[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                   OPEN BORDERS, CLOSED CASE: SECRETARY 
                    MAYORKAS' DERELICTION OF DUTY ON THE 
                    BORDER CRISIS

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

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                     COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                             JUNE 14, 2023

                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-17

                               __________

       Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
                                     

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        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
        
                              __________

                                
                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
54-093 PDF                  WASHINGTON : 2023                    
          
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                     COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

                 Mark E. Green, MD, Tennessee, Chairman
Michael T. McCaul, Texas             Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi, 
Clay Higgins, Louisiana                  Ranking Member
Michael Guest, Mississippi           Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas
Dan Bishop, North Carolina           Donald M. Payne, Jr., New Jersey
Carlos A. Gimenez, Florida           Eric Swalwell, California
August Pfluger, Texas                J. Luis Correa, California
Andrew R. Garbarino, New York        Troy A. Carter, Louisiana
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia      Shri Thanedar, Michigan
Tony Gonzales, Texas                 Seth Magaziner, Rhode Island
Nick LaLota, New York                Glenn Ivey, Maryland
Mike Ezell, Mississippi              Daniel S. Goldman, New York
Anthony D'Esposito, New York         Robert Garcia, California
Laurel M. Lee, Florida               Delia C. Ramirez, Illinois
Morgan Luttrell, Texas               Robert Menendez, New Jersey
Dale W. Strong, Alabama              Yvette D. Clarke, New York
Josh Brecheen, Oklahoma              Dina Titus, Nevada
Elijah Crane, Arizona
                      Stephen Siao, Staff Director
                  Hope Goins, Minority Staff Director
                       Natalie Nixon, Chief Clerk
                     Sean Jones, Legislative Clerk
                            
                            
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

                               Statements

The Honorable Mark E. Green, a Representative in Congress From 
  the State of Tennessee, and Chairman, Committee of Homeland 
  Security:
  Oral Statement.................................................     1
  Prepared Statement.............................................     6
The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress 
  From the State of Mississippi, and Ranking Member, Committee on 
  Homeland Security:
  Oral Statement.................................................     9
  Prepared Statement.............................................    11

                               Witnesses

Mr. Chad Wolf, Executive Director & Chief Strategy Officer, 
  American First Policy Institute; Former Acting Secretary of 
  Homeland Security:
  Oral Statement.................................................    14
  Prepared Statement.............................................    15
Mr. Joseph B. Edlow, Managing Member, The Edlow Group; Former 
  Acting Director for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services:
  Oral Statement.................................................    20
  Prepared Statement.............................................    22
Mr. Rodney S. Scott, Senior Distinguished Fellow for Border 
  Security, Texas Public Policy Foundation; Former Chief of U.S. 
  Border Patrol:
  Oral Statement.................................................    29
  Prepared Statement.............................................    31
Ms. Eleanor Acer, Director, Refugee Protection, Human Rights 
  First:
  Oral Statement.................................................    34
  Prepared Statement.............................................    36

                             For the Record

The Honorable Mark E. Green, a Representative in Congress From 
  the State of Tennessee, and Chairman, Committee of Homeland 
  Security:
  DHS Order of Secession.........................................    12
The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress 
  From the State of Mississippi, and Ranking Member, Committee on 
  Homeland Security:
  GAO Decision, August 14, 2020..................................    48
  GAO Decision, August 21, 2020..................................    54
  Article........................................................    56
The Honorable J. Luis Correa, a Representative in Congress From 
  the State of California:
  Press Release..................................................    59
The Honorable Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Representative in 
  Congress From the State of Georgia:
  Memo from Customs and Border Protection........................    79
The Honorable Yvette D. Clarke, a Representative in Congress From 
  the State of New York:
  Report From the Haitian Bridge Alliance........................    86

 
 OPEN BORDERS, CLOSED CASE: SECRETARY MAYORKAS' DERELICTION OF DUTY ON 
                           THE BORDER CRISIS

                              ----------                              


                        Wednesday, June 14, 2023

             U.S. House of Representatives,
                    Committee on Homeland Security,
                                            Washington, DC.
    The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in 
room 310, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Mark E. Green 
[Chairman of the committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Green, McCaul, Higgins, Guest, 
Bishop, Gimenez, Pfluger, Garbarino, Taylor Greene, Gonzales, 
LaLota, Ezell, D'Esposito, Lee, Luttrell, Strong, Brecheen, 
Crane, Thompson, Jackson Lee, Payne, Swalwell, Correa, Carter, 
Thanedar, Magaziner, Ivey, Goldman, Garcia, Ramirez, Menendez, 
Clarke, and Titus.
    Chairman Green. The Committee on Homeland Security will 
come to order.
    Without objection, the Chair may declare the committee in 
recess at any point.
    Without objection, the gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. De La 
Cruz, is permitted to sit on the dais and ask questions to the 
witness.
    Before I start my opening comments today, I would like to 
make a few administrative notes.
    First, and most importantly, today is the United States 
Army's birthday. We have purchased a birthday cake to the 
United States Army and it is in the joint room for both 
parties, Members, and staff to enjoy. Please, as you are having 
a piece of cake, reflect on the 248 years of men and women who 
have served our great Nation in the United States Army.
    Also, before we start today, I want to point out that this 
is an oversight hearing, and it is the beginning of several 
that will follow. I am guessing that the party that holds the 
White House will differ in their opinions to the party not in 
the White House. That is OK. I am certain we can all conduct 
ourselves without disrupting the decorum of this committee by 
using unparliamentary words to attack an individual's 
character. You can attack behavior, you can attack decisions, 
you can engage in debate, you can say doing this or that makes 
no sense, you can even say something is stupid, but you just 
can't say that an individual is stupid. I understand that it is 
a subtle difference, but it has been the standard of this 
committee for many Chairmen before me and it will be enforced 
by me too.
    Last, next week we will hold our first joint meeting of all 
the cyber-related subcommittees. The intent is to begin a 
paradigm shift in how we approach cybersecurity in a 
bipartisan, multi-committee fashion. We need a whole-of-
Government approach. We need to break down the silos in 
Government and in Congress, industry, and especially the 
administrations. Cyber folks love this idea. All Members of our 
Cyber Subcommittee should attend. It is a breakfast and we will 
host some of the Nation's brightest cybersecurity experts. I 
encourage all Members of the Committee of Homeland Security to 
engage and attend. The cyber border is just as important as any 
other border.
    In July we are going to hold--another administrative note 
here--we are going to hold a substantive markup that we also 
hope will be bipartisan, tentatively aiming for the first week 
back in session in July. We need to move early in July to deal 
with the reauthorization of the Chemical Facility Anti-
Terrorism Standards Statute, or CFATS. It is my hope we can do 
this and other legislation in a bipartisan way.
    Now for the business of the day. The purpose of this 
hearing is to receive testimony on Secretary Mayorkas' 
dereliction of duty.
    I now recognize myself for an opening statement.
    On February 2, 2021, Alejandro Mayorkas was sworn in to be 
the United States Secretary of Homeland Security. He swore an 
oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United 
States and faithfully discharged the duties of his office. 
Since then, the American people have suffered from a national 
security, humanitarian, and public safety disaster at the 
Southwest Border. A disaster that has turned every city into a 
border city, and every State into a border State.
    In just over 2 years, under Secretary Mayorkas, more people 
have entered our country illegally than in the 12 years of the 
Obama and Trump administrations combined. This includes more 
than 5.2 million apprehensions at the Southwest Border, more 
than 6.1 million apprehensions, factoring in America's Northern 
and Maritime Borders, and at least 1.5 million known gotaways, 
illegal aliens who slip across our border without being caught 
and are now at large in the United States. This should terrify 
every American.
    Based on Border Patrol statistics of criminal aliens they 
do catch, those gotaways could include as many as 1,180 aliens 
guilty of DUIs, 285 guilty of sexual assault, and more than 3 
dozen guilty of murder. Last fall, an illegal alien struck and 
killed Florida Sheriff's Deputy Mike Hartwick before fleeing 
the scene. The alien had entered the country illegally in 
October 2021 in Texas, and was sent back to Mexico. But at some 
point reentered our country as a gotaway.
    An unknown number of national security threats are pouring 
across our border each and every day. Since October of last 
year, Border Patrol has reported nearly 10,000 arrests of 
Chinese nationals that have illegally crossed the Southwest 
Border, and the number continues to increase every month. I 
have confirmed that some of the Chinese nationals coming in 
have ties to the Chinese Communist Party and the People's 
Liberation Army. They have been released into the United 
States.
    That is all I can share at this point. We will be holding a 
Classified briefing in the near future on this for all Members.
    DHS has no way to verify the identities and backgrounds of 
these individuals. They are almost always quickly released into 
the interior of our country to do who knows what. This is the 
height of madness. Releasing unvetted individuals from our 
Nation's most dangerous adversaries into our local communities. 
That is what Secretary Mayorkas is doing with each and every 
one of these individuals Mayorkas is putting our national 
security at risk. U.S. law states that one of the foremost 
duties of the Secretary of Homeland Security is to control and 
guard the borders of the United States, but Secretary Mayorkas 
has surrendered control of our Southwest Border to the Mexican 
cartels. Today nothing comes in or out without the cartel's 
knowledge and tacit approval. They have seized full control, 
pushing not just historic numbers of illegal aliens across, but 
record amounts of drugs like fentanyl, which killed more than 
71,000 Americans in 2021. A horrific new record. Fentanyl is 
now the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 49. 
American children are attending the funerals of their friends 
who have died of fentanyl poisoning. According to one recent 
study, more than 1,500 kids under the age of 20 died from 
fentanyl poisoning just in 2021, more than 4 times as many as 
in 2018.
    Secretary Mayorkas has put all families at risk, even 
families visiting from overseas. The Lavenir family from France 
tragically lost their 19-month-old daughter Enora to fentanyl 
poisoning when on vacation in Florida. This beautiful little 
girl was exposed to fentanyl left behind by the previous 
occupant of their rental unit. How can any family in America 
feel safe when a stay in a hotel or an Airbnb could end up with 
the death of a child?
    The devastating consequences don't stop there. Some other 
highlights of the Secretary's open borders policy include the 
following: more than 350,000 encounters of unaccompanied 
minors. The administration has since lost control of at least 
85,000 of these children. Tragically, many of them are being 
trafficked, abused, and exploited. According to a damning New 
York Times investigation, many of these children are being 
forced to do dangerous jobs that violate the U.S. child labor 
laws, all because of Mayorkas' decision to stop vetting the 
sponsors. From October 1 to 2020 to March 2023, Border Patrol 
recorded nearly 28,000 arrests of illegal aliens with criminal 
backgrounds, approximately 6,000 more total arrests than the 
previous 4 physical years combined. These numbers do not 
include data from States like Texas, which has apprehended 
hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens and recorded more than 
27,000 arrests of criminal illegal aliens itself. In fiscal 
year 2021, Border Patrol discovered 568 dead migrants at the 
Southwest Border, nearly double the 254 found in fiscal year 
2020. In fiscal year 2022, the number jumped to 853. More than 
1,700 migrants have died on U.S. soil while trying to enter 
this country illegally on Mayorkas' watch--people he encouraged 
to make the journey. Mayor Adams of New York recently stated 
that more than half of the hotel rooms in New York City are now 
filled with illegal aliens. Cities like Chicago are putting 
illegal aliens ahead of their own citizens, allocating millions 
of dollars to house and care for those arriving to their city, 
infuriating residents and neighbors like South Shore, who won't 
get those resources. In May, Chicago Mayor Lightfoot stated, we 
simply have no more shelters. Medicaid spending on emergency 
medical services for illegal aliens more than doubled in fiscal 
year 2020 to fiscal year 2021, from around $3 billion to more 
than $7 billion. This suffering and death falls squarely on the 
shoulders of the Secretary of the Department of Homeland 
Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, a man who has been derelict in 
his duty to protect America.
    Since his first day in office, Secretary Mayorkas has 
intentionally undermined America's immigration laws and 
meaningful border security enforcement and in its place, 
implemented an extreme agenda of open borders. The vast 
majority of those crossing our borders illegally are coming not 
because of COVID-19, climate change, or because CBP doesn't 
have enough funding. They are coming for economic reasons, and 
they are coming in record numbers because Mayorkas left the 
door open, unlocked. Those individuals typically possess no 
legitimate claim to asylum, and under prior administrations, 
both Democrat and Republican, most would have been quickly 
deported. The difference now, Mayorkas and his policies. Yet 
not once has he taken responsibility for this mess.
    The mountain of evidence this committee has gathered proves 
that Alejandro Mayorkas has been derelict in his duty as the 
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Upon assuming 
office, he immediately went to work reversing and tearing down 
the effective border policies of the last two administrations, 
replacing them with an open borders policy of mass catch-and-
release. He has also repeatedly violated laws passed by this 
Congress. To date, our investigation has uncovered nearly a 
dozen violations of statutes and court orders. Consider just a 
few examples. The evidence shows that Mayorkas has repeatedly 
violated the law that prohibits mass parole of aliens into the 
country. The statute makes clear parole is only to be granted 
on a case-by-case and temporary basis for an urgent 
humanitarian reason or significant public benefit. Instead, 
Mayorkas has done the opposite, directing and overseeing a 
release of hundreds of thousands of aliens via mass parole in 
just 2 years through various programs, including, more 
recently, his CBP One App. The evidence also shows Mayorkas has 
violated the clear language of the Immigration and Nationality 
Act, requiring illegal aliens to be detained while their claims 
are resolved. At his direction, millions of illegal aliens have 
been released into the country through a program called 
Alternatives to Detention, via other mass parole, or with a 
notice to appear in court. DHS's own data shows that when 
illegal aliens are not detained at all, or are only detained 
for a short time, then released into the interior, they are 
almost never removed.
    Mayorkas and his defenders like to claim that we simply 
don't have detention space for the historic number of illegal 
aliens being drawn to the border by his disastrous policies, 
which is the epitome of circular reasoning. You don't get to 
break the law in order to fix the consequences of your reckless 
decisions.
    The evidence further shows Mayorkas has also violated the 
laws regarding the deportation of illegal aliens. Illegally 
entering the United States is a criminal deportable offense. 
Mayorkas has decided enforcing that law is just optional. 
Passed by Congress but he can just make it optional. First, he 
has issued guidance making it harder for ICE to detain and 
deport the vast majority of illegal aliens in this country. As 
a result, deportations have plummeted, and the number of 
illegal aliens on ICE's non-detained docket has grown by more 
than 2 million people in just 2 years. It gets worse. Mayorkas 
has flagrantly violated the laws requiring him to detain 
criminal illegal aliens. His own acting ICE director, Tae 
Johnson, told Congress in April that ICE had actually been 
releasing hundreds of criminal illegal aliens into the country, 
into our communities.
    When I last checked, the United States was a Nation of 
laws. We expect our leaders to follow the laws that Congress 
passes, and those who fail to do so should be exposed and face 
the consequences. The Constitution is clear. Congress writes 
the laws, and officers like Mr. Mayorkas are sworn to enforce 
them. No one is above the law, not even the Secretary of 
Homeland Security. His failure to uphold his oath and follow 
the law has been the driving force behind the disaster at the 
border.
    Mayorkas has consistently made statements to Congress and 
the American people that demonstrate either dishonesty or gross 
incompetence, perhaps even both. He said at least 19 separate 
times some variation of the border is secure, even telling 
Members of this committee in 2021 that the border was no less 
secure than previous. He also claimed to have operational 
control of the border per the definition of the Secure Fence 
Act of 2006. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz confirmed to this 
committee in March that DHS, in fact, did not have operational 
control of the border. Only after this did Mayorkas backtrack 
and tell the Senate later in March that no Secretary has ever 
had such control per the definition.
    Mayorkas has claimed his policies are not responsible for 
the crisis, but they are. He claimed he was handed a dismantled 
system--he wasn't. He claimed that DHS is promptly expelling 
illegal aliens--they aren't. Our investigation has unearthed 
nearly 80 occasions on which Mayorkas has been outright 
dishonest or misleading, and other instances in which he has 
displayed unacceptable ignorance about the basic aspects of the 
on-going crisis.
    Dereliction of duty is a serious matter. I spent 24 years 
in the Army, I know what it means. It means someone has either 
wilfully or negligently failed to do their duty or has done 
such a poor job that there is no reasonable excuse. When that 
individual is the Cabinet Secretary who swore to defend the 
Constitution in the homeland, the charge is even more serious.
    Again, today marks the United States Army's 248th birthday. 
As a West Point graduate, as I said, I served 24 years. I know 
what dereliction of duty is when I see it and as a commissioned 
officer, I was responsible for holding those guilty of it 
accountable. There is zero doubt in my mind that Secretary 
Mayorkas has been derelict of his duty.
    As the people's elected representatives, this committee has 
a duty to investigate Mayorkas and bring any wrongdoings to the 
American people. What we have found thus far is damning. To 
date, our investigation has discovered that he has violated the 
laws of the United States, abused the authority of his office, 
and betrayed the public trust through repeated dishonest and 
misleading statements to Congress and the American people, 
while also demonstrating gross incompetence. I cannot imagine 
why President Biden, who is charged with defending the American 
people as Commander-in-Chief, would continue to tolerate this.
    Our investigation will show the President why he should 
fire Mayorkas immediately or own this failure himself.
    This isn't about politics or policy or disagreements, it is 
about law and order and the safety of the American people. It 
is about whether a Cabinet Secretary has followed the law, 
upheld his oath, and been faithful to the public trust. The 
American people want answers to this crisis. They deserve the 
truth. Unfortunately, Alejandro Mayorkas has been derelict in 
his duty as the United States Secretary of Homeland Security. 
The cartels are thriving, migrants are suffering, and Americans 
are dying. Their blood is on Secretary Mayorkas' hands. I hope 
every Member of this committee works together to fix this 
disaster.
    [The statement of Chairman Green follows:]
               Statement of Chairman Mark E. Green, M.D.
                           setting the stage
    On February 2, 2021, Alejandro Mayorkas was sworn in as the United 
States Secretary of Homeland Security. He swore an oath to support and 
defend the Constitution of the United States and faithfully discharge 
the duties of his office. Since then, the American people have suffered 
from a national security, humanitarian, and public safety disaster at 
the Southwest Border--a disaster that has turned every city into a 
border city and every State into a border State.
                   record crossings and consequences
    In just over 2 years under Secretary Mayorkas, more people have 
entered our country illegally than in the 12 years of the Obama and 
Trump administrations combined. This includes:
   More than 5.2 million apprehensions at the Southwest Border;
   More than 6.1 million apprehensions factoring in America's 
        Northern and Maritime Borders; and
   At least 1.5 million known gotaways--illegal aliens who slip 
        across our border without being caught and are now at large in 
        the United States.
    This should terrify every American.
    Based on Border Patrol's statistics of criminal aliens they DO 
catch, those gotaways could include as many as 1,180 aliens guilty of 
DUIs, 285 guilty of sexual assault, and more than 3 dozen guilty of 
murder.
    Last fall, an illegal alien struck and killed Florida sheriff's 
deputy Mike Hartwick before fleeing the scene. The alien had entered 
the country illegally in October 2021 in Texas and was sent back to 
Mexico, but at some point re-entered the country as a gotaway.
    An unknown number of national security threats are pouring across 
our border each and every day. Since October of last year, Border 
Patrol has reported nearly 10,000 arrests of Chinese nationals that 
have illegally crossed the Southwest Border, and the number continues 
to increase every month. I've confirmed that some of the Chinese 
nationals coming in have ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and 
the People's Liberation Army (PLA).
    That's all I can share at this point, but we'll be holding a 
Classified briefing in the near future on this for all Members. DHS has 
no way to verify the identities and backgrounds of these people. They 
are almost always quickly released into the interior of our country to 
do who knows what.
    This is the height of madness--releasing unvetted individuals from 
our Nation's most dangerous adversaries into our local communities. 
That's what Secretary Mayorkas is doing.
    With each and every one of these individuals, Mayorkas is putting 
our national security at risk.
                          cartels and fentanyl
    U.S. law states that one of the foremost duties of the Secretary of 
Homeland Security is to control and guard the borders of the United 
States. But Secretary Mayorkas has surrendered control of our Southwest 
Border to the Mexican cartels. Today, nothing comes in or out without 
the cartels' knowledge and tacit approval.
    They have seized full control, pushing not just historic numbers of 
illegal aliens across, but record amounts of drugs like fentanyl, which 
killed more than 71,000 Americans in 2021--a horrific new record. 
Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18-49. 
American children are attending the funerals of their friends who have 
died of fentanyl poisoning. According to one recent study, more than 
1,500 kids under the age of 20 died from fentanyl poisonings in 2021, 
more than four times as many as 2018.
    Secretary Mayorkas has put all families at risk--even families 
visiting from overseas. The Lavenir family from France tragically lost 
their 19-month-old daughter Enora to fentanyl poisoning when on 
vacation in Florida. This beautiful little girl was exposed to fentanyl 
left behind by a previous occupant of their rental unit.
    How can any family in America feel safe when a stay in a hotel or 
Airbnb could end up in the death of their child!
                           other consequences
    The devastating consequences do not stop there. Some other 
``highlights'' of this Secretary's open borders policies include the 
following:
   More than 350,000 encounters of unaccompanied minors. The 
        administration has since lost track of at least 85,000 of these 
        children. Tragically, many of these children are being 
        trafficked, abused, and exploited.
   According to a damning New York Times investigation many of 
        these children are being forced to do dangerous jobs that 
        violate U.S. child labor laws. All because of Mayorkas' 
        decision to stop vetting sponsors.
   From October 1, 2020, to March 2023, Border Patrol recorded 
        nearly 28,000 arrests of illegal aliens with criminal 
        backgrounds, approximately 6,000 more total arrests than the 
        previous 4 fiscal years combined.
   These numbers do not include data from States like Texas, 
        which has apprehended hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens, 
        and recorded more than 27,000 arrests of criminal illegal 
        aliens itself.
   In fiscal year 2021, Border Patrol discovered 568 dead 
        migrants at the Southwest Border, nearly double the 254 found 
        in fiscal year 2020.
   In fiscal year 2022, the number jumped to 853. More than 
        1,700 migrants have died on U.S. soil while trying to enter the 
        county illegally on Mayorkas' watch--people he encouraged to 
        make the journey.
   Mayor Adams of New York City recently stated that more than 
        HALF of the hotel rooms in New York City are now filled with 
        illegal aliens.
   Cities like Chicago are putting illegal aliens ahead of 
        their own citizens, allocating millions of dollars to house and 
        care for those arriving in the city, infuriating residents of 
        neighborhoods like South Shore who won't get those resources. 
        In May, Chicago Mayor Lightfoot stated, ``We simply have no 
        more shelters.''
   Medicaid spending on emergency medical services for illegal 
        aliens more than doubled in from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal 
        year 2021, from around $3 billion to more than $7 billion.
                        mayorkas is responsible
    This suffering and death fall squarely on the shoulders of the 
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security--Alejandro Mayorkas, a 
man who has been derelict in his duty.
    Since his first day in office, Secretary Mayorkas has intentionally 
undermined America's immigration laws and ended meaningful border 
security enforcement, and in its place implemented an extreme agenda of 
open borders.
    The vast majority of those crossing our borders illegally are 
coming not because of COVID-19, ``climate change,'' or because CBP 
doesn't have enough funding.
    They're coming for economic reasons, and they're coming in record 
numbers because Mayorkas has left the doors of our country unlocked and 
wide open.
    These individuals typically possess no legitimate claim to asylum 
and under prior administrations--both Democrat and Republican--most 
would have been quickly deported.
    The difference now?
    Mayorkas and his policies. Yet, not once has he taken 
responsibility for this mess.
                  mayorkas' policies/violations of law
    The mountain of evidence this committee has gathered proves 
Alejandro Mayorkas has been derelict in his duty as the Secretary of 
the Department of Homeland Security.
    Upon assuming office, he immediately went to work reversing and 
tearing down the effective border security policies of the last two 
administrations, replacing them with an open-borders policy of mass 
``catch and release.''
    He has also repeatedly violated laws duly passed by Congress.
    To date, our investigation has uncovered nearly a dozen violations 
of statutes and court orders.
    Consider just a few examples:
    (1) The evidence shows Mayorkas has repeatedly violated the law 
        that prohibits mass parole of aliens into the country. The 
        statute makes clear parole is only to be granted on a case-by-
        case and temporary basis, for an urgent humanitarian reason or 
        significant public benefit.
    Instead, however, Mayorkas has done the opposite, directing and 
        overseeing the release of hundreds of thousands of aliens via 
        mass parole in just 2 years through various programs, including 
        most recently his CBP One mobile app scheme.
    (2) The evidence also shows Mayorkas has violated the clear 
        language of the Immigration and Nationality Act requiring 
        illegal aliens to be detained while their claims are resolved.
    (3) At his direction, millions of illegal aliens have been released 
        into the country through a program called ``Alternatives to 
        Detention,'' via other mass parole, or with a notice to appear 
        in court. And DHS's own data shows that when illegal aliens are 
        not detained at all or only detained for a short time and then 
        released into the interior, they are almost never removed.
    Mayorkas and his defenders like to claim that we simply don't have 
        detention space for the historic number of illegal aliens being 
        drawn to the border by his disastrous policies, which is the 
        epitome of circular reasoning. You don't get to break the law 
        in order to fix the consequences of your reckless policy 
        decisions.
    (4) The evidence further shows Mayorkas has also violated the laws 
        regarding the deportation of illegal aliens. Illegally entering 
        the United States is a criminal, deportable offense. Mayorkas 
        has decided enforcing that law is optional.
    First, he has issued guidance making it harder for ICE to detain 
        and deport the vast majority of illegal aliens in this country.
    As a result, deportations have plummeted, and the number of illegal 
        aliens on ICE's Non-Detained Docket has grown by more than 2 
        million in just 2 years.
    It gets worse. Mayorkas has flagrantly violated the laws requiring 
        him to detain criminal illegal aliens. His own acting ICE 
        director, Tae Johnson, told Congress in April that ICE had 
        actually been releasing hundreds of criminal illegal aliens 
        into the country! Into our local communities!
    When last I checked, the United States was a Nation of laws. We 
expect our leaders to follow the laws that Congress passes, and those 
who fail to do so should be exposed and face consequences. The 
Constitution is clear--Congress writes the laws, and officers like 
Mayorkas are sworn to enforce them. No one is above the law, not even 
the Secretary of Homeland Security.
    His failure to uphold his oath and follow the law has been the 
driving force behind the disaster at the border.
                      mayorkas has been dishonest
    Mayorkas has consistently made statements to Congress and the 
American people that demonstrate either dishonesty or gross 
incompetence. Perhaps even both.
    He has said at least 19 separate times some variation of ``the 
border is secure,'' even telling a Member of this committee in 2021 
that the border is ``no less secure than it was previously.''
    He has also claimed to have operational control of the border per 
the definition of the Secure Fence Act of 2006. Border Patrol Chief 
Raul Ortiz confirmed to this committee in March that DHS in fact did 
NOT have operational control of the border.
    Only after this did Mayorkas backtrack and tell the Senate later in 
March that no Secretary has ever had such control per that definition.
    Mayorkas has claimed his policies are not responsible for the 
crisis--THEY ARE.
    He claimed he was handed a ``dismantled'' system--HE WASN'T. And he 
claimed that DHS is promptly expelling illegal aliens--THEY AREN'T.
    Our investigation has unearthed nearly 80 occasions on which 
Mayorkas has been outright dishonest or misleading, and other instances 
in which he has displayed unacceptable ignorance about basic aspects of 
the on-going crisis.
                               conclusion
    Dereliction of duty is a serious matter. It means someone has 
either willfully or negligently failed to do their duty or has done 
such a poor job that there is no reasonable excuse.
    When that individual is the Cabinet Secretary who swore an oath to 
defend the Constitution and the homeland, the charge is even more 
serious.
    Today marks the United States Army's 248th Birthday. As a West 
Point graduate, I proudly served for 24 years.
    I know dereliction of duty when I see it, and as a commissioned 
officer, I was responsible for holding those guilty of it accountable.
    There is ZERO doubt in my mind that Secretary Mayorkas has been 
derelict in his duty!
    As the people's elected representatives, this committee has a duty 
to investigate Mayorkas and bring any wrongdoings to the American 
people. What we have found thus far is damning.
    To date, our investigation has discovered that he has violated the 
laws of the United States, abused the authority of his office, and 
betrayed the public trust through repeated dishonest and misleading 
statements to Congress and the American people, while also 
demonstrating gross incompetence throughout his public statements.
    I cannot imagine why President Biden, who is charged with defending 
the American people as commander-in-chief, would continue to tolerate 
this.
    Our investigation will show the President why he should fire 
Mayorkas immediately or own this failure personally.
    This isn't about politics or policy disagreements. It's about law 
and order, and the safety of the American people.
    It's about whether a Cabinet Secretary has followed the law, upheld 
his oath, and been faithful to the public trust.
    The American people want answers to this crisis. They deserve the 
truth.
    Unfortunately, Alejandro Mayorkas has been derelict in his duty as 
the United States Secretary of Homeland Security.
    The cartels are thriving. Migrants are suffering. And Americans are 
dying. Their blood is on Secretary Mayorkas' hands.
    I hope every Member of this committee works together to fix this 
disaster.

    Chairman Green. I now recognize the Ranking Member, the 
gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Thompson, for his opening 
statement.
    Mr. Thompson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Chairman, Americans have gotten used to political 
theater from Congressional Republicans, but this hearing is a 
new low. You don't have to look further than the title to know 
that the hearing is a sham. Calling a hearing and saying case 
closed before you have heard any testimony is not legitimate 
oversight. It is obvious this hearing isn't really about border 
security. It is not even really about Secretary Alejandro 
Mayorkas or the Department of Homeland Security. It is about 
partisan politics. It is about House Republican leadership 
catering to its most extreme MAGA members who want to impeach 
someone, anyone at all. It is about trying to make good on GOP 
backroom deals to elect a Speaker, raise the debt ceiling, and 
stave off of mutiny in the Republican ranks.
    If the hearing title alone doesn't make it obvious, just 
look at who the Majority has invited to testify. The last time 
this committee called Mr. Wolf to testify, he was serving in a 
role as Acting Secretary of Homeland Security. He was asked to 
testify to the committee's annual hearing on threats to the 
homeland, but he refused to appear. He was subpoenaed and 
ultimately defied that subpoena, Mr. Wolf was a no-show at a 
hearing to inform Congress on terrorist threats facing our 
Nation. But he comes to the Hill twice in the last week to 
appear before the Judiciary Committee and here today to engage 
in political gamesmanship. Perhaps Mr. Wolf is also trying to 
distract from his abysmal tenure at DHS, a tenure that included 
the Department's intentionally taking children from their 
parents at the border, changing and delaying a report on 
Russian interference in the 2020 election, and misusing DHS 
personnel to crack down on peaceful protesters in Portland. As 
it turns out, he was even serving unlawfully as Acting 
Secretary, having been appointed outside the Department's 
succession orders. In fact, Mr. Wolf was the fifth person to 
run DHS and the second to do so unlawfully in less than 3 years 
under President Trump. A stark reminder of the chaos and 
dysfunction of that administration.
    I expect that today's Republicans will try to rewrite the 
history of the Trump administration and its border security and 
immigration policies. But the truth is, under the last 
administration, DHS took children from their parents, forced 
individuals fleeing violence and persecution to wait in Mexico, 
and expelled unaccompanied children at our border. The truth 
is, the last administration dismantled our lawful immigration 
system to the point where it could barely function. The 
policies were not only terribly cruel, but also incredibly 
ineffective. They didn't address fundamental border security 
challenges, fix our broken immigration system, or respond to 
the on-going global migration phenomenon. Instead, they made 
the problem worse. For example, the number of encounters at the 
border jumped sharply after President Trump implemented Title 
42, and they made vulnerable people suffer. That is the mess 
the Biden administration inherited. That is what Secretary 
Mayorkas has had to deal with since taking office.
    Mr. Chairman, legitimate oversight follows the facts. The 
facts are that the Biden administration's plan to address these 
challenges are working. The number of Border Patrol encounters 
have plummeted by 70 percent since the Biden administration 
ended Title 42 last month, the number of overall border 
encounters have dropped by 50 percent in that time, due in 
large part to DHS's hard work under Secretary Mayorkas' 
leadership. The Biden administration has re-established lawful 
pathways for migrants to access the asylum system. It has also 
utilized parole on a case-by-case basis for those fleeing 
certain totalitarian or communist regimes in our hemisphere. At 
the same time, it has made clear that our borders are not open 
and those arriving outside lawful pathways will be sent home. 
Recent deportation and removal numbers reflect that hard 
reality for many.
    Unlike its predecessor, the Biden administration is 
enforcing border and immigration laws in an orderly, humane 
way, consistent with precedents set by prior administrations of 
both parties. Some may not like that, but those are policy 
differences and nothing more. You don't impeach a Cabinet 
Secretary because you don't like their policies and you 
certainly don't impeach a Cabinet Secretary to appease extreme 
members of your political party. Secretary Mayorkas is 
fulfilling his duty under the law and to the American people. 
If the Republican Majority doesn't like what he is doing, they 
should work with Democrats to pass bipartisan border security 
and immigration reform legislation. Apparently, they prefer 
political theater and sloppy, inaccurate, ``report'' instead. 
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    [The statement of Ranking Member Thompson follows:]
             Statement of Ranking Member Bennie G. Thompson
                             June 14, 2023
    Americans have gotten used to political theater from Congressional 
Republicans, but this hearing is a new low. You don't have to look 
further than the title to know this hearing is a sham. Calling a 
hearing and saying ``case closed'' before you've heard any testimony is 
not legitimate oversight. It's obvious this hearing isn't really about 
border security. It's not even really about Secretary Alejandro 
Mayorkas or the Department of Homeland Security. It's about partisan 
politics.
    It's about House Republican leadership catering to its most extreme 
MAGA Members, who want to impeach someone--anyone at all. It's about 
trying to make good on GOP backroom deals to elect a Speaker, raise the 
debt ceiling, and stave off a mutiny in the Republican ranks.
    If the hearing title alone doesn't make that obvious, just look at 
who the Majority has invited to testify. The last time this committee 
called Mr. Wolf to testify, he was serving in the role of Acting 
Secretary of Homeland Security. He was asked to testify at the 
committee's annual hearing on threats to the homeland, but he refused 
to appear. He was subpoenaed and ultimately defied that subpoena.
    Mr. Wolf was a no-show at a hearing to inform Congress on terrorist 
threats facing our Nation. But he's come to the Hill twice in the last 
week to appear before the Judiciary Committee and here today to engage 
in political gamesmanship. Perhaps Mr. Wolf is also trying to distract 
from his abysmal tenure at DHS--a tenure that included:
   the Department intentionally taking children from their 
        parents at the border,
   changing and delaying a report on Russian interference in 
        the 2020 election,
   and misusing DHS personnel to crack down on peaceful 
        protestors in Portland.
    As it turns out, he was serving unlawfully as Acting Secretary, 
having been appointed outside the Department's succession order.
    In fact, Mr. Wolf was the fifth person to run DHS and the second to 
do so unlawfully in less than 3 years under President Trump--a stark 
reminder of the chaos and dysfunction of that administration.
    I expect that today Republicans will try to rewrite the history of 
the Trump administration and its border security and immigration 
policies. But the truth is, under the last administration, DHS took 
children from their parents; forced individuals fleeing violence and 
persecution to wait in Mexico; and expelled unaccompanied children at 
our border. The truth is, the last administration dismantled our lawful 
immigration system to the point where it could barely function.
    These policies were not only terribly cruel, but also incredibly 
ineffective. They didn't address fundamental border security 
challenges, fix our broken immigration system, or respond to the on-
going global migration phenomenon. Instead, they made the problem 
worse--for example, the number of encounters at the border jumped 
sharply after President Trump implemented Title 42. They made 
vulnerable people suffer. That is the mess the Biden administration 
inherited, and that is what Secretary Mayorkas has had to deal with 
since taking office.
    Legitimate oversight follows the facts, and the fact is that the 
Biden administration's plans to address these challenges are working. 
The number of Border Patrol encounters have plummeted by 70 percent 
since the Biden administration ended Title 42 ended last month. The 
number of overall border encounters have dropped by 50 percent in that 
time, due in large part to DHS's hard work under Secretary Mayorkas' 
leadership.
    The Biden administration has reestablished lawful pathways for 
migrants to access the asylum system. It has also utilized parole on a 
case-by-case basis for those fleeing certain totalitarian or communist 
regimes in our hemisphere. At the same time, it has made clear that our 
borders are not open and those arriving outside of lawful pathways will 
be sent home. Recent deportation and removal numbers reflect that hard 
reality for many.
    But unlike its predecessor, the Biden administration is enforcing 
border and immigration laws in an orderly, humane way, consistent with 
precedent set by prior administrations of both parties. Some may not 
like that, but those are policy differences and nothing more.
    You don't impeach a Cabinet Secretary because you don't like their 
policies. You certainly don't impeach a Cabinet Secretary to appease 
extreme Members of your political party. Secretary Mayorkas is 
fulfilling his duty under the law and to the American people.
    If the Republican Majority doesn't like what he's doing, they 
should work with Democrats to pass bipartisan border security and 
immigration reform legislation. Apparently, they prefer political 
theater and a sloppy, inaccurate ``report'' instead.

