another issue is ticketing. The lead field coordinator has
convened discussions with both Southwest Airlines and I believe
it was United Airlines to discuss how to better coordinate
ticketing as well as moving people through the airport to their
gate.
There are things that have been done tactically to address
these issues, and as we discussed before the hearing, and as I
will highlight here, is it completely solved? No, it is not.
But there are a lot of things in process and also completed to
have alleviated some of the issues.
I do want to note, though, there is, as we discussed before
the hearing, a limit to what we can do because once people are
processed out of CBP custody the Federal Government has few
levers to actually provide support. There is a lot of
coordination that will have to happen between CBP, the non-
governmental organizations, the local officials and entities
like the Sky Harbor Airport, to ensure that we can move people
through the system and avoid some of the pain points that you
have highlighted previously.
Senator Sinema. Mr. Chair, I know that my time has expired.
Might I be able to ask one additional question?
Chairman Peters [presiding.] Absolutely. Go ahead.
Senator Sinema. Thank you. My next question is for Mr.
Nunez-Neto. Street releases are not new to Arizona communities.
For years I have been working with Arizona's local mayors and
our counties to help relieve the burden caused by these street
releases. The DHS plan indicates that there is defined criteria
in place which our local CBP officers will use to determine
whether and now to perform street releases in particular
communities.
What is the criteria that DHS is utilizing to make these
decisions about street releases, and what steps will be taken
to minimize the burden that is placed on Arizona communities in
the case of street releases?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Thank you, Senator. I welcome also Chief
Huffman's views on this. We are working hard to minimize the
potential for street releases. We acknowledge that they have
happened really consistently over the years when particular
parts of the border become overstretched. We have put
guidelines in place. We would be happy to share with you more
detailed information on that.
I think, in general, the safety of the community and public
safety is kind of the north star in this space and we try to
ensure if there is a need to release migrants that we do so, as
MaryAnn noted, in direct coordination with local NGO's and
local authorities in order to make sure that they have
somewhere to go and a place to sleep.
Chief Huffman, I do not know if you want to add anything to
that.
Mr. Huffman. I concur with what Mr. Neto answered. Local
CBP officials they work closely with the local officials. They
understand the stress of this burden. But as we all know, CBP
is the first step when you counter somebody, and once the
system just gets so strained sometimes you have to make the
choices of those releases. When you have to do so, you do so in
coordination with the NGO's, if they are available, in general,
and make sure you are in coordination with your State and
locals. But obviously, we would like to not have any street
releases if we could avoid it at all.
Senator Sinema. Mr. Chairman, I know my time has expired. I
will note that there have been repeated stories in Arizona,
including the mayor of a small town in Arizona called Gila
Bend, in which there are no shelters and no bus stop. That
mayor was actually transporting migrants himself to the Phoenix
area because of street releases that were unplanned and
unannounced.
I have grave concern that this will continue to be a burden
on local Arizona communities. Additionally, leaving migrants
without any place to go without safe harbor, particularly as
summer temperatures rise over 110 in Southern Arizona.
Mr. Chairman, I have an additional 12 questions that I will
submit for the record, and I am interested in hearing a lot
more about these plans. As of this moment, I do not feel
confident that the system is ready for this mass migration that
could occur as early as May 23rd.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Sinema.
Senator Scott, you are recognized for your questions.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SCOTT
Senator Scott. Thank you, Chair.
I am from the State of Florida. We have quite a few people
who have moved to our State from foreign countries, and we like
immigration. But what is going on in Florida right now, people
have no belief that our Federal Government has secured our
border. They have no belief that there is a plan to secure our
border. They are seeing friends and some families lose their
lives because of the unbelievable increase in drug overdose
with the fentanyl that is coming across the border. They read
the stories about the number of terrorists that have been
caught and they know that there are so many people that have
not been caught, so they assume there are a lot of terrorists
that have come into the country since Joe Biden got elected,
and none of this seems to get any better.
CBP encountered 221,000 illegal immigrants along the
Southwest Border in March, a 33 percent increase compared to
February and the highest number in 22 years. Most concerning is
the encounters of a historic number of illegal aliens from
countries beyond Mexico, in the Northern Triangle now represent
nearly 40 percent of all border encounters in March. In
contrast to fiscal year 2012, encounters of foreign nationals
originating from outside Mexico in the Northern Triangle were
two percent of encounters. In fiscal year 2021, the figure had
increased to 22 percent.
First off, Mr. Nunez-Neto, how many countries are there and
how many countries are represented in people that are coming
across our border illegally now?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Thank you, Senator. It is common each year
to see individuals from dozens of nationalities at our border.
I think what has changed is the sheer volume from countries we
do not traditionally receive people from, and predominantly
that has been this year Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, which
account for about a quarter of our encounters.
Senator Scott. How many countries are represented? How many
countries are there in the world and how many countries are
represented in people that have come across illegally that
Border Patrol has picked up?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. I do not have the specific number in front
of me but it is normally in the high dozens.
Senator Scott. There are about 200 countries in the world,
depending on who you asked, and the Del Rio Sector reported
that last fall migrants from 106 countries crossed their sector
in fiscal year 2021. That is one of nine Southern Border
sectors. Ranking Member Portman said, in March, that there were
people coming over the border this year from 150 countries.
The numbers are staggering and reveal a fact that cannot be
ignored. This is not a regional problem. Apprehensions of
illegal aliens from distant countries like Syria, Lebanon,
Romania, India, Turkey prove that the Biden administration's
radical border policies have sent a clear message to the
world--come across our Southern Border; it is wide open. The
rest of the world clearly believes that if you can get to the
Southern Border, you can come across.
Mr. Nunez-Neto, do you believe our Southern Border is
closed?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. As the Secretary noted yesterday, Senator,
there is no doubt that we are facing severe challenges on our
border. I would note that it is in line with historical trends
to see large numbers of countries encountered at the border,
but again, the key difference that we are currently seeing are
the large numbers of individuals from countries like Venezuela,
Cuba, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, and Haiti,
that we are not accustomed to seeing on the border.
Senator Scott. Is the border closed?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. The border has and continues to present a
challenge for us.
Senator Scott. Do you think our country has a right to have
a secure border? Secretary Mayorkas has come and testified. I
do not see anything happening. I am a business guy. If I went
into business and you saw a 33 percent increase in something
bad happening, somebody would do something.
I was down on the Arizona border a few months ago, and what
the Border Patrol told me is this is the first administration
that they cannot say that they see anything happening. It is
just fascinating mean. We have people dying. About one out of
every 3,000 people in this country died of a drug overdose last
year. It is staggering.
Let me go to Ms. Mendrala. The Biden administration is
supposedly having talks with Cuba now. I am from Florida. We
have a lot of people that are of Cuban descent. They know the
atrocities of the Castro regime for decades. They were furious
when the Obama Administration had their appeasement, which did
not work. I can tell you story after story. I can tell you one
story of a lady I know that after Obama's appeasement the
Castro regime cutoff her hand, stuck it in the mud so she would
die of infection. Do you know what her atrocity was? She
complained that somebody closed a school in her area.
My understanding is we are back talking to them again. We
are talking about the same appeasement stuff that is going to
do nothing. We have 1,300 people in Cuban prisons right now
that peacefully protested on July 11th. Some of these are kids.
They are being tortured. They are going to die. I have not seen
one thing the Biden administration has done. I have called the
White House. The White House has not done one thing to call
this out.
Now my understanding is you are having conversations with
Cuba. Are you going to take them off the State-sponsored
terrorism list? Are you going to take away the sanctions? It
just does not make any sense to anybody I know, that has
watched all the atrocities and has had their family members put
in prison for doing nothing.
Ms. Mendrala. Thank you, Senator, for the question, and I
will say that we absolutely share your concerns about the human
rights situation on the island. President Biden himself,
Secretary Blinken, and several other officials from the State
Department and elsewhere in the Administration have publicly
condemned human rights violations.
Senator Scott. No, no, no, no, no. Joe Biden has not said
one word. I called Joe Biden. I called the White House and they
hung up on me. Joe Biden has not said one word about the
atrocities. He has not said one word about these 1,300
protesters. I asked him to do it. He will not do it. By the
way, when this was going to happen I said, ``You have to get
the internet back on,'' and they said, ``Oh yes, we are going
to work on that.'' There has been nothing done. Or is there
anything being done to get the internet back on, so these
peaceful protesters, so the other protesters can talk to each
other? Nothing. They said, ``Oh yes, we are going to work on
it.'' That was last July. Not one thing has happened.
Ms. Mendrala. Senator, I would be happy to follow up\1\
with you to share some of the statements that have been made
publicly by Administration officials.
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\1\ Ms. Mendrala follow up response to Senator Scott appears in the
Appendix on page 243.
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Senator Scott. Not Joe Biden.
