[Senate Hearing 119-326]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 119-326
SANCTUARY CITIES: THE COST OF
UNDERMINING LAW AND ORDER
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
March 10, 2026
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Budget
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
63-061 WASHINGTON : 2026
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COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET
LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina, Chairman
CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa JEFFREY A. MERKLEY, Oregon
MIKE CRAPO, Idaho PATTY MURRAY, Washington
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin RON WYDEN, Oregon
ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
JOHN CORNYN, Texas SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island
MIKE LEE, Utah MARK R. WARNER, Virginia
JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana TIM KAINE, Virginia
PETE RICKETTS, Nebraska CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
BERNIE MORENO, Ohio BEN RAY LUJAN, New Mexico
RICK SCOTT, Florida ALEX PADILLA, California
Nick Myers, Majority Staff Director
Ben Ward, Minority Staff Director
Mallory B. Nersesian, Chief Clerk
Alexander C. Scioscia, Assistant Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 2026
OPENING STATEMENTS BY COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Page
Senator Lindsey O. Graham, Chairman.............................. 1
Senator Jeffrey A. Merkley....................................... 4
Prepared Statement........................................... 47
STATEMENTS BY COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Senator Grassley................................................. 20
Senator Van Hollen............................................... 22
Senator Johnson.................................................. 24
Senator Whitehouse............................................... 26
Senator Cornyn................................................... 27
Senator Lujan.................................................... 29
Senator Lee...................................................... 31
Senator Padilla.................................................. 33
Senator Kennedy.................................................. 34
Senator Kaine.................................................... 36
Senator Scott.................................................... 38
Senator Moreno................................................... 40
WITNESSES
The Honorable Chad Wolf, Former Acting Secretary U.S. Department
of Homeland Security (2019-2020), and Homeland Security and
Immigration Chair, America First Policy Institute.............. 7
Prepared Statement........................................... 50
The Honorable Michael L. Chapman, Sheriff of Loudoun County,
Virginia....................................................... 9
Prepared Statement........................................... 55
Ms. Jessica M. Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies, Center for
Immigration Studies............................................ 11
Prepared Statement........................................... 57
Mr. David J. Bier, The Selz Foundation Chair in Immigration
Policy, Cato Institute......................................... 12
Prepared Statement........................................... 67
Mr. Brendan Duke, Senior Director, Federal Budget Center on
Budget and Policy Priorities................................... 14
Prepared Statement........................................... 84
APPENDIX
Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record
Mr. Bier..................................................... 95
Mr. Duke..................................................... 96
Charts submitted by Chairman Graham.............................. 97
Charts submitted by Senator Merkley.............................. 103
Statements submitted for the Record by Chairman Graham........... 107
Statements submitted for the Record by Senator Merkley........... 122
Document submitted for the Record by Senator Kaine............... 132
Documents submitted for the Record by Senator Padilla............ 136
Documents submitted for the Record by Mr. Bier................... 181
SANCTUARY CITIES: THE COST OF
UNDERMINING LAW AND ORDER
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TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 2026
Committee on the Budget,
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
The hearing was convened, pursuant to notice, at 10:00
a.m., in Dirksen 608, Hon. Lindsey O. Graham, Chairman of the
Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Graham, Grassley, Johnson, Marshall,
Cornyn, Lee, Kennedy, Moreno, R. Scott, Merkley, Whitehouse,
Kaine, Van Hollen, Lujan and Padilla.
Also present: Republican Staff: Nick Myers, Majority Staff
Director; Erich Hartman, Deputy Staff Director; Lillian
Meadows, Senior Counsel; Meghan Green, General Counsel.
Democratic Staff: Ben Ward, Minority Staff Director;
Melissa Kaplan-Pistiner, General Counsel; Joshua Smith, Budget
Policy Director.
Witnesses:
The Honorable Chad Wolf, Former Acting Secretary U.S.
Department of Homeland Security (2019-2020) and Homeland
Security and Immigration Chair, America First Policy
The Honorable Michael L. Chapman, Sheriff of Loudoun
County, Virginia
Ms. Jessica M. Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies, Center
for Immigration Studies
Mr. David J. Bier, The Selz Foundation Chair in Immigration
Policy, Cato Institute
Mr. Brendan Duke, Senior Director, Federal Budget Center of
Budget and Policy Priorities
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN GRAHAM
Chairman Graham. Good morning. Welcome to the Republican
hearing on Sanctuary Cities. Are our Democratic friends on the
way? Should we wait? Do we know if they're coming? Could
somebody find that out?
I will go ahead and make sure our Democratic colleagues can
have their time and ask their questions. So we're the Budget
Committee, the mighty, mighty Budget Committee that did
reconciliation and thank you very much. Right on cue. I would
hope this Committee would take round two and see if we can do
something on reconciliation round 2. But that'd be up to a
group of us and talk to the leadership about that.
But this hearing today, I think it's timely. We're trying
to look at the budget impact of a policy called Sanctuary
Cities. Now there are 200, I think cities, 14 States--We got a
chart here somewhere--that engage in the practice of Sanctuary
Cities.
And what is that practice? Local officials, state local
officials, basically have adopted a policy of not turning over
to the federal government illegal immigrants subject to being
turned over, because they don't like the policy. They don't
want to engage in deporting these people.
Now, under President Obama, I think three million people
were deported and I don't believe any Republican refused to
work with the federal government to deport these people. And
when President Obama deported three million people, it was
called being strong and good government. When we try to deport
people as a result of being invaded by illegal immigrants for
four years under the Biden administration, we're not seizing
bad guys.
I don't buy that at all. I think most Americans would like
to get control over our country and sovereignty over our
nation. Immigration done right can be a tremendous benefit to
the country. When you obliterate the borders for four years and
people from all over the world flood in, you got a problem and
it needs to be fixed and cleaned up.
As to United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE), if we can make ICE more professional, if we can do
things at Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that make it
more professional, count me in. I think Markwayne Mullen will
be a great Secretary to do that. But to my Democratic
colleagues, we'll never fix illegal immigration until you get
to the source of the problem.
And one of the problems we have is magnets to encourage
future illegal immigration. I got 12 Sanctuary states, 200
cities. There are 25,000 people that ICE had a detainer on that
were refused to be turned over.
Next one. We believe it endangers public safety, 10,000
criminals released by Sanctuary policies who went on to be
arrested for additional crimes. They should have been turned
over. They weren't. They stayed in the country and they
committed crimes, $9 billion in fraud that we know of and
probably growing. 59 percent of illegal immigrant households
are on government welfare programs costing taxpayers 42 billion
a year.
And that's some real, real money. Let me give you a real
life example of what happens when you don't do this, right?
Fairfax. I think we're going hear here in a minute from one of
our sheriffs. Fairfax police warned prosecutors about a repeat
offender months before deadly bus stop stabbing.
And this gentleman here, Jalloh, what's his name? Jalloh,
was in custody and had a pretty bad rap sheet. People in the
prosecution business say, don't release this--I mean deport
this guy, turn him over. Don't release him. That was good
advice.
It was not taken.
This young lady here, Stephanie Minter, was murdered by
this man. And we had this man in detention in Fairfax County
and they refused to turn him over for deportation. He was
allowed to stay in the county and the rest is history. A young
mom is dead because of that decision.
And who was this guy? He came to the country in 2012. He
was arrested 30 times, rape, malicious wounding and assault.
2020, ICE submits a formal detainer to deport him. The request
is blocked by Virginia's attorney for Fairfax County, a Soros-
backed prosecutor and defender of Sanctuary Cities who ignored
the detainer.
On May, 2025, he was arrested once more for stabbing and
the individual in the leg, but was--but again released. 30
arrests. May 2025 stabbed somebody in the leg. Let him go
again. February 2026, just months later, he murders Ms. Minter.
I'm not okay with that. I think that's offensive to who we
are as a rule of law nation to the people in Fairfax County to
this district attorney. I wish we could find a way for these
people to sue you and make you pay a heavy price for ignoring
your legal obligations under federal law and showing such poor
judgment.
How many arrests is necessary? How many people need to be
stabbed before a guy like that is deported? And what's the
upside of keeping them here? Is this the model citizen we want
to keep in America? Now there's an ideology around Sanctuary
City that needs to be broken and we're here to break it.
I've got legislation designed to change this dynamic. Going
forward if a local official or a governor, anybody refuses to
cooperate with federal government in turning over people
subject to deportation under federal law, they can be
prosecuted because they should be prosecuted. You got to make
it so that those who hang on to these illegal immigrants in
defiance of federal law, that they feel the pain, not just the
public.
So my hope is that we can find a way forward to break the
cycle of the damage being done from Sanctuary Cities, the cost
incurred to the taxpayer and what happened to Stephanie, just
like never happens again. We're not going to quit on this. If
you want to defend it, you're welcome to do it.
And this is not going away. You'll never have rational
immigration as long as you have 12 states saying if you get
here, you never leave. You're never going to fix this if you
have 200 cities that practice Sanctuary policy, because the
illegal immigrant believes I get there and never leave.
I've tried to work with Democrats like many over here to
find a rational solution to our illegal immigration problem.
We're not going to ignore four years. So for Joe Biden
obliterated our border. People came in from all over the world
by tens of millions, flown into the interior of the country and
only God knows where they're at.
Look at the number of people on the terrorist watch list
and how it's gone up 2,700 percent in '21, '22, '23. Where are
these people? They don't know. I asked. Nobody knows where
they're at. So in this invasion during the Biden
administration, we had 11,000 murderers. Look at the number of
people on the terrorist watch list. They're in our country and
we don't know where they're at.
So what we're going to do is be willing to reform ICE, try
to fix problems that we've seen, but we're not going to give up
on the idea that we need to right wrongs here and deport people
that present danger and try to regain control over our
immigration system.
To my Democratic colleagues, what is the answer to
Sanctuary Cities? Is it to continue the policy? Is it to
eliminate the policy? All of us say eliminate it. I think the
public is with us by like 80 percent. Until we eliminate the
policy, you're going to see more and more stories like I just
described and it is now time to call the question on Sanctuary
Cities.
Will it be the norm going forward in America or will it
change? To my colleagues on this side of the aisle thank you
for supporting this effort. We're fully committed to
eliminating Sanctuary Cities for the good of the country. To my
Democratic colleagues, we'd love to join with you in a rational
way to do some things to make ICE more professional.
But what you need to do in return is work with us to
eliminate one of the biggest magnets to future illegal
immigration, which is Sanctuary City policy. With that, Senator
Merkley.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MERKLEY \1\
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\1\ Prepared statement of Senator Merkley appears in the appendix
on page 47.
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Senator Merkley. Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. It's
been a year since we've had a meeting of this Budget Committee
and a lot has happened in that last year. Of course, one of the
big things that happened was a piece of legislation that Trump
called his Big Beautiful Bill, but most of us consider it a big
ugly betrayal of the American citizen.
What did it proceed to do? Slash nutrition for hungry
children, gutted health care for millions of families,
enormously increased the wealth of the already wealthiest in
our country. That's certainly not government by and for the
people; that's government by and for the powerful. And it
massively increased our national debt, estimated to be a $30
trillion increase over the next 30 years.
And if interest rates are one percent higher than used in
the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) model, call that a $50
trillion increase in national debt over the next 30 years and
it also massively increased the budget for ICE. I don't think
you'll see many changes in budgets that look like this. You
won't see a leap like this for housing in America, a
fundamental need for families.
You won't see this for health care in America. In fact,
health care was savaged by the Big Ugly Bill. You won't see
this for education in America, but you certainly see it for
ICE. Now these issues of the impact on nutrition budgets and
health care budgets and housing budgets and deficit and debt
and the budget for ISOs are all very good topics for this
Committee to hold a hearing on, but we haven't held a hearing
on that.
Now Trump has turned ICE into secret police. I can't
believe that we now have secret police in America, but we do. I
well recall studying secret police back when I was in college
and the basic mark of them was they'd show up in unmarked vans,
unmarked uniforms, no judicial warrant, knock down doors
without a judicial warrant, grab people, detain them and often
prevent them from having access and communication with families
or lawyers.
All of that's happening right now in America. We now have a
secret police called ICE and it's a tremendous black spot on
our nation that this has happened under this administration.
Freedom and privacy, laws, norms and our Constitution all
shredded.
Heartbreakingly, three American citizens have been killed
by ICE. Renee Good, Alex Pretti in Minnesota and Reuben Ray
Martinez in Texas. Now when ICE killed Reuben Ray Martinez,
they hid the facts. So most Americans aren't aware that a third
individual was killed. But recent reporting by CBS News
obtained the body cam footage showing him being killed by an
ICE officer in March of 2025.
Now ICE's budget has been increased by a factor of seven.
The way that it operates has been dramatically changed from the
norms of law and justice in a democratic republic to the
strategy of secret police in an authoritarian regime. That
would be a very good topic for a hearing, given how much ICE's
budget has increased and we should be holding one in an
examining that question.
Wars come with enormous costs. We know that the wars in the
Middle East and Afghanistan and Iraq were staggering in terms
of blood and treasure. More than 7,000 Americans killed, more
than 50,000 Americans injured, often life-altering injuries,
more than $6 trillion of national treasure expended.
So here we are. America's at war. That'd be a good topic
for a budget hearing. Seven U.S. service members already
killed. The Pentagon estimating a billion dollars a day. And in
fact, some of my colleagues have said it's $2 billion a day, a
big change in expenditures and revenues.
But none of those are the topics of today's hearing, the
first we've had in a year. But we do have this topic that my
colleague has pointed out, Sanctuary Cities. Well, Sanctuary is
a bit of misnomer. Sanctuary states and cities are not places
that are a safe haven where immigrants cannot be detained or
deported.
It refers to the decision that local police will serve as
local police and not be commandeered to be assistant ICE
agents. These policies are rooted in the 10th amendment of the
Constitution and my colleagues across the aisle like to lean on
state's rights. It's certainly a state's right to refuse to
have its local police commandeered to be assistant ICE agents,
assistance now to ICE operating as a secret police in the
United States of America.
So the idea that local police do local police work and ICE
agents do ICE work is protected by our Constitution. But
there's also a public safety rationale behind it. We know that
when local police serve as local police, they build
relationships with the community and decrease crime.
