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


              HOW THE BORDER CRISIS IMPACTS PUBLIC SAFETY

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

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                   SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,
                    THE BORDER, AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

                                 OF THE

                         COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
                           AND ACCOUNTABILITY

                     U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION
                               __________

                             APRIL 16, 2024
                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-100
                               __________

  Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability
  

                    [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
  
                       Available on: govinfo.gov
                         oversight.house.gov or
                             docs.house.gov
                             
                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                    
55-453 PDF                WASHINGTON : 2024                                
                             


               COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY

                    JAMES COMER, Kentucky, Chairman

Jim Jordan, Ohio                     Jamie Raskin, Maryland, Ranking 
Mike Turner, Ohio                        Minority Member
Paul Gosar, Arizona                  Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of 
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina            Columbia
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin            Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts
Michael Cloud, Texas                 Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia
Gary Palmer, Alabama                 Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois
Clay Higgins, Louisiana              Ro Khanna, California
Pete Sessions, Texas                 Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
Andy Biggs, Arizona                  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York
Nancy Mace, South Carolina           Katie Porter, California
Jake LaTurner, Kansas                Cori Bush, Missouri
Pat Fallon, Texas                    Shontel Brown, Ohio
Byron Donalds, Florida               Melanie Stansbury, New Mexico
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania            Robert Garcia, California
William Timmons, South Carolina      Maxwell Frost, Florida
Tim Burchett, Tennessee              Summer Lee, Pennsylvania
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia      Greg Casar, Texas
Lisa McClain, Michigan               Jasmine Crockett, Texas
Lauren Boebert, Colorado             Dan Goldman, New York
Russell Fry, South Carolina          Jared Moskowitz, Florida
Anna Paulina Luna, Florida           Rashida Tlaib, Michigan
Nick Langworthy, New York            Ayanna Pressley, Massachesetts
Eric Burlison, Missouri
Mike Waltz, Florida

                                 ------                                
                       Mark Marin, Staff Director
       Jessica Donlon, Deputy Staff Director and General Counsel
                James Rust, Chief Counsel for Oversight
                        Sloan McDonagh, Counsel
      Mallory Cogar, Deputy Director of Operations and Chief Clerk

                      Contact Number: 202-225-5074

                  Julie Tagen, Minority Staff Director
                      Contact Number: 202-225-5051
                                 ------                                

   Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs

                  Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin, Chairman
Paul Gosar, Arizona                  Robert Garcia, California, Ranking 
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina            Minority Member
Clay Higgins, Louisiana              Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts
Pete Sessions, Texas                 Dan Goldman, New York
Andy Biggs, Arizona                  Jared Moskowitz, Florida
Nancy Mace, South Carolina           Katie Porter, California
Jake LaTurner, Kansas                Cori Bush, Missouri
Pat Fallon, Texas                    Maxwell Frost, Florida
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania            Vacancy
Vacancy                              Vacancy

                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                              ----------                              

                                                                   Page
Hearing held on April 16, 2024...................................     1

                               Witnesses

                              ----------                              

Hon. Ken Cuccinelli, Senior Fellow for Immigration and Homeland 
  Security, Center for Renewing America
Oral Statement...................................................     5
Mr. Bill Waybourn, Sheriff, Tarrant County, Texas
Oral Statement...................................................     6
Mr. Mike Chapman, Sheriff, Loudoun County, Virginia
Oral Statement...................................................     8
Mr. David Bier (Minority Witness), Director, Immigration Studies, 
  Cato Institute
Oral Statement...................................................    10

Written opening statements and statements for the witnesses are 
  available on the U.S. House of Representatives Document 
  Repository at: docs.house.gov.

                           Index of Documents

                              ----------                              

  * Statement for the Record; submitted by Rep. Mfume.

  * Article, The Hill, ``Yale, MIT study 22M undocumented 
  immigrants in US''; submitted by Rep. Gosar.

  * Letter, March 6, 2023, Ranking Member Raskin to Chairman 
  Comer, re: White Supremacy; submitted by Rep. Frost.

  * Article, USA Today, ``Immigrants aren't more likely to commit 
  crimes than US-born''; submitted by Rep. Garcia.

  * Article, ABC, ``Migrants are not driving a surge in violent 
  crime as Trump claims''; submitted by Rep. Garcia.

  * Article, NBC, ``Trump's claims of a migrant crime wave are 
  not supported''; submitted by Rep. Garcia.

  * Report, Brennan Center, ``Fact-Checking Trump's Speech Crime 
  and Immigrants''; submitted by Rep. Garcia.

  * Questions for the Record: to Mr. Chapman; submitted by Rep. 
  Grothman.

  * Questions for the Record: to Hon. Ken Cuccinelli; submitted 
  by Rep. Grothman.

  * Questions for the Record: to Mr. Waybourn; submitted by Rep. 
  Grothman.

Documents are available at: docs.house.gov.

 
              HOW THE BORDER CRISIS IMPACTS PUBLIC SAFETY

                              ----------                              


                        Tuesday, April 16, 2024

              U.S. House of Representatives

               Committee on Oversight and Accountability

           Subcommittee on National Security, The Border, and

                            Foreign Affairs

                                           Washington, D.C.

    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:15 a.m., in 
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Glenn Grothman 
[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Grothman, Gosar, Sessions, Biggs, 
Mace, LaTurner, Fallon, Perry, Garcia, Lynch, Goldman, and 
Frost.
    Also present: Representatives Timmons and Crockett.
    Mr. Grothman. Thank you all for being here. Sorry. We had 
kind of an important conference.
    The Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and 
Foreign Affairs will come to order. Welcome, everyone.
    Without objection, I may declare a recess at any time.
    I recognize myself for making an opening statement.
    The Biden Administration's open border policies have led to 
the worst border crisis in America's history. Millions of 
illegal aliens have entered the United States under the Biden 
Administration, impacting every community across the country. 
This Congress, both my Subcommittee and the full Committee have 
examined the consequences of the Biden Administration's 
horrendous policies. The President has unnecessarily created a 
national security and humanitarian crisis by refusing to uphold 
the rule of law.
    Today, we are examining how the border crisis affects 
safety in our towns, cities, and communities. Not surprisingly, 
the open Southwest border has attracted many illegal immigrants 
with criminal histories. But rather than simply deport those 
with criminal backgrounds, the Biden Administration is letting 
them remain in our communities, even after they are showing 
that they are criminals. In fact, the Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement's non-detained docket has at least 617,000 aliens 
with criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. That is 
a non-detained docket. One would think that being a criminal 
illegal alien, at a minimum, would make someone an enforcement 
priority, but it is not under the Biden Administration.
    In 2021, Secretary Mayorkas issued a memorandum entitled, 
``Guidelines for the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Law,'' 
stating that criminal history does not automatically make an 
illegal alien an enforcement priority. Instead, immigration 
officers have to engage in a complex analysis of whether the 
criminal illegal alien is a ``current'' public safety threat to 
be considered an enforcement priority. What does that mean? In 
2022, the ICE principal legal advisor issued a memorandum 
interpreting Mayorkas' guidelines. Her memorandum stated, ``The 
existence of criminal history alone, regardless of severity, 
will not necessarily indicate that a non-citizen presently 
poses a current public safety threat pursuant to the 
Secretary's priorities.'' I should say that again. ``The 
existence of criminal history regardless of severity'', they 
say, ``does not necessarily mean we have a safety threat 
here.''
    According to this standard, a criminal alien could 
theoretically be a convicted murderer and avoid becoming an 
enforcement priority for ICE. The Administration will wait to 
enforce our laws until the threat is deemed by them to be a 
current threat. By that time, it will be too late, as we have 
seen too many times in recent months.
    Even if the Biden Administration cared to enforce our laws, 
sanctuary jurisdictions work to make our country less safe by 
shielding those criminals from immigration consequences. 
Sanctuary jurisdictions across the country refuse to cooperate 
with Federal immigration authorities, mainly in the case where 
an individual is arrested or convicted for criminal activity. 
In contrast to the harm caused by sanctuary jurisdictions, 
today we have two sheriffs representing communities that are 
not sanctuary jurisdictions. These sheriffs are fighting at the 
local level to keep their constituents safe from criminal 
illegal aliens, criminal illegal aliens who should not be in 
the U.S. who commit crimes against our citizens.
    Today, I imagine we will hear from the other side lots of 
claims about flawed studies with shaky evidence seeking to show 
that illegal immigrants are somehow less likely to commit 
crimes in the U.S. Cite those statistics all you want to the 
victims of crime and those committed by criminal illegal 
aliens. I doubt shaky statistical claims and platitudes will 
make them whole. The fact is that illegal immigrants should not 
be in the country in the first place and able to commit these 
crimes. Moreover, an analysis by the Texas Department of Public 
Safety showed that illegal aliens are more likely to be 
convicted of homicide, sexual assault, and kidnapping than the 
average Texan.
    The solutions are not hard: secure the border; stop 
releasing illegal aliens in the country in droves; and when an 
illegal alien commits a crime in this community, turn them over 
to ICE, enforce the law and remove them. It is just that 
simple.
    Now, before we begin the testimony, I will ask unanimous 
consent that Representative Jasmine Crockett from Texas be 
waived on the Subcommittee for the purposes of asking 
questions.
    Without objection, so ordered.
    I would now like to recognize Ranking Member Garcia for the 
purpose of making an opening statement.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you to all of 
our witnesses that are here today.
    Now, I want to just start on, we all know that on June 16, 
2015, Donald Trump rode down the escalator at Trump Tower to 
launch his campaign for President, and I want to remind us what 
he said that day: ``When Mexico sends its people, they are not 
sending their best. They are not sending you. They are not 
sending you. They are sending people that have lots of 
problems, and they are bringing those problems with us. They 
are bringing drugs. They are bringing crime. They are 
rapists.'' Now, we all know that is who Donald Trump is and he 
controls the Republican Party, so we are here today. He is 
basing his 2024 campaign, as we all know, on the exact same 
rhetoric.
    Now, just weeks ago, Trump referred to immigrants who enter 
the country illegally as ``animals'' nearly half a dozen times. 
He literally said, ``Democrats say, `please don't call them 
animals. They are humans.' '' Trump said, ``I said, `no, they 
are not humans. They are animals.' '' He has also repeatedly 
claimed that South American countries are emptying their, what 
he calls, insane asylums and mental institutions to send the 
patients to the U.S. as migrants. Now, we know that is not 
happening, and here is evidence that even his own campaign 
cannot provide any evidence for what he said. What he continues 
to say are lies and untruths. These fact checks are important.
    Now, I am an immigrant. I came here as a young child. My 
parents came here to build better lives. My mom worked as a 
healthcare worker. When I took an oath to become a U.S. 
citizen, it was the proudest day of my life. And so, I 
personally am offended not just from what I hear, but for the 
way Donald Trump and the House Majority speaks about migrants 
and folks that come here for a better life. Donald Trump wants 
to claim that people like me and my family are poisoning the 
blood of our country, as he likes to say. It is disgusting and 
it is un-American, and it has real consequences. Like the white 
supremacists at Charlottesville, who Trump called ``very fine 
people,'' it provokes people like the white nationalists who 
targeted people of Mexican descent in El Paso, murdering 23 
innocent people.
    Now, I love this country and I know that our Chairman also 
loves this country, but I also think it is important that we do 
not divide all of us that are here. We should cut through the 
noise and actually look at some of the facts and data, and as 
much as some in the House Majority may not like facts and data, 
it is important to review them.
    I want to run through some unanimous consent requests. Here 
is NBC: ``Trump's Claims of a Migrant Crime Wave Are Not 
Supported by National Data.''
    Mr. Grothman. Without objection.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you. Here a second one, ABC: ``No, 
Migrants Are Not Driving a Surge in Violent Crime as Trump 
Claims.''
    Mr. Grothman. Without objection.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you. Here is another one, USA Today: 
``No, Migrants Aren't More Likely to Commit Crimes Than U.S.-
Born, Despite Trump's Border Speech.''
    Mr. Grothman. No objection.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you. And if you prefer, maybe, academic 
sources, here is research from Stanford, which looked at 140 
years of data and finds conclusively that migration does not 
increase crime. Right now, in fact, immigrants are 60 percent 
less likely to be incarcerated than people born in the United 
States--60 percent less likely. And let us be clear--
undocumented people are less likely to be incarcerated than 
native born people as well. And here is the Brennan Center 
report, which hopefully points out that, ``The spike in violent 
crime happened on Trump's watch, not Biden's. In 2020, the 
final year of the Trump presidency, murder rose by nearly 30 
percent and assault by more than 10 percent.'' So, I would like 
to submit that as well, sir.
    Mr. Grothman. Without objection.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you. So, just to conclude, under 
President Biden, crime has fallen nationwide, and those are the 
facts. So, I just hope that we can stop with the fear 
mongering, and I look forward to the rest of the hearing.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. I am pleased to introduce our witnesses 
today. I will rattle them off: Ken Cuccinelli, Senior Fellow 
for Immigration and Homeland Security at the Center for 
Renewing America. He served as the 46th Attorney General of 
Virginia from 2010 to 2014. He also served as Director of 
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services and as 
Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under 
the Trump Administration. Sheriff Bill Waybourn has served as 
Sheriff of Tarrant County, Texas since 2017. He previously 
served this country as a member of the Air Force. He continued 
his public service after leaving the armed forces as a Texas 
police officer. Sheriff Mike Chapman has served as the Sheriff 
for Loudoun County, Virginia since 2012. Sheriff Chapman 
previously served at the DEA and the Howard County, Maryland 
Police Department. David Bier is the Director of Immigration 
Studies at the Cato Institute. He previously served as Senior 
Policy Advisor to former Representative Raul Labrador of Idaho. 
I want to thank you all for being here.
    Pursuant to Committee Rule 9(g), the witnesses will please 
stand and raise their right hand.
    Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony that you 
are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth, so help you God?
    [A chorus of ayes.]
    Mr. Grothman. Let the record show that the witnesses 
answered in the affirmative. Thank you. You may sit down. We 
appreciate you being here today and look forward to your 
testimony.
    Let me remind the witnesses that we have already read your 
written statements and they will appear fully in the hearing 
record. Please, if you can, limit your oral statement to 5 
minutes. As a reminder, please press the button on the 
microphone in front of you so it is on, and Members can hear 
you. When you begin to speak, the light in front of you will 
turn green. After 4 minutes, the light will turn yellow. It 
means you got 1 minute to go. When the red light comes on, your 
5 minutes have expired, and we wish you would wrap it up.
    I now recognize Mr. Cuccinelli for his opening statement.