Ms. Mendrala. I will share that we absolutely share your
concerns about the human rights situation on the island, the
political prisoners, those that were protesting peacefully July
11th, and desired to, in days following and before that were
arrested, remained in prison, many of them with harsh
sentences, as you rightly point out, some of them minors. We
have made those concerns publicly and we share those directly
with them as well.
Senator Scott. I would like to see where it is because I
have not seen it. The President has not said a word. Are you
going to take away the sanctions or are you going to take them
off the terror watch list?
Ms. Mendrala. With respect to the migration accords or the
migration talks that occurred a couple of weeks ago, the United
States and Cuba, over several years, over several decades,
brokered migration accords, 1984, 1994, 1995, and 2017, to
commit both sides to several measures that would promote safe,
legal, and orderly migration.
Administrations for decades now have met on a biannual
basis, at a technical level, to discuss the implementation of
the accords. The meeting that occurred a couple of weeks ago
was a resumption of those migration talks to discuss compliance
with the migration accords on both sides, to promote safe,
legal, and orderly migration.
As you know, the challenges of Cuban outflow of migration
is tremendous at this moment. Individuals spending their life
savings, risking their lives in many respects, subjected to
mistreatment by smugglers and traffickers as they make their
way overland to arrive in an irregular fashion at our border.
It is imperative that we work together with partners throughout
the region and speak directly with the Cubans.
Senator Scott. That is a yes that it is on the table, that
you are going to take away the sanctions.
Ms. Mendrala. Oh, no, sir. I am responding specifically to
your question about migration.
Senator Scott. My question is, are you going to take them
off the terrorist watch list, State-sponsored terrorism, and
are you going to eliminate the sanctions?
Ms. Mendrala. Oh, sir, I have no comment on either of
those.
Senator Scott. But if you have no comment that is a yes.
Thank you.
Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Scott.
Senator Rosen, you are recognized for your questions.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROSEN
Senator Rosen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to all
the witnesses for being here.
Of course, we had Secretary Mayorkas yesterday, and as I
said to the Secretary, it really was disappointing that only
after the Administration announced that Title 42 restrictions
would be lifted at the border did DHS release a plan to
Congress for dealing with the change in policy and, of course,
the expected surge at our border.
It is also concerning that the plan seems to lack important
details about how the Administration is going to make sure that
our border is secured. Moreover, things like surging resources
to the border and improving coordination between NGO's and
government, solutions that DHS, frankly, that they have just
offered in the past.
What I want to know from all of you here today is what the
Department has learned since the two-plus years since Title 42
took effect, and how this plan differs from DHS past policies
and practices?
Ms. Tierney, I will start with you, then Mr. NuNez-Neto and
Mr. Huffman, please.
Ms. Tierney. Senator, thank you for that question. Again, I
work at FEMA so my involvement in immigration day to day is
limited, although the past year I have had some involvement. I
think a key thing that I will note is that the Southwest Border
Coordination Center has brought together departmental
components as well as the interagency to coordinate their
actions in a way that perhaps may not have been done before.
Through that we have better aligned our priorities. We have
identified specific objectives and tasks, and every day a team
of dozens is working vigorously to execute against those tasks.
That is why, in the past, I would say, 45 to 60 days there
has been a substantial plus-up in both the acquisition of
resources as well as the deployment of resources. There has
also been significant movement in several policy areas, which
Assistant Secretary Mr. Nunez-Neto could go into.
That is one key thing that I think is different and has
improved outcomes come May 23rd.
Senator Rosen. Thank you.
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Yes, thank you for your question, Senator.
I think there are a number of lessons that have been learned
over the last two years, starting with the fact that because of
the lack of consequences under Title 42 the number of people
who just keep trying to come back is really extraordinarily
high, and that puts a lot of strain on the system. The need to
have consequences for those who do not have a legal basis to
stay in the country I think is a key lesson learned.
I think additionally, as the senior coordinating official,
MaryAnn Tierney, just noted, there are a number of initiatives
underway to really kind of look at the system from beginning to
end and find efficiencies at every step of the process, from
encounter to referral between CBP and ICE, to how ICE manages
expedited removal in its facilities.
One of the things that has been a historical issue for not
just DHS but also DOJ is the fact that all of our immigration
processes are paper-based, and the printing out and scanning of
documents takes an extraordinary amount of time and pulls our
frontline law enforcement personnel away from their law
enforcement duties.
We are working to digitize the notices to appear and to
create an electronic A-file that will, I think, really kind of
revolutionize the way we process at the border. We hope to have
a lot of this done by the end of the year, and I think we will
see huge gains across the entire immigration continuum as part
of that.
Senator Rosen. Thank you. Ms. Tierney, do you have anything
to add?
Ms. Tierney. [Shakes head.]
Mr. Huffman. Again, thank you for the question. As you
know, CBP is just one agency in the overall continuum that
works border security issues, and we are usually the first ones
to encounter people, and then we are kind of in the process of
having to deal with them first. But the ultimately pathway,
where they go, is dependent upon other parts of the program.
I think one of the key lessons we have learned, and this
started back in 2019, when we first saw a big push, is that the
shifting demographics of who we deal with, going from single
adults to family units back to single adults, is very
challenging to have the right type of facilities to do the
processing, to do the temporary custody, those kinds of things.
That turned out to be a big challenge across the board
because historically we were built to deal with single adults.
That is how our system has worked and it is how facilities have
worked. We learned how to quickly scale up and change that. We
started using these soft-sided facilities a lot, and we are
able to configure those soft-sided facilities in order to work
better for us, to be able to detain and process and then move
on to the next stage for those things. That was key to us, as
Mr. Nunez-Neto mentioned, improving our processes in between,
to move them from the technology issues, to get away from
paper, and switch to digital. Those are important.
This is kind of one of the first times where CBP has not
felt in the fight alone for this situation. Seem to have a
better, whole-of-government approach this time, so that is
really helpful. It helped us last spring and summer, when we
were dealing with an extremely large number of unaccompanied
children, to finally get fully coordinated and a unified team
to process this thing.
That same process we are using now as we get ready for
Title 42 to go away because we are dealing with unprecedented
numbers. There is no question about that. I am probably the
only guy that was on the job here in 1986, when we set the
first record of 1.6 million encounters that year, which was
very difficult to do, and we have gone through several like
that.
But over time we have learned how to take better care of
those in our custody, how to process faster, but also to make
sure we have all the team players involved in it, from within
Homeland Security plus DOJ, Department of State, all involved
to help us deal with the situation.
Senator Rosen. Thank you, because I do think we have to
take these lessons learned into a coordinated, whole-of-
government approach, turn it into an action plan, like
digitizing, so you can share better across agencies, being able
to modernize our facilities. But we have to have a plan that is
robust, coordinated, and humane and dignified.
I look forward to working with you on that. I am going to
submit my next question for the record because all of this
really begs the need for comprehensive immigration reform that
really does take these lessons learned and turn them into
humane, dignified, robust action plan, not only at our border
but for our immigration as a whole.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Rosen.
Senator Johnson, you are recognized for your questions.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHNSON
Senator Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have dueling
charts here. I do not expect you to be able to read all the
detail here, but a picture does paint 1,000 words.
Just so you know, the gold is single adults, blue are
family units, red are unaccompanied children. What we have here
is 10 years' worth of monthly apprehensions. I kind of told the
story yesterday with Secretary Mayorkas, but let me tell a
slightly different story.
Over the last eight and a half years, on average, we had
about 30,000 single adults being apprehended at the Southwest
Border monthly, about 30,000. Very steady. What we had in 2014
was the humanitarian crisis of unaccompanied children and
family units exploiting our asylum laws. The same thing
happened in 2019. Something different is happening now.
The first thing you will see is an explosion in single
adults. Now we are hearing this yesterday and again today that
they want to explain this away as from repeat offenders. The
Chairman's chart\1\ showed 25 percent of the apprehensions were
repeat offenders. This is from 30,000 to well over 150,000.
Chief Huffman, do repeat offenders account for going from an
average 30,000 to over 150,000 single adults being apprehended
on a monthly basis?
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\1\ The chart referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the Appendix
on page 101.
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Mr. Huffman. Thank you for the question, Senator. I believe
you are correct. The math does not add up. I mean, there is a
significant amount of recidivism, folks involved in the Title
42. We know that.
Senator Johnson. We had recidivism back here too, right?
Mr. Huffman. Yes, sir, and going all the way back to when
we were counting, in 1986. Recidivisms are in all those
numbers. There is no question about that.
Senator Johnson. There is something else going on here. Let
me suggest where you really started seeing single adults
increase was during the 2020 Presidential debates, when every
Democratic Presidential candidate said they were not going to
deport anybody and they were going to offer people free health
care.
Now again, if you look at the chart,\1\ there are some
pretty remarkable break points. For example, the number of
apprehensions dropped precipitously right after President Trump
was elected. People thought our laws were going to change, we
were going to tighten up the border, so they stopped coming.