Research shows that jurisdictions that choose for local
police to be local police and not assistance to a secret
police, refusing to be commandeered as a federal agent, they
have a higher median household income, they have less poverty,
they have less reliance on public assistance, they have lower
unemployment. Those all sound like pretty good things to me and
they have lower crime rates.
A 2022 study found that allowing local police to be local
police, not commandeered to be assistant ICE agents, results in
a decrease in crime rates in those communities. And why? Well,
because in places where they do get commandeered to be
assistant ICE agents, they get less information, less trust,
less ability to prosecute and crime goes up.
So if my colleagues are all for crime, then persist in
trying to violate the 10th amendment and the wise wisdom of
those states that see the wisdom in separation with different
roles. And there's nothing about local police being local
police that hampers federal immigration enforcement. In fact,
when people are arrested, fingerprints, data, crime are all put
into a national database.
So the federal government has all it needs and if it wants
to make sure that a person is handed over at the time that a
person is completing their sentence in a local or state
institution, all they have to do is get a judicial warrant, a
judicial warrant. That's all that's required.
We've already seen the harm that happens when the executive
branch tells the executive branch that it's okay to override
Americans' civil rights. Reason: we have separation of powers
in our Constitution, something being seriously eroded under
this administration.
So as a reminder, each of these issues, slashing nutrition
assistance, gutting health care, increasing the wealth of
billionaires, exploding deficits and debts, transforming ICE
into a secret police, launching a war, are all appropriate
issues this Budget Committee should be focused on. But the
decision by cities and states to enhance public safety by
having local police focus on local police issues is not a new
change.
And so it's puzzling to me why that's the decision for this
first hearing in a year. What we know is that states and cities
that let local police be local police do pretty damn well.
With that in mind, I've invited two expert witnesses to
join us today, Mr. David Bier from the Cato Institute, an
expert on Sanctuary policies and the broader concerns about the
Department of Homeland Security and its $170 billion for
immigration enforcement, with little accountability or
oversight.
Joining him is Mr. Brendan Duke from the Center on Budget
and Policy Priorities, which focuses on critical budgetary
concerns, including how the big ugly betrayal law exploded our
debt and raised the costs for working families. So I appreciate
both of you joining us today.
And while he is not able to join us for today's hearing,
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield has written a statement
and it explains how the home states, my home state Oregon, how
their policy is to let police be police, has assisted and
helped him and the law enforcement officers keep Oregon
communities safe.
As he notes in his statement, Oregon's police policies have
peacefully coexisted with seven presidential administrations.
Mr. Chair, I ask unanimous consent to enter his statement into
the record.\2\
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\2\ Statement submitted by Senator Merkley appears in the appendix
on page 122.
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Chairman Graham. Without objection.
Senator Merkley. And I also asked unanimous consent to
submit a statement for the record from the Law Enforcement
Action Partnership,\3\ which states ``When local departments
are pressured to prioritize federal immigration objectives,
officer time and resources are diverted from serious threats
such as violent crime, domestic violence and community safety
concerns.
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\3\ Statement submitted by Senator Merkley appears in the appendix
on page 125.
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``The result is a policing environment that is less
effective and less trusted. Creating a less effective and less
trusted local public safety environment should not be the
objective of the federal legislature.'' Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Graham. Thank you very much. So the novel
approach, the 10th Amendment protects Sanctuary Cities, I
hadn't heard that one, but we'll talk about that later.
So our witnesses are Secretary, former secretary Chad Wolf,
Acting Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
from 2019 to 2020 and the current Homeland Security Immigration
Chair of the America First Policy Institute.
Sheriff Michael Chapman has been the sheriff of Loudoun
County, Virginia since 2012. I think you're next door to
Fairfax County. You can tell us about that.
Ms. Jessica Vaughan is Director of Policy Studies at the
Center for Immigration Studies, where she has worked since
1992. Welcome to y'all. If you'd rise and raise your right
hand, please. Do you solemnly swear the testimony you're about
to give this Committee is the truth, the whole truth and
nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Panel. I do.
Chairman Graham. Thank you. Welcome to y'all. Mr. Wolf.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE CHAD WOLF, FORMER ACTING SECRETARY,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY AND HOMELAND SECURITY AND
IMMIGRATION CHAIR, AMERICA FIRST POLICY INSTITUTE \4\
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\4\ Prepared statement of Hon. Wolf appears in the appendix on page
50.
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Hon. Wolf. Well thank you, Chairman Graham and Ranking
Member Merkley for the opportunity to testify before the
Committee today.
What we now commonly call ``Sanctuary Cities'' was born
nearly 50 years ago in California and since then has exploded
nationwide. According to the Department of Justice, 12 states,
the District of Columbia, as well as 22 other jurisdictions for
now are officially considered Sanctuary jurisdictions.
But as the Chairman said, there are likely hundreds more.
According to a 2024 report, nearly eight million illegal aliens
resided in those jurisdictions and one in every three Americans
or 120 million Americans live in Sanctuary jurisdictions.
To be clear, this is not a localized phenomenon.
Ultimately, Sanctuary policies affect every American. And so
while not all Sanctuary jurisdictions have the exact same
policies, they all share a core belief that it is acceptable
and even justified to ignore illegal immigration and violations
of our immigration law.
But our law is clear. Title VIII, Section 1227 clearly
states that aliens who entered the U.S. illegally or otherwise
in the U.S. without lawful authorization are in fact removable.
That is the mission of ICE. The law goes on to address those
who harbor illegal aliens. Title VIII, Section 1324 states that
any person who encourages or induces an alien to come enter or
reside in the U.S. knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact
of such coming to, entry or residence will be a violation of
law.
Now due to the supremacy clause and a long list of judicial
opinions interpreting that, states do not have the authority to
pick and choose which federal laws are recognized and enforced.
And they do not have the authority to nullify federal laws by
ignoring them or proactively creating obstacles to their
effectiveness.
Tragically, Sanctuary policies are unleashing devastating
consequences for the American people, particularly those that
live in those jurisdictions. In California, again the
birthplace of the Sanctuary movement, local politicians
released 4,641 criminal aliens from local jails in 2025, rather
than handing them over to ICE for removal.
Those criminals included aliens that had committed
Homicide, assault, sexual predatory offenses and burglary. And
just weeks ago, as the Chairman indicated in Fairfax County,
just miles from where we are today, a criminal illegal alien
with more than 30 arrests fatally stabbed a woman in the neck
and that county, Fairfax County, has been a Sanctuary for
almost a decade and this is the tragic result.
Despite the dangerous nature of Sanctuary jurisdictions,
there are some that will not stop until we've become a
Sanctuary nation, largely free from all border enforcement and
immigration enforcement. Calls for ICE-free zones, detention
bans and even an outright abolishment of ICE are becoming
increasingly common.
The evidence is clear to restore the rule of law, common
sense and public safety, the era of Sanctuary jurisdictions
need to come to an end permanently. Thankfully, President Trump
and numerous states are taking action, but legal challenges
persist and Sanctuary jurisdictions are still largely able to
exist under current law. Congress should take action.
In my written testimony, I've outlined several
recommendations to address this issue, including the need to
hold local officials accountable for knowingly violating the
law. Let us heed the lessons that we've learned from tragedies
unfolding in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago,
Seattle, San Francisco and others. The American people are
safer when state and local governments cooperate with federal
immigration agencies. State and local governments should give
our agents access to their jails and prisons, so that federal
agents can screen prisoners, determine their immigration
status, process removable aliens and transfer custody to
federal authorities once an alien is released.
This requires little effort from local governments, yet
under Sanctuary policies, state and local officials often slam
the door shut on immigration officers.
I'd like to close with a simple question. For those who
continue to support Sanctuary policies, how many more Americans
need to die at the hands of illegal aliens released by
Sanctuary jurisdictions? Sanctuary cities must become an
artifact of American history, rather than the ongoing safe
haven for drug dealers, narco-terrorists, murderers and
dangerous people who threaten the safety and the security of
the American people.
And let me just end on a comment made by the Ranking
Member, talking about secret police. I think that's an
outrageous comment. I think the men and women of ICE are sworn
law enforcement officers, they do their job, they're trained to
do their job. They have a very dangerous job in what they do
and to continue to denigrate their job and how they go about it
in such a dangerous environment I think is a disservice to
them.
Senator Merkley. Mr. Chairman, since the testimony involves
the comment I made, I will just reply that if you don't want to
be secret police, don't act like secret police. And I laid out
the factual basis on exactly all the qualities that they are
utilizing now that are the hallmark of secret police around the
world. Thank you.
Chairman Graham. Mr. Chapman.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE MICHAEL L. CHAPMAN, SHERIFF, LOUDOUN
COUNTY, VIRGINIA \5\
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\5\ Prepared statement of Hon. Chapman appears in the appendix on
page 55.
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Hon. Chapman. Chairman Graham, Ranking Member Senator
Merkley and other Members of the Committee. I am Loudoun County
Sheriff Mike Chapman and lead Virginia's most complex and
largest full-service sheriff's office, employing over 900.
Loudoun County sits just outside of Washington, D.C. and is the
home to Leesburg, Middleburg and the Dulles International
Airport.
In Loudoun County, we celebrate a diverse community, have
an extraordinarily diverse workforce. We welcome everyone here
that's here legally and within our organization speak over 25
different languages. I have served 47 years in this profession
as a local police officer, a career Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) special agent and for the past 14 years as
an elected sheriff.
I am honored to sit before you today to discuss our mutual
concern of Sanctuary cities and counties. I am fortunate that
Loudoun County is part of a traditional form of government that
enables a sheriff to conduct all law enforcement, jail and
court operations under one roof, essentially making me both a
sheriff and a police chief.
This differs significantly from our surrounding
jurisdictions where appointed county, city and town police
chiefs are the norm. Loudoun's form of government has enabled
me to make decisions in the best interest of our citizens, free
of mandated political agendas. It has also allowed me to be the
only Republican law enforcement leader in all of Northern
Virginia.
That responsibility is a double-edged sword. While I don't
answer to our 7-2 Democrat Board of Supervisors for policy
decisions, I do receive my budget from them. This dichotomy
causes significant friction, making this a very challenging
area. Our system of government, however, provides our citizens
with a check and balance.
We endured a two year battle with our Board of Supervisors
who pursued rather converting our sheriff's office into a
police department several years ago, to exercise complete power
and control over our agency. We defeated this aggressive action
because our citizens ultimately decided that they prefer having
a direct voice in who leads their public safety through the
election process.
This system and our common sense approach to problems
putting citizens first is why the Sheriff's office has been
awarded favor, government service for two years running in our
local newspaper, and why I've been selected as favorite public
servant for the past five years.
Regarding immigration, it is important to distinguish
criminal aliens who pose a threat to our community from
immigrants here legally. Consequently, while our surrounding
jurisdictions choose to be sanctuaries, not make this
distinction and not honor ICE detainers, we do just the
opposite. We have always cooperated with all of our state,
local and federal counterparts including ICE, and have
routinely notified ICE of those in our custody for criminal
offenses who also had active detainers issued by ICE regardless
of the presidential administration.
We honor all detainers and warrants from other law
enforcement jurisdictions, just as I would expect them to honor
ours. These practices likely contribute to why our agency has
the lowest crime rate in the entire Washington D.C.-Northern
Virginia area, and is one of the safest counties in the entire
United States.
That doesn't mean we're exempt from problems related to
illegal immigration. In 2024, we experienced five homicides,
three of which were committed by people here illegally. Two of
the three were committed by an Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13) gang
member and in a neighboring county, one that refuses to contact
ICE regarding the criminals they arrest, two homicides were
committed in just over the past two months.
One occurred within 24 hours after the criminal who had an
outstanding ICE detainer on him was released from jail without
any notification to ICE. The other, police questioned why the
subject had been released and warned the prosecutor of danger,
stating not if, but when he would assault again, resulting in a
grandmother being stabbed to death at a bus stop. This
exemplifies what happens with Sanctuary counties. Law
enforcement's hands are tied by politicians and political
agendas.
Last year, I signed a 287(g) warrant service officer
program agreement, which enabled us to hold a person arrested
for a criminal violation an additional 48 hours for ICE, in the
event ICE couldn't pick them up immediately. This enabled us to
safely turn over criminal illegal aliens to ICE who otherwise
would have been released into our community and could pose an
additional threat to our residents.
This simple process has kept ICE from having to conduct
street operations in our area. I have told my community that
not turning over criminal aliens to ICE, who could endanger our
residents, would be irresponsible and dangerous to the very
people I've sworn an oath to protect. This process, which has
worked well for us, is likely to become far more challenging
considering the legislation currently in motion in Richmond.
Our governor rescinded the previous administration's
executive order, which enabled jurisdictions to cooperate with
ICE. This was followed by legislation proposed by both houses
of our general assembly, which if passed and signed by the
governor, will likely require judicial warrants from ICE for
local law enforcement to act on anything.
Considering illegal immigration is a civil offense, this
action will no doubt force us to release detainees incarcerated
by us for criminal offenses unrelated to immigration back into
our communities, where they could pose an additional threat to
our citizens.
If this Committee can exercise any leverage to influence a
different outcome, I am confident that law enforcement
officials throughout Virginia and other locations who are
familiar with these challenges would be grateful. We take our
jobs seriously and want to keep all of our citizens safe. Thank
you for your attention and, I look forward to answering any
questions.
Chairman Graham. Ms. Vaughan.
STATEMENT OF JESSICA VAUGHAN, DIRECTOR OF POLICY STUDIES,
CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION STUDIES \6\
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\6\ Prepared statement of Ms. Vaughan appears in the appendix on
page 57.
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Ms. Vaughan. Good morning and thank you. More than half of
removable aliens live in those jurisdictions that have
Sanctuary policies intended to hinder immigration enforcement
and prohibit cooperation between state and local law
enforcement and federal immigration enforcement, which is
almost always a violation of federal law and imposes enormous
costs on taxpayers.
My organization has been tracking these policies since
2015, and we maintain a list and map of jurisdictions and
policies on our website. Those who promote Sanctuary policies
often claim that they're needed to build trust with immigrants,
so that they'll report crimes or to avoid distracting local law
enforcement agencies with immigration enforcement.
These claims are disproven and disingenuous. In fact,
Sanctuary policies are an irrational political response based
on disagreement with federal immigration policy and opposition
to enforcement of immigration laws. The motivations for
Sanctuary policies are ideological and political, but the cost
of Sanctuary policies is unfortunately very tangible.
