[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 144 (Thursday, September 7, 2017)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1173]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES 
                        APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2018

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                               speech of

                     HON. ROBERT C. ``BOBBY'' SCOTT

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, September 6, 2017

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the state of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 3354) making 
     appropriations for the Department of the Interior, 
     environment, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending 
     September 30, 2018, and for other purposes:

  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Chair, I rise in support of Amendment No. 
66, offered by Representative Jayapal, to strike the $535 million 
increase for ICE enforcement and instead add $30 million to ICE's 
Office of the Inspector General and $10 million to DHS's Office of 
Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. This additional oversight funding 
would support investigations of sexual assault in immigration detention 
as mandated by the Prison Rape Elimination Act.
  The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) was passed in 2003 as a result 
of a remarkable bipartisan effort led by Congressman Frank Wolf and 
myself in the House and Senators Jeff Sessions and Ted Kennedy in the 
Senate.
  Ten years after passage of PREA, in 2014, DHS finalized regulations 
to comply with PREA. This year, 2017, is the first in which DHS is 
instituting those regulations by auditing its facilities for 
compliance.
  We must aid DHS in its efforts to investigate and prevent sexual 
abuse. According to the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at DHS, 
during the two-year period from May 2014 to July 2016, it received over 
1,000 complaints from detainees reporting sexual abuse or assault. The 
Office of Inspector General investigated only 24 of those complaints--
that is 2.4 percent of the total complaints that were made by detained 
immigrants.
  Immigrant detainees also face barriers to reaching the Inspector 
General's telephone hotline for reporting abuse, because, according to 
a 2013 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), 
approximately 14 percent of calls placed to that hotline did not go 
through because, for example, the call was not answered.
  This Amendment is an essential step to giving DHS resources to comply 
with PREA and protect immigrants from sexual abuse and assault in 
detention facilities.

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