                    STATEMENT OF HON. KEN CUCCINELLI

                             SENIOR FELLOW

                   IMMIGRATION AND HOMELAND SECURITY

                      CENTER FOR RENEWING AMERICA

    Mr. Cuccinelli. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and Members 
of the Subcommittee, you have probably heard the phrase, ``The 
main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.'' Well, 
here is today's main thing. Every single crime committed by an 
illegal alien invader is preventable. Crime rates do not 
matter. Only the raw number of crimes and the harm caused by 
those crimes matter.
    Over 10 million illegal alien invaders have entered America 
since Joe Biden became our President and opened our borders. 
The chaos at our Southern border is, sadly, not confined there. 
As far too many American families have imminently learned, the 
chaos at the border is directly contributing to unnecessary 
suffering and tragedy in communities all over the country, most 
recently and prominently, Athens, Georgia. The lives of our 
citizens are being forever altered by crime facilitated by open 
border policies and the cartel-driven invasion occurring 
because of it.
    The failed policies of this Administration are callously 
indifferent at best and willfully negligent at worst, serving 
only to exacerbate the pain and suffering of the very citizens 
from whom it derives its legitimacy. The statistics from these 
failed policies are alarming: tens of thousands of deaths, huge 
increases in human trafficking, outbreaks of previously 
defeated diseases like measles and tuberculosis.
    But it is the individual human cost that remains most 
alarming. The ever-growing number of American victims of 
illegal immigration, including Brandon Michael, Kate Steinle, 
Mollie Tibbetts, Sarah Root, Brandon Mendoza, Ronald de Silva, 
Kayla Hamilton, and, of course, Laken Riley, not Lincoln. These 
are the human casualties that are preventable with a secure 
border. The sad reality is that there are tens of thousands of 
additional names of deceased Americans who could and should be 
read aloud in a hearing such as this. Unfortunately, that is 
not the case. Instead, we hear false narratives and manipulated 
data that parse the crime rates of illegal aliens with American 
citizens, and yet, every illegal entry into the United States 
is a crime. The crime rate for illegal immigrants is 100 
percent. Every one of them broke the law when they invaded our 
country illegally.
    The Texas Department of Public Safety tries to keep track 
of criminal alien activities as best they can. Since June 2011, 
Texas has experienced a minimum of 65,999 assault charges; 
6,594 rape charges; 61,155 drug charges; 2,998 robbery charges; 
and 970 homicide charges attributable to criminal illegal 
aliens in the last 13 years. And lest anyone forget, the Bureau 
of Justice Statistics suggests that more than 50 percent of 
violent crimes and 70 percent of property crimes are never 
reported to law enforcement. These numbers of crimes by illegal 
aliens in Texas that I refer to is clearly dramatically under 
counted.
    None of these criminals should be in the United States in 
the first place. Every citizen victimized by an illegal 
immigrant is a victim that could and should have been prevented 
with commonsense border and immigration policies, carried out 
by elected officials who possess a shred of concern for those 
they represent. Arguments over citizen versus non-citizen crime 
rates are ivory tower intellectual exercises that miss this 
fundamental point. For the ivory tower dwellers, if you truly 
want to find the number of crimes committed by illegal aliens, 
the deck is stacked decidedly against you.
    Just a few factors that make a full accounting of the 
criminals who are illegal aliens impossible include the time it 
takes to identify criminals in law enforcement custody as 
illegal aliens; sanctuary city and state policies that withhold 
information normally relied upon between jurisdictions; the 
slowness of the Federal Government in determining legal status, 
and that can include both capability and cooperativeness; cash 
bail policies that turn criminals back out on the street 
immediately; and the obvious interest that illegal aliens have 
in not being discovered.
    I will close by returning to the main thing. Every murder, 
every assault, every robbery, every rape, every drunk driving 
death, and every murder committed by illegal immigrants was 
preventable. I look forward to your questions.
    Mr. Grothman. Thank you. Sheriff Waybourn?

                       STATEMENT OF BILL WAYBOURN

                                SHERIFF

                         TARRANT COUNTY, TEXAS

    Sheriff Waybourn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Committee. It 
is truly an honor to be here from Texas and thank you for 
having me.
    While I only represent Tarrant County Sheriff's Office this 
morning, I feel certain that every sheriff in America is 
concerned with the border and its impact on our communities. If 
you will allow me just a couple of minutes, I will take you to 
ground zero in Tarrant County on issues that we have faced.
    Just recently, a gentleman gets up in the morning in 
Southern Tarrant County and his car is missing. He calls the 
police, the Tarrant County Sheriff's Office, and as he is 
reporting it, he notices on his OnStar that his vehicle is 
going across the border into Mexico before he even finished the 
report. And further, you know, the DPS at the same time just a 
few days later, and along with HSI, is taking down a stash 
house in Tarrant County with several immigrants in it that owed 
the cartel money. Finally, there is another stash house that we 
assisted in helping with that they literally had cages in the 
houses where they were keeping women for cartel money. They 
were waiting to pay off their debts. And according to the HHS, 
in the last 3 years, we have had over 2,500 children, 
unescorted minors, settled in Tarrant County. Now, I bring that 
up for one reason. Who is following up on them? Are those 
children safe? Is there something nefarious going on there? We 
are not sure.
    We are also told by HSI that approximately a thousand 
illegal aliens every couple of weeks are settling in the DFW 
area. As all of these things are happening, also we have city 
police agencies working fentanyl homicides, including a former 
county judge dying from it because fentanyl knows no 
boundaries. In another city police agency, at the same time, is 
working a fentanyl poisoning of a 2-year-old that got into 
somebody's stash. In 2020, in Fort Worth, Texas, you could buy 
a gram of methamphetamine for $80. Today, that same gram will 
cost you $15 to $20. In 2020, you would spend $30 on a pill 
that can contain fentanyl. That same pill today costs $8. 
Inflation had a tremendous reverse in the dope business.
    In 2020, Tarrant County narcotics team took $3.5 million 
worth of drugs off the street. In 2021, they took $21 million 
of drugs off the street; in 2022, $35 million. Also, at all 
these scenes often were cartel members that we have arrested, 
and also, we hear from DEA that the cartel members working in 
our area, 90 percent of them are illegally in the U.S. And yes, 
they do have American citizens assisting them.
    Our mental health teams in the jails has told us that the 
strong availability of illegal drugs has caused the 
skyrocketing of our mental health issue, and it has gone from 
2017 to 25 percent of the population to 66 percent today, with 
42 percent of them being chronic, and marijuana with strong THC 
is also a part of that issue. While in Tarrant County, between 
May of last year and December, we had over 3,000 overdoses of 
opioids. Many were fatal. Our anti-addiction team, made up of 
eight different counties, in the first quarter of this year has 
taken $21 million of drugs off the road. All of this is cartel 
dope. And also, in November, the cartel decided to shoot it out 
with our team, injuring one of our officers. We vigorously 
returned fire, and we terminated that threat and recovered 14 
kilos of drugs.
    The impact on our county jail is that we have an average 
population of 4,200 people. Six percent of that population is 
generally illegal aliens. Of that 264 in custody, that have 
allegedly committed 178 violent crimes, including eight murders 
and 44 sexual assaults of children. Please note that there are 
approximately 15 different countries represented in that group, 
and 10 percent being from Venezuela, in fact, affiliated with 
Venezuela gangs. We have seen a large number of Venezuelans 
come across the border recently, and it is interesting to note 
that intel, that a country that does not talk to us at all, is 
that their prison population has been reduced by 25 percent.
    And back at the Tarrant County Jail, those illegal aliens 
cost the Tarrant County taxpayers about $24,000 a day to house 
them. We have solicited intelligence directly from cartel 
members in jail, asking them the proverbial question, why are 
you killing your clients with this fentanyl? And their simple 
answer was, whatever kills the American is good with us.
    Based on our intel, our common belief in law enforcement is 
that that part of the world, is that China, the Mexican cartel, 
and Venezuela is weaponizing fentanyl to use against us, with a 
daily overdose in Tarrant County of 15 and a fentanyl death 
every day and a half and 300 in the Nation. We are very 
thankful for Narcan. We have had tons of saves with Narcan 
dozens of times.
    The sheriffs in Texas agree that securing the border--
securing the border--and reforming immigration are entirely two 
different issues, that we first must secure the border. With 
the concern of the terrorist watchlist people showing up at the 
border that we have identified in the near 2 million gotaways, 
it is those other people that we do not know about that keeps 
us up at night. And Christopher Wray from FBI sounded the 
alarm. All warning lights are on.
    While I would like to ask lawmakers to do a lot of things, 
one of the things at the long haul is that we do have to curb 
our appetite for drugs and sex trafficking. That is an issue of 
America. With all that said, we must, I believe, urgently 
dispatch resources to secure our border; insist on other 
countries following the rule of law, including asylum; and hold 
the threat of trade and foreign aid in the balance. Finally, 
formally declaring the Mexican cartels as public enemy No. 1 
and ensure that the only invitation to come to America is that 
of which is of legal means, which we invite those people and 
greet them with open arms.
    Thank you for listening. God bless you all, and godspeed on 
these issues.
    Mr. Grothman. Thank you. We will move on to Sheriff 
Chapman.