First, the public safety costs, and these are the most
significant and problematic. Between October of 2022 and
February of 2025, Sanctuary jurisdictions refused more than
26,000 detainers for criminal aliens. Half of these were in
California and large numbers also were released in Illinois,
Virginia, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
The individual jails that released the most were Santa
Clara County, California, Cook County, Illinois and Fairfax
County, Virginia. In 2024 alone, the Fairfax County sheriff
declined to honor 744 detainers for criminals that she had in
custody. That's more than two a day. Some of these are gang
members with long rap sheets who get arrested over and over,
costing county taxpayers, untold sums in repeated crimes,
prosecution and incarceration. Others are child predators and
sex offenders.
Oregon is another place that protects criminal aliens with
strict Sanctuary policies. Last fall, ICE actually had to issue
subpoenas just to try to get four Oregon sheriffs to share
information on violent felons who had been released despite ICE
detainers. They had convictions for rape, assault, child
exploitation and kidnapping, among other crimes.
What possible reason can there be for not cooperating with
ICE for their removal? It's certainly not a public safety
reason, and it seems as if they actually want to make
immigration enforcement as costly and labor intensive as
possible. Besides blocking law enforcement agencies from
cooperating with ICE Sanctuary states typically have other
policies that attract illegal settlement and thus burden
taxpayers with support of illegal immigrants.
Besides funding emergency health care and schooling for
all, a number of Sanctuary states go farther and choose to
provide Medicaid subsidized health insurance, nutrition
assistance, housing and much more. Illegal immigrants use these
welfare programs in large numbers. My organization has found
that over 60 percent of illegal alien-headed households are
using at least one form of welfare program and usually more
than one, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars to
taxpayers.
This is why any resources spent on immigration enforcement
actually save taxpayers money, taxpayer money in the long run.
It is my repeated observation that the politicians who support
Sanctuary policies are not moved by the costs or the pain their
policies have caused American families.
Victims like Stephanie Minter, Denny McCann, Drew
Rosenberg, Matthew Denice, Dominic Durden, Laken Riley and Kate
Steinle and so many others. These are priceless lives lost to
Sanctuary policies, and it's wrong to trivialize their loss as
a statistical blip.
Some states like South Carolina, Florida and Texas, have
banned Sanctuary policies. The Trump administration is making
progress through outreach and litigation, but while the federal
government likely cannot force Sanctuary jurisdictions to do
the right thing, it can create consequences for sanctuaries.
Congress needs to create additional consequences like
disqualification from certain federal funding, so that
taxpayers are not subsidizing sanctuaries.
Congress should also clarify that state and local police
have the authority to cooperate with immigration enforcement,
so that they can't be blocked from doing it by state or local
laws. In addition, those who are seriously harmed as a result
of Sanctuary policies should have some resource in the courts.
Thank you.
STATEMENT OF DAVID J. BIER, THE SETZ FOUNDATION CHAIR IN
IMMIGRATION POLICY, CATO INSTITUTE \7\
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\7\ Prepared statement of Mr. Bier appears in the appendix on page
67.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Bier. Chairman Graham, Ranking Member Merkley and
distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for the
opportunity to testify.
For half a century, the Cato Institute's research has shown
that people, whatever their ancestry, background or birthplace,
can thrive in a free society. Immigrants come to work for us
and with us to make our lives better. They work at higher rates
and are nearly twice as likely to start businesses here.
Immigrants have reduced government deficits by 14 and a
half trillion dollars over the last 30 years, and yet Congress
has not updated the legal immigration system during that entire
time. So just three percent of all legal immigrant applicants
were approved in 2024.
Rather than fix this broken system, the new administration
banned half of all the legal immigrants who had made it to the
end of that process, including spouses and children of U.S.
citizens. The fallout from this flawed system is left to our
cities to manage. In many areas one in five residents lives
with someone here illegally.
Mass deportation is not an option for these places. It is
an attack on them. It is taking Americans, Americans away from
their spouses, parents, pastors, parishioners, employees,
employers, customers and friends. It's not us Americans versus
them immigrants. Cities know immigrants are part of us. They
also know that immigrants are here to build, not destroy.
A mountain, literally a mountain of research proves that
immigrants and reasonable limits on participation with ICE do
not increase crime rates. Immigrants, even illegal immigrants,
are half as likely to be incarcerated for crimes in the United
States. According to DHS, only about three percent of illegal
immigrants have any criminal convictions.
Immigrants reduce crime rates, which means your less likely
to be a victim of a crime. Let me be clear. When a non-citizen
does victimize someone, they should be convicted, imprisoned
and deported. But it is DHS that has ignored this formula. Just
28 percent of the people detained by ICE right now were
convicted of any crime at all.
This is no surprise. DHS has abandoned its public safety
mission. It has stripped millions of vetted immigrants of their
legal status, just so that it could deport them. Instead of
protecting us, DHS violates the Constitution. Its massed agents
invade our homes without warrants. They detain without
evidence, and they deport without due process. They intimidate,
beat and even kill Americans who protest. They arrest legal
immigrants for writing opinion articles. They lie to the courts
and then they ignore them.
With all this unconstitutional mayhem, Congress should not
itself violate the Constitution by threatening local law
enforcement, not for interfering with ICE, but rather for
following their own local laws that they swore an oath to
uphold.
Under our system of federalism and the Constitution,
Congress can't force cities to do its bidding, whether on
immigration, guns or the environment. If Congress wants cities
to help DHS, it'll need those cities to trust DHS. But to get
trust you need to be trustworthy, and this DHS is not.
Consider this. Before this administration, non-citizens
were more likely to report serious crimes to the police than
the U.S.-born population. Now, DHS is arresting immigrant crime
victims. For example in Iowa, a shooting victim who helped
bring to justice violent robbers was arrested by ICE before he
had even healed.
But since he had a pending charge for an unpaid traffic
ticket, ICE considers him a criminal. This has caused filings
for U visas for crime victims working with police to drop by 63
percent. This is not making Americans safer. Congress must
require DHS to focus on real threats, and it must empower
Americans to sue federal agents for violating the Constitution.
We need accountability and constitutionality to restore trust.
Thank you.
STATEMENT OF BRENDAN DUKE, SENIOR DIRECTOR, FEDERAL BUDGET,
CENTER ON BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES \8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ Prepared statement of Mr. Duke appears in the appendix on page
84.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Duke. Thank you. Chair Graham, Ranking Member Merkley
and Members of the of the Budget Committee. My name is Brendan
Duke, and I'm Senior Director for Federal Budget Policy at the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The Center on Budget is a non-partisan research and policy
institute that advances federal and state policies to help
build a country where everyone has the resources they need to
thrive and share in the nation's prosperity.
Let me first begin with an overview of our fiscal situation
for the Budget Committee. Analyses typically focused on
government spending and revenue as shares of the economy. In
2025, revenue was 17 percent, which is around the same level as
in 1985. Programmatic spending on the other hand grew seven-
tenths of a percentage point since 1985.
But Social Security and Medicare are responsible for more
than 100 percent of the increase in spending, because the
country has gotten older. That is nobody's fault. I'm sure
everyone on this Committee wishes they had the same knees or
back they did 40 years ago. Similarly, we all wish we had the
demographics and ratio of working age Americans to retirees
that we had 40 years ago.
The combination of population aging in basic arithmetic
means we will face a choice between raising revenue past the 17
percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) level set when the
country's demographics were more favorable, or making drastic
cuts to important programs.
The retirement of the baby boom was a predictable and
predicted development. But at the beginning of the 21st
century, we had a fiscal system that would deliver adequate
projected revenue to meet our needs. Rounds of
unpaidfor tax cuts ruined that. Take a look at
projections for 2025 that were made right before most of the
Bush tax cuts were made permanent, and before anyone even
thought of the Trump tax cuts and compare them to the actual
2025 numbers.
The 2025 deficit is much higher than projected in 2012,
despite programmatic spending being lower than projected. The
reason the deficit roses revenues come in far lower than
projected as a result of those unpaid-for tax cuts.
Importantly, Social Security, Medicare and other health
programs such as Medicaid and premium tax credits also came in
below CBO's 2012 projections.
What all of this ultimately shows is that it's entirely
possible to meet our commitments to seniors, while ensuring
millions of low and moderate income Americans have health care
and food if we are willing to raise the revenue to do so.
Instead, Congress made a different choice last summer. The
giant reconciliation bill adds $3.4 trillion to the deficit, as
it extends tax cuts tilted to the wealthy despite cutting
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid
by about 20 percent by 2034.
CBO more recently estimated this figure at $4.7 trillion
over the new budget window and including interest. Notably,
this $3.4 trillion cost is higher than the cost of extending
all of the expiring tax cuts for all families, including for
millionaires, but without the cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, and it
would have cost far less than, to extend the tax.
That's for the 98 percent of families making under $400,000
without those cuts to SNAP and Medicaid. In other words, the
cuts to health care and food assistance in the reconciliation
bill were entirely the result of Congress's choice to load the
bill with tax cuts beyond the 2017 tax cuts, along with large
increases for defense and immigration enforcement.
The result is millions of low income families will lose the
ability to afford the high cost of groceries or go to the
doctor when they're sick, cuts that a vast majority of the
public staunchly oppose. Moreover, the entire cost of the tax
cut was essentially offset by the Trump administration's
decision to raise taxes on imported goods.
Cutting income taxes financed by taxes on imported goods is
a poor trade. It is both economically inefficient and further
pushes the burden of financing the government from high income
to low and middle income families.
In fact, the combo of the Trump administration's tariff
regime and the spending cuts on the reconciliation bill will
leave households in the bottom 70 percent worse off. The
Supreme Court last month handed the Trump administration an
opportunity to save face by ruling that many of these sweeping
tariffs were illegal.
Instead of using the Court decision to back down on a
failed policy, Trump has instead replaced those struck down
tariffs with a sweeping 10 to 15 percent across the board
tariff. I think we can all agree that the steps required to
significantly improve the outlook, whether through revenue
increases, program cuts or both can be politically challenging.
Immigration can reduce the need for those difficult
measures. Immigrants contribute to our communities and the U.S.
economy in many ways. In particular, they improve our fiscal
outlook by boosting our national birth rate and they boost our
workforce. Last month, CBO evaluated the economic and fiscal
effects of the administration's anti-immigrant policies. CBO
cut in half the projection of the annual growth rate of the
U.S. population over the next few 10 years.
CBO now estimates that the 2035 working age population will
be 2.4 million people smaller than in its previous projection.
This has important fiscal costs too. CBO projects that the
administration's actions to reduce immigration will increase
deficits by $500 billion over ten years, principally by
reducing the number of taxpayers.
Those higher deficits will make deficit reduction that much
harder, adding to the damage from H.R. 1. Financing income tax
tilted to the wealthy by cutting programs and raising import
taxes while discouraging and disparaging immigrants is no way
to fix our country's fiscal imbalances.
Thank you.
Chairman Graham. Thank you all for your testimony.
We'll do five minute rounds.
Mr. Bier, is it accurate that Barack Obama deported three
million people when he was president?
Mr. Bier. Those are total removals, not people deported
from the interior.
Chairman Graham. What does that mean?
Mr. Bier. Well, there are people deported from the borders
who never lived in the United States.
Chairman Graham. Were there people deported inside the
United States?
Mr. Bier. Well, I mean I think it's a little bit unfair to
compare people deported at the border----
Chairman Graham. Oh, hey, hey, hey.
Mr. Bier [continuing]. Versus people in the interior. I
think Jessica would agree to this.
Chairman Graham. So hey. Hey listen, listen. You don't want
to answer a question, that's fine, but don't tell me what's
fair and unfair. Bottom line. Did he use judicial warrants to
deport anybody? When he deported somebody interior, did he have
a judicial warrant?
Mr. Bier. No.
Chairman Graham. No. Why? Because it's stupid. Mr. Wolf,
tell me what would happen if we adopted his approach. You can't
deport anybody unless you have a judicial warrant. Would that
be effectively the end of deportation?
Hon. Wolf. I think it would. I mean if you just look at----
Chairman Graham. Don't you think that's what they want to
do?
Hon. Wolf. In part, absolutely.
Chairman Graham. These people over here want to stop
deportation.
Hon. Wolf. So if you just look at the 1.5 or 1.6 million
individuals here with a final order of removal, right? They've
been through the judicial process. They've been to an
immigration judge, probably an Immigration Board of Appeals,
and every time the judge says, you don't have a legal right to
be here.
If you had to get a judicial warrant for each one of those,
you'd be here for the next 20 years trying to remove those
1.6----
Chairman Graham. But when a Democrat says you need a
judicial warrant to deport somebody, they're turning--Obama
didn't do it, did he?
Hon. Wolf. Not that I'm aware of, no.
Chairman Graham. No. No, he didn't because it's impossible.
You just stop the whole system. You're not trying to reform
ICE. You're trying to stop deportations. If it were up to you,
we'd have more illegal immigrants. I hope people are paying
attention to what the hell is going on in this country.
Sheriff, tell me about what it's like to live next to a
Sanctuary county.
Hon. Chapman. Well, we're the only ones that actually work
with ICE and are able to get people out based on our 287(g). We
turn them over to ICE. We arrest them for criminal violations
outside of their immigration status. They come and they pick
them up and they're gone. And I'll tell you, it's made a big
difference. We had----
Chairman Graham. Well, those laws that you're enforcing,
were they on the books before Trump became president?
Hon. Chapman. Yes.
Chairman Graham. So all these laws were there before Trump
became president and Obama used them. Now, when we use them,
all of a sudden we're Nazis. I think people see through this.
Do you believe Sanctuary City policy is bad for crime, Mr.
Chapman?
Hon. Chapman. I do. I think, you know, the ability--if you
look at us and compare it to our next door neighbor there they,
I think, maybe have notified ICE maybe about seven times last
year, where it was 184 times for us.
Those are people that could have been released back to our
community, that could have committed other crimes, and we don't
need that here. It's irresponsible of me to allow that to
happen and let these people back in our community.
Chairman Graham. Ms. Vaughan, how would you--what's your
takeaway about Sanctuary City policy? What damage has it done
to our country, if any?
Ms. Vaughan. Well, there's the cost of the lives lost to
illegal aliens who were released by Sanctuaries. That's
priceless. There's the fiscal----
Chairman Graham. This case behind me, Jalani. Is that his
name? He should have been deported. Do you agree Ms. Vaughan?