They found out, no, nothing really changed and they started
surging.
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\1\ Senator Johnson's chart appears in the Appendix on page 103.
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Then President Trump did real consequences. Return to
Mexico was a real consequence, and it worked. It pretty well
stopped the flow of unaccompanied children and family units
exploiting our asylum laws, and all we were left with were
single adults, until the Biden administration, and once again
family units and unaccompanied children exploiting our asylum
laws took off.
We have been nibbling around the edges. This is surreal,
the last two days, what we have been talking about here.
Nothing is going to fix the problem until we actually talk
about the root cause, and the root cause is the credible fear
standard. It is so low in comparison to what the asylum
standard is. Getting asylum is actually quite difficult, is it
not, Mr. Nunez-Neto? You have to be persecuted or fear being
persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality,
membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.
That is the asylum standard. Correct? Economic migration does
not count. Correct?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Sir, you are right that there is a wide
difference between the statutorily mandated credible fear
interview at the beginning of the process----
Senator Johnson. That was the root cause of the problem,
right, because the vast majority of people that come in here,
they are coached to say that you are afraid to go home,
credible fear, and they get waved in, never to have their claim
adjudicated, and now we have somewhere between 20 and 30
million people in this country undocumented because of that
fact.
The credible fear bar is so low in comparison to what the
actual asylum standard is, and until we fix that we are going
to continue to have this kind of flow, particularly with an
Administration that is not willing to do what the previous
administration did and offer a real consequence.
Real quick, what are those consequences we stopped talking
about? The main consequence is expedited removal. We are still
doing that. Correct?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Yes, sir, we are still using expedited
removal.
Senator Johnson. The only other consequence we are talking
about is we are not writing down their name. I do not know. We
used to actually remove them like 100 miles or quite a few
miles away from the entry point. That was a consequence. Do we
do that anymore, Chief Huffman.
Mr. Huffman. Yes, sir. We are still having some interior
repatriation flights. When the flights are available we do can
do that. Yes, sir.
Senator Johnson. So that is still a consequence. Again, so
we are still doing some consequences. Expedited removal, we are
still doing that, and we still have that flow.
I guess my question, first of all, for Ms. Mendrala, you
talked about disinformation in South America. What is that
disinformation?
Ms. Mendrala. Sir, thank you for the question, Senator. We
have seen smugglers and other bad actors use information, twist
information, craft disinformation about U.S. border policies in
such a way to----
Senator Johnson. Specifically, what do they tell them?
Ms. Mendrala. We have seen information that would suggest
that certain nationalities would be granted entry without
consequence----
Senator Johnson. OK. Let me stop you right there. Isn't
that exactly what is happening here? People are granted entry
without consequence. Last year, close to one million processed
and dispersed. Another few hundred thousand known got-aways
because we are so overwhelming Customs and Border Patrol. We
are not going to fix this unless we are honest.
The reality is, what the people are being told in Central
America is largely true. You come to America, you cross the
border, you say, ``I am afraid to go home,'' and you are home
free. Isn't that the reality, Chief Huffman? Isn't that exactly
what the agents on the border are having to grapple with? There
is nothing they can do because that is the policy of this
Administration, process and disperse.
Mr. Huffman. I will speak to what I think the agents up
front, without regard to the policy. I will defer that to DHS
policy. But there is a level of frustration because they
believe that many people are, ``gaming the system'' or making
fears they may not really have because it is possible to do
that.
Ideally, though, those are single adults that we do have a
clear path for removal, that we can put into expedited removal,
and they can have those claims assessed. The biggest challenge,
as you know, comes when we are dealing with the other
populations, such as family units that seem to exploit that. As
we go to applying consequences further up--and we intend to,
and we have been somewhat and hopefully we will be able to
increase our consequences of the criminal prosecution aspect,
as the counts start opening up, and we are able to prosecute
more cases there--the next concern would be, of course, that
single adults will start becoming family units again, as we
have seen in the past.
Senator Johnson. They will sell children to make a family
unit. When I was Chairman, we had testimony that a child was
sold for $84 to form a family unit.
There are no consequences being applied here. There was
with Return to Mexico but that was dismantled, the first day of
this Administration. Again, we have to actually understand what
the root cause is. Sure, there are push factors, but the main
root cause is the pull factor, the reality that you can come to
America, say you are afraid to go home, and you are home free
and you get to stay. That is the pull factor. That is why you
have this problem.
Until this Administration is willing to recognize that root
cause we are going to have an enormous problem, even though the
Secretary will not admit it is a problem.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Johnson.
Senator Hassan, you are recognized for your questions.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HASSAN
Senator Hassan. Thank you, Chairman Peters. I want to thank
you and Ranking Member Portman for this hearing. I want to
thank all of the Members of this very distinguished panel
before the Committee today to discuss ongoing efforts to secure
the Southern Border.
Chief Huffman, I am going to start with a question to you.
I recently visited the Southern Border for a third time and was
there in early April. I am concerned after that visit that DHS
is not more widely deploying the technologies that you are
using to help secure the border in some locations. Greater
deployment of integrated and autonomous cameras, radar,
sensors, and additional technology to detect and deter the
unauthorized aerial vehicles (UAVs), that smugglers use would
expand CBP's capabilities, address existing security gaps, and
be a force multiplier.
Congress has previously appropriated millions of dollars
for these technologies, some of which CBP has not spent. Chief
Huffman, what is holding up CBP's deployment of small border
technologies, particularly to strategic locations? Does the
Department need additional funding for any equipment or to
surge resources in order to complete required reviews or plans
before the technology can be deployed?
Mr. Huffman. Thank you for that question and, obviously,
thank you for the funding. That is extremely important. The
technology provides CBP as a whole, and Border Patrol in
particular, the level of situational awareness that is critical
to their success, and for your recognition of that it is
important to do that.
The main reason between the lag between the obligation of
the funds and the deployment, generally it is real estate
issues and environmental issues. It is not a lack-of-resource
issue. It is the process where you are acquiring property or
you are acquiring those things. It is regulatory issues that we
work through. We are working through those as quickly as we can
and intend to be deploying all of the technology we have as
quickly as we can.
Senator Hassan. Would it be helpful to you, I mean, when
you work through regulatory issues like that it takes personnel
to do that. Would it be helpful to you to surge personnel who
do these regulatory processes?
Mr. Huffman. It could very well be, on the particular
cases. It all depends on where it is and what you are trying to
accomplish to do that. Our office that does that works real
closely with the different programs to do that. If they need
personnel they ask for additional personnel and try to meet the
timelines necessary. But certainly if we have an opportunity to
speed it along with that we would certainly be happy to do that
and look into how that could help.
Senator Hassan. I would look forward to working on that
with you because we have to get that done. Strategic deployment
of that technology is really critical.
Mr. Huffman. Yes, ma'am. I could not agree more.
Senator Hassan. OK. Let me ask you another question, Chief.
In your testimony you noted that CBP is shifting Border Patrol
agents and CBP officers from other locations to assist at the
Southern Border. When I visited the border last month,
personnel there said that while these temporary duty
assignments certainly help address increased migrant flow they
are taxing for the agents, officers, and their families and
they are not a long-term solution.
I am also concerned that the continual and likely increased
shifting of personnel to the Southern Border will have a
detrimental impact on travel, trade, and security along the
Northern Border. How will CBP work to increase personnel at the
Southern Border and continually and reliably meet these
staffing needs?
Mr. Huffman. Again, thank you for that for two reasons.
One, anyone that takes care and concern about our front force,
our workplace, that is important to us so I appreciate your
care and concern about that.
It is a very challenging time. There is no question about
that. People have detailed to those areas, to the problem
areas, and we try to minimize that as much as we can. Some of
the things we are working on is, one, for the first time ever
we are establishing these contract processors to get agents
back to the field, which may relieve the need to bring more
down. We are increasing our use of the remote processing to
allow people to stay. Using technology to stay on the Northern
Border, we process those ways as well, it is another process to
do that.
As we increase the hiring of our Border Patrol processing
coordinators, also those things are all efforts that we are
planning to affect the personnel issue, that deal with those
issues, to increase more people on the front line organically
or with contractors, or with resources in there to do that, so
we will have less likely to do that.
Those all take a while to evolve, as we get to those
places, to where they function like we would like to. We rely
upon our leadership and our Northern Border ports and our
Northern Border sectors to balance their resources as well as
they can to address those and minimize that, leaning heavily on
our Stonegarden partners in those areas as well to help us
address all those things across the enterprise.
It is a big case of risk management is what it is, and that
is what we are trying to do the best we can in those
situations.
Senator Hassan. I understand you are trying to do the best
you can. I am also obviously concerned that as we stand up more
resources at the Southern Border we attend to the security and
trade and travel at the Northern Border as well. Again, I look
forward to working with you to make sure that that happens.