    Chairman Green. Thank you, Ranking Member.
    Other Members of the committee are reminded that opening 
statements may be submitted to the record.
    I would like, without objection, to enter into the record 
the DHS Order of Secession, which shows that Mr. Wolf had the 
authority to serve as Secretary.
    Without objection, so ordered.
    [The information follows:]

    
    

    Chairman Green. I am pleased to have a distinguished panel 
of witnesses before us today on this overdue discussion.
    I ask that our witnesses please rise and raise their right 
hand.
    Let the record reflect that the witnesses have answered in 
the affirmative.
    [Witnesses sworn]
    Please be seated. You are done. OK.
    I would like to now formally introduce the witnesses. Mr. 
Chad Wolf serves as America First Policy Institute's executive 
director, chief strategy officer, and the chair for the Center 
of Homeland Security and Immigration. Prior to joining AFPI, 
Mr. Wolfe was the former Acting Secretary of the U.S. 
Department of Homeland Security. During his time at DHS, he 
successfully navigated numerous global and domestic challenges 
to the Nation's security, including COVID-19, civil unrest, 
numerous border and immigration crises, historic natural 
disasters, and threats to global aviation security. Prior to 
his service at DHS, he spent over 10 years in the private 
sector helping clients manage risks, and before that, worked 
here on Capitol Hill. He has received the U.S. Secretary of 
Transportation 9/11 medal, the U.S. Secretary of Homeland 
Security Distinguished Service Medal, and the National 
Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal.
    Mr. Joe Edlow has an extensive distinguished background in 
immigration policy. He most recently served as acting director 
of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Prior to that 
position, he served as the chief counsel for USCIS. Before his 
time at USCIS, Mr. Edlow worked on immigration issues in 
various capacities under the Trump administration, including 
with the Executive Office of the President and the Justice 
Department's Office of Legal Policy. He served from 2008 to 
2015 as assistant chief counsel for the U.S. Immigration and 
Customs Enforcement. He possesses significant experience on 
Capitol Hill as well, including stints with the House Judiciary 
Committee and former Representative Raul Labrador of Idaho.
    Mr. Rodney Scott is a law enforcement officer and the 
former chief of the United States Border Patrol, where he 
served from January 2020 to August 2021, under both President 
Trump and President Biden. Scott has served in the Border 
Patrol and CBP since 1992. Throughout his career, Mr. Scott 
held roles such as assistant chief in CBP's Office of Anti-
Terrorism in Washington, DC, as well as the division chief and 
director for the Incident Management and Operations 
Coordination Division at CBP headquarters.
    Ms. Eleanor Acer is a senior director for Refugee 
Protection at Human Rights First, where she oversees Human 
Rights First's research and advocacy on issues relating to 
refugee protection, asylum, and the human rights of migrants. 
Ms. Acer served on the American Bar Association's Commission on 
Immigration as the vice chair of the Refugee Council USA from 
2006 to 2008, and currently serves on its board. Ms. Acer 
received her JD from Fordham University School of Law and her 
BA in history from Brown University.
    I thank all the witnesses for being here today, and I now 
recognize Mr. Wolf for 5 minutes to summarize his opening 
statement.

  STATEMENT OF CHAD WOLF, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & CHIEF STRATEGY 
    OFFICER, AMERICAN FIRST POLICY INSTITUTE, FORMER ACTING 
                 SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY

    Mr. Wolf. Chairman Green, Representative Thompson, thank 
you again for the opportunity to testify today.
    By any objective measure or metric, the United States is 
facing the worst humanitarian and national security crisis 
along our Southern Border in our Nation's history. Today's 
border security system is unrecognizable from the America First 
policies of the Trump administration, or even those in place 
during previous administrations. In all candor, this is the 
first administration of either political party to deliberately 
take steps to diminish the security along our Southern Border.
    Here's the situation along the border today. This country 
has experienced the largest mass scale catch-and-release policy 
that has resulted in more than 4.5 million illegal aliens, 
including 1.5 million known gotaways, being allowed into 
American communities. That is a population larger than every 
major U.S. city except for New York City. There have been more 
than 200 known or suspected terrorists apprehended at the 
Southern Border, compared to just 11 during the Trump 
administration. The border is effectively controlled by the 
Mexican cartels. Fentanyl is coming across the border in record 
amounts and is the leading cause of death of young Americans. 
More migrants have died during their journey than ever before. 
Three hundred thousand eighty children and counting have been 
trafficked or smuggled across the Southern Border and abused 
physically, mentally, and in some cases sexually along the 
horrendous journey.
    In the last 2 years, this administration has lost contact 
with more than 85,000 children after releasing them to 
sponsors, many of them unvetted. Tens of thousands of children 
have been subjected to indentured servitude and harsh forced 
labor situations.
    Last, we are seeing a concerted effort to facilitate 
illegal aliens into the country at ports of entry through an 
unlawful parole program and a CBP One app to disguise or 
otherwise hide the extent of the crisis from the American 
people.
    I understand the difficulty and complexity of running the 
Department of Homeland Security, but it is clear to me and to 
millions of Americans that this is a crisis by design and one 
that was avoidable. I'm here today as a veteran of DHS, having 
served at the Department in two Presidential administrations 
spanning over 7 years, holding 8 senior-level positions that 
culminated in serving as the acting secretary, but perhaps most 
importantly, earning the respect of the Department's law 
enforcement officials along the way. While I look forward to 
today's discussion, as you have already heard, some Members 
will choose to attack me because I am critical of the 
administration's actions surrounding this crisis.
    This is what you will likely hear, this is what you have 
heard. They will claim I ignored a subpoena to appear before 
this committee in 2020. What they have failed to provide you is 
the relevant context, that I gave this committee over 2 months 
of dates for that hearing and for my availability, and that a 
hearing was never scheduled, or that it would have been 
improper for me to testify after President Trump nominated me 
to be DHS Secretary. They will attack me because of questions 
surrounding the Department's order of succession and how it 
affected my role as Acting Secretary, a role that I am very 
proud of. To the extent they mention policies they will fixate 
over a short-lived zero tolerance from 5 years ago while 
staying completely silent about the historic and on-going 
migrant child trafficking crisis facilitated by this 
administration.
    The reason we see a border in crisis, in chaos, is simple. 
The Biden administration has dismantled all of the proven and 
effective policies put in place under the last administration. 
That includes well-known policies like the Remain in Mexico and 
the Asylum Cooperative Agreements with the Northern Triangle. 
But it also includes more than two dozen lesser-known but 
effective policies, such as a third country transit asylum bar, 
a humanitarian asylum review process, a prompt asylum claim 
review, a regulation to end fake families and the cruel 
recycling of migrant children, having Border Patrol Agents 
conduct credible fear screenings, internal relocation guidance, 
expedited removal, ending Nation-wide catch-and-release, maxing 
out ICE detention capacity and exceeding annual deportation 
targets. The list goes on. Every one of those have been torn 
down.
    By comparison, this administration has embraced ineffective 
and unlawful policies that have made American communities 
dangerous and have enriched the Mexican cartels. These policies 
include a Nation-wide catch-and-release scheme that 
incentivizes millions and millions of other illegal aliens to 
enter illegally, a 100-day deportation freeze for all illegal 
aliens, including criminals, releasing illegal aliens on an 
honor system to self-report to ICE field offices, exempting 99 
percent of the illegal aliens from deportation, the lowest 
level of ICE detention capacity, the lowest deportations in 
modern history, terminating Remain in Mexico and fully 
exempting children from Title 42. This is dangerous and this is 
an inhumane approach that need not occur. The laws did not 
change between administrations, just the decision by this one 
not to follow the laws.
    For the reasons cited here and others I'm happy to discuss, 
it is my professional opinion that this administration is 
derelict in its duty to faithfully execute the laws as written 
and protect American communities.
    Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Wolf follows:]
                    Prepared Statement of Chad Wolf
                             June 14, 2023
    Chairman Green and Representative Thompson: Thank you for the 
opportunity to testify before the House Homeland Security Committee.
    By any objective measure or metric, the United States is facing the 
worst humanitarian and national security crisis along our Southern 
Border in our Nation's history.
    As someone who understands the difficulty and complexity of running 
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), I do not state this lightly. 
It is clear to me and millions of Americans that the Biden 
administration has failed in its Constitutional duty to ``take Care 
that the [immigration and border security] Laws be faithfully 
executed.''\1\ This is a dereliction of duty.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ U.S. CONST. ART. II,  3 (cleaned up).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I have reached this inescapable conclusion after having had the 
distinct privilege of serving at DHS at its inception under President 
George W. Bush and throughout President Trump's administration, 
including the last 14 months as Acting Secretary of Homeland Security. 
For the last 27 months since I left office, I have closely followed the 
national security and humanitarian crisis unfolding along the Southern 
Border and have been publicly critical of the Biden administration's 
policies and operations. That criticism is not expressed because we are 
from different political parties but rather, it comes from my own 
experience as Acting Secretary and the apparent and deliberate 
destruction of what was, very recently, the most effective border 
security in recent memory.
    One of my philosophies as Acting Secretary was based on one simple 
axiom: if you do not have borders, you do not have a country. 
Sovereignty does not exist if you are not sovereign over your own 
borders--territorial, maritime, or aerial.
    To that end, today's border security system is unrecognizable from 
the America First border security policies of the Trump administration 
or even the border security apparatus in place during the 
administrations of Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama. In all candor, 
the Biden administration is the first administration of either 
political party to actively take steps to diminish the security along 
our Southern Border.
    In contrast, under President Trump's leadership, a talented group 
of professionals and I helped implement a body of policies that 
established the most secure Southern Border in my lifetime. In addition 
to building the most advanced border wall system, we put in place 
across-the-board policies that deterred illegal immigration, disrupted 
the Mexican cartels, disincentivized the flow of deadly fentanyl, and 
enforced the laws enacted by Congress.
    In fact, when confronted with caravans of illegal aliens surging to 
the Southern Border in 2018-2019, we were honest with the American 
people that it was a crisis. So, we went straight to work to restore 
order and maintain America's sovereignty.
    The Trump administration utilized previously untapped legal 
authority found in section 235(b)(2)(C) of the Immigration and 
Nationality Act (INA) to put in place the highly successful Remain in 
Mexico policy, or Migrant Protection Protocols;\2\ President Trump also 
struck historic Asylum Cooperative Agreements with the Northern 
Triangle countries to redirect illegal aliens to seek asylum closer to 
their home country under the authority provided by section 208(a)(2)(A) 
of the INA.\3\ The Trump administration also issued a third-country 
transit regulation under section 208(b)(2)(C) of the INA to thwart 
asylum forum shopping, bolstered internal relocation guidance for 
adjudicators,\4\ streamlined asylum cases at the border to speed up 
deportations of those found ineligible, and restored the definition of 
refugee \5\ to Congress's intent of requiring persecution by a 
Government actor on one or more of the protected grounds. No 
Presidential administration can do more under existing law--and none 
should do any less.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ 8 U.S.C. 1225(b)(2)(C).
    \3\ 8 U.S.C. 1158(a)(2)(A).
    \4\ See 8 C.F.R. 208.13(b)(3).
    \5\ 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(42).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    These policies were necessary because economic migrants and human 
traffickers were exploiting the loopholes in our laws by making 
fraudulent asylum claims to block their quick deportation under 
expedited removal.\6\ Only between 10-15 percent of illegal aliens 
apprehended at the Southern Border who claim asylum actually qualify 
for this humanitarian relief.\7\ The rest, to put it mildly, are trying 
to game the system. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 
they need to--but they cannot--satisfy the appropriately rigorous 
``well-founded fear of persecution'' standard in order to obtain 
humanitarian relief.\8\ Such artful circumvention of the law is the 
same as breaking the law. Every President has a bona fide duty to stop 
the lawbreakers. Anything short is a contravention of the laws Congress 
has gone to all the trouble of enacting--repeatedly.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \6\ 8 U.S.C. 1225(b)(1)(A)(i).
    \7\ See DEPART OF JUSTICE, EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW, 
Asylum Decision and Filing Rates in Cases Originating with a Credible 
Fear Claim, available at https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/
1062976/download.
    \8\ 8 U.S.C. 1101(A)(42).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Trump administration utilized the fullest extent of its legal 
authority to combat this asylum fraud by making aliens wait in Mexico 
or detaining them in the United States, the only two options 
permissible under section 235 of the INA and, importantly, quickly 
returning them when an immigration judge denies their claim. We never 
forgot the violence that illegal immigration cruelly inflicts on 
defenseless women and children, who are raped, trafficked, and scarred 
for life by the lawbreakers.
    The evidence speaks for itself. During the Trump administration: 
fraudulent asylum claims declined, those who qualified got humanitarian 
relief faster, lives were saved as migrants stopped taking the 
dangerous journey north when they realized they would not be allowed 
into American communities.
    In stark contrast, today we see a border in chaos and crisis 
because the Biden administration ideologically and arbitrarily 
dismantled ALL of these successful policies on Day One and sidelined 
career Border Patrol experts who continued to warn that a historic 
surge of illegal aliens would overwhelm the border in the absence of 
any deterrent policies. Political correctness and rank ideology 
supplanted common sense and the clear command of our immigration laws.
    And even as the warnings of career Border Patrol experts came to 
pass, the Biden administration sat idly by and did little to curtail 
this crisis. The result is that since President Biden was sworn into 
office, nearly 5.5 million illegal aliens--and counting--have 
unlawfully come into our country plus at least another 1.5 million 
``gotaways'' who completely bypassed the Border Patrol and made it into 
American communities.\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \9\ See https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-
encounters.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    To be clear--the laws didn't change between administrations, just 
the refusal of the current one to follow their legal obligations. 
Instead, they embraced destructive and unlawful policies that have made 
American communities less safe and enriched the Mexican cartels to new 
heights because open borders is a lucrative business.
    But the abuse of the law doesn't end there. Here are some 
additional, non-exhaustive examples:
   Nationwide Catch-and-Release.--The Biden administration 
        intentionally decided to ignore its legal mandate to detain 
        illegal aliens or make them wait in Mexico throughout their 
        immigration court proceedings. Instead, this administration re-
        implemented the dangerous catch-and-release policies ended by 
        President Trump and instead began mass releasing illegal aliens 
        into American communities.
    Federal District Court Judge Wetherell struck down this practice, 
        writing ``The Court finds in favor of Florida because, as 
        detailed below, the evidence establishes that [the Biden 
        administration] have effectively turned the Southwest Border 
        into a meaningless line in the sand and little more than a 
        speed bump for aliens flooding into the country by prioritizing 
        `alternatives to detention' over actual detention and by 
        releasing more than a million aliens into the country--on 
        `parole' or pursuant to the exercise of `prosecutorial 
        discretion' under a wholly inapplicable statute--without even 
        initiating removal proceedings.''\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \10\ State of Florida v. U.S., Case No. 3:21-cv-1066-TKW-ZCB (N.D. 
Fl. Mar. 8, 2023).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Issuing Notices to Report (NTRs).--Unable to process the 
        volume of illegal aliens out of DHS custody fast enough under 
        catch-and-release, DHS early on under the Biden administration 
        resorted to issuing Notices to Report--essentially an honor-
        system document that asks illegal aliens to self-report to a 
        local Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office when 
        they reach their destination.
    Unsurprisingly, few reported and now these illegal aliens lack 
        immigration court dates because they were not issued a Notice 
        to Appear (NTA), the formal charging document. This means that 
        removal proceedings will not even begin until ICE encounters 
        them in the future, further prolonging the amount of time these 
        illegal aliens remain in the United States. This process was 
        discontinued for some time but as the administration scrambled 
        to deal with the expiration of Title 42, they attempted to 
        resume NTRs.
    Again, the court blocked the implementation of this policy, holding 
        that it ``appears that DHS is preparing to flout the Court's 
        order,'' noting that this policy ``sounds virtually identical'' 
        to the catch-and-release policy he blocked in March 2023. The 
        judge further explained, ``In both instances, aliens are being 
        released into the country on an expedited basis without being 
        placed in removal proceedings and with little to no vetting and 
        no monitoring.''\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \11\ State of Florida v. Mayorkas, Case No. 3:23-cv9962-TKW-ZCB 
(N.D. Fla. May 11, 2023).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Canceling Notices to Appear (NTAs).--For those illegal 
        aliens who received NTAs, their court dates are multiple years 
        down the road because the volume of illegal aliens the Biden 
        administration allowed into the United States has overwhelmed 
        the immigration courts. Instead of ending catch-and-release and 
        reinstating deterrence policies, the Biden administration 
        unilaterally canceled thousands of NTAs which removes them from 
        the immigration court backlog. These illegal aliens still lack 
        a lawful right to be in the United States and this unlawful 
        action by the Biden administration makes their future 
        deportation nearly impossible.
    As a broader point, such travesty of the Rule of Law dishonors not 
        only our Nation and our law-abiding citizens--it also makes 
        light of the sacrifices borne by countless lawful immigrants 
        who patiently stood in line to come to this country the legal 
        way. This administration's message could not be more 
        unambiguous--those who waited their turn, filled out 
        applications, and paid fees for visas were foolish for obeying 
        our immigration laws. The Biden administration tells lawful 
        immigrants that the enormous sacrifices they and their families 
        made in coming to America by following the law count for 
        nothing. When the current administration arbitrarily excuses 
        the contravention of our laws by some, it is diminishing and 
        demeaning to us all.
   Nullifying Interior Enforcement.--On Day 1, the Biden 
        administration issued a 100-Day deportation freeze for all 
        illegal aliens, including those with criminal convictions. 
        Federal District Judge Drew Tipton enjoined this non-
        enforcement policy on the grounds that it was ``arbitrary and 
        capricious'' and that the policy ``fails to provide any 
        concrete, reasonable justification for a 100-day pause on 
        deportations.''\12\ DHS has since issued ``enforcement'' 
        priorities that exempt 99 percent of illegal aliens from the 
        threat of deportation. The Biden administration has sidelined 
        ICE agents and effectively accomplished the goals of the 
        extremist ``Defund ICE'' movement.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \12\ Texas v. United States, Civil Action No.: 6-21-cv-00003 (S.D. 
Tex. Feb. 24, 2021).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
   De Facto Amnesty.--President Biden campaigned on granting 
        amnesty to all illegal aliens--a policy that even the previous 
        Congress rejected. But the President was undeterred. Ignoring 
        the Constitution's grant of the legislative power to the 
        Congress (and not to the President), he decided to achieve in 
        practice what Congress did not permit him to achieve in 
        principle. As a result, the DHS Secretary implemented a de 
        facto amnesty when he declared that being here unlawfully is 
        not grounds for removal. The obvious remedy corresponding to a 
        violation of the law was arbitrarily taken off the table.
    This edict directly and incontestably contradicts the law and mocks 
        our Nation's time-honored immigration court system. In keeping 
        with that policy choice, the current administration's claims of 
        prioritizing limiting resources are disingenuous, perhaps 
        flatly risible. After all, there are over 1 million aliens with 
        final orders of removal who are still in the United States; 
        yet, the Biden administration has removed the lowest levels of 
        illegal aliens, including criminal aliens, in modern 
        history.\13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \13\ See U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE Annual 
Report Fiscal Year 2022, fig. 20 (Dec. 30, 2022), available at https://
www.ice.gov/doclib/eoy/iceAnnualReportFY2022.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Giving USCIS Asylum Officers Jurisdiction over Border Asylum 
        Claims.--Through an unlawful regulation, the Biden 
        administration has given U.S. Citizenship and Immigration 
        Services asylum officers the ability to decide the asylum 
        claims of illegal aliens apprehended at the border. Congress 
        created DHS through the Homeland Security Act of 2002, with 
        much--but not all--immigration jurisdiction that was held by 
        the former Immigration and Naturalization Service within the 
        Department of Justice transferred to DHS.\14\ By this 
        authorizing statute, only immigration judges have the legal 
        authority to hear asylum claims of aliens in removal 
        proceedings as this authority was not delegated to DHS.\15\ It 
        is apparent that the Biden administration made this unlawful 
        move under the belief that USCIS employees will be more like to 
        grant relief. DHS data shows that USCIS asylum officers are 
        granting asylum at nearly twice the historical rate of 
        immigration judges.\16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \14\ Homeland Security Act of 2002, Pub. L. 107-296 (Nov. 25, 
2002).
    \15\ Id.; see also Arthur, Andrew & Law, Robert, Public Comment Re: 
Procedures for Credible Fear Screening and Consideration of Asylum, 
Withholding of Removal, and CAT Protections by Asylum Officers (Oct. 
18, 2021), available at https://cis.org/sites/default/files/2021-10/
JNPRM_Asylum_Procedures_FINAL_submitted_10-18-2021.pdf.
    \16\ See Department of Homeland Security, Asylum Processing Rule 
Cohort Reports, available at https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-
statistics/special-reports/asylum-processing-rule-report.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Categorical Parole.--Perhaps the most egregious example of 
        violating the law is the DHS Secretary's unlawful use of the 
        parole authority. Section 212(d)(5) of the INA could not be 
        clearer that the right to grant this kind of parole comes from 
        a remarkably narrow sliver of statutory authority, only 
        allowable on a case-by-case basis for: (1) urgent humanitarian 
        reasons or (2) significant public benefit.\17\ DHS has ignored 
        the statutory requirements and turned this limited authority 
        into an override of the legal immigration system.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \17\ 8 U.S.C. 1182(d)(5).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    You know the law is not in your favor when you suddenly discover a 
        slender reed in some old statutory provision that, only when it 
        is totally divorced from context, gives you the slightest hope. 
        That's why, as the Supreme Court reminded us less than a year 
        ago in West Virginia v. EPA, when the Executive branch ``claims 
        to discover in a long-extant statute an unheralded power 
        representing a transformative expansion in its regulatory 
        authority,'' that's usually a sign of desperation because the 
        President and/or the agency know in their heart of hearts that 
        they do not have the statutory authority they are claiming.\18\ 
        Everyone else knows it as well. As if that Supreme Court 
        prescription wasn't enough, the Court in West Virginia also 
        said that when the Executive suddenly ``locate[s] [its] 
        newfound power in the vague language of an ancillary provision 
        of the [law],'' its claimed authority is on conspicuously 
        shaky, and presumptively unsound, ground.\19\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \18\ 142 S. Ct. 2587, 2610 (2022) (cleaned up and alterations 
made).
    \19\ Id. (cleaned up and alterations made).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    So too here. The mass parole system devised by the Biden 
        administration turns our immigration law framework on its head. 
        After all, statutes have to be interpreted, to the extent 
        possible, as a harmonious whole, so why would Congress have 
        enacted the rest of the INA if Presidents, operating 
        whimsically, could circumvent it by issuing paroles ad nauseam? 
        This question, like all such questions, answers itself.
    Just think: The parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, 
        and Venezuelans allows up to 360,000 illegal aliens per year to 
        fly into American communities and the separate unlawful program 
        using the CBP One app near the Southern Border are not new, 
        safe, lawful pathways but a diversion of illegal aliens from 
        between ports of entry to the ports of entry. It is clear that 
        these illegal categorical parole programs are designed to hide 
        the optics of the border crisis from the American people.
    What is more, this administration's abuse of the parole authority 
        isn't limited to the border. After the Biden administration's 
        disastrous withdrawal from Kabul DHS unlawfully paroled into 
        the United States nearly 100,000 unvetted Afghans, most of whom 
        were military-aged males.
    You needn't take my word for it. Even the Inspectors General of 
        both DHS and the Department of Defense have issued scathing 
        reports on the national security vulnerabilities the homeland 
        has been exposed to because of this reckless, senseless, 
        dangerous, and of course unlawful decision.\20\ There are a 
        number of instances where these Afghan parolees have committed 
        heinous crimes, include rape.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \20\ See, e.g., U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE INSPECTOR GENERAL, 
Evaluation of the Screening of Displaced Persons from Afghanistan, 
Report. No. DODIG-2022-065 (Feb. 15, 2022), available at https://
media.defense.gov/2022/Feb/17/2002940841/-1/-1/1/DODIG-222-065.PDF.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    By embarking on this nullification of immigration law by Executive 
        fiat, the Biden administration is allowing into the U.S. 
        millions of illegal aliens who do not qualify for a visa and 
        thus creating a subclass of aliens who have no avenue for a 
        legal immigration status and are in perpetual uncertainty and 
        agony. That is not American leadership or humanity at its 
        finest. Instead, this is just cynical, crass treatment by the 
        current cadre of Executive branch leadership and is the direct 
        result of the Biden administration's circumventing our border 
        security and immigration laws.
    In conclusion, I would suggest that one of the most important 
duties as the DHS Secretary is to be transparent and honest with the 
American people about security issues affecting the homeland. It is 
very clear to me that the current administration is lying to the 
American people about the severity of the problem, while at the same 
time absurdly attempting to lay blame on the Trump administration, on 
Congress, or some other entity for their failed strategy.
    Here is the reality:
   The border is not secure, it is in fact open to illegal 
        aliens by the hundreds of thousands.
   A historic number of illegal aliens--nearly 5.5 million--
        have been apprehended at the Southern Border during the Biden 
        administration with approximately 3 million allowed into 
        American communities--a population larger than every major U.S. 
        city except for New York City and Los Angeles.
   Another 1.5 million observed ``gotaways'' who bypassed 
        Border Patrol and pose severe national security and public 
        safety threats.
   More than 200 known or suspected terrorists apprehended at 
        the Southern Border compared to just 11 during the Trump 
        administration--and these are just the ones caught because they 
        didn't realize we had them in the FBI database.
   The border is effectively controlled by Mexican cartels--who 
        crave the predictability of these policies for their business 
        model.
   More migrants have died during their journey than ever 
        before.
   More Border Patrol agents have been assaulted by so-called 
        asylum seekers than ever before.
   The Biden administration has lost contact with more than 
        85,000 children after releasing them to sponsors, according to 
        The New York Times.\21\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \21\ Dreier, Hannah, Alone and Exploited, Migrant Children Work 
Brutal Jobs Across the U.S., NEW YORK TIMES (Feb. 25, 2023).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
   The Biden administration is aware of tens of thousands of 
        children being subjected to abusive work conditions, according 
        to The New York Times.\22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \22\ Dreier, Hannah, As Migrant Children Were Put to Work, U.S. 
Ignored Warnings, NEW YORK TIMES (Apr. 17, 2023).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
   And there is no operational control over large portions of 
        the border. This is not just my assessment, but that of 
        outgoing Border Patrol Chief Ruiz and other career U.S. Customs 
        and Border Protection officials when questioned by Congress or 
        in litigation challenging Biden administration policies.
    These are the results of a process the Biden administration calls 
``safe, orderly, and humane.'' But to whom exactly? Not to the migrants 
dying along the journey; not to the migrants abused, extorted, or worse 
by the Mexican cartels; not to American communities that have been 
overrun by this influx of illegal aliens and lethal fentanyl; and not 
to Border Patrol officers who have been assaulted and have pleaded with 
political leadership to solve this crisis.
    Instead, the process that has been created over the last 2 years 
can be more accurately described as dangerous, corrupt, and inhumane. 
After 9/11, DHS was created to secure the homeland and protect our 
Nation's citizens. I was there to help get DHS up and running. Yet the 
actions of the Biden administration have done the opposite of adhering 
to the DHS mission by eroding our institutions and diminishing the Rule 
of Law. This is a crisis by design.
    Finally, a singular quote from Supreme Court Justice Louis 
Brandeis' from almost a century ago still rings true today:

``Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials 
shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to 
the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will 
be imperil[]ed if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our 
Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, 
it teaches the whole people by its example . . . If the Government 
becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man 
to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.''\23\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \23\ 277 U.S. 438, 485 (dissenting opinion) (emphases added).

    Unfortunately, this is a message lost on the Biden administration. 
Anarchy, I regret to say, is what we see today with the strategic 
refusal to implement our border security laws. Unless we course-correct 
immediately, our Rule of Law is in somber danger of being lost forever 
into the oblivion of history. That is a message worth remembering, and 
re-committing ourselves to, if we are to remain a Nation of laws. Or 
even a Nation at all.
    For the reasons cited here and for others I am happy to discuss, it 
is my professional opinion that the Biden administration has been 
derelict in its duty to faithfully execute the law, as written, and to 
protect American communities.
    Thank you and I look forward to answering your questions.

    Chairman Green. I now recognize Mr. Edlow for 5 minutes to 
summarize his opening statement.

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH B. EDLOW, MANAGING MEMBER, THE EDLOW GROUP, 
  FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR FOR U.S. CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION 
                            SERVICES

