Transcripts For CSPAN3 Senate Homeland Security Committee Hearing On Southern Border Migration 20240714

Good morning. I want to call this business round table to order. I want to thank the participants for taking your time and, first of all, just working on the Homeland Security Advisory Council. From my perspective producing a really good report. A really good basis for hopefully legislation that we can pass on a bipartisan basis, but prior to that working with us to try to accomplish something to started a dressing this tremendous problem. We just keep upping this thing. The top line number is down a little bit because june is reduced a little bit from may because i was rejecting this based on the most recent month. Based on mays numbers the total number of individuals coming here in is either unaccompanied child but prime heard as a family was over 800 thousand projection, now its just over 700 thousand. One thing ive been pointing out since 2014 these bars represent currently five years nine months, 1,086,000 people coming to this country illegally, being apprehended. Most coming as a family unit, 822,000, of those 822,000 we have returned a whopping 12,021 individuals. Even though i know in your report you make the you talk about 15 of people having a valid asylum claim. So this is a clearly broken system, were trying to grapple with it, thats what youre trying to do. So im really pleased to have at the round table four individuals who have been working on the Homeland Security Advisory Council. A quick read your names and a quick bio and we will just do you want to start start with karen. Okay. Youve got it all worked out. And, again, take the time you need, but we have karen tannedy by the bay, the reason we do this round table, too, is more of a free flow to information. Feel free to interrupt, okay, but i want to stay on the same theme. If you do it in hearing form its one senator, seven minutes and they go through their own questions and you get disjointed. I think this is a better way of opening up the discussion. We have karen tandy, ms. Tandy is a former associate Deputy Attorney general for the department of justice. To her right is jay ahern. Mr. Ahern is principal and head of the Security Services at the chirdoff group. Sitting to her left is dr. Karen cooper, a developmental and forensic pediatrician at the womack is it womack army medical center. Dr. Cooper holds faculty positions at the university of North Carolina chapel hill, department of pediatrics and the Uniformed Services university of health sciences. Last but not least mr. Leon fresco. Mr. Fresco is a partner and immigration attorney at how land and knight law firm. He also served as the Deputy Assistant attorney general for the office of immigration litigation the department of justice civil division. My final comment is the Homeland Security Advisory Council is a bipartisan group. You have members, first of all, policy experts in a variety of areas, but also spans the political spectrum and youve come together and produced a solid product. With that i will turn it over to ms. Tandy. Im sorry, gary do you have any comments . No, thats fine. Are you sure . Yeah, lets hear from them. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, chairman johnson, and Ranking Member peters and senators of the committee. We are grateful for the opportunity to share our interim report and to have that discussion today. You have before you four members of the tenmember Homeland Security Advisory Panel that was created in october 2018 and at that time the ten of us were given direction by then secretary nielsen of the department of Homeland Security to make findings and recommendations on cbps care of families and children at the border. Recommendations on best practices, training, policy changes, any legal changes that were needed for the care of families and children at the border. From december until march, through march, this group of this panel went to multiple places along the southwest border. We spent multiple days on each trip. We went to every state along the southwest border and to six of the nine Border Patrol sectors, that included ten u. S. Border patrol stations, four ports of entry, as well as a variety of facilities where children were being cared for. Over the period of our work leading from october up to april we received briefings from 109 subject matter experts. With he reviewed a prodigious amount of material and data around that and spoke to ngos, medical professionals, government officials and a variety of other experts. Very early on this panel certainly drew the conclusion that the immigration system is overwhelmed and fractured at every critical point. The tender age children, especially children below the age of 12 are at the heart of this crisis. The primary issue that was clear to this panel was the result of a shift in immigration, a shift that went from what was predominantly single males and processing and facilities for predominantly single males that completely shifted i say males adult males completely shifted to a more than 600 increase to children, family units, that would be one adult typically and a typically tenderaged child, 12 and under. Thats a family unit. And the shift was for these family units and unaccompanied children coming from Central America. That was the critical stage of the what became the ultimate major stress in the immigration system and our crisis at the border. What happened was children were endangered, they were endangered during the 1200 to 2,000 mile journey to our country, they were endangered during the crossing and children were preyed upon. They were preyed upon by smuggling organizations, they were preyed upon by Drug Trafficking organizations and by others who were benefitting and making money off of their attempt to get into the country. The overwhelmed dhs and hhs capacity to care for these children was another result of the fractured system. Customs and Border Protection exercised and continues to exercise valiant efforts to deal with this crisis. It is outside of their training, the humanitarian piece of this is outside of their training, it is beyond the capacity of their facilities and until recently beyond their funding. As a result our National Security has been endangered with as many at any given time as many as four out of ten Border Patrol agents who are no longer performing their border Law Enforcement mission. They are instead doing the things they were not trained to do, which is providing the humanitarian relief to the best of their capacity. At this time if i could have the graph presented. I think this depicts more closely than anything the crisis. This is a graph of family units that were apprehended by Border Patrol. When this panel started in october there were less than 17,000 family units apprehended at the border, and im talking about between the ports of entry, the remote areas of the border, the uninhabited parts of the border. So that went from october to in april instead of less than 17,000 family units that were apprehended they were now up to 58,000 a month that were apprehended. By the next month it was peaking at 84,000. Why that graph is so important is that it shows you how the crisis escalated and the surge of these family units that require such special care and attention and you can see currently in june its actually dropped for the june numbers, even at the june numbers that is at the same time that same level is when this panel filed our report in april and we deemed it an emergency then. This is not our final report. We did not plan to file an interim report. We were so alarmed at what we saw at the border, the conditions at the border, that we we determined an emergency report was required. During this fiscal year again, these are children between the ports of entry in these remote areas 266,657 children have illegally crossed the border in between the ports of entry. Thats a Staggering Number and why this is so important that changes are made and made quickly. This panel, all ten of us, parked our politics at the door. We are bipartisan, as the chairman pointed out. We parked our politics and unanimously arrived at our recommendations in this report. Each recommendation is integrated with the others and standing alone any one of them is not a panacea to turning this crisis around, but we do urge the congress to take action. We are pleased that Congress Took action on supplemental funding at the end of june, it was critical. And now we urge congress to make the other changes that we recommended in the report. Thank you, mr. Chairman, mr. Ranking member. Thank you, karen. Who is going to go next . Jay . So my recommendation is just bring that microphone a little bit closer to you as well. Turn them off because i think only so many work at the same time. I may not be quite as softspoken as madam chair. Ive never been accused of that. Thank you for the children to be