Ms. Vaughan. Absolutely, yes.
Chairman Graham. You know, you're talking about suing
somebody who's been abused by the government. Why don't we sue
local prosecutors who put this in motion? I'd love to do that.
So I'm going to try to find a way to give victims a chance
to go to court when a local prosecutor puts back on the streets
somebody with 30 priors. That's some--do you support that idea,
empowering people?
Ms. Vaughan. I do. I think that that would be an effective
deterrent to Sanctuary policies, because they're adopted----
Chairman Graham. Make these counties and cities pay.
Ms. Vaughan. Right. They're adopted for political reasons,
not public safety reasons.
Chairman Graham. Yeah. What are--what's the upside of
ignoring federal law and keeping people like this out of
federal custody? It's a political choice.
So let me ask you this question. There was a clerk of
court, Mr. Wolf, in Kentucky that did not want to issue a
marriage license to a gay couple, in spite of the fact Supreme
Court said that gay marriage was legal, and she went to jail.
Do you think that's a good outcome? Should she have gone to
jail for refusing to obey the law?
Hon. Wolf. I think it's important to obey the law.
Chairman Graham. Yeah, I do too.
Hon. Wolf. The law is the law.
Chairman Graham. And when I suggested that the clerk of
court who had a religious view, that she could not in good
conscience issue a marriage license to a gay couple, even
though the law required, she needed to get out of her job. I
was--boy, what a great guy I was then.
Now the shoe's on the other foot. All of a sudden, that's
not--that's not a good idea. You can--what you want to do is
just ignore the laws you don't like. Is that where we're
headed, Mr. Wolf?
Hon. Wolf. I believe it is.
Chairman Graham. Well, let's stop it now. Let's end this
madness. There is no upside to Sanctuary Cities. It's all
downside. Senator Merkley.
Senator Merkley. Well, no upside other than, higher median
household income, less poverty, less reliance on public
assistance, lower unemployment and safer communities, all of
which seem pretty much on the upside from my point of view.
Mr. Duke, what effect did the Big Beautiful Bill, as Trump
called it, have on debt over the ten year budget window?
Mr. Duke. CBO shows that it adds $4.7 trillion to the
deficit.
Senator Merkley. That's a pretty whopping sum.
Mr. Duke. It's enormous.
Senator Merkley. For one piece of legislation, and over 30
years?
Mr. Duke. It comes to $30 trillion with a T.
Senator Merkley. Wow.
Mr. Duke. Yeah.
Senator Merkley. What's our national debt right now?
Mr. Duke. As a share of GDP, it's around 100 percent.
Senator Merkley. And that's about $30 trillion?
Mr. Duke. Yeah.
Senator Merkley. So another $30 trillion. But if interest
rates are one percent higher, how much more does that add to
the debt?
Mr. Duke. I can't believe I'm saying these numbers, because
they sound like they're from Star Trek, but $50 trillion.
Senator Merkley. Yeah, $50 trillion. Well, thanks a lot
folks for passing a bill that's going to add $30 to $50
trillion to our national debt, suppressing our investments in
health care, housing, education, public safety, transportation,
all important things for the welfare of America.
And Mr. Duke, how did that bill affect the size of the
working age population?
Mr. Duke. Yeah. So basically the combination of that--so
first that bill funded ICE a lot, as you showed, and CBO says
that it is going to shrink the number of people who are in the
workforce, because they are going to leave the country or be in
detention camps. That directly shrinks our tax base.
Senator Merkley. Okay. So that has an overall effect on the
GDP of our nation?
Mr. Duke. Fewer working people means smaller GDP.
Senator Merkley. Okay. Mr. Bier, in states or cities that
have policies referred to as Sanctuary policies, but more
accurately that dedicate local police to doing local police
work, do those locations fully cooperate in detaining somebody
when there's a judicial warrant for them?
Mr. Bier. Yes, absolutely. They turn over anyone subject to
a criminal matter upon notice by the federal government that
they have a warrant.
Senator Merkley. So those jurisdictions have entered into
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) federal database
fingerprints, arrest record, what that person's being detained
for, how long they're being held. Federal government has all
that information.
Mr. Bier. Exactly, yes. So they could go and get those
individuals anytime they want. And in this case in Virginia,
for example, the Laken Riley Act, which they all supported,
directed the Department of Homeland Security to get those
people.
And instead of getting those people, they're out on the
streets profiling random Hispanic workers going to their jobs.
So it's a total misdirection to blame the county, when the
Department of Homeland Security isn't even following the law
that they passed.
Senator Merkley. Why not, since they could get that warrant
and pick up those individuals who have committed violent
crimes?
Mr. Bier. Because the White House has created an arrest
quota that's the only metric for success for them. How many
arrests can you make today? And the fastest way to make arrests
is indiscriminate raids, indiscriminate profiling of people on
the street.
That's what's led to this huge jump in the number of
people, and the frankly chaos that we're seeing in cities
across the country.
Senator Merkley. So there was a chart in your longer
written testimony showing that only five percent of the
individuals booked by ICE have ever had a violent criminal
conviction.
Mr. Bier. Yeah. And not only that, if you look at my
written testimony as well, I talk about how the Department of
Homeland Security has its own internal threat assessment that
they assign to each individual who comes into their custody.
And those people have to prioritize. They actually have a
mandate. They can't be all political. They have to figure out
who is actually a threat. And of those people, only ten percent
received the highest threat level and 70 percent were deemed by
the Department of Homeland--this Department of Homeland
Security, to not be a threat at all.
Senator Merkley. So how does that match the campaign
rhetoric about we're going to go after the worst of the worst,
which I think 100 percent of Americans supported the idea that
anyone who had committed a violent crime should be--should be
investigated, should be prosecuted, should be if convicted and
incarcerated should be deported. But those numbers don't match
that.
Mr. Bier. Great campaign messaging, great messaging for,
you know, a $200 million ad campaign by the DHS Secretary. Not
based in reality at all. On day one of this administration,
they rescinded all policies that forced ICE to focus on violent
offenders and people with criminal convictions.
Senator Merkley. They did the exact opposite of what they
told the citizens they were going to do during the campaign.
Mr. Bier. It was a lie, just like it was a lie about all
the things they said about Renee Good and Alex Pretti and all
the other people that they've killed over the last year.
Senator Merkley. And you recommend--do I have time for the
last question, or my time has expired?
Chairman Graham. Sure. Go ahead.
Senator Merkley. You recommend in your testimony that there
be a private right of action when individuals' civil rights are
violated. Now my understanding is that if local police or state
police violate your civil rights, you have a cause of action
against that; is that correct?
Mr. Bier. Yeah. Under Title 42, Section 1983, there's a
private right of action against state and local, but not
against the feds.
And this is a critically important issue, because right now
they're recruiting all these state and local officers into
essentially the ICE framework, which gives them immunity
against all constitutional violations that they carry out while
working in conjunction with the federal government.
So we need to expand that to cover federal officers as
well, to make sure we don't have this immunity creep into every
police department in America, which is their goal, including
through this bill that we're talking about today.
Senator Merkley. So when the Vice President said ICE agents
have absolute immunity in violating people's civil rights, he
was right?
Mr. Bier. Effectively, yes. Right now, as the law stands.
Senator Merkley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Graham. Thank you. Just one point of
clarification. Is it your position that a non-violent illegal
immigrant shouldn't be deported?
Mr. Bier. My position is that we should give people who are
peaceful people a path to citizenship. You endorsed that
principle for many years, Senator.
Chairman Graham. So no matter how many people come?
Mr. Bier. No. It should be based on whether people have a
demonstrable basis to remain in the United States, which is
whether they contribute to this country or whether they're a
threat to it.
Chairman Graham. I guess----
Mr. Bier. We should have all laws----
Chairman Graham. I guess what you don't understand, and I
don't want to, I'm familiar with the Gang of Eight bill, shut
down illegal immigration. We did away with the magnets. We're
going to give people a chance who've been here for a long time.
Mr. Bier. Your bill had the exact opposite approach of what
this Department of Homeland Security is carrying out.
Chairman Graham. Listen, listen. For four years, Biden
obliterated the border. 11 million people came in and the bill
I was working on would have prevented that. He took everything
we were trying to do to stop illegal immigration, be fair to
the ones here and blew a hole in it, and now we got 11 million
more and you want to give them amnesty. They'll never stop.
Senator Grassley.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR GRASSLEY
Senator Grassley. Yeah. The United States is a country
based on the rule of law, and it's against the law to enter our
country without our permission.
And I compliment the Chairman for having this hearing, and
his strong statements and his strong questioning. We all know
that our country benefits from legal immigration and entering
our country. This is a Budget Committee, and my questions will
basically be based upon budget impact and cost to our
government.
Mr. Wolf, there are some legal limitations that prevent
states from completely excluding illegal immigrants from access
to some of their government programs. What are those
limitations and what immediate steps considering those
limitations can the federal government take to minimize the
fiscal burden of Sanctuary jurisdictions?
Hon. Wolf. Yeah. I think when we talk about public
benefits, whether they're federal or state benefits, I think
and the Chairman I believe mentioned this earlier, these are
strong magnets of why folks decide to come to the United States
illegally.
Now there's a variety of different reasons for them to do
so. But if they're able to stay in a jurisdiction that shields
them from law enforcement, that provides public benefits,
particularly at the state level, but also at the federal level,
both need to be looked at, that continues to incentivize those
individuals to come and to stay.
And so when you look at how to secure the country, it's it
not only border security, it's a big part of it, but it's also
getting at these pull factors, and those public benefits are a
big part of that. I think the American people are generous. I
think they want to help people that need true help.
But to have folks that come here to the country illegally
choose to stay illegally, have no protections under U.S. law
and continue to get public benefits, I think that's where the
American people draw the line.
Senator Grassley. Ms. Vaughan, Sanctuary jurisdictions
frame their policy as squarely a matter of local policy. But we
know these policies have both broader public safety and fiscal
effects on areas beyond their border. So what are some examples
of the cost to both the federal government and the state
government caused by Sanctuary policies that are often
forgotten or overlooked, with emphasis upon forgotten or
overlooked?
Ms. Vaughan. Well, I think too many of the victims of these
policies have been forgotten. I named a few of them, but these
families are still suffering silently. Another forgotten cost
is the cost of providing benefits, taxpayer-funded social
services to illegal alien households.
And federal law currently allows states to choose to do
that if their legislature approves it, at enormous costs, and
some of those dollars are federal dollars. So all of us as
Americans share the cost burden of that arrangement, and
Congress can do something about that.
But there's also the cost of the erosion of the integrity
of our immigration system, when individual states and
jurisdiction and local jurisdictions can obstruct the
enforcement of federal laws that are passed by Congress without
consequence. Even though they are--many of these Sanctuary
policies are clearly in violation of Section 1373 and 1644 of
the Immigration Act.
And so, you know, it's a slap in the face to legal
immigrants to have--say allow these policies that shield
individuals from immigration enforcement, most of whom are
criminal aliens. Immigrants don't want to live with these
policies either. Something like 70 percent of the American
public is opposed to Sanctuary policies for all of these
reasons.
Senator Grassley. Mr. Wolf, if you can answer this
question. It's in regard to the 11 million people that came
here under Biden and Harris. Over that period of time, did
illegal immigrants seek out Sanctuary jurisdictions for safe
harbor? And is there any evidence to back up your statement?
Hon. Wolf. Well, I think if you look historically at where
illegal aliens reside now, they reside all across the United
States. But if you were to do a heat map, you would see them
in--the majority of them in places like New York City, Chicago,
Los Angeles and others that have these Sanctuary jurisdictions.
So, yes. I do believe over time that illegal aliens do tend
to, go to these types of jurisdictions.
Senator Grassley. I got six second left. Sheriff Chapman,
what are some examples of state and local cost increases those
jurisdictions incur?
Hon. Chapman. Well, I look at the funding that goes to our
state and local, the folks that surround us and folks that do
not support, you know, the immigration policies here and the
funding that they get. And I think if that was curtailed, maybe
they might look at this a lot more seriously.
But it is a cost to us. It's a cost of putting people out
there. You're talking about more homicides, you're talking
about--we've had our share locally here and certainly as a
Chairman brought up, and we've had them in Loudoun County. And
it's a human factor that is really important here. We want to
keep our people safe and keep them alive.
Chairman Graham. Senator Whitehouse.
Senator Whitehouse. Thank you, Chairman.
Chairman Graham. Van Hollen. I apologize.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR VAN HOLLEN
Senator Van Hollen. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr.
Wolf, if I could start with you. You would agree that in
America, people have the right to peacefully protest under the
First Amendment, right?
Hon. Wolf. Correct.
Senator Van Hollen. You would agree that people have the
Constitutional right to due process, right?
Hon. Wolf. Correct.
Senator Van Hollen. Would you agree with Kristi Noem, who
characterized Renee Good as a domestic terrorist? Is Renee Good
a domestic terrorist in your view?
Hon. Wolf. I've been very clear on this point when that
incident occurred, as well as, the Pretti incident as well, as
to let that investigation play out before any comments are made
about the motives of any of the individuals involved, including
the law enforcement officers.
Senator Van Hollen. So clearly it was wrong to label them
domestic terrorists, right?
Hon. Wolf. Again, I don't--I'm not at the department. I
don't know what the information she had. If you're asking me my
opinion, I would have wait till the investigation play out
before I rendered any decision.
Senator Van Hollen. So you think it's still an open
question, as to whether or not they're domestic terrorists?
Hon. Wolf. Again, I'm going to let the investigation play
out.
Senator Van Hollen. It sounds like you do, which I think,
you know, the country has seen the videos, okay. So I find it
outrageous that you would sit here today and hold open the idea
that they were domestic terrorists. Their parents and their
loved ones deserve an apology from the U.S. government. And I
find it outrageous that you're taking the position that you are
here today.
Hon. Wolf. I'm not taking a position.
Senator Van Hollen. Yes, you are. By taking no position and
leaving on the table the notion that they're domestic
terrorists, you are taking a position.
Mr. Bier, thank you for emphasizing the big lie, that what
the Trump administration is doing is going after the worst of
the worst. As Senator Merkley pointed out and as you've shown,
that's just not true. I mean nobody wants people who are here
illegally committing violent crimes, but the overwhelming
majority of people who are in detention right now, by ICE's own
admission, pose no risk to public safety, is that right?
