[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 43 (Monday, March 9, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S907-S909]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                    Department of Homeland Security

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, we are more than 3 weeks into the 
Democrat's DHS shutdown, and Democrats keep telling us that they are 
serious about funding this Agency, but their actions speak louder than 
their words. Negotiations have been going now for well over a month, 
and Democrats have sent two offers to the White House--two offers that 
were basically the same. No

[[Page S908]]

compromise. No give-and-take. Just take it or leave it.
  Then, on Thursday, perhaps realizing that forcing tens of thousands 
of DHS employees to go without pay isn't great for their brand, 
Democrats made a new yet equally unserious proposal, and that is 
selectively funding certain DHS Agencies. That is right. Democrats want 
to fund the parts of the Department of Homeland Security that they like 
and keep the rest shut down indefinitely.
  Now, this might come as news to Democrats, but the fact is that every 
part of the Department of Homeland Security is essential. As our 
colleague Senator Britt pointed out on Thursday, Democrats' plan would 
leave Homeland Security investigations in limbo. A lot of Americans 
might not know it, but Homeland Security Investigations is responsible 
for some pretty serious law enforcement activities in this country. 
They look up child predators, drug dealers, terrorists.
  And then there is Customs and Border Protection, another Agency that 
Democrats' plan would leave in limbo. Now, most Americans interact with 
CBP officers when they come back to the United States from abroad. They 
are the people who check your passport. They are also the people who 
prevent illegal immigrants and contraband like drugs and weapons from 
crossing our borders and getting into the country.
  Under President Trump and thanks to the hard work of these men and 
women, our border is secure, and illegal crossings have shrunk to a 
tiny fraction of the record-setting numbers of the Biden 
administration.
  The police chief in Sioux Falls recently said this of the drop in 
fentanyl seizures in South Dakota's largest city:

       I think it's safe to say that some of the measures taken 
     within the southern border are paying dividends within our 
     community.

  Are Democrats looking to undo these gains and return to chaos at the 
border?
  Well, on top of all this, Democrats' proposal would also leave 
enforcement and removal operations unfunded--the people responsible for 
removing gang members, convicted criminals, and other dangerous illegal 
immigrants from our country.
  On Thursday, the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee 
Senator Murray said that Democrats ``cannot, we will not, cut a blank 
check--funding without reforms--for ICE and Border Patrol.''
  Well, no one is asking her to. In fact, the DHS funding agreement the 
Democrats reneged on would have funded deescalation training for ICE 
officers, added $20 million for body cameras, and increased oversight 
of ICE funding.
  The Trump administration has already taken a number of actions to 
rein in immigration enforcement on its own, and the administration has 
made two substantial offers to Democrats to legislate reform measures, 
over and above the measures that Republicans had already agreed to.
  Republicans and the White House are at the table--at the table. It is 
Democrats who are standing in the way.
  Democrats can talk all they want about getting reforms, but the only 
thing they are accomplishing by dragging this out is protecting the 
status quo. There is only one way to get reforms signed into law, and 
that is by passing a DHS funding bill. And if Democrats were really 
serious about taking action on this issue, they would be working 
overtime to arrive at a compromise.
  But they are not. They don't even want to sit down. Members on our 
side have reached out to the leaders on the Appropriations Committee on 
the Democrat's side and been told: We are not interested in having a 
conversation about this--not even interested in sitting down, which 
strongly suggests that what they are really interested in is not a 
solution but a political issue. They don't really want reforms. They 
want a political issue that they can use in November.
  It is 3 weeks and counting on Democrats' second shutdown this fiscal 
year alone. Tens of thousands of DHS employees are going without pay 
and critical DHS priorities are going unfunded.
  Will this be the week that Democrats actually get serious? I hope the 
answer is yes. But as of right now, this is what we are getting from 
the leadership on the Democrat side, the leadership on the Democrat 
Appropriations Committee--by the way, all of whom negotiated this deal 
in the first place before they walked away from it. But despite 
repeated overtures on our side and by the White House to engage with 
Democrats, they said: We are not even going to talk about it--not even 
going to talk about it.
  So are they going to continue to keep Homeland Security and hard-
working Americans in jeopardy?
  I guess we will find out soon enough, but I hope that posture changes 
and they reengage in keeping important Agencies of our government that 
fulfill important safety and security responsibilities funded and those 
employees at work.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democrat whip.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last week was historic in the Senate 
Chamber. For the first time, the Secretary of the Department of 
Homeland Security came and appeared before the Senate Judiciary 
Committee. She had been in the position for almost a year and had never 
agreed to publicly appear and account for her mismanagement of that 
Department until last week--1 day before the Senate Judiciary 
Committee, on which I serve as ranking Democrat, and the second day 
before the House Judiciary Committee for a similar hearing.
  When the smoke had cleared, President Trump announced, via a social 
media post, that he was firing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. 
The reason for the decision was obvious after her 2 days of testimony 
and 2 days of refusal to respond to important questions.
  Under Kristi Noem's disastrous stewardship, the Department was devoid 
of any moral compass or respect for the rule of law. The city of 
Chicago was one of the first victims of Secretary Noem's political 
theater campaign with her so-called Operation Midway Blitz. Instead of 
targeting the ``worst of the worst,'' as the President has frequently 
announced, Secretary Noem unleashed masked, militarized immigration 
enforcement officers onto our streets.
  These officers detained American citizens, green card holders, and 
community members with no prior criminal records in violent, 
indiscriminate, and unconstitutional roundups.
  Do you remember the President's pledge at rally after rally? We are 
going after ``the worst of the worst.'' We are going into the 
neighborhoods of America. We are going to find the terrorists and the 
rapists and the murderers and the criminally insane who managed to 
sneak across our border. We will find them, and we will send them out 
of the country or to jail, one or the other.
  What does their record show so far with that project and campaign 
under Secretary Noem and President Trump? They found that only one out 
of seven of the people who have been detained and deported--one out of 
seven--has any kind of serious criminal record. One out of seven.
  So for their best efforts and for billions of dollars in 
recordbreaking amounts, DHS, with these Agencies, has more money than 
the U.S. Marine Corps, more money than the FBI. How are they doing? If 
they were batters in Major League Baseball and hit the ball one out of 
seven times, they would be not only in the minors, but they would be 
out of the game. One out of seven people deported has any kind of 
serious criminal record.
  Her roving patrols shot a Chicago resident and citizen, Marimar 
Martinez, five times. Marimar Martinez is a miracle--``el milagro''--
lucky to be alive. What did she do that was so dangerous--worst of the 
worst--that invoked the reaction from the ICE and CBP agents? She was 
taking a box of extra clothing to her church on a Saturday morning, 
driving through the streets of Chicago--Kedzie Avenue to be specific--
when she was stopped by these agents of DHS.
  When it was all over, they had shot at her car as it departed and 
struck her with five different bullets. Imagine, she is alive today to 
tell about it. She miraculously survived, but Renee Good and Alex 
Pretti of Minneapolis were shot by immigration agents there and did not 
survive.
  That is why we are in a conversation with the Republicans about 
changing