                       STATEMENT OF MIKE CHAPMAN

                                SHERIFF

                        LOUDOUN COUNTY, VIRGINIA

    Sheriff Chapman. Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, the 
Ranking Member, and Members of this Committee. My name is Mike 
Chapman. I am the elected Sheriff of Loudoun County, and I 
appreciate the opportunity to appear before this Committee 
today on behalf of the National Sheriffs' Association as you 
address border security, national security, and the 
effectiveness of law enforcement.
    Loudoun County sits about 30 miles Southwest of Washington, 
DC. and is home to about 450,000 residents. While not a border 
county, we face many of the same challenges resulting from a 
porous border when it comes to illegal immigration, criminal 
activity, and the movement of illegal drugs. I am in my 46th 
year of law enforcement, having served 7 in local law 
enforcement, 23 as a special agent with the Drug Enforcement 
Administration, and four domestic assignments, to include 
McAllen, Texas, and in three foreign assignments. I am a 4-time 
elected Sheriff of Loudoun County, having served over 12 years. 
I serve as the Chairman for Homeland Security for the National 
Sheriffs' Association and on the NSA's Board of Directors. I 
previously participated in numerous White House meetings on 
immigration reform, opioid and MS-13 roundtables, and other 
congressional hearings and discussions.
    Today, I would like to highlight two critical issues that 
are impacting law enforcement nationwide. These are, No. 1, the 
proliferation of fentanyl, which is killing more and more 
Americans and is responsible for a dramatic rise in juvenile 
overdoses; and two, the influx of illegal immigrants and its 
impact on criminal activity.
    In 2021, our Nation experienced about 106,000 reported 
deaths from overdoses and poisonings. Last year, more than 
112,000 people died from overdoses, with over 70 percent of 
them dying due to fentanyl, more people than would fill a 
professional football stadium. In Loudoun County, we average 
about 150 overdoses per year and about 24 deaths. 
Unfortunately, we have seen a significant increase in juvenile 
drug use and drug overdoses. Last fall, we had 11 reported 
overdoses within a 6-week period among students who attend one 
high school. Almost all were fentanyl. Four occurred on school 
campus, and most required lifesaving and administration of 
Narcan, naloxone, and/or CPR. That was more than half of all 
the juvenile overdoses for the year at just one of our 19 high 
schools. These overdoses made national news because I let the 
public know, much to the chagrin of our school administrators.
    Having served as a DEA agent in Miami during the mid-and 
late 1980's, I thought I had seen the worst of the drug 
problem. I was wrong. So, what is causing this drug crisis? 
First and foremost, wide open borders. A few years ago, my 
agency worked with the DEA on an operation entitled ``Operation 
Angels Envy.'' Kilogram amounts originating from the Sinaloa 
Cartel crossed the Californian-Mexican border and traversed the 
U.S. to the Washington, DC. area. These drugs included enough 
fentanyl to kill every man, woman, and child in Loudoun County 
2 times over. This demonstrates why every state is now a border 
state. This gets me to my second point: illegal immigration. 
The porous border, lax enforcement policies, the refusal to 
return illegal migrants to their countries, the discouragement 
by this Administration for local authorities to turn over 
illegal migrants to ICE, and its overall lack of support to law 
enforcement in general has been a catalyst for increasing 
violent crime nationwide.
    A recent nationwide online survey, entitled ``TIPP,'' which 
stands for the TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics, 
found that 72 percent of Americans perceive the Southern border 
as a national security threat, with the same percentage wanting 
strong enforcement of existing laws. To quote Cochise County 
Sheriff, Mark Dannels, ``President Biden refuses to acknowledge 
and exercise his full authority to secure our borders.'' The 
study follows a letter to Speaker Johnson from National 
Sheriffs' Association President, Greg Champagne, last November 
addressing, at that time, the over 7.5 million illegal 
immigrants crossing our border, to include the capture of 2,000 
Chinese aliens. He noted eight steps the U.S. could immediately 
take to put the brakes on this problem to include, among 
others, building the remainder of the wall, immediately 
expelling anyone entering our country illegally, and ending the 
authority to issue parole.
    Unfortunately, law enforcement agencies nationwide are 
suffering from the cascading criminal and social impacts of 
this Administration's policies, now coupled with an increase of 
threat of terrorism. An April 8th press release by the American 
Sheriffs' Alliance noted that over 700 known or suspected 
terrorists were apprehended last year at the southern and 
northern borders. This is a crisis, and we need your help. We 
need a Congress and an Administration that will help provide 
better physical barriers, technology, collaborative 
intelligence, and human resources. But this is not simply about 
funding. We need an Administration that supports the dangerous 
work of our profession and encourages the enforcement of 
existing laws, one that will allow Customs and Border 
Protection, ICE, and others to do their job. We need an 
Administration that backs all law enforcement.
    Thank you again for the opportunity to be here, and, of 
course, I would be happy to answer any questions. Thank you.
    Mr. Grothman. Thank you. Mr. Bier?