Mr. Bier. That's right. Over 70 percent were given no
threat level at all. They could be released right now without a
threat to the public.
Senator Van Hollen. Yeah. So this is just such a big lie. I
mean that's what we're seeing playing out in this forum and out
of the White House from people like Stephen Miller and the
President of the United States.
Could you talk about another big lie? We do know that the
so-called Big Beautiful Bill, as Republicans called it,
increased the debt massively, like over 4 trillion bucks,
right? They gave tax cuts to billionaires permanently. They cut
health programs, they cut food safety, food programs.
They had a walloping increase for ICE, like seven times its
regular budget. And at the same time, we hear people like
Stephen Miller and others claiming that it's actually
immigrants who are the cause of increasing our deficits and
debt. In fact, they've said that immigration is the cause of
the growing national debt, and immigrants take more from the
country than they contribute.
Now, Mr. Bier, you've looked at this question very closely.
Could you just respond to what I think is the second big lie?
Mr. Bier. Yeah. Over the last 30 years, we looked at all
the government budgets, federal, state and local combined.
Immigrants reduced deficits by 14 and a half trillion
dollars, which is about a third of all of the total deficits
during that period of time. And it's easy to understand why,
because they work at 12 percentage points higher than the
national average.
They use less benefits because they're subject to
constraints, unique barriers to applying for those benefits in
particular Social Security and Medicare, where those are by far
our largest programs and they're not eligible for those at all
if they're here in the country illegally, or if they came
legally and they don't have a sufficient work history to
qualify.
So you have clear reasons for believing that they are
reducing the deficits and debt. They are a benefit to this
country, and we need more people who are going to contribute in
the future as our population ages.
Senator Van Hollen. Could you amplify a little more on the
issue of Medicare and Social Security, because those, you know,
trust funds in just a couple years there won't, you know, be
enough to pay out full on the dollar for Social Security and
Medicare?
Mr. Bier. That's right.
Senator Van Hollen. But as you pointed out, there are many
immigrants that are paying into that, but not paying out. So
could you just elaborate on that?
Mr. Bier. According to the Social Security Administration,
we need about 35 million more workers in order to keep revenues
equal to expenses by the middle of the 2030's.
So we are at a position right now where immigration is not
going to solve it. Obviously, it's not going to solve it. But
it is moving us in the right direction. These are people who
are showing up. They're ready to work. They're often prime age
individuals who are ready to enter the labor force.
So it's a huge benefit fiscally to the United States to
have these people who want to contribute to our country.
Senator Van Hollen. Thank you. And thank you for exposing
two of the big lies coming out of the Trump administration.
Mr. Bier. Thank you.
Senator Van Hollen. Thank you.
Chairman Graham. The information we have is that 64 percent
of the people encountered by ICE are either convicted or
pending criminal charges. So if somebody's wrong, we'll find
out who's lying.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHNSON
Senator Johnson. Mr. Chairman. Yeah. Let's talk about some
realities here. The Ranking Member talked about the funding for
ICE rose dramatically this first year of the Trump
administration. Well, this is why, because for the previous
four years, President Biden and the Democrats opened up the
border. Now I like this chart. First of all, saved the
President's life.
But the other reason I like this chart is it shows cause
and effect. And the catalyst for this explosion in illegal
immigration really was deferred action on childhood arrival.
That's what sparked this. That created the first incentive for
people to come this country illegally. That started the first
wave.
Now back in 2014, these were massive numbers. I remember
President Obama calling it 2,000 a day. It was, you know, a
humanitarian crisis. I think under Biden we had over 14,000 a
day average. So Mr. Wolf, you were Acting Secretary trying to
clean up the Obama mess.
You know, I remember leading a delegation down to McAllen,
Texas during the Obama administration, where we looked at the
facility they set up and everybody, Democrat, Republican, were
singing the praises of DHS for kind of skirting the rules and
establishing a facility that would keep the children safe, as
they were being encountered and detained across the border,
because of the incentive of Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals (DACA).
A couple years later in the Trump administration, that
exact same facility, all of a sudden now the Democrats are
calling that kids in cages. I mean first of all, will you just
confirm the fact that that was the exact same facility that we
praised in 2014, and all of a sudden 2017, those are kids in
cages?
Hon. Wolf. That's correct. Those were Border Patrol
facilities.
Senator Johnson. I think out of your Department, last year
we got a memo that said of the millions, and nobody knows
exactly how many millions came in here, the wide open border. I
mean this is--I mean it's so out of whack. 650,000 people that
are at large in America have committed crimes. 15,000
murderers, 20,000 rapists. Mr. Bier, you're shaking your head.
Mr. Bier. They're not at large. The murderers are in
prison. They're in prison, where they should be.
Senator Johnson. They're not detained.
Mr. Bier. They're detained by the state. They're not
detained by ICE. They're in prisons ready to be deported. Now I
don't----
Senator Johnson. Ms. Vaughan, have you kept track of how
many people have been murdered, raped, victims of vehicular
homicide at the hands of somebody that the Biden administration
let in this country?
Ms. Vaughan. I wish there were a way to do that. But so
many law enforcement agencies do not keep track of the
immigration status of people in their custody. They don't want
to know.
Senator Johnson. Would you say it's in the hundreds?
Ms. Vaughan. Yes.
Senator Johnson. Thousands?
Ms. Vaughan. Yes.
Senator Johnson. Tens of thousands?
Ms. Vaughan. One data point that I do know is that at a
certain point a few years ago, ICE determined that there were
10,000 deportable criminal aliens who were released by
Sanctuary policies, who subsequently re-offended within 18
months.
Senator Johnson. So where is the outrage on the other side
of the aisle to those victims and their families? You know, we
had a hearing and in Homeland Security, and they were talking
about the trained activists. The number was very large I mean,
but I couldn't believe it.
Trained activists that are trained to basically interfere
and obstruct with the legal law enforcement actions. And I made
the comment, I can't imagine encouraging my supporters, first
of all, to get trained to obstruct justice much less than go
ahead and do it. Put yourself in harm's way, knowing people are
going to potentially get hurt.
Well, people did get hurt. Three people lost their lives,
and now the other side exploits those martyrs while they
completely ignore the thousands. Let's face it, it's thousands
of the Laken Rileys and those individuals, you know.
Where's the outrage to the crimes committed by that massive
wave? And of course, I didn't want to have to spend money on
ICE. But what are you going to do and trying to clean up this
mess? I mean it is difficult enough for you to clean up Obama's
mess. Try and clean up Biden's mess, and rather than getting
help from the other side, no.
They trained activists to obstruct trying to clean up that
mess. That's the reality of the situation. That's why I agree
and I appreciate this hearing. We have to end Sanctuary Cities,
because it's just another incentive, a massive incentive for
more illegal immigration. And the next time Democrats get in
power, they'll open it up again. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Graham. Senator Whitehouse.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR WHITEHOUSE
Senator Whitehouse. Thank you, Chairman. Let me first
observe for my colleagues here that ``Sanctuary City'' is a
political term. It's not a technical term as your own witness
has acknowledged, and it's important to get things right.
So I want to just describe what's happening in Rhode
Island. In Rhode Island, our federal district court has decided
that local and state police officers can be held liable if they
hold a person under an ICE detainer without a proper warrant,
that the warrant requirement actually applies. And particularly
when you're dealing with someone's freedom, detention. And that
decision is not a fluke. It has been upheld by the United
States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
So in my state, the district of Rhode Island from a federal
point of view, and in my circuit the United States Circuit
Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, it is binding law that
state and local officials who hold somebody under an ICE
detainer where ICE hasn't bothered to get a warrant, can be
held civilly liable. So we need to face that fact, because
that's actually binding federal law.
The second comment I want to make is about the behavior of
ICE agents when they operate in Rhode Island. Those of you on
the Judiciary Committee will remember me describing the set of
affairs to then Secretary Noem. So masked agents appear in the
Rhode Island Superior Court courthouse. They're operating in
violation of an agreement that they have with the Court not to
operate in that courthouse.
They are operating with cameras, in violation of a
courthouse rule that forbids taking photographs. They're
pursuing a 30 plus year-old individual who they have mixed up
with a high school intern who is interning for one of our state
court judges. The state court judge is going to take the intern
back to high school, so they walk out to the judge's car.
If the ICE agents hadn't bothered to figure out who the
judges were in the courthouse, when they got to the car, parked
in a judge's only spot, they had the information necessary to
deduce that this might be a judge. But rather than accept the
judge's representations that he was returning an intern to the
high school, I'll take out the full F-bomb because they used
the actual full word.
They told the judge ``We are going to smash your effing
windows and we're going to drag you out of your effing car if
you don't turn over this intern to us.'' And then they grabbed
the intern, and they took the him into another car for half an
hour and figured out that the high school intern was not the 30
plus year-old person they purported to be looking for.
Why would regular law enforcement, why would those sheriffs
in the courthouse want to cooperate with an agency whose
legal--whose law enforcement behavior is so wildly
irresponsible and unprofessional? It's hard to imagine. And
when I asked Secretary Noem about the problem of deconfliction,
I think pretty much everybody in law enforcement understands
what deconfliction is. Even if the state police aren't
cooperating with the Bristol Police, when they run in to do a
raid in Bristol, they will let the Bristol police know that
they're going to do a raid so that when calls come in about
cars in the street or people with guns or whatever, the local
police department know what's going on.
Deconfliction is elementary stuff that is taught to law
enforcement, and yet ICE refuses to deconflict and the
secretary didn't know the difference between deconfliction and
cooperation. So clearly there's a massive hole in the way in
which DHS thinks about this stuff, and it is in that
environment that I think a lot of sensible decisions are being
made by local police chiefs, about whether they want to
cooperate with an organization that behaves in unreasonable and
unprofessional ways, that threatens judges with violence and
that refuses to even give them the courtesy of deconflicting
when they're operating in their jurisdiction. Thank you,
Chairman.
Chairman Graham. Thank you. Senator Cornyn.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR CORNYN
Senator Cornyn. Well Mr. Chairman, I think President Trump
has done it again, exercising almost magical powers, turning
Democrats into budget hawks.
It's an amazing thing to behold, And of course they
reflexively oppose anything and everything that he proposes,
whether it's standing to honor law enforcement and public
safety and not illegal immigrants, whether it's eliminating the
threat of nuclear weapons and the number one state sponsor of
terrorism. They take the side of the state sponsor of
terrorism. It's just amazing to me to behold.
Sheriff, I was struck by the Ranking Member's introduction
to his comments. He said let the police be the police, and I
assume that would extend to other law enforcement officers like
you and the sheriffs and other folks who maintain public
safety. But is the collective role and job of law enforcement
officers like yourself to protect public safety?
Hon. Chapman. It is, and I think we all need to work
together. One of the things that was just left out of the
testimony just provided is the fact that communication is
important to this, and we work very well with our counterparts.
And a lot of times it's because of the chiefs are driven by
the politicians above them, that don't allow them to actually
work properly and cooperatively with our federal and other
local counterparts. When you have that level of communication,
you can work these issues out in advance before you have a
problem like, you know, what the Senator was just saying.
Senator Cornyn. Well, a lot of it boils down to
information-sharing; correct?
Hon. Chapman. That's correct.
Senator Cornyn. And even where in the Senator Whitehouse's
Circuit, the judges said that maybe local law enforcement can't
keep people beyond their jail sentence without some other
additional warrant.
Let me ask you to go out on a limb here a little bit. If
the two individuals who tragically died in Minneapolis, who
interfered with law enforcement operation by ICE, if there had
been the kind of cooperation that you demonstrate in Loudoun
County and the sort of cooperation that you've advocated for
here, do you think it's like more likely than not that those
two individuals will still be alive?
Hon. Chapman. Well, I can't really speak directly to that.
What I can tell you is that the cooperation that we've had
actually works well, and I do believe that that would have had
an impact there. When you're talking about 287(g) and again,
Senator Whitehouse's information, we have an agreement with ICE
and our people are trained in order to hold onto people for a
little bit up to 48 hours after they're incarcerated for a
completely separate offense with us, okay.
Senator Cornyn. That's a memorandum of understanding
between the feds and the local law enforcement?
Hon. Chapman. That's right. And that way they're already in
custody. All we got to do is turn them over. They don't only
have to come to the community to do--very often to do any
enforcement operations. So it actually works out well.
And to get on the front side of this and to have that level
of communication prevents that kind of thing. But if you have
politicians that are directing you to act in a particular way
it really, you know, really messes up the system here, and I
think that's largely the problem.
We all want to work together. We work with everybody. All
of our federal counterparts, all of our state and local
counterparts, which I believe is one of the reasons we got one
of the lowest crime rates in the entire country.
Senator Cornyn. And you have--as a result of that
cooperation, you haven't experienced any of the tragic
consequences that we saw in Minneapolis?
Hon. Chapman. We've actually had--before that, we actually
had people that were--had not been arrested by us that
committed crimes. But anybody that's been arrested by us and
turned over to ICE is not a problem. They're out of our hands.
Senator Cornyn. And Mr. Wolf, you were of course former
Secretary of Homeland Security, and our Democratic colleagues
say that they won't fund the Department of Homeland Security
and alleviate these long waiting periods that citizens are
experiencing at airports all around the country. They won't
fund the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), until
federal warrants are required.
Now will you explain how a final order of deportation is a
civil matter, and that requiring after that due process has
already been exhausted why requiring a criminal warrant would
be not only unnecessary, but also destructive of ICE's ability
to actually enforce immigration law?
Hon. Wolf. Absolutely. An alien will go before an
immigration judge through--towards the end of their pendency of
their hearing. They will go before an immigration judge and
they will rule on their case.
If they want to appeal that, they'll go to the Immigration
Board of Appeals and they could perhaps even appeal that
outside of that. And in every case a judge, through the due
process, they'll have an attorney with them through the due
process, says you don't have a legal right to remain in the
United States and it's time for you to self deport. It's time
for you to leave.
And we know, as I indicated earlier, about 1.6 million of
those individuals have said ``No. I'm going to defy that order.
I'm going to stay here in the United States. I don't want to go
back to my home country.''
And then ICE is coming in at the very end of this process,
enforcement removal officers, to effectuate that judge's order,
to understand and to remove that individual from the country.