Ms. Tierney, the first pillar of the DHS plan for Southern
Border security focuses on surging additional resources to
support border operations, including medical support resources.
The plan indicates that DHS is expanding medical support and
COVID-19 mitigation protocols and was preparing to be able to
provide medical care for up to 18,000 people per day by the end
of April.
Ms. Tierney, did DHS make its deadline, and how can DHS
ensure that frontline operations have the necessary medical
resources and support if 18,000 people were apprehended
tomorrow?
Ms. Tierney. Senator, thank you for that question. I
appreciate the opportunity to talk about the medical support
plan.
Currently CBP has over 800 contract medical personnel
capable of providing 24/7 medical support. They are also
authorizing travel and pay for the current personnel to again
move around the Southwest Border, based on requirements. There
has also been work with the Federal interagency to identify and
secure Federal medical teams from across a variety of
departments. That is underway, and those requests for
assistance are in process.
There is also work to plus-up the contract that exists
currently, and that is also underway with task orders against
that, as well, as I mentioned, the interagency agreements.
There is medical personnel onsite now. There will be
Federal interagency support between now and May 23rd teed up
and employed, and then the expansion of the existing contracts.
Senator Hassan. Does that mean that in your assessment,
with those resources in place, that if there were 18,000 people
at the border tomorrow you would be prepared to meet the
medical needs? That is what the plan said, you would be ready
by the end of April.
Ms. Tierney. Senator, I think what I would say is, being a
prudent and practical person that we will have resources in
place and we will have an ability to expand based on
requirements.
I think, again, as the Secretary and others have mentioned,
if CBP were to encounter up to 18,000 people per day, that will
place enormous strain on the system. I think it is unclear
whether the medical services that are currently in place or
that are in the process of being in place could flex to that
level. That is almost three times the number of people that are
currently encountered at the border, on average.
Senator Hassan. I think one of my concerns, and Mr. Chair,
I want to do one follow-up on this--I know I am running over
time--but one of my concerns about this plan, the discussion we
have been having about getting ready for the eventual lifting
of Title 42 is that people keep telling me, but we have a plan,
and it is not clear that having the plan and actually having
the resources on the ground to meet the goals of that plan are
the same thing.
I appreciate this dialog, but what I am going to continue
to follow up with all of you on is what does that mean in
operational terms for the frontline personnel who will, in all
likelihood, be seeing a significant increase in attempted
migrant crossing when Title 42 is lifted.
Now I want to follow up with one other issue, Ms. Tierney.
The DHS plan also indicated that the Department is planning to
expand its COVID-19 vaccine program to 24 CBP sites by May
23rd, so that all age-eligible, non-citizens who had not
already been vaccinated would receive their first dose before
they traveled beyond a processing center.
Ms. Tierney, is the Department's 100 percent vaccination
plan based upon current apprehension levels or does it account
for 18,000 possible daily apprehensions? Would the 24 sites
noted in the plan be sufficient to accommodate all unvaccinated
individuals or would additional sites and resources be
necessary?
Ms. Tierney. Senator, thank you for that question. I
believe you kind of had a two-part question. I would like to
address the first part because I think it is a very important
point that is worth discussing in this forum.
I think we would all agree that officer safety and the
safety of the non-citizens crossing the border--is a priority.
The plan lays out the resources that we will need to have in
place by May 23rd, and have the ability to flex up to, based on
increases in encounters at the 12,000 and 18,000 encounter-per-
day planning assumptions.
The plan lays out what we need to do, and what the
Southwest Border Coordination Center, the people working in it,
the interagency, is doing is actioning those planning items to
actually resource the things that we need, whether it is
additional Federal law enforcement personnel, contract civilian
processors to free up Border Patrol agents, contract security
guards, buses, airlift, medical personnel, additional
facilities. That is what we have been doing and what we will
continue to do in order to be ready for May 23rd and be
positioned for additional encounters.
Senator Hassan. The Chairman is indicating that it is time
to move on because we are well over time. That is not the
question I asked. I understand what you are saying to me now. I
will look forward to following up with you. I would like, in
writing, a response on the vaccination capacity. Thank you.
Ms. Tierney. Certainly.
Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Hassan.
Senator Padilla, you are recognized for your questions.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PADILLA
Senator Padilla. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There has been a
lot of talk for several weeks now about Title 42, and what it
means if and when it is lifted on May 23rd or another date. To
remind us, on the Committee, and to remind the public that what
Title 42 is and what it is not.
Title 42 is not an immigration law. It is a public health
regulation. The other thing that is important to remind folks
is we are engaging in important conversations about immigration
policy and the asylum process, and it is absolutely legal for
people who come from around the world to the United States to
request asylum. It does not mean that it is automatically
guaranteed but it is lawful to request asylum based on
conditions that one or a family is fleeing.
I personally was happy to see the Administration announce
an end to Title 42 and the resumption of asylum processing at
the border. I know some of my colleagues would like the
American public to think that taking down Title 42 is a major
shift in policy, but lifting a public health order, which is
what Title 42 is, actually would only return us to our existing
immigration laws, where people seeking asylum in the country
are allowed to exercise that legal right.
Now this legal right has been on the books for decades. My
first question is for Ms. Mendrala. What obligations exist
under United States and international law to allow people to
exercise their legal right to ask for asylum and what impact
did Title 42 have on that right?
Ms. Mendrala. Thank you, Senator, for the question. With
respect to U.S. immigration law I will defer to my colleagues
on the panel. With respect to international law, there are laws
in countries throughout the region. Each country's protection,
the legal framework for protection and asylum is unique. One of
the priorities of the State Department is to work with partner
countries, select countries, to strengthen their protection
mechanisms and to strengthen their asylum systems so that
individuals seeking refuge in those countries can find
meaningful access in an efficient way, protection in the
countries where they seek it, and not be forced to take the
journey to the United States in order to do so.
Senator Padilla. The second part of the question is how did
Title 42 help or hurt that process?
Ms. Mendrala. Sir, it is unique on every country context. I
think as the United States put in place a public health order
at our border, many countries throughout the region enacted
similar public health measure as well, to require additional
public health documentation upon entering a country or to enact
movement restrictions that we saw globally, the number of
people on the move, migrating, be it regularly or irregularly,
during the pandemic dropped dramatically because of generalized
movement restrictions and quarantine, be those imposed by the
State or self-imposed.
Senator Padilla. I think from a layman's point of view it
certainly did not make things better. I know we are living in
unique times, given the once-in-a-century global health
pandemic. But one would be hard-pressed to suggest that the
absence of the ability for someone to seek asylum, a lawful
opportunity when you limit or constrain law opportunities to
migrate, that only serves to add pressures and demands for
unlawful methods of migration. I do not think it has been a
success by that measure.
Let me change topics here for a second. I want to focus on
DHS's plans for the wind-down of Title 42. Again, I was glad to
see that one of the six pillars of the plan for the end of
Title 42 is focused on coordination and communication with
NGO's at the border as well as with State and local
governments. I think this coordination is going to be key to
ensuring that groups have time to prepare and local communities
do not become overburdened as they receive and support
individuals who have been screened, and only those properly
released to continue with their immigration cases.
I am proud of the work that the State of California has
done with groups in my State, including the California
Welcoming Task Force, who have been working to support people
coming to our country to seek safety. But they cannot
effectively continue to do that without adequate communication
and coordination from DHS, let alone financial assistance, but
that is another conversation.
I want to urge that the people working tirelessly at the
Department to prepare to return to a safer, more orderly, and
more humane process at the border, particularly the SBCC,
closely coordinate and communicate with NGO's and State and
local governments, and not just in California but across the
border.
A question for Mr. Nunez-Neto. Can you walk us through the
steps that you are taking as part of this plan to bolster the
capacities and the preparedness of NGO's to receive non-
citizens after they have been processed by CBP?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Yes. Thank you for that question, sir, and
I am happy to start the answer but will hand it off to the
senior coordinating official, MaryAnn Tierney, because the SBCC
is really where the rubber meets the road.
We have been working through FEMA's Emergency Food and
Shelter Grant Program to provide resources to NGO's to help
really with all the back-end things that they do to move
migrants and non-citizens along to their final destinations. We
are deeply thankful of Congress enacting additional funds for
that program this year.
I will say, as MaryAnn often notes, that there continues to
be a gap between what the U.S. Government can do and what the
need is, and I will maybe hand the baton over to her to
describe how the SBCC is trying to fill that gap.
Ms. Tierney. Great. Thank you, and thank you, Senator, for
that question. I will agree with you that I think California
has a very robust system for addressing the migrant surge in
that State, in particular the California Office of Emergency
Services, the City and County of San Diego, as well as the two
primary NGO's servicing those areas.