    Mr. Edlow. Thank you, Chairman Green, Ranking Member 
Thompson, and distinguished Members of this committee. I 
appreciate the opportunity to present testimony today regarding 
the continuing threats to the integrity of our immigration 
system caused by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland 
Security's willful disregard of our country's immigration laws.
    The Biden administration, through the Secretary, has seen 
fit to ignore the law, instead favoring poorly-conceived and 
poorly-executed policy decisions. Actions through Executive 
Orders, Departmental memos, and rules lay waste to the INA and 
Congressional intent, it has eroded our immigration system and 
propelled the crisis to current levels.
    As the Chairman said, Section 102 of the INA charges the 
Secretary of Homeland Security with administration and 
enforcement of the Act, and further vests in the Secretary the 
power and duty to control and guard the boundaries and borders 
of the United States against the illegal entry of aliens. The 
massive number of encounters recorded by CBP and the small 
number of alien removals by ICE, however, suggest that this 
Secretary has failed to faithfully execute the laws entrusted 
to him.
    Since Day 1 of the administration, the Department has taken 
aggressive action to undermine immigration enforcement. Nowhere 
is that clearer than Secretary Mayorkas' September 30, 2021 
memorandum outlining the appropriate instances in which DHS was 
authorized to take action against aliens, either unlawfully 
present or lawfully present, but removable. Specifically, 
Secretary Mayorkas outlined three main buckets for removal, 
threats to national security, threats to public safety, and 
threats to border security. While in theory this would seem to 
encompass many aliens, in reality the numerous carve-outs, 
loose definitions, and required factors for consideration made 
it nearly impossible for ICE to move forward with most 
enforcement actions. These poorly-defined categories gave even 
some of the most serious of criminal aliens a free pass in the 
interest of equity. Let me be clear, there is a time and a 
place for prosecutorial discretion, which has been recognized 
by the Supreme Court. However, memos targeted at whole groups 
and not on a case-by-case basis do not comply with contours of 
such discretion. Categorical prosecutorial discretion is not 
discretion at all. It is instead an effort to undermine the 
enforcement mechanisms clearly found in the law. The 
Department's failure to enforce the full INA in the name of 
prioritization and discretion is a dereliction of duty.
    The rampant parole abuse that we now witness is exactly why 
Congress saw fit to change the law in 1996. Replacing emergent 
reasons or for reasons deemed strictly in the public interest, 
with on a case-by-case basis for humanitarian reasons or 
significant public benefit, Congress signaled its intention to 
clamp down on the process. It specifically wanted to guard 
against ad hoc programs meant to supplement existing 
immigration programs. Regardless of the plain language as it 
currently stands, parole has become a favorite tool of the 
administration. While first used as an alternative to 
detention, parole programs have subsequently played a large 
role in artificially decreasing border numbers. The expanded 
categorical parole programs for nationals of Venezuela, Cuba, 
Nicaragua, and Haiti are wholly unlawful. While certainly the 
previous administration utilized programs, the number of 
parolees were a small fraction compared to what we have seen on 
a monthly basis over the past 2\1/2\ years.
    I would be remiss if I did not mention the Department's 
regulatory agenda, which seeks to upend the credible fear 
process in the name of orderly processing, starting with the 
presumption that every economic migrant is entitled to 
protection. In 2022, DHS issued an interim final rule on 
credible fear screening. Under the new process, a positive 
credible fear determination by an asylum officer will lead to a 
non-adversarial asylum interview before another DHS asylum 
officer. This impermissibly changes the process and undermines 
Congressional action by shifting adjudication authority from 
DOJ to DHS. Even more concerning, written summary of the 
original credible fear interview now doubles as an alien's 
asylum application, rendering moot the requirement that an 
alien file one at all. This shifts the burden to present and 
prepare a meritorious claim for protection. While this does not 
ensure an asylum grant, it certainly provides a path for fraud 
and renders certain anti asylum fraud measures moot.
    A second final rule issued last month appears to be tough 
on illegal border crossers, making them ineligible for asylum. 
However, the number of exceptions and the easily rebuttable 
presumptions belie its stated purpose. This rule will have the 
opposite effect, as it will ultimately incentivize aliens to 
make the dangerous trek northward with families in tow.
    Mr. Chairman, we would not be sitting here today if the 
Secretary and the Department simply enforced the law as 
written. Instead, the Department has, in an effort to remove 
barriers and to create a subjectively orderly system, conflated 
law and policy and ensured that when the two were in conflict, 
that policy won the day. A return to the rule of law is the 
only cure at this point and is incumbent upon Congress to use 
its oversight and lawmaking authority to repair the damage done 
by the Department.
    Thank you and I look forward to your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Edlow follows:]
                 Prepared Statement of Joseph B. Edlow
                             June 14, 2023
    Chairman Green, Ranking Member Thompson, and distinguished Members 
of this committee, thank you for the opportunity to present testimony 
regarding the on-going crisis threatening the integrity of our 
immigration system.
    As this committee investigates the actions and inaction of the 
Department of Homeland Security, the conclusion that the administration 
and Department have failed to comply with the law, as written, and 
often times acted in contravention of the law, is inevitable. This 
administration has seen fit to ignore the law, instead favoring poorly-
conceived and even more so poorly-executed policy decisions. The 
actions through Executive Orders, Departmental memos, and rules 
seemingly upend the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and 
Congressional intent. These decisions, implemented at each immigration 
agency, have eroded this country's immigration system and have 
propelled the crisis to its current levels.
    The sharp rise in unlawful entries and attempted entries along the 
Southwest Border provides a critical litmus test of the crisis' scope 
but is an outgrowth of administration and Departmental actions. The 
focus on the overwhelming numbers does not, in and of itself, provide 
insight into the reasons for the crisis. Additionally, media often 
focuses on the border to the detriment of the other actions and 
inaction by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. 
Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Regardless of the 
specifics, it is plainly obvious that since President Biden was 
inaugurated in January 2021, this country has witnessed an 
unprecedented border crisis.
                       executive order and memos
    Beginning on Day 1 of the Biden administration, the Department of 
Homeland Security's (DHS) Acting Secretary, David Pekoske, halted all 
deportations for 100 days.\1\ This was predicated on interim 
enforcement priorities that the Department wanted ICE to implement. In 
its view, the only way to sufficiently update priorities was to reset 
the entire system by halting all enforcement actions. This was followed 
up by ICE Acting Director Tae Johnson's memo of February 18, 2021. This 
memo was the first step to implement the priorities and included 
reporting requirements for enforcement actions and the need to justify 
any action to superiors through a pre-approval process.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Memo. from David Pekoske, Review of and Interim Revision to 
Civil Immigration Enforcement and Removal Policies and Priorities (Jan. 
20, 2021), available at: https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/
publications/21_0120_enforcement-memo_signed.pdf.
    \2\ Memo. from Tae D. Johnson, Interim Guidance: Civil Immigration 
Enforcement and Removal Priorities (Feb. 18, 2021), available at: 
https://www.ice.gov/doclib/news/releases/2021/021821_civil-immigration-
enforcement_interim-guidance.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    At the White House, on February 2, 2021, President Biden issued his 
``Executive Order on Restoring Faith in Our Legal Immigration Systems 
and Strengthening Integration and Inclusion Efforts for New 
Americans.''\3\ The order required DHS, in conjunction with the 
Department of Justice and the Department of State to ``identify 
barriers that impede access to immigration benefits and fair, efficient 
adjudications of these benefits and make recommendations on how to 
remove these barriers.''\4\ This was followed with an Executive Order 
that, among other things, created the battle cry of the 
administration--removing barriers to immigration.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ Exec. Order No. 14012, 86 Fed. Reg. 8277 (Feb. 5, 2021).
    \4\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    To that end, on September 30, 2021, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas 
issued a memorandum entitled ``Guidelines for the Enforcement of Civil 
Immigration Law'' which outlined the appropriate instances in which DHS 
was authorized to take action against aliens either unlawfully present 
or lawfully present but removable.\5\ \6\ Specifically, Secretary 
Mayorkas outlined three main buckets for removal--(1) threats to 
national security; (2) threats to public safety; (3) threats to border 
security. While, in theory, this would seem to encompass many aliens 
who should properly be targeted for enforcement actions by ICE, in 
reality, the numerous carve-outs, loose definitions, and required 
factors for consideration make it nearly impossible to move forward 
with most enforcement actions. These poorly defined categories could be 
seen to give even the most serious of criminal aliens a free pass in 
the interest of equity and ``justice.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\ Memo. From Alejandro N. Mayorkas, Guidelines for the 
Enforcement of Civil Immigration Law (Sept. 30, 2021), available at: 
https://www.ice.gov/doclib/news/guidelines-civilimmigrationlaw.pdf.
    \6\ On June 10, 2022, the U.S. District Court for the Southern 
District of Texas vacated this memorandum.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On April 3, 2022, ICE's Principal Legal Advisor, Kerry Doyle, 
issued a memo on prosecutorial discretion, aligning ICE action in 
immigration court with the Mayorkas Memo.\7\ The April Memo provided 
that ICE attorneys were to exercise prosecutorial discretion in cases 
that were not deemed priority cases. This could include dismissal as 
well as administrative closure (pausing the case indefinitely).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \7\ Memo. from Kerry E. Doyle, Guidance to OPLA Attorneys Regarding 
the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Laws and the Exercise of 
Prosecutorial Discretion (Apr. 3, 2022), available at: https://
www.ice.gov/doclib/about/offices/opla/OPLA-immigration-
enforcement_guidance-Apr- 2022.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    These memos all seek to redefine immigration enforcement by 
creating fictional priorities with no basis in law. Neither the INA's 
section on inadmissibility nor its section on removability suggest a 
prioritization of grounds for enforcement. Instead, it enumerates a 
list of grounds of inadmissibility and removability that the Department 
of Homeland Security is required to enforce. Its failure to do so in 
the name of prosecutorial discretion is a dereliction of duty and 
cannot be permitted to continue.
    Prosecutorial discretion is a critical tool for any police or 
prosecuting agency, when used correctly. The Supreme Court has even 
upheld such measures. Writing for the Court, Justice Scalia found that 
a `` . . . well-established tradition of police discretion has long 
coexisted with apparently mandatory arrest statutes.''\8\ In 
interpreting ``seemingly mandatory legislative commands,'' the Court 
found that the there exists a ``deep-rooted nature of law enforcement 
discretion . . . ''\9\ However, that discretion is not absolute and 
cannot replace whole statutory text. Prosecutorial discretion should be 
viewed in the context of a case-by-case analysis in an individual 
matter. The use of prosecutorial discretion to exempt an entire class 
of individuals from law enforcement action, as is suggested in these 
memos, is not discretion at all.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \8\ Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 748, 760 (2005).
    \9\ Id. at 761 (citing Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41 (1999)).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The results of these memos speak for themselves. In fiscal year 
2022, ICE recorded a little more than 72,000 alien removals from the 
United States.\10\ While that may appear to be large number, the 
Executive Office for Immigration Review (the immigration courts) 
reports that in just the first quarter of 2023, immigration judges have 
ordered almost 47,000 people removed and have affirmed credible or 
reasonable fear denials in more than 4,000 matters.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \10\ U.S. Immig. and Customs Enforcement, ICE releases fiscal year 
2022 annual report (Dec. 30, 2022), available at: https://www.ice.gov/
news/releases/ice-releases-fy-2022-annual-report.
    \11\ Exec. Off. For Immig. Review, Fiscal year 2023 First Quarter 
Decision Outcomes (Jan. 16, 2023), available at: https://
www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1105111/download.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    During the period that these memos were in effect, and beyond, the 
number of encounters along the Southwest Border steadily climbed. In 
fiscal year 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded a 
staggering and unprecedent 2,378,944 encounters.\12\ Thus far in fiscal 
year 2023, CBP has already recorded 1,431964 encounters as of the end 
of April.\13\ These are just the known and reported numbers and do not 
account for the thousands of ``gotaways'' who were able to elude Border 
Patrol agents.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \12\ U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Southwest Land Border 
Encounters (May 17, 2023), available at: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/
stats/southwest-land-border-encounters.
    \13\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The numbers simply do not add up and even with the bulk of the 
Mayorkas and Doyle memos not in effect, the result is still lopsided 
enforcement compared to the record number of aliens entering.
                            the regulations
    Under the guise of removing barriers, the Department, along with 
the Department of Justice, engaged in several rulemakings purportedly 
aimed at creating efficiency and expediency at the border.
    Under section 235(b)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act 
(INA),\14\ aliens apprehended by CBP entering illegally along the 
border or without proper documents at the ports of entry are subject to 
``expedited removal'', meaning that they can be quickly removed without 
receiving removal orders from an immigration judge (IJ).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \14\ Section 235(b)(1) of the INA, available at: https://
uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title8-
section1225#=0&edition=prelim.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    If an arriving alien claims to fear harm or asks for asylum, 
however, CBP must hand the alien over to an asylum officer (AO) in U.S. 
Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for a ``credible fear'' 
interview.\15\ Credible fear is a screening process to assess whether 
the alien may have an asylum claim, and thus proving credible fear is 
easier than establishing eligibility for asylum.\16\ If an AO finds 
that the alien does not have credible fear (makes a ``negative credible 
fear determination''), the alien can ask for a review of that decision 
by an IJ.\17\ If the IJ upholds the negative credible fear 
determination, the alien is to be removed immediately.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \15\ Section 235(b)(1)(A)(ii) of the INA, available at: https://
uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title8-
section1225#=0&edition=prelim.
    \16\ See section 235(b)(1)(B)(v) of the INA (defining ``Credible 
fear of persecution''), available at: https://uscode.house.gov/
view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title8-section1225#=0&- 
edition=prelim.
    \17\ Section 235(b)(1)(B)(iii)(III) of the INA, available at: 
https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title8-
section1225#=0&edition=prelim.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    When an AO or IJ makes a ``positive credible fear determination'', 
on the other hand, the alien is placed into removal proceedings to 
apply for asylum before an IJ.\18\ Most aliens who have claimed a fear 
of return in the past received a positive credible fear assessment (83 
percent between fiscal year 2008 and fiscal year 2019),\19\ but less 
than 17 percent of those who received a positive credible fear 
assessment were ultimately granted asylum.\20\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \18\ Section 235(b)(1)(B)(ii) of the INA, available at: https://
uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title8-
section1225#=0&edition=prelim.
    \19\ Credible Fear and Asylum Process: Fiscal Year (FY) 2008-fiscal 
year 2019, U.S. Dep't of Justice, Executive Office for Immigration 
Review (generated Oct. 23, 2019), available at: https://
www.justice.gov/eoir/file/1216991/download.
    \20\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In 2022, DHS issued an interim final rule entitled ``Procedures for 
Credible Fear Screening and Consideration of Asylum, Withholding of 
Removal, and CAT Protection Claims by Asylum Officers.''\21\ Under the 
new process, a positive credible fear determination by a DHS asylum 
officer will lead to a non-adversarial asylum interview before another 
DHS asylum officer. Asylum officers who find an alien eligible for a 
form of protection lesser than full-fledged asylum, such as statutory 
withholding of removal \22\ or protection under the Convention Against 
Torture,\23\ must still refer the matter to a DOJ immigration judge who 
may consider the entire case. That is hardly streamlining the process.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \21\ Procedures for Credible Fear Screening and Consideration of 
Asylum, Withholding of Removal, and CAT Protection Claims by Asylum 
Officers, 87 Fed. Reg. 18078 (Interim Final Rule Mar. 29, 2022) (to be 
codified at 8 C.F.R. parts 208, 212, 235, 1003, 1208, 1235, and 1240).
    \22\ Statutory withholding of removal specifies that an alien may 
not be removed ``to a country if the Attorney General decides that the 
alien's life or freedom would be threatened in that country because of 
the alien's race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular 
social, or political opinion.'' 8 U.S.C. 1231(b)(3)(A).
    \23\ Following the United States ratifying its signing of the 
Convention Against Torture in 1994, Congress implemented CAT 
protections in Section 2242 of the Foreign Affairs Reform and 
Restructuring Act of 1998 aimed at not effecting the removal of a 
person who would be subjected to torture upon such removal. See Foreign 
Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 (FARRA), Pub. L. 105-277, 
Div. G, Tit. XII, chap. 3, subchap. B, section 2242(a) (1998).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Even more concerning was that the written summary of the original 
credible fear interview doubles as an alien's asylum application, 
rendering the requirement that an alien file an asylum application 
moot. This shifts the burden to present and prepare a meritorious claim 
for protection. Aliens may rely on first-made claims of their story, 
changing or including relevant details in advance of the asylum 
interview or court proceeding, but without having to affirmatively file 
an application. While this, in and of itself, does not ensure an asylum 
grant, it certainly provides a path for fraud. It also renders a key 
anti-asylum fraud measure moot.
    In addition to the practical problems associated with this rule, it 
impermissibly shifts authorities from the Department of Justice to the 
Department of Homeland Security. As Congress was creating the new DHS, 
it specifically determined which functions would be enumerated.\24\ 
Regarding asylum officers, or USCIS in general, Congress specified 
which immigration functions would be transferred to the new created 
department.\25\ Section 451 of the HSA established the Bureau of 
Citizenship and Immigration Services and provided its function as 
transferred from the DOJ.\26\ By including a catch-all provision for 
any functions that may have been missed in the paragraphs 1 through 4, 
it is apparent that the intent was to ensure that whatever adjudicative 
functions were being performed by INS prior to the transfer, would be 
continued by USCIS subsequent to it. Nothing in the provision suggests 
that any further functions be transferred.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \24\ Homeland Security Act of 2002, Pub. L. No. 107-296, 116 Stat. 
2135 (2002).
    \25\ Id.
    \26\ Id. at  451(b), 116 Stat. 2135, 2196 (2002). (``(b) Transfer 
of Functions from the Commissioner.--In accordance with title XV 
(relating to transition provisions), there are transferred from the 
Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization Services the following 
functions and all personnel, infrastructure, and funding provided to 
the Commissioner in support of such functions immediately before the 
effective date specified in section 455:
    (1) Adjudications of immigrant visa petitions.
    (2) Adjudications of naturalization petitions.
    (3) Adjudications of asylum and refugee applications.
    (4) Adjudications performed at service centers.
    (5) All other adjudications performed by the Immigration and 
Naturalization Service immediately before the effective date specified 
in section 455.'')
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As additional evidence that EOIR functions were not transferred, 
the HSA affirmatively established EOIR within DOJ. This section, 
ultimately codified in INA, states:

``(1) In general.--The Attorney General shall have such authorities and 
functions under this Act and all other laws relating to the immigration 
and naturalization of aliens as were exercised by the Executive Office 
for Immigration Review, on the day before the effective date of the 
Immigration Reform, Accountability and Security Enhancement Act of 
2002.''\27\ \28\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \27\ 8 U.S.C. 1103(g).
    \28\ The Immigration Reform, Accountability, and Security 
Enhancement Act of 2002 (S. 2444; 107th Cong.) was introduced in May 
2002 but was never passed. This language was retained for the Homeland 
Security Act of 2002, Pub. L. No. 107-296,  1102, 116 Stat. 2135, 
2273-2274 (2002).

    This provision makes clear that the Attorney General retained the 
functions of EOIR to include the authority to order deportation from 
the United States. Nowhere in the HSA nor in the INA is there any 
reference to USCIS, exercising authority to order removal. As the 
former INS did not exercise such authority, and no such functions were 
specifically transferred to USCIS, the statute is not ambiguous or 
silent on the matter. Congressional intent is clear that such quasi-
judicial functions would remain with EOIR where such functions have 
been exercised exclusively since 1983.
    Accordingly, DHS, through USCIS, now taking on additional 
authorities aimed at processing in aliens faster and getting them full-
fledged asylum interview, in a non-adversarial manner, without the 
benefit of immigration court or ICE trial attorney's input. This is 
rulemaking run amok as it is contrary to statute, contrary to long-
existing policy, and directly encroaches on the Department of Justice.
    Relevant to the border, a notice of proposed rulemaking was 
published on February 23, 2023.\29\ Starting with the name, 
``Circumvention of Lawful Pathways,'' the proposed role is an 
ineffective measure and empty gesture. Despite its perceived 
enforcement provisions, this rule, if implemented, would allow most 
aliens to arrive at or between ports of entry, make fraudulent claims 
of fear to enter the United States or continue to utilize unlawful mass 
parole programs to accomplish the same. As the Biden administration 
continues to steadfastly grip to its Executive Order on removing 
barriers to immigration,\30\ this rule, finalized on May 16, 2023 will 
do exactly that.\31\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \29\ Circumvention of Lawful Pathways, 88 Fed. Reg. 11704 (proposed 
Feb. 23, 2023) (to be codified at 8 C.F.R. parts 208 and 1208).
    \30\ Restoring Faith in Our Legal Immigration Systems and 
Strengthening Integration and Inclusion Efforts for New Americans, 86 
Fed. Reg. 2877 (Feb. 5, 2021).
    \31\ Circumvention of Lawful Pathways, 88 Fed. Reg. 31314 (Final on 
May 16, 2023) (to be codified at 8 C.F.R. parts 208 and 1208).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The rule may be framed as an enforcement tool to limit the number 
of aliens who will ultimately be able to receive asylum, however we are 
hard-pressed to find any examples of classes of aliens who will 
actually be kept out of the process under this rule.
    The crux of the rule is the concept that a presumption of asylum 
ineligibility exists for any alien entering the United States who does 
not meet certain criteria. Specifically, the proposed rule requires 
that to be eligible for asylum one of three criteria must be met: (1) 
The alien must have appropriate documentation; (2) must present at a 
port of entry with a prescheduled appointment through the CBP One App; 
or (3) must have sought protection in a third country and received a 
final determination. The last criteria is akin to the Third Country 
Transit Rule, which likewise largely prohibited asylum eligibility for 
a non-contiguous alien who did not apply for protection in a country 
where such processes are available.\32\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \32\ Circumvention of Lawful Pathways, 88 Fed. Reg. 11704, 11750-
11752 (proposed Feb. 23, 2023) (to be codified at 8 C.F.R. parts 208 
and 1208).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The similarities to the previous rule end there, however. While 
this appears to be a strong measure to control migration along the 
Southern Border, it becomes apparent that the exceptions swallow the 
rule. We are left with the question of to whom this rule will actually 
apply once implemented. Of the three criteria, the one that we presume 
will most often be utilized is the prescheduled appointments. It is not 
likely that many aliens will suddenly obtain legitimate documentation 
and, if they were able to do so, they likely would not be applying for 
asylum but would be entering on a type of visa. This is an important 
distinction because credible fear procedures would not apply to an 
admitted alien (i.e. one that actually has a valid authorization). The 
third criterion may be used more often than the first but it is unclear 
to the extent that an alien would avail themselves of protection in 
Mexico and other nations in Central and South America. Whether they are 
being smuggled to the United States or make the journey on their own, 
the lack of resources and familiarity with the law will also make this 
criterion rarely met.
    The rule is clearly encouraging aliens to use the second criterion. 
A prescheduled appointment through the CBP One App is the most 
available option for aliens with access to smart phones or other 
technology allowing them to contact the system. However, even this 
criterion is waived if the alien can demonstrate that ``it was not 
possible to access or use the . . . system due to language barrier, 
illiteracy, significant technical failure, or other on-going and 
serious obstacle.''\33\ In essence, everything must align perfectly for 
this criterion to be the basis for the presumption of ineligibility. 
Relying on technology is itself a risky proposition as factors such as 
bugs within the app or lack of available cellular service or a reliable 
internet connection could all hamper an alien's ability to successfully 
schedule an appointment. Additionally, while we do not have statistics 
on literacy rates of migrants, it would be fairly common to find 
migrants without a strong grasp of the English language. If language 
and literacy are included as prerequisites, this will likely include a 
far larger population of migrants who would overcome the rule's 
presumption. Last, the catch-all of ``other or on-going and serious 
obstacle'' is left undefined in the regulatory text. As asylum officers 
and immigration judges will be trained on identification of the 
presumption, leaving a catch-all which will seemingly be within the 
discretion of the adjudicator will allow virtually any reason to pass 
muster. This will result in the presumption being raised against hardly 
any alien crossing into the United States.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \33\ Circumvention of Lawful Pathways, 88 Fed. Reg. 11704, 11750 
(proposed Feb. 23, 2023) (to be codified at 8 C.F.R. parts 208 and 
1208).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    For those few aliens against whom the presumption will be raised, 
the rule has fashioned it as a rebuttable presumption. Again, the 
exceptions and now the rebuttals swallow the rule itself. An alien may 
rebut the presumption when proving that the alien has a medical 
emergency, ``faces an imminent and extreme threat to life or safety,'' 
or meets the statutory definition of trafficking victims.\34\ Of the 
three, the most concerning is the threat to life or safety. It is well-
established that the trek to the United States is dangerous with more 
migrants killed or kidnapped each year. The dangers of the journey are 
further exacerbated with the influence of cartels and other criminal 
organizations that view smuggling migrants as a for-profit business 
without regard to their safety. From fiscal year 2017 through fiscal 
year 2021, CBP has reported over 1,700 migrant deaths.\35\ Fiscal year 
2021 had the most in a single year with 568 deaths.\36\ Additionally, 
in that same time period, Border Patrol rescued over 8,400 
individuals.\37\ Fiscal year 2021 again saw the most rescues in a 
single year with 3,423.\38\ These numbers only represent the deaths and 
emergencies reported by CBP, not other Federal, State, and local 
agencies and it is unknown how many bodies have never been discovered. 
The journey to the Southern Border of the United States is inherently a 
journey where an alien will face extreme threats to life and safety 
from beginning to end. To add this as an exception is to exempt the 
entire population of migrants that have traveled with the assistance of 
smugglers and other criminal enterprises.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \34\ Id.
    \35\ U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Border Rescues and 
Mortality Data (Feb. 6, 2023), https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/
border-rescues-and-mortality-data.
    \36\ Id.
    \37\ Id.
    \38\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While the rule claims to disincentivize illegal border crossers, 
the Department's provisions have instead created additional incentives 
to make the perilous journey either as unaccompanied children or with 
children in tow. In addition to the fact that the NPRM does not apply 
to unaccompanied children, the Department of Justice rule requires 
granting asylum despite ineligibility in an effort to preserve family 
unity. In a relevant portion, the Department of Justice's regulation 
states that ``[w]here a principal asylum applicant is eligible for 
withholding . . . and would be granted asylum but for the presumption . 
. . and where an accompanying spouse or child . . . does not 
independently qualify for asylum or other protections . . . the 
presumption shall be deemed rebutted.''\39\ Caselaw has long held that 
grantees of withholding of removal cannot receive derivative benefits 
for their spouses and children.\40\ This provision seeks to sidestep 
that issue by granting full asylum status to the principal and family 
even if the principal alien cannot otherwise rebut the presumption.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \39\ Circumvention of Lawful Pathways, 88 Fed. Reg. 11704, 11752 
(proposed Feb. 23, 2023) (to be codified at 8 C.F.R. parts 208 and 
1208).
    \40\ Matter of A-K-, 24 I. & N. Dec. 275 (BIA 2007).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                              parole abuse
    While the Department claims that a lack of available pathways has 
made the aforementioned rules necessary, that lack has not stopped the 
Department from abusing its parole authority. For a section of law 
meant to be used sparingly and in exceptional circumstances, the 
Department has relied heavily on its parole powers to permit aliens to 
enter the counter en masse, many without a notice to appear before an 
immigration judge. Section 212(d)(5) of the INA authorizes parole of 
aliens ``into the United States temporarily under such conditions as he 
may prescribe only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian 
reasons or significant public benefit . . . ''\41\ Additionally, the 
legislative history of parole authority, cited by the former INS in its 
initial regulation, makes clear that the intent was to exercise the 
authority in a narrow and restrictive manner. The original rule stated:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \41\ 8 U.S.C.  1182(d)(5).

``The drafters of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 gave as 
examples situations where parole was warranted in cases involving the 
need for immediate medical attention, witnesses, and aliens being 
brought into the United States for prosecution. H. Rep. No. 1365, 82d 
Cong., 2d Sess. at 52 (1952). In 1965, a Congressional committee stated 
that the parole provisions `were designated to authorize the Attorney 
General to act on an emergent, individual, and isolated situation, such 
as the case of an alien who requires immediate medical attention, and 
not for the immigration of classes or groups outside the limit of the 
law.' 5 Rep. No. 748, 98th Cong., 1st Sess. at 17 (1965).\42\''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \42\ Detention and Parole of Inadmissible Aliens; Interim Rule with 
Requests for Comments, 47 Fed. Reg. 30044 (Jul. 9, 1982) (codified in 8 
C.F.R. parts 212 and 235) (emphasis added).

    Regardless of the plain language of the statute and the legislative 
history, parole has become a favorite tool of the Biden administration. 
While first used as an alternative to detention, parole programs have 
subsequently played a large role in artificially decreasing numbers 
along the border.
    When reviewing the Border Patrol monthly disposition and transfer 
statistics, it becomes apparent that parole was the path of choice to 
quickly process and move aliens northward. Border Patrol monthly 
disposition and transfer statistics for fiscal years 2022 and 2023 
demonstrate just how commonplace parole has become. While Border Patrol 
suggestions that the ``processing disposition decision related to each 
apprehension is made on a case-by-case basis . . . ''\43\ the raw 
numbers belie that disclaimer. In fiscal year 2022, parole numbers 
steadily rose to culminate in over 95,000 paroles granted in September 
2022.\44\ That trend has continued in this fiscal year as Border Patrol 
recorded over 130,000 paroles in December 2022.\45\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \43\ Customs and Border Protection, Custody and Transfer Statistics 
Fiscal Year 2023 (May 19, 2023), available at: https://www.cbp.gov/
newsroom/stats/custody-and-transfer-statistics.
    \44\ Customs and Border Protection, Custody and Transfer Statistics 
Fiscal Year 2022 (Nov. 14, 2022), available at: https://www.cbp.gov/
newsroom/stats/custody-and-transfer-statistics-fy22.
    \45\ Customs and Border Protection, Custody and Transfer Statistics 
Fiscal Year 2023 (May 19, 2023), available at: https://www.cbp.gov/
newsroom/stats/custody-and-transfer-statistics.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Moreso than individual aliens, the Department has gone farther 
astray as it has implemented parole programs, contrary to law, for 
nationals of certain countries. Beginning in October 2022, the 
Department announced that it was utilizing new pathways to ``create a 
more orderly and safe process for people fleeing the humanitarian and 
economic crisis in Venezuela.''\46\ This was augmented in January 2023, 
when the Department announced expanded parole programs for nationals of 
Nicaragua, Cuba, and Haiti.\47\ The program permits nationals of those 
countries, and their immediate relatives, to seek parole when sponsored 
by someone with lawful status in the United States. It is worth noting 
that the sponsor need not be a relative of the beneficiary.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \46\ Dep't of Homeland Sec., DHS Announces New Migration 
Enforcement Process for Venezuelans (Oct. 12, 2022), available at: 
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2022/10/12/dhs-announces-new-migration-
enforcement-process-venezuelans.
    \47\ Dep't of Homeland Sec., DHS Continues to Prepare for End of 
Title 42; Announces New Border Enforcement Measures and Additional Safe 
and Orderly Processes (Jan. 5, 2023), available at: https://
www.dhs.gov/news/2023/01/05/dhs-continues-prepare-end-title-42-
announces-new-border-enforcement-measures-and.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While the previous administration did end parole programs, such as 
the Central American Minors (``CAM'') program, it is undeniable that 
some parole programs continued to exist and operate. These programs 
were far more limited in scope. The Filipino World War II Veterans 
Parole Program, the Haitian Family Reunification Parole Program, and 
the Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program only account for a 
fraction of the number of paroles granted by the Biden administration 
in just a single month. Additionally, the Cuban Family Reunification 
Parole Program stems from the Cuba Accords, something that cannot be 
said about the other countries currently enjoying broad parole.
    The result of these parole programs was a drop in border numbers 
and a marked decrease in parole utilized by Border Patrol. This is all 
smoke and mirrors however as it is supplanting one form of illegal 
entry for another. This is not to suggest that parole is akin to an 
illegal entry but a recognition that parole usage in this fashion, is 
unlawful.
                     the legal immigration backlog
    This committee is well aware of the vast number of pending matters 
presently before USCIS. As of December 31, 2022, USCIS reported a 
pending caseload of 8,841,152 matters. While the agency claims to want 
to reduce this number, actions speak louder than words. It was recently 
reported that USCIS adjudicators were being shifted from their assigned 
work in order to support operations along the Southwest Border.
    While the extent of this shift is still relatively unknown, it is 
clear that any shift will have significant consequences for the 
adjudication of affirmative asylum cases as well as applications and 
petitions for immigration benefits. It is also important to remember 
that the latter group pays the fees that keep USCIS operational. 
Essentially, USCIS is taking resources away from the adjudications that 
fund the agency and thereby applicants for benefits are primarily 
funding, not their own adjudications, but the adjudication of credible 
fear matters along the border.
                               conclusion
    The Department of Homeland Security has taken many measures in the 
past 2\1/2\ years aimed at addressing the border crisis however it 
appears that no one thought to simply enforce the law as written. In an 
effort to remove barriers and to create a subjectively orderly system, 
the Department has conflated law and policy and ensured that when the 
two were in conflict, that policy won the day. The memos that undermine 
grounds of inadmissibility and removability, the rules that undermine 
Congressional action and established authorities, and the parole 
programs that are simply incongruous with the law paint a clear 
picture. The Department has, through its own actions, created the worst 
border crisis in American history. A return to the rule of law is long 
overdue and it is incumbent upon Congress to demand that corrective 
action be immediately taken.

    Chairman Green. Thank you, Mr. Edlow.
    I now recognize Mr. Scott for 5 minutes to summarize his 
opening statement.

 STATEMENT OF RODNEY S. SCOTT, SENIOR DISTINGUISHED FELLOW FOR 
 BORDER SECURITY, TEXAS PUBLIC POLICY FOUNDATION, FORMER CHIEF 
                     OF U.S. BORDER PATROL

    Mr. Scott. Chairman Green, Ranking Member Thompson, Members 
of the committee, thank you for letting me testify here today.
    The career professionals at DHS, and specifically Customs 
and Border Protection and U.S. Border Patrol, deserve our 
praise and admiration. I am confident that they are doing 
everything they can every day to protect this country, despite 
this administration's efforts to undermine their efforts.
    The chaos at our Southwest Border and the consequences are 
a result of actions taken by the Biden administration. The 
perspectives that I provide are grounded in my professional 
experience, including my time as chief in the Biden 
administration.
    Decades of bipartisan border security improvements were 
erased on January 2021, when the Biden administration announced 
actions that were heard around the world as the U.S. borders 
are now open. As predicted, the most secure border the United 
States had ever enjoyed disintegrated into chaos. The Biden 
administration's claims that they inherited a border in 
shambles, that surges in illegal immigration like this are 
normal, or that allowing more illegal aliens to go through a 
port of entry is solving the problem are not accurate. The 
crisis at our border is still raging. Don't get lulled into 
believing that 3,500 arrests a day should be cheered just 
because it is lower than the 11,000 a day we saw a few weeks 
ago. The Border Patrol remains overwhelmed, the cartels 
continue to control who and what is entering the United States, 
migrants are still being exploited, and children are still 
being trafficked.
    CBP has recorded over 6 million encounters and over 1.4 
million known gotaways--that's under the Biden administration. 
But numbers fail to convey the severity of the national 
security consequences. Some consequences are easier to measure 
than others before a bomb goes off. The 1.4 million known 
gotaways are a measurable consequence of agents being 
overwhelmed. But consider that hundreds of miles of border lack 
any persistent surveillance. When construction of the border 
wall system was terminated, the associated technology was also 
terminated. Every minute that agents are not patrolling the 
U.S. border increases the probability of more unknown gotaways.
    Most illicit narcotics, including the fentanyl that is 
readily available in your home town, originated outside of the 
United States. Every agent and officer taken away from 
inspection and patrol duties decreases our Nation's ability to 
interdict these poisons before they can hurt your family, your 
friends, and your neighbors.
    Leaving hundreds of miles of border unmanned and 
unpatrolled is like leaving the doors of your home open when 
you go on vacation. You can replace things that get stolen, but 
the real threat is the unknown person hiding in your home when 
you return. Verifying any unknown person's identity or their 
story requires a face-to-face conversation. How many human 
trafficking incidents went undetected because our law 
enforcement personnel today are being instructed to process 
aliens like a fast-food drive through? How do we quantify the 
intelligence collection opportunities that were lost?
    Additionally, when CBP officers are redirected to conduct 
immigration processing, legal trade and travel suffers. This 
further disrupts our supply chain, increases the cost of 
imported goods, and more.
    As chief of the United States Border Patrol, my staff and I 
engaged and advised the Biden transition teams well before 
inauguration. The administration's laser focus on expediting, 
processing, and increasing opportunities for migrants to enter 
the United States never wavered. Advice from career 
professionals was ignored, policies were implemented that 
resulted in thousands of aliens being released into the United 
States. Illegal immigration intensified, overwhelmed Border 
Patrol, and effectively transferred control of our Southwest 
Border directly to the Mexican drug cartels. This is a national 
security threat. Cartels use illegal aliens to overwhelm law 
enforcement, creating controllable gaps in border security. 
These gaps are exploited to smuggle anything they want into the 
United States. To think that terrorist networks and hostile 
nations are not exploiting this vulnerability is naive.
    I'm not here testifying about policy differences. Policy is 
how you carry out your duties under the law. The Secretary of 
Homeland Security has a legal duty to prevent the illegal entry 
of aliens and to secure our border. Even if success is 
unattainable, he still needs to try. Instead, Secretary 
Mayorkas has chosen to expend Department resources to provide 
care for aliens that enter the United States illegally.
    As detailed in my written testimony, I believe the 
Secretary is derelict in his duties to secure the border. I 
also believe that the Secretary has likely violated the 
Empowerment Control Act. Secretary Mayorkas is great at 
invoking understandable compassion for the plight of the 
migrants, and I too acknowledge our humanitarian 
responsibilities. But as Secretary of the United States 
Department of Homeland Security and the overseer of billions of 
tax dollars that are appropriated to protect America, if you 
look at that, this administration is clearly not doing their 
job.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Scott follows:]
                 Prepared Statement of Rodney S. Scott
                             June 14, 2023
    Chairman Green, Ranking Member Thompson, Members of the committee, 
good morning and thank you for inviting me to testify before you.
    I am appearing before you to ensure that you and the American 
people have an opportunity to understand that the chaos at our 
Southwest Border, and the subsequent national security vulnerabilities 
and consequences are a direct result of informed and intentional 
decisions made by the Biden administration. The chaos at our borders is 
not a reflection on the dedicated career Government personnel. The 
career professionals that make up DHS, and specifically U.S. Customs 
and Border Protection (CBP), including the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP), 
deserve our praise and admiration. I am confident that they do 
everything they can each and every day to secure our borders and 
protect America even as this administration undermines their efforts.
    The information and professional assessments that I provide are 
grounded in nearly three decades of experience as a career Border 
Patrol agent and my first-hand experience working in the Biden 
administration, as chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, until I retired in 
August 2021. For much of my career I was honored to participate in the 
transition from an uncontrolled chaotic Southwest Border to a border 
that was increasingly secure. Unfortunately, that progress was reversed 
by the Biden administration. The informed and intentional decisions 
made by the Biden administration directly resulted in the predicted 
disintegration of border security into the chaos that now threatens to 
be a new normal.
    The current administration, supported by a lot of media, is 
misleading America by asserting that they inherited a border in 
shambles, surges in immigration like we are experiencing are normal and 
that they are solving the border ``challenge'' by allowing aliens, 
without any legal immigration documents, to enter the United States 
through official Ports of Entry. The aliens are allowed to schedule an 
appointment via the CBP One app, assert a fear claim, and then get 
released with Notice to Appear in immigration court in a few years. Or 
they can apply for a program that relies on an expanded use of parole 
authority to get into the country without immigration documents. This 
parole program is arguably illegal, because in part, the process lacks 
the individual case by case determination as required by law.
    Let me be clear, the crisis at our border is still raging and poses 
both immediate and strategic national security threats to America. 
Despite the current administration's claims, just because U.S. Border 
Patrol encountered 11,000 illegal aliens on a single day with Title 42 
in place does not mean that arresting 3,500 illegal aliens a day under 
Title 8 is a good day. First, 3,500 arrests each day continues to 
overwhelm USBP capabilities and empowers the cartels to control who and 
what enters the United States. For context, from fiscal years 2015 
through 2020, USBP averaged approximately 1,250 arrests each day. 
Fiscal year 2015 and fiscal year 2017 averaged below 1,000 arrests each 
day. Over the course of those years, USBP was improving situational 
awareness and improving interdiction effectiveness. This progress ended 
and chaos ensured with the signing of several Executive Orders and 
public announcements on, and following January 20, 2021. The message 
that was heard around the world was that the U.S. borders are open and 
even those without legal immigration documents will be allowed to enter 
the United States. As you know, this resulted in over 6 million 
encounters \1\ and over 1.4 million known got-a-ways.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Nationwide Encounters/U.S. Customs and Border Protection 
(cbp.gov).
    \2\ Public statements by USBP Chief Raul Ortiz.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Second, these numbers and comparisons alone still fail to 
adequately demonstrate the severity of the border crisis or the daily 
consequences of mass migration. Simple encounter and arrest numbers 
fail to portray how much time it takes to arrest, search, transport, 
and then process each individual. These numbers also fail to show the 
thousands of hours that agents spend transporting sick and injured 
aliens to local hospitals and then providing 24/7 security monitoring 
until the alien is released.
    Third, these numbers fail to adequately portray the loss in 
situational awareness as agents are not patrolling the border while 
they routinely detain and then transport large groups of illegal aliens 
out of remote areas, often three aliens at a time depending on the 
terrain and the vehicle capacity. Nor do they account for the number of 
agents required to monitor and provide care during administrative 
processing. Further, these numbers do not address the loss in agent 
effectiveness that occurred when the border wall system, to include the 
surveillance technology package, was terminated leaving hundreds of 
miles of border without persistent surveillance capability and sporadic 
gaps in border barrier. These numbers also fail to show how many human 
trafficking incidents went undetected or measure the loss of 
intelligence because agents and officers do not have time to conduct 
thorough interviews.
    Fourth, these numbers do not address how many people got into the 
United States undetected or the volume of narcotics that was 
successfully smuggled to your city. If you are unaware, the gotaways 
reported by USBP are only the known gotaways. They were detected but 
there were no agents left to interdict them. An illegal entry unseen is 
an illegal entry uncounted!
    Additionally, these numbers also fail to acknowledge the impacts 
associated with the increased volume of undocumented migrants being 
funneled into our ports of entry. By redirecting CBP Officers to 
conduct civil immigration processing the wait times for legal trade and 
travel are increased. This further disrupts our supply chains and 
increases the cost of imported goods. Even more importantly, it also 
reduces the time officers have to conduct thorough inspections and 
interviews to identify potential threats. I would like to remind 
everyone that this is their real job. Nineteen terrorists carried out 
the 9/11 attacks because the 20th terrorist was denied entry into the 
United States by an alert officer that had time to conduct an effective 
inspection interview.
    I would also like to remind everyone that the majority of fentanyl 
and other illicit narcotics, readily available in every State across 
our Nation, originated outside the United States. Every agent and 
officer taken away from inspection and patrol duties decreases our 
ability to interdict these poisons before they can make it to your 
families, friends, or neighbors.
    I started my testimony with a strong assertion that I believe the 
chaos at our Southwest Border and the national security vulnerabilities 
and consequences are a direct result of informed and intentional 
decisions made by the Biden administration. I do not make this 
assertion lightly. As chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, my staff and I 
engaged directly with the transition teams prior to the inauguration, 
as well as President Biden's appointed personnel following the 
inauguration.
    In two very brief direct engagements with Secretary Mayorkas, he 
acknowledged that the significant numbers of illegal entries were 
overwhelming Border Patrol capabilities and was not sustainable. He 
also acknowledged his prior experience in DHS and that he understood 
there must be consequences for illegal entry to stem the flow. The 
first engagement was a senior DHS leadership call with the Secretary 
and the second engagement was at a meeting with border Sheriffs in El 
Paso, TX. Unfortunately, I quickly learned that the Secretary's words 
and action were routinely very different. Routine conversations, formal 
and informal operational guidance, combine with the public actions and 
statements of Secretary Mayorkas and other Biden administration 
officials, quickly resulted in the conclusion that the administration 
had no intention of securing the border in any meaningful way despite 
the legal requirements to do so.
    Biden administration personnel made it very clear in every 
engagement that their focus was on expediting immigration processing to 
increase throughput and open new opportunities for migrants to enter 
the United States. This was very consistent with the statements made 
during the Presidential campaign. My personal interactions also made it 
clear that many of the political appointees did not believe that 
millions of unknown, unvetted foreigners illegally entering the United 
States were a problem. The only issue that the Biden administration 
appointees wanted to discuss was how to avoid the optics of large 
numbers of aliens, especially unaccompanied alien children, being 
detained in Government facilities.
    Nonpartisan career Government personnel, to include myself, advised 
the Biden administration repeatedly that the removal of consequences 
for illegally entering the United States, reimplementing catch-and-
release, and very publicly terminating the construction on the border 
wall system would undoubtedly result in an influx of illegal aliens 
that would overwhelm U.S. capabilities and empower the cartels. The 
Biden administration refused to acknowledge the national security 
threats that increase proportionately with any increase in illegal 
immigration and/or the fraud in our asylum processes. Despite being 
briefed and provided written warnings, the Biden administration refused 
to acknowledge that mass illegal immigration transfers control of the 
U.S. border directly to the cartels.
    From Day 1, political leadership in the Biden administration 
ignored career professionals and increasingly made policy decisions 
that resulted in thousands of aliens being released into the United 
States. As predicted, the volume of illegal immigration rapidly 
increased, overwhelmed Border Patrol and effectively transferred 
control of our Southwest Border to the Mexican drug cartels.
    I watched the border security gains that were made over three 
decades vanish and the safety of border communities spiral backwards. 
Policy makers must understand that this is not simply an immigration 
issue. This is a national security threat. Cartels use illegal aliens 
to overwhelm law enforcement creating controllable gaps in border 
security. These gaps are exploited to smuggle anything they want into 
the Uited States. To think that well-resourced terrorist networks and 
hostile nations are not exploiting this vulnerability is naive.
    Prioritizing immigration processing over enforcement also means 
that deployed agents are spread so thin that they often lack the 
capability to make an interdiction, even after an illegal entry is 
detected. This does not include the unknown gotaways along the hundreds 
of miles of border that lack persistent surveillance and go unpatrolled 
for days and even weeks. In my professional assessment, as a direct 
result of decisions and actions taken by the Biden administration and 
specifically Secretary Mayorkas, U.S. Border Patrol has lost the 
ability to know who and what is entering our homeland.
    Border security is national security. My first-hand experiences 
taught me that border security and immigration policy are two 
distinctly different, yet interrelated issues. Border security is 
simply knowing and controlling who and what enters our homeland. 
Immigration and customs laws and policies are irrelevant if you cannot 
control the initial entry.
    I realize that some people see the border security and immigration 
enforcement decisions of this administration, and specifically 
Secretary Mayorkas, as simple policy differences. I do not agree with 
that opinion. Policy is how you carry out your duties and 
responsibilities under the law. Our Government officials should not be 
allowed to use policy differences as an excuse to ignore the law. By 
law, the Secretary of Homeland Security is required to take action to 
prevent the entry of illegal aliens and to secure the border. I argue 
that even if unattainable the law requires the Secretary to at least 
try to meet these objectives.
    I believe that Secretary Mayorkas and subordinate political 
appointees have taken actions and made public statements clearly 
demonstrating that the Secretary has made informed decisions to ignore 
legal responsibilities. Instead, he has chosen to dedicate the 
resources of the Department to provide care, feeding, and even 
facilitating the movement of aliens that entered the United States 
illegally. I would argue that once again his actions do not match his 
words and go against his own enforcement prioritization guidance issued 
on September 30, 2021. This guidance states that Department resources 
should be focused on the most significant national security and public 
threats. Despite issuing that guidance, he has chosen to expend a 
significant portion of the resources and capabilities of the Department 
to process civil immigration cases at the expense of addressing 
significant national security and public safety threats at the border.
    I have heard many people of both parties rightly argue that we have 
never had enough resources to detain and prosecute everyone that enters 
the United States illegally, and that this is why we must leverage 
prosecutorial discretion. While on the surface this statement is true, 
it is also misleading, as it leaves out some very important facts. 
Prior to Secretary Mayorkas taking the helm at DHS, prosecutorial 
discretion was heavily complimented by deterrence strategies and 
effective polices that decreased the total number of illegal entries. 
As illegal entries decreased the percentage of law violators that could 
be detained and prosecuted increased, this acted as a further 
deterrent. These cascading effects resulted in improved border security 
year over year until January 20, 2021.
    I believe the intent of the law is clear even in areas where the 
means and methods are not clearly defined. My personal observations and 
experience have led me to believe that Secretary Mayorkas has 
intentionally ignored legal responsibilities and empowered his 
subordinates to do the same. Specific areas of concern are outlined 
below.
    Secretary Mayorkas has ignored his duty to prevent aliens from 
illegally entering the United States as required by law.