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the procedures of ICE and CBP when it comes to this Presidential 
campaign. To think that innocent American citizens are being shot and 
killed in our streets is unacceptable, unthinkable, unimaginable, but 
it is a fact, and that is why we are standing for the premise that 
these agents have to be held to similar standards that police and 
troopers are held to all across the United States.
  How many of your State troopers are wearing a mask today to go out 
and do their job? In Illinois, none; in your State, probably the same. 
How about your local police? Are they wearing masks? Do they have video 
cameras on?
  The basics of policing that we accept as professionalism have been 
rejected by the Department of Homeland Security. We are trying to 
establish a standard for these enforcement officers that is comparable 
to the standard of your police and State troopers and deputy sheriffs. 
That is it.
  When I talk to law enforcement leaders in Illinois, they shake their 
heads and say: How many of our law enforcement officers are wearing a 
mask every day? None--virtually none.
  Yet they are insisting that these ICE agents and CBP agents wear a 
mask. They say it is for their own safety. Let me tell you what is for 
their safety: to have the confidence of the people you are trying to 
protect. That, when it comes to safety, is the standard we should have. 
Wearing a mask and no identification does not instill confidence in the 
body politic.
  Secretary Noem wasted no time in labeling all three of the victims 
that I referred to--Marimar Martinez, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti--as 
domestic terrorists, misleading the American public and causing 
immeasurable pain to their families. They were not domestic terrorists 
or anything like it. Yet she said it in each of the three instances.
  So last week when Secretary Noem finally appeared before the Senate 
Judiciary Committee, my colleagues and I sought to hold her to account. 
She proceeded, unfortunately, to lie under oath multiple times, 
including saying DHS followed court orders and had not detained 
American citizens, despite ample evidence to the contrary.
  But Noem's abysmal track record wasn't enough to spur the President 
into action. What was the tipping point? Well, it turned out she had a 
multimillion-dollar--in fact, over $143 million--self-promotional 
campaign which showed Kristi Noem riding horses at Mount Rushmore while 
wearing cowboy shoes and outfits, talking about how tough she was. 
Well, it turned out President Trump got wind of it and said to one of 
the Senators: She spent more money on her self-promotion campaign than 
I spent to get reelected.
  Think about that.
  As we started asking questions about this TV promotion campaign, it 
turned out it involved some firms she had been doing business with in 
her home State. Too many questions.
  Donald Trump announced that our colleague from Oklahoma Senator 
Markwayne Mullin will succeed Kristi Noem. We will find out how he 
plans to lead the Department in this perilous moment as the Senate 
exercises its authority under the Constitution to provide advice and 
consent on this nomination.
  I want to make it clear for the record what happened last week. 
Senator Patty Murray of the State of Washington, the ranking Democrat 
on the Senate Appropriations Committee, came to the floor and made a 
unanimous consent request that we fund every other Agency under DHS, as 
we had agreed in a bipartisan manner, and work solely on ICE and CBP to 
come up with an agreement and establish some reasonable policing 
standards.
  Who objected to funding the rest of this Department? The Republican 
leader. So he had his chance--and I think he will have it again, I 
hope, soon--to restore the funding for these critical Agencies at this 
moment and give us enough time--we certainly have enough time--to work 
out an agreement on the procedures when it comes to ICE and CBP.
  It won't be unreasonable to ask Senator Mullin, if he pursues this 
appointment by the President, what he will do to change this Department 
in those critical areas. What does he think about shooting innocent 
Americans in the street? What does he think about his officers wearing 
masks? What does he think about them carrying videos cameras to record 
exactly what happens at these scenes? What does he think about someone 
bashing down the front door of your home without a judicial warrant, 
without the permission or the approval of a judge, in accordance with 
just basic policing across America? These are fundamental questions.

  The Republican leader said earlier: We can do something this week.
  Yes, we should. We have been waiting for the White House to pitch in 
in a constructive way. Now is the moment to do it. I certainly hope we 
can achieve it this week, as Senator Thune promised.