A lot of work has been done by the CBP lead field
coordinator, again, the senior official on the ground
responsible for coordinating all of this, to establish
regularized and robust interaction with the State and with
locals. For example, at the CBP Emergency Operations Center for
Region Nine, which covers California, Cal Office of Emergency
Services (OES) and Cal Health have representatives in that
location. I believe that is kind of the gold standard and the
ideal that I would personally like to see across the southwest
border in terms of complete physical integration of those
operations.
In addition, a lot of work has been done with the NGO's. I
will use California as an example because one of the first
things I did when I got this assignment was go visit the
border. In each of my locations I did meet with NGO's and
toured their operations and discussed with them their
challenges. That ongoing interaction and operational
coordination was a key thing that I heard, a well, as something
that was not as robust as it needed to be. That is something at
the SBCC, with the lead field coordinators we have worked, I
would say relentlessly, to improve through regularized and
recurring meetings, both with NGO's and with State and local
officials that have an operational role. That has occurred in
California, as I mentioned, which I believe is the gold
standard----
Senator Padilla. Thank you. I hate to interrupt. I do not
want to be the only member who did not go over his time and I
want to ask one more quick question, but before I do underscore
what you just said, that California is the model through that
interagency coordination and collaboration. I invite all my
colleagues on this Committee and across the Senate to support
replicating that model throughout the Southwest Border, not
just on the California side.
But my final item, just quickly. DHS has indicated also
that in preparation for a potential increase in migration the
agency will focus on targeting people who attempt to cross the
border more than once for criminal prosecution, as part of the
agency's initiative to escalate consequences and conserve
processing resources. The agency has also indicated that it
will refer for prosecution, ``those whose conduct warrants
it.'' While that may sound good at the surface level I am
concerned about the plan to use prosecution as a deterrent
without being clear-eyed and focused on how it is applied. In
the past, such deterrent policies have not always worked, and
instead were just used to punish asylum seekers, which we have
already established is lawful. It is a potential huge violation
of U.S. obligations under the Refugee Convention.
A question for Mr. Huffman. Does CBP have plans to refer
asylum seekers for prosecution, and if not, how are you going
to safeguard that?
Mr. Huffman. Sir, thank you for the question. As you know,
the United States government secures this border by proper
application of administration and criminal law. That is the
method we use for securing our borders and that is what we do.
The plan to increase prosecutions for those that warrant it
will be primarily someone who has been referred for expedited
removal, they have been removed, and they have returned. They
have already gone through that process already to do that. I
can tell you that no one will be referred to prosecution simply
because they are an asylum seeker. That would be well outside
our guidelines.
In addition to that, we refer cases for criminal
prosecution if we feel they should be prosecuted. The U.S.
attorney is the ultimate determination if they would go forward
with that case. But where circumstances would warrant it would
be people that may try to harm a Border Patrol agent, may try
to put somebody else in danger, those kinds of circumstances
that increase the likelihood that they are a dangerous person.
It could be their criminal record, that they have some sort of
record also that warrants it that may lead them to be more
likely a candidate for criminal prosecution. There are a number
of factors that can do that.
Senator Padilla. Thank you for your response. In closing I
want to underscore we will be following up to ensure proper
communication of that understanding, change in policies,
training folks on the ground and close to the ground to make
sure that what you are suggesting here is followed through in
practice.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Padilla.
Senator Ossoff, you are recognized for your questions.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR OSSOFF
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our
witnesses.
Ms. Tierney, the United States must know and control who
enters and exits our territory. That is a basic condition of
sovereignty. The Department expects, does it not, a significant
increase in attempted unauthorized entry along the Southern
Border this summer?
Ms. Tierney. Sir, the DHS Office of Immigration Statistics
has published projections that show an increase in irregular
migration post-Title 42.
Senator Ossoff. Is the Administration prepared for this
anticipated surge in attempted crossings?
Ms. Tierney. Senator, thank you for that question. We have
identified the needed requirements to meet the different levels
of our planning assumptions and we are actively working to both
resource physical assets as well as policies and improvements
to processing to meet those increased surges.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. Tierney, but my question is
a simpler one. It is, is the Administration prepared?
Ms. Tierney. Sir, I think since some of these projections
are higher than what CBP has seen previously, I think we are
doing prudent planning. We are using the planning to identify
the resources requirements that would be needed based on what
experts like Chief Huffman and others identify as the need. We
are working to improve policies. I think we are readying
ourselves and we are going to be as ready as we can be, come
May 23rd.
Senator Ossoff. If you are not able to confidently state
that the Administration is prepared, what are the requirements
that are unmet? Have you sent, for example, a request for a
supplemental to Congress? If you are not prepared, what is it
going to take to get prepared? Because my constituents lack
confidence that sufficient preparation is ongoing and that the
Administration is prepared. If you are not prepared, what do
you need?
Ms. Tierney. Sir, I would not say that we are not prepared.
What I would say is that we are preparing, based on
projections, based on requirements identified by experts. We
are resourcing against those requirements, and we will have the
necessary items in place for May 23rd.
Now, again, I have been an emergency manager for quite some
time. I never feel like we are prepared enough. I always want
to be more prepared than we need to be. We are doing everything
we can to be ready. We have been working furiously, since the
fall of 2021, to get ready. We are more ready now than we were
yesterday, and we will certainly be more ready on May 23rd than
we are now.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. Tierney. How will you
measure success?
Ms. Tierney. We have identified, for each of our major
agencies, items that would indicate stability. For example,
with Customs and Border Protection, the Southwest Border
Coordination Center has identified a stability goal for Border
Patrol that is having twice as much holding as we have
encounters over a 48-hour period. For example, if the Border
Patrol is seeing about 6,000 to 7,000 encounters a day, which
is what they are generally seeing right about now, then you
would want to have about 13,000 to 14,000 holding spaces
available. I think that is an indicator of what the system can
absorb and process through in about a 48-hour period.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. Tierney. My time is limited,
but I would like you to walk me through several of the other
metrics or qualitative assessments that you will use to measure
success. You say you are preparing, and I knowledge that work
is ongoing. How will you measure whether that preparation has
been effective? You mentioned holding capacity relative to
encounters. What are the other measures of success?
Ms. Tierney. So time in custody would be another measure of
success. Also the ability to decompress Border Patrol stations
through lateral movement and some of the other options that we
have identified, like mobile en route processing. So monitoring
the capacity of the individual sectors, identifying sectors
that are over capacity, and then being able to flex to address
that over-capacity.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. Tierney.
Ms. Contreras, I want to discuss with you the welfare of
unaccompanied minors in Federal custody. First of all, has ORR
mistreated or previously subjected minors in U.S. immigration
detention to abusive conditions, to risk of abuse, to sexual
misconduct? Has that occurred in U.S. custody?
Ms. Contreras. Senator, thank you for that question. As
background, I want you to know that during my first week on the
job I visited Fort Bliss. I wanted to see what the care was
like for the children, as you are speaking to, and I thank you
for asking about it.
What we saw is ORR, we have the responsibility, at HHS, for
legal and moral obligation, and that is always and first about
the safety of kids. We have had situations when we had to move
very quickly to meet a greater capacity in a short amount of
time, where we needed to improve conditions, and that has been
the focus over the last year, so that now what you see are, a
lot of emergency intake sites were, of course, now demobilized.
Mental health supports for kids, case management so they have
access to someone, recreation, health, safety needs, those have
all been the priority.
Senator Ossoff. Ms. Contreras--and I do want to get into
the steps that are being taken now, and I recognize that this
Government Accountability Office (GAO) report refers to
misconduct and incidents principally or even entirely prior to
your tenure. I recognize that. But this is an HHS Office of
Inspector General (OIG) report.\1\ It talks about inadequate
supervision, sexual misconduct, the abuse of children in U.S.
Federal custody. It is completely unacceptable that this has
taken place.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The HHS OIG Report referenced by Senator Ossoff appears in the
Appendix on page 106
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I want to ask you two questions, Ms. Contreras, with my
time remaining, and these will be my final questions. I thank
you in advance for your response.
The first is, can you give this Committee and the Congress
and the American people and my constituents assurances that
preparations have been made, safeguards are in place to ensure
that minor children in U.S. immigration detention are never
subjected to this abuse again? That is the first question. The
second question is, what specific steps are you taking to
ensure that, and will you grant the Red Cross unrestricted
access to ORR facilities that house migrant children?
I will give you the time, with the Chairman's indulgence,
to answer, and that will be my final question. Thank you.
Ms. Contreras. Thank you, Senator. On the question of
access to the Red Cross, that is something that I would have to
ask our team about, but I would be happy to do that and get
back to you. We welcome the oversight that comes from Members
of this Committee, from our nonprofit partners, from the Flores
monitor. That is an important part of accountability and
transparency as we carry out this very important mission.