                       STATEMENT OF DAVID J. BIER

                ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, IMMIGRATION STUDIES

                           THE CATO INSTITUTE

    Mr. Bier. Chairman Grothman, Ranking Member Garcia, and 
distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for the 
opportunity to testify.
    For nearly half a century, the Cato Institute has produced 
original research showing that a freer, more orderly, and more 
lawful immigration system makes the United States a wealthier, 
freer, and safer country. As America's founders recognized, 
free societies direct people, whatever their background, 
ancestry, or birthplace, toward activities that benefit 
mankind. Economist Julian Simon called people the ultimate 
resource because it is only our creativity and work that 
transforms natural resources into human resources.
    Never has immigration been more important to this process 
than today when we have 9 million open jobs, and our labor 
force would be falling without immigrants. Economically 
productive people make goods and services that improve the 
lives of Americans in countless ways. They also make for safer 
communities. Increased economic activity, such as starting 
businesses and filling housing vacancies, are proven ways to 
reduce crime. Immigrants reverse the decay in our cities, 
contributing to massive drops in crime in the 1990's and 
2000's. Today, immigrants pay $250 billion in taxes to state 
and local governments, 50 percent more than they get in 
benefits, increasing the resources for law enforcement. Many 
immigrants become law enforcement officers themselves, and many 
more cooperate with law enforcement to stop and solve crimes. 
Like everyone else, immigrants want safe neighborhoods.
    In the last decade, police agencies have requested legal 
status for nearly half a million immigrants who are aiding 
their investigations. Immigrants also directly lower the crime 
rate by committing fewer serious crimes per capita. Immigrants, 
according to the U.S. Census Bureau data, are 68 percent less 
likely to have committed a crime that has put them in prison. 
So indiscriminate mass deportation, further cutting off legal 
immigration, would undermine public safety.
    Indiscriminate enforcement also has an opportunity cost. 
Every dollar spent going after immigrant families and workers 
is a dollar lost to catching people who have victimized people 
in the United States. When the prior Administration decided to 
mass prosecute immigrant parents with children, U.S. attorneys 
complained that they were failing to prosecute sex offenders 
because traumatizing the immigrant kids was too important. Here 
is another example. In 2020, the prior Administration 
eliminated asylum and began expelling all border crossers to 
Mexico under Title 42. Did this policy improve security at the 
border? Not at all. Criminal crossings spiked to record highs 
by December 2020, and evasions of Border Patrol grew at an 
unprecedented pace. Eliminating people's opportunity to turn 
themselves in to Border Patrol to request asylum added to the 
flows of people trying to evade Border Patrol, making it easier 
for serious threats to evade detection.
    With very little help from Congress, this Administration is 
trying to improve the situation. It ended Title 42, and 
evasions have since declined by 70 percent, according to the 
Border Patrol Chief. It has opened a few legal pathways for 
entry, which, although limited, have reduced illegal crossings 
by hundreds of thousands. Policy should focus on making 
immigration legal and orderly. Instead, Congress' caps on legal 
immigration block 97 percent of the applicants for legal 
permanent residence this year. It is time for a new approach. 
Make legal immigration possible again.
    Let me end here. When someone harms another person, justice 
demands they pay for it. In America, we say if you do the 
crime, you do the time. We do not say if you do the crime, lock 
up their family, their friends, their co-workers, their co-
ethnics. America stands for individual rights and individual 
responsibility, not collective punishment. So, yes, let us talk 
about how to better go after the bad apples, but the rest of 
the roughly 50 million immigrants in the United States are here 
to work with us and for us peacefully, let them do so legally. 
Thank you.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. Well, first of all, with unanimous 
consent, I would like to ask that William Timmons from South 
Carolina be waived on the Subcommittee for the purpose of 
asking questions.
    Without objection, so ordered.
    To begin my questioning, first of all, I want to ask 
Sheriff Waybourn to followup on a couple of things you said. 
Just to clarify, you said that the number of people in prison 
in Venezuela has dropped 25 percent over the last couple of 
years?
    Sheriff Waybourn. That is the intel that we get up from 
both the DOJ and from our border partners.
    Mr. Grothman. You quoted somebody as saying they were OK as 
long as fentanyl was killing Americans. Who did you quote again 
on that?
    Sheriff Waybourn. That was a cartel member that we had in 
custody that we were soliciting information from.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. Thank you. By the way, I have been at the 
border, and I talked to the Border Patrol, and they tell me 
``Mexico is not sending their best.'' That is what they tell 
me. OK. Now, Mr. Cuccinelli, the Administration made changes in 
policy regarding the enforcement of our country's immigration 
laws, and these changes shield illegal aliens with criminal 
histories from removal. I want to discuss Secretary Mayorkas' 
2021 guidelines for the enforcement of civil immigration law in 
the 2022 Doyle Memorandum. Mr. Cuccinelli, did the Biden 
Administration actually make it more difficult for immigration 
officers to remove criminal illegal aliens?
    Mr. Cuccinelli. Absolutely and intentionally. And the way 
to think of those early memos, like the first one there early 
in 2021, is that they were attempting to tie their own 
shoelaces together. They literally took steps at ICE and CBP to 
make it harder for them to achieve their mission structurally.
    Mr. Grothman. In fact, the Doyle Memorandum says, ``The 
existence of criminal history alone, regardless of severity, 
will not necessarily indicate that a non-citizen presently 
poses a current public safety threat pursuant to the 
Secretary's priorities.'' Mr. Cuccinelli, under that standard, 
an illegal alien convicted of the most heinous crime, such as 
rape or murder, could avoid becoming an enforcement priority, 
correct?
    Mr. Cuccinelli. Absolutely. That was the point.
    Mr. Grothman. Is a criminal alien more or less likely to be 
removed under the Biden Administration as compared to the 
previous Administration?
    Mr. Cuccinelli. Far less likely, and many of them do not 
even get to ICE because of the catch-and-release swamping of 
CBP.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. In recent months, we have seen Americans 
killed, sexually assaulted, and burglarized by legal 
immigrants. The illegal aliens who committed these crimes 
should not have been in the country in the first place, 
correct?
    Mr. Cuccinelli. That is absolutely correct.
    Mr. Grothman. Is it fair to say these crimes should never 
have happened?
    Mr. Cuccinelli. Should never have happened.
    Mr. Grothman. Now, your testimony cites Texas Department of 
Public Safety data for the proposition that illegal aliens 
commit violent crimes at a higher rate than the average person. 
Do you note that the data on crime rates is very limited?
    Mr. Cuccinelli. So, I do know that it is very limited. I 
want to clarify, my comments were on the raw numbers, not the 
rate of crimes committed. I do not believe the rate of crimes 
is relevant. When you have got 6,500 rapes and almost 1,000 
homicides, I do not think the rate of crime matters to the 
victims of those crimes.
    Mr. Grothman. Were gangs like MS-13 prominent in Virginia 
during your tenure as attorney general?
    Mr. Cuccinelli. MS-13 was the single most severe violent 
crime problem in Virginia during my time as AG and before and 
after. Sheriff Chapman could speak to the present day more 
acutely than I could. But there was no question that in the 
last 20 years it is the illegal-immigrant-based gangs, which do 
not cover all of Virginia--the Richmond and Norfolk corridor is 
still, what I would call traditional gangs, are predominant 
there, but they are not as violent as the illegal immigrant-
based gangs.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. Are foreign gangs active in the interior 
of the U.S. a violent crime threat?
    Mr. Cuccinelli. Absolutely. They are one of the worst 
violent crime threats and some of the most vicious behavior. 
Some of it is quite extreme.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. Is it hard to get data on the total 
number of crimes committed by illegal immigrants?
    Mr. Cuccinelli. It is very difficult to get that. It is 
very difficult. We are talking about Texas data because they 
are the only state that has even attempted to track that data 
for a long period of time. That is also why I noted the Bureau 
of Justice Statistics' analysis of how underreported even those 
types of crimes are in the first place, to say nothing of the 
challenge of determining if someone is actually here illegally.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. My Ranking Member here has told us that 
people crossing the Southern border are committing crimes at a 
less rate than the native-born population. Do you care to 
respond to that?
    Mr. Cuccinelli. So, first of all, I am using round numbers 
here, but over 10 million people have crossed the border under 
President Biden. Over 2 million of them, we have no information 
about. They are gotaways, and, presumably, there was a reason 
that they were not running to Border Patrol. They were running 
from Border Patrol. So, when you hear comments about evasions 
of Border Patrol being down, that is not necessarily a good 
sign. If they have a reason to run to Border Patrol because 
they are going to be caught and released without question, as 
you noted, regardless of the severity of any criminal record 
that is uncovered, then you are going to see more evasions. We 
have over 2 million of those folks. It is impossible to 
determine the rate of crime among a group of people we cannot 
even identify.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. So, really, it would be impossible to get 
that----
    Mr. Cuccinelli. It is.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. Thank you. Now, on to Mr. Garcia.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you. I have only been in Congress for a 
year. I served as mayor for 8 years before that. That is just 
not the way that you actually take data on crime, so I think we 
also need to be realistic and honest about the way crime is 
measured in the United States. It is measured when a crime is 
committed. That is when you take the data. So, this idea of 
folks running away or not being captured or we are not 
capturing this crime or that crime is just factually incorrect. 
I also just want to note that prior to my service as mayor, I 
was an educator for 10 years in the classroom at the college 
level, and we used data to make decisions. This idea that we 
are not going to use data to actually make decisions, I think 
is interesting, and I certainly do not agree with it. I want to 
ask some questions about data and about facts, not about what 
we think is happening or may not be happening.
    Mr. Bier, good to see you again. I want to put this poster 
up. I think it is important.
    [Chart]
    And before we get to the border, I just want you to remind 
us, who was President in 2020 again?
    Mr. Bier. Donald Trump.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you. Now, is it true that under Donald 
Trump, murder rates surged by 30 percent, according to data 
collected by police departments across America, to the highest 
rate since the 90's?
    Mr. Bier. Yes, absolutely. Surge in the summer of 2020.
    Mr. Garcia. And this data was collected by our men and 
women in police, like the Long Beach Police Department, which I 
honorably represented and helped support back in my community. 
Now since 2020, when we know that President Biden was elected, 
have violent crime rates increased or fallen.
    Mr. Bier. They have fallen year after year, yes.
    Mr. Garcia. In fact, they have fallen dramatically. Is that 
correct?
    Mr. Bier. And we just have reporting early this 2024 that 
they are continuing to fall.
    Mr. Garcia. So, crime is at an incredibly high levels when 
Donald Trump is elected, and now, overall, violent crime has 
dramatically decreased now that President Biden is in office. 
Is that correct?
    Mr. Bier. Over the last 4 years, crime has fallen.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you. And that is actually data reported 
by our cops, so we want to believe our men and women in law 
enforcement. That is the data that they are providing us. I 
also want to talk about some violent crime trackers that we 
have discussed. Murder, we know, has plummeted in the U.S. 
since 2023, one of the fastest rates of decline we have ever 
actually had. Now, Mr. Bier, there are 45 million immigrants in 
this country. Now, why do you think Donald Trump is pushing 
this migrant crime narrative which we know is not true?
    Mr. Bier. Well, it is because he wants to push policies 
that ban immigrants. We saw what he did when he was in office. 
He did not reduce illegal immigration. He banned legal 
immigration to the United States.
    Mr. Garcia. Now, it is fair to say that Trump's rhetoric, 
accusing people, by the way, like me and my family, of 
poisoning the blood of this country or claiming that we are 
fueling an invasion actually fuels the potential for violence?
    Mr. Bier. Absolutely. I mean, if you look at the number of 
criminals who have engaged in mass shootings, I mean, you are 
looking at the Pittsburgh shooter, looking at El Paso, Buffalo, 
Charlottesville, you go down the list and there are so many 
times where you hear this great replacement rhetoric being used 
to justify. Of course, there are crazy people on all sides of 
every debate, but we should not be fueling it with 
irresponsible and inaccurate rhetoric.
    Mr. Garcia. And we have already said and noted that the 
data provided to us by the men and women of our police 
departments across the country, it is also clear that non-
citizens, undocumented migrants actually commit less crimes, 
actually a lot less crimes than naturalized citizens. Is that 
correct?
    Mr. Bier. That is right. Seventy-five percent less for 
legal immigrants, 50 percent less for illegal immigrants, so a 
very significant difference.
    Mr. Garcia. And it is also true that if you look at most of 
our major American cities, when you actually look at the 