``8 USC 1103 (a)(5) Secretary of Homeland Security . . . He shall have 
the power and duty to control and guard the boundaries and borders of 
the United States against the illegal entry of aliens and shall, in his 
discretion, appoint for that purpose such number of employees of the 
Service as to him shall appear necessary and proper.''

    Secretary Mayorkas has ignored his duty and failed to take any 
meaningful action toward establishing operational control of the U.S. 
borders as required by law.

``The Secure Fence Act of 2006 states in part that:
`` . . . the Secretary of Homeland Security shall take all actions the 
Secretary determines necessary and appropriate to achieve and maintain 
operational control over the entire international land and maritime 
borders of the United States . . . ''

    Biden administration personnel demonstrated contempt for the 
Impoundment Control Act of 1974 and openly discussed methods to ignore 
the Appropriations Acts that authorized and funded border wall 
construction. They prevented any meaningful construction, while 
creating the appearance that work was being done to avoid an 
Impoundment Act violation.
    The Presidential Proclamation \3\ that paused border wall 
construction was issued on January 20, 2021. The Proclamation included 
a required review of each project and that a submission of a plan 
within 60 days. It also included the following statement,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ Proclamation on the Termination of Emergency With Respect to 
the Southern Border of the United States and Redirection of Funds 
Diverted To Border Wall Construction/The White House.

``while providing for the expenditure of any funds that the Congress 
expressly appropriated for wall construction, consistent with their 
appropriated purpose. The plan shall be developed within 60 days from 
the date of this proclamation. After the plan is developed, the 
Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall take 
all appropriate steps to resume, modify, or terminate projects and to 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
otherwise implement the plan.''

    Based on statements made during the 2020 Presidential campaign, I 
had anticipated this type of guidance and directed my staff to create a 
database with details of every wall project. The database would 
include, but not be limited to, the origination of the specific 
operational requirement, funding source, construction status, and any 
foreseeable questions that the new incoming administration may ask. 
That database was completed well before the Presidential Proclamation 
was issued. This information was presented and made available to 
Secretary Mayorkas and several Biden administration personnel on 
multiple occasions. Yet, to my knowledge, no meaningful construction of 
Congressionally-appropriated wall projects has been resumed.
    While the statements of Secretary Mayorkas and subordinate 
political appointees usually include at least one small fact to evoke 
understandable compassion for the plight of migrants, I have yet to 
hear a single statement or see any action toward protecting Americans 
or securing our borders. I acknowledge and champion our responsibility 
as humans to help others, but Secretary Mayorkas oversees the United 
States Department of Homeland Security, with significant capabilities 
and billions of tax dollars in appropriated funds, that are supposed to 
be used to protect Americans, and America. This administration is 
clearly not doing that.
    I look forward to answering your questions.
    Honor First!

    Chairman Green. Thank you, Mr. Scott.
    I now recognize Ms. Acer for 5 minutes to summarize her 
opening statement.

STATEMENT OF ELEANOR ACER, DIRECTOR, REFUGEE PROTECTION, HUMAN 
                          RIGHTS FIRST

    Ms. Acer. Thank you.
    Chairman Green, Ranking Member Thompson and distinguished 
Members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to 
testify before you today.
    Over the last few years, Human Rights First has documented 
the horrific harms inflicted on people due to the Remain in 
Mexico and Title 42 policies. I personally witnessed the first 
days of the implementation of Remain in Mexico from Tijuana 
under the Trump administration and the final days of the Title 
42 policy from Matamoros and Reynosa last month. My testimony 
focuses on a few key areas.
    First, our laws and treaties rightly allow people seeking 
protection from persecution to seek asylum, and asylum is both 
morally just and politically popular. Second, not only did 
Trump administration policies like Remain in Mexico and Title 
42 evade and violate refugee law, but they spurred chaos and 
inflicted massive human suffering. Third, the Biden 
administration should swiftly end its asylum ban, which 
endangers the lives of refugees and is inconsistent with the 
law, as were the Trump administration's bans on asylum. Fourth, 
as Human Rights First's experts on extremism and antisemitism 
have detailed, rhetoric painting migrants and asylum seekers as 
threats or invaders fuels white supremacist conspiracy theories 
and violence. It must be countered. Finally, Congress and the 
Biden administration should work together to implement 
effective strategies and provide the necessary resources to 
address challenges at the border and properly staff safe, 
effective, fair, asylum adjudications.
    The crisis we're facing is a humanitarian one, and it's 
global. In my written testimony, I outlined the ways in which 
human rights situations have deteriorated in countries in the 
Americas, including Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua, and 
Venezuela, pushing people to flee in search of protection, 
safety, and stability. The reality is that the vast majority of 
the world's refugees are hosted by other countries, and here in 
the Americas, other countries are hosting refugees as well. Six 
million of the 7 million Venezuelans who have fled are hosted 
in countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The United 
States is more than capable of humanely receiving and fairly 
processing the claims of people seeking refuge here.
    Under the Trump administration, Human Rights First tracked 
1,544 reports of kidnappings, murder, torture, rape, and other 
violent attacks against people returned to Mexico under MPP. 
During the Court-ordered reimplementation of MPP in 2022, 
asylum seekers continued to be targeted. MPP hearings remained 
a due process farce. Many asylum seekers were abducted while 
traveling through border regions to attend hearings or directly 
outside U.S. ports of entry before or after their hearings. MPP 
also wasted Government resources. DHS's analysis concluded it 
diverted resources from other migration priorities. In June 
2020, the Supreme Court confirmed the DHS Secretary had 
authority to end the policy.
    Asylum seekers and migrants returned to Mexico under Title 
42 similarly suffered kidnappings, rapes, and other attacks. 
The Trump administration returned well-known political 
activists from Nicaragua directly back to their country of 
persecution. Human Rights First has tracked over 13,480 reports 
of kidnappings, torture, and other attacks against asylum 
seekers and migrants during the Biden administration. Moreover, 
far from being an effective border management tool, the policy 
actually spurred increased crossings between ports of entry, 
inflated border apprehension statistics, and exacerbated cartel 
violence. Ending Title 42 does not mean that the U.S. border is 
open. It means U.S. immigration and refugee law can no longer 
be evaded by specious invocation of public health authority.
    The Biden administration has taken important steps toward 
expanding refugee resettlement from the Americas and some 
regular pathways to the United States through parole. As 
outlined in my testimony, the Department of Homeland Security 
has authority, legal authority, to parole individuals into the 
country, and legal authority to release people from detention. 
The use of these legal authorities do not mean the border is 
open.
    In conclusion, the Biden administration and Congress should 
work together to uphold refugee law at U.S. borders. Maximizing 
asylum at ports of entry after years of blockage is essential 
to end the counterproductive consequences of term policies that 
restricted and blocked access to asylum at ports of entry and 
pushed populations to cross between. We should enhance support 
for refugee hosting capacities in other countries, support for 
strong asylum systems and reception capacities ramp up, speed 
up, and strengthen regional resettlement, improve parole and 
other safe migration policies, implement humanitarian rather 
than punitive approaches to refugee protection, and take other 
steps that I've outlined in detail in my testimony.
    We also need to press the Biden administration to end its 
asylum ban and to stop subjecting asylum seekers to fast track 
processing in CBP custody, as the Trump administration did.
    Thank you so much.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Acer follows:]
                   Prepared Statement of Eleanor Acer
                             June 14, 2023
    Chairman Green, Ranking Member Thompson, and distinguished Members 
of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you 
today. My name is Eleanor Acer, and I serve as Human Rights First's 
senior director for refugee protection. I have over 25 years of 
experience monitoring and advocating for adherence to human rights and 
refugee law under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Human 
Rights First is an independent, non-profit organization that, for more 
than 4 decades, has pressed the United States to take a lead role in 
promoting, defending, and upholding human rights. It has partnered with 
human rights defenders in Cuba, El Salvador, Hong Kong, Russia, Saudi 
Arabia, Ukraine, and elsewhere around the world and, here at home, with 
attorneys, veterans, and many others.
    Working with volunteer lawyers at many of the Nation's leading law 
firms, we have provided pro bono legal representation to refugees 
seeking asylum, helping thousands to receive protection in this 
country. These have included pro-democracy advocates and victims of 
religious persecution from China, journalists forced to flee Guatemala, 
Ethiopia, Honduras, Iran, and Nigeria, LGBTQ+ people seeking protection 
from persecution, victims of political repression from Venezuela, 
Syria, Egypt, and Nicaragua, and Indigenous and other families targeted 
due to their opposition to brutal armed groups with transnational reach 
in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
    Over the last few years, our human rights researchers have traveled 
repeatedly to Mexican border cities to speak with people seeking asylum 
who have been turned away or left stranded in danger by the Remain in 
Mexico and Title 42 policies, and we have tracked horrific accounts of 
human suffering inflicted by these policies. I personally witnessed the 
first days of implementation of the Remain in Mexico policy from 
Tijuana under the Trump administration, and the final days of the Title 
42 policy from Matamoros and Reynosa last month. My testimony will 
focus on a few key areas:
   First, our laws and treaties rightly allow people fleeing 
        persecution to seek asylum--and this right to seek asylum is 
        both morally just and politically popular.
   Second, not only did failed Trump administration policies 
        like Remain in Mexico and Title 42 evade and violate refugee 
        law, but they spurred chaos and inflicted massive human 
        suffering.
   Third, the Biden administration should swiftly end its ban 
        on asylum, which endangers the lives of refugees seeking asylum 
        and is inconsistent with the law.
   Fourth, orchestrated rhetoric painting migrants and asylum 
        seekers as threats or ``invaders'' fuels white supremist 
        conspiracy theories and violence targeting Black, Brown, 
        immigrant, Jewish, and other people. Lawmakers must refuse to 
        provide a platform for this rhetoric and must swiftly call out 
        racist fearmongering and counter disinformation with reliable 
        and accurate data.
   Finally, Congress and the Biden administration should work 
        together to implement and support effective strategies 
        including strengthened regional refugee resettlement and 
        parole; provide the necessary resources to address adjudication 
        and processing challenges; and properly staff safe, effective, 
        and fair asylum adjudications. Parole and release from 
        detention are legally authorized and mass detention would 
        neither be humane nor fiscally responsible.
  i. upholding asylum is morally right and politically popular across 
                              party lines
    The right to seek asylum is a fundamental human right enshrined in 
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the wake of World War II, 
the United States helped lead efforts to draft the Refugee Convention, 
which along with its Protocol, prohibits the return of people to 
persecution. United States law specifically provides for people in 
search of refuge to seek asylum at ports of entry and after entering 
the United States.
    The majority of American voters, across party lines, believe that 
the United States should provide asylum to people fleeing persecution 
or violence in their home countries.\1\ Many Americans are the 
children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of people who fled 
political, religious, and other persecution. Moreover, lawmakers of 
both parties also believe the right to asylum should be protected.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ In a November 2022 poll conducted by the U.S. Immigration 
Policy Center, 87 percent of Democrats, 74 percent of Independents and 
57 percent Republicans expressed support for asylum. Another May 2022 
poll found that a majority of voters across the political spectrum 
supported asylum and wanted the Biden administration to end the Title 
42 policy. Voters ``by a margin of 58 percent to 32 percent [said] that 
they would prefer a candidate who favors allowing people to legally 
request asylum at the Southern Border over a candidate who opposes 
doing so.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Proponents of unjust anti-asylum policies often refuse to 
acknowledge the factors pushing people to leave their countries in 
search of refuge, or the fact that the vast majority of the world's 
refugees are hosted by countries other than the United States. In 
reality, the human rights situations in many countries in the Americas 
have deteriorated in recent years, pushing people to flee in search of 
protection, safety, and stability. For example:
   In Cuba, where freedom of expression, association, and other 
        basic human rights are sharply restricted, repression has 
        increased over the last few years, as security forces responded 
        violently with an extended wave of brutal repression to the 
        country's historic protests against economic difficulties and 
        lack of fundamental freedoms.
   In Haiti, violence and political instability escalated after 
        the 2021 assassination of the president, and in late 2022 the 
        U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, U.N. High Commissioner 
        for Refugees, and the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Haiti 
        all warned that people should not be returned to the country 
        due to the dire and dangerous conditions there.
   In Nicaragua, political persecution continued to escalate 
        against civil society, journalists, activists, church leaders, 
        nuns, and ordinary people--who live in fear and cannot safely 
        engage in public assembly or religious worship--and further 
        intensified during the year with a crackdown against civil 
        society in connection with November 2022 elections. In January 
        2023 guidance, the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) stated this 
        crackdown ``may be characterized as a massive violation of 
        human rights.''
   In Venezuela, the human rights situation has grown 
        significantly worse in recent years due to harsh crackdowns on 
        political opposition, the ruling party's reliance on widely 
        condemned elections to control all branches of the government, 
        horrific use of torture, and a severe humanitarian crisis.
   Human rights violations have continued or escalated in other 
        countries as well, including in Guatemala where the rule of law 
        has deteriorated, concerns of authoritarianism are rising, and 
        persecution has escalated against journalists, Indigenous and 
        human rights activists, and judicial officials combating 
        impunity for human rights violations, as well as in Honduras, 
        El Salvador, and other countries, as Human Rights Watch 
        documented in its recent annual report.
    The reality is that many people fleeing these and other places have 
fled to other countries in the Americas. In fact, of the 7.1 million 
people who have fled Venezuela in search of safety and stability, about 
6 million are hosted in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and other countries in 
Latin America and the Caribbean. Costa Rica is hosting about 200,000 or 
more Nicaraguans, and experienced a five-fold increase in total asylum 
claims in the first 6 months of 2022, as compared to the year before. 
Mexico hosts about 500,000 refugees and asylum seekers, though many 
face grave threats to their safety there.
    The United States is more than capable of humanely receiving and 
fairly processing the asylum claims of the portion of people seeking 
refuge here from repression, violence, and persecution.
  ii. failed trump administration policies inflicted chaos and human 
                             rights abuses
    The Title 42 and Remain in Mexico policies were failed policies 
implemented by the Trump administration that violated and evaded 
immigration law, inflicted disorder and dysfunction at the border, and 
led to massive human rights abuses. These dysfunctional policies also 
spurred repeat entries, led to family separations, pushed people 
seeking asylum to cross outside ports of entry, and inflated border 
statistics.
A. Remain in Mexico or ``Migrant Protection Protocols'' (MPP)
    The Remain in Mexico policy--often referred to as ``MPP''--was a 
blatant evasion of U.S. refugee law and asylum processes. Initiated by 
the Trump administration through a flimsy 4-page memorandum, the policy 
turned away people seeking asylum and other migrants awaiting 
immigration court hearings to ``wait'' in danger, in Mexico, for their 
U.S. hearings. The Remain in Mexico policy--and others like it that 
force asylum seekers to wait outside the United States for their cases 
to be heard--simply cannot be implemented lawfully, safely, fairly, or 
humanely.
    Human Rights First tracked at least 1,544 publicly-reported cases 
of kidnappings, murder, torture, rape and other violent attacks against 
people returned to Mexico under MPP during the Trump administration. 
For example, after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) returned 
them to Nuevo Laredo under MPP, a Guatemalan family with 2 young 
children, 5 Cuban asylum seekers, and 4 Venezuelan women and a girl 
were among those kidnapped and held captive in multiple separate 
incidents. Others were subjected to horrific sexual violence, including 
a 9-year-old disabled girl and her mother, who were kidnapped near the 
Tijuana port of entry and repeatedly raped. Another asylum seeker was 
kidnapped and raped in front of her 3-year-old son after DHS sent them 
to Matamoros. In yet another case, DHS forced a Nicaraguan mother and 
her 9-month-old baby to wait in Mexico under MPP; they were kidnapped 
by cartels, who punched the mother in the neck and forced her to call 
family members and beg for ransom money. A 7-year-old Honduran girl and 
her mother were abducted after DHS returned them to Nuevo Laredo under 
MPP. She told her mother ``Mommy, I don't want to die'' after 
overhearing the kidnappers threatening to murder other migrants.
    During the court-ordered reimplementation of MPP in 2022 (due to 
litigation brought against the Biden administration by Trump-aligned 
State attorneys general attempting to force the continuation of MPP), 
asylum seekers continued to report horrific kidnappings, rapes, and 
other violent attacks after DHS returned them to Mexico (under what was 
known as MPP 2.0). As Human Rights First detailed in a September 2022 
report, these included: a Nicaraguan woman kidnapped and sexually 
assaulted; a Venezuelan asylum seeker beaten and shot at; a teenage 
girl sexually assaulted; and two Nicaraguans kidnapped by a cartel and 
forced to watch as cartel members put a gun in another man's mouth and 
threatened to kill him.
    MPP hearings also remained a due process farce under MPP 2.0. Only 
5 percent of the people returned to Mexico under MPP 2.0 managed to 
find attorneys to represent them. Just to attend their U.S. immigration 
court appointments, asylum seekers were forced to risk kidnapping and 
violence. Many were abducted while traveling through border regions to 
attend hearings or directly outside U.S. ports of entry before or after 
hearings. Cartels extorted returned asylum seekers based on the date of 
their next MPP hearing, effectively imposing a tax on the time the U.S. 
Government forced them to wait in Mexico under the policy. For asylum 
seekers subjected to this process, the dangers, impediments to legal 
counsel, and abhorrent conditions forced many to give up on their 
requests for U.S. asylum protection.
    MPP also wasted Government resources. DHS's own analysis concluded 
that the personnel required for MPP diverted resources from other 
immigration priorities. DHS Secretary Mayorkas concluded that ``there 
are inherent problems with the program that no amount of resources can 
sufficiently fix, and that other problems ``cannot be addressed without 
detracting from key administration priorities and more enduring 
solutions.'' In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that the 
DHS Secretary had the authority to end the policy.
B. Title 42
    Beginning in March 2020, the Trump administration exploited Title 
42, a public health authority, to block and expel people at the U.S. 
Southwest Border without due process, adherence to refugee law and 
treaties, or immigration law consequences. Federal courts have vacated 
and enjoined the Title 42 policy, including in a November 2022 D.C. 
district court ruling that vacated the policy for violating U.S. law. A 
March 2022 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit 
prohibited DHS from using Title 42 to return asylum-seeking families 
``to places where they will be persecuted or tortured.''
    Asylum seekers and migrants returned to Mexico under Title 42 
endured kidnappings, rape, and other attacks. Under the Trump 
administration, these included a pregnant Honduran asylum seeker who 
had been repeatedly raped in Mexico and was expelled under Title 42 
while experiencing contractions, a Guatemalan asylum seeker, who had 
been kidnapped for a month in Mexico and was beaten by a U.S. Customs 
and Border Protection (CBP) agent with a baton while being expelled to 
Nogales, Mexico, and a Honduran woman who was turned away from a 
shelter in Reynosa, Mexico, along with her 3-year-old toddler and 5-
day-old baby after being expelled. The Trump administration also used 
Title 42 to deny Nicaraguan political activists opposed to President 
Daniel Ortega the ability to seek asylum and instead expelled them 
directly back to Nicaragua, as the Washington Post reported.
    Human Rights First has tracked over 13,480 kidnappings, torture, 
and other attacks against asylum seekers and migrants impacted by the 
Title 42 policy during the first 2 years of President Biden's 
administration. These included: a 34-year-old Haitian asylum seeker, 
Jocelyn Anselme, who was murdered in Tijuana in May 2022 while blocked 
from seeking asylum under Title 42; a Nicaraguan woman kidnapped with 
her 4-year-old child and raped, who remained stranded in danger in 
Mexico; a lesbian asylum seeker from El Salvador raped after being 
expelled to Mexico under Title 42; a 13-year-old girl who was nearly 
abducted at gunpoint in Juarez after her family fled political 
persecution in Venezuela but was expelled under Title 42; and a 
transgender Honduran asylum seeker who was kidnapped and raped after 
DHS repeatedly expelled her to Mexico.
    In a December 2022 report, Human Rights First found that the court-
forced continuation of the Title 42 policy (pursuant to a lawsuit 
brought by Trump-aligned attorneys general) and the Biden 
administration's October 2022 expansion of the Title 42 policy to expel 
Venezuelans: inflicted terrible human rights abuses, including for 
Black, Brown, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ persons, women, and children; 
subjected asylum seekers to refoulement to persecution and torture in 
the countries they fled; endangered faith-based, humanitarian, and 
legal aid workers assisting asylum seekers impacted by the policy; and 
pushed asylum seekers to attempt dangerous crossings to reach safety.
    Proponents of the forced continuation of the Title 42 ``public 
health'' policy inaccurately and absurdly painted it as a tool needed 
for ``controlling'' migration at the Southwest Border. Far from being 
an effective border management tool, the Title 42 policy was a failed 
attempt at a border policy. The policy actually prevented U.S. agencies 
from enforcing immigration law, spurred increased crossings between 
ports of entry, inflated border apprehension statistics, exacerbated 
cartel violence and insecurity at the border, facilitated 
discriminatory asylum policies that target Black, Brown, and Indigenous 
asylum seekers, and subverted both U.S. and international law.
    In a June 2021 report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), 
for example, confirmed that Title 42 expulsions led to ``some 
individuals trying to cross the border multiple times per day'' and 
that the repeat crossing rate rose to 34 percent during the first 
quarter of fiscal year 2021, meaning that 1 in 3 people encountered at 
the border at that time had been previously expelled or deported. With 
respect to people seeking refugee protection, Title 42 and similar 
policies pushed asylum seekers--including Cubans, Haitians, and 
Venezuelans--who previously mostly approached official border posts to 
seek asylum, to instead attempt to cross into the United States between 
ports of entry.\2\
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    \2\ For instance, as Human Rights First explained in a June 2022 
report, Government data confirms that in fiscal year 2017, 99 percent 
of Cubans and Haitians encountered at the Southern Border had arrived 
through a port of entry. But after years of ``metering'' restrictions 
and Title 42 expulsions, in fiscal year 2022 through May 2022, just 0.2 
percent of Cubans and 14 percent of Haitians arriving at the Southern 
Border were able to present themselves at a port of entry. The 
percentage of Haitians arriving through ports of entry rose in April 
and May 2022, as some ports of entry processed limited numbers of 
Haitian asylum seekers through Title 42 exceptions. More limited data 
also shows that the percentage of Venezuelan asylum seekers presenting 
themselves at ports of entry followed a similar trend, plummeting from 
56 percent in fiscal year 2020 to just 0.2 percent in fiscal year 2022 
through May 2022.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Counterproductive policies such as Title 42 and Remain in Mexico 
have also benefited the criminal cartels that control extensive 
territories. As Human Right First detailed in a February 2022 report, 
cartels have adapted to turnback policies by targeting the very asylum 
seekers turned away by CBP--kidnapping them, purporting to charge them 
for the right to remain in Mexico, torturing them and demanding ransom 
payments from their U.S. family members. Some of these organizations 
have worked to actively prevent asylum seekers from approaching ports 
of entry, as the restoration of port of entry processing for asylum 
seekers threatens the cartels' control and extortion efforts.
    Ending Title 42 does not mean that the U.S. border is ``open.'' It 
means that U.S. immigration and refugee law can no longer be evaded by 
the specious invocation of ``public health'' authority.
    The last thing that Congress or the Biden administration should do 
is to attempt to force, prolong, codify, or resurrect policies that 
violate U.S. law and obligations under international refugee law and 
inflict disorder, family separation and massive human rights abuses on 
people seeking refuge. Such policies are not actual ``solutions,'' but 
tools to deny access to this country to Black, Brown, Indigenous, 
LGBTQ+, and other people seeking asylum from persecution.
iii. inhumane, counterproductive asylum policies remain in place under 
                        the biden administration
    Two-and-a-half years since President Biden took office, his 
administration has taken some important initial steps toward ending 
Trump administration policies that created chaos, subvert refugee law, 
and endanger the lives of people seeking asylum. These steps include 
President Biden's February 2021 Executive Order directing review of 
Trump administration policies, the Secretary of Homeland Security's 
termination and re-termination of the notorious Remain in Mexico (RMX) 
policy, and the termination of the Title 42 policy in May 2023. The 
Biden administration has also taken steps to expand refugee 
resettlement from the Americas and provide some regular pathways to the 
United States through parole.
    The Biden administration wielded the Title 42 policy for over 2 
years--in part due to lawsuits filed by State politicians aligned with 
the prior administration--and expanded it multiple times to expel 
additional nationalities to danger. Despite finally ending this 
inhumane and dysfunctional policy, the Biden administration has 
recently taken steps backward, implementing other Trump-era policies in 
the face of border arrivals and orchestrated, politically-driven anti-
immigrant rhetoric. Other inhumane Trump administration policies remain 
on the books due to the slow pace of agency regulatory action.
    In May 2023, the Biden administration DHS and DOJ issued a 
regulation promulgating an asylum ban--an approach repeatedly initiated 
by the Trump administration and repeatedly found unlawful by the 
courts.
   During the period that the Trump administration's transit 
        ban was in effect, asylum seekers who were denied protection 
        and ordered deported due to the ban included a Venezuelan 
        opposition journalist and her 1-year-old child; a Cuban asylum 
        seeker who was beaten and subjected to forced labor due to his 
        political activity; a gay Honduran asylum seeker who was 
        threatened and assaulted for his sexual orientation; and a 
        Congolese woman who had been beaten by police in her country 
        when she sought information about her husband who had been 
        jailed and tortured due to his political activity.
   Asylum seekers who underwent credible fear interviews in CBP 
        custody under the Trump administration--many of whom were also 
        subjected to the asylum transit ban--were denied a meaningful 
        opportunity to present their asylum claim and many were ordered 
        deported, including a 16-year-old girl who fled trafficking and 
        sexual exploitation, an Indigenous Guatemalan woman who was 
        sexually assaulted because of her ethnicity, and a Central 
        American woman fleeing domestic violence by an abuser who 
        killed one of her children.
    The Biden administration's asylum ban unlawfully makes refugees 
ineligible for asylum based on how they enter the United States and 
whether they applied for protection in a country they traveled through 
on their way to seek safety. It will return refugees to persecution, 
torture, and death in their home countries and other countries where 
their lives are at risk and leave other refugees in limbo in the United 
States without permanent status or a pathway to citizenship. During the 
year that the Trump administration's similar transit ban was in effect, 
it resulted in the denial of asylum to refugees with well-founded fears 
of persecution and deprivation of a path to citizenship for refugees 
left only with withholding of removal due to the transit ban. The Biden 
administration's misguided approach breaches President Biden's campaign 
promise to end restrictions on asylum seekers traveling through other 
countries and endangers many Black, Brown, Indigenous, LGBTQ+, and 
other asylum seekers. It also advances the agenda of anti-immigrant 
groups, including the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which 
was designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and 
praised the Biden administration's plans to impose an asylum ban as a 
``good first step.''
    In January 2023, Human Rights First joined a diverse \3\ coalition 
of nearly 300 organizations in a letter to the Biden administration, 
urging it to abandon its plan to issue the asylum ban. Nearly 80 
Members of Congress echoed that call, in a bicameral letter to 
President Biden. Faith-based organizations also called on the Biden 
administration to uphold asylum and abandon plans to propose an asylum 
ban. Nonetheless, in February 2023 the Biden administration published 
its proposed asylum ban, which met wide-spread opposition. Of the 
51,000 comments received in response to the proposed rule after a mere 
30-day comment period, the vast majority of comments opposed the ban, 
including comments from UNHCR, the union representing asylum officers 
who would be forced to implement the illegal ban, former immigration 
judges, 82 Members of Congress from the President's own party, Black-
led, civil rights, and LGBTQ+ organizations, Catholic Bishops, rabbis, 
and Holocaust survivors and their family members. Despite the wide-
spread opposition, the administration finalized the illegal ban in May 
2023 and began wielding it against asylum seekers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ The diverse coalition of prominent labor, LGBTQ, faith, and 
civil rights signatories include: ACLU, Amnesty International, CHIRLA, 
Community Change Action, FIRM Action, HIAS, Haitian Bridge Alliance, 
Immigration Equality, Immigration Hub, Indivisible, International Mayan 
League, MoveOn, IRAP, IRC, NILC, National Immigrant Justice Center, 
PFLAG National, Refugee Council USA, The Leadership Conference on Civil 
and Human Rights, UndocuBlack Network, UnidosUS, and the Welcome with 
Dignity campaign.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In addition, the Biden administration has been conducting fast-
track asylum screenings through expedited removal in CBP custody at the 
border, undercutting any meaningful opportunity for an asylum seeker to 
explain their case, and applying the asylum ban in these screenings to 
rapidly deport asylum seekers without a hearing regardless of their 
risk of persecution. On June 5, 2023, 112 organizations wrote to the 
Biden administration warning that this practice has already produced 
systemic due process barriers, effectively denies asylum seekers any 
meaningful chance to consult with counsel, and rushes them through a 
sham process to quickly deport them. The National Immigrant Justice 
Center also issued a report finding that the Government is actively 
obstructing access to counsel and that the program ``appears designed 
to rush people through to deportation without legal advice or 
representation.'' The conduct of credible fear interviews in CBP 
custody is similar to a Trump-era policy known as the ``Prompt Asylum 
Case Review'' program and ``Humanitarian Asylum Review Program,'' or 
PACR/HARP.
    PACR/HARP was also a due process, humanitarian, and refugee 
protection fiasco. Notably, President Biden directed DHS to terminate 
PACR/HARP in his February 2021 Executive Order. Asylum seekers detained 
in CBP custody have frequently reported being provided insufficient or 
inedible food and water; lack of access to showers and other basic 
hygiene; and inability to sleep because of lack of adequate bedding and 
cold conditions. Conducting credible fear interviews in CBP custody 
drastically exacerbates the deficiencies of the expedited removal 
process, which continues to result in the deportation of refugees to 
persecution and torture.
    Over the last month or so, Human Rights First and other researchers 
have spoken with hundreds of asylum seekers stranded in the highly 
dangerous Mexican border cities of Matamoros, Reynosa, Nogales, and--
this week--Ciudad Juarez. Findings include:
   The Biden administration's new asylum ban is stranding many 
        people seeking asylum to wait in places where they are targets 
        of brutal violence and kidnappings and left in horrendous 
        conditions without access to basic services. Haitian and other 
        Black people seeking asylum are targets of anti-Black 
        discrimination and violence;
   Human Rights First has spoken to hundreds of people waiting 
        in Mexico, and they overwhelmingly had no knowledge of the 
        Biden administration's asylum ban;
   People seeking asylum continue to struggle to secure one of 
        the limited CBP One appointments while they wait in danger--
        including an LGBTQI+ asylum seeker who was nearly kidnapped in 
        Sonora, and two Haitian couples and a baby who escaped a 
        potential kidnapping near the Nogales port of entry in late 
        May;
   People seeking asylum who do not have appointments have been 
        turned away from ports of entry by CBP officers and/or by 
        Mexican authorities, and in other cases left to ``wait'' in a 
        line that barely budges--some left waiting in their country of 
        feared persecution.
    Human Rights First issued reports in recent weeks in collaboration 
with some of the other organizations that are monitoring the 
implementation of the Biden administration's asylum ban including the 
Haitian Bridge Alliance and organizations participating in a delegation 
the Haitian Bridge Alliance led, the Florence Immigrant & Refugee 
Rights Project and the Kino Border Initiative.
    There is a more humane, effective, and legal way forward, as Human 
Rights First has explained in its most recent set of recommendations, 
which are outlined below.
 iv. anti-immigrant narratives endanger communities and drive harmful 
                                policies
    Anti-immigrant fear-mongering that paints migrants and people 
seeking asylum as threats and ``invaders'' fuels white supremist 
conspiracy theories and violence targeting Black, Brown, immigrant, 
Jewish, and other people, as Human Rights First's experts on extremism 
and antisemitism have detailed in a recent fact sheet. By portraying 
immigrants as an existential threat to native-born Americans, this type 
of rhetoric makes violence more likely, as we have seen in recent 
years. Eleven people in Pittsburgh and 23 people in El Paso were 
murdered by white supremacists animated by fears of supposed immigrant 
``invaders.'' As these horrifying attacks demonstrate, we cannot 
divorce this ``invasion'' rhetoric from its violent and racist origins.
    These narratives often rely on a vitriolic combination of 
disinformation and bigoted stereotypes. For example, immigrants are 
often portrayed as criminal or violent, even when extensive research 
shows native-born Americans are much more likely to commit crimes than 
are immigrants. In recent years, immigrants have been increasingly 
blamed for the devastating growth of fentanyl usage across the country, 
despite the reality that fentanyl is most likely to enter the United 
States through legal points of entry by U.S. citizens.
    In recent months, some Members of Congress have continued to 
promote this harmful rhetoric, including in advance of the lifting of 
Title 42. To prevent Congressional hearings from serving as vehicles to 
further popularize extremist rhetoric, lawmakers must effectively 
challenge the disinformation, bigoted stereotypes, and conspiracy 
theories on which these narratives rely. For example, 115 Members of 
Congress co-sponsored H. Res. 413, which condemns the white supremacist 
``great replacement'' conspiracy theory and the terrorist attack 
targeting the Black community it inspired in Buffalo, New York. 
Representative Raskin, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and 
Accountability, publicly called on his fellow committee Members to 
denounce white supremacism. Lawmakers, especially those in positions of 
leadership, can and must proactively and repeatedly counter such 
statements on the public record, ensure the voices of targeted 
communities have representation, and support efforts to protect the 
rights of migrants and asylum seekers.
 v. the use of parole and release from detention are authorized by law
    DHS has the legal authority to parole people into the country ``on 
a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant 
public benefit.'' The parole authority is spelled out in 8 U.S.C. 
1182(d)(5)(A) of U.S. law. The use of parole for eligible people does 
not mean that the U.S. border is ``open.'' U.S. immigration authorities 
have used parole authority for decades to parole people into the United 
States--including people from the Soviet Union and Vietnam (1988), 
Cubans through the Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program (CFRP) 
(2007), and Ukrainians through Uniting for Ukraine (2022).
    The Biden administration has also created programs to allow certain 
individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to apply for 
parole if they meet requirements including having a sponsor in the 
United States. The existence of regular pathways can enable some people 
to travel safely and without resorting to irregular travel. The Biden 
administration should strengthen its use of parole including to improve 
access to it for highly vulnerable persons who are not eligible under 
current initiatives.
    The use of parole however is not, and is no substitute for, asylum 
or refugee resettlement. People facing grave threats cannot wait to 
apply for parole, and many cannot afford or are not eligible to apply 
for these parole initiatives due to their requirements. Parole 
authority or other regular pathways to the United States should never 
be used as an attempt to justify the denial of access to asylum.
    Moreover, it is not illegal to release people from immigration 
detention. U.S. law provides for ways to release people from 
immigration detention and custody. For instance, CBP has the discretion 
to put people it encounters into removal proceedings, with or without 
sending them to detention, or to use expedited removal. People seeking 
asylum who are initially referred into expedited removal can for 
instance be released from immigration detention on parole under U.S. 
law--as both Democratic and Republican administrations have repeatedly 
confirmed through their actions and official guidance.
    Human rights reports have documented the abuses suffered by people 
held in immigration detention, as well as the waste of Government 
resources inherent in the massive use of immigration detention. 
Detention costs on average $144.42 per bed, per day. Studies have 
repeatedly confirmed that asylum seekers and migrants overwhelmingly 
appear for hearings after release from DHS custody, rendering the use 
of costly and harmful immigration detention unnecessary to ensure 
future appearance. It is both fiscally irresponsible and incredibly 
inhumane to endeavor to send all people awaiting asylum or other 
immigration court adjudications to detention centers. Detained asylum 
seekers and migrants are also cutoff from legal representation; only 
37.6 percent of detained individuals with pending cases have been able 
to secure legal representation while 63.8 percent of all people 
released from detention who have pending cases are represented, 
according to data analyzed by Syracuse University's Transactional 
Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). Legal representation is critical 
to ensuring that individuals understand our byzantine immigration laws 
and court proceedings (described by one immigration judge as ``death 
penalty cases heard in traffic court settings''), and thus demonstrate 
they meet the criteria to receive asylum or other relief that they are 
eligible for under U.S. law.
             vi. recommendations for upholding refugee law
    Instead of seeking to prolong, use, or resurrect inhumane and 
counterproductive policies that were part of the Trump administration's 
agenda, the Biden administration and Congress should work together to:
   Uphold refugee law at U.S. borders without discrimination, 
        including to maximize (rather than restrict or ``meter'') 
        asylum at ports of entry, and ensure people seeking asylum have 
        prompt access to ports of entry--not limited to CBP One, but 
        also assured to people approaching ports of entry to seek 
        asylum. Maximizing asylum at ports of entry after years of 
        blockage is essential not only to uphold refugee law, but also 
        to end the counterproductive consequences of Trump policies 
        that, by restricting and blocking access to asylum at ports of 
        entry, have long pushed populations that previously sought 
        asylum at ports of entry to instead attempt to cross the 
        border.
   Immediately rescind the Biden administration's asylum ban, 
        which punishes refugees and bars them from asylum, stop 
        subjecting asylum seekers to expedited removal including 
        through dangerously fast-tracked screenings in CBP custody 
        where asylum seekers do not have meaningful access to counsel, 
        and rescind remaining fatally-flawed policies of the Trump 
        administration that ban refugees from asylum.
   Enhance support for human rights and refugee hosting 
        capacity in other countries in the Americas, including through 
        efforts to support development of strong asylum systems, 
        reception capacities, access to employment, and protection of 
        rights and safety of refugees and migrants in Mexico and other 
        countries in the Americas.
   Ramp up, speed up, support, and strengthen regional refugee 
        resettlement, improve parole and other safe migration pathways 
        in the Americas, but never use the existence of such pathways 
        to deny access to asylum.
   Implement a humanitarian, rather than a punitive and 
        attempted deterrence-based, approach to refugee protection 
        through effective, sustainable, humane refugee reception 
        structures, coordination, funding mechanisms, and case support 
        to address the lack of dedicated humanitarian and refugee 
        protection structures that has long hampered the U.S. response 
        to people seeking refuge at its own borders.
   Upgrade asylum adjudication processes so they are accurate, 
        fair, properly staffed, and prompt, including: improve the new 
        asylum rule process so it leads to efficiency rather than 
        rushed and counterproductive inaccurate adjudications, fund 
        sufficient asylum adjudication capacities to address asylum 
        backlogs and ensure timely adjudication of new cases, and 
        support and champion funding for legal representation.
   Stand firm against anti-immigrant rhetoric and efforts, and 
        unequivocally reject attempts to exploit Congressional hearings 
        as opportunities to platform dangerous anti-immigrant 
        conspiracy theories. Reject and oppose anti-asylum 
        Congressional proposals, including efforts to force 
        continuation or enactment into law of the Trump 
        administration's cruel, racist, and counterproductive policies. 
        Draconian policies will not appease perpetrators of xenophobic, 
        racist rhetoric, but will inflict massive human suffering, 
        create more dysfunction, and subvert refugee law globally.
    Human Rights First has detailed these steps in its comprehensive 
recommendations paper issued in January 2023. These strategies lay out 
a more humane and effective approach.
    Let's be clear: we are not, by any stretch of the imagination, an 
``open borders'' Nation. Any such assertion is patently false. For 
example, CBP conducts security checks of people seeking entry at ports 
of entry or otherwise encountered, and puts people into removal 
proceedings, expedited removal, and/or refers them to ICE for check-
ins. Too often they send people seeking refugee protection to 
immigration jails. Human Rights First has issued countless reports 
documenting past and present asylum bans and the horrifying impact of 
Title 42. Unfortunately, our Government has repeatedly focused on 
harsh, rights-violating policies that attempt to deter and punish 
people seeking to migrate or request asylum at the border, only 
exacerbating bottlenecks and dangerous conditions along the Southwest 
Border and in detention.
    Instead of prolonging, codifying, using, or resurrecting unjust, 
inhumane, and dysfunctional policies aimed at decimating asylum that 
were initiated under the Trump administration, the Biden 
administration, and Members of Congress should uphold U.S. refugee law, 
the human right to seek asylum, and U.S. commitments under 
international refugee law. This includes abandoning efforts to ban or 
deny asylum to refugees who are otherwise eligible for asylum under 
U.S. law.
    The crisis we are facing is a global humanitarian crisis; people 
are fleeing their home countries due to a rise in political 
instability, authoritarianism, human rights abuses, climate change, and 
more. The United States is not meeting the moment, nor is it leading by 
example; other nations, including those with far less capacity than 
ours, are welcoming and hosting the overwhelming majority of the 
world's refugees. We can and must do better to uphold refugee law at 
home.