And in some cases, they are in their house, and so they
have a final order of removal. They have reasonable suspicion
that that individual is in that house. They have likely
observed that individual go in and out of that house, and they
are there to remove that individual.
It's very different than a judicial warrant, where you're
just going into arrest someone who's then going into the due
process system, has to go before a judge, have their case
heard, all the facts. That is not as what is occurring when you
have a final order of removal.
Senator Cornyn. Thank you.
Chairman Graham. Senator Lujan.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR LUJAN
Senator Lujan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Everyone, thank
y'all for being here today. And I just want to begin by
reminding everyone this is the first hearing of the Budget
Committee in this Congress.
This is the first one, 13 months into this Congress. Oh,
you're saying second, sir? I appreciate that, Chairman. Second.
Voice. What was the first one?
Senator Lujan. Look. When we talk about what's happening to
constituents across the country right now, you'd think there'd
be some hearings about the high cost of everything. They're
detainers, 287. I certainly hope we get to that place.
But since we're here today and we're not talking about the
high cost of groceries or how expensive it's to get a birthday
cake for your kids, gas prices through the roof, housing
unaffordable, my Republican colleagues want to have a
conversation about the One Big Beautiful Bill that they passed,
which by the way we've now learned from the Congressional
Budget Office that the legislation increased the federal
deficit by $3.4 trillion. Trillion.
That's a lot of money, while failing to provide real relief
to middle and low income families. So, look. The proposal's
tied to the package and its broader agenda included cuts to
programs like food, like SNAP, providing support to millions of
working families just to put food on the table.
So as we sit here in the Senate Budget Committee, yes or
no, and my question is to Mr. Duke. Does focusing federal
attention on punishing so-called Sanctuary Cities meaningfully
address the affordability crisis Americans are facing?
Mr. Duke. No.
Senator Lujan. Does it lower health costs for a child with
diabetes?
Mr. Duke. No.
Senator Lujan. Does it make the gas that people put at a
gas station into their vehicles more affordable to get to work,
or does it make it more expensive?
Mr. Duke. It has nothing to do with gas.
Senator Lujan. Does it help a single mom afford to put food
on the table?
Mr. Duke. No.
Senator Lujan. Does it address the medical solvency issues
to make sure seniors can count on their benefits?
Mr. Duke. It addresses them by making them worse.
Senator Lujan. Does it help a young couple who wants to buy
a home and start a family maybe afford that house?
Mr. Duke. It does not help.
Senator Lujan. Well, what the hearing discusses does not
include anything that I just asked about, and the constituents
I've been talking to at home are saying when's Congress going
to get off their rears and do something about the prices that
we're hitting every day, as opposed to just protecting the
Epstein class and not demanding that these documents and
everything else get released?
So Mr. Wolf, you had responsibilities in a few of these
places, and I appreciate the responses you were providing to
one of my colleagues now about the process that you believe is
fair, that allows ICE agents to go into someone's house without
a judicial warrant. I just--it's hard for me to continue to
listen to justification on how American citizens can have their
homes broken into without a judicial warrant. I don't
understand this, that American citizens, it's okay for an
American citizen to have their windows on their car bashed in.
That's not okay, and with all these conversations about
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and some of these companies now
that are working with ICE for facial recognition, which I have
concerns about, what I don't understand now is how the
Department of Homeland Security has access to the best facial
recognition, AI.
DHS says they know who the violent criminals are. Their
words. They say they know who they are. And if they only had
access to facial recognition, they could go find all the
violent criminals. Well, why aren't they doing it? It's one
unanswered question after another. It's one American right
after another that is being torn apart, and there's
justification now to say we can pound in your door.
We can go in your house if you're an American citizen, or
we can bust out your windows and drag your butt out of a car as
an American citizen. I just don't get it, Mr. Chairman, and I
hope we have some hearings about getting answers to that,
because I think there's agreement between Democrats and
Republicans on this issue.
We don't want American citizens being treated this way.
None of us. We want to go after the violent criminals. We both
agree with this. I certainly hope that we can have a thorough
and thoughtful hearing and get some answers to that as well,
and that everyone agrees, stop doing that. Mr. President, tell
your folks to stop doing that.
I hope now that Senator Mullin, who's going to be Secretary
of Health or Homeland Security, maybe he'll get these people to
stop all the bad shit and to go after the bad people. Then
we'll be in a better place. Thank you for the time, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Graham. Thank you. Yeah. We'll have a hearing on
affordability and Ms. Vaughan, what percentage of a legal
immigrants in Sanctuary Cities or just in general receive
federal benefits?
Ms. Vaughan. I don't have numbers for specific Sanctuary
jurisdictions.
Chairman Graham. Yeah, just in general.
Ms. Vaughan. but nationally, it's more than 60 percent----
Chairman Graham. So more than 60 percent of illegal
immigrants receive federal benefits, and it has absolutely no
budget impact. Well, that's interesting. Senator Lee.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR LEE
Senator Lee. Thank you Mr. Chairman for holding this
hearing. Thanks to each of you for being here. I want to say at
the outset a couple of things. First, I'm not familiar with
many countries that are asked to simply ignore their own
immigration laws, separate and apart from their criminal laws,
just their own immigration laws.
Those countries that do exist or may have existed over time
don't remain countries very long, because things happen when
you don't enforce your own immigration laws. We don't have to
travel very far in our own continent or throughout Europe or
Asia or Africa, to see what would happen if one of us entered
one of those countries, took up residence there unlawfully. It
likely wouldn't end well for us.
I also want to observe that there's been several mentions
here today about the difference between state authority and
federal authority in reference to state's rights. I don't like
using the term state rights, not only because it conjures
George Wallace's image, also because it's inappropriate.
States don't have rights. Individuals have rights. States
have authority. It's the inverse polar opposite of a right. We
have parallel authority with parallel sovereign jurisdictions
in this country. The U.S. government, the one headquartered in
this city where we sit today, has authority over our
immigration laws, laws governing naturalization.
Who may enter the country, who may stay, under what terms
and conditions or for what period of time. We do need our
federal government to be able to undertake those efforts, to
perform those efforts well. We've adopted a number of
techniques to procure and encourage the cooperation of state
and local jurisdictions.
Sometimes those have been ignored, and that is unfortunate.
I'll get more to that in a moment. But look, we're exploring
something today that is not without cost. The cost of an
unsecured border, an unprecedented illegal immigration during
the four years of the Biden administration, remain both
stunning and debilitating.
The Trump administration, for its part, quite fortunately
has done a very effective job at securing the border and
beginning the process of deportations on a very large scale.
But there's a lot of work left to be done to deport the many
millions who remain in this country, for us to be able to
restore law and order, people who if they did immigrate to
almost any other country on Earth, would be in a whole lot of
trouble and would be facing those things.
And yet we're made to feel as if we would be doing the
wrong thing by enforcing our immigration laws as such. That
important work that's being done carried out every day by brave
men and women in federal law enforcement, continues to be
obstructed across the country, as radical leftists, who are
proudly, aggressively supporting Sanctuary Cities, are trying
to try to undermine the enforcement of federal law.
These Democrat-controlled state and local governments have,
in many instances, been working actively, aggressively through
these Sanctuary City policies to subvert not just federal law,
but the enforcement of federal law by duly sworn and authorized
federal law enforcement officials.
And they are trying to do one thing by enforcing the law,
which is to prioritize the well-being of American citizens and
the safety of the American homeland. This terrible reality that
we face is highly offensive to the citizens of the United
States, especially those who have done the work to immigrate to
this country legally and to do it the right way.
Now believe it or not, not that long ago, Democrats
supported and President Clinton himself signed into law the
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act,
commonly known as IIRIRA. That Act in expanded border
enforcement capabilities and helped bring immigration under
control at a time when illegal immigration to the United States
was far less frequent, far less of a large problem than it has
been in recent years.
In 2016, President Trump ran for President and was elected
on a promise to stop illegal immigration. Democrats intending
to oppose the President at every turn decided to depart in that
moment from their previous, more common sense position, and to
go all in on the belief that our nation should effectively have
no border at all, that borders are sort of aspirational
suggestions that we can look the other way on.
That brings us to the topic of today's hearing, the cost of
Sanctuary Cities. So what is that cost? Well, the cost is
clear. It is waste, fraud and abuse by illegal aliens who
shouldn't be within our borders. We saw this in Minnesota and
we've seen it elsewhere. The cost is clear more than anything
else.
It's the loss of human life, innocent human life. Innocent
American lives at the hands of illegal aliens, who have
perpetrated some of the most heinous attacks on innocent
American lives in recent memory. And these are entirely
preventable, entirely avoidable crimes, crimes that would not
have happened but for our open border policies facilitated by
Sanctuary Cities.
The cost is clear. It's also the increased additional
avoidable tax burden on state, local and federal taxpayers, who
are expected to subsidize and in fact are forced to subsidize
problematic social welfare programs that illegal aliens have
obtained eligibility for through fraudulent means or various
loopholes, to say nothing of the education system, which
because of a Supreme Court ruling in Plyler v. Doe four and a
half decades ago, states are also forced, by no choice of their
own, to supply that additional benefit as well.
So, look. The cost is clear. It's all over the place. We
can't ignore it, and by continuing to ignore it, we create
additional problems. Let's not dress this up as something that
it is not and never can be. Thank you.
Chairman Graham. Mr. Padilla.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR PADILLA
Mr. Padilla. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to echo the
sentiment that several of my colleagues have mentioned earlier
in this hearing, in more than just being surprised that this is
well, I guess the second hearing for this Congress, but the
first of this calendar year.
It is not about the federal budget, not about an economic
outlook. But I understand why the Republican majority wouldn't
want to talk about that, not while gas prices are spiking
because of an unauthorized war against Iran. Instead, we're
here to discuss how off base this whole Sanctuary conversation
really is.
Now I know it's an area of passion for the Chairman. We've
debated Sanctuary policies on the floor of the Senate. As I've
objected to the legislation he has presented that would promote
federal overreach, in my opinion. I think part of my
frustration comes from the fact that there's a fundamental
misunderstanding about what Sanctuary policies are and what
Sanctuary policies are not.
Sanctuary policies do not mean that there are no laws in
Sanctuary cities or states. They do not keep ICE and other
federal agencies from entering a city or a state to arrest
violent criminals as they're released from prison. Sanctuary
policy simply affirm that immigration enforcement is the job of
the federal government, and that the federal government cannot
unilaterally decide to co-opt state and local authorities or
their resources, precious resources in carrying out these
responsibilities.
True, there's some states and local jurisdictions who may
choose to coordinate, collaborate, but there's many who don't
for their justifiable reasons. It means carrying out
immigration enforcement activities is ICE's purview, while
respecting state and local law enforcement agencies to make
their own decisions about how to focus and direct their limited
resources that they deem best protects and serves their
constituents.
It means prohibiting federal overreach through policies
that have been upheld by the courts. And so I'm glad several of
my Republican colleagues are here to listen me to me quote
Justice Scalia in the case Prince v. United States.
``The federal government may neither issue directives,
require the states to address particular problems, nor command
the states'' officers or those of their political subdivisions
to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program.''
Look, folks. We can have disagreements on policy, but the
fundamental misunderstanding about what Sanctuary policies are
has led to the promotion of enforcement actions across the
country that have become damaging to our communities and to our
local economies.
So it seems to me that this debate has not really been
about public safety, because if it were, we could also be
talking about how the data shows that Sanctuary policies
actually make communities safer, healthier and more prosperous.
That's right. The evidence shows, the research shows
Sanctuary jurisdictions have lower crime rates, higher meeting
household income, less poverty, less reliance on public
assistance, higher labor force participation and lower
unemployment.
That's right. Seems like Sanctuary cities are helping to
make America great. I said it. So let's stop perpetuating the
lies. Let's ensure that ICE and United States Customs and
Border Protection (CBP) agents are accountable and conduct
their jobs in accordance with the law and the Constitution.
Let's allow local law enforcement leaders to do what they deem
is best for public safety.
And Mr. Chairman, just so you know that I'm not
exaggerating in my claims, I'd like to submit for the record
articles and reports from researchers at the University of
Texas-Austin, from the Center for American Progress, from the
University of Arizona, University of North Carolina and the
American Immigration Council.\9\
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\9\ Documents submitted by Senator Padilla appears in the appendix
on page 136.
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Chairman Graham. I have no objection.
Senator Padilla. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Graham. Senator Kennedy.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR KENNEDY
Senator Kennedy. Secretary Wolf, thank you for your
service. Why in your opinion do so many, not all, but so many
of my Democratic colleagues believe in open borders?
Hon. Wolf. Well, that's a good question. I think it's a
couple of different fronts. One, it would be they don't believe
in immigration law. They don't like enforcement, they don't
like removing of individuals.
Senator Kennedy. What else?
Hon. Wolf. And they believe that--there are some that
believe that anyone and everyone should be able to come to the
U.S., whether they apply for protections under what else U.S.
law or not.
Senator Kennedy. What else?
Hon. Wolf. And then there are some probably that would like
to see more voters in the U.S. as well.
Senator Kennedy. Ms. Vaughan, some of my colleagues for
whom I have great respect, believe that the 10th Amendments,
the 10th Amendment allows local governments to ignore federal
immigration law and implement Sanctuary policy.
The Supreme Court has ruled that racial quotas represent a
pernicious form of racial discrimination. Can local governments
ignore that ruling under the 10th Amendment?
Ms. Vaughan. Well, the 10th Amendment is about----
Senator Kennedy. And can they--answer my question, please.
Ms. Vaughan. The 10th Amendment is about commandeering, and
so it's not really appropriate to this because----
Senator Kennedy. Is the answer yes or no, ma'am?
Ms. Vaughan. Could you ask me again because I don't
understand the relevance to--I'm sorry, because ICE is not
asking them----
Senator Kennedy. Secretary Wolf, you heard my question.
Under the guise of the 10th Amendment, can local governments
ignore Supreme Court ruling?
Hon. Wolf. I don't believe they can.
Senator Kennedy. Okay. Women have the right to vote in
America by statute and by Constitutional interpretation. Under
the guise of the 10th Amendment, can local governments just
ignore that and prohibit women from voting?
Hon. Wolf. No.
Senator Kennedy. Mr. Duke, you worked for President Biden
and Vice President Harris, didn't you?
Mr. Duke. Yes.