undocumented population versus citizens, that those cities, 
again, crime is being committed at a much higher rate by 
citizens than non-citizens. Is that correct?
    Mr. Bier. That is right. We looked at the border sector 
cities in particular with a great deal of focus on them because 
they have so much cross-border traffic. They are among the 
safest in the United States, and they saw some of the fastest 
declines in crime in the 1990's and 2000's when their immigrant 
populations exploded.
    Mr. Garcia. And so, I think it is really important to paint 
a real picture of immigration, of migrants, of immigrants that 
are coming to this country to search for a better life and move 
away from the xenophobic rhetoric that tears down migrants, 
that tries to somehow paint them as murderers and rapists when 
the data does not actually support those arguments. And so, 
this idea that we are not going to look at data, I think it is 
a joke, it is unfair, and it is certainly causing more damage 
across the country than anything positive.
    I want to just return to some of our policies as well. Now, 
Mr. Bier, one of the Majority's witnesses today was, we know, 
one of the architects of Trump's immigration agenda, which 
included unprecedented restrictions on legal immigration. To 
close my questioning, how did that actually impact the actual 
border, those Trump policies?
    Mr. Bier. Well, when we restrict legal immigration and 
asylum, we incentivize people to cross the border illegally. If 
we tell them there is no opportunity to come to this country 
legally, then, of course, you are going to see more people go 
to the border and try to seek safety and opportunity that way. 
It is counterproductive. It is a failed policy. It resulted in 
more evasions, like I talked about. That is a problem for 
security. We want Border Patrol to focus on serious threats, 
not people coming for safety and opportunity in this country.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you, sir, and I yield back.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. Mr. Gosar?
    Mr. Gosar. Thank you. Mr. Bier, just want you to take back 
to the Cato Institute--thank you very much for the National 
Emergencies pamphlet. Really, it hit the nail on the head. Now, 
to go back to immigration. Mr. Bier, what percentage of illegal 
aliens are detained? What percentage are detained?
    Mr. Bier. In the entire country?
    Mr. Gosar. Yes.
    Mr. Bier. Well, there are over 12 million illegal 
immigrants in the United States, and there are about 34,000 
detention beds funded by Congress, so it is a very small 
percentage, obviously.
    Mr. Gosar. Mr. Cuccinelli, how would you think about that?
    Mr. Cuccinelli. Well, even when there were double that 
number of beds, we were overwhelmed with the demand. For 
example, there are, the last time I looked, over 1 million 
final orders of removal in this country. Final orders removal. 
They have been all the way through a due process pipeline that 
is more extensive than American criminals get in the criminal 
justice system, and they have been found appropriate to deport. 
And those beds are intended to be used to detain while 
deporting and to hold dangerous individuals while working to 
deport them. And the fact that we have a fraction of the beds 
relative to the population that is, by law, supposed to be in 
process of being deported, right now speaks to the priorities 
of the Administration and, frankly, this Congress.
    Mr. Gosar. Let me ask you a question. Is there Federal law 
for the detention of illegal aliens entering this country or 
found to be in this country?
    Mr. Cuccinelli. I am sorry. Can you say that again?
    Mr. Gosar. Yes. Does Federal law require the detention of 
illegal aliens?
    Mr. Cuccinelli. Yes, it does.
    Mr. Gosar. OK. So, it should be 100 percent. So, let us go 
back to this number again. So, 6.2 million illegal aliens were 
arrested since President Biden took office until the end of 
Fiscal Year 2023. In Fiscal Year 2021, there were 660,000 
illegal aliens, known as gotaways or illegal aliens who avoided 
capture by Customs and Border Patrol. If one were to 
extrapolate those numbers for Biden's tenure, that would make 
about 2 million individuals as gotaways, so all that means is 
that 3 out of every 5 illegal aliens were detained in some 
fashion or other.
    Mr. Cuccinelli. Briefly, yes.
    Mr. Gosar. Briefly, exactly. Mr. Bier, that would make an 
illegal alien incarceration rate of 60 percent, would it not?
    Mr. Bier. I do not follow the math. No, it would not. There 
are 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States at 
least.
    Mr. Gosar. No, I am glad you said that. Are you familiar 
with the Yale and MIT study?
    Mr. Bier. Yes. I mean, if it is that high, then they have a 
really, really, really low incarceration rate. If it is 25 
million, then that means you divide the numerator by half.
    Mr. Gosar. Well, according to your testimony, the 
incarceration rate of American citizens is about 1.2 percent, 
correct?
    Mr. Bier. Of American citizens?
    Mr. Gosar. Yes.
    Mr. Bier. Yes.
    Mr. Gosar. So, would you agree that 60 percent is higher 
than 1.2 percent?
    Mr. Bier. Yes, but you are making this up. There is no----
    Mr. Gosar. I am not making it up.
    Mr. Bier. There is no 60 percent of illegal immigrants who 
are incarcerated.
    Mr. Gosar. So, Mr. Cuccinelli, would you agree?
    Mr. Cuccinelli. Oh, with that? Yes.
    Mr. Gosar. How about you, Sheriff Waybourn?
    Sheriff Waybourn. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Gosar. How about you, Sheriff Chapman?
    Sheriff Chapman. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Gosar. Now, Mr. Bier, would you agree that under 
current law that the incarceration rate of illegal aliens 
should be 100 percent, save for the fact that the brave men and 
women of the Custom Services and Border Protection are not able 
to catch all the gotaways?
    Mr. Bier. It is impossible to have 100 percent. Now, 12 
million detention beds, that would be----
    Mr. Gosar. Current law states 100 percent.
    Mr. Bier. Yes. You pass a law that makes no sense. It is 
impossible to have 12 million detention beds in the United 
States. That is multiples of our entire prison population.
    Mr. Gosar. Mr. Cuccinelli, Sheriff Waybourn, and Sheriff 
Chapman, estimates of sexual assault of illegal alien women 
traveling to the United States range from 31 to as high as 80 
percent. There are many reports of rape trees. Multiple 
ranchers personally meet with me and shown me the dead bodies 
of illegal aliens on their property. Do you think the Biden's 
executive actions facilitating illegal immigration lead to the 
compassionate outcomes for these illegal alien women, starting 
with you, Mr. Cuccinelli?
    Mr. Cuccinelli. No. I mean, those percentages are hard to 
nail down, but they are significant. They are high, and when 
you make the pool of victims higher, you end up with more 
sexual assault. I mean, it is that simple.
    Mr. Gosar. How about you, Mr. Waybourn?
    Sheriff Waybourn. I concur with what he said.
    Mr. Gosar. How about you, Mr. Chapman?
    Sheriff Chapman. I would agree. I think specifically 
getting to the numbers is a little difficult but definitely a 
problem.
    Mr. Gosar. Mr. Chairman, I yield back, but I would like to 
get this in the record by unanimous consent.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. So, ordered.
    Mr. Grothman. OK, Mr. Lynch.
    Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One thing that we 
should be able to agree upon is that the situation on our 
Southern border is unacceptable, just from a starting point.
    Now, in February, after months of negotiations, a 
bipartisan coalition in the U.S. Senate unveiled a national 
security supplemental that included a bipartisan border 
agreement proposing the most significant border security 
reforms in nearly 30 years. And at President Biden's request, 
the agreement included over $20 billion for border policy 
changes, including adding more than 1,500 new Customs and 
Border Protection personnel. It added a ton of funding for 
anti-fentanyl and anti-human trafficking provisions, and the 
bipartisan agreement also includes $1.4 billion dollars for 
cities and states that are now currently forced to provide 
services to migrants.
    And I know that for my district, which includes the city of 
Boston, and the state of Massachusetts in general, that funding 
is critical. Massachusetts is currently spending about $75 
million a month, so we are up over a billion dollars in the 
past year to shelter over 7,500 families. Meanwhile in my own 
district, in the city of Boston, I have 42,000 U.S. citizen 
families on the waiting list for public housing, 42,000 just in 
the city. I have 180,000 American families, citizens, who are 
on the list, so they are basically housing insecure, as they 
say now, right on the edge of homelessness. So, there are about 
180,000.
    So, the migrant problem is just on top of that, right, with 
resources and also because of the emergency nature of the 
situation. And I want to say in fairness to the Governor of 
Massachusetts and my colleagues in the legislature--I used to 
serve in the legislature--this is not on them. This problem 
starts at the border. We own this. We in Congress, we own this 
problem, and I know that some of my state colleagues are 
getting a lot of heat on this, but they do not have any control 
over the solution. Personally, I would welcome the opportunity 
to debate and amend and vote on a border security bill.
    Look, I know the agreement in the Senate is far from 
perfect, but that is what legislating is about. I would just 
ask them to send the bill to the House. We will take it up. We 
will have to tweak it. That happens with every single bill that 
comes before the legislature here. We will have to figure it 
out. There will be some things I do not like, and there will be 
some things that I think we desperately need that will be 
included, but this is our job. This is our responsibility. 
People are afraid. Some of that fear is driven by inflammatory 
rhetoric, but some of it is real. Some of it is the data that 
we have heard here this morning, but we have a responsibility 
to the people that we represent to take up a bill to figure 
this out, to move away from the model that we have right now.
    I have been down to the Southern border multiple times with 
Republicans and Democrats on this Committee. I have gone to El 
Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras to try to figure out the push 
factors. Look, I remember we had shooting wars in Honduras and 
Nicaragua and El Salvador. We did not see the levels of 
immigration during those shooting wars that we now see at the 
border.
    So, there is something else going on there. There is an 
industry behind this that is actually recruiting. First of all, 
they are pushing a narrative if you get into the United States, 
you can stay, which is false, but they are pushing that 
narrative and they are moving people to the border. And the 
President should have the ability, authorized by Congress, if 
we see 30,000 people coming to our border and we know it will 
overwhelm the system that we have at the border to regulate the 
flow of people into this country and to figure out who they 
are, why they are coming, the President should have the ability 
to declare an emergency and close that border until we regulate 
the flow to something that the current judicial system, the 
asylum system can actually assimilate. And to judge those 
people based on who they are and why they are attempting to 
come into our country, but that is not happening right now. 
That is not happening right now.
    So, I am just urging my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle, bring a bill to the Floor. Let regular order try to 
figure this out. You will not get everything you want, but 
neither will we on this side of the aisle, but we will make it 
a better situation for everyone involved. Thank you, Mr. 
Chairman. I yield back.
    Mr. Grothman. Thank you, Mr. Lynch. Mr. Sessions?
    Mr. Sessions. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. To the 
sheriffs that are here from Loudoun County and the 
distinguished gentleman from Tarrant County, thank you for 
being here. Mr. Waybourn is a good friend of mine, and I 
applaud him. Mr. Cuccinelli, good to see you again. Thank you 
for your service to this country.
    I think it is interesting that we hear up here about the 
problem or problems and whose job it is, whether it be the 
Congress or whether it be something else, but let us just pin 
the tail on the donkey. It is the Administration that is 
sending the welcome sign and making sure that people up and 
down--not just south of here, but all over the world--the word 
is out.
    I think the things that Stephen spoke about is exactly 
correct. The people who are losing are the American people, 
poor Americans, Americans who grew up here. This Administration 
took some $370 million that was designed and earmarked or at 
least allocated in appropriations for veterans who have been 
disabled, they took that money from disabled veterans. What we 
are looking at is a political circumstance, and yet, we forget 
that for 4 years, the Democrats had control of this body also. 
It is a tough issue.
    Two weeks ago, or 3, I was the speaker at an immigration 
ceremony where there were about 50 people in McLennan County, 
Texas who came. And I spoke to them, and I told them welcome to 
the United States. And I talked to them, and I told them this 
is their country now. But I told them leave your customs behind 
because you are now an American. Leave the laws there behind. 
And they openly told me, yes, we went through extensive study. 
We believe that what we have learned in this process of legal 
immigration has helped us to be better citizens. While we 
sought the advantages that had been talked about in this 
Subcommittee hearing of money, we really viewed it as, I told 
them, you have a right and a responsibility.
    I will say to each and every one of you, I sit on the side 
where I believe that we should require everybody to go through 
that process, legal immigration, that we are confusing with 
someone in the attack against a Donald Trump. The bottom line 
is, the law should be the law. They fail to say, they blamed it 
all on South America. It is 97 other countries also that people 
come from illegally, and they bring their customs with them, 
and they prey on those individual markets. They will go where 
people who are from their country are all across this country, 
and, of course, you and I both know that sanctuary cities allow 
that.
    And I do not want to do it today, but I have dealt with how 
police officers--not sheriffs, police officers--deal with 
illegals in sanctuary cities and literally do no recordkeeping 
because they know they are not looking at someone who is the 
real person, and they dismiss them because they do not want to 