    Chairman Green. Thank you for your testimony.
    I now recognize myself for questions.
    I want to talk about this claim that there has been a 70 
percent decrease since Title 42 went away. It looks like they 
are counting the encounters at 3,500 compared to the peak of 
11,000, the actual record number, which happened right before 
that. But what they are not counting--it is very interesting--
confirm--I don't know any of the witnesses that can confirm 
this, but we are not counting the CBP One app appointments, as 
I understand it. Is that correct?
    Mr. Wolf. That is correct. So the numbers that are being 
cited by the Department are Border Patrol numbers. Those are 
encounters between ports of entry. So they talk about, I 
believe, a 70 percent decrease. What they're not telling you, 
they're actually capturing the number, but they're not 
including it in their press release, is the number from of, 
which is the Office of Field Operations, they're at a port of 
entry are the number of inadmissibles that are showing up at 
ports of entry. What's happening is they're being shifted 
between the ports of entry to the ports of entry.
    Chairman Green. It is a shell game. Basically, we are 
taking the numbers out of these and we are not reporting them 
over here, and we are allowing for appointments to be made 
through CBP One app and then saying that that is a lawful 
mechanism of entry.
    Mr. Edlow, is that in congruence with the law? Is that a 
lawful entry just because you fill out an app on-line?
    Mr. Edlow. No. No, it's not.
    Chairman Green. So it is a violation of the law?
    Mr. Edlow. It's a violation. Frankly, if somebody comes to 
the port of entry, has no documentation to get in, there is a 
lawful mechanism for them to claim credible fear and to move 
through that process. But to just allow them to come in to 
parole them, not on a case-by-case basis, I might add, but as a 
group, is not within the confines of the law.
    Chairman Green. Yes, it is against the laws passed by the 
U.S. Congress. OK.
    So again, kind-of digging into this a little further. This 
group of--and I think the amount of the appointments are about 
1,500 or so a day, add that to the 3,500, add that to the 
number that don't schedule an appointment, and come through 
that--we don't know that number because they are not reporting 
that number. Has there really been an appreciable decrease in 
your opinions since Title 42 went away?
    Mr. Scott. I do not believe that there has been a decrease 
in the numbers. It is a shell game.
    The other thing I want to point out, too, is it's very 
selective about what day they choose to compare the numbers to. 
You need to look at a little broader amount of time. The border 
for my entire career was systematically getting more and more 
controlled, and we are actually driving those numbers down. You 
have to look at it longer, not just 1 day in time.
    Chairman Green. Mr. Wolf, on May 10, reporter and 
immigration analyst Todd Bensman reported ahead of the 
expiration of Title 42 that Mexican immigration officials were 
informing him that they were coordinating with DHS personnel on 
the other side of the border to move illegal aliens from the 
Mexico side of the Rio Grande to the American side. In other 
words, they were helping aliens illegally cross into the United 
States. This would violate, as I understand it, Section 274 of 
the INA, which prohibits aiding and abetting illegal 
immigration or helping someone enter the country. In your 
opinion, would such an intentional coordination on a high-
profile stage have been conducted without the approval or 
foreknowledge of the Secretary of Homeland Security?
    Mr. Wolf. No, you would need to have approval up and down 
the chain of command.
    Chairman Green. So basically, again, violating the laws of 
the United States. You would think that authority--I mean, the 
Border Patrol guys would never do that without the authority of 
the Secretary. Is that what you are saying?
    Mr. Wolf. It's hard for me to say whether the Chief of the 
Border Patrol was aware or whether that made it all the way to 
the Secretary or not. I'm not there, so I can't testify to 
that.
    Chairman Green. OK. I can't imagine they would willfully 
break the law without the Secretary giving them approval. But 
we will dig further into that later.
    The interim final rule that came out, Mr. Edlow, can you 
discuss a little bit about how this basically upends the entire 
intent of the laws of Congress from the INA?
    Mr. Edlow. Certainly, Mr. Chairman.
    When the Homeland Security Act was signed and enacted in 
2002, 2003, most powers that had been exercised by the former 
INS were moved over to the new DHS, specifically with asylum to 
USCIS, where asylum officers were conducting interviews. 
However, after a credible fear interview, the way it always had 
worked was that the alien would then go before the immigration 
judge. That powers were never transferred as part of the 
Homeland Security Act. This rule does transfer, does shift that 
authority from DOJ to DHS, having a second bite at the apple 
to----
    Chairman Green. Speed people into the country, basically 
not have to go through the immigration judge process.
    Mr. Edlow. Correct. But not only that, sir, but the fact 
that they do not require a new asylum application really does 
limit the ability for anyone to assess whether there's a valid 
claim or not.
    Chairman Green. My time has expired.
    I yield to the Ranking Member.
    Mr. Thompson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Ms. Acer, Republicans have constantly falsely accused 
Secretary Mayorkas of being derelict in his duty to secure the 
border, even though as I said in my opening statement, border 
encounters have dropped sharply since the Biden administration 
terminated Title 42 last month. Republicans don't like the 
Biden administration is returning to a more orderly, humane 
border and immigration policy after the cruelty and dysfunction 
of the Trump administration. They can't stand that these 
policies have been effective. So we are seeing this political 
theater play out with the Republican leadership trying 
desperately to appease its Members.
    My Republican colleagues seem to be particularly upset 
about the Biden administration allowing people to present 
themselves at port of entry to seek asylum as provided under 
the law, just as every other administration had prior to this 
one. Actually, there seems to be some revisionist history going 
on because even President Trump's Secretary of Homeland 
Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, Mr. Wolf's former boss, 
acknowledged, in fact, encouraged migrants to come to ports of 
entry for processing, saying, and I quote, ``So if a migrant 
comes to a port of entry, they haven't broken any laws''. This 
is exactly why we tried encourage the migrants to go to a port 
of entry.
    The Biden administration is being sued to force it to do 
more to restore access to asylum after the last administrations 
effectively cut it off.
    Now, Ms. Acer, since you are an immigration attorney with 
vast experience and expertise in this field, I want to talk 
with you you and set the record straight. Claiming asylum at a 
port of entry is lawful, correct?
    Ms. Acer. Absolutely.
    Mr. Thompson. Claiming asylum after being encountered by 
Border Patrol is lawful too, correct?
    Ms. Acer. Absolutely, yes.
    Mr. Thompson. Paroling migrants, is lawful and within the 
authority of the Secretary of Homeland Security, correct?
    Ms. Acer. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Thompson. No administration has ever detained everyone 
encountered at the border, isn't that right?
    Ms. Acer. That is right.
    Mr. Thompson. That includes the Trump administration, 
correct?
    Ms. Acer. Absolutely.
    Mr. Thompson. So Title 42 caused terrible harm to asylum 
seekers, which you saw first-hand on your visits to the border. 
Title 42 was also detrimental to border security. Isn't that 
right?
    Ms. Acer. Absolutely.
    Mr. Thompson. Please explain that to the committee.
    Ms. Acer. As I mentioned in my testimony, Title 42 
encouraged repeat entries. It did not have immigration 
consequences. It also pushed populations that used to go and 
seek asylum at ports of entry to end up having to cross between 
ports of entry, because not just for weeks, but for months and 
months and years and years, there was no way to actually cross 
the border.
    The change in numbers we've seen, I believe, is a 
confirmation of what an absolute disaster Title 42 was from so 
many ways. Asylum seekers that we met at the border were trying 
to use the CBP One app. How that works, for those of you who 
haven't seen it, is people provide information that the 
Government receives and actually reviews in advance. One of our 
concerns about the CBP One app is that it could be used to 
actually meter and limit the number of asylum seekers allowed 
to legally seek asylum.
    In addition, I would say that we're also concerned about 
asylum seekers who are trying to approach ports of entry, who 
are not being allowed to do so now, either because of CBP or 
Mexican government authorities not letting them do so.
    Mr. Thompson. Thank you.
    Mr. Chair, I would like to include in the record a GAO 
decision that Mr. Wolf indeed served in that capacity of 
Secretary illegally. I would like to also include a review 
requested by the Department and affirmed by GAO again, that Mr. 
Wolf served in that capacity illegally. I would also like to 
submit for the record a fellow judge in Maryland also ruled 
that Mr. Wolf was serving illegally in that position.
    Chairman Green. Without objection, so ordered.
    Mr. Higgins. Mr. Chairman, I object.
    Chairman Green. We have an objection.
    Mr. Higgins. I object. I don't believe the Ranking Member 
is capable of presenting to this committee justification for 
claiming that Secretary Wolf served illegally. This is not a 
Court of Law, it is a committee in Congress. I object to the 
inclusion in the historical record.
    Chairman Green. OK. I think we misunderstood the 
gentleman's motion. It was not objection to the insertion of 
the material into the record, it was, I think, just a statement 
of opinion about.
    And so, so ordered. The GAO reports are entered into the 
record.
    [The information follows:]
   [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                ------                                

 Article Submitted For the Record by Ranking Member Bennie G. Thompson
 judge rules chad wolf likely unlawfully serving as homeland security 
       secretary and temporarily blocks some asylum restrictions
By Laura Ly and Paul LeBlanc, CNN
Updated 10:59 AM EDT, Tue September 15, 2020
    CNN--A Federal judge in Maryland has ruled that Chad Wolf is likely 
unlawfully serving as acting secretary of the Department of Homeland 
Security and temporarily barred the Trump administration from enforcing 
new asylum restrictions on members of two immigration advocacy groups.
    Judge Paula Xinis, in a 69-page ruling issued Friday, wrote that 
the two groups are ``likely to demonstrate (former acting Homeland 
Security Secretary Kevin) McAleenan's appointment was invalid under the 
agency's applicable order of succession, and so he lacked the authority 
to amend the order of succession to ensure Wolf's installation as 
Acting Secretary.''
    Subsequently, Wolf didn't have the authority to impose the asylum 
rules that are being challenged, Xinis ruled. The new requirements, 
which court documents say took effect in late August, concern 
employment, and the case is ongoing.
    Xinis' ruling does not mean Wolf is leaving his position. The 
appointments of Wolf and his No. 2, Ken Cuccinelli, to the top 
leadership roles in the Department of Homeland Security have 
increasingly come under scrutiny, though both continue to serve in 
their posts. The Trump administration appealed a Federal judge's ruling 
earlier this year that it was unlawful to appoint Cuccinelli to lead 
the agency responsible for processing US immigration requests, and he 
remains in that post more than 6 months later. The case before Xinis is 
ongoing.
    CNN has reached out to the department for comment.
    Last month, a coalition of 20 State attorneys general and 10 cities 
and counties challenged rules imposed by the Trump administration that 
they argued limited access to employment authorization for asylum 
seekers, New York Attorney General Letitia James' office said Monday.
    ``The first rule would require asylum seekers to wait a year before 
applying for employment authorization, and bar many from obtaining 
authorization at all. The second rule would eliminate the longstanding 
requirement that employment authorization applications be processed 
within 30 days, thus allowing such applications to sit untouched 
indefinitely,'' James' office said.
    Xinis found that DHS ``completely sidestepped this critical impact 
of the new rules'' and ``never wrestled with the fundamental 
implications of deferring or denying advance work authorization.''
    ``Substantially limiting approval of work authorization for bona 
fide asylees will inevitably affect their ability to afford the costs 
of seeking asylum, including hiring legal counsel,'' Xinis wrote.
    Xinis' order granted injunctive relief to only members of Casa de 
Maryland, Inc. and Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, two of the lawsuit's 
plaintiffs that the judge found to have ``demonstrated associational 
standing at this stage,'' finding the relief ``both proper and 
necessary to avoid irreparable harm.''
    The organizations have approximately 100,000 and 4,000 members 
each, according to the judge's order.
    James welcomed the ruling, calling Wolf a man with ``no authority 
and no business sitting in the chair of the acting secretary of 
Homeland Security.''
    ``Not only is this decision welcome news for asylum seekers who 
were unfairly targeted by the Trump Administration, but the courts have 
now found that Chad Wolf has no authority at the Department of Homeland 
Security,'' she said.
    CNN has previously reported that the Government Accountability 
Office found that Wolf and Cuccinelli, the senior official performing 
the duties of deputy secretary, were appointed as part of an invalid 
order of succession.
    ``We vehemently disagree with what the GAO has put out,'' Wolf told 
CNN's Jake Tapper at the time.
    Wolf has been at the forefront of a host of issues like 
immigration, civil unrest and the coronavirus pandemic response, and as 
a result, has come under criticism for his actions. During Wolf's 
tenure, the department has been marked by a focus on the border wall, a 
fight with New York over Global Entry and more recently, a deployment 
of Federal officers to Portland, Oregon, in opposition to local 
officials.
    Wolf has been the acting secretary since November 2019. The 
department has not had a confirmed secretary since April 2019 when 
former Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was forced to resign.
    President Donald Trump last month announced that he would 
officially appoint Wolf to take over the role on a permanent basis, and 
his nomination was formally sent to the Senate last week.
    This story has been updated with additional developments.

    Chairman Green. I now recognize Mr. McCaul from Texas, 
Chairman McCaul from Texas, for his 5 minutes of questioning.
    Mr. McCaul. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I served as Chairman of this committee for three terms, now 
the Foreign Affairs Committee. Mr. Edlow, good to see you. We 
worked together on these issues. Secretary Wolf, Mr. Scott, 
great State of Texas, and I was a Federal prosecutor charged 
with prosecutions at the border.
    Political asylum is always the magnet, and it has been 
abused by the cartels for many years. Eighty-five percent of 
these claims are not legit, only 15 percent are. It is very 
simple, when they are allowed to enter the United States, 
because we don't have detention space, they are released into 
our society. They are given a notice to appear, and they 
disappear. I have seen this for 20 years in Congress. In fact, 
my first bill was the End Catch and Release and here we are 
today with the same program.
    The Trump administration, through Secretary Wolf, Mr. 
Edlow, implemented what I thought was a very effective plan 
called the Migrant Protection Protocols, Remain in Mexico, 
because they had to remain in Mexico pending their 
adjudication. If it was legitimate, they were allowed in, if 
not, they were not allowed into the country. It brought the 
numbers down dramatically. So what happened when the Biden 
administration gets into power, nearly on Day 1 Secretary 
Mayorkas rescinds the order, rescinds Migrant Protection 
Protocols, Remain in Mexico. What has happened since then? 
Nearly 100,000 young people died in this country due to 
fentanyl. Enough has been seized to kill billions of people, 5 
million encounters, nearly 100 on the terror watch list, which 
used to frighten me as Chairman of this committee when I would 
hear of anybody on the terrorist watch list getting into the 
United States of America. There was a court order to force the 
administration to reimplement MPP. That court order, in my 
view, has not been fully complied with by this administration.
    To make things worse, they took the vetting process away 
from sponsors of these aliens. What has that turned into? 
Children going to houses, 20-30 of them under one sponsor, not 
vetted, turns into a human trafficking enterprise, a criminal 
enterprise. Young girls being sex trafficked and young men 
going to MS-13 as they try to pay back the cartels. Cartels now 
are in operational control. When I was down at the border after 
the rescission of MPP, I asked the chief of Border Patrol, Mr. 
Ortiz, is there a direct cause and effect between the 
rescission of this program and what we are seeing at the 
border, totally out of chaos? He told me the answer was yes. 
Every Border Patrol officer will tell you that because they 
live it. My State, Mr. Scott, as you know, has spent $4.5 
billion just this session to deal with this problem, a Federal 
responsibility.
    So my question is, do you believe, Mr. Wolf, Mr. Scott, Mr. 
Edlow, that Secretary Mayorkas is responsible for the 
consequences that followed of the rescission of MPP, and do you 
believe he is complicit with the consequences of what has 
happened to this country?
    Mr. Wolf. So the answer to that is a resounding yes. 
Obviously, the Secretary ended MPP, Migrant Protection 
Protocols, so he's responsible for the actions that follow 
that.
    I would just say, look, at the end of the day, it's OK to 
claim asylum. What's not OK is to simply be released into the 
country. Or it's not OK to say that there's an immense amount 
of fraud in the asylum system. DHS knows that, they have the 
numbers, we all use the numbers that come from DHS, but they 
simply put blinders on and say, we're OK with that amount of 
fraud. It's OK for the American people. That's why we 
implemented MPP and we did a number of other things. They're 
not doing any of that now. So all the folks that are claiming 
asylum at ports of entry, again, are being released into 
American communities. That's not OK.
    Mr. McCaul. I agree.
    Mr. Scott. Mr. Edlow.
    Mr. Scott. I agree fully. I want to point out, MPP made 
sure people got due process, but they did not get what they 
want. Most of these people, from my experience, don't really 
care about asylum, they don't really care about the legal 
documentation or process. They want to be released into the 
United States. Once that was taken away, the flow immediately 
decreased because they couldn't commit fraud. Everybody knew 
that this administration got rid of that program intentionally. 
They're responsible for the results.
    Mr. McCaul. Mr. Edlow.
    Mr. Edlow. I also agree. There's plenty I could say about 
MPP in terms of where it comes from, in terms of the INA. But I 
will just say this, when the court initially told the Secretary 
to reinstitute MPP, there was an attempt to do that, a half-
hearted attempt to do that. But in the press release that did 
that, it also made it clear that the Secretary had every 
intention to fight that decision from the court and to take 
measures to end MPP in other ways. So it was really never an 
actual attempt to reinstate it.
    Chairman Green. The gentleman's time has expired.
    I recognize Mr. Correa of California.
    Mr. Correa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    What I would like to do is start out by submitting for the 
record, without objection, the press release mentioned by 
Chairman Green, if I may, where it says that there were 10,070 
non-citizens processed on an average per day via the CBP One 
app. I would like to submit this for record, sir?
    Chairman Green. Without objection.
    [The information follows:]

          Press Release Submitted by Honorable J. Luis Correa
                  U.S. Department of Homeland Security
     border encounters remain low as biden-harris administration's 
    comprehensive plan to manage the border after title 42 in effect
Release Date: June 6, 2023
    Since the CDC's Title 42 public health order lifted and the Biden-
Harris Administration's comprehensive plan to manage the border went 
into full effect on May 12, DHS has continued to experience a 
significant reduction in encounters at the Southwest Border.
    As a result of planning and execution--which combined stiffer 
consequences for unlawful entry with a historic expansion of lawful 
pathways and processes--unlawful entries between ports of entry along 
the Southwest Border have decreased by more than 70 percent since May 
11. DHS has overseen significant expansions in lawful pathways even as 
we have repatriated a significant number of migrants.
    From May 12 to June 2, 2023, DHS repatriated over 38,400 
noncitizens under Title 8 authorities, including single adults and 
families, to more than 80 countries. This includes over 1,400 
noncitizens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who were 
returned to Mexico under Title 8 authorities--the first time in our 
bilateral history that the Government of Mexico has allowed the 
repatriation of non-Mexican nationals at the border under Title 8 
authorities.
    Thousands more are being detained by CBP and ICE and processed by 
USCIS to assess their asylum claims under the new Circumvention of 
Lawful Pathways regulation. Those found not to have a credible fear 
have been and will continue to be expeditiously removed.
    Since May 12:
   CBP has averaged 3,400 U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) encounters 
        in between ports of entry per day and fewer than 300 non-CBP 
        One Office of Field Operations (OFO) encounters at ports of 
        entry per day, for a total of approximately 3,700 unscheduled 
        encounters per day.
   The top 3 nationalities encountered during this most recent 
        period, which accounted for nearly 70 percent of encounters, 
        were:
     Mexico 1,200 encounters/day
     Honduras 520 encounters/day
     Guatemala 360 encounters/day
   Nearly 14,000 credible fear referrals were received by USCIS 
        and over 11,500 credible fear interviews were completed. USCIS 
        has already conducted a record number of interviews over the 
        past 3 weeks, and these numbers will continue to increase as 
        our processes further scale.
   Through CBP One, an average of 1,070 noncitizens presented 
        in a safe and orderly manner at a port of entry each day to be 
        processed during their scheduled appointment time. CBP has, as 
        of June 1, expanded the number of appointments available to 
        1,250 each day.
     The top 3 nationalities with CBP One appointments were: 
            Haiti, Mexico, and Venezuela.
   An additional 23,000 vetted and sponsored Cuban, Haitian, 
        Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan nationals arrived in the United 
        States through the parole processes we announced in January 
        2023.
    The Administration's plan is working as intended. We are cognizant, 
however, that the conditions in the hemisphere that are driving 
unprecedented movements of people are still present and that the 
cartels and coyotes will continue to spread disinformation about any 
potential changes to policies at the border in order to put migrants' 
lives at risk for profit. We will remain vigilant and continue to 
execute our plan, making adjustments where needed.
    Surges in migration have been a regular occurrence for more than a 
decade under Republican and Democratic Administrations. Presidents of 
both parties have attempted to use their executive authorities to 
address these challenges--as we have. This, in turn, has invited 
litigation from both sides of the political spectrum and has resulted 
in courts across the country dictating border and immigration policy in 
ways that are contradictory and detrimental to our ability to manage 
the border.
    It is abundantly clear that executive action cannot solve the 
entrenched challenge of migration in our region, and that neither party 
can address its impact on our border by itself. Until and unless 
Congress comes together in a bipartisan way to address our broken 
immigration and asylum system, we will continue to see surges in 
migration at our border.