Senator Ossoff. I am sorry. I know I said I was done and
the Chairman is going to tap me out with the gavel soon. I do
have here, this is a Red Cross press release\1\ saying HHS,
ORR, and FEMA have requested that the Red Cross provide support
to ensure unaccompanied children have safe, clean, comfortable
conditions in detention. So you are seeking this from the Red
Cross. Is that correct? Will you grant them access to
facilities, even when you do not ask for it, so they can
inspect these facilities and ensure that children are not being
mistreated?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The Red Cross letter referenced by Senator Ossoff appears in
the Appendix on page 150
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ms. Contreras. Senator, that is something I will follow up
with. I have not seen the letter, but again, we welcome
oversight and we certainly value our partners.
I do not want to end without addressing your first question
about what is the commitment. You absolutely have the
commitment of the ORR staff, of HHS, and certainly myself of
one month into my tenure as Assistant Secretary. I have
represented many kids as their lawyer who have been abused, in
many ways. While we always have that possibility of predators
being in existence, what we are doing at HHS--we are the child
welfare agency--is to make sure that we are taking every
precaution, that we are staffed adequately so that there are
eyes on our children, that we are using safeguards to make sure
that we are keeping kids safe.
So you have my absolute assurance that that is the No. 1
priority for us at HHS.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you. I look forward to the follow-up
on the Red Cross.
Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Ossoff.
Senator Hawley, you are recognized for your questions.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HAWLEY
Senator Hawley. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thanks
to all of the witnesses for being here.
Mr. Nunez-Neto, if I could start with you. You are the
Acting Assistant Secretary for Border and Immigration Policy at
DHS. Is that right?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. That is right, Senator.
Senator Hawley. So it is your role, then, to help formulate
and drive policy and implement those policies at the
Department. Have I got that right?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Correct.
Senator Hawley. Help me understand the Administration's
policy. Are you trying to stop illegal immigration anymore or
have you given up on that?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Sir, we are committed to enforcing the laws
that Congress has enacted at the border, and as I noted in my
testimony we are expanding our use of expedited removal as we
prepare for the end of Title 42, particularly for recidivist
border crossers.
Senator Hawley. OK. So that sounds like a yes. That is a
yes, you are still trying to stop illegal immigration? It is
hard to tell but you are telling me yes?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. That is correct, sir.
Senator Hawley. OK. Let us talk about a few of your
policies, since you are in charge of policy, and you can tell
me which of these has been effective in stopping illegal
immigration.
OK. Ending construction of the border wall. Has that been
effective in stopping illegal immigration?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. I would defer to my colleague from Customs
and Border Protection, but my understanding is that barriers on
the border serve to slow irregular migration, not stop
irregular migration.
Senator Hawley. OK. You are saying that the border wall is
not effective. So maybe we should just tear the whole thing
down.
Mr. Nunez-Neto. The border wall is effective in rerouting
migration, and it is effective in slowing the pace at which
migrants can cross the border, which is particularly important
in urban and suburban settings. In rural area, what we have
found is it is still fairly easy for migrants to make holes in
the wall----
Senator Hawley. OK. Interesting. So stopping construction
of it, though, has not slowed illegal immigration.
How about terminating the Remain in Mexico policy, which
you have tried to do? Has that stopped illegal immigration, or
slowed it?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Sir, as you know, we are in the process of
reimplementing the MPP program as part of----
Senator Hawley. Yes, because you are under court order to
do so. But you have tried, as a matter of policy, to end it. So
was that successful in slowing illegal immigration?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Sir, as our Secretary noted in his prior
testimony, his view is that the MPP program poses unjustifiable
costs on migrants and illegally restricts their access to the
asylum system.
Senator Hawley. Yes. OK. How about ending our ``safe
third'' agreements with Northern Triangle countries? Has that
been successful in stopping or slowing illegal immigration?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. I would defer to my colleague from the
State Department in terms of these international agreements.
But, only one of those agreements was even starting to be
implemented prior to Title 42, and Title 42----
Senator Hawley. Have we seen a decrease in illegal
immigration since you eliminated them?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. I think what you have seen, sir, is the
impact of Title 42 on our border crossings.
Senator Hawley. Oh, OK. Since you mentioned Title 42, has
the attempt to rescind Title 42, has that been successful in
slowing illegal immigration?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Title 42, I think, has had a really
interesting effect on migration in that, because of the number
of repeat border crossers we see it has actually inflated our
numbers at the border. I think what you have also seen----
Senator Hawley. Are you saying that Title 42 have
increased----
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Is an increase in Mexican migration----
Senator Hawley [continuing]. Illegal immigration? Are you
saying that the Title 42 restrictions have increased illegal
immigration?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. I think that the data is clear, that
Senator Johnson showed earlier, that once Title 42 restrictions
were put in place we have seen an actual increase in migration
from Mexico, in particular, and that is because of the lack of
consequences----
Senator Hawley. Oh, wow. So eliminating it will then you
think, decrease the amount of illegal immigration?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. I think over time, once we start reimposing
significant immigration consequences on people at the border
through our use of expedited removal, particularly for single
adults----
Senator Hawley. Oh, wow.
Mr. Nunez-Neto. And particularly for those from Mexico, you
are going to see a decrease.
Senator Hawley. Wow. That is news. That is news, ladies and
gentlemen, that this Administration's position, you still
clearly want to rescind Title 42, and you think that rescinding
it will decrease illegal immigration at the border.
Let us talk about the facts here. Last year alone--DHS
experienced a record 1.7 million border crossings, more than 2
million unauthorized migrants crossed the Southern Border
during the last calendar year, and in fiscal year 2022, to
date, there have been 245,390 illegal crossings in just the Rio
Grande Valley, and 195,289 in Del Rio. The number of single
adults crossing in these areas is up 75 percent. Why is it up?
Because of all of the policies that we have just talked about.
Your policies are single-handedly leading to an explosion of
illegal immigration at the border, and yet you are sitting here
and telling me that border walls have nothing to do with it,
that Title 42 will lead to a decrease in illegal immigration,
that eliminating the ``safe third'' agreements have nothing to
do with the surge.
Good heavens. This is just remarkable.
All right. Let me ask you something else. Last week DHS
released a memorandum that lays out your six-part plan to
address the current--by the way, what would you call what is
happening at the border? Is it a crisis?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. I believe we are facing significant
challenges at the border, sir.
Senator Hawley. Challenges. Is it a problem?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. I think there are parts of the border where
we have seen particularly problematic flows.
Senator Hawley. Problematic flows. Parts of the border. But
it is not a crisis.
Mr. Nunez-Neto. It is a challenge, sir.
Senator Hawley. OK. Let the record reflect that the witness
does not think that this is a crisis. I would hate to see what
a crisis would be. I mean, who could possibly imagine?
All right. I assume you played a role in drafting this
plan. Let us look at some of the prongs of this plan. You want
to bolster the capacity of non-governmental organizations to
receive non-citizens after they have been processed by CBP and
are awaiting the results of their immigration removal
proceedings. You want to increase CBP processing efficiency in
order to address overcrowding at Border Patrol stations.
I have to be honest with you. As I look at this it looks
like an attempt to memorialize your efforts to help as many
illegal immigrants get into the country as possible.
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Sir, the third pillar of the plan is our
efforts to impose consequences on those who try to enter the
country illegally.
Senator Hawley. Of which you have a demonstrated track
record of doing precisely nothing of any consequence. You have
presided over the most unbelievable explosion of illegality at
the border in American history. Now what you are proposing
looks like ways to turn this mass immigration into mass
amnesty.
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Sir, with all due respect, I think that
Title 42 is not an immigration measure. It is a public health
authority, and it----
Senator Hawley. You just told us a minute ago that
withdrawing it would decrease illegal immigration.
Look, with all due respect, nothing you have said here is
remotely credible. If you think that withdrawing Title 42 will
decrease illegal immigration, I invite you to have that
discussion with the Members of this Committee, maybe
particularly on the Democrat side. I think they would be
fascinated to hear that. And believe me, I will help them. I am
happy to talk about your testimony today. I will be telling
everybody about it.
But you have single-handedly forced on this country a mass
crisis that is endangering children, that is leading to an
avalanche of drugs in my State, that is increasing criminality.
For you to sit here and tell me that eliminating Title 42 is a
solution, and that nothing you have done has had any
consequence, and that border walls are not effective, and that
``safe third'' agreements are not effective, and Remain in
Mexico is not effective--frankly, sir, you have no credibility
whatsoever, and neither does the Administration that you work
for. What you do have, though, is responsibility, for
everything that is happening at the border.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Hawley.
Witnesses, you have been here a long time, and we
appreciate your testimony, but we are going to start a second
round for individuals who have a few more questions. The second
round we are going to attempt to limit to five minutes. We will
try to be more effective than limiting the initial round to
seven minutes. But we will have a few more questions here.
First, Ms. Contreras, my question is for you. CBP
facilities are clearly not an acceptable location to house
unaccompanied minors, and you mentioned that in your testimony,
but how is HHS cooperating across departments to ensure
sufficient resources are in place to prevent vulnerable
children from spending extended amounts of time in these CBP
facilities?