Senator Kennedy. And I listened carefully to your testimony
today. You expressed--well, you offered the opinion that the
One Big Beautiful Bill is terrible in part because it will
cause deficits. Is that, is that right?
Mr. Duke. Yes.
Senator Kennedy. Isn't it a fact that the profligacy of
President Biden caused nine percent inflation in America?
Mr. Duke. No.
Senator Kennedy. Okay. Isn't it a fact that if President
Biden had discovered life on Mars when he was president, he
would have immediately sent it money?
Mr. Duke. I don't believe so.
Senator Kennedy. Oh, you don't? Okay. Well, I appreciate
your newly found fiscal conservatism.
Mr. Bier, you seem to be a very smart guy and you seem to
be a nice enough guy.
Mr. Bier. Thank you, Senator. You seem smart as well.
Chairman Graham. I object. [Laughter]
Senator Kennedy. Don't, don't you----
Mr. Bier. That was the Chairman, not me.
Senator Kennedy. Don't you think your hyperbolic statements
undermine your credibility?
Mr. Bier. What hyperbolic statement did I make?
Senator Kennedy. On February the 11th, 2026, you posted on
Bluesky, quote--my words or your words, not mine. ``The
Democrats'' video telling service members to ignore illegal
orders didn't go far enough. They should have also urged them
to refuse unethical orders, whether illegal or not. There are
many things deemed legal that are still obviously unethical and
everyone should hold themselves to this higher law.'' Did I
read that correctly?
Mr. Bier. I believe you did. Do you disagree with it? Do
you think people should do unethical things in their capacity
as----
Senator Kennedy. On December the 31st of 2025, you posted
to in front of----
Mr. Bier. But wait, wait. Do you disagree with----
Senator Kennedy. But wait, let me finish my question, sir.
In front of God and country. You said ``They,'' referring to
Republicans, ``think they can troll their way into us accepting
ethnic cleansing.'' Your words, not mine. Did I read that
correctly?
Mr. Bier. That was in regard to a Department of Homeland
Security----
Senator Kennedy. Did I read that correctly?
Mr. Bier [continuing]. Post about advocating 100 million
deportations. That is what DHS has tweeted from their own
account.----
Senator Kennedy. Truth hurts, doesn't it?
Mr. Bier [continuing]. 100 million deportations would be
ethnic cleansing. You would be removing----
Senator Kennedy. Truth hurts, doesn't it?
Mr. Bier [continuing]. One-third of the country. So yes,
there are people within the Department of Homeland Security----
Senator Kennedy. Truth can just gut you like a fish. And
you don't think this is hyperbolic? Give me 30 more seconds.
Mr. Bier. I think advocating 100 million deportations is
ethnic cleansing.
Senator Kennedy. I'm having fun, Mr. Chairman. On February
5th, you said the following on Bluesky.
Mr. Bier. Your time is up.
Senator Kennedy. ``These are all good. But there's no
enforcement mechanism.'' I'm sorry. Let me try a better one.
On March 2nd, you said ``If you rule against Trump's
population purge agenda,'' no hyperbole there, ``The nativists
will name you, threaten you and come after you. These judges
are much braver than the ICE agents who hide behind masks while
violating the Constitution.''
Mr. Bier. They are much braver. They put their names on
their rulings, and they stand behind their Constitutional
rulings. When I talk about population purge, I'm talking about
the fact that they're trying to deport U.S.-born citizens,
people born here. They are trying to deport them as well.
So it's not a mass deportation agenda. It is also an agenda
intended to reduce the population of the United States,
including U.S.-born people----
Chairman Graham. Thank, thank you.
Mr. Bier [continuing]. So these are not hyperbolic
statements. I appreciate you reading my account. I appreciate
your concerns.
Senator Kennedy. What planet did you just----
Chairman Graham. Wait, wait, wait.
Senator Kennedy. Wait a minute, Mr. Chairman. What planet
did you just parachute from?
Chairman Graham. No, no, no. Hey guys.
Senator Kennedy. You trigger my gag reflex, Mr. Bier.
Chairman Graham. So we got a process here, and it's good to
know you don't have an agenda. Senator Kaine.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR KAINE
Senator Kaine. Mr. Chair, thanks for doing this, and
Sheriff, welcome. I've got a Virginian at the table and that's
why I wanted to come. My sheriff in his testimony said ``It is
important to distinguish criminal aliens who pose a threat to
our community from immigrants here legally.''
All of us agree with that. We should try to find that
balance. I don't think we're balanced right now. I've been here
13 years. I wish we'd have a hearing about the positive impact
immigrants make on the United States. We've never had that
hearing in this Committee or the Health, Education, Labor and
Pension (HELP) Committee or any others. When we have hearings,
it's about immigrants doing bad things rather than about----
Chairman Graham. When y'all were in charge, why didn't you
have them?
Senator Kaine. Well, can I take my time? Can I take my
time? Because I think what happens, I think what happens----
Chairman Graham. You get a whole minute more.
Senator Kaine [continuing]. When the only hearings about
immigrants are about crime, and we have a President who calls
people's countries shithole countries. I got a lot of
immigrants in the United States and in Virginia who feel like
they're being targeted.
And let's talk about positives. I'm going to use Loudoun as
an example. The sheriff is rightly proud of Loudoun County.
420,000 people in the last census. It's probably coming up to
450 now. It is not only one of the safest jurisdictions in the
United States, it's also by recent count the wealthiest county
in the United States.
And guess what? 25 percent of the population and climbing
is immigrant. 25 percent. Safe, economically successful
immigrant. And I also applaud this Sheriff's Department. If you
have something to do or if you don't have something to do on
Halloween sometime, go to the Halloween parade in Leesburg and
you'll see the Sheriff's deputies helping order and they all
wear uniforms with their names on them. None of them wear
masks.
The county's been an innovator in body camera, in body
camera use. Wow. What a novel concept. I like the
professionalism that I see with your Sheriff's Department, and
I think we could use it at the federal level.
Here's an issue about Sanctuary Cities in the Trump
administration. DHS--Mr. Chair, you might like this one. DHS in
May put out a list of Sanctuary cities and they included 34
Virginia communities, cities and counties on that list. It
provoked laughter in Virginia.
There were cities that were not cities but counties. There
were counties that were not counties, but cities. There were
jurisdictions that have virtually no immigrants whatsoever
listed as Sanctuary communities. Here was my favorite, the city
of Duffield, Virginia.
Now, if you don't know where Duffield is, you're not alone.
Scott County, deep in Appalachia, 0.6 square miles, 76 people,
not a single immigrant, not even a police department. Sanctuary
City. Virginia laughed the DHS out of the office. And so in
October, this was in August. I'm sorry, this was in May.
In August, United States Department of Justice (DOJ) came
back and did a new list, number of Sanctuary Cities in
Virginia, zero. They redid the list in October. Number of
Sanctuary Cities in Virginia, zero. Mr. Chair, I'd like to
introduce DHS's bogus Sanctuary Cities list into the
record.\10\
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\10\ Document submitted by Senator Kaine appears in the appendix on
page 132.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chairman Graham. Without objection.
Senator Kaine. And then Mr. Chair, my last question is,
look. I'm not on Judiciary, and the bill that you have about
imposing liability on local officials would suggest that the
only fault in this area lies on local officials.
Now if you have a markup, it'll be in Judiciary. And I'm
not on it, but my question is sort of for you. Isn't what's
good for the goose, good for the gander? What about all the
times when I was governor of Virginia, 2006-2010, and my DOC,
Department of Corrections or local law enforcement, told ICE
and the federal immigration agencies, three years under
President Bush, one year under President Obama that ``Hey,
we've got somebody here who is not lawfully here. Please come
pick them up, and ICE didn't show up.''
And ICE still is not showing up. So often the bad examples,
including one of the ones in Fairfax recently, repeated
instances of ICE having this person in their purview, in their
grasp and then letting them go. So wouldn't it be--I mean if
you're going to do a bill and and blame cities for this, and
try to impose liability on their local taxpayers?
What about letting people sue ICE, when hard-working local
officials and sheriffs let folks know ``Hey, we got folks here
that, you know, are here unlawfully. Come pick them up.'' And
when they don't come pick them up, shouldn't they be liable for
that?
Chairman Graham. Maybe that's something we could do
together. Sounds like a pretty good idea to me. Be glad to work
with you.
I think those days were probably over with this
administration. But the idea that the federal government had
notice and the local community is willing to turn them over and
they turned a blind eye and somebody got hurt, I would be
willing definitely to create liability there.
Senator Kaine. And I'll just conclude Mr. Chair and say,
you know, the mayor in me, the governor in me gets mad when
things like this get blamed on mayors and governors, when often
it's complete dysfunction at the federal level under multiple
administrations. That's the real culprit. I yield back.
Chairman Graham. Right. The lawyer in me wants to hold
people accountable who create problems. Senator Scott.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR SCOTT
Senator Scott. Thank you, Chairman. Thanks for holding this
important hearing. The United States is a nation of law and
order. Those two things go hand in hand because when you have
laws that are obeyed, you have order in your communities. But
for too long, liberal states and cities have decided to simply
ignore the federal laws they don't agree with.
When I was the governor of Florida, I didn't have to worry
about our sheriffs not enforcing law but President Trump and
our federal law enforcement have to worry about that every day.
The American people voted very clearly to secure the border.
That's what the election was about, and stop illegal
immigration we're a country of legal immigration, not illegal
immigration.
And without a single new law being enacted, President Trump
has delivered and secured the border when President Biden said
he couldn't do it. President Trump and the heroic men and women
of our ICE and border patrol are enforcing our laws and they're
securing our nation and the crime rate is down.
But some Americans say no, we won't follow federal law. We
want to be a Sanctuary for people who broke the law to enter
our country illegally. It is a violation. It's against the law
to come into our country illegally, like most countries. It's
dangerous. It's costly to the American taxpayer and has
horrific consequences. That's why I and my colleague on this
Committee, Senator Moreno, have introduced two bills to curb
this kind of dangerous disregard for the law.
Our unifying American Security Interest Act and Sanctuary
Jurisdiction Event Security Enhancement Act, which stopped DHS
funding grants and financial assistance from going to cities
and jurisdictions that refuse to support our ICE and DHS agents
in their efforts to keep our streets safe.
Americans clearly don't want their tax dollars used for
handouts to illegal aliens for health care or food stamps while
we have American citizens here at home who are going without.
And that's exact kind of waste and financial mismanagement that
these bills will stop.
But that's just the financial cost. Let's talk about the
human costs. Laken Riley, a nursing student, 22 years old in
Georgia was beaten with a rock and strangled by a Venezuelan
illegal alien, who had been caught at the border and released
under Biden's Open Borders rules.
Rachel Morin, 37 of Maryland, a mother of five who was
raped and murdered while hiking by a Salvadorian criminal alien
who crossed our border illegally, not once, not twice, but
three times under Biden. Kate Steinle, 32, died in her father's
arms on a San Francisco pier after being shot by a five-time
Mexican deportee, who was allowed to roam freely because the
city's Sanctuary policy led local officials to ignore an ICE
detainer.
These are just a few of the many lives cut short in the
potential unrealized lives because of Biden's Open Borders,
that allowed dangerous people to come into this country, and
the Sanctuary Cities that chose to support and encourage these
criminals.
I'm from Florida. We are an immigration state, legal
immigration. We don't support illegal immigration.
Sheriff Chapman, my question. How can open borders and lax
immigration policies like a Sanctuary Cities be considered
humane by Democrats if they fail to protect the very citizens,
Democrats and other elected officials are meant to serve, and
they're under oath of office to serve.
Hon. Chapman. Well, I agree with that. I mean the most
important thing is for us to keep safety, keep our people safe
and we've got to do everything in our power, and that includes
working with everybody. I make that point all the time to my
constituents, saying ``Look. We want to work with all of our
federal counterparts. We all have different missions here,
different cogs in the wheel. But we all have to work together
to keep everybody safe.''
Senator Scott. Is it better for you if you turn somebody, a
criminal over to ICE, rather than let them back into the
community?
Hon. Chapman. Absolutely, absolutely.
Senator Scott. Mr. Wolf, in Sanctuary Cities, local
authorities can decline ICE detainers, which means that
criminals are released back in the community rather than
transferred safely into ICE custody.
This creates opportunities for illegal fugitives to
relocate or re-offend, like in the tragic murder of Kate
Steinle. It also forces DHS officers to go into neighborhoods
to root out violent criminals. Not only does this cost the
taxpayer more; it also increases the risk for everyone
involved, including bystanders, DHS officers and potential
future victims.
How do these policies prioritize offenders over American
victims by obstructing deportations?
Hon. Wolf. Well, when ICE is required to go into a
community, out on the streets, right, instead of going into
that jail setting and picking up that criminal illegal alien;
it'll take one or two officers to go into a jail setting.
If they have to go into their neighborhood, it's going to
take 15 to 20 officers to apprehend that same individual.
You're putting not only the officers at risk, you're putting
that alien at risk and you're putting others in that community
at risk.
So the idea here, and it's an ironic kind of play here, is
that individuals and politicians that want less ICE in their
jurisdictions, they will give them Sanctuary policies to say
``We want ICE out.'' But in fact, it just requires them to be
more in their communities because they won't go into a jail
setting.
They have to go into their neighborhoods. They have to
continue to enforce immigration law. So if your idea is I want
to see less ICE in my community, I don't like immigration
enforcement, let them into your jail. Let them pick up those
criminal illegal aliens. Otherwise, they're going to be out on
your streets because they have to continue to enforce
immigration law.
And of course, it's better with local law enforcement
support and cooperation. But again, in many jurisdictions,
Sanctuary jurisdictions, we don't see that either.
Senator Scott. Thank you, Chairman.
Chairman Graham. Senator Moreno.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR MORENO
Senator Moreno. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A quick question
for all of you. You can just do a very simple if it's okay, yes
or no. I'm going to try to ask it as a simple yes or no
question. Are you familiar with U.S.C. 1325?
Hon. Wolf. Yes.
Hon. Chapman. No.
Ms. Vaughan. Yes.
Mr. Bier. Yes.
Mr. Duke. No.
Senator Moreno. You're not. Okay. So the law passed the
1952 is the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA). It talked
about how the country controls immigration.
Mr. Wolf, we'll start with you. Do you think that we made a
mistake passing that law, that prohibits people from entering
this country illegally?