here this morning. I have the opportunity and the pleasure to serve as karens vice chair of this panel and was appointed to the Homeland Security Advisory Council by secretary nielsen almost a year ago. I come from perhaps a different perspective than many others on our panel. I actually served in customs and Border Protection for 33 years and predecessor organizations as well. When i look back over the 33 careers that i actually spent in government before i ended up leading the agency for the last four years as the deputy commissioner, then as the acting commissioner at the end of the Busch Administration and through the first full year of the Obama Administration i must say that im very stunned and very concerned about the transformation that has happened ot our border. When i take a look back at what we used to deal with years ago starting in the mid 70s when i first came on board, we were dealing with challenging environments of dealing with people trying to he is kad and avoid apprehension. Today we see people rushing to the first person they see in a uniform to surrender themselves. You have to ask yourself why is that . I think the answer is pretty obvious. Its because of the broken immigration system that we have to go ahead and deal with today that needs some of the changes. When you take a look at some of the family units that weve seen, unaccompanied children by the way, i havent seen the recent numbers but they are well into the 4,000 or 5,000 range of unaccompanied children that have been recycled by smuggling organizations for the purpose of being able to be conveyed across the border so they will have an advantage in the process to be able to go ahead and be put into Quick Release proceedings to be able to set up for a hearing that may happen years later. Thats a concern. When you take a look at the challenges that many of these families have as theyre making their way to the border and all the changes and all the Horror Stories that have actually been conveyed, i think those are certainly significant issues that need to be addressed and we will talk about some of those things on the push factors that are occurring in some of those countries where we will have an opportunity to go in a couple weeks to spend a few days in each of the northern triangle countries. Weve dealt with some of these challenges in the past. We have dealt with immigration surges over the years, whether it be some of the cuban migration issues in south florida with the boat lift in the 80s excuse me, right at 1980 or some of the challenges over ten years when i was working in government with the brazilian crisis. It kind of shifted from the Traditional Mexican population of people trying to gain entry to a group of brazilians. Some of the same expedited removal proceedings and return to mexico proceedings that were allowed under law at the time were not the same for people from other than mexico and dealing with the brazilian population there needed to be swift action to go ahead and put them in removal proceedings and, guess what, it stopped. It stopped. I think those types of circumstances we need to consider today because the challenges that we focus on today unfortunately are the things that get characterized in the media every night. And there are some very, very tragic circumstances, you can see each one of those, but unfortunately the agency i had the opportunity to lead for many years gets judged by the one off circumstances that occur, not the daily circumstances and the challenges they have to deal with on a daily basis. Some of those things are very important and thats where i get very concerned about the mission of Homeland Security. I had the pleasure and the honor to serve with tom ridge and governor hutchinson when we started to stand up the department of Homeland Security right after the president signed the Homeland Security act in 2002 and we had all of four and a half months to stand it up on march 1st of 20303 and its still maturing years later, but it was brought about to go ahead and secure the homeland. What deeply troubles me today is it has actually turned into the Immigration Agency of this country and thats a concern and should be a concern for all the members of congress, both sides of the house and both parties because what deeply concerns me is what is happening to the rest of the mission . I really applaud a lot of the efforts that are going on with the front line officers and agents securing the homeland as best they can, but having to consume their time dealing with the humanitarian crisis thats right in their face and they have to deal with, but what else is happening . We saw when we were there right at the shift change where migrant families were coming in surges to go ahead and distract the Border Patrol from the drug interdiction mission as the cartel missions who also have profiting take advantage of that surging and capitalizing on the agents being consumed with having to manage that with them running their drugs right to the left and to the right. We cant let that happen as a country. We have to continue to focus on all aspects of the mission. There are still bad people trying to get into this country, many of them do come across the southwest border. It is not all people from the northern triangle country. These are issues we need to deal with as a body whether its the administrative branch, legislative branch and certainly we need to make sure that those that are charged with setting the laws and executing those laws have the best capabilities they have to be successful. Ms. Tandy mentioned the supplemental was certainly very helpful. I would say it came too late. The agencies within dhs and many within doj for having to deal and hhs had to exhaust their budgets just to be able to keep up with some of the challenges that they needed to be able to procure things for people. There are hundreds of millions of dollars in debt before the supplemental. I hope it helps recover some of the budget because i hope none are deficient. There were the challenges to deal with the mission and that was first and foremost for them. When you see and hear the stories of their giving warmed up burritos in the microwave. Why is that . The procurement laws they had to go ahead and acquire things and the budget was not there to support what they needed for the am igs and the front line people went out and procured it with their own funds to be able to do the best they could given the circumstances they had. The processing facilities at a Border Patrol station for those that are here you know that, for those that are length and watching in the audience, think of it as a police station. They are cells to do immediate processing not for long term detention. But given the entire process, take a look at it as a continuum or as a supply chain is broken because of every step of that process needs to be reevaluated, reassessed and improved. So its yes its a process improvements but also legislative change needs to occur to make it better. Its not just what happened at the Border Patrol station with the intake, they have up to 72 hours, but as you take at that one moves into i. C. E. Detention and then all the other things that have to happen with hhs, housing for family units or for the administrative judges that need to provide the hearings, the system just backs up tremendously and the most obvious point in the visible point is at those Border Patrol stations and then at the i. C. E. Detention facilities. Every step of this process needs to have review and its not just more about adding more Border Patrol agents or building a wall or things of that nature, its taking a look at the entire process end to end, giving them the laws to be able to be effective, the appropriate level of support for the administrative ujs j, the bed space needed to be able to house people throughout the entire process, but also evaluating what is the cause and effect here. The push factors are very important. As weve looked at intelligence reports and some of the data from people that have been interviewed upon arrival, its not for fear of persecution, im sure theres many people that are you b. You we have he had briefing from people involved with doing deep study and analysis. The murder rates, the violence rates have not changed that dramatically in the last five years. The agricultural situation because of the drought has, the Economic Situation has because of corrupt governments in those northern triangle countries where people have lost complete confidence in their country and are looking to go ahead and find better opportunities elsewhere. When you flip to the interviews of why here . Education, medical, the opportunity to be reunited with family thats already here illegally and also more confidence in our government. Building the capacity and the trust and confidence in those locations where they live and where they likely want to be if it werent for those other