house them. They do not hold them accountable to the same law 
that they will hold Americans accountable for. They take 
billions of dollars, not just schools, not just healthcare, and 
move it to them. And then we have got people that come up here 
and say we have just got to handle this bill because Uncle Sam 
will pay all this money.
    Well, I know what the money is for. The money is to take in 
an extra million people illegally because it is embarrassing 
how they have jammed into cages. And when President Trump was 
in office and this surge did happen, they called him names 
because they were in cages. So, what does the Biden 
Administration do? They waive all the laws. They do not even 
take people, children, as they come across and follow them 
where they are going because there are so many. They are 
flooding our cities, they are flooding this country, and then 
we turn around and argue about levels of people who are 
committing crimes. It is a crazy thing. But the way you fix 
this is by having the authority and the responsibility to stop 
this, to control it, to give our men and women of law 
enforcement the opportunity to protect themselves and protect 
this country, and then go into a process that might be not only 
fair, but look right also.
    I have been to the border many times. It does not look 
right. You see all sorts of people coming across in their 
casual attire because they simply showed up and knew they would 
get in. They take an Uber from San Diego, from Tijuana to come 
across. It is true. I have seen it. And so, for those of you 
who do not think it is true, you ought to go back because you 
can see it anytime you want.
    So, gentlemen, thank you very much. You did not just place 
something right in front of us and expect us to do the heavy 
lift. We know it deals with a President, the Administration, 
who has to be honest about what they are doing also. Mr. 
Chairman, I want to thank the people who are here, all four of 
them, and I want to thank you for having this hearing. And I 
yield back my time.
    Mr. Grothman. Mr. Frost?
    Mr. Frost. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Since the beginning of his 
campaign for President, Donald Trump, in 2015, has been 
consistently propagating hateful, extremist rhetoric about 
immigrants, including falsehoods, depicting all Mexican 
immigrants as criminals, as drug dealers, and as rapists. At a 
campaign event just last month, Trump claimed that immigrants 
are poisoning the blood of this country. The Republican 
witnesses here today are the latest in a line of people 
spreading racist, far-right fiction in an attempt to dehumanize 
immigrants. Mr. Bier, I want to get back to some truth in this 
conversation. Is someone more likely to commit a crime if they 
are born in the United States or if they are foreign born?
    Mr. Bier. If they are born in the United States.
    Mr. Frost. And you wrote in a Times article that I have 
right here, ``No matter how researchers slice the data through, 
the numbers show that immigrants commit fewer crimes than 
native-born Americans, but that is not good enough for Trump 
followers. They firmly believe that immigrants make America 
less safe. What the anti-immigration crowd needs to understand 
is that not only are immigrants less likely to commit crimes 
than native-born Americans, but they also protect us from crime 
in several ways.''
    And you are 100 percent right in that. Several studies show 
that immigrants are 46 percent less likely to commit a crime, 
and that in communities that have had an influx of undocumented 
immigrants, crime actually goes down. Collectively, American 
undocumented immigrants pay an estimated $11.64 billion dollars 
in state and local taxes every single year, and the average 
undocumented immigrant has been living and contributing to the 
economic success of our country for between 10 and 14 years. 
These are folks who are literally putting more into our system 
than they are taking out because they are undocumented. These 
are our friends, our family, teachers, the substitute teachers, 
people who work in the medical field, people who work in 
hospitality, our neighbors, my family.
    Mr. Bier, how might white supremacist falsehoods about an 
invasion put immigrant communities in danger?
    Mr. Bier. Look, we have talked about this before. We have 
seen the El Paso shooter manifesto, the Buffalo shooter. You go 
to Charlottesville, you saw what happened there, the Pittsburgh 
synagogue shooter. Now dozens of people have been murdered. It 
is astounding. They are saying what is motivating them. It is 
this idea that these people are invaders, and, therefore, they 
can be responded to with military-style force.
    Mr. Frost. Yes, and it just makes me wonder because we keep 
hearing from colleagues on that side of the aisle and some of 
these witnesses that I guess the rate does not matter or the 
data does not matter, and what really matters are the families 
and the victims, which I 100 percent agree with, but then they 
completely disregard the families and victims of immigrant 
communities because of the hateful rhetoric that they are 
pushing. What about the friends and families of victims who 
have been murdered in schools across this country because my 
colleagues refuse to do anything to end gun violence? Does that 
matter? I guess not.
    We have already seen how this hateful anti-immigrant 
rhetoric has been taken up by bad actors to justify horrific 
violence against everyday Americans. And for example, when a 
gunman walked into a Walmart store, killing 23 people and 
injuring another 22 almost exactly a year ago, Oversight 
Committee Democrats called on Chairman Comer and every 
Oversight Republican to condemn this rhetoric.
    Mr. Chair, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record 
a letter dated March 6, 2023, from Ranking Member Raskin to 
Chairman Comer, yet again inviting you to condemn white 
nationalism and white supremacy in all forms, including the 
great replacement theory.
    Mr. Grothman. Without objection.
    Mr. Frost. Not only have my Republican colleagues refused 
to condemn this extreme rhetoric, but they have also invited 
witnesses here who keep pushing it. I mean, we have Mr. 
Chapman, a sheriff, who should really be focused on the real 
causes of crime and violence. Under his watch, gun-related 
injuries surged by 57 percent in 2021. Mr. Chapman, I have one 
simple question for you. Do you know who your County Sheriff's 
Office pays to do the firearm disposal and how much you pay 
them for your firearms disposal?
    Sheriff Chapman. I would argue the statistics that you just 
mentioned about are----
    Mr. Frost. That is not the question I asked, Sheriff. I 
just want to know do you know----
    Sheriff Chapman. I think it is important to correct the 
record on that.
    Mr. Frost. I would like to know who your office pays for 
firearm disposal and how much you pay for that.
    Sheriff Chapman. Our firearms are handled by our Firearms 
Unit, and any disposal will come under them.
    Mr. Frost. OK. Got you. Many law enforcement agencies 
contract with disposal companies. And something that is of 
grave concern to me is that a lot of these companies are not 
doing what they have promised and are not destroying firearms, 
and are seeing these firearms being put back on the streets. 
Which is why I introducing my bill, Destroy Zombie Guns Act, 
which will make serious reforms to help keep all Americans 
safer. I implore my colleagues on this Committee to co-sponsor 
the bill and to join me in fighting for real positive change 
for public safety for all people. Thank you. I yield back.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. OK. I will just wait. We are going to 
suspend for 1 minute because I have somebody supposedly walking 
in the halls, who is almost here.
    [Pause.]
    Mr. Grothman. OK. We will begin closing statements. I guess 
there is some people who may, may not make it. First of all, I 
would like to thank our witnesses for their testimony. Well, 
should I yield to the Ranking Member first? Yes. Well, would 
you----
    Mr. Garcia. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank 
our witnesses again. I just want to reiterate what I said 
earlier, that I think when we have these hearings, it is really 
important that we focus on the crime data and the data that is 
provided to us by our law enforcement agencies. I want to 
reiterate what I said before, that non-citizens, undocumented 
immigrants consistently, and not just by a little, by 
significantly, commit less crime than citizens do.
    And I just repeat that just because I think the 
demonization of migrants and immigrants is wrong. We can all 
agree, we are concerned about all crime committed by anyone. We 
should focus on reducing that. But we should not be demonizing 
non-citizens as somehow rapists or murderers or worse than, 
because they actually do commit less crime.
    With that, I will yield back.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. I guess I will wait for a minute. Mr. 
Timmons is going to ask some questions. We will suspend for 1 
minute. OK. Ms. Mace?
    Ms. Mace. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning, 
everyone. One crime by one illegal alien is one too many.
    Last year, an illegal alien who was deported in 2021 after 
being convicted in Charleston County, South Carolina of 
sexually abusing a 9-year-old, was convicted for illegally 
returning after it was discovered he used our wide-open border 
to re-enter our country and return to Charleston, South 
Carolina. Last fall in October, a young 3-year-old girl named 
Maddie Hines in South Carolina was tragically killed by an 
illegal alien in a car crash. The individual who committed the 
crime was deported under President Trump and his 
Administration. The illegal was able to reenter into the United 
States under Joe Biden because of his wide-open and dangerous 
border policies that put American lives at risk. Several weeks 
ago, the Lowcountry was put on high alert as an illegal alien, 
wanted by law enforcement in Dorchester County for two counts 
of unlawful possession of a firearm, was on the run with his 
firearm, with his illegally possessed gun. In January, an 
illegal alien from Honduras murdered an American citizen in 
Columbia, South Carolina, our state's capital, after crossing 
the border illegally last year.
    Fentanyl trafficked across our Southern border by criminal 
cartels has killed 1,660 South Carolinians alone. It is clear 
that the Biden Administration's policies have turned every 
state in this Nation to a border state, every town into a 
border town. We have had members of MS-13 gang arrested in 
Beaufort, South Carolina. We have had human trafficking busts. 
In fact, 3 years ago in my hometown--you have never heard of 
it, it is called Goose Creek, South Carolina--there was a human 
trafficking bust with 28 people arrested. Two years ago in 
Summerville, South Carolina, there was a sex trafficking bust 
with over 20 people arrested. Joe Biden's open border policies 
have enabled an illegal alien crime wave to sweep across South 
Carolina and the Nation.
    So, I have a few questions for our witnesses today, and I 
want to thank you for being here. My first question will go to 
you, Mr. Cuccinelli. I found it staggering that in a memo in 
2021 Secretary Mayorkas wrote, ``The fact that an individual is 
a removable non-citizen will not alone be the basis of an 
enforcement action against them.'' Why is Joe Biden and his 
Administration waiting until these illegals commit serious 
crimes before deporting them, if they deport them at all?
    Mr. Cuccinelli. I was going to say, in fact, they are not 
deporting them even when they do commit serious crimes, and I 
can only conclude that they want the border invasion, that they 
have opened the borders for their own reasons.
    Ms. Mace. Right. I have actually talked to different police 
and law enforcement agents across the country, most recently 
the NYPD. In New York, for example, they are letting illegals 
just completely walk out of there when they are committing 
heinous crimes. Can you speak to the policies put in place by 
Joe Biden's Department of Homeland Security that have 
disempowered ICE, allowing criminal aliens to roam free, 
victimizing American citizens?
    Mr. Cuccinelli. Yes. So early in the Biden tenure, in early 
2021, in both ICE and CBP--you cited one memo, but there were 
others--if you will recall that time period where the 
Administration, through Secretary Mayorkas, intentionally made 
it difficult for both CBP and for ICE to accomplish their 
missions. It is part of, by the way, why the morale in those 
two organizations is as low as it has ever been, because you 
sign up to do a job and then you are actually impaired by your 
leadership from doing that job. And that is reflected in the 
number of criminals that are even coming into their custody, to 
ICE. When CBP is catching and releasing 85 percent of their 
apprehensions, ICE does not even see most of these folks and 
does not get a chance to thoroughly vet them. CBP's vetting is 
not as thorough. They are not in detention. They have, 
basically, turned into a human processor right now under the 
Biden Administration.
    Ms. Mace. Thank you, and my next question is for Sheriff 
Chapman. In your testimony, you mentioned you are experiencing 
``discouragement'' by this Administration for local authorities 
to turn over illegal migrants to ICE. Can you clarify further 
what Mr. Cuccinelli comments are? What the Administration is 
doing to discourage you from turning over illegal aliens to 
ICE?
    Sheriff Chapman. Well, I can certainly speak to that with 
regards to the police department. So, that is around the 
Washington, DC. area, certainly, you know, Fairfax and some of 
the other departments around, where they are not even allowed 
to notify ICE about people that are incarcerated.
    Ms. Mace. Unbelievable.
    Sheriff Chapman. For us, we do. We go that extra mile. We 
make sure that we notify ICE in Loudoun County. It largely has 
to do with the fact that I am an elected official. I am not 
answering to boards that have their own political agendas in 
place. So, we do make every effort to contact ICE, and we have 
a very good success rate. The majority of people that ICE want 
turned over to them, we do in a timely manner. And that way, 
they can pursue whatever other charges they want to do.
    Ms. Mace. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Mr. Grothman. I will call Mr. Timmons.
    Mr. Timmons. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you 
letting me waive on to this Subcommittee. I have been in 
Congress 5-and-a-half years, and never once has an issue polled 
as high as concerns with the Southern border. We are talking 
40-plus percent. It is the No. 1 issue of my constituents, and 
it is the No. 1 issue for my constituents because 8-and-a-half 
million people cross the Southern border illegally. It is the 