    Mr. Correa. Ms. Acer, does that sound like hiding the data?
    Ms. Acer. No, it's not hiding the data.
    Mr. Correa. I want to show you a quote by Secretary 
Nielsen, if I may. So we prefer Mr. Wolf, we prefer people 
showing up at ports of entry as opposed to between ports of 
entry? Yes, no?
    Mr. Wolf. Absolutely. I would say----
    Mr. Correa. Thank you.
    Mr. Wolf [continuing]. That that is accurate. What I would 
say is that the migrants are not breaking the law.
    Mr. Correa. Thank you. Thank you very much.
    Mr. Wolf. DHS is breaking the law with the parole----
    Mr. Correa. You have got other people you can address here, 
but I just have 3 minutes left.
    Ms. Acer, is it legal to come to ports of entry?
    Ms. Acer. Absolutely.
    Mr. Correa. I want to show you a couple of pictures here of 
the refugee challenge we have in the Western Hemisphere. Tell 
you the United States is not No. 1. You have got other 
countries that are having it even worse than we do right now 
trying to address this human challenge the world is facing. I 
am going to show you also a picture of the Darien Gap and a 
young girl who separated from her mother. She is not coming to 
Disneyland. She is trying to survive.
    Ms. Acer, let me ask you, did Secretary Mayorkas create the 
COVID-19 Pandemic?
    Ms. Acer. No, sir.
    Mr. Correa. Is he responsible for the unprecedented 
violence, gang violence, extortions, assaults in Central 
America?
    Ms. Acer. No, sir.
    Mr. Correa. How about for the on-going crisis in Haiti?
    Ms. Acer. No.
    Mr. Correa. The economic instability in Venezuela?
    Ms. Acer. No.
    Mr. Correa. Human rights violations in Cuba?
    Ms. Acer. Absolutely not.
    Mr. Correa. Responsible for repression, poverty in 
Nicaragua?
    Ms. Acer. No.
    Mr. Correa. Instability in Peru?
    Ms. Acer. No.
    Mr. Correa. Central American economic crisis?
    Ms. Acer. No, sir.
    Mr. Correa. China's economic challenges?
    Ms. Acer. Absolutely not.
    Mr. Correa. Russian Ukrainian war and the ensuing refugees 
from Ukraine and Russia?
    Ms. Acer. No, sir.
    Mr. Correa. African economic instability and food 
shortages?
    Ms. Acer. No.
    Mr. Correa. America's stunning economic growth, strongest 
in the world?
    Ms. Acer. No.
    Mr. Correa. Probably not. America's low unemployment rate?
    Ms. Acer. No.
    Mr. Correa. America's insatiable demand for workers with or 
without documents?
    Ms. Acer. No.
    Mr. Correa. Responsible for the private-sector farmers, 
ranchers, hiring of undocumented workers?
    Ms. Acer. No, sir.
    Mr. Correa. Let's just clarify, Ms. Acer, is asylum legal?
    Ms. Acer. Yes.
    Mr. Correa. Is approaching our ports of entry and asking 
for asylum, is that legal?
    Ms. Acer. Absolutely.
    Mr. Correa. Is that legal under international law?
    Ms. Acer. Absolutely.
    Mr. Correa. Thank you very much.
    I just want to add the majority party here voted to end the 
COVID-19 health care emergency. In doing so, you voted to lift 
Title 42. What was left? Secretary Mayorkas has managed, he 
enlisted the help of our neighbors. No other time in the 
history of the United States and Mexico have we had such a 
great working relationship with Mexico and the others through 
Central and South America on the issue of the refugee crisis. 
So to say that Secretary Mayorkas has been derelict of his duty 
is misleading the American people and presenting misleading 
facts.
    Ms. Acer, is Mr. Mayorkas lying to the American people?
    Ms. Acer. No, sir, I don't believe to my knowledge. Though 
I do disagree with him on his asylum ban. I think he is 
absolutely wrong on that.
    Mr. Correa. I would probably disagree with him on that as 
well.
    Thank you, Mr. Chair and I----
    Mr. Goldman. Will the gentleman yield? Mr. Correa.
    Mr. Correa. I yield, of course.
    Mr. Goldman. A few seconds.
    I just want to point out, Mr. Wolf and all of our witnesses 
here, you may have a difference of opinion as to how the United 
States should process our asylum applicants, but the notion 
that that difference of a policy opinion would be the basis for 
``case closed'' that Secretary Mayorkas violating his duty is 
preposterous and it is not any basis for impeachment.
    I yield back.
    Chairman Green. The gentleman's time has expired.
    I now recognize Mr. Higgins from Louisiana for his 5 
minutes questions.
    Mr. Higgins. Thank you Mr. Chairman.
    Americans watching this or listening to the commentary you 
would have to be living under a rock in America to not 
recognize the disintegration of our sovereignty at the Southern 
Border over the last 2 years. You got 6 million illegals 
processed in some manner into our country, 1\1/2\ million known 
criminal runner gotaways. The border law enforcement is so 
overwhelmed estimates easily state that that number is doubled 
of unknown and uncounted criminal runner gotaways. All told, 
you are talking about 9 million people rolling into our country 
since President Biden was inaugurated.
    Secretary Mayorkas' failure is difficult to calculate the 
impact upon our country, our entire country, generational 
trauma the man has brought upon our country. My colleagues 
across the aisle have a this is your Baghdad Bob moment when 
you witness clearly what the truth is, what everyone across the 
country recognizes as the disintegration of our Southern Border 
and horrific impact upon our country, and yet you drone on and 
on about how great things are, blame everything on Trump, good 
lord for years. Yes, a Ranking Member has a right to introduce 
a Government study into the record. But the insinuation was 
that former Secretary Wolf served illegally.
    So I am going to give you an opportunity to respond to 
that, Mr. Wolf. I know you very well. Did you serve honorably 
and legally as Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, 
sir?
    Mr. Wolf. I believe I did. I was asked to serve as that 
Acting Secretary by the President. I took my oath seriously. 
I'm very proud of the way that I led the Department. Lawyers 
can argue over the order of succession about the Acting 
Secretary before me, but I think what's clear is simply being 
confirmed doesn't make you capable of doing the job.
    Mr. Higgins. Thank you for your response, sir, and I 
apologize on behalf of the committee for that insinuation. I 
think it was ugly, it was tainted by agenda. Over the course of 
the next several months perhaps they can develop a new script 
than just attacking the Trump administration, because we are 
going to expose what has happened to our country over the last 
2 years.
    Mr. Scott, would you explain to the committee in America 
how Secretary Mayorkas has intentionally shifted migrant 
numbers through the CBP One app to promote the appearance of 
decreasing illegal crossings?
    Mr. Scott. Yes, as we discussed earlier, the numbers that 
are being reported publicly focus--they're selective. They've 
been focusing on the Southwest Border only and we need to focus 
on total encounters or what OFO calls as inadmissibles. If you 
go onto CBP.gov, their website, it's a nightmare, but you can 
slowly sort some of this stuff out, which is not open----
    Mr. Higgins. Yes, sir. So to focus on a CBP One app, is it 
true that there is virtually no parameters disqualifying an 
applicant from applying for parole through the CBP One app?
    Mr. Scott. That is my understanding.
    Mr. Higgins. That is my understanding as well.
    Mr. Wolf, in your opinion, sir, is an increased use of the 
CBP One app for parole application consistent with the app's 
original purpose?
    Mr. Wolf. No, not the original purpose.
    Mr. Higgins. Would you clarify that for America, please?
    Mr. Wolf. Again, it was for foreigners. It was for industry 
on how to facilitate that trade across the border. It was for 
boating licensing----
    Mr. Higgins. It was for legal commerce.
    Mr. Wolf. Right.
    Mr. Higgins. To speed legal commerce through ports of 
entry.
    Mr. Wolf. Correct.
    Mr. Higgins. Yet now it is being used for undocumented, 
legally identified as inadmissible, illegal migrants coming 
through our ports of entry using the CBP One app, and they are 
granted parole.
    Is that your understanding?
    Mr. Wolf. That's my understanding of how it's currently 
being utilized.
    Mr. Higgins. Would you clarify how that is in violation of 
the law?
    Mr. Wolf. Well, again, that's not how the CBP One app was 
originally. Again, it's not how you allow individuals to come 
in, paroling them in. There's so many different exemptions of 
using that CBP One app. If you can't access it, they allow you 
into the country. So it's another smoke and mirrors of how to 
bring in individuals, again, that have no legal right to be 
into the country. Whether you parole them in or put them into 
the asylum system, the end result is all the same. So we can 
talk about the different ways, the end result is that they are 
released into American communities, and that is what's fueling 
this crisis.
    Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Mr. Wolf.
    Mr. Chairman, my time has expired. I yield.
    Chairman Green. The gentleman's time has expired.
    I now recognize Mr. Magaziner for his 5 minutes 
questioning. From Rhode Island, by the way.
    Mr. Magaziner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I have to say, I am getting sick and tired of House 
Republicans politicizing the Department of Homeland Security. 
There are common-sense, bipartisan actions that this committee 
could be taking up to improve security along the Southern 
Border. But instead of advancing smart policies to keep 
Americans safe, the Republicans have resorted to the type of 
political theater and Biden-bashing that the American people 
are sick of. We know there are challenges at the border because 
poverty and political instability are causing millions of 
people to flee their home countries. But the notion that 
President Biden or Secretary Mayaorkas are guilty of 
``dereliction of duty'' are absurd. President Biden and 
Secretary Mayorkas have been proactive in taking steps to 
protect our homeland.
    Here are the facts. April 27, 2021, just 2 months after 
taking office, Secretary Mayorkas launched Operation Sentinel 
to combat criminal organizations smuggling migrants across the 
border. June 7, 2021, Secretary Mayorkas launched Joint Task 
Force Alpha to crack down on trafficking groups in Mexico and 
the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and 
Honduras. November 2021, President Biden's infrastructure bill 
delivered $430,000,000 to Customs and Border Protection above 
previously-budgeted levels for enhanced security at points of 
entry. Nearly every House Republican voted no. December 15, 
2021, President Biden signed Executive Order 14060, 
establishing the U.S. Council on Transnational Organized Crime 
with a focus on enhancing operational and intelligence 
capabilities to disrupt transnational crime organizations. In 
2022, the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats 
passed a Homeland Security funding measure that added 300 
Border Patrol agents and 125 CBP officers. Every House 
Republican voted no because it had Joe Biden's name on it. In 
2023, Secretary Mayorkas launched Operation Blue Lotus and 
Operation Four Horsemen to disrupt narcotics trafficking at and 
between points of entry. April 2023, the Biden Justice 
Department unsealed charges against 28 leaders of the Sinaloa 
cartel engaged in drug trafficking and other crimes.
    The list goes on and on. This is just a sample of the 
actions that the administration has taken to improve security 
on the border. But, of course, you do not hear House 
Republicans talking about any of this because it doesn't fit 
their narrative. The only dereliction of duty here is House 
Republicans wasting time on political games instead of focusing 
on the real problems that we need to tackle to protect the 
homeland.
    Let's look again at the record. House Republicans 
introduced a measure to impeach Secretary Mayorkas 2 years ago 
when he had only been in office for 6 months. Politics. A 
leader of this committee, in a closed door fundraiser months 
ago, announced that Republicans were going to impeach the 
Secretary and said, ``Get the popcorn. It's going to be fun.''
    Chairman Green. Will the gentleman yield? That is not what 
I said. I want to correct the record. I never used the word 
impeachment, and I am tired of this continual narrative falsely 
quoting me. I won't allow it, Mr. Magaziner.
    Mr. Magaziner. Listen.
    Chairman Green. Continue your testimony.
    Mr. Magaziner. I will continue.
    Listen, another Member of this committee, Ms. Greene, just 
a few days ago, told the press that she voted on the debt 
ceiling bill only in exchange for ``beautiful dessert,'' which 
is impeachment. So this has always been about politics and 
political games. The most important fact is this, since the 
expiration of President Trump's Title 42 policy, illegal border 
crossings are down 70 percent. Even when you include CBP One 
app appointments, which are legal, they are still down more 
than 60 percent since the expiration of Title 42. So there are 
a lot of things that we could be doing. Instead, we are wasting 
our time on theater.
    Now, Mr. Wolf, during your time running the Department of 
Homeland Security, were you ever impeached?
    Mr. Wolf. No.
    Mr. Magaziner. No. During your time working at DHS in the 
Trump administration, did you prevent all unlawful entries into 
the United States?
    Mr. Wolf. We worked every day to do that.
    Mr. Magaziner. But did you prevent all unlawful entries, 
yes or no?
    Mr. Wolf. No.
    Mr. Magaziner. OK, well, I am confused, because I read Mr. 
Higgins articles of impeachment that he filed a few days ago. 
In short, they say that Secretary Mayorkas should be impeached 
because he failed to maintain operational control at the border 
defined as the prevention of all illegal entries into the 
United States. So I don't understand, why didn't we impeach the 
DHS director under the Trump administration or any prior 
administration if that is the standard that warrants 
impeachment? Political theater, that is why. That is all this 
is.
    With that, I yield back.
    Chairman Green. The gentleman yields.
    I recognize Mr. Bishop from North Carolina.
    Mr. Bishop. I thank the Chairman.
    I think this is interesting, and it begins to ferret out 
what really is the key issue that this Congress needs to focus 
on in regards to the matter that is being testified to. I 
appreciate the witnesses who are here. You are professional and 
dispassionate.
    I think almost no one is brazen enough anymore to deny that 
there is a border crisis created by the Biden administration, 
Secretary Mayorkas. Border Chief Ortiz admitted such on the way 
out the door. FEMA announced yesterday the distribution of more 
than $290,000,000 in Congressional funding to communities 
receiving migrants. You don't deploy FEMA resources when there 
isn't a crisis. But the issue here--and I agree it shouldn't be 
political theater, it is not about policy differences, can't 
be--the issue here is vindicating the rule of law and the 
Constitutional role and lawmaking power of Congress. Many claim 
the Trump indictment is about the rule of law. The Ranking 
Member says appropriately policy differences are of a different 
dimension. I agree with that. The appropriate response for 
Congress is different in each case.
    I don't even think, with all respect to the Chairman, that 
our focus can be exactly on dereliction in the full sense 
articulated, because dereliction is willful or negligent. What 
we need to focus on here is whether this is not a case of 
negligence. If it were, the implications would be different, 
the remedy would be different. Incompetence in administering a 
Federal agency is maladministration, and the recourse falls to 
the people alone. But intentional sabotage of the rule of law 
is something entirely different. It is an affront to the 
separation of powers to the institutional authority of the 
Congress under the Constitution and it invites another remedy, 
and that is impeachment.
    Secretary Wolf, the Ranking Member attacked actions by the 
Trump administration. But you point--you know, your statement 
really elegant, 10 pages, covers a lot of the ground. I urge 
people to look at it carefully. You point out that there--you 
were attacked for by the Ranking Member--these were exercises 
of authority specifically granted to Congress. Take Migrant 
Protection Protocols remain in Mexico. You cite 235B2C of the 
INA. In the case of an alien described in subparagraph A, that 
somebody who would have right otherwise to asylum, claim of 
asylum, who is arriving on land from a foreign territory 
contiguous to the United States, the Attorney General may 
return that alien to that territory pending a proceeding under 
section 1229(a) of this Title. So that is exactly what you did. 
Whether somebody said you did it in exact way or if you want to 
challenge House, you are exercising an authority.
    Same thing with safe Third Country Agreements under section 
208(a)2(A). I won't read all that. But here is what you point 
out, the violations of law, several of these found by Federal 
district judges at this point in time, by the catch-and-
release, ignores the mandate to detain or make them wait--an 
asylum applicant wait in Mexico. That has been judged by Judge 
Wetherell in Florida to be unlawful.
    The use of notices--what are they called, NTRs, Mr. Wolf?
    Mr. Wolf. Notices to report.
    Mr. Bishop. Notices to report. So you don't even have any 
formal commencement of removal proceedings, which a notice to 
appear would be setting a date even though you never get to 
them. They don't even do it, they just let them go with NTRs. 
The exercise of authority to adjudicate asylum by DHS 
officials--maybe, Mr. Edlow, you may have pointed this out in 
your testimony--instead of in the Department of Justice, where 
that power is reserved.
    An interior non-enforcement policy. Mr. Wolf, you pointed 
out the 100-day deportation freeze. Judge Tipton said that was 
illegal. Subsequent enforcement priorities established that 
exempt 99 percent from the threat of deportation. Secretary 
Mayorkas declaring that illegal presence alone is not grounds 
for removal. More than a million in the country subject to 
final removal orders, and they said they are not going to 
remove them.
    So I am just going to leave my last minute to you, Mr. 
Wolf. But I see what we are talking about is intentional 
sabotage of the rule of law as set by Congress. That is a 
different ballgame.
    Mr. Wolf. It is different. It's not just about whether or 
not aliens, illegal aliens, can claim asylum, as was talked 
about here earlier. As you indicated, at least in my written 
testimony, there are seven different instances where I believe 
the law is not being faithfully executed, to include the 
categorical parole, which was the last one there.
    Mr. Bishop. I didn't get to that.
    Mr. Wolf. Which is at ports of entry, which is at the heart 
of all of this. To have asylum, needs to be an urgent 
humanitarian benefit or advantageous somehow to the United 
States. Simply paroling up to 360,000 individuals, which is 
what they are on track to do per year, violates the letter of 
the law. It's very clear.
    Mr. Bishop. Final point here is that it does fall to 
Congress, as well as these judges, fall to Congress through the 
impeachment power to decide whether the law has been 
intentionally flouted.
    I yield back.
    Chairman Green. The gentleman yields.
    I now recognize Mr. Swalwell from California.
    Mr. Swalwell. I have heard the phrase rule of law and 
accusations that the Biden administration is sabotaging the 
rule of law. The title of this hearing is ``Secretary Mayorkas' 
Dereliction of Duty on the Border Crisis.'' But I think, in 
contrast to that, it is very interesting to me that the chief 
witness that the Majority has called here, Mr. Wolf, was found 
on November 14, 2020, by a Federal Judge to ``not lawfully be 
serving as Acting Secretary.'' Not lawfully serving as Acting 
Secretary. So a lot of considerations and concerns from my 
colleague across the aisle about the rule of law, but the 
witness that they called served unlawfully as the Acting 
Secretary of Homeland Security, where an accusation of 
dereliction of duty is being made today.
    In addition to that, again, it is interesting that this is 
the chief witness that they have called today because on 
September 17, 2020, the unlawfully-serving Acting Secretary, 
Mr. Wolf, failed to honor his Congressional subpoena, didn't 
show up, skipped the hearing. So you have someone who is acting 
unlawfully and somebody who skips a Congressional subpoena, and 
we are going to be lectured by the Majority about a dereliction 
of duty of the current lawfully-serving Senate-confirmed 
Secretary of Homeland Security. I think that is interesting and 
an important perspective that we should have as we consider 
what is going on at our Southern Border.
    Ms. Acer, I want to speak with you just about what is going 
on at the Southern Border. If you were to think about the 
migrants who are fleeing the Northern triangle, who leave 
everything they know, their family, their livelihood, their 
culture, their homes, their community, their churches, and take 
the journey to America, do you believe that if we were to find 
a way, as a global alliance, public-private partnerships, to 
help invest in those countries in their economic security and 
their physical security and stand up and support a rule of law 
and go after corruption, that that would reduce the number of 
people who came to the United States?
    Ms. Acer. Absolutely. The reason that people are coming 
here to seek protection is because they're not being protected 
at home by their countries. There's a lot more that the United 
States can do to increase respect for human rights and to 
otherwise assist in making sure that conditions allow people 
who can stay safely in their home countries to do so.
    Mr. Swalwell. I understand the counter to that will be, 
well, why would we invest money there if we have needs here? 
There is no doubt we have needs here, but if we are going to be 
spending the money anyway, either enforcement of the border or 
taking care of people who come here, to me it just seems like a 
better holistic investment to try and work private-sector, 
public-sector, non-profit, NGO's in those countries to stand 
up. As I said, economic and physical security.
    Also wanted to ask, what effect do you think it has, Ms. 
Acer, when my colleagues across the aisle and Republicans say 
that we have open borders? In fact, the title of the hearing 
today is ``Open Borders, Closed Case.'' Do you think if you are 
south of our border and you are looking for somewhere to go to 
keep your family safe and to find some livelihood, if you hear 
people falsely declaring that the border is open, do you think 
that makes you more or less likely to try and go to the United 
States because you think the border is open?
    Ms. Acer. I don't know how much migrants actually listen to 
these hearings, but you're right in that I've heard Mexican 
officials say they wished that U.S. politicians would actually 
stop saying that the border was open because they thought that 
was really sending the wrong message. Sometimes disinformation, 
inaccurate information does get into Facebook groups that many 
migrants do follow.
    Mr. Swalwell. Thank you, Ms. Acer.
    I think the lesson here is that this issue is complicated. 
It involves human beings who are leaving everything. We have 
got our own struggles in the United States and clearly cannot 
take on a consistent flow from the Southern Border. But it 
needs solutions, not theater. I am afraid that my colleagues 
are interested in the crisis, but they are not interested in 
the solutions.
    I yield back, gentlemen.
    Chairman Green. The gentleman yields.
    I now recognize Mr. Gimenez from Florida for his 5 minutes.
    Mr. Gimenez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Ms. Acer, you were quoted in the Baptist News Global 
referring to the end of Title 42, and you said that the dangers 
facing asylum seekers are more acute than they were years ago 
when the Trump administration started these policies and these 
policies have contributed to a worsening of the conditions that 
face migrants and people seeking asylum. Did you make that 
statement?
    Ms. Acer. I don't remember my exact words, but I probably 
did.
    Mr. Gimenez. OK. Thank you.
    Mr. Wolf, I believe, like my colleagues, that I don't 
believe that Mr. Mayorkas is incompetent. I think that he is 
derelict in his duty because I think everything that he has 
done is actually done on purpose. Do you share that view?
    Mr. Wolf. I do. This is by design.
    Mr. Gimenez. Right. So I have been an administrator and 
when I have made mistakes and I listen to my folks and say, 
hey, why didn't that go the way that I wanted it to, I would 
listen and kind-of change things, but Mr. Mayorkas kind-of 
doubles down. So when in the first days of the Biden 
administration, a bunch of policies that the Trump 
administration had put in place in order to secure the border 
were overturned, and then things started to go south in a 
really big way.
    Do you know first-hand, if people in the border--that 
Customs and Border Patrol agents actually advised Mr. Mayorkas 
that, hey, you need to reverse these policies to stop this 
tidal wave that is coming into the United States?
    Mr. Wolf. Again, I wasn't there. It's my understanding that 
they did. Chief Scott was there in the Border Patrol advising 
the Biden administration, so I'm sure he can answer.
    Mr. Gimenez. Well, Mr. Scott, can you answer that question?
    Mr. Scott. Yes. He was informed verbally, he was informed 
in writing. I think it's important for everybody to understand 
everything fundamentally changed. When I worked for Secretary 
Wolf, we had team meetings, we were asked for our input. We 
were told over your career what works and what doesn't work. On 
January 20, 2021, that all got shut off. DHS, the Secretary 
even went to the step of shutting down the integrated teams of 
career professionals that were brought into DHS Ops to provide 
guidance. Our input was no longer solicited, and when my team 
and I gave it unsolicited, we were basically put in a box. They 
did not want to know what we had to say. They made it very 
clear, expedite processing and find new ways to let migrants 
into the United States and that was the only agenda.
    Mr. Gimenez. Exactly. Which is on purpose, really 
circumventing U.S. law.
    Mr. Scott. One hundred percent on purpose, scripted out. 
The Secretary is not incompetent.
    Mr. Gimenez. No, I know he is not incompetent. He is 
derelict, without a doubt.
    Mr. Wolf, back to you. When you had the Remain in Mexico 
policy and people were told to remain in Mexico, and then they 
had their asylum hearings, what percentage of those that were 
seeking asylum were actually granted asylum?
    Mr. Wolf. Again, it would have been under that about 10 to 
15 percent. The number that grant asylum has been holding for 
years now. About 80 percent to 85 percent do not qualify, and 
about 10 to 15 percent do qualify. We saw that again under MPP 
as well.
    Mr. Gimenez. All right, so those are the people that 
actually qualify to get into the United States, are granted 
parole into the United States, given some kind of legal status 
in your site, because they actually have a valid asylum claim. 
Now, when you get rid of that and you allow them to come into 
the United States and then you don't--well, the law also says 
that if you are seeking your asylum, you are supposed to be 
detained until your hearing, correct?
    Mr. Wolf. Correct.
    Mr. Gimenez. That is not happening right now, is it?
    Mr. Wolf. It is not.
    Mr. Gimenez. OK, so now you have got all the people are 
coming into the United States. They are actually being granted 
entry into the United States. So you are actually increasing 
the number of migrants entering the United States illegally 
because they don't really have a valid asylum claim by about 80 
percent. Would you agree with that number?
    Mr. Wolf. That sounds about right.
    Mr. Gimenez. OK. So we don't even know where they are, we 
don't know where they're some of them are being tracked, some 
of them are not being tracked. We don't know where 85,000 
children are at this point. I consider that to be a dereliction 
of duty. Children? 85,000? We don't know where they are. Did 
that ever happen under the Trump administration?
    Mr. Wolf. Eighty-five thousand, no, absolutely not. Again, 
you have an unaccompanied alien child crisis at the moment, 
380,000. So if you happen to go to the baseball game tonight, 
that fills National Stadium almost nine times, that's how many 
children that have come across that border that have no parent, 
have no guardian, that have been smuggled by these Mexican 
cartels at the behest, sometimes of their parents, because they 
know that if they get across that border, they will remain here 
in the United States. It is a terrible journey. You are 
subjecting them to just horrific conditions. It needs to end.
    Mr. Gimenez. The Democrats dare to call what happened 
during the Trump administration inhumane.
    My time is up. I yield back.
    Chairman Green. The gentlemen yields.
    I now recognize Mr. Goldman of New York.
    Mr. Goldman. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Our witnesses were asked whether what Secretary Mayorkas 
has done is intentional. Obviously, it is intentional. He is 
not doing things unintentionally. He has testified before us 
and he has acknowledged repeatedly that we are dealing with a 
very difficult situation at the border.
    I want to focus on, go back to what my colleague, Mr. 
Swalwell, was focusing on, which is my friend, Mr. Bishop's, 
quote that there is an intentional sabotage of the rule of law. 
Now, we have heard a couple of times today that the GAO and a 
Federal Court found that Mr. Wolf was acting unlawfully. To my 
understanding, that would be a violation of the rule of law.
    But let's focus a little bit on some policies and some 
efforts. Mr. Gimenez mentioned that there are children who 
cannot be found, which brings up, of course, the Trump 
administration family separation policy. Mr. Wolf, when you 
were the chief of staff to the Secretary of Homeland Security, 
isn't it true that you supported the family separation policy?
    Mr. Wolf. I was at the Department from 2017 to the end of 
the administration.
    Mr. Goldman. Well, did you not, according to an inspector 
general's report, urge the counselor to the Attorney General to 
implement the family separation policy to increase prosecution 
of family unit parents and separate family units?
    Mr. Wolf. No, I don't believe--no.
    Mr. Goldman. OK. Well, I want to introduce into the record 
this inspector general's report on family separation, which 
includes an email by you to Jean Hamilton, the counselor to the 
Attorney general.*
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    * The document has been retained in committee files and is also 
available at https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/reports/21-
028_0.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Mr. Wolf. So that email had a number of options----
    Mr. Goldman. Hold on, hold on.
    Mr. Wolf [continuing]. For consideration. There was no 
direction, there was no directive.
    Mr. Goldman. Right. So you are saying right here, right 
now, that you did not support the family separation policy?
    Mr. Wolf. That was not your question.
    Mr. Goldman. Is that your testimony?
    Mr. Wolf. That was not your question.
    Mr. Goldman. I am asking it right now, is that your 
testimony?
    Mr. Wolf. We implemented a number of policies in the 
administration. I agreed with President Trump when he ended 
zero tolerance in June, I believe, of 2018. Absolutely.
    Mr. Goldman. Did you support the family separation policy?
    Mr. Wolf. We had no family separation policy at the 
Department.
    Mr. Goldman. Really? The Department did not----
    Mr. Wolf. No. I'm happy to go through this. The Attorney 
General announced a zero----
    Mr. Goldman. All right, let's talk about this.
    Mr. Wolf [continuing]. Tolerance policy that the 
Department----
    Mr. Goldman. That the--let's talk about this.
    Mr. Wolf [continuing]. Then implemented.
    Mr. Goldman. One sec, one sec. Let's talk about this 
because the facts are that more than 5,000 children were 
forcibly separated from their parents at the border. The reason 
is because the Department of Justice for the first time used 
Title 8, United States Code, Section 1325, which makes it a 
misdemeanor offense to charge anyone crossing without lawful--
without papers, et cetera. That had never been used before. 
Because the only point of that is to put parents who are 
charged with that in jail where they cannot actually be with 
their families.
    Now, a Federal Court in 2018 ended the family separation 
policy, which this Court determined that there was because the 
Government's policy, ``shocks the conscience'' and violates the 
Constitutional right to family integrity. There are still 
children who were separated at the border from their parents 
who have not been found because this zero tolerance policy, 
which ultimately ended up separating parents and children, did 
not create any mechanism to account for that separation in 
order to track the children. Now, that clearly, as a judge said 
was a violation of the rule of law. An intentional sabotage of 
the rule of law.
    Let me go quickly to another one. According to a 
whistleblower complaint by the former head of the Department's 
intelligence branch, Mr. Wolf ordered him to withhold an 
intelligence notification on Russian activities because it 
``made the President look bad''. The Office of Inspector 
General investigated it and found that the Department did not 
adequately follow its internal processes and policy standards 
when editing and disseminating an intelligence product 
regarding Russian interference with the 2020 Presidential 
election. The Acting Secretary, Mr. Wolf, participated in that 
review process.
    Mr. Chairman, I know my time is up. I would like to 
introduce for the record that Inspector General's report which 
my staff will give.
    I would like to note that before we start attacking this 
intentional sabotage of the rule of law, we ought to look in 
our own glass house.
    I yield.
    Chairman Green. Without objection, so ordered.**
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    ** The document has been retained in committee files and is also 
available at https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2022-
05/OIG-22-41-Apr22-Redacted.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Chairman Green. I recognize Mr. Pfluger from Texas for his 
5 minutes.
    Mr. Pfluger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    How rich was that?
    Mr. Wolf, how many apprehensions occurred in the Trump 
years combined? I mean, just round numbers.
    Mr. Wolf. All 4 years?
    Mr. Pfluger. Yes.
    Mr. Wolf. I don't have a number for you. The chief may.
    Mr. Pfluger. Chief?
    Mr. Scott. I don't have that number off the top of my head, 
to be honest. But it was less than a million a year and some 
years, less than 500,000.
    Mr. Pfluger. OK. How many since Biden has taken over?
    Mr. Scott. You have to define whether they're arrests or 
encounters.
    Mr. Pfluger. Apprehensions.
    Mr. Scott. The apprehensions would technically include 
encounters. There were over 6 million.
    OK. Known, gotaways that has been reported?
    Mr. Scott. Known gotaways over 1.5 million, plus or minus 
that's only the known.
    Mr. Pfluger. OK. Known or suspected terrorists?
    Mr. Scott. There's been about 200. I think there's 98 this 
year.
    Mr. Pfluger. OK.
    Mr. Scott. Again, those are just the ones that are known.
    Mr. Pfluger. Two hundred since January 2021.
    Mr. Wolf, you guys reported known or suspected terrorists. 
Actually, it took us 6 months to get Mayorkas and the President 
to actually report known or suspected terrorists. What is the 
combined approximate total in the Trump years of known or 
suspected?
    Mr. Wolf. I believe it was 11.
    Mr. Pfluger. Eleven. How rich is that discussion that we 
just heard about looking in a glass house? You know what the 
political theater here is? Over 5 million apprehensions at our 
Southern Border, over 200 known or suspected terrorists, over a 
million and a half known gotaways. I have constituents who are 
currently sitting in this committee hearing right now that live 
in west Texas and these folks are dealing with the unfunded 
mandate that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are 
calling political theater. You are saying that 53 people that 
died in a tractor trailer south of San Antonio last summer is 
political theater? Give me a break.
    This is insane that we continue to look at this 
administration anything less than a complete, abysmal failure.
    Mr. Wolf, it looks like you might have a reply or something 
that was from the previous question.
    Mr. Wolf. I would just say the previous question from the 
Congressman was probably false on all fronts. I think it's a 
naive view of the situation that occurred in 2018. Children are 
separated from adults who may or may not be their parents. 
Perhaps they're their parents that are abusing them. This 
happens every day along the border. You need to visit the 
border. You need to talk to Border Patrol to actually 
understand the border. This happens every day in the Biden 
administration, this happens in the Trump administration, 
Obama, and it goes on and on and on. I'm sure the chief can 
tell you more about that. But this idea that it only started in 
3 weeks in 2018, it's a false narrative.
    Mr. Pfluger. Well, isn't it true that the Obama 
administration actually started family separation in all 
practicality? Mr. Scott, you served for four different 
Presidents, both sides of the aisle.
    Mr. Scott. Correct. I'm really offended by the--not by you, 
but the statement family separation. DHS, United States Border 
Patrol, under various different administrations prosecute 
people for committing crimes, and we prosecute more people for 
committing crimes of the percentage of the total population as 
the numbers go down. Over years, we found out consequences slow 
down the flow of illegal immigration. A consequence is a 
prosecution. That's what we were doing in the field. That 
happened way before the Trump administration. Some of you may 
be familiar with Operations Streamline. The Border Patrol 
reported on it all the time, and that was misdemeanor 
prosecution of illegal entry, and it has a direct result in 
improved border security. The track record is there, multiple 
administrations.
    Mr. Pfluger. Mr. Scott, when did you serve the Biden 
administration? What months or years?
    Mr. Scott. For the Biden administration from the day of 
inauguration until August 14, 2021.
    Mr. Pfluger. OK, so for approximately 8 months.
    Mr. Scott. Plus or minus.
    Mr. Pfluger. Was Secretary Mayorkas briefed on policy 
failures? Were there recommendations that were made to 
Secretary Mayorkas and President Biden from Border Patrol, from 
ICE, from Customs, from any of our DHS leaders?
    Mr. Scott. I personally participated in numerous conference 
calls. The Secretary insulated himself a lot, but he had 
representatives on those calls, and occasionally he was in 
those calls himself. Yes, it was very clear, but the 
administration made it very clear deterrence was no longer our 
mission, and we weren't even allowed to talk about it. The 
minute you talked about trying to slow down the flow or putting 
any kind of a deterrent mechanism in place, we were immediately 
stymied.
    Mr. Pfluger. So this is a willful and complicit decision to 
turn away from the policies from 2017 to 2020 and go a 
different direction, which have resulted in the numbers that I 
previously said. They have been advised, and there have been 
recommendations made by yourself and others that they have 
completely ignored?
    Mr. Scott. Absolutely. They're just carrying out their game 
plan that they said in the campaign.
    Mr. Pfluger. This is complete dereliction of duty.
    I thank you, gentlemen, for your service to this country.
    Mr. Chairman, the dereliction that we see from Secretary 
Mayorkas is unprecedented, and it has resulted in so many 
assaults, deaths, and drugs and chaos in this country. Thank 
you for holding this hearing.
    I yield back.
    Chairman Green. The gentleman yields.
    I now recognize Mr. Ivey from Maryland.
    Mr. Ivey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that.
    I wanted to say that when I arrived on the Hill this 
morning, I was surprised to find out that the committee had 
issued a report. It is titled ``Causes, Costs, and 
Consequences.'' It is titled as Committee on Homeland Security 
Majority Report. It is, I don't know, around 55 pages long. 
What this document lays out is the Republican views with--I 
haven't had a chance to read it yet because I just got it. 
Actually it was waiting in my spot here when I sat down to 
begin the hearings. That is the first I have saw it and I 
didn't have a chance to go through it.
    But I want to say a couple of things about it. I look 
forward to reading it and having a chance to digest it. I am 
deeply disappointed that a Majority Report didn't give the 
Minority any opportunity not only to review it, but to respond 
to it. I guess this isn't a formal report, but to the extent we 
are actually looking to try and do things together, to work 
together, to move the committee forward together to address the 
issues that are being addressed not only in this hearing, but 
in previous hearings, this kind of approach doesn't work. In 
fact, it is counterproductive, to say the least. I understand 
you guys have a view, and some of the points you have are 
different than ours, some of ours are different than yours. But 
if we are going to try and address this together, we actually 
have to work together, and it has to begin before the hearing 
starts.
    What was especially disappointing about this one was I had 
a conversation with--I won't call a name, but a Member of the 
report, the Republican side on the House floor last night with 
respect to trying to move legislation in this committee. Part 
of it came out of the mark-up that we had a few weeks ago where 
there was recognition I thought by both sides that the 
Democrats had offered some amendments that might make sense. 
For example, with respect to the drones issue, we were told 
when we went to visit the border that there was a 17-to-1 
deficit. We had offered an amendment to try and increase the 
number of drones and funding for it. The Republicans didn't 
take any amendments during the mark-up, and that is their 
prerogative. But there was a statement made at the time, well, 
maybe we can move amendments that you have offered that we find 
mutually acceptable that are beneficial. Another one, for 
example, was additional funding for Border Patrol agents. There 
are some provisions in the bill that passed, but not all that 
we talked about to provide additional funding, hire more 
agents, retention by paying them more and the like, since we 
are losing agents and it is harder to enforce the border with 
fewer agents than more agents. So we talked about actual 
legislation to try and address the problems that we are talking 
about here. I was assured, hey, yes, we can work together on 
this stuff. We got an oversight thing we got to do tomorrow, 
but we can work together on getting legislation done through 
the--I had no idea that the oversight thing--I knew the 
witnesses were coming. I mean we got the testimony just barely 
48 hours in advance, but at least we did get it in advance. But 
this report is a blind-side. Hopefully that is not an 
indication of things to come.
    But I also did remember at a previous hearing I raised this 
issue, the New York Times article that came out April 18. ``Key 
Republican Tells Donors He Will Pursue Impeachment of 
Mayorkas.'' Now, I don't need to go through it again, we put it 
in the record previously. But basically it laid out a plan, a 
five-phase plan, quote, unquote, to set up the impeachment of 
Mr. Mayorkas. I was told that these were misquotes and the 
like. You know, we are really going to try and work together on 
this, we are going to file the--blah, blah, blah--in the 
hearing. This is on the record. Then I get this.
    You know, I understand that that both sides differ. As I 
mentioned before, my first job here was 1987 on Capitol Hill 
working for Congressman Conyers. I am sorry I missed earlier 
parts of the meeting because I had votes in Judiciary. But can 
we actually try and address some of these problems by working 
together? I know we have got different sides. I understand how 
hearings work. You guys get three witnesses, we get one. That 
is fine, but let's try and do things that--we can disagree 
without being disagreeable and try and move our points forward, 
I think. Because this is the Homeland Security Committee, our 
goal, I think, for all of us is to try and do what is best to 
help the American people. It is harder to do it when we are 
working at cross-purposes.
    So with that, I yield back.
    Chairman Green. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from New York, Mr. 
Garbarino.
    Mr. Garbarino. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Edlow, what is the legal basis for asylum?
    Mr. Edlow. The INA Section 208 sets out exactly what asylum 
is.
    Mr. Garbarino. Is general economic hardship a legal basis 
for asylum?
    Mr. Edlow. A legal basis? No, it is not. There are five 
recognized grounds of asylum.
    Mr. Garbarino. Is general violence or crime alone a legal 
basis for asylum?
    Mr. Edlow. It is not, Congressman.
    Mr. Garbarino. Is political instability alone a legal basis 
for asylum?
    Mr. Edlow. Not alone, no.
    Mr. Garbarino. Does filing an asylum claim after entering 
illegally or improperly negate the fact that the individual 
entered illegally to begin with?
    Mr. Edlow. No, it doesn't. However, when someone comes in 
at the port of entry, claims credible fear, has a positive 
credible fear determination at that point, they are given the 
opportunity to present an asylum claim. Under Section 235 they 
are supposed to be detained. As we know, that's not been 
happening, but they are able to stay in the country to file 
that claim. They do not have legal status in the country, they 
are an asylum applicant at that point.