certifications are a key part of this Going Forward, but at the same time we have to fix some of the push the pull factors on our end and thats the legal system and some of the things that require statutory change. I will end there. Thank you, jay. You want me . Okay. Thank you. Thank you, senator. Thank you, everybody. I will just be very brief and just say i think i associate myself with the comments of my colleagues and this was a bipartisan report and i think one of the key things to focus on moving forward into how we get to Actual Solutions is to say i think we need to define the problem. I think people are disagreeing on what the problem is and its valid to disagree because depending on how you view this there could be three different problems, problem one could be i want to eliminate the total number of crossings, period, through the border. I dont care what the purpose is of the person who is crossing, i just want it all to go away. Thats one way to define the problem. A second way to define the problem would be i want to take the group thats coming into the United States and successfully vet who is coming here as a refugee and if you are a legitimate refugee allow you to come and enter the United States, or if you are not a legitimate refugee then remove you from the United States so that would be a second way of defining this. A third way would be it doesnt matter to me why youre coming, i just want that you dont you know, that bad things dont happen to you when you arrive in our custody and thats it. You know, thats a third way of looking at this. And so at least from my point of view i was working with my colleagues to try to come up with this second option of how we successfully vet people in a manner where people who are coming with legitimate refugee claims can come in a very quick fashion, be assessed, we know who is coming for the purposes that the law permits and who is coming for the purposes the law doesnt permit and that theyre treated compassionately while that vetting process is occurring. I think if you have that as your goal, its easiest to get to a bipartisan consensus, whereas if your goals are the others, this is where it becomes a more problematic formulation. So that is the that is the frame of approach that at least if people want to ask me questions where im coming from on this is how do we take the population thats coming, make sure that theyre treated in a compassionate manner while we vet decide if the reasons theyre coming are reasons permitted under our law or reasons not permitted under our law. Thank you. Doctor, again, get the microphone as close as you can. There you go. Thank you very much. As a pediatrician of now more than 40 years, and who worked first as a military officer retiring from ft. Bragg where we have the largest pediatric population in the army, it was an honor to serve with this committee and i must say that the challenges for children are severe and significant. At this particular time there are more than 67,000 minors who have been present at the cbp and have come across the border in that manner. As our report reflects, many of these challenges reflect the fact that there are Communicable Diseases which can be fatal and have been fatal for several of the children who have come across the border. Whenever you have children that are in groups such as this the risk for influenza, for example, which has been one of the primary causes of death for many of the children who have come across the border has been very difficult. I think its very relevant that in reviewing the mortality cases that weve already seen, the overwhelming majority of these children were seen at medical Treatment Facilities and were sent back to the border and unfortunately succumbed to dying niece that were not clear when they were seen by medical Treatment Facilities. Another part of our report has to do with the identification of these children as being biologically related to the parents, the individuals who are sighted as parents when they come in as a family unit. Having appropriate biometrics was a real challenge in our discussions as a committee because of some of the existing restrictions with respect to facial photographs and things of that nature. So we have made some recommendations in our report on trying to make sure that the children who are going to be coming across the borer and released to the interior are going to, in fact, be children who are going to be cared for. The issue of recycling of children brings us to the risk for sex trafficking and labor trafficking of children and trafficking in general. Because im a forensic pediatrician i work quite a bit with trafficking victims and circumstances of that nature and that was one of my greatest concerns which was affirmed when we had our first meeting regarding the risk of children who would be brought into the United States and then sent back to Central America to come back into the United States with different people posing as their parents. That kind of stress and trauma for children is untenable and will have, without a doubt, far reaching psychological impact over the time that they are going to be continuing through their childhood. Finally, i would want to say that the recommendations by the American Academy of pediatrics are excellent. They are prevalent, they are available to any Healthcare Provider free on the internet, on all of the different medical problems and means of surveillance that should be taken and thats really very helpful. What we would really like to see is that on site as was recommended in our report that there be on site Healthcare Providers rather than individuals who are not versed in the care of Young Children and adolescents, because of the nature of the concentration of these children in the settings it is very important that not only they be screened within the first 24 hours by a Healthcare Provider upon arrival, but also will require rescreening sometimes daily if there are soft signs of potential problems that we can see to make sure they can survive this last part of the journey that they have taken. Thank you very much. Just real quick on the point of health professionals, pediatricians at the border, both gary peters and i, senator peters and i talked to the incoming head of that organization and i talked to mark morgan that same day or the day after about facilitating whatever professionals want to get down there, are willing to serve in that capacity to get that done and the acting cbp commissioner was very open to trying to work within the rules and laws and who knows what bureaucratic hurdles that may exist on that, but, again, a very receptive to getting those pediatricians and those types of medical experts down there at the border to help alleviate or mitigate some of the problems. Yes, youre quite correct about that and thank you very much. One thing that i noticed and we made recommendations for was that there initially in the smaller cbp stations there wasnt really a location that was available for the right kinds of equipment, et cetera, but i think that that can be modified very readily. In fact, when we got to the clint station there was already a contract provider who had been hired to help facilitate evaluation of patients. I was going to quick so, again, i want this free flowing, but the order was peters, scott, hassan, rosen, portman, carper, holly. I really do want this free flowing because i totally over senator peters opening. I want to pick up on, dr. Coop cooper your comments. The question ive been asking is how long is too long to detain a child. I have never gotten a straightforward answer. What is your view and whats the view of the folks here . The American Academy of pediatrics feels and states that no time is a good time as far as detention is concerned. Do you agree with that . My feeling is that you have to make sure once children have crossed the border that there is going to be a safe place for them to land. You want to make sure that they are not going to be at risk to still be under the power and control of smugglers, for example, or people who are falsifying their identifications to increase the risk for their children. So once that has been ascertained, it would be very good not to have them in the herd circumstance, herd circumstance, that you have within detention because it will really foster a higher risk for Infectious Disease complications. Dont you have to define detention, though . Whats harmful totally depends on what the facility is, right . Yes, let me respond to that. I have visited two detention settings, in one particular detention setting the setting was with families, family and children, and what we found was that that particular setting which is in dilly, texas, it was an extraordinarily excellent location. These families had their own individual apartments, if you will. There was a Dining Facility with very excellent food. There was education, a School