No. 1 issue because hundreds of thousands of American citizens 
have died from fentanyl overdoses, the vast majority of which 
is coming across the Southern border. It is the No. 1 issue for 
my constituents because all of the social safety net programs 
that American citizens rely on are being overly burdened by the 
8-and-a-half million that have come in the last 3-and-a-half 
years or the 10-plus million that have been here for much 
longer.
    So, these are the biggest challenges that our country is 
facing right now, and it really is frustrating because 
originally the Administration said the border is secure, the 
border is secure. For the first 3 years, they said the border 
was secure, and then in the last 6 months after the House 
Republicans have repeatedly said the border is not secure, we 
must do something, they finally changed their tune. And they 
changed their tune because the Democrat mayors in all these 
sanctuary cities are going crazy because their social safety 
nets are broken. They are tens of billions of dollars short, 
and they are asking for relief. And this President, all he has 
to do is sign his name, undo the executive orders he did 3-and-
a-half years ago and solve this problem.
    I guess I just want to ask the sheriffs. Why do you think 
this President is doing this? Why do you think this 
Administration is doing it? Sheriff Waybourn, any thoughts?
    Sheriff Waybourn. I am afraid I do not know why this is. I 
know that Speaker Johnson spoke the other day that there are 
people in Congress that would like to be able to give them the 
ability to vote, so I would think that maybe it is a political 
issue such as that.
    Mr. Timmons. Sherriff Chapman, thoughts?
    Sheriff Chapman. I would agree with Sheriff Waybourn. I 
cannot specifically say, but it appears that is the reason.
    Mr. Timmons. So, the best I can tell is there are two real 
reasons. No. 1 is the census. Reapportionment is going to occur 
in 6 years. And the idea is that you bring 8, 10, 12 million 
people into this country and you lure them with social safety 
net programs, you lure them with government benefits, and they 
go to the blue states. They go to the cities that offer wildly 
disproportionate social benefits to those in need. And that is 
what we are seeing in New York, but they are going there. And I 
guess when the census occurs, it is going to result in New York 
and California and Illinois receiving a disproportionate 
percent of the representation because we do not apportion the 
census based off of citizens. We apportion the census based off 
of humans, and, I mean, I think that is a big problem.
    And you know, at the end of the day, the Chairman of 
Judiciary last Congress, Chairman Nadler, specifically said 
that the objective was to give these individuals the right to 
vote. I mean, when the towers fell, 3,000-plus Americans died. 
We went to war. We spent hundreds of billions of dollars to 
hold them accountable. Here we are. Hundreds of thousands of 
Americans have died from fentanyl overdoses. The amount of 
human misery occurring in this country because of the 
lawlessness at our Southern border is just shocking. The 
cartels terrorize Mexico because they are making tens of 
billions of dollars off of this Administration's border 
policies. It is just shocking.
    I mean, the President recently said that he was going to 
address this, somehow implying he would maybe sign an executive 
order and reinstate Remain in Mexico, which would substantially 
address the concerns that we have. But I mean, it is only 
because there is an election coming, and he is so far 
underwater in his approval ratings.
    And I mean, it really is a sad day for this country that 
the President of the United States, it seems like he is 
destroying the American Dream because the American people are 
hurting. Inflation is killing their dreams of homeownership. 
Interest rates are through the roof. Hundreds of thousands of 
people are dying from fentanyl. They are not safe. The Defund 
the Police movement has resulted in enormous violence and 
insecurity in our cities. And I mean, our country is just on 
the wrong track, and we really need to change course. And with 
that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you.
    Mr. Grothman. Thanks. Ms. Crockett?
    Ms. Crockett. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and I am going 
to go straight to Sheriff Waybourn, because I do not know if 
you recognize it, but I actually represent a portion of Tarrant 
County. So, I am very familiar with some things that are going 
on there, so I want to talk about some of those things.
    Before I do that, though, I do want to address the last 
things that were brought up about the census, and I am not 
really sure if my colleague recognizes that Texas actually got 
two new congressional seats. The state of Texas actually grew a 
whopping 4 million people, and because of those 4 million 
people that came into Texas or from wherever they came from, we 
actually got two new congressional seats, which Texas 
historically has been a red state, and New York actually lost a 
seat, which historically has been a blue state. So, I did want 
to make sure we put some facts on the record.
    But we are talking about immigrants a lot. In fact, there 
was a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric and blaming of immigrants 
when certain things happen. And based on things coming out of 
this Committee, we seem to believe that immigrants are the 
reason why crime is up and why our communities are less safe. 
So, I did my research and I want to go through some of it with 
you, specifically about Tarrant County because I do not want 
you to have to know statistics about somewhere else.
    So, with that being said, Sheriff, do you know if within 
the last year, between 2022 and 2023, if there was an increase 
or a decrease in murder and negligent homicide in Tarrant 
County?
    Sheriff Waybourn. I do not have the numbers in front of me, 
but it did not increase.
    Ms. Crockett. OK. In fact, it went down by almost 17 
percent, so great job. What about manslaughter by negligence, 
or we call it criminally negligent homicide?
    Sheriff Waybourn. I believe it also went down in the past--
--
    Ms. Crockett. Yes.
    Sheriff Waybourn. It may be ticking up at the moment. 
Intoxicated and homicide may be ticking up at the moment in 
2024.
    Ms. Crockett. OK. Well, we had a 56.52 percent decrease. 
How about rape?
    Sheriff Waybourn. All those categories, we believe, went 
down.
    Ms. Crockett. Absolutely.
    Sheriff Waybourn. And I do credit a lot of incredible law 
enforcement and municipal police chiefs.
    Ms. Crockett. Awesome. So, there actually was a decrease by 
3.35 percent in rape, robbery went down 4.5 percent, and both 
aggravated and simple assault went collectively down by 3.18 
percent, and theft went down by 3.89 percent. This is at the 
same time in which we are talking about the migrant community 
and stoking these fears that they are bringing all of this 
trauma and this crime and violence to our communities, but when 
we look at a Texas community, Tarrant County, actually 
everything has gone down. And I do want to thank you for your 
service in that way because it takes a team. It cannot just be 
one thing. It means we have got to have great law enforcement, 
but we also have to have really good policies, and we honestly 
need to be honest about the data that we see.
    So overall, it shows me that, Sheriff, in Tarrant County 
all crime was down, is what I can tell from the numbers. And do 
you know if Dallas County, which is next door, if they had an 
increase or a decrease in overall crime?
    Sheriff Waybourn. I think all of North Texas we saw 
decreases----
    Ms. Crockett. Absolutely.
    Sheriff Waybourn. [continuing] In every one. And again, 
Chief Garcia, Chief Neil Noakes, there is some great police 
work going on in both of those counties.
    Ms. Crockett. Absolutely. So, I am going to move on to 
something else really quickly. One of the things that I want to 
talk about is the border in general and policies. I am not sure 
that you are aware, but I am going to make sure that it is 
clear, that the Senate worked on a bill, much like the Senate 
has done a lot more work than the House has done this entire 
session. And the only reason that that bill has not come to the 
Floor to help those that need help as relates to the border 
crisis is because Donald Trump specifically said that it should 
not come to the Floor.
    In addition to that, I want to talk specifically about some 
concerns that I do have in Tarrant County. While I am so 
thankful that the numbers have gone down, there has been a 
concern about the fact that there has been a consultant that 
has had to come in. And this consultant has had to come into 
Tarrant County potentially to the tune of approximately 
$200,000 for an 18-month contract to help the elected sheriff 
identify solutions for an extensive list of jail deaths and an 
alarming shortage in detention officers staff, and the 
necessity for Tarrant County to address its overcrowded jail by 
entering into a $40 million contract with a privatized jail 
outfit to house Tarrant County's inmates in Garza County. That 
is concerning to me. It is concerning because as a former 
public defender, I actually had clients that died in the jail. 
And most people do not understand that the main job of a 
sheriff is usually to make sure that they are taking care of 
the jail population.
    And so, Sheriff, I want to make sure that while they have 
brought you to D.C., that we make sure that we are taking care 
of Tarrant County, where you and I both are locally elected to 
serve, because we cannot have a situation in which we have 
violations of people's civil rights potentially due to 
overcrowding, or we cannot have a situation where we are losing 
lives because we are helping out our friends who are trying to 
stoke more fears about the migrant community, because the one 
thing that we know from the data is when it comes to migrants 
in the state of Texas, specifically in Tarrant County, if 
anything, it looks like the numbers have gone down as far as 
crime overall instead of going up. And so, we know that while 
it is a team effort, this idea that this President is doing 
something so nefarious that he is trying to bring people in so 
that he can get them to vote for him or he can get them to help 
out a census in a particular state, that is just not what the 
case is.
    But I do thank you for your time, and thank you, Mr. 
Chairman. I yield.
    Mr. Grothman. We got Mr. LaTurner.
    Mr. LaTurner. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you to our 
witnesses for being here today as we discuss the ongoing border 
crisis.
    The invasion at our Southern border did not happen by 
accident. During the 2020 Presidential campaign, then-candidate 
Joe Biden promised to protect sanctuary cities from Federal law 
enforcement, pledged to halt deportations, and encouraged 
millions of asylum seekers to surge to the Southern border. It 
did not take long for the President to make good on his open 
border promises. In his first 100 days of his Administration, 
President Biden took over 94 executive actions to reverse 
Trump-era immigration policies and undermine America's border 
security. The Biden White House ended Remain in Mexico, halted 
construction of the border wall, and did away with Title 42 
expulsions. These disastrous policies have turned every state 
into a border state.
    President Biden's sanctuary city policies and catch-and-
release practices complicate the efforts of border patrol, ICE, 
and local law enforcement to keep our streets safe and protect 
our communities. This unprecedented level of illegal 
immigration is redirecting essential resources away from their 
critical role in crime prevention, costing taxpayers billions 
of dollars, and leaving our communities more vulnerable.
    The unchecked flow of illegal immigrants across our 
Southern border not only undermine our law, but also opens the 
door for bad actors to enter the country undetected. Under 
President Biden, more than 600,000 illegal immigrants with 
criminal records or pending criminal charges have been released 
into the United States. Our communities now face an increased 
threat from drug smugglers, human traffickers, and violent 
criminals who exploit our weakened Southern border, each crime 
being entirely preventable. We are now confronting a full-blown 
public safety crisis, one that stretches far beyond the border 
states and impacts the entire Nation. This Administration's 
actions, or lack thereof, sends a message that our laws can be 
blatantly ignored, and violations will go unpunished. For far 
too long, Secretary Mayorkas and the entire Biden 
Administration have refused to enforce our Nation's immigration 
laws and turned their backs on the victims of this worsening 
crisis. It is unacceptable, and this Committee must hold them 
accountable.
    Sheriff Chapman, thank you for being here today. My 
district is not located on the Southern border. Yet, I still 
hear from my constituents in Kansas every single day who are 
impacted by this Administration's open border policies. Would 
you agree that the implications of the border crisis are 
widespread, affecting not just the border communities but also 
towns and cities across the entire Nation?
    Sheriff Chapman. Absolutely. And as I said in my opening 
comments, probably the biggest reflection of that is the 
overdose deaths that we are seeing throughout the country here. 
Over the last several years now, they have exceeded 100,000, 
with the vast majority of those being fentanyl. So, when you 
are talking about an impact, that definitely is an impact, and 
it is killing so many people throughout our country.
    Mr. LaTurner. As a sheriff of a non-border state, could you 
discuss the specific challenges that you, as chief law 
enforcement officer, remain vigilant to guard against in light 
of the Administration's border policies?
    Sheriff Chapman. Well, fortunately, as an elected official, 
I have the ability, as I mentioned earlier, to contact ICE when 
we have people that need to go to ICE that are being detained, 
but we are concerned about an increase, certainly, with MS-13 
and 18th Street Gang members coming in as a result of this. We 
did have a problem several years ago with gang members. We are 
concerned that that is going to reignite itself here as this 
problem continues.
    Mr. LaTurner. I would like to stick with you but shift our 
discussion to the topic of sanctuary jurisdictions, which limit 
the ability of ICE to fully enforce immigration laws, as you 
know well. In your opinion, how do sanctuary jurisdictions 
affect public safety?
    Sheriff Chapman. I think sanctuary jurisdictions are 
extremely detrimental to public safety because it allows people 
that should not be here, in locations where they should not be, 
and allows them to basically commit crime. Fortunately, we are 