Ms. Contreras. Thank you for that question, Senator. I
think we would all agree that all of my colleagues on this
panel, that HHS is a child welfare agency. It is our job, when
children are referred to us, to be able to take them as quickly
as we can into our care.
What we see now is that the average length of stay in CBP
is less than 24 hours, and that is an accomplishment everyone
has worked very hard on.
We have had a lot of coordination between our teams, of
ORR, CBP, and throughout DHS, in order to make sure that we are
coordinating and that we are taking care of children as soon as
we can. What you see is there has been some co-location of
staff. That is a big part of being able to make that happen.
This remains a priority. We are glad that the number is
down to less than a day in the custody of CBP, and that is
something that will remain a priority in our work.
Chairman Peters. Thank you.
Fentanyl and other illicit narcotics are harming our
communities, and we certainly need to do everything we can to
stop them from entering in the country. In February of this
year I led my colleagues in requesting additional funding for
nonintrusive inspection (NII) systems that will improve CBP
officers' ability to interdict these illegal drugs.
Chief Huffman, could you please discuss for the Committee
the impact of nonintrusive inspection systems on CBP's rate of
narcotics interdictions?
Mr. Huffman. Thank you for that question, Senator, and I
would be happy to discuss that a little bit. As you know, as
you mentioned, fentanyl is a key threat to our nation right
now, and we are seeing a lot of it, and the amount we are
seeing seems to increase every year. Most of the fentanyl now
is coming across the Southern Border, being encountered at the
ports of entry, primarily in San Diego and Otay Mesa, two main
areas where we are seeing most of the fentanyl coming across.
One of the main tools we used to use, in Canada, is the NI
equipment that we are grateful to have. It helps us to be very
successful in identifying that stuff, because fentanyl is a
unique narcotic as opposed to big bundles of marijuana. It can
be easily stored.
What we have seen recently, though, is we have seen an
increasing number of packages caught but it is smaller
quantities, indicating they are adjusting their tactics as
well, maybe trying to beat our NI capabilities, smaller packets
but more cross increases their chances to get across.
But currently CBP is utilizing over 350 large-scale and
over 4,500 small-scale nonintrusive inspection systems across
the Southwest Border to inspect cargo containers, commercial
trucks, rail cars, privately owned vehicles. We use those not
just at the ports of entry but at some of our interior
checkpoints as well.
By fiscal year 2023, CBP expects to increase the NI scans
to these vehicles by up to 40 percent more with the equipment
we have coming. So as we are able to increase the scans we
obviously see an increase in encounters of narcotics, but also
the more we increase, the better we are able to deter future
actions.
It is a very important tool, we are very appreciative we
have that, and we will continue to use that greatly across all
of our borders.
Chairman Peters. So given it is an effective tool, and you
would like to spread it, how many additional nonintrusive
inspection systems do you think are needed to fully equip all
of our nation's ports of entry?
Mr. Huffman. I am not sure of the right number, that I have
that with me, Senator, but I would be glad to get that back to
you if I consult more with my OFO colleagues to get you the
exact number.
Chairman Peters. We would like that so I would appreciate
that.
Another question for you, sir. What efforts is CBP
undertaking to ensure that the information gathered related to
drug smuggling is shared among our partner agencies in order to
better combat the transnational criminal organizations that are
operating these operations?
Mr. Huffman. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that question as
well. Our ability to share information with our partners in
this is key in order to be successful. We participate
extensively in different task forces, and we partner with
different agencies at the Federal level, State level, and local
level, depending on what we are doing. We work closely with ICE
and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) on cases
collaboratively. The information that we gather of our
encounters is shared with them all the time. We never cease to
do that. The same with the Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA). We facilitate the information across the whole range,
whether it is on our Southern Border, Northern Border,
interior. We participate in a number of joint operations with
our State and locals and also our Stonegarden partners, and we
share that information across in different meetings and things
that we have in order to assure that we do that.
I think our ability to work together with all of our
partner and all of the agencies makes us a better place, a
better organization, and much more effective, and we continue
to do that on a regular basis. I have been doing this for many
years, and we participate at all levels, at all times, and it
is just invaluable to be able to share that information with
those partners.
Chairman Peters. I appreciate that. Thank you.
Ranking Member Portman, you are recognized for questions.
Senator Portman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the
witnesses for their patience with us today. There is just so
much to go over.
Let me just quickly about what I think we have learned
today. One is a deep concern expressed by just about every
member of this panel, Democrat and Republican, about the lack
of a plan in place to properly address the surge of migrants
who will certainly be coming over the border when Title 42
ends. That is, I think, a consensus point.
Second, an acknowledgment that the asylum process is
totally broken and it acts as a magnet to draw people to the
border and over the border. Here are the numbers. Secretary
Mayorkas tells us the average asylum case processing time is
six to eight years. We heard today it is five to six years, but
that is not what your boss says. But let us say it is five to
six years. It is a long time when people are in the community,
living in the community, working, kids going to school, having
children, becoming part of the community.
There is a 1.6-million-person backlog now on asylum claims
being considered by the courts; 1.2 million people have gone
through the process and received a final order of removal,
meaning they should be deported because they were not
successful in their asylum claim. Yet the Administration has
reduced the number of people being deported. It is now 56,000 a
year. That is about four percent. In the Obama-Biden years it
was 350,000 a year.
Incidentally, under law, Section 235 of the Immigration and
Nationality Act (INA), there is a requirement of detention of
unlawful migrants seeking asylum, crossing our border without
authorization, and yet, of course, we do not have the capacity
to do that. This Administration has reduced the number of ICE
beds. We are now at 24,000 beds, much of which are already
full.
So that is where we are, and that is why it is true, I
think, that there is a consensus here on this panel that this
is broken and we have to fix it.
On the illegal narcotics coming over, Agent, I appreciate
the work your folks do. I was at Mariposa, the port of entry in
Nogales earlier this year, and I saw the desperate need for
more of these scanning devices you talked about to try to stop
the fentanyl. The fentanyl is streaming into our communities.
It is coming in at such high volumes now that it is reducing
the price, because of supply and demand. A huge supply, very
inexpensive, and it is causing more deaths as a result.
I am a big fan of looking at the demand side. I have asked
legislation, and it is working now, on treatment and recovery
and prevention. But it is possible to deal with this flood and
not have many more people dying of overdoses. We are at record
levels right now.
Here are the numbers that we have. Only two percent of
passenger vehicles are being scanned. Only 17 percent of
commercial vehicles are being scanned. That is it. Yet that is
where 90 percent of the seizures attributed to nonintrusive
inspections are resulting from. This is where we are finding
most of these narcotics. It is a huge increase in March, a huge
increase from the previous March, a 300 percent increase from
the previous March. It is levels we have never seen before. And
yet think of all those cars and trucks that we are not
scanning.
The question, Agent Huffman, is how can we do better? There
is a plan to increase that by the end of next year, and yet I
look at the President's budget this year and there is zero in
the budget for new scanning machines.
I guess my question for you is, are we on track at least to
reach this number of 40 percent of passenger vehicles, instead
of two percent, and 70 percent of commercial vehicles instead
of 17 percent by the end of next year?
Mr. Huffman. Yes, sir, we are on track by the end of fiscal
year 2023 to increase the scans to scan 40 percent of the
vehicles and 72 percent of the commercial vehicles,
respectively. As you know, we would certainly like to do more,
and as we increase our ability to do so we will do that.
Obviously, we would like to look at every single thing that
comes into the country if we have the ability to do that,
because it is important to do that. There is no question that
fentanyl is a significant threat to us.
Senator Portman. We provided the funding for you back in
2019 to get to that number of 40 percent, at least, of cars, 70
percent of trucks, and we should provide more. But again, in
the budget there is nothing.
Unaccompanied kids, Senator Ossoff talked about this. Kids
have been mistreated in the past, as we know. There are lots of
stories about it, unfortunately. I got involved in this because
of a bunch of kids from Guatemala, six of them, were brought up
by their trafficker, went into HHS custody, and then HHS gave
them to sponsors. Those sponsors were the traffickers, the very
traffickers who had treated them so poorly coming up from the
border, lied to their parents, and they took them to an egg
farm in Ohio where six kids, as young as 14, lived in
deplorable situations, underpaid, working six, seven days a
week, not in school, and luckily a local authority found it.
This is one thing that got the interest of the Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) with this Committee.
Senator Carper and I did an intensive investigation. We
published three reports about it, and basically about the
failure of the Federal agencies to be responsible for the care
of our unaccompanied kids.
Ms. Contreras, I do not have time to get into this in the
detail I would like to, but as you know we have done a lot of
work in this area. We think it is totally unacceptable for the
U.S. Government to release unaccompanied kids, who are, by
definition, much more vulnerable to trafficking, to unrelated
sponsors and not to do more follow-up.