Situation from kindergarten to 12th grade provided for them. There was recreational space for them and there was also medical care, extremely good medical care that was provided by the United States Public Health service on site. That is a setting that would be the most ideal. But thats not typical. What folks are confronting right now. That no, that has not been what weve seen in what ive seen looks very different from what you just described. Right. The Inspector Generals report certainly revealed that that was not the typical, but that would be the desired type of setting. That has to be the goal. You talk about screening of folks, which is important to have professionals there on site. Yes. I know the report talks abou telemedicine as a possibility, but talk to me about that. There has to be limitations to telemedicine. We need to have professionals actually on site, not doing it via telemedicine, concerns about that, what i read in the report. Telemedicine, depending on condition. If you look at a child with respect to potential Infectious Disease problem, telehealth capability has to be very good, many children present with rashes that will indicate theres an infectious problem such as measles, mumps, et cetera. Influenza, our greatest concern is going to only be diagnosed by febrile reaction and soft symptoms, softer the younger the child. Those children by definition need not to remain in a detention setting, nor should they remain in cbp setting, they need to be taken to medical Treatment Facility without doubt. Other types of telehealth capability will offer itself as long as you have a Good Health Care provider to describe whats going on or a para health person, such as a nurse or a paramedic that can give information, trauma injuries that may have occurred to a child. Some of the other children that died, at least one died of severe congenital heart disease. In that situation, telehealth will not be beneficial except to affirm need for immediate transfer for a patient like that. Can i ask a question. We know that Health Screenings are supposed to go on, right now they go on by cbp officers instead of health professionals. Isnt a medical professional what we need to provide screenings as often as they need to be done on a daily basis . I can tell you, i am suffering from a summer cold. Two days ago i didnt have it, today im taking all kinds of medication and trying not to spread my germs. How quickly do you think American Academy of pediatrics, i have them in my office, we have Health Care Professionals willing to volunteer time at these facilities. What do we need to do to facilitate that for the safety of our children . Absolutely, senator rosen, i agree with you 100 . To have a pediatrician would be the very best recommendation, and youre right, daily evaluation of children is indicated because theyre in a high risk setting. Especially the Young Children. As well as possible, you would like to get them out of those settings, make sure you have Health Care Providers that can see them on a regular basis. Real quick [ inaudible ] right. It is a mix. Depending as far as what facilities, there are variances. Making a distinction between a Border Patrol station with initial arrest processing before they went to detention facilities, theres distinction and difference needs to be recognized, what particular type of stage or facility can stage in the process you talk about. I point to one of the key recommendations, Regional Processing Centers where you have the ability to have the right kind of facility with the right type of care givers there to be able to have a triage on entry into it by medical professionals stationed there all the way through the court and hearing and provisions for providing attorneys for people that need to go ahead and appear before an immigration judge. Having that in one concentrated location, probably three or four locations on the borders is recommended as well as within in guatemala. How quickly can you ramp up and do that, we have children suffering now, tender age children they will suffer for the rest of their lives because of this who came here. We cant let children suffer because of whatever we may think of how they got there, who brought them here, why they brought them here. The fact is theyre here, especially the tender age ones, not of their own choice. While all of the adults, we want to work together, we can talk about policy and procedure and all those things, but in the meantime, how quickly can we do something to protect the children. It takes funding. I have to get in on this. Perfect. It takes funding. I would ask you how long it took to get supplemental funding approved. Those are months that were lost. Can i just, i wanted to take a step back. First of all, thank you all for being here and for your work. And i appreciate that the work the panel has done, and i understand as well that the administration wants the ability to indefinitely detain families, and that cbp family and Children Panel prioritize that as a recommendation. Doctor, i understand the concern about vetting families and making sure children are in fact related to the adults they come with. Lets start with a fundamental proposition. Do you believe the indefinite detention of children is harmful to children, and lets go down the line. Indefinite detention would not be any of our goals. Yes or no. Yes. Yes or no. Certainly. Maam . We do not recommend indefinite detention. What im trying to get is a shared set of values and understanding that we can then have a discussion based on. So because if you lift the floors limit, youre talking about possibility of indefinite detention. So is it or is it not, not just talking about exposure to Communicable Diseases here, is it or is it not harmful to children . This panel found that a period of detention in the proper setting which is not the current setting, in the proper setting was an important balance of the nations security, customs and Border Protection processing requirements, and the care of these children who arrive often ill and traumatized. I tauunderstand that. Being provided with Health Facilities and health care in a center that is could be a Detention Center but not parked in a Detention Center. I would like to submit, mr. Chair, a letter that a group of Child Advocacy organizations sent to the panel. The letter from the Child Health Experts expresses strong opposition to the panels recommendation to allow for indefinite detention of children. Heres what it said. Just a quote. Detention of children for even brief periods causes known and well documented developmental, physical, and psychological harm. These impacts may be pronounced for Asylum Seekers who freakily fled severe violence and trauma in kuncountries of origin. Detention poses significant barriers to accessing legal counsel, to assist families in preparing and presenting claims for legal protection. So what is the response to the medical advice and why doesnt your report reflect those findings . Thats the question, and ill also say this is not an either or. We can be secure and not harm children by indefinite detention. And both are really important priorities. This is a security issue and a humanitarian one. Let me first ask, incredibly important at this point. I dont know definition of detention that group is, if theyre looking at the Border Patrol stations, absolutely. I dont think anybody would say thats not going to create harm. You talk about dilley, where you have families there. Senator anyway, we will enter that in the record. Indefinite detention of children, putting them in an institutional facility, period, according to pediatricians and experts causes them harm. Doesnt matter. Obviously better conditions are better, but it doesnt undo the harm. Thats why in this country unless we find an adolescent that committed a crime or is harmful to themselves or others, we dont detain them because any detention is harmful. What i am concerned about is we keep presenting this as either we have to detain kids or we are not having secure borders. Thats a polarity i reject and the United States could easily address. Can i speak briefly. I got back from the border friday. You were looking for Practical Solutions here. I think what were missing is why the children are coming in the first place and under flores, the recommendation, i think it should apply to unaccompanied children but not to families with children, it is definitely incentive to come to america. So you are frankly, if you are focused on solution to long term detention, you should focus on keeping them from coming in the first place. Theres no good solution here. Actually, there are. Let me finish. You had a long time to talk. Theres no good solution unless you deal with incentives. Youre encouraging children to leave homes in Central America and join traffickers to come to our border where you are encouraging children, this report has said 4 to 5,000 