Hon. Wolf. No, I don't think that's a mistake.
Senator Moreno. Sheriff, do you believe we made a mistake
passing that law?
Hon. Chapman. No, I don't think so.
Senator Moreno. Ms. Vaughan?
Ms. Vaughan. No.
Senator Moreno. Mr. Bier?
Mr. Bier. It was a mistake to not let them come legally.
That's what we need.
Senator Moreno. But that's not what the law said.
The law said you can't enter the country illegally. Was
that a----
Mr. Bier. There were definitely mistakes in the INA, many
mistakes.
Senator Moreno. Was that part--don't be cute. Was that part
of the law a mistake, yes or no?
Mr. Bier. The part of the law that says you can't come
legally? Yes, that was a mistake.
Senator Moreno. That was a mistake, that you can't come
illegally?
Mr. Bier. No, legally. Legally is what I said.
Senator Moreno. Okay. So you haven't answered to my
question. But that's okay. You're a smug guy and that's part of
your shtick. How about you?
Mr. Duke. I don't know anything about this law.
Senator Moreno. Do you think it should be a crime to enter
the country illegally?
Mr. Duke. I don't know anything about this. I'm here to
talk about budgets.
Senator Moreno. Well, no, no. You don't have to--look, I'm
not a lawyer. You don't have to be a lawyer. It's a simple
question. Should it be a crime? I'll say it slowly. Should it
be a crime to enter the United States of America illegally
without permission?
Mr. Duke. I don't know anything about that.
Senator Moreno. Do you have a home?
Mr. Duke. I rent.
Senator Moreno. Do you have a place that you sleep in?
Mr. Duke. Yes, correct. Okay. Should it be a crime for
people to enter your home without permission?
Mr. Duke. Yes.
Senator Moreno. You're pretty certain on that one?
Mr. Duke. Yes.
Senator Moreno. Okay. But you're not sure if it's okay to
enter America without permission. Which is our home, by the
way.
You don't know about America? Okay. Gotcha. All right. So
this is the best the Democrats can come up with Mr. Chairman. I
hope the Ranking Member can listen for just a second, if you
don't mind. This is the best witnesses you've got?
A guy who can't distinguish whether it's okay to have
people enter our country illegally. Of all the millions of
people that you could have chosen to testify----
Senator Merkley. To my good colleague----
Senator Moreno. Oh, let me finish. The best you have is a
guy who has no idea what our immigration law is and isn't sure
if somebody should enter the country illegally.
Another guy is a smug guy who obviously has an agenda.
And in fact, let me just ask you a question, because I
was----
Senator Merkley. Maybe you can maybe stick to the facts,
instead of badgering the witnesses.
Senator Moreno. I'm not badgering the witnesses.
Senator Merkley. Well, you're attacking them.
Senator Moreno. I'm asking simple questions.
Senator Merkley. Yeah, why don't you ask some actual
factual questions?
Senator Moreno. But why don't you do this? Why don't you
speak when it's your turn? Oh, because we actually take turns.
Senator Merkley. You're addressing me, so I am addressing
you back.
(Simultaneous discussion.)
Senator Merkley. You're looking right at me. You're
addressing me.
Senator Moreno. Because here's what I find out ironic, is
that you follow rules here about speaking order. People can't
speak out of turn, but it's okay with you that people enter our
country and skip their turn. See----
Senator Merkley. Oh, now you're attributing views to me I
haven't expressed. Isn't that interesting?
Senator Moreno. What I would love to find interesting----
Senator Merkley. Not only are you attacking the witnesses,
now you're attacking your colleagues here on the dais, which I
think is very inappropriate.
Chairman Graham. Gentlemen, gentlemen. Wait a minute. I'm
in charge.
Senator Moreno. Yes, sir.
Chairman Graham. You ask him a question.
Senator Moreno. Yes.
Chairman Graham. He'll get a chance to answer that
question. Finish your time.
Senator Moreno. Thank you. All right, moving on to the next
question, Mr. Sheriff. How important is it for local law
enforcement to cooperate with federal officials?
Hon. Chapman. I can tell you it's worked for us, and it's
kept our crime rate down extraordinarily low.
Senator Moreno. So if somebody is in your position in
Hamilton County, which is the county where Cincinnati is with
the Cincinnati Chief of Police, would you advise them that you
think it's helpful to cooperate with law enforcement?
Hon. Chapman. Absolutely.
Senator Moreno. Okay. Do you find it interesting that
politicians who have no idea, no background in law enforcement,
will pass laws that prohibit law enforcement to cooperate with
federal officials, local law enforcement? Do you think that's a
good idea?
Hon. Chapman. No, it's not a good idea.
Senator Moreno. It's a terrible idea. Do you have death
threats against your sheriff deputies on a regular basis?
Hon. Chapman. We get threats. Not that often, but we do.
Senator Moreno. Constant, constant death threats or do you
get constant?
Hon. Chapman. Not constant death threats, but we do get
threats, yes.
Senator Moreno. Do you have drug cartels that have bounties
out for your deputies?
Hon. Chapman. No. No, we don't.
Senator Moreno. Do you get your agent's doxed, where they
go to your agent's--your deputies' homes and threaten their
children and their wives and their kids?
Hon. Chapman. No, we have not.
Senator Moreno. Do you get politicians that call your
deputies Gestapo and Nazis?
Hon. Chapman. We've had certainly politicians, not locally
here, but certainly we've had a lot of people in the community
that have said that.
Senator Moreno. Do you find any of that helpful when
talking about law enforcement agencies? Because see, here's the
irony. What we're disparaging is the people whose job it is to
enforce the laws.
And I find it extraordinarily interesting that the people
in charge of making these laws are disparaging the people who
are enforcing those laws.
And I wonder and I'll ask for the record if the minority
witnesses could just sign an affidavit that they have not
received any money, and the organization that they work for or
participate in from any organizations tied to the Mexican drug
cartels, which would have an absolute incentive to have illegal
migration at the levels that we saw under Biden?
Chairman Graham. If you have any reason----
Mr. Bier. We haven't accepted any drug cartel money.
Senator Moreno. Again, if they could just put that in
affidavit or an affiliated organization.
Chairman Graham. You okay, Mr. Duke?
Mr. Duke. I'd like to look at the affidavit.
Chairman Graham. Okay, fair enough. But do you know if
you've accepted any money?
Mr. Duke. I do not know of anything like that.
Chairman Graham. Right. Yeah, sure. Okay. Thank you. All
right. So good hearing. Senator Merkley, I'll let you go first.
I'll have a few words, then we'll go vote.
Senator Merkley. Well, let's start with the Gang of Eight
that my colleague referred to from 2013. Democrats and
Republicans came together, four and four. They crafted a bill
on immigration.
It was all about the rule of law on the border. Democrats
and Republicans together saying the rule of law matters, and it
addressed many of the immigration challenges that we have in
different sectors, be it employment, agriculture, a path to
citizenship for people who'd been here a long time, a path to
citizenship for Dreamers, Democrats and Republicans together.
So one of the myths we've heard today from some of my
colleagues is that Democrats don't support the rule of law.
Absolutely wrong. What happened to that 2013 bill that went
over to the House of Representatives controlled by Republicans,
they would not even hold a hearing on it.
They wanted to keep an open sore of immigration as a
political issue. In 2024, Democrats and Republican Senate came
together again, crafted a deal and it was President Trump as a
candidate who said ``Don't do it. I want to keep immigration as
an election issue.''
So I just think it would be more productive if we quit
casting aspersions across the aisle, and go back to the
philosophy of 2013 and work together to actually get a bill
done, or the philosophy of 2024. And certainly all of us agree
in going after violent criminals.
That's the second myth that was presented today that people
don't support going after violent criminals. Absolutely a myth,
and it's just irritating to continuously hear that.
Myth number three from one of my colleagues was that
Democrats won't fund FEMA. In fact, last week in the Senate we
asked unanimous consent to fund FEMA and the Coast Guard and
Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and it was the
Republicans that objected. So let's clear up that piece.
The next myth, that is that undocumented individuals
receive benefits. It is illegal under the law for undocumented
individuals to receive Medicaid or Medicare or Children's
Health Insurance Program (CHIP) or SNAP or Social Security
benefits.
Another myth, that states that have decided that local
police are more effective being local police, somehow attract
immigrants because they're not held accountable to the law.
They are held accountable to the law. In fact, you have lower
crime rates in those states. So that's kind of interesting.
And in fact, we see that some states like Texas, they have
50 percent more undocumented immigrants as a ratio of
population than Oregon does. So clearly it's not Oregon's
policies that say we're more effective and safer and more
prosperous when ICE does ICE and local police do local police
work.
And yet another myth. One of my colleagues across the aisle
said ``States do not have powers.'' He says they do not have
rights. But they do have powers, the 10th Amendment. The powers
not delegated to the U.S. by the Constitution are reserved to
the states and to the people.
And that is why the federal government cannot commandeer
individuals in the states to do federal responsibilities. It's
called the Constitution of the United States of America.
Another myth was that it's less safe in states where local
police do local police work. There's many statistics that show
the opposite of that. But let's just take for example, where is
the highest murder rate in America? Is it in a state where
local police are assigned to local police?
No. It's Mississippi. Who's the second highest murder rate?
Louisiana. How is the murder rate in Oregon? It is one-fourth
of what is in those states. So let's be clear again. This myth
that you have higher crime rates in places where the local
police gain the trust of the people, work carefully between
state and local and with federal officials, but they don't do
the work of ICE.
And if ICE knows that someone is in a jail, and they know
because it's in the federal database and the FBI database and
they want that person, it only takes a couple days to go get a
judicial warrant and pick that person up. Every time there's a
judicial warrant, that person is held.
So if it's just being lazy or sloppy or whatever else,
there's a whole lot of misinformation coming forward here that
needed to be corrected.
Chairman Graham. Well, thank you very much. I have a
different view of things. I really appreciate the hearing.
Obama deported three million people. I don't think all of them
were criminals. They didn't use judicial warrants. What you're
trying to do is make it impossible to deport people.
If you have to go to a judge and get a judicial warrant to
deport somebody, you effectively destroy the ability to deport.
You're denying Trump the same system you are giving Obama. This
hearing to me is stunning. I'm so glad we had it. You're all in
on Sanctuary City policy.
If you're looking to America, if you're looking for anybody
to change this system, our Democratic friends have no interest.
They think it's good for America. The more illegal immigrants,
the better. I don't. I'd like to have a rational immigration
system.
Gang of Eight. I was involved in it. What we tried to do is
stop future flow and the trade-off was to give people a pathway
to citizenship, knowing you would stop future flow. You're
right. The House blocked the bill during 20 to 2020--from 2020
to 2024, Joe Biden destroyed every concept of rational
immigration.
He made it impossible for a Republican to sit down and talk
with a Democrat, because during his four years, he took every
rule and ignored it. There are no taxpayer dollars associated
with legal immigrants. They were flown into the country on
airplanes. They were bussed in, they were fed, they were given
housing.
11 million people are not living in the streets. They're in
some apartment or a house somewhere, and if you don't think
that affects housing, that's crazy. 11 million people came at
least in a four-year period, and to hear you say it, no impact
on this country, that's just absurd.
So what are we going to do? We're going to try to start
with the magnets. If you don't think Sanctuary City policy is a
magnet for future illegal immigration, that's just insane. How
can you fix it if you don't take the magnets off the table?
The bottom line is I want a vote on my bill to hold local
and state officials accountable for violating federal law, when
they should enforce it like they did during Obama, and you
won't let me have a vote. You won't let me have the debate. The
reason you don't want to vote is because 70 to 80 percent of
the American public think the policies you're pushing are
harmful.
There is a budget impact to being overrun in a country in a
four-year period. To think this is not a problem is insulting
to the American people. It is a problem, and you try to
rationalize it and make it a good thing. It's not a good thing.
It's a bad thing. At the end of the day, if you can't answer
the question ``It should be a crime to come into the country
illegally,'' that says all you really need to know about the
people here.
Of course it should be. It should be a crime as Senator
Moreno said, to go in your house without being invited. We
cannot have a sovereign nation when people just show up and
come in and go anywhere they want to go. That's just not
rational.
We've got more people on the terrorist watch list than
we've ever had, 2,700 percent. The people who have come here
are all not well-meaning. I understand immigration pretty well.
I understand the need to fix it. The American people want to be
fair.
But Senator Merkley, they're not going to buy into a system
that constantly allows people to come in unchecked. Once you
can prove to them you've stopped illegal immigration, then we
could have a rational discussion about what to do with people
who have been here a long time.
But you've doubled or tripled the number of people. So all
I'm going--all I will say, this is a debate worthy of a great
nation. Our Democratic friends are accepting of a Sanctuary
policy. They don't think it's a problem. I do. Let's have a
debate. Let's have a vote.
This will be good for the country going into 2026, as to
who should be in charge of controlling our borders and
enforcing law. This administration is enforcing the law.The
prior administration obliterated the law. Thank you very much
to all of you for coming. I appreciate your time and attention.
Senator Merkley, thank you. The hearing's adjourned and oh, one
second. I want to introduce a statement. Yeah, you didn't
finish up.
Donald Rosenberg was unable to be here. I'd like to put his
statement in the record. He represents Victims of Illegal Alien
Crime. Without objection I'd like to introduce this statement
if that's okay. Is that okay? \11\
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\11\ Statement submitted by Chairman Graham appears in the appendix
on page 107.
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Senator Merkley. Yes.
Chairman Graham. Thank you. I want to thank our witnesses
for appearing before the Committee. You want to finish your
thought? Go ahead.
Senator Merkley. Mr. Bier, you have a pile of documents
that you want to enter into the record. What are those
documents?
Chairman Graham. Without objection.
Mr. Bier. These are all the studies that show that
immigrants do not increase crime, and places that place
restrictions on ICE cooperation are not resulting in an
increase in crime.\12\
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\12\ Documents submitted by Mr. Bier appears in the appendix on
page 181.
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Chairman Graham. Without objection.
Senator Merkley. Thank you.
Chairman Graham. Okay. The hearing record will remain open
until noon tomorrow for the submission of questions to the
record to the Committee Clerk. The hearing is adjourned. Thank
you all very, very much.
(Whereupon, at 12:24 p.m., Tuesday, March 10, 2026, the
hearing was adjourned.)
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