    Mr. Garbarino. Thank you. Are you aware that the CBP and 
Troy Miller, CBP acting commissioner, have recently tweeted 
that most of those claiming asylum at the border don't qualify 
for asylum as economic migrants?
    Mr. Edlow. I'm not aware of the tweet, but I would agree 
with it.
    Mr. Garbarino. Prior to the Biden administration, how were 
the words urgent humanitarian reasons and significant public 
benefit in a parole statute interpreted by DHS?
    Mr. Edlow. So I don't think there's necessarily been a 
change in the actual interpretation of the wording. But where I 
think there's a change is the sheer volume of categorical 
parole programs that we've seen. I'm not going to sit here and 
say there were not some categorical parole programs under the 
Trump administration, I, for the most part, would have liked to 
have seen them go away. I don't think that they are lawful. 
With the exception of maybe the Cuba accords that allowed for 
the Cuban family reunification, the remainder of the programs 
probably should not have been there. However, we saw maybe 20-, 
30,000 people over the course of the 4 years get paroled in 
under these types of programs. Whereas now, we're seeing mass 
parole where in the months prior to them stopping parole, given 
the court decisions and some other things, we saw months where 
there was over 100,000 people paroled in that month.
    So, the sheer volume of parole numbers is astronomical now. 
Plus, they're doing it for specific countries, whole 
populations of those countries that they have a sponsor here 
that's not case-by-case. If they have humanitarian needs to get 
here, they can come through other means. They can come to the 
border and ask for credible fear. That's what we expected 
before. This is not an appropriate use of the parole 
authorities.
    Mr. Garbarino. Thank you very much. A lot of numbers going 
up. You are talking about paroles are going up. You know, we 
have seen numbers in migrants found dead on U.S. soil also go 
up. Mr. Scott, CBP personnel have reported informally that more 
than 1,700 migrants have been found dead on U.S. soil during 
this administration's watch, Biden and Mayorkas's watch. More 
than 500 were found dead in fiscal year 2021, and reportedly 
more than 800 found dead in fiscal year 2022. The 5 years prior 
to fiscal year 2021, the number had not exceeded 300 in any 
given year. Why is the number of dead migrants found on our 
soil increasing so much?
    Mr. Scott. Because chaos kills people, and we've created a 
chaotic border situation. Additionally, Border Patrol has a 
search-and-rescue team that would normally just respond and be 
out in remote desert areas looking for people in advance. 
They're processing civil immigration cases. So, we're leaving 
vast sections of border open, and I would argue those numbers 
are probably underreported.
    I was down at the border recently talking to some local 
sheriffs, and they're telling me that they're finding bodies on 
ranches. There are people dead along the border they believe 
have just crossed that are not included in CBP's numbers. But 
chaos kills people, and that's what we've created on our 
border.
    Mr. Garbarino. I appreciate that. I have 50 seconds left. I 
know people run out of time when they want to answer this 
question. So, I want to yield the rest of my time to Mr. Wolf, 
if there is anything you want to continue to say about, you 
know, this hearing and what you have experienced, I would 
appreciate it.
    Mr. Wolf. No, again, I think what we did during the Trump 
administration is every day we weren't perfect, but every day 
we worked to install policies and operations that further 
secured that border that actually upheld the rule of law, day 
after day after day. Some we got right some we got wrong at the 
end of the day. I think if you look at the overall evidence of 
the past 27 months, that is not the case. They have 
specifically torn down policies and put others in place that 
make that border significantly less secure, not only from a 
humanitarian perspective, but also from a national security and 
a public safety perspective as well.
    Mr. Garbarino. Thank you very much. I ran out of time, so I 
yield back.
    Chairman Green. The gentleman yields. The Chair recognizes 
Mr. Clark. All right, Mr. Garcia. I am sorry.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you 
to our witnesses for being here today as well. I want to just a 
couple of notes. I think that first, I just want to note that 
there has been a lot of attacks, of course, on the Biden 
administration on the work that is happening on the border. I 
think that obviously as a reminder that Democrats also want a 
safe and secure border. That is in the interests of everyone in 
our country.
    I also want to note that there has been a bemoaning that, 
of course, that since the end of Title 42, that the chaos at 
the border that oftentimes many in this committee were rooting 
for just also did not happen. So, once again, it is very clear 
that we are getting another political hearing, another 
distraction from the real issues that are in front of our 
country.
    I also want to note that there has been, once again, a 
repeating of things that have been debunked by witnesses, by 
experts, repeated over and over in this committee. We have been 
ignoring the facts about fentanyl. We want to blame the opioid 
epidemic on people that are seeking their legal right to asylum 
and not actually on the failures of our treatment system in the 
United States. Folks want to feed a narrative that if we just 
invade Mexico, things will get better in this country. All 
these things, along with false claims that our border is 
somehow open. The men and women of Department of DHS and our 
partnerships with NGO's and in Mexico are doing their jobs. 
Again, the border is not open. We continue to do that work in 
this country.
    I also want to just remind Members of this committee there 
has been a lot of back-and-forth on the issues around family 
separation. I want to give Ms. Acer a chance to respond to 
this. We have heard a lot about family separation under the 
Trump administration and specifically, quite frankly, a 
rewriting of what actually happened and of history. Can you 
clarify the actual differences between what happened in the 
Trump administration to what is happening today?
    Ms. Acer. Yes, absolutely. So, the Trump administration 
initiated policies that they knew would separate children from 
their parents. The decision to start prosecuting families for 
initial entries was done with full knowledge of what the impact 
would be. I actually met mothers in detention centers who had 
been separated from their children, had no idea where they were 
or how to find them. It was heartbreaking as a parent.
    Mr. Garcia. I want to note that I think that the 
differences between what has happened during the Trump 
administration and what is happening today, and the point of 
actually the whole process is completely different. So, I want 
to thank you for that clarification.
    One other question. In this committee, we have had Members 
of the Majority work to defund programs with NGO's, 
particularly around with Catholic Charities, who is trying to 
support legal asylum, which is really shameful and really 
counterproductive to our work and our humanitarian work along 
the border. Can you explain why our partnerships with NGO's 
that are providing these services are so important to the work 
that DHS does and across the border?
    Ms. Acer. Yes, absolutely. Those partnerships are critical 
globally around the world as well as here at home. Faith 
leaders, faith volunteers, employees of faith organizations, 
and other NGO's, you know, are inspiring. You know, those who 
are motivated by their religions are trying to welcome the 
stranger day in and day out through their work. Refugees around 
the world are welcomed by faith-based and other organizations. 
That's critical to enable all the other countries to be hosting 
refugees. But here at home, we need more support for the 
organizations that are working to welcome refugees into our 
communities. There's also a disgraceful lack of support for the 
organizations in Mexico that are struggling to host refugees 
who are now waiting to seek asylum at our ports of entry.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you. Finally, I just want to just note, I 
know there has been discussion about the One app application. I 
think one of the key reasons that conditions have improved and 
really we are focused on legal pathways is because the CBP One 
app after we all agree a difficult rollout has actually made 
things a lot better. So, I just want to thank everyone that 
worked on that, the entire Department, so many groups that have 
been involved in the rollout. Now over 1,000 migrants a day are 
able to use that app to exercise their legal right to asylum, 
which I think is really important. It is a legal right, even 
though some in the Majority choose to not see it that way. I 
yield back. Thank you.
    Chairman Green. The gentleman yields. The Chair recognizes 
Ms. Greene of Georgia.
    Ms. Greene. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is interesting to 
me to listen to some Democrats here on the committee trying to 
harp on the very idea that Mr. Wolf is somehow illegitimate as 
the former Acting Secretary. We Republicans here, we are 
committed to searching for answers as to why this 
administration continues to inflict catastrophic damage to our 
country.
    Here, I just want to remind you of a few things that are 
very important to understand. Not only is fentanyl poisoning 
the No. 1 cause of death of young Americans ages 18 to 49, 
nearly 83,000 Americans have died of opioid poisonings since 
the year 2022, and they die weekly in my district. Ninety-six 
individuals on the terrorist watch list have been apprehended. 
Crime has skyrocketed across the country, and we are missing 
85,000 children, 85,000 children.
    While Democrats across the aisle on this committee want to 
talk about families being separated under the Trump 
administration, I would like to introduce for the record, Mr. 
Chairman, a letter from Customs and Border Protection saying 
that the Biden administration is ending DNA testing, familial 
DNA testing, as of that was at the end of May, May 31, 2023. 
So, when you talk about separating----
    Chairman Green. So ordered.
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    Ms. Greene [continuing]. Children, we have the Biden 
administration not even testing, testing who these adults and 
these children are. I can't comprehend it. Everyone in this 
room knows what an Amber Alert is. We all get them on our 
phones, right? This is when a child has been kidnapped. We are 
so concerned in this country about children who have been 
kidnapped that we have something called an Amber Alert 
notifying all of us that there is a missing child. Eighty-five 
thousand children missing, migrant children missing, in the 
United States is the same thing as 85,000 Amber Alerts. It is 
unbelievable.
    Mr. Wolf, many of the children are brought to United States 
by coyotes and human smugglers. In your view, how is Secretary 
Mayorkas responsible for exasperating the unaccompanied 
children humanitarian crisis?
    Mr. Wolf. Well, it's not just one action. It's obviously a 
culmination of a variety of different incentives. It's an 
incentive structure that has been created over the past 27 
months. It allows individuals to come into the country and 
remain into the country. When you exempt UACs from Title 42, 
that sends a signal to the cartels and to everyone else to 
smuggle as many children across that border as humanly 
possible. We know they are going to stay in the United States. 
So, when you make these categorical pronouncements, the cartels 
are watching and they are paying attention.
    Just to key off on your last point, not only did DNA 
testing going to end, about to end, the vetting of sponsors 
also ended at HHS under this administration. No more vetting 
detailed, in-depth vetting of sponsors. We also increased 
vetting of other household members. We didn't just want to know 
who the sponsor was. We wanted to know other household members 
and dive into those backgrounds. That was eliminated as well. 
Site visits, not every home was visited, but random site visits 
to make sure that those children were where they said they 
would be, also eliminated under this administration. So, the 
idea that somehow they are protecting children because they 
needed to facilitate the flow out of HHS facilities quicker and 
quicker is a misnomer.
    Ms. Greene. Unbelievable. Mr. Scott, it has been reported 
that many minors at the Southwest Border are in fact related to 
adults with whom they are traveling. In fact, some of them are 
even recycled. I can't even comprehend using the term recycled 
when it comes to children. These kids are used again by 
different cartels and human smugglers to guarantee admission of 
family units. In your estimation, has this exploitation of 
minors exponentially expanded under the Mayorkas's policies?
    Mr. Scott. I believe it has and this is why. Every one of 
those child recycling cases, and if you don't understand what 
that means, that means a child being teamed up with a fake 
family over and over again. So, he has to make that trip over 
and over again because that gets them to become a family unit. 
They get into that categorical exemption to get released. Every 
one of those cases was discovered by an agent interviewing the 
child and finding little cracks in the story. That takes time. 
The agents don't have that time today. Those conversations are 
no longer going on at all. They're being pumped through the 
system like fast food commodities.
    Worse than that, now the DNA piece of it is being shut down 
as well. That was one of the last tools to be able to quickly 
be able to prove somebody was not related. That doesn't mean 
that there's not some kind of a connection there. But that gave 
the agents a tool. Most people broke immediately when they 
believed they were going to be subjected to the DNA. You didn't 
even have to do it.
    This administration knows they're putting children at risk 
every day. They're enticing them to come to the country, and it 
defies common sense.
    Ms. Greene. Thank you. He should be impeached.
    Chairman Green. The gentlelady yields.
    Ms. Greene. I yield back.
    Chairman Green. The Chair recognizes Ms. Jackson Lee of 
Texas.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. Let me 
thank the distinguished Ranking Member and Chairman and my 
colleagues and Members and the witnesses every time you put 
yourself forward. We certainly thank you very much. But this is 
a journey that I have taken now for 28 years, maybe a little 
shorter. It never fails that whenever Republican administration 
is in, my Republican friends are in the Majority, there is an 
enormous crisis, and the Executive does nothing. There is no 
effort to write legislation. There is no effort to correct what 
any one of you are saying. It is with all due respect, and 
admiration, and friendship, it is a broken record. It is 
literally a broken record.
    Before the late John McCain passed, there was a gang of 
eight who had an enormous contribution to trying to do an 
overhaul over immigration reform. It was the party that is now 
in charge of the House that blocked it. I worked with on this 
committee a Chairwoman by the name of Candice Miller from 
Michigan. We worked on comprehensive immigration reform 
measures to address the U.S.-Mexico border, which was blocked 
by the Republican leadership at that time.
    Do your homework. In years past, we have written 
legislation to provide the border personnel every manner of 
support we could give them. So, let me be very clear. The 
Remain in Mexico program was horrible because I went and 
visited the squalor that the people were sitting in. There was 
nowhere for them to go. It was misery. Nothing was happening. 
The border wall, you can get a nice comment and quote, our men 
and women at the border are very nice people. They will give 
you quotes. But it is well-known that most of fentanyl comes to 
the United States citizens through legal ports of entry. It is 
also well-known that even though you will say, well, that is 
because we need more border wall, that the border communities 
fight you for the border wall, not to have it. Smugglers and 
others find other ways.
    As relates to the asylum cooperative agreements, we have 
agreements now with Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua. As 
relates to Title 42, the Republicans voted to end the public 
health provision that the President ended, and by its very 
essence, you ended Title 42. Let me quickly because I will be 
going to one witness, because all the other witnesses I know 
what you are going to say, but I do appreciate the work that 
Ms. Acer is doing. So, please be ready for a question. I am 
trying to get through.
    I heard the word impeachment. I don't know whether it was 
going in direction of my President, the President of the United 
States, or whether it was going in terms of Secretary Mayorkas, 
an immigrant himself, who pulled himself up by the bootstraps 
and has more commitment in his tiny finger than what I would 
imagine some who advocate against him. I make that generic. But 
Secretary Mayorkas has done nothing contrary to his boss. He is 
a member of the Cabinet and his boss wants America to be safe, 
the President of the United States. In every aspect of work 
that we can do, from the increased resources, from adding to 
the additional personnel, to creating pathways for people to 
parole in, for creating the app, and the numbers have gone 
down. They surge up, they go down. It depends upon movements of 
people.
    So, you have no more answers than anyone else. Mr. Wolf, 
you were in there for a year or 2 years, and I don't see 
anything that you did that has brought down anything that we 
are talking about. This is not a personal statement because I 
want to add and say I appreciate your service to the Nation. 
But everybody that is sitting there that is criticizing had 
their opportunity.
    We have got to come together as a country and stop scaring 
our constituents because America is getting more diverse and 
they are contributing to the economy and to the culture of this 
Nation. The world watches as to whether or not we can make this 
experiment work. They are in awe of us. They come because they 
are in awe, because they are desperate, because they think this 
is the greatest country in the world. It is. Its democracy, 
however challenged, is still standing. It bothers me to 
masquerade.
    I have this question, Mr. Chairman, I ask your indulgence 
so she can answer it. I represent Catholic Charities and many 
others. I fought to get hostages back from Russia. I have dealt 
with the crisis of deportation, families separated. What does 
it do to our very dedicated non-profits who are innocent, who 
have the responsibility of taking care of people in streets, 
people who are separated, children who are separated, people 
who are traveling that you would assess them criminally or find 
them so that they are so scared that they cannot do the normal, 
humane things for individuals who even may be in here on a 
legal pathway coming into the United States? Mr. Chairman, I 
asked your indulgence for her to be able to ask that question--
answer it.
    Chairman Green. Just if you could make your answer short. 
Ms. Jackson Lee is already over her time, so I will allow it.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. OK, thank you.
    Chairman Green. I will allow it.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you.
    Chairman Green. Just make your answer as quick as possible.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. No basis for the Secretary to be impeached 
but go right ahead.
    Ms. Acer. It's reprehensible. Not only does it punish 
people for acting on their humanitarian values, it also 
punishes them for acting on their faith beliefs as well. It's 
totally counterproductive. I mean, here in America, we need our 
faith-based organizations. We need our communities to step up 
and be part of the solution. Many Americans want to do that and 
are doing that as we speak. Thank you.
    Chairman Green. Thank you. The gentlelady yields. I now 
recognize Mr. LaLota----
    Ms. Jackson Lee. I yield.
    Chairman Green [continuing]. For his 5 minutes.
    Mr. LaLota. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, sir, for 
your leadership and bringing this committee together in this 
hearing and for your efforts to make my constituents' lives 
safer for securing the Southwest Border. I appreciate the 
witnesses and your expertise being here.
    I represent the First Congressional District of New York. 
The western edge of my district is about an hour or so east of 
New York City. Over the past several weeks, my constituents 
have heard how New York City's sanctuary city policies, coupled 
of course, with our country's non-secure and wide-open 
Southwest Border, have overwhelmed New York City's resources 
previously meant for the homeless, for folks suffering from 
substance abuse and veterans in need. Given the influx of 
migrants who are attracted to New York City because of those 
sanctuary city policies, the city can no longer handle the 
influx of those migrants. In response, Mayor, New York City 
Mayor Adams is now attempting to sending those same migrants 
who were attracted by those sanctuary city policies to suburban 
counties throughout the State who had expressly rejected those 
sanctuary city policies.
    Mr. Wolf, that leads me to my first question, sir. Can you 
please explain what sort of costs, such as monetary, personnel, 
public safety, are imposed on States, cities, and counties in 
dealing with the current crisis at the Southwest Border?
    Mr. Wolf. Sure, there's a variety of different costs. You 
know, all of the children that we've talked about go into 
public education systems. English is usually not their first 
language. So, that's going to strain public education systems 
in every community that they go into. Certainly, the ones that 
they go to in a large amount.
    Health systems, public safety systems. You now have public 
safety officers, law enforcement officers, having to deal with 
additional crimes and additional incidents, particularly along 
the border, that I've talked to sheriffs that are overwhelmed 
because of what's going on.
    Then we talk about the money that DHS is sending to NGO's, 
right? Billions of dollars, I would say millions of dollars 
being sent to NGO's for a crisis that they created, that 
they're now using taxpayer dollars to send to try to solve the 
crisis. So, there's a lot of different costs, you know, that 
American taxpayers bear.
    Mr. LaLota. What, if anything, sir, can you say about the 
cost on public safety with a whole slew of unvetted young adult 
migrants, excuse me, adult migrants that are being shipped to 
suburban counties? What can you say as far as what public 
safety costs?
    Mr. Wolf. I think there's a variety of different, you know, 
ways. If you talk to law enforcement officers along the border, 
they're dealing with crimes and they're dealing with incidents 
that they've never had to deal with before. When you talk of 
military-aged males, individuals coming over that are a certain 
age that are not being vetted, right? We talk about 1.5 million 
gotaways. These are individuals that obviously don't want to 
interact with law enforcement officers for a very specific 
reason. They're here to do bad things.
    Or we talk about 100,000 Afghans that weren't properly 
vetted. We've seen and there's been reports of crimes and 
incidents that are occurring on that front.
    So, I think there's a variety of different things that you 
could point to that says if the process was followed correctly 
and individuals are vetted as they should be, some of this 
should not have occurred.
    Mr. LaLota. Four billion, New York City has said that it 
will spend $4 billion next year caring for and housing the 
illegal alien population that has come to New York City because 
of its sanctuary city policies. Eight billion, Texas is on 
track to spend more than $8 billion on Operation Lone Star 
doing the job that Secretary Mayorkas won't do, securing the 
Southwest Border.
    Another question for you, Mr. Wolf. How do these massive 
expenditures affect the cities and States who are forced to pay 
them? Is it fair for New York and Texas law-abiding taxpayers 
to have to suffer the burden that the open border and the 
sanctuary city policy have created?
    Mr. Wolf. No, none of this is fair. None of this should be 
occurring. But this is what happens when the Federal Government 
refuses to do its job. We've never seen this before. As I 
testified, it's in my oral and written, every administration 
has progressively tried to make improvements along that border. 
I would argue that some administrations did more than others, 
but every administration, at least in my lifetime, has done 
that. This is the first that has not only taken one or two 
steps back, we've probably taken five to 10 steps backward.
    So, you're going to--that's got to be picked up by someone. 
It's different States along the border, and it's different 
municipalities, cities, and officials that have to pick up the 
slack. They have to protect their communities.
    Mr. LaLota. Thank you. I appreciate you being here today 
with your expertise and your experience. Mr. Chairman, I yield 
back.
    Chairman Green. The gentleman yields back. I now recognize 
Ms. Clarke.
    Ms. Clarke. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, 
everyone. I just wanted to correct the record of my colleague, 
Mr. LaLota. These immigrants had no choice in where they ended 
up in this Nation. They crossed the Southern Border, yes, but 
it was Governors of the States of Texas and Florida that put 
these individuals on buses directed to New York City.
    Mr. LaLota. Not all of them.
    Ms. Clarke. So, having said that, we are currently, as my 
colleague Rep. Correa demonstrated in this line of questioning, 
witnessing an unprecedented human migration movement around the 
world of individuals seeking refuge, safety, and economic 
opportunity. Individuals are fleeing economic instability, 
governmental corruption and persecution, violence. Climate 
change has ravaged food and water supplies in their homes of 
origin, and this has been evident in many nations within the 
Western Hemisphere and especially in the Caribbean, in the 
island nation of Haiti, as individuals have been enduring far 
more dangerous means and methods to escape and to seek refuge 
here in the United States. This is not just a challenge for the 
United States, but a global challenge. We must step up to the 
plate to do our part.
    So, my first question, my only question is to you, Ms. 
Acer. Would you agree that there is an unprecedented movement 
of vulnerable people in the Americas and world-wide? Can you 
speak about how that is affecting our border and how our 
Government should work with regional partners to address this 
challenge?
    Ms. Acer. Yes, absolutely. There's been a significant 
increase in people fleeing in search of protection in the 
Americas in recent years. There's also been a shift with 
increasing numbers fleeing from Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba. 
I'm sure some of you know, for example, about the crackdown on 
political opposition and faith groups in Nicaragua forcing many 
people to flee that country, for example. People who have fled 
from Venezuela are facing restrictions in some of the countries 
that they have been in, and they are seeking safety and 
stability as well.
    So, there's been major regional shifts. But there's a lot 
that we can be doing and doing more of in the region. 
Incredibly important is to continue to support, and support as 
best we can the front-line countries that are actually hosting 
the vast majority of refugees. I mentioned, for example, that 
countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are hosting 6 out 
of the 7 million Venezuelans who left their country. It's 
certainly in the U.S. interest to continue to support those 
efforts. Critically important that we now have a commitment to 
start long-overdue resettlement from the region, from the 
Americas that needs to be absolutely stepped up.
    You mentioned the plight of Haitians who are facing such 
extreme dangers that the United Nations and the U.N. Refugee 
Agency said that it is too dangerous for people to be returned 
to Haiti right now. So, parole, for example, has been an 
incredible lifeline for some people from Haiti. But the parole 
processes are not as accessible as they should be for many 
people facing dire risks and the numbers are too small. You 
know, there's really no way often for Haitians to actually flee 
in search of refuge.
    So, thank you so much for everything that some of you have 
been doing. I would really encourage bipartisan support, you 
know, for the programs that are helping refugees around the 
world, for the expansion of refugee resettlement from the 
region, and for these very legal parole initiatives.
    Ms. Clarke. I would like to thank you for the work that you 
are doing. Mr. Chairman, without objection, I would like to 
enter this report led by the Haitian Bridge Alliance with input 
from Ms. Acer and Human Rights First, which documents their 
observations on the Southern Border following the end of Title 
42.
    Chairman Green. Without objection, so ordered.
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    Ms. Clarke. I would also like to just say that for those 
who are Christians in the room, you know, I just find it very, 
I guess, disorienting that we see suffering around us as a 
Nation, one of the wealthiest in the hemisphere, and that today 
we sit here not looking for solutions, but creating problems. 
Jesus Christ was a refugee. I yield back.
    Chairman Green. The gentlelady yields. I now recognize Mr. 
D'Esposito of New York for his 5 minutes.
    Mr. D'Esposito. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to 
our panel. Thank you for those who have served this country and 
for all the work that you continue to do. I first want to start 
with, I guess, a simple question to each of you and ask who 
Secretary Mayorkas was appointed by?
    Mr. Wolf. The President.
    Mr. D'Esposito. Our current President.
    Mr. Wolf. President Biden.
    Mr. D'Esposito. Thank you. Mr. Scott.
    Mr. Scott. President Biden.
    Mr. Edlow. President Biden.
    Ms. Acer. President Biden.
    Mr. D'Esposito. Thank you. I just wanted to make that 
clear. So, I guess my first question is going to be to Mr. 
Scott. There was a story that in response to a mounted Border 
Patrol agent in Del Rio, Texas, Secretary Mayorkas had stated 
about the images that were shared, that they ``those images 
painfully conjured up the worst elements of our Nation's on-
going battle against systemic racism.'' Now, I asked that 
question because on my multiple visits to the border and 
speaking to Customs and Border Patrol agents just recently, I 
visited JFK Airport, which is just blocks from my district. I 
am a retired NYPD detective. I feel that boots on the ground, 
having conversations, speaking cop to cop, you really get an 
understanding of how people feel.
    So, how do Border Patrol agents who have legitimately made 
it their life's work to secure our border feel when their so-
called leader, the Secretary of Homeland Security, rewards 
their hard work by slandering them as systemically racist?
    Mr. Scott. It's a kick in the gut. I'd like to point out 
that that followed the Secretary going on national TV and 
declaring that the border was secure. So, his credibility was 
already challenged. But that second kick in the gut really 
damaged morale beyond anything that could be imagined.
    Mr. D'Esposito. Thank you. I think what was important, you 
said in your opening statement that this is not about policy, 
it is about his legal duty and the fact that he took an oath. I 
said when he was here that you take an oath to defend and 
protect the Constitution, you protect our Nation's borders. 
That is what he should be doing. From the moment he wakes up in 
the morning to the moment he closes his eyes in his bed, he 
should be working every second to protect this great Nation. I 
think it is clear from today's hearing that Secretary Mayorkas 
has been derelict in his duties to secure the homeland, but 
also derelict in his ability to protect CBP agents and DHS 
employees.
    Both Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz and National Border 
Patrol Council Vice President Chris Cabrera recently told 
Congress that 17, 1-7, CBP personnel committed suicide in 2022, 
the highest total in over a decade. How has Mayorkas's 
unprecedented border crisis affected the lives and families of 
our Border Patrol agents?
    Mr. Scott. I'm hesitant to blame the border crisis on any 
specific death or suicide, but I want people to think about 
this. Every law enforcement agency out there has to make 
decisions. He misses birthdays, he misses soccer games just 
because of the schedules they work. There's a lot of family 
tension. But historically, that agent, that officer, has been 
able to go home and say, I'm protecting America. I'm doing this 
so that our kids can have a better life.
    This administration makes Border Patrol agents and many CBP 
officers feel like smugglers. They no longer have that 
intrinsic mission that they can justify to their spouse, to 
their kids, of why they miss those important events. I believe 
that has cascading effects in many areas and can potentially be 
a factor in the suicide.
    Mr. D'Esposito. I agree with you. I think that someone who 
came from law enforcement, there is nothing more important than 
knowing that your leader or so-called leader has your back. 
When you go to work every day and realize that the control at 
the border is no longer in your control, but now in the control 
of cartels, it makes your life more difficult.
    Seventeen CBP suicides in 1 year is absolutely intolerable. 
Do you believe that Secretary Mayorkas has been derelict in his 
handling of the crisis among the Border Patrol agents? I don't 
just mean the policies along the border, but the way that he is 
treating the men and women who put on that uniform, the men and 
women who stand that line, the men and women who want to 
protect our points of entry?
    Mr. Scott. I believe he's derelict. I'll go back to the 
horse patrol incident in Del Rio. You know, everybody focuses 
on the first allegation that was proved wrong very, very 
quickly. Yet, behind the scenes, Secretary Mayorkas still moved 
to take disciplinary action against those agents for doing 
nothing but trying to prevent the illegal entry of aliens into 
this country right in front of them, which is their job. When 
he disciplined those agents, that sent a resounding message 
throughout the entire work force that not only did he not have 
your back, he was out for you.
    Mr. D'Esposito. I agree. Listen, when so-called leaders, 
and we have seen it in the State where I am from, when you take 
the handcuffs from the police, when you take the handcuffs from 
their belt and actually handcuff the police and give criminals 
and in this case, cartels more resources, things need to 
change. I appreciate your service. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Green. The gentleman yields. I now recognize Mr. 
Menendez for his questioning. The gentleman is from New Jersey.
    Mr. Menendez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, as I think 
others have alluded to, this is a bit of a frustrating day. We 
had Secretary Mayorkas here in front of this committee, and I 
think there was maybe only a handful of questions asked during 
that hearing from colleagues across the side. The opportunity 
to really engage with the Secretary that you are now looking to 
remove from office. There wasn't a lot of appetite to engage in 
that honest conversation.
    Then today, we get this report, you know, shortly before 
this meeting. It took me no time to go through it because this 
is supposed to be an investigation, a report looking into what 
is happening at our border. But throughout it, using sources 
like Fox News, the Heritage Foundation, the Washington 
Examiner, the Center for Immigration Studies, an extreme think 
tank, the Daily Signal, all outlets that reaffirm what 
Republicans want to make the border seem instead of doing a 
real investigation, thoughtful about how we can improve the 
situation at the border, which Democrats have engaged in.
    When we have talked with Chief Ortiz, he has talked about 
how the funding is working, that they have the funding that 
they need, but they need to continue to work on recruitment. He 
even spoke about how morale is high, which you don't hear from 
folks in this room because I feel like there is an attempt to 
paint a picture that is politically beneficial for folks, my 
colleagues, who I do have immense amount of respect for. But 
they have already made the decision about what they wanted this 
report to be.
    You look at the sources throughout, you look at how 
statistics are framed, and it is all done to get to the 
destination that they had already decided they wanted to arrive 
on. To me, you know, that is extremely problematic, along with 
other things throughout this. Again, we only had minutes to 
review, and I was just in a T&I Committee on the FAA 
reauthorization. But there is a section called Empowering a 
Vast NGO Network to Facilitate Illegal Immigration. We are 
talking about groups like Catholic Charities. We are not 
talking about some sinister operation that the Federal 
Government is working with NGO's to move illegal aliens across. 
That is not what is happening. We are talking about people who 
are trying to help other human beings, organizations like the 
Catholic Charities. Here in this report, where we are making it 
seem sinister.
    Also, just to be clear, this is not just about the border. 
There is a section, Rolling Back DACA. People who have lived 
here their entire lives. Rolling back DACA is one of the 
solutions that we should give consideration to. So, this is not 
just about the border. This is about, you know, an extreme 
policy toward the border, toward immigration, based on, you 
know, non-objective sources that aided this report to move in a 
way where it got to the destination I think a lot of people 
wanted to get to. That is disappointing. I do think people ask 
us and look to us to get to real solutions.
    The last thing I will say is I think there has been an 
immense amount of talk about 85,000 unaccompanied minors who 
are lost. I don't believe any of the witnesses are with HHS or 
have worked at HHS, but as I understand it, the situation is 
that they place calls to these families, to these sponsors of 
these children, and there was 85,000 unanswered calls. I 
understand that as a fact, but there is no one here from HHS 
that can speak to that. But it is something that I think would 
course correct a lot of the conversation that has been had 
today. Obviously, if there is any migrant children that are 
unaccounted for, that is something we want to work on. That is 
absolutely something we would want to work on. But when you 
talk about the dereliction of duty, when you talk about all the 
things you try to cast upon this administration, upon this 
particular Secretary, you are doing so in a dishonest way.
    That is just a disappointing thing for me, because I do 
have so much respect for our public servants, my colleagues, 
the staff of this committee. But this is not the direction we 
should be heading. This is not the result. If you want to take 
a real look at the border, this is really, to me, just 
political messaging now. I yield back.
    Chairman Green. The gentleman yields. I now recognize Ms. 
Lee from Florida.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having this important 
hearing and to our witnesses for being here today. It is 
undeniable that we have a national security and a humanitarian 
crisis at our Southern Border. Under Secretary Mayorkas's 
leadership at the Department of Homeland Security, the number 
of illegal border crossings has reached a record high. Many of 
these crossings are unaccompanied children. These children are 
vulnerable to trafficking, exploitation, and other forms of 
abuse. Just last month, we saw a migrant child who arrived in 
Safety Harbor near my district without a parent or guardian, 
who died in Federal custody.
    Tragedies like these are avoidable and preventable. Today 
we have heard testimony about decisions that are being made at 
the Department of Homeland Security that have facilitated this 
crisis. Mr. Wolf, I would like to return specifically to a line 
of earlier testimony you were providing about the decisions of 
Secretary Mayorkas to suspend certain policies that have had 
the net effect of endangering these unaccompanied children who 
are coming across our border. Specifically, you touched on a 
couple of things that the vetting of sponsors and household 
members for these children is not being done appropriately and 
that site visits have been eliminated. Would you tell us, 
please, a little bit more about those safety protocols and the 
significance of them not being done effectively?
    Mr. Wolf. Sure. Once children come across that border and 
Border Patrol apprehends them, they are quickly transferred 
over to HHS facilities where they stay until they're able to 
find a sponsor. The sponsor comes, picks them up, and they do 
that. What we were finding was that individuals coming to pick 
them up, we didn't know who they were, and the background 
checks and the type of vetting that was done was not 
sufficient. We wanted to make sure that we were protecting 
those minors and that they were going into households that they 
wouldn't be trafficked, they wouldn't be further trafficked in.
    But again, this administration, for a variety of different 
reasons, I think we could only guess, decided to reduce the 
amount of vetting on those sponsors that come and pick them up. 
But it's not only the sponsor it's again, it's the others in 
that household. So, it's not enough to do that background check 
on one adult, but if there's five other adults in that 
household, you want to know who they are as well. Again, they 
have reduced those vetting requirements, site visits as well.
    My guess, and it's a guess, is because early on in this 
administration, the number of children coming across that 
border in such astronomically high numbers was backing up HHS 
facilities.
    Ms. Lee. Is----
    Mr. Wolf. There were too many children in there. So, the 
quickest way to get children out of those facilities is to 
reduce the amount of time they're in the facility, which is to 
say, reduce the amount of vetting, because vetting does take 
time. We need to make sure that we know who those individuals 
are that are picking up these children. But if you reduce that 
amount of vetting and you reduce the time, then the children 
can go through those facilities quicker and there's not lines 
and they're not backing up.
    Ms. Lee. Mr. Wolf, is it correct to say that those 
protocols, those measures that you used to implement with 
checking the people, checking the sponsors, checking the people 
who are living in that home, verifying that the sites are safe, 
and conducting that on-going monitoring of the sites, was that 
an important part of ensuring that we are keeping these 
unaccompanied minors safe when they are here in our country?
    Mr. Wolf. Well, absolutely. From the HHS perspective, Chief 
Scott talked about it earlier, DNA testing is something that 
Border Patrol could do. So, we actually tried to find it early 
in the system, as early in the system as humanly possible, 
which is when they cross that border and they go before that 
Border Patrol officer to do that questioning, that line of 
questioning. Again, as you reduce that, you're taking more and 
more protections away from trying to protect these children and 
trying to reduce the amount of trafficking that's going on.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you. On that subject, Mr. Scott, would you 
please return to the subject of DNA testing and tell us what 
role does DNA testing, why is it important in our efforts to 
combat human trafficking and the exploitation of children?
    Mr. Scott. It's very important for the simple reason you're 
trying to identify people and you're trying to make sure 
people's stories actually match. I left out of my statement 
earlier, in the INA, it mandates that we fingerprint and 
photograph anybody over 14 years of age. It's silent below, but 
Council has determined that you need reasonable, articulated 
facts above and beyond to do the fingerprinting and 
photographing of minors. So, most children because, again, 
Border Patrol doesn't have time right now to get those facts, 
aren't fingerprinted or photographed. So, there's no historic 
data to look at to figure out if the child is being recycled or 
not. Then on top of that, the massive flow.
    So, the DNA testing, the real, actual rapid testing at the 
stations, and just the threat of that could take a potential 2- 
or 3-hour interview and make it into minutes. Because people 
broke left and right that it's not really my kid. Because we 
would tell them, you're going to be prosecuted. You can tell me 
the truth now.
    But now they don't have the ability to do the threat. Then 
if someone sticks to their story, they don't have the ability 
to actually identify that there is no actual biological 
connection between these people. More children will be 
trafficked. More children are at risk.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you, sir. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Green. The gentlelady yields. I now recognize Mr., 
well, we have Ms. Titus here. I recognize Ms. Titus from 
Nevada.
    Ms. Titus. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize for 
being late. I was in a mark-up. But it doesn't sound like I 
missed much because it is the same old points being hammered 
over and over again for political reasons and not trying to 
really look for a solution. Also, this committee just continues 
to look at this one topic. If you are talking about dereliction 
of duty, perhaps we should be looking at some of the other 
aspects of homeland security, like cybersecurity. That is such 
a major issue. Or real immigration reform, or domestic 
terrorism, those are all part of our charge. Not looking at 
those, I think, is a dereliction of duty.
    In my district, we have a lot of mixed-status families. We 
have somebody who is a dreamer, somebody who is TPS, somebody 
