[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 121 (Tuesday, July 15, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4354-S4355]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                    Department of Homeland Security

  Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, the Department of Homeland Security has an 
extremely important mission: to keep Americans safe. Under that 
mission, the Department is tasked with two critical jobs: border 
security and disaster response.
  Our current Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, has failed 
both. In her short tenure, Secretary Noem has overstepped, 
underperformed, and endangered the lives of countless Americans. I 
believe it is time for Secretary Noem to resign or for her to be fired.
  Secretary Noem has undermined FEMA's work and, in so doing, 
endangered disaster victims. Just a few months ago, Secretary Noem said 
in a Cabinet meeting:

       We are eliminating FEMA.

  And she meant it. She meant it. We saw evidence of that in what 
happened not just in Texas but in North Carolina, New Mexico, 
California, Kentucky, Hawaii, and Vermont, where FEMA is absolutely 
crucial to helping people in communities and businesses recover from 
disaster.
  We need FEMA. It is only the resources of the Federal Government that 
can surge resources into affected communities. We can't lose that 
function and that capacity. When you need safety from a flood, when you 
need to start the long road to recovery, you need the support of the 
Federal Government. No State, no community can do this alone.
  I have seen from our experience in Vermont that FEMA, in fact, must 
be reformed. It must not be destroyed, as Secretary Noem has suggested.
  In my view, we cannot have a leader in charge of FEMA who is 
committed to its destruction. We must have one who is energetically 
committed to its reform.
  We have seen the result of Secretary Noem's indifference to FEMA as 
the catastrophe in Texas unfolded. As the waters rose along the 
Guadalupe River in Hill Country, it was the people of Hill Country, as 
my colleague Representative Chip Roy of Texas said, who responded 
heroically. They were saving lives; they were rescuing stranded 
children; they were comforting those who lost loved ones; and they 
provided material assistance and constant support.
  As for FEMA, it didn't answer the phone. Secretary Noem had 
instituted a policy to micromanage FEMA to death. Under Secretary 
Noem's watch, FEMA instituted a new policy that required the 
Secretary's signature on any expense more than $100,000, which, at the 
time of a major catastrophe, is a very small amount.
  Secretary Noem had an ``eyes wide open'' awareness that this policy 
would mean it would take ``a minimum of five days for front office 
review.'' In a disaster, you do not have 5 days.
  Contractors for FEMA answered the vast majority of calls--about 
3,000--from flood victims on July 5. But according to news reports, 
after contracts with those companies were allowed to lapse, that 
response rate fell to 36 percent on July 6 and then only 16 percent on 
July 7. When people needed someone to answer the phone, FEMA left 
13,793 calls unanswered.
  In the aftermath of disaster, people cannot wait for help. Many are 
homeless or living in very dangerous conditions. Search and rescue 
teams were waiting to be deployed. Disaster recovery centers were slow 
to open. Current and former FEMA employees have raised the alarm about 
how slow the Federal Government was to respond and support Texas. We 
can reform FEMA in very commonsense ways--and we must--but we cannot 
risk the lives of countless Americans under the mismanagement of a 
Secretary who has called for its elimination.
  There is a second reason Secretary Noem must resign. She is failing 
our country on immigration. We have three fundamental issues on 
immigration: border security, the deportation of criminals, and the 
status of people who are here without legal status but are working, are 
paying taxes, in many cases have families, and have no criminal record.
  I want to step back for a minute and acknowledge something that too 
many Democrats have been too slow to state: The United States does need 
a secure border, and President Trump has largely accomplished that.
  In December 2023, there were 249,740 illegal crossing arrests between 
official ports of entry. That was an alltime high. Last month, that 
number dwindled to 6,070 illegal border crossing arrests. I give 
President Trump credit for that change.
  The second issue is that undocumented immigrants who have committed 
serious crimes should be held accountable. They should be prosecuted, 
punished, and deported. There is widespread consensus on that.
  Yet on the third issue, those who are here without committing crimes, 
who in many cases were brought here as young people, we are seeing 
under the leadership of Secretary Noem that her response is an across-
the-board embarkation on a massive and far-reaching deportation plan. 
There is no distinction in her policy among those who were brought here 
as children, who have families, who have jobs, who pay taxes, and who 
serve their communities.
  But there is a big difference between deporting known criminals and 
rounding up immigrants--some of whom have status to be here, in fact, 
are here legally--from work sites, from schools, and from churches. 
This mass deportation policy is not about serving America and doing 
what our country needs to be strong and safe. It is, instead, about 
Secretary Noem accumulating the highest possible head count of 
deportees. It is hurting those folks, their families, and their 
communities, of course, but it is also hurting America and, 
particularly, rural America.
  Our farmers depend on labor to milk their cows and to pick their 
crops. It is weakening our construction industry, where workplace raids 
are shutting down construction sites, including for low-income housing, 
which we so desperately need. It is decimating our healthcare 
workforce, in the hospitality industry in every State of the Union.
  We need a Homeland Security Secretary who will help us develop a 
sensible policy for folks who are here without status but have no 
criminal record, who work, who have families, and are taxpayers.
  There is no restraint. There is no nuance. There is no judgment being 
applied by the Department leader, the Secretary of Homeland Security, 
to develop a policy that makes sense, a policy that balances security 
and our economy, a policy that makes a distinction between law-abiding 
people who know no country other than the United States of America 
versus criminals who should not be allowed to remain in the country.
  And finally, I have significant concerns about Secretary Noem's 
fiscal mismanagement and self-aggrandizement as DHS Secretary. This 
fiscal issue is particularly important in light of the billions of 
dollars that were allocated to that Department in the recent 
legislation.
  Secretary Noem awarded as much as $200 million for an ad campaign 
that she started, thanking President Trump for his immigration policy 
and warning migrants in the United States to leave, a campaign that was 
reportedly awarded to a Republican campaign consultant.
  Secretary Noem spent $21 million to transport 400 migrants to 
Guantanamo Bay--$55,500 per person.
  Do we really need to spend that much?
  And several of those migrants were quickly transferred out of the 
facility.
  There are also too many instances of Secretary Noem putting her 
personal

[[Page S4355]]

ambition ahead of her mission responsibility. She has posed for photos 
and videos using detained people as props. She has joined television 
interviews in various uniforms--as a Border Patrol agent. She has 
treated ICE raids as political theater.
  And while in Vermont at the Haskell Free Library and Opera House--it 
is a library that sits directly on the Vermont-Canadian border--the 
Secretary jumped from one side of the line in the middle of the library 
and parroted terrible things about Canada; ``51st State''--and then she 
jumped back, ``United States''; ``51st State, United States.''
  That was deeply offensive to Vermonters who have an enormous amount 
of affection for our Canadian neighbors, and we have suffered the 
consequences of dramatic downsizing of our tourism industry--totally 
unnecessary, totally provocative and wrong.
  We have an obligation to protect the safety of the families that all 
of us represent, and I urge every one of my colleagues to demand better 
for our constituents and for every American. We need a Secretary at the 
Department of Homeland Security who puts public safety and preparedness 
before her personal image or political aspirations.
  Secretary Noem must resign.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.