Right now we are told that there is no follow-up after
three phone calls and that we do not know where 19,000
unaccompanied kids are. We cannot determine their safety and
well-being. Is that correct?
Ms. Contreras. Senator, thank you for that question and
thank you for your leadership on making sure that we keep our
duty to children, and that includes post-release.
What I would like to share is that the work that has been
done to strengthen the post-release work, some of which you
referred to which are well-being follow-up calls, there are
home visits in place now if there are concerns raised. The
background checks and vetting that happens for sponsors is
designed specifically to avoid the kinds of problems that have
happened.
We take the safety of kids very seriously. It is the No. 1
priority, and we keep building on what our duties are, how do
we carry out those duties to buildup that post-release support
as well, to make sure that they are in safe hands.
Senator Portman. There is a continuing issue, as you know,
as to who has responsibility, and my hope is that HHS, under
your leadership, takes additional responsibility for these
kids. Someone has to be responsible for their care.
Let me ask you a very specific question, as my final
question, Mr. Chairman. HHS has cooperated with some of our
requests for information. We continue to do oversight on this
issue, as you know, but we have yet to receive documents that
we have requested, and these were requested in January in a
letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra.
Can you commit to ensuring that HHS sends the remaining
documents by the end of next week?
Ms. Contreras. Senator, you do have my commitment that we
will go back and get the attention of who I need to, to figure
out what it is that we owe you and how we can make sure that we
follow up as promptly as we can.
Senator Portman. I will tell you what it is. It is very
simple. It is the number of sponsors out there, the number of
sponsors who have been denied. It is information that you would
have, and it is not information that is difficult, I would not
think, to find, and very necessary for us to do the proper
oversight. I really would appreciate you getting those to us by
next week so that we can continue our oversight work.
Again, to each of you thank you for your service and
particularly to those of you representing people on the border
itself, you have an impossible task. Thank you for what you do
every day. The American people are asking a lot of you, and I
know it is very stressful, and I know there has been difficulty
in retention and recruitment. We need to do everything we can
to hold, Agent, your people up right now, because it is hard
already and it is about to get a whole lot harder, and we owe
them not better policy in the Administration but better
legislating, and we will continue to work on that.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Portman.
Senator Sinema, you are recognized for your questions.
Senator Sinema. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to echo
what Senator Portman just said about the respect for the men
and women who serve in blue and green on the front lines of our
border. I think that we can safely say it is a bipartisan
agreement that we admire and strongly support their efforts. I
want to pass along my thanks as well, particularly to those who
are serving throughout Southern Arizona.
Chief Huffman, robust migrant processing at ports of entry
is a key part of the DHS plan for the Southern Border. However,
Arizona's ports of entry were not designed to manage large-
scale asylum processing. This has the potential to create a
volatile situation that is unsafe for our CBP officers and our
migrants when bottlenecks occur and frustration rises.
While the funding I secured for ports of entry
modernization, with my colleague, Senator Portman, in the
Infrastructure, Investment, and Jobs Act, will be very helpful
in the long term, these modernization projects are still years
from completion.
What capacity requirements for infrastructure,
transportation, and related staffing will be in place for
Arizona ports to prevent overcrowding and disruptions to trade
and travel? How many individuals will CBP have capacity to
process in Arizona on a daily basis, and on what date will all
those deployments be complete?
Mr. Huffman. Thank you for your question, and again, thank
you for your support for the men and women on the front line of
CBP. As was mentioned, they are facing an enormous challenge,
and it is going to get tougher.
As far as Arizona specifically, I do not have specific
numbers with me but I can get those numbers to you to exactly
what is in place, unless you have them.
Ms. Tierney. I do not, Chief.
Mr. Huffman. OK. I will get those to you, what they are.
But I do know that there are concerns about the volume at all
of our ports of entry. Arizona's, in particular, you asked for.
The safety and security of our folks are top and in front of
our minds at all times.
At each port they will take appropriate steps, if they need
to, including temporary halting processing if they have to.
They will reorder the lines. They have our Mobile Field Force
teams trained up and ready to go in case it does get to be a
volatile situation, to help control crowds. If necessary, if
they have to, they may even close down lanes or close down the
ports until they can regain order. Those are the standard steps
we have taken historically in the past when we have had
challenge at our ports of entry, and they are well-versed in
understanding how to do those and execute those if we get to
those cases.
We are, as mentioned, detailing people to those areas. We
are building up the capacity to process throughputs. Arizona,
as you know, is kind of a unique challenge. They do not have
the same NGO support for follow-on afterwards that you do in
other areas, so as Ms. Tierney mentioned earlier, we are
addressing those as well to try to move through those things.
I know you mentioned earlier about the other States, and
although you were concerned about them that was not top on your
list. But those are key, as she mentioned, about having the
system that allows us to decompress laterally and move those
people. When those people are processing through they would be
released in some area besides in the Arizona area, in the Yuma
area.
All those things have been taken into consideration as we
try to work specifically on these difficult areas. The Yuma
sector, the Border Patrol is one of the most challenging ones
to deal with. It is the one that is always the first one to be
over capacity because the infrastructure is so small there,
when we start getting traffic flows in there. That is the No. 1
focus that we are working on, trying to continue to find ways
to decompress that, move people out of there, and minimize the
impact as much as possible on the local community.
Senator Sinema. Thank you. Mr. Nunez-Neto, I am pleased to
hear that DHS has based part of their plan on the Regional
Processing Plan's model that I proposed with Senator Cornyn in
our Bipartisan Border Solutions Act. I know Senator Portman
spoke about that earlier. These enhanced, centralized
processing centers will co-locate DHS components, nonprofits,
and other relevant entities to help reduce systemic
inefficiencies.
I understand the pilot location became operational on April
29th, in Laredo, Texas, and that this pilot will be used to
work out the logistics for future centers. What factors are
being used to determine future locations for these processing
centers, and how long do you anticipate it will take to
operationalize additional centers?
Mr. Nunez-Neto. Thank you for that question, Senator. This
is something I think we are all very excited about, bringing
innovation to the process at the border. I think these Enhanced
Central Processing Centers have a lot of potential to allow us
to better triage the flow and focus, consequences on higher-
risk individuals but then for low-risk individuals who are
going to be referred into immigration proceedings and released
have facilities that allow us to co-locate with ICE, with
potentially HHS, and with NGO's in order to have kind of a much
more seamless handoff at every stage of the process, within the
same facility.
I think what we are looking to see, really, is whether we
realize those gains in terms of the handoffs between each stop
of the process and the time in custody they are spending
actually being held in CBP custody. We are also hoping that
this process will allow us to, by minimizing the law
enforcement footprint in the facility have more of our law
enforcement officers on the line, doing their primary law
enforcement function rather than doing processing. A big part
of that effort is going to be looking at ways to contract out
the processing support.
I believe that there is an expansion plan in place. I do
not know, Chief Huffman, if you know the next locations. If
not, we will get back to you.
Mr. Huffman. I do not have the exact next locations now but
the thing is, when you stand these up you have the ability,
when you see how traffic flows you want to try to anticipate
where you are going to need them the most. We can make some
estimates of where we need them the most, but I think as we see
the traffic flows we want to be as nimble as we can to be
there, to the right spot.
Senator Sinema. Thank you. We intend to follow up on that.
We want to hear follow-up information, and in particular,
whether or not Arizona can expect to get an Enhanced
Centralized Processing Center. We will want to hear more about
that and, of course, when we can expect it to be fully
operational.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Sinema.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank each of our
witnesses. Thank you for joining us today. I think I speak for
all Members of the Committee. We want to thank you for your
commitment to addressing both the humanitarian and security
challenges that we face on our Southern Border.
I certainly appreciate the very thorough discussion that we
had today about the Administration's efforts to secure our
Southern Border, preparations in advance of the termination of
Title 42 public health order, and certainly the expected
challenges that we are likely to face in managing migration
changes that will occur when this order is repealed.
These challenges are certainly not unique to this
Administration. We have seen surges in the number of migrants
for the past decade, under both Republican as well as
Democratic administrations. I think from hearing testimony here
today it is clear that until Congress and the Administration
enact some common-sense, bipartisan solutions to fix our
immigration systems these circumstances are going to continue
to prevail.
There are certainly many issues where we disagree. We heard
some of those here today. But I think there have been some
areas of agreement, as well, that we should rally around--
increasing consequences for illegal entry, addressing the root
causes of migration, increasing regional cooperation on these
issues, and the need for bipartisan reform passed by Congress.
I look forward to working with my colleagues in the
Administration on some of these common-sense efforts. We will
be working diligent and hopefully can accomplish what we need
to accomplish.
The hearing record will remain open for 15 days, until May
20th at 5 p.m., for the submission of statements and questions
for the record.
This hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:08 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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