not one of those, but I do believe some of our surrounding 
locations are, and I just think it poses an enormous danger to 
the citizens of those areas.
    Mr. LaTurner. Describe how important you think it is for 
local jurisdictions to work with Federal Government to enforce 
U.S. immigration law.
    Sheriff Chapman. Extremely important. I am retired from the 
Drug Enforcement Administration as a special agent. I have very 
good relationships with all of our Federal counterparts here, 
and I think, for the most part, everybody wants to do the right 
thing. Unfortunately, political agendas get in the way of that 
often, but as far as we go, it is very important for us to 
constantly work, notify other people in other agencies of what 
is going on so that we can address these issues promptly and 
keep our citizens safe.
    Mr. LaTurner. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, I yield 
back.
    Mr. Grothman. Mr. Goldman?
    Mr. Goldman. You?
    Mr. Fallon. No, go ahead.
    Mr. Goldman. Do you want to go?
    Mr. Fallon. You can go.
    Mr. Goldman. I would rather wait. I just sat down. If that 
is OK.
    Mr. Fallon. Chairman, up to you.
    Mr. Grothman. Mr. Fallon?
    Mr. Fallon. All right. Gentlemen, thank you for coming. I 
heard some of the questioning earlier, and some of our 
Democratic colleagues were focusing on are illegal immigrants 
less likely to commit crimes than native-born American 
citizens? And I think we are asking the wrong question. First 
of all, in relation to that, we do not know if that is a true 
statement or not. We do not know if they are less or more 
likely because the studies that were done are flawed. And they 
cite a Cato study, and yet in the Cato study, they say ``we 
cannot make a direct apples-to-apples comparison between Texas 
and other states.''
    We also do not see studies done when we have had this Biden 
border crisis and this explosion. When you look at the Obama 
Administration, about 1.7 million illegal encounters in the 
first 3 years, about the same with the Trump Administration, 
and then it went up to almost 8 million. We do not know the 
impact of that yet. So, I like to begin, unlike so many people 
in Congress, I like to begin with doubts and then end in 
certainties, not the other way around. I do not want to put my 
thumb on the scale. I want to know the truth, not their truth 
or our truth. There is no such thing as that. There is such 
thing as one thing: the truth.
    So, we are asking the wrong question. We should be asking 
this question: are we safer or not with mass unlawful 
migration? And I think I can answer that definitively. We are 
less safe when we allow mass unlawful migration. Take case in 
point in Texas, my home state. Between June 2011 and March 
2024, there were 513,000 crimes committed by criminal aliens. 
Four hundred twenty-eight thousand criminal aliens just in 
Texas were arrested that resulted in 187,000 felony 
convictions. So, I think our job here in Congress is to make 
all American citizens as safe as possible. Allowing for mass 
unlawful migration, sticking your head in the sand and 
pretending it does not exist or it is not harmful, is 
absolutely ludicrous. It does not matter if somebody is more or 
less likely. Clearly, criminal aliens exist, and they have 
committed mass amount of crimes in Texas.
    Sheriff Waybourn, great to see you again. You are a great 
American. While there are several factors in play, is it 
possible that the rise in crime recently in Texas has some 
correlation to the rise in the number of illegal migrants in 
Texas?
    Sheriff Waybourn. I believe you answered your own question 
a while ago. I do not think we can tell that, depending on the 
documentation. We have actually, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, 
have seen a decrease in crime, but we do not know. That 
community a lot of times simply does not report it, and we know 
that for a fact.
    Mr. Fallon. Well, yes. And Sheriff, the criminal migrant 
gangs, like MS-13 and others, who are they most likely to prey 
on demographically? Are they most likely to prey on White 
Americans, Black Americans, or Hispanic Americans?
    Sheriff Waybourn. Hispanic Americans.
    Mr. Fallon. Yes. They are actually disproportionately more 
of a threat people of color in this country to this criminal 
element.
    Sheriff Waybourn. That is it, and I believe you were a part 
of the legislature in Texas where we changed the law, where we 
cannot ask immigration status of a victim to get them to come 
more out of the shadows to tell us who is attacking them.
    Mr. Fallon. Yes, it is about protecting innocence and 
justice. And also, Sheriff, my constituents are repeatedly 
expressing concerns about the border and illegal migration. It 
is the No. 1 thing I hear at town halls. What are you hearing 
from your constituencies in Tarrant County?
    Sheriff Waybourn. I think they are very concerned about the 
open border and have been for the last several years, and the 
plethora of drugs that are coming across it and the impact it 
is having to our communities because it knows no bounds.
    Mr. Fallon. Is this just Republican----
    Sheriff Waybourn. No, sir.
    Mr. Fallon. No?
    Sheriff Waybourn. This is the citizens in general.
    Mr. Fallon. And is it just a certain demographic? Is it 
just White Americans, or is it all shapes, sizes, and shades?
    Sheriff Waybourn. All Americans.
    Mr. Fallon. Sheriff Chapman, you are Sheriff in Virginia. 
Do you feel like border concerns are something that you hear 
about as well out there, and are you concerned?
    Sheriff Chapman. Oh, certainly I am concerned about what is 
going on with the border and the impact that it is having 
across the country, to include Loudoun County, Virginia.
    Mr. Fallon. Mr. Bier, a ``yes'' or ``no'' answer. Would you 
agree it would be potentially dangerous to allow a complete 
stranger into your home?
    Mr. Bier. I would not.
    Mr. Fallon. You would not do that, right?
    Mr. Bier. I mean, it depends on the circumstance.
    Mr. Fallon. That is fair. I mean, it is clear that somebody 
knocks on your door and if you do not know who they are, I do 
not let them in either.
    Mr. Bier. I mean, I do not know. It depends on who they 
are.
    Mr. Fallon. Well, you said no.
    Mr. Bier. If they are a family with kids.
    Mr. Fallon. Yes. A complete stranger?
    Mr. Bier. I should not be too hasty.
    Mr. Fallon. OK. All right. So, you would? A family and 
kids. How many strangers and kids are in your home right now?
    Mr. Bier. None that I know of.
    Mr. Fallon. None. Do you house any illegal migrants in your 
home, or I should just say ``migrants,'' that have crossed the 
border in your home?
    Mr. Bier. No.
    Mr. Fallon. Yes. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Mr. Grothman. Mr. Goldman?
    Mr. Goldman. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Bier, I 
want to go back to a little bit about what my colleague from 
Texas was talking about in terms of the data. Obviously, it is 
self-evident that if there are more people in the country and a 
specific percentage of people commit crimes, there is going to 
be more crime, right?
    Mr. Bier. Yes. The absolute number will increase if the 
total population is larger.
    Mr. Goldman. OK. But you and the Cato Institute have done 
some work on this in terms of comparing the data that is 
available, which is limited, of the number of non-American 
citizens who commit crime versus those who are citizens of the 
United States, and just summarize again what you have found.
    Mr. Bier. Well, the U.S. Census Bureau data, which goes 
through 2022, shows that non-Americans or immigrants are 68 
percent less likely to have committed a crime that put them in 
prison at that time, and if you look at it, break it down by 
legal status, you can say that 75 percent less likely for legal 
immigrants and about 50 percent less likely for illegal 
immigrants. And we keep hearing about why this is such a big 
surprise. It is not a surprise. If you look at the demographic 
characteristics of immigrants, they are more likely to work, 
more likely to marry. Particularly if you look at male 
immigrants--men commit the vast majority of crimes in this 
country--male immigrants work at a rate almost double, when you 
control for education level, than similarly educated Americans.
    Mr. Goldman. Right, and there are other studies that have 
been done. The Marshall Project and the New York Times found 
that between 2007 and 2016, there was no link between 
undocumented immigrants and a rise in violent or property crime 
in those communities. Sheriff Waybourn was talking about in 
Dallas, crime is down. Crime in New York City is down also, and 
we have had a significant influx of newly arrived migrants. 
Yes, of course, there will be more crime as there are more 
people. But if the argument is that our country is 
proportionately or disproportionately more dangerous and 
insecure and unsafe because of the influx of migrants, the 
statistics just simply do not bear that out. Is that right, Mr. 
Bier?
    Mr. Bier. That is right. No one is saying we should 
continue illegal immigration. The question is, should we allow 
people to come legally to this country or not? That is the 
whole question. It is already illegal to come here illegally, 
so the question is, should they be allowed to stay, have a path 
to legal status, have a path to come in legally, and we keep 
hearing that they are such this big threat. No. If the crime 
rate goes down, that means your likelihood of being a victim of 
a crime goes down, and that is a good thing.
    Mr. Goldman. Well, let us focus on something that my 
Republicans do not like to talk about, which is the impact of 
guns on both the fentanyl trade and the influx of migrants. Am 
I correct, Mr. Bier, that the cartels broadly rule the border 
in terms of the fentanyl trade as well as a lot of the 
migration? Is that accurate?
    Mr. Bier. Absolutely. They charge a fee to cross the border 
illegally. They control the traffic. They force people to cross 
where they want them to cross. It is controlled by cartels.
    Mr. Goldman. Yes. And, Sheriff Waybourn, you agree?
    Sheriff Waybourn. Absolutely.
    Mr. Goldman. And, Sheriff Waybourn, do you agree that the 
cartels are able to control the fentanyl trade and the border 
because they possess weapons, guns that help give them the 
power and authority?
    Sheriff Waybourn. I have not inventoried their weapons, of 
course, but they are a very powerful outlaw organization, and 
they do have tools.
    Mr. Goldman. Sheriff Waybourn, would you be surprised to 
hear that over 500,000 guns are trafficked annually from the 
United States to Mexico?
    Sheriff Waybourn. None of those figures would surprise me.
    Mr. Goldman. Right. In fact, there is only one gun store in 
Mexico. It is almost impossible to get a gun in Mexico. And so, 
the cartels, who you have acknowledged, Sheriff Waybourn--and, 
I think, Mr. Cuccinelli, I think you have acknowledged that to 
me in the past--the cartels rule with guns, but they rule with 
American-made guns. And yet, we are doing nothing to try to 
stop the trade, try to stop the export of American-manufactured 
guns to the cartels, which give them the power to run the 
fentanyl trade and to wreak havoc at the border.
    And that is why I introduced a bill, The Disarming Cartels 
Act. I urge my Republican colleagues, who do not discuss guns 
once in their seminal border security package, to join us in 
trying to actually solve the problem. And to solve the problem, 
you need to stop the export of American-made guns to the drug 
cartels so that that will limit and eliminate their power. Mr. 
Chairman, I yield back.
    Mr. Grothman. Thank you. We already heard the closing 
statement from the Ranking Member, so now I will give you my 
closing statement.
    First of all, to respond to a couple of the comments on the 
other side, we heard from Matt O'Brien, former head of ICE, you 
know, last Committee or two Committees ago, that he felt that 
people who are here illegally committed crimes at a 
substantially greater number than the native born. As far as 
the recent drop in the number of murders in this country, I 
think that was because, or anybody looking at the statistics 
would know, that there was a spike up at the time George Floyd 
died. I kind of call it the Floyd effect. And for the year 
thereafter--I guess on a Federal level it would be Fiscal Year 
2021 to 2022, Donald Trump's final year--there was a big 
increase, but that was not because of any overall policy. That 
was because George Floyd died during that time and it kind of 
resulted in a big increase. It is very difficult to get exact 
statistics.
    So, I can tell you anecdotally, law enforcement in my area 
is aware of crimes being committed by immigrants. A lot of 
times they did not even have statistics, though. It surprises 
me that when I talk to local sheriffs' departments or people 
who run the local corrections, and I ask how many people are 
here illegal, they have no idea, and that is in Wisconsin. I 
think in other states where they pride themselves on being 
sanctuary cities, I am sure it is much more difficult to get 
those numbers. So, as a result, they have to rely on both what 
Mr. O'Brien said and anecdotal evidence that I gather in 
Wisconsin.
    I would like to thank you one more time for being here. We 
had a very interesting testimony today about the difficulty it 
is in removing people who even committed crimes in the United 
States. The Biden Administration has specifically made it more 
difficult to deport a criminal even after they have committed a 
crime. And we heard in the past as well that--I believe it was 
from Mr. O'Brien or a different witness. Sorry, it was one of 
the immigration judges. He went back and looked to see what 
happened to people who he ordered deported after they had 
committed crimes. And under the Biden Administration, he found 
that none of these people were deported, which is an indication 
that the policy of the Biden Administration is we want to get 
as many new people in here as possible, and even if an 
immigration judge orders somebody deported, we are not going to 
kick them out.
    And that is the attitude that permeates this whole 
discussion, which is one of the reasons why we have such a 
massive increase of illegal immigrants in this country together 
with the cost of the illegal immigrants and crime committed by 
those immigrants.
    So, in any event, I would like to thank the four of you for 
being here one more time.
    With that and without objection, all Members have 5 
legislative days within which to submit materials and 
additional written questions for the witnesses, which will be 
forwarded to the witnesses.
    If there is no further business, without objection, the 
Subcommittee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 12:03 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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