who is a citizen, somebody who has no papers, and somebody who 
doesn't even know what they are. So, that is five problems all 
in one. I would like to ask you, Ms. Acer, if you would comment 
a little bit about the TPS aspect of that, because it was just 
announced that the President was going to extend TPS for El 
Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Nepal. Can you talk about 
how that helps with humane immigration or accommodation of 
people here? We have got 6,000 TPS holders, mostly from El 
Salvador in southern Nevada. So, I would just like to hear more 
about where that is.
    Ms. Acer. Yes, TPS is critical. It is, you know, a life-
saving protection for people from places that, you know, are 
too dangerous or for other reasons people cannot be returned 
to. So, it's a life-saver. It could be improved, and there 
needs to be access for people to eventually, after a certain 
number of years, to really be able to stabilize their families, 
to be able to bring their kids to safety and, you know, 
ultimately to get onto a path to citizenship.
    Ms. Titus. Well, I know that the former President ended 
TPS, excuse me, for some of these countries. There were some 
people who had been here 20 years, had established a family, 
had a job, paying taxes, and then suddenly that is yanked away 
and they are sent back. So, maybe you could help us with some 
ways that we could actually put forward to improve the system, 
as you mentioned.
    Ms. Acer. I'd be happy to suggest changes, and I think one 
of the most important ones is that people can actually get onto 
a path to citizenship at some point and also to bring their 
families together. We also need to make sure to be using 
redesignation authority, because sometimes a situation in a 
country triggers a need for TPS, and then, you know, time can 
change again, time goes on, but actually the situation is even 
worse. So, that TPS needs to be redesignated to make sure to 
protect people.
    Ms. Titus. Thank you. Also, I think you were on the ground 
when Title 42 was lifted. You know, there were some that were 
just so anxious to see these people rushed across the border, 
chaos, sending down troops. I don't know if they thought there 
was going to be some confrontation, but of course it didn't 
happen and the numbers have actually gone down. Would you talk 
about that a little bit for us?
    Ms. Acer. Yes, so we were there, including on the first day 
after Title 42, we were in Matamoros, we also were in Reynosa. 
Everywhere we went, you know, we met asylum seekers. We spoke 
to, I think, hundreds of asylum seekers. I was part of a 
delegation with the Haitian Bridge Alliance and other NGO's, as 
well as just on our own, with our own researcher. You know, 
people were struggling to follow the process for seeking asylum 
at ports of entry. We were asked so many questions about the 
CBP One app. People were trying to use it, couldn't get an 
appointment. There were tons of glitches, as you've all heard. 
Some people with dark skin were having trouble actually being 
able to register for the system.
    Many people don't have phones, asylum seekers. We spoke to 
many families who had been robbed of their phones or didn't 
have one to begin with. In some cases, there was a need for 
internet access. You know, people were walking around 
struggling, trying to get sufficient internet access to be able 
to actually use the app.
    The other problem is that the number of appointments are 
really small when you look across the border and you have 
asylum seekers who've been waiting and waiting, you know, for 
weeks and months. It's in the U.S. interest for people to 
actually go to ports of entry and seek asylum there, if 
possible.
    I'd stress also, though, that it's so important for there 
to be access to asylum for people who can't use and access CBP 
One. Not everyone can. There are people who don't speak 
languages that are used by the system. As I mentioned, there 
are people without phones. We've got to make sure that our 
ports of entry are operational and that there's ways for people 
who are seeking asylum who don't have to have CBP One 
appointments to be able to do so and who can't get them. Asylum 
seekers from Mexico. There are asylum seekers from Mexico who 
have been waiting and waiting. It's the next-door country but 
can't get in at one of the ports of entry.
    Ms. Titus. Thank you, and I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Green. The gentlelady yields. I now recognize Mr. 
Strong from Alabama.
    Mr. Strong. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Wolf, under U.S. 
law, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security is, 
and I quote, ``charged with a duty to control and guard the 
boundaries and borders of the U.S. against illegal entry of 
aliens.'' Mr. Wolf, would it be safe to say that it is a 
responsibility of this role to be apprised of strategies, 
tactics, and methods being employed to exploit our borders?
    Mr. Wolf. Absolutely.
    Mr. Strong. Would you also say that a great deal of time at 
DHS is devoted solely to briefing and keeping the Secretary 
informed on such matters?
    Mr. Wolf. Yes, there are numerous ways the Secretary stays 
informed about a number of things going on at the border.
    Mr. Strong. Thank you. On several occasions this year when 
he has appeared before Congress, Secretary Mayorkas has 
testified that he was unfamiliar with some of the tactics being 
employed by cartels at the Southern Border. Mr. Wolf, in what 
circumstance would you say it is understandable or acceptable 
for the Secretary of Department of Homeland Security to be 
unaware of what is happening at the border?
    Mr. Wolf. In that particular instance, I can't imagine how 
he's not aware of those tactics.
    Mr. Strong. Is it a total failure at every level?
    Mr. Wolf. Again, I can't imagine why he would not know that 
just by visiting the border, talking to Border Patrol agents, 
and understanding that, frankly, it's just common knowledge----
    Mr. Strong. I would----
    Mr. Wolf [continuing]. That those are the tactics.
    Mr. Strong. I would think so also. Mr. Wolf, Mr. Scott, Mr. 
Edlow, whoever is comfortable, Secretary Mayorkas has had more 
than 2 years to observe the failure of his policies and either 
change course or resign if not allowed to by President Biden. 
He has done the opposite, doubling down on those policies, and 
implementing new unlawful programs. Does this strike you as 
someone helplessly responding to a crisis or someone intent on 
policies that caused the crisis?
    Mr. Scott. I believe he's very committed to his policies. I 
don't mean to be out of order, but I'd like to comment on your 
last question for the Secretary.
    Mr. Strong. Please do.
    Mr. Scott. I put in writing, as the chief of the Border 
Patrol what those tactics were in a memo that went through 
commissioner, Acting Commissioner Troy Miller, and it was 
addressed to Secretary Mayorkas. It's clearly outlined. That 
was while I was still chief of the Border Patrol. I----
    Mr. Strong. Thank you. Mr. Scott, I appreciate that. I want 
to come back to you with this question. Why would the 
Department of Homeland Security Secretary oppose the 
construction of more border wall system, especially when Border 
Patrol agents routinely say it is an important part of the 
toolkit?
    Mr. Scott. Because the President campaigned on no more 
border wall.
    Mr. Strong. Thank you. Mr. Scott, since you are here, and I 
want to thank you again for coming back before us. I know I 
have met you several times. During the Trump administration, 
you looked--the big thing that I saw whenever you were there, 
Border Patrol apprehended, processed, and by ICE Air returned 
these illegal aliens to the country of their origin. What 
message did this send when you were there to those seeking to 
enter America illegally?
    Mr. Scott. That is a huge deterrent. A couple of things 
happened, I think, and we keep talking about gotaways, but what 
people aren't really understanding is that every gotaway and 
then every person released into the United States does exactly 
what you would do. They call home and they tell their family 
and friends where they're at. They check in. Their friends and 
family hear that, that message gets out, and more come. When we 
put people on airplanes and they show up back in the home 
country after expending all these resources, they have horror 
stories about the trip, unfortunately, but they chose that 
trip. But they tell those stories and then they see them back 
home. That has a huge deterrent effect. That actually saves 
people's lives because people choose to stay where they're at 
and make things better as opposed to put themselves in the 
cartel's hands.
    Mr. Strong. Thank you. Mr. Wolf, Secretary Mayorkas has 
apparently turned off all the fiber-optic sensors embedded in 
the border fence that was built during the Trump administration 
to allow the Border Patrol to detect when and where people are 
trying to either climb the fence, which is not easy, or cut 
through the fence with welding equipment. Do you believe 
Secretary Mayorkas has played a role in directing the 
Department of Homeland Security to halt the completion of 
lights, post-construction, and/or turn off the fiber-optic 
sensors embedded in existing fences?
    Mr. Wolf. So, I can't think of a reason why you would 
decommission or turn off capabilities that are already 
installed. The border wall system is much more than just that 
physical infrastructure. Lights, camera, roads, physical 
access, all the things that Border Patrol agents need to do 
their job, why you would turn those off, it's beyond me. I 
can't even think of a reason why you would do that.
    Mr. Strong. Thank you. With 8 seconds left, I know it was 
mentioned that illegals don't have internet access. I want to 
let everybody know that there are counties in Alabama that 
don't have internet access also. We need to work on America to 
solve that problem. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairman Green. The gentleman yields back. I now recognize 
Mr. Ezell from Mississippi.
    Mr. Ezell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Fentanyl poisoning is 
now the largest leading cause of death for Americans 18 to 49. 
As a 42-year law enforcement officer and a sheriff, I saw the 
devastating effects of young teenagers and young adults dying 
as a result of this. It is heartbreaking. The death toll 
continues to climb. The rising power of the Mexican cartels 
continue to grow. This low-cost manufacturing of a drug is 
terrible to this open border. Mr. Scott, do you believe the 
current fentanyl crisis is the consequences of Mr. Mayorkas's 
open border policy?
    Mr. Scott. I believe that in part it really is. I want to 
highlight some misinformation. People keep talking about 
seizures as if it was the total. More fentanyl is seized at the 
ports of entry than in between the ports of entry. But it's 
because CBP officers are there doing a fantastic job. They're 
ready to greet everybody every day. We're leaving hundreds of 
miles of border open every single day. No one patrolling it. 
But yet Border Patrol is still catching fentanyl between the 
ports of entry. The metric needs to be how much is available in 
our cities. There's no shortage.
    Mr. Ezell. Mm-hmm. In your role as Border Patrol Chief, how 
you have seen cartels, tell us how you have seen the cartels 
capitalize on the border crisis and used the surges for 
migrants to smuggle their narcotics.
    Mr. Scott. So, historically, the cartels have used any 
distraction they can. Honestly, a lot of people have a hard 
time picturing this. So, just think of sports. You fake a play 
to the right, you run the real play to the left. That's what 
the cartels have done. They've always done it. They've always 
tried to do it. When you've seen in El Paso a young child, I 
think the last one was basically like a several-month-old child 
being dropped over the fence in plain sight of cameras where 
they know it's going to be viewed that's because they know 
agents are going to prioritize taking care of that baby and 
they can push something else through.
    Now unfortunately, we've given them millions of 
distractions. We've given them right now, what, 3,500 
distractions a day that the Border Patrol is having to go deal 
with so that they can bring anything they want in. It's lowered 
their overhead. It's lowered their risk. It's a direct impact 
on the ability to get narcotics in cities in the United States 
and other threats.
    Mr. Ezell. Thank you. Mr. Wolf, last year 850 migrants died 
at the border. This is the highest ever recorded. The average 
under the Trump administration was 280. If this is the case, 
why does the Biden administration continue to tout their 
immigration policies as safe, humane, and orderly?
    Mr. Wolf. I'm not sure I have an answer for you, 
Congressman. The amount of deaths that are increasing in that 
desert and along that river are a factor of the amount of 
people coming across the border. We're seeing a huge spike, 
right? So, we were at 10,000 a day. For a long time, we were at 
7,000 a day. We're still at 3,500 to 4,000 a day, right? You 
only have to go back to Secretary Jeh Johnson under the Obama 
administration, who said 1,000 a day is a bad day for the 
Border Patrol. We're in crisis mode. We're still at 3,500.
    So, this idea that somehow we have retracted from 10 and 
that we should pat everyone, ourselves on the back and say, 
good job, you're still losing the ballgame in a big way. So, I 
think that is something we need to look at.
    Mr. Ezell. Absolutely. Thank you. Mr. Wolf, I keep thinking 
about these words safe, humane, and orderly. Do you believe 
that Secretary Mayorkas has been honest with the American 
people?
    Mr. Wolf. I don't. Not only on those words, but, you know, 
when you talk about the border is secure, operational control, 
he talks about putting people in expedited removal. He knows 
what that means. The staff of this committee knows what that 
means. None of those individuals will likely be removed. All 
they have to do is claim asylum and they are pulled out of 
expedited removal.
    So, he uses terms like these for the American people to try 
to explain away what's going on along that border. But those 
that work in the Department know immigration. They know 
something else. So, if you're a Border Patrol agent and you 
hear these words and you're saying, you know, your political 
leadership is saying, look, I'm removing all these folks under 
expedited removal, you know that's not the case.
    Mr. Ezell. Mr. Scott, could you add anything to that?
    Mr. Scott. I would agree to that 100 percent. The words 
very rarely match the actions. I'll just leave it at that.
    Mr. Ezell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Green. The gentleman yields. I now recognize Mr. 
Brecheen from Oklahoma.
    Mr. Brecheen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, Secretary 
Mayorkas swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution 
against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. He swore that 
oath to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic, to 
the Constitution. He did not swear an oath to support this 
administration's policies. By this Majority Membership's count, 
Secretary Mayorkas has chosen to ignore or refuse to enforce 
over 10 different Federal laws. This is a dereliction of duty 
and a violation of his oath.
    The rule of law, which is a term that is thrown around 
oftentimes by Members of Congress, means that nobody is above 
the law. It means no Member of the Congress, it means no member 
of the Judiciary, it means no Secretary of Homeland Security. 
The rule of law matters. What the Constitution and what Federal 
law dictate matter. Speaking about the rule of law, Margaret 
Thatcher once said, any country or government which wants to 
proceed toward tyranny starts to undermine legal rights and 
undermine the law. President JFK, John F. Kennedy once said, 
certain other societies may respect the rule of force of law--
we respect--rule of force, we respect the rule of law. Barack 
Obama, former President, said, one of the challenges of a 
democratic government is making sure that even in the midst of 
emergencies and passions, we make sure that the rule of law . . 
. prevail.
    So, I want to talk about the Federal law, and I want to 
talk about the areas that have been violated. Section 103(a)(5) 
of the Immigration and Nationality Act says that, he, speaking 
of Mayorkas in his position currently, shall have the power and 
duty to control and guard the boundaries and borders of the 
United States against illegal entry of aliens. Mr. Scott, how 
is Mayorkas violating this?
    Mr. Scott. He's not even trying. So, all you have to do is 
look at his words, any public statement. He continually talks 
about creating pathways for more migrants to come to the United 
States. CBP One app is nothing more than an invitation world-
wide without any immigration documents or any right to come to 
the United States. You've never heard him once support any 
initiative the Border Patrol put out that actually allows them 
to increase their situational awareness and be able to stop the 
flow. He even disciplined agents for trying to stop the flow.
    Mr. Brecheen. Mr. Wolf, I am going to read something, throw 
this to you. On May 10, a reporter, immigration analyst Todd 
Bensman reported ahead of the expiration of Title 42 that 
Mexican immigration officials were informing him they were 
coordinating with DHS personnel on the other side of the border 
to move illegal aliens from the Mexico side of the Rio Grande 
to the American side. In other words, Mexican DHS officials 
were helping illegal aliens cross into the United States. This 
would violate Section 274 of the Act we just cited, which 
prohibits aiding and abetting illegal immigration or helping 
someone enter the country illegally. What are your thoughts on 
this?
    Mr. Wolf. I think it's concerning. Look, Border Patrol 
agents are in a difficult position. When they see hundreds of 
folks coming across that river, they want to make sure that 
they're safe and secure, but at the same time, they should not 
be facilitating that either. So, my guess is those decisions 
had some buy off from leadership somewhere in the department.
    Mr. Brecheen. They would have to.
    Mr. Wolf. Yes.
    Mr. Brecheen. They would have to. No one would take that 
upon their authority without Mayorkas knowing about it. Mr. 
Wolf, Section 212 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, also 
just mentioned beforehand, says that parole can only be granted 
on a case-by-case basis, a temporary basis, for an urgent 
humanitarian reason, significant public benefit. How is 
Mayorkas's mass release of illegal aliens into the interior 
violating this U.S. law? Where is he deriving the authority to 
violate the clear language of the statute?
    Mr. Wolf. So, we use that authority very differently. 
Urgent humanitarian need is if someone needs to come into the 
United States for a medical procedure of some kind, you allow 
them in, and then obviously you remove them as well. For a 
significant public benefit, you want to parole someone in to 
probably testify at a criminal trial, you parole them in, and 
then you ask them to leave. What you don't do is parole 360,000 
individuals a year from four different nationalities, 
regardless of who you are, regardless of what you do, the 
simple fact that you come from that country, that you are 
somehow granted parole.
    I think it's interesting that those individuals are not 
being put in the asylum system. So, the administration is 
either signaling that they don't qualify for asylum or the 
system's broken, which we know it to be. Instead, they're 
paroling them in, which is a different set of benefits. Again, 
it's a little bit of a shell game that they're using.
    Mr. Brecheen. Is he adhering to Federal law?
    Mr. Wolf. I don't believe he is.
    Mr. Brecheen. No. Last question, Mr. Scott. Article IV, 
Section 4 guarantees to every State a Republican form of 
government and to protect those States against invasion. Five 
million people, more than the population of Oklahoma have come 
in illegally under the Biden administration. Do you believe 
that he is violating the Constitution, Article IV, Section 4?
    Mr. Scott. I believe what we have at the Southwest Border 
currently is an invasion but for a slight different reason than 
most people understand. The illegal aliens themselves may not 
be the invader, but they are being used by a cartel that has 
nation-state power. People don't understand the power of the 
cartel in Mexico, the influence they have on the government, 
the weaponry they have, is equivalent to many, many countries. 
That cartel is using this massive illegal immigration every day 
to invade our country, the sovereignty of it, and to pose real 
threats. Through fentanyl alone, which is only one of the 
things they smuggle, they've killed more Americans than most 
wars. It's an invasion.
    Mr. Brecheen. Thank you. I yield, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Green. The gentlemen yields. I now recognize Mr. 
Crane from Arizona.
    Mr. Crane. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I find it interesting 
that many of my colleagues continue to talk about how 
Republicans screaming about open borders is causing this 
invasion. I want to ask a couple of the panelists, weren't you 
guys paying attention back in the Presidential campaign back in 
September 2019, when then-candidate Joe Biden said, we are a 
Nation who says if you want to flee and you are fleeing 
oppression, you should come? Mr. Wolf, did you hear that?
    Mr. Wolf. I did.
    Mr. Crane. Mr. Scott, did you hear that?
    Mr. Scott. Yes, I did.
    Mr. Crane. Mr. Edlow.
    Mr. Edlow. I'll be honest, Congressman, I wasn't paying 
attention at that point.
    Mr. Crane. Darn it, Mr. Edlow, you broke the streak. Ms. 
Acer, how about yourself?
    Ms. Acer. I don't recall the exact words, but certainly 
I've heard President Biden speak positively about the 
importance of seeking asylum.
    Mr. Crane. What do you think, Mr. Wolf, what kind of 
message do you think that sends to people that might want a 
better life?
    Mr. Wolf. Well, I think it sends the message that the 
borders are open. Now is the time to come. If I'm elected, 
there's going to be a new security regime along those borders. 
I think that we saw the results of that.
    Mr. Crane. Absolutely. Absolutely. I wanted to double-tap 
on that because that is a massive part of the causation here. 
Next, you know, I just I find it interesting as I sit in this 
chamber and I continue to hear political theatre, political 
theatre. This is all political theatre.
    I want to go through some of the political theatre that we 
continue to hear. Four-point-eight million encounters at the 
Southwest Border, 1.3 million known gotaways, 69 individuals 
just this year on the Terrorist Watch List, 71,238 fentanyl 
deaths in 2022. Does that sound like political theatre to you 
guys?
    Mr. Wolf. It does not.
    Mr. Crane. No, it is not. How about this? Border town's 
only hospital running out of resources, on the brink of 
collapse caring for migrants. Yuma, Arizona in the State that I 
represent. Does that sound like political theatre? That is the 
problem. These are real lives. These are real issues. This is 
real infrastructure that is being overrun. This isn't political 
theatre.
    The reason we continue to scream about it is because our 
colleagues don't really seem to care. Quite honestly, the 
American people sends us, Congressmen and -women 
representatives to represent them up here in Washington, DC and 
they are feeling the causation of these policies. They are 
feeling the causation of this plan.
    I want to also go into the political theatre of what the 
American taxpayer feels, $182 billion dollars reported to cover 
the costs incurred from the presence of illegal aliens. That is 
$1,156 every year per taxpayer. Is that political theatre? Do 
people feel that, Mr. Wolf?
    Mr. Wolf. I believe they do feel that. I think the most 
concerning thing is it's all avoidable.
    Mr. Crane. Absolutely. What about you, Mr. Scott? Do you 
think that American taxpayers feel that?
    Mr. Scott. I spent most of my career along the Southwest 
Border. I work with Texas a lot right now, and they're double-
paying for border security. It's a resounding yes. It's 
completely avoidable.
    Mr. Crane. Absolutely. How about five suspected MS-13 gang 
members in United States illegally charged with murder and 
death of Maryland 15-year-old? Is that political theatre? 
California MS-13 gang member accused of 10-year-old's torture 
and murder. How about that, political theatre? How about this 
one? Five MS-13 gang members who killed Virginia teenager 
sentenced to life in prison, Washington Post. More political 
theatre that we have to continue to scream about because nobody 
on the other side is listening. This administration continues 
to ignore it.
    You know, one of the most interesting things, because I am 
the last person that gets to question anybody, Mr. Scott, I 
heard you testifying. How many administrations did you serve 
under, sir?
    Mr. Scott. I was in the Border Patrol for about 6. I was in 
leadership positions in 5.
    Mr. Crane. Right. You know, you said something that really 
struck me as somebody who has been in the military before. You 
said that when you actually and members of your team actually 
brought up deterrence on phone calls with this Secretary, that 
you guys were shut down immediately.
    Mr. Scott. Correct. Face-to-face, transition teams, phone 
calls, the entire time.
    Mr. Crane. That seems really odd, sir. It doesn't sound as 
if this Secretary wanted to hear what could stop these 71,000 
fentanyl deaths, what could stop these hospitals from getting 
overrun, what could stop these children from getting murdered 
by MS-13 gang members? Does it?
    Mr. Scott. No. We were prevented from talking about border 
security or threats at all.
    Mr. Crane. The last thing I want to say, Ms. Acer, I know 
you spent a lot of your life trying to help migrants, right? I 
read your bio, and I think a lot of Americans can identify with 
that and even appreciate it. What they don't appreciate is that 
your concern and care does not seem to extend to them 
whatsoever. That is a problem. Ma'am, I want to ask you one 
question. Has your organization ever taken money from the Soros 
Foundation?
    Ms. Acer. Excuse me?
    Mr. Crane. The Soros Foundation, have you ever----
    Ms. Acer. Yes, yes. We've received money from multiple, 
multiple foundations over many years.
    Mr. Crane. Do you know how much money----
    Ms. Acer. And I--can I----
    Mr. Crane [continuing]. You guys have taken from the Soros 
Foundation?
    Ms. Acer. No, I do not know how much money we've taken in 
from any foundation. I just am really troubled if you're 
somehow picking on one particular foundation. There's a long 
history of the Soros Foundation being targeted for antisemitic 
reasons.
    Mr. Crane. That has nothing----
    Ms. Acer. And so, I----
    Mr. Crane [continuing]. To do, ma'am, with why we have an 
issue with it. Everybody knows that George Soros is a globalist 
and uses his money to often destroy the very things that 
protect Americans, our way of life, and our freedom. That is 
exactly why I asked you the question. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairman Green. The gentleman yields. We have a Member, an 
at-large Member, who has and we, of course, sought unanimous 
consent at the beginning to allow her to be here. Ms. De La 
Cruz, you are recognized from Texas.
    Ms. De La Cruz. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for hosting this 
meeting today and for allowing me to waive on today to this 
important hearing. I am Congresswoman Monica Del La Cruz. I am 
here on behalf of my constituents, on behalf of the RGV Border 
Patrol sector, the brave men and women who serve and defend 
this country. You know, Texas 15 is right along the border in 
South Texas. It includes McAllen, Texas. Over the last several 
years, I have seen the other side of the aisle, the current 
administration, demonize our hardworking Border Patrol agents. 
Not only demonize them, but cripple them with lack of 
resources, not only on the technology side, but lack of 
resources from being able to put current policies in place and 
do their job, which is to protect this country. But yet they 
get up day after day and still go to their work, long hours.
    When I think about those brave men and women, I not only 
think about them, but I think about their spouses and their 
children. Because the stories that you don't hear are the 
stories about how these men and women, when they go and pick up 
children who have been abandoned because the cartels, they just 
leave these children on lands, children at the age of 1, at the 
age of 2, of 3. Our Border Patrol men and women are carrying 
these babies. They are helping women to give birth on the 
banks.
    The reason that I came today and asked to be waived on is 
because they need a voice. They need a voice to stand up for 
them, to show them that the people in Congress care. Well, at 
least some of them. Because when we look at this room, I can 
see people on the other side of the aisle are not here. Are not 
here to see what the crisis is at our borders, to see our 
national security and how there is a lack of security due to 
this administration.
    That being said, I want to say that Chief Scott, you were 
here under the previous administration. My understanding from 
speaking to my friends in Border Patrol in the RGV sector is 
that you put together many processes and put them in place in 
order to be able to facilitate the immigrants coming through 
and how to properly put them through the borders. That being 
said, there were several various or there were various 
Executive Orders under the previous administration that seemed 
to work. Can you tell me how the Executive Orders from the 
previous administration and the Executive Orders from this 
administration have changed?
    Mr. Scott. During the last administration--and the Trump 
administration gets labeled with a lot of this--but under 
Secretary Wolf's guidance and others, we put together 
integrated teams and we had a simple question put in front of 
us. Literally every week we had to go back to the White House 
and give answers. What can we do to secure the border and 
protect America?
    In all the EOs that went in place, MPP, the asylum 
cooperative agreements, I was sending Border Patrol agents to 
countries down south, left and right, to build relationships 
with them and just simply get them to enforce their own laws. 
It was all about protecting America. Then on January 2021, 
everything switched. Every one of those policies that actually 
showed progress and improved and protected America was replaced 
with messages that said, speed up the processing as fast as you 
can. We're not into the deterrence business anymore, and we 
need to find new ways to get more migrants into the United 
States.
    Ms. De La Cruz. So, do policies work?
    Mr. Scott. Policies do work. Rhetoric works short-time, but 
policies and actions work long-term. I believe Mr. Edlow is 
really a key into some of those policies, and he may have some 
more.
    Ms. De La Cruz. Before I go to you, let me ask you one last 
question. Mr. Scott, how many people did you personally parole 
into this country?
    Mr. Scott. So, while I was chief of the Border Patrol, that 
authority was delegated to sector chiefs. Not to try to get out 
of it, but because that's how much we cared about it.
    Ms. De La Cruz. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Scott. There's 20 sector chiefs Nation-wide. So, when I 
was a sector chief, in a year, I think the most paroles I ever 
did was about 10. The things that people are missing is there 
was a very in-depth threat assessment done with every one of 
those individuals. There was a plan to keep track of them. Then 
when whatever the reason was, was done, we physically made sure 
the person was removed from the United States consistent with 
the law.
    Ms. De La Cruz. That being said, how does that compare with 
the current administration and amount of paroles that are led 
into this country?
    Mr. Scott. We were using it consistent with the law, case-
by-case, individual determination. From my understanding, the 
way it's being used now is just a blanket way to get people out 
of stations, avoid the optics of people backed up in Border 
Patrol stations.
    Ms. De La Cruz. I think that is where this is of real 
concern is it all goes to optics when it is convenient to the 
Biden administration. With that, I yield back.
    Chairman Green. The gentlelady yields. I now recognize the 
Ranking Member for his closing comments.
    Mr. Menendez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, we have 
had the opportunity to engage in a dialog about what we hope we 
can do together. You know, for me, I think today was 
challenging because it feels a move away from working together 
across the aisle on a lot of the challenges that we have to 
face, including the border. It is a move away from trying to 
come to a comprehensive approach to immigration reform.
    The fact that the report was issued this morning without 
consultation with Minority, with the staff, I want to be clear 
about one thing. Secretary Mayorkas has not violated the law. 
He and the Department of Homeland Security have been working to 
secure the border every day. I have been to the border twice 
since January. I went with a delegation of Democrats from 
Homeland Security. So, we have an interest in dealing with this 
issue directly and availing ourselves of the opportunities to 
deal with people directly who are at the front lines. So, we 
are not running from this issue, but we are trying to work at 
it in a constructive manner.
    If you talk about the administration, Secretary Mayorkas 
has increased efforts to go after smugglers. We talked about 
additional legal pathways to enter the United States. But that 
actually hurts the cartels' and smugglers' business model. So, 
by creating constructive, actual avenues for people to come 
here legally, it undermines what the cartels are trying to do 
at the border.
    The numbers are what they are. Encounters at the border are 
down. We don't all have to agree with the administration's 
policies, but the facts show that they are in fact effective. I 
do hope that in the future we can have real substantive 
discussions on the threats facing our Nation. It is critically 
important that we do so. I hope we can do so under different 
circumstances. I look forward to doing that work because we are 
here to create solutions for all of our constituents and I look 
forward to those days. I yield back.
    Chairman Green. The gentleman yields. I recognize myself 
for a few closing comments. First, I just want to reiterate 
that we are looking at a cause and effect. The cause is 
policies that were working. You can look at the numbers that 
were coming in and those policies were thrown away. Migrants 
listened to the President about granting asylum and all this 
stuff, granting, you know, permission to just basically come 
into the country. They came and they tested the system. Those 
who got here made phone calls back home and the wave of people 
started.
    This notion that a migration crisis has occurred and we are 
responding to it is wrong. We created a migration crisis by 
creating an incentive for people to come here. We opened our 
border. People tested it and they called home. Now more are 
coming. Not hurricanes, not earthquakes, not changes to our 
immigration law, not changes to the budget at CBP, not changes 
to the number of Border Patrol agents. What changed were 
policies. It has created a mass migration wave from 160 
countries of people coming to the United States.
    Tragically, the drug cartels have taken advantage of this. 
They seized on the opportunity to use people to pay them up to 
$13 billion, transferred to some of the most heinous people. We 
have seen the images. We have seen the videos of them burning 
human corpses they have executed. Yet, we are trying to find, 
you know, some excuse for this. The cause and the effect is 
policies and a mass wave and cartels who are manipulating the 
situation.
    Add to that the tactics and strategy of the cartel to 
overwhelm Customs and Border Patrol with mass waves of people, 
thinning of the line in order to process, frees up the cartels 
to come right across the border in their carpet shoe, wearing 
backpacks full of fentanyl. We have seen the piles of the 
backpacks in Arizona and Texas.
    The effects, Americans are more unsafe, period. All you 
have to do is look at that little baby from France who was 
visiting the United States, crawling around on a VRBO carpet, 
and encountered fentanyl left from someone before and that baby 
died. How many Americans take their kids to the hotel? How many 
Americans go to a VRBO and say you don't know if you are safe 
in the United States of America because of the policies of this 
administration and this Secretary.
    We know that rapists and murderers have been released and 
that is not counting the population of the gotaways. We have 
got percentages in the folks that have turned themselves in. 
Why would you be a gotaway by the way, if you are just here to 
get in for economic purposes or even asylum, just turn yourself 
in and you will get released into the country. Why would you be 
a gotaway? One-point-five million of them in the United States 
now. What percentage of that 1.5 million are murderers or 
rapists or drug dealers or cartel members? Mr. Mayorkas can't 
answer that question. We are going to have Mr. Mayorkas back 
here. No one can answer that question.
    Americans are unsafe because of this open border. National 
security, 200-plus terrorists versus 11. That tells you that 
the terrorists are trying harder and harder to get into this 
country because they know the policy. The door is open. 
National security. This chart is incredible. You look at the 
past several years, there is not much statistical difference in 
those years, but suddenly in this year look at the Chinese 
nationals pouring into this country. We have reports from 
sector chiefs saying they are PLA-associated. They are taking a 
lesson from the Russians who infiltrated Ukraine before they 
invaded. Now, it is not to say that the Chinese are going to 
invade the United States, but if we were to defend Taiwan, 
think about what those people might become.
    It is interesting to think about. But Mr. Mayorkas can't 
guarantee us what they are. They are just being released into 
the United States. That is a national security issue. Migrants 
separated, you now, we are talking 85,000. I understand the 
phone call system. That means there were some, whatever the 
number is and probably in the thousands. Oh, by the way, the 
New York Times not known, and in the report, not a Fox News, 
not a Newsmax, the New York Times went and found some of those 
people. Found they were stacked in homes as much as 20 and were 
being used in forced labor. Should never happen in America. It 
happened because Mayorkas's decision, a dereliction of duty, as 
far as I am concerned, waived the background checks on those 
individuals. It is unconscionable.
    It has been discussed the financial cost too, not just the 
human cost, an effect, and it will cost us. It is costing us. 
Your health insurance is going up because of the uncompensated 
care at the ER, period. Why? There are 7-plus million people.
    Mr. Mayorkas broke the law. We have had witnesses cite the 
law, read the law, and describe the methodologies, which he is 
either subverting it or breaking it. He has refused to abide by 
at least two court orders. Fact. He made it lawful to enter the 
country in lawful pathways that don't exist in the law. That is 
breaking the law. That is violating the law.
    He clearly lied to Congress. Chip Roy showed him the 
definition of operational control. He said, yes, according to 
that definition, we have operational control of the border. 
Then in the Senate, after Ortiz made his comment, he admitted 
no one's ever had control by that definition. Admitting that he 
lied when he was in front of the committee with Chip Roy. A 
Secretary of Homeland Security, a Secretary of any department 
in our Government cannot come to the U.S. Congress and lie to 
Congress under oath, period. That is a dereliction of duty. 
Whether you like the fact that we are, you know, helping people 
who are in need, he lied to Congress. That is unacceptable.
    Oh, by the way, we went back and searched the record. All 
the pounding on Mr. Wolf here, which will tell you something, 
if you are not defending your own guy and just beating up on 
the witness, maybe you don't have a leg to stand on. But we 
went back and looked at your record, sir, and we can't find 
anywhere where you claimed to have had operational control.
    At least you didn't lie. He admitted his own incompetence. 
In the Senate, he said he did not understand the strategies of 
the cartels. Now, Merrick Garland, the Attorney General, said, 
yes, that is the strategy of the cartels. The Attorney General 
gets it. The Secretary of Homeland Security doesn't understand 
the strategy of the cartel he has been asked to confront to 
protect Americans. That is admitting incompetence.
    I want to correct the record on a few things, too. Asylum 
is the heart of our country trying to help people in need. I 
get it, appropriate. Abuse of asylum laws for a political 
purpose is wrong. Asylum is not granted to people, if you read 
the law, just because they are coming from a corrupt 
government, or from a crime-ridden area, or poverty. Asylum is 
granted when a Government is pursuing an individual. The U.N. 
Charter is very clear when a refugee is seeking asylum and they 
go into another country, that country is supposed to take care 
of them and not pass them on to another country. That is in the 
United Nations Charter. Why is this happening all over Central 
America? Why are we accepting that that is OK? We signed the 
U.N. Charter. They signed the U.N. Charter. Let's enforce it. 
There are insinuations that because we want to see the rule of 
law in place, that we are somehow anti-migrant or anti-charity.
    When I ran my health care company, I built a not-for-profit 
for a lot of reasons. I wanted to hire physicians to join my 
company that had a heart to serve people. So, we had a not-for-
profit and we paid those doctors' expenses so that they could 
do foreign trips and we could run free clinics. I want to serve 
people, but the Government doesn't get to pick where my charity 
goes. The Government doesn't get to decide that I, Mark Green's 
taxpayer dollars are going to go for taking care of--maybe I 
want to give my charity to Gold Star families. The family 
members of dead Americans who fought for this country, maybe 
that is where I want my charity to go. Maybe I, you know, want 
to plant trees and save the environment. The best vacuum 
cleaner for CO2 on the planet is a tree.
    But I am having to pay taxes that the President gets to 
decide where that charity goes. No. There has been an 
accusation today the GOP has done nothing. We just passed a 
border security bill that addresses all these issues.
    Ms. Acer, you said that we shouldn't say that the border is 
open because it might incentivize more people to come. I think 
that is what the implication of what you were saying. I 
couldn't agree more. That is why we are having the migration 
crisis, is we opened the border. The President said it in his 
campaign. People come and they call and now they are coming 
into the country. I agree. It creates an incentive and you 
apparently do too.
    Immigration is not our committee. Here is another thing. 
Well, maybe I misunderstood you, but that is what I thought you 
said. But immigration is not our committee. We don't get to 
solve the immigration problems. People here today have talked 
about, hey, we got to fix immigration. Yes, we got to fix 
immigration. But if you create more of an incentive for people 
to come, they are going to come. You have to secure the border 
first. You secure the border, then we will fix immigration. I 
couldn't agree more on that.
    NGO's, not all NGO's are bad. Not all NGO's are good. There 
are some that are doing great things and there are some that 
are incentivizing the migration that is harming people and 
there are some incentivizing people to break the law. That is 
just period. Just because you are looking into NGO's, it 
doesn't mean that you are anti-NGO. It means you want people 
taken care of appropriately.
    We have talked about the CBP One app and the shell game 
that that is. We have been, you know, accused of not addressing 
other issues like cyber. We have many other subcommittees that 
are taking actions on cyber and maritime security and other 
things. That stuff's all going on. You can't make the 
accusation that we are just here prosecuting Mr. Mayorkas.
    Congress has both an oversight requirement, an oversight 
obligation as much as it has a passing laws obligation. 
Oversighting this crisis is our duty and we are not going to 
shirk that duty. It is revealing that Democrats today spent far 
more time baselessly attacking Mr. Wolf than defending 
Secretary Mayorkas and his policies.
    If you examine the facts, there is no defense for his 
dereliction of duty. This is just the beginning of a lot of 
hearings fulfilling that duty for oversight. We will get to the 
bottom of what is going on at our Southern Border. We will 
characterize the costs to the American people. We will inform 
them and hopefully inform the President. My hope is that the 
President is unaware of all this and that maybe he will do the 
right thing and fire a guy who has lied to Congress, broken the 
laws, and facilitated this mass migration that has resulted in 
the harm both of Americans and of the migrants.
    I want to thank the witnesses for their valuable testimony 
today and all of our Members for their questions. As I said at 
the beginning, we were going to disagree. We did. But that is 
what this is all about. It is the sausage making, as they say.
    Members of the subcommittee--the committee may have some 
additional questions for the witnesses and we would ask that 
the witnesses respond to those in writing. Pursuant to 
Committee Rule VII(D), the hearing record will be held open for 
10 days for such purposes. Without objection, the committee 
stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 1:30 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

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