kids recycled already, when i was on the border, they had numbers higher than that. But they know who the kids are because they process them, they process them again and process them again. We dont want kids detained at all. Thats not good for kids. Whats really bad for the kids is the United States congress refusing to do things we all know should be done, i know uhyou know should be done to discourage them from the long journey in the first place. Thats what the report is getting at. As long as you have the notion that under flores a 20 day limit is in place, as long as you have the situation now where because partly because theyre overwhelmed, theres no way to process the children or families within the 20 days, theyre committed to going to the United States, they go to a nonprofit, they get them on a bus or airplane, theyre in New Hampshire or ohio. And again, 15 at the end of the day according to the report and data we have are getting asylum claims granted, due claim asylum. It is on average over two years, but really as the report indicates four to five years. The report indicates that very few people are ever removed. If youre a trafficker, this provides the perfect opportunity to say to kids and families if you pay me 5,000 bucks or 10,000, somewhere in between there, well take you up to the border and dump you at the border. As we know, 30 of women and girls based on best data are sexual assaulted during the journey. This is the problem. We can talk about detention, i couldnt agree with you more, we dont want to detain anybody, but the real issue, how do you keep kids from making this dangerous journey in the first place. You want to detain them to prevent them going to a stash house or put in the sex trade situation or the egg farm. One of the alternates, human traffickers they havent paid debt to that control their families. We havent focused on the Human Trafficking and danger children are in if we dont protect them. There are other solutions. Theres short term detention which we process them through. And i dont want to dominate the discussion but i feel a couple of things that i want to clarify. One is i would not say that it is the children themselves who are being incentivized, theyre exploited by a lot of different people. Lets focus on the the laws and the rules. Lets focus on incentives to adults who then bring the children. Secondly, the notion that the only way to deal with this is to extend the flores limit beyond 20 days or to let them go is a false choice. There are other recommendations that other groups made that indicate that we could in fact keep track of families, case manage families, surge our capacity so that hearings could be held within 20 days. Those are all things we are capable of doing if we will provide the resources to do it. Rapid adjudication is the goal of Operation Safe return, but id like to turn it to leon. You are an immigration lawyer. I think your proposed solution was rapid adjudication, but were also told, too, Operation Safe return is only going to evaluate based on credible fear standard, we dont have time in 20 days to do the full adjudication process. Right. And also talk about basic asylum law and asylum standard whats complicated, there are two completely different case tracks. Theres expedited removal track and normal track. So the attempts to solve the problem have been geared around expedited removal track which is where the government, if you dont express credible fear can immediately remove you. The issue is most people express fear of removal, so then you have to make this adjudication, is that fear credible and if it is, you can stay, and if it is not, then you can be removed. The question our panel put to i. C. E. , this had been tried both in the Obama Administration and in this administration, we asked has any family, literally asked that question, any family, not 20 or 30 or a thousand, has any family been removed thats been placed in the expedited removal process. The answer they gave was no. I dont know if you remember that question. Since 2014, 822,000, reremoved 12,021. After they were could be voluntary. Through the context of what they use family Removal Centers that theyre using now. So what we started to think about when we were thinking about that is geez, then what youre doing is if youre detaining anybody for any amount of time, youre wasting time because youre not accomplishing removal. The whole point of detention would be to accomplish removal in that situation and youre not accomplishing removal, why are you doing detention. There are two alternatives. You can make changes to expedited removal system which i am not a big fan of, others are, or you can move people toward the real removal system. It is my belief that the biggest delays you have in the normal removal system are you have to give people time to find counsel, which takes many months. Thats why you blow through all of the time limits, and you have to give people opportunities to get documents which a lot of times they cant get because theyre fleeing their country. In my view if you give people counsel on day one and expedite the hearing and establish the courts right there on site and say unless the claim sounds incredible, we will deem it as credible, you dont need to get documents, the underlying theory is a lot of the cases dont qualify legally for asylum, then you can get proceedings done in 20, 30 days. So thats why when you say flores extended, we werent saying extended from 20 days to a thousand days. The question is if it will take 24 days, 26 days, Something Like that to get the proceeding done, and youre Holding Someone in a facility that we can all agree is a facility that will meet whatever standards the policy makers thinks are good standards, then a lot of people get asylum and will be able to stay. Can i ask a question. This is about adults. Who does credible fear screening for minors . Same officer does the family. They do the whole family. If theyre unaccompanied. If the child is unaccompanied, they cannot be put in expedited removal proceedings. So they are just held . They go through the normal, regular proceeding. Cbp can only hold them 72 hours, after the 72 hours, they have a legal obligation to send them into the custody of department of health and human services, until that department can find an adult who is capable of being their custodian. Then the removal proceeding i have spoken about will play out. Either theyll win and be able to stay or lose and be ordered almost all stay. I want to drill down on this. Talk about disparity between the vast majority granted fear and have a valid asylum claim or subject to removing. Talk about the disparity, how it plays out in the few cases that are adjudicated where it is not granted asylum. So the problem is again, you have different Legal Standards. The standard for acheering credible fear standard, you have to establish to get out of expedited removal and into normal removal process, theres a significant possibility that you have an asylum claim, and asylum is defined in dick at that, but people talk about it in Supreme Court law, 10 chance, youll be persecuted. You have to show significant possibility of having a 10 chance of being persecuted. It is a generous standard because thats the standard written. I understand. So thats why they call it credible fear, hey, i am afraid to go home, thats credible, now youre into the process. Thats correct. How long, what kind of evidence and what do they have to provide and why then at the tail end only 15 are granted asylum . Let me say this, having come from department of justice where we were constantly having to recorrect statistics, i am suspect of all our statistics, i dont know what the statistics are, if anybody claims to know what the statistics are, you are we dont know what we dont know. Having said that, let me just say that it is a fair point that there are a large number of asylum claims that once presented dont meet the standard, and the problem is because we dont know what the standard is being adjudicated in the courts now, it is unclear, we have no idea. Supreme court will eventually decide this. Layout the basic premise. The basic premise is people are making claims that theyre going to be persecuted in their home country because of Domestic Violence concerns or gang concerns their country is indifferent to. It is not clear whether the claims qualify or not for asylum. Thats whats being disputed. The five basic ways are race, religion, national origin, social group or political opinion. Social group thats thats the one theyre claiming. One thing quickly, being down there friday, i learned something i should have known, i talked to five or six families. At one point i worked on the border, i used the best spanish i had. It was exactly what you would expect people were saying. They cant get a job in Central America, the drought, most working in agriculture, one was in the tourist business, but they want a better life for kids. Not a Single Family was saying anything about credible fear. And i probed a bit and they didnt. But im told and i guess i should realize this, along the process, these families will be released within a couple days of being in the processing center, there were a thousand families there. Theyll be released on their own recognizance. Along the process, they can claim asylum at different points. If they do get counsel six months from now, they can claim asylum. You would hope in every area you have an officer of the court bound by law not to produce fake asylum claims that they wouldnt be produced, you know, a lawyer wouldnt help someone to make a fake asylum claim. But is it true some of them claim asylum later in the process. Here is whats complicated, what people dont realize about that expedited removal process, to use that process, you have to have detention capability and uscis officers to do credible fear screening. We dont have sufficient of either of those now, what youre describing when people are released without having credible fear screening, released to do track two, normal removal hearing. When you have a normal removal hearing, the system doesnt know anything about you. It asks you, do you concede to removal or not. If you say no, they ask what is your defense to removal. At that point you could introduce a defense. That would be when you get the hearing, two months later, three months later. For the first hearing. Depending when the next trial is can i interject. Seems to me we have two different issues. We have immediate issue with all of the children at the border detained, whether you want to say cages or holding areas, whatever your definition is. 200. Thats the total number of children once they got to once they got funding, went from 2,000 down to a couple hundred. I wanted to ask you, do you have an average number of days in Border Patrol facilities . They try to do it in a couple days. It is hard to get a correct answer to that. The standard is 72 hours. If it is tender age children, should be 24 hours. Children are moved out of cages in 24 hours . No. Thats the law is 72 hours. The goal is 24 hours. But bear with me in terms of the reality. Forget the standards because thats not whats happening. Whats happening is the surges of people that are coming across. The surges of people have overwhelmed what is meant a facility meant to keep people hours, not days, not weeks and longer. But whats happened is to move people out of these facilities, the Border Patrol, it is difficult for them to do full processing they should be doing. Theyre attempting and trying very hard but whats typically happening is these people are given notice to appear and theyre released. What used to happen is first of all, every part of the chain had funding and space requirements to meet their obligations. So they did move in 24 and 72 hours a year ago, and what happened now is that it is backed up. Hhs does not have the bed space. I. C. E. Cant take the people from Border Patrol unless they have someplace to put them with hhs, through hhs. Previously there were travel plans that were accomplished by i. C. E. They would determine where people were going. They would confirm the receiving entity at the other end. Youre making the point, we have an issue with the immediate issue with children and families, how theyre being held. Then we have long term policy issue of what we do Going Forward to deter it or take care of them or move it. There are two different issues. One is immediate for the health, safety, care, particularly of tender age children and families, and long term policy issues. It is about the overwhelming nature of the flow. Youre not going to stop the flow in a day, senator. We have to get through what were doing now to take care of, theyre not these people, theyre human beings. Thats the recommendation. I think thats the point, you cant disassociate the two. No one wouldnt argue they need to do better for the kids in the first 24 hours, without question. The capacity is so exceeded by surge of people that occurred because of the broken immigration. That continues to happen. Thats the focus people want to look at, not looking at whats happening in the Central American location. What happens on the interior of the United States. Interior of the United States, again, this body would be questioning i. C. E. If they were releasing kids to sponsors in the United States using for sex or Human Trafficking. It is a deliberate exercise goes on to be sure they dont put them into hands to create more concern, more exploitation for the kids in the country. While no one is satisfied with processing time, we can understand the factors causing the challenge. We were told families showed up at stash houses, they were beaten. Some of them, yes. Some taken for ransom. We recommend in Regional Processing Centers that have the medical, legal, everything in there, so you can move them out of the cbp facilities. Thats why we recommended this as soon as possible to get people out of cbp and start moving the rest of the process. Mr. Chairman, can i jump in as well. Reading the recommendations on the floor, did you all have conversation about what to do with 17yearold males because the highest number of people coming in now as far as percentage are single males coming across the border, claiming to be 17. I assume they have been coached if you claim youre 17, youll be treated differently. Theres no papers or documentation, dont know if theyre 25 or 17. They come across, say theyre 17. Did you have zfrconversation on that and one more followup as well. We had some. The emergency nature of our report focused on fixing the biggest problem which is the family units, not the unaccompanied and 17yearolds would follow in there in the mix. So we had some. Our final report will address those types of concerns. So when i talked to Foreign Ministers and leaders in el salvador, guatemala, honduras, they say the same. We want our kids back. To them it is a very odd statement to say these kids cross the border and if we had an american that entered into guatemala, americans would demand their child back. We have a child from el salvador that comes, we say no, were going to keep them. The salvador and minister was in my office saying we want our kids back. If theyre unaccompanied, why cant the government say send them back to us, we will repatriot ate them with families. We create a barrier on that instead of allowing them to return to their own country. Did you all have conversation about that . Thats the subject of one of the recommendations, to amend the tbpra, a parent in the home country that wants them back to be able to send them back. But what about the country itself as far as their embassy, theyre there as a National Entity to say send the child back. Same thing we would do, if a parent was here, wasnt here, we would reach out to another country, send the american child back, well take care of it. Wouldnt you have to be sure the child would be safe . If a child says theyre not there because theyre not safe, certainly you dont want to send them back. If the gang is coercing the parent. We release 79 of unaccompanied child to a person in america. I would venture to say our laws are such they would be more likely to be safe in america. I am saying this is no guarantee in terms of whats happening. But it is a strange anomaly, if a country says we want our child back, we tell them no. The question is whether you do it systematically or individually. What i mean by that, if you do it individually, what you have is a child presenting themselves individually saying i cant go back to my familys home, my dad beats me, it is an unsafe home. Even if the government is saying i want the child back, okay, government, where are you putting the child if we send them back to you. Thats the problem. How do you deal with the individual claim versus how do you deal with the systemic claim. Not giving a recommendation, im saying what the law says now is you have to then do proceeding on whats in the best interest of the child, to remain here with guardian or removed back. Foreign minister versus a parent encouraging kids to come. They have a brother thats here. Education, opportunity, Better Health care and what not. There are a lot of kids, thousands going back, sometimes as many as four or five at a time in the hands of a smuggler, put at the starting line, brought back again. Thats unconscionable. We cant let that continue. Just real quick. When you made opening statement, you define the problem, defining solutions, the way i continue to talk about this, the problem is in the graph, in the chart. From my standpoint the initial going, this is the first step. The initial goal should be to reduce the illegal flow, to disin sent advise families and children to the dangerous journey. With Operation Safe return, tell human smugglers, we wont allow you to exploit laws. It will take time. Heres the initial step. The message to Central American families is dont, please, dont indebt yourself to human smugglers. Dont mortgage your house, dont pay them a year of salary. When i talk about we have the same conversation with families on the border. I was surprised how many, you dont know what theyre told by human traffickers, i havent paid a human trafficker anything, which is concerning. They will have to pay. Why they end up at stash houses and have to work out debt. We have the robert kraft story, talking about asian women, 30, 40,000 indebted to human traffickers, they pay it off in the sex business. From my standpoint, the goal of policy initially, first step, reduce that flow. Thats where i go to your recommendations in terms of how do we do that. Is that kind of what youre saying is the first step, why this is an emergency interim report . Absolutely, senator. Thats integrated in all our recommendations, is to stem the flow so that these children are not placed in danger to begin with. Part of that is to give them a safe place to assert their claims in Central America, in guatemala with a processing center. And if they continue to flow to the border and move with notice to appear, if they follow their claims we may not see them again for years. If that continues it will just continue to pull the families in. So we want them to be able to assert claims and to do it in a humane setting. The best place to do that is in a safe place we establish with International Cooperation with guatemala to do it down there so we save them a terrible journey, terrible crossing into this country. I want to pursue that. Obviously we dont want to send folks back, children back to an unsafe place theyre fleeing. Now theyre saying you have to stay in the place youre fleeing while we process your claims which could take a long time. Tell me about the International Effort to put them someplace, talking about a refugee camp in guatemala for folks if they believe theyre being persecuted or attacked or threatened by drug cartels, we have to keep them safe while we go through the process i would think. One of the Panel Members is a former u. S. Ambassador to mexico in the clinton administration, and he was one of the principal proponents of establishing such a center. It does no good for the center to be on unsafe ground in guatemala so it has to be a center where theres an agreement with the government of guatemala where theres security provided that you would have all of the support, medical, security, welfare, the asylum officers who would do the processing, judges, additional judges who would take care of the back end of the claim and all of that would have to be a concentrated effort. It doesnt exist. But there is a belief that it could with an international agreement, with the government of guatemala, it could be created, and it could stop the danger to the kids who are going through mexico to get up here and then all of the ills we talked about that happen to them. Just to add to that, is it on . Just to add to that, one of the things that we get so focused on, whats happening at the initial Border Patrol station, and the time spent in i. C. E. Detention centers, before they go off to the hhs family centers. And we lose sight of the fact, first the conditions they lived before they started this trek to the United States. And the horrific stories weve heard and seen from people along the way, those things are really of concern. Somebody can be cared for better, and i dont agree with any of the current standards. But lets not lose sight of whats happening in transit and exploitation. We cant skof at that. Ive never published photos of the dead, did he say indicated animal chewed bodies. What can we do to go ahead and stop the flow . What can we do to stop push factors. Thats going to take more patience than often times the United States government tends to show. Thats an effort of capacity building. Again, some of this is discussion of capacity building. Juliette kayyem wrote a piece saying you meet a surge with a surge. Doesnt mean we dont work on pull and push factors which are important. Doesnt mean we also dont fix our immigration standards. But my i go back to flores a second, not to beat a dead horse but i think it is important, i was governor. I ran a number of systems. My own view is that every time you give human beings deadlines and limits, they go right up to them and then they go a little past them, a little past them. My concern is not im not critical of the personnel trying to do their best at the border given how overwhelmed they are, and the fact that time limits are very hard for us to meet right now given the lack of capacity at the border on our side and the numbers that are coming. My concern is rather than change the standard which will then if you change it to 25 days, now it is 28 days or 35 days before kids get out, because thats human nature. If you instead change the focus to whats the capacity needed at the border as the United States of america to keep children safe within the standards we already have, thats the Surge Capacity that i would like to see us focus on while we are fixing long term problems which i think theres a lot of agreement about. The problem is we dont know what capacity, from the last three years or this year . Is next year going to be worse . There was a study in guatemala, a third of them intend to migrate to the United States. 5. 8 million people. We wont have near enough facilities. Week work on legislation to stop the push or pull, so if you do them simultaneous. Thats a long term solution. We have a problem in the here and now. If i can address senator hassan, this panel only recommended a change in flores for children accompanied by a parent. I understand. And we did not recommend changing any of the time limits that flores applied originally in 1997. The extension of those time limits by the flores courts to push that into the family units is where the crisis really took off. Right. But i think, and i understand that, i have the footnote with your recommendation on flores in front of me, i wanted to reread it before we had this discussion. The issue is this. We know separating children from families is not only wrong but unacceptable to americans everywhere on all sides of the aisle. And we know that detention of children is harmful, and what i have been trying to focus on is just our capacity as a country, the greatest country on earth with more resources than any country on earth to do the right thing by kids which i believe we have the ability to do while were working on other issues. And thats my i understand why the recommendation is there, i just think were seeing it as a false choice and i think we can do better. I look forward to continuing to have the conversation with all of you. I know youre trying to do your best by kids, too. And senator, if i could respond to what you said about building capacity at the border or wherever these unaccompanied children or children and families will be from a medical perspective, there needs to be a fixed location at every border station separate from border detention environment so that Health Care Providers can humanely evaluate and treat children and monitor them, even keep them overnight if necessary in a safe and appropriate manner. That would be a very achievable, not extraordinarily expensive intervention that should be present at every one of the sites. Thank you very much. I want to get back to the point, the number two choice you try to process quickly, part of the aspects of the report to have a rocket docket at the Regional Center where you bring folks together. I guess my question is how realistic is it to get the kind of due process necessary to do it in 20, 30 days. I know the acting secretary said 20 days is not enough. What are the practical aspects associated with it, how many Immigration Judges do you need, how are you going to, you said difficulties of getting documents, so really give me substance behind this. Under the Current System it couldnt work. The Current System, youre not providing people with counsel, you have to give them time, if youre not providing people with opportunity to get documents, you have to give them time. You recommend counsel be provided . Give them counsel day one. Youre not spending time with people saying i need time to find counsel. Because you already have it. Day one they get counsel provided to them. Exactly. And the issue of documents was something that was just added in 2004. Before if you had a claim that sounded credible, what the court would do is decide, does the claim sound credible. You say i flew on a magic unicorn, thats not credible sounding. You give a claim that sounds credible, they used to not make you corroborate with documents, it wasted time, and what you do is you can plug in the legal factor. Is this still an asylum claim. People are making the assertion that this is not a valid social group, others say it is a valid social group. Well, lets get to those claims without wasting all of the time, the entire waste of the asylum Hearing Forces people to get documents they dont have already because they flee the country, cant get the documents. You take those two things out of it and just move to nuts and bolts of the adjudication, you can in fact do it very quickly. In 20 days. In 20 days if you have a significant number of judges added to the courts and gave people counsel. Did you do any analysis how many we need . Depends on the flow. In april, senator, we recommended doubling the current number of judges so that would be at that time an additional 300 who in a lifo in, last in, first out, no documents except for the border surge, they would address that first instead of the entire backlog of asylum claims. Which isnt the right way to do it. With the current number you can believe the numbers accurate, 800,000 cases are backlogged before eoir. Put the recent one at the end of the list, individuals coming here, if their objective is economic interest, theyre going to achieve it, several years before they get appearance notice to come for hearing. Last in, first out is a critical component. Thats why numbers are growing. Many times the lawyer will advise the person in my view, the whole system is running the way it is supposed to, ethically, sir or maam, youre not articulating asylum claim. You have if they are, you can move forward. Im trying to twist the center arms to sign the letter of support for Operation Safe return. As imperfect as it is, youre talking about changing the law, im not seeing that happening anytime soon unfortunately. We may be able to pass unconsented, but a high hurdle in the house. My assumption is were not changing law anytime soon. With existing authority, letter of support for Operation Safe return, would you use authorities in use as of june 30. Nothing further, you know, take a look at what authorities, laws regulations replace there. I mean, is that something you could continue to work with us onto home in, good idea by senator peters trying to go through this, real time evaluation through the Inspector General and gao in terms of getting individuals in, evaluating why theyre coming in, how many are reaching credible fear claim, again, real time information to inform future public policy, future law changes. Again, it is not the solution but it is a step. It could maybe make improvement. If we could return people that dont even achieve that initial credible fear claim, start returning those people incredible fashion to send that signal, dont take this risk. Youre going to go home. You might see that flow reduced with the brazilians when you added expedited removal. I think First Response to that is any movement that will go ahead and add consequences to the current flow would then result in it being reduced is a positive step, without question. The question is how much Material Impact will it have on overall body numbers. But you have to start. Please understand, that doesnt take the congress off the hook for some legislative changes needed. And funding needed as well. Those types of things, it is all about messaging as well. Theres tremendous narrative goes down in northern triangle countries. A lot is controlled by traffickers and quasi travel agencies. They have a card like a travel agency. We seen it. Say it is 200 a week or a day, i believe they can be in multiplication factor for numbers that decide not to go if they realize it is not a free pathway to being able to stay in the United States a number of years waiting for a hearing. If the number is small, i wish it would be bigger, it is small, it is a start. You publicize it. Consequences could be significant if the messaging factor goes down to the northern triangle countries. The rub here, because of the kind of issues we worked through, having not just access to counsel but having counsel. So if there was a program that said you have access to counsel, how realistic is that to get counsel for these folks. Whats the time line versus what you are proposing, leon, which is providing government attorney. Is that the standard we should be looking at . Heres the issue that makes things complicated for me. If youre trying to do a pure expedited removal based solution, i feel like that was, you know, for better or worse, that was what the facilities were created to do. The problem is the expedited removal solution didnt engender a lot of removals. I dont know what the number is. I wont quote any more numbers, but i think thats why, and the reason it doesnt is because of the Legal Standard you have to apply. By the way, that alone in terms of Operation Safe return, good information to have. Yes. Thats why this isnt working. Right. I mean, thats what i think the complication is twofold. Heres what my concern would be. I think youre on the right track, i think the concern would be if you end up detaining people the entire time necessary to try to accomplish this and you cant because you keep hitting the 20 days of flores, and you havent accomplished the removal, the whole thing fell. It is a pilot program. Again, we would learn from that. Of course. Again, in our phone conversation, i agree with you. I originally said it as those including valid asylum claim, we realize thats not possible, do it based on credible fear, you do what you can do. This is the only thing you can do with an existing law, existing authority, but it will inform the process. Again, trust me, i realize it is not fantasy, it is not the solution, but if you can do something in a bipartisan fashion that communicates to human traffickers, were not allowing you to exploit our laws. Move that direction on a bipartisan basis, recognizing this is not acceptable. This is causing harm to people. We want to dissuade it, deter it. Thats what were trying to accomplish. A first baby step towards solution. Again, ill make the appeal publicly. Sign on a letter of support, work with us, engage us to do it. If i could add, senator, the Operation Safe return is a baby step. If laws are not going to be changed as the panel recommended, theres nothing else. Theres nothing to stop these children from getting harmed. Nothing thats going to stop the dangers were seeing. It will continue and it will increase. A baby step is better than nothing. Having said that, this Operation Safe return is not an act of congress. It is within current authorities and funding. Theres no Reason Department of justice, department of Homeland Security, and hhs cant just do it and do it yesterday. Heres the problem. Anything the administration does is challenged in court. I am trying to provide bipartisan support saying we actually want the administration to do this. Maybe not that, but this. You will give beleaguered agencies the cover that they need to do this. I dont know that thats enough to keep courts from intervening, but nonetheless, we do applaud doing something. The real critical factor thats going to change these numbers is rolling back flores to what it was originally intended for to get these processes with funding, with judges, with a rocket docket, get this stopped. Without that, this is what will happen. Can i finish my point, senator . This is what will happen. You know these criminal elements on the other side of the border, and what will happen is Operation Safe return will be the point of no return for these criminal traffickers. And they will move elsewhere on the border and push people elsewhere on the border. Some of the worst places on the border for these Sick Children is in new mexico. Border patrol stations arent even open 24 hours, theyre so remote. That is a risk here that it will divert the flow. You can go from all over the border and accumulated, you can do it ideally, senator, this toe in the water is not just in dilley. It starts all over the border to prevent that. So anybody from any part of the border can go there and have this process. I want to quick talk, you are on i lost my train of thought. I will come back. Sorry about that. I would also like to encourage that we increase funding to dhs because these children and families that are coming into the interior are all going to have to go into Public School settings and for the unaccompanied children, they have to go through the home care settings, Child Welfare settings. Having spoken to several directors of various communities where large groups of children have been brought, it is obviously overwhelming for them. I think that would be the other thing we should do to try to accommodate those children who are already in the interior. I remembered. Again, youre democrat, right . Yes. Do you agree with secretary johnson who vehemently disagreed with flores reinterpretation that flores Settlement Agreement did not apply to accompanied children . The specific problem asking me that, