[Senate Hearing 117-573]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                        S. Hrg. 117-573

          SECURING AND ENSURING ORDER ON THE SOUTHWEST BORDER

=======================================================================

                                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
        
        
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                               __________

                    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

                                 ------                                
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

                              ----------                              


                         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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Tierney appears in the Appendix 
on page 85.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Huffman appears in the Appendix 
on page 90.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Mendrala appears in the Appendix 
on page 97.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The chart referenced by Senator Peters appears in the Appendix 
on page 101.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Ms. Mendrala follow up response to Senator Scott appears in the 
Appendix on page 243.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The chart referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the Appendix 
on page 101.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Senator Johnson's chart appears in the Appendix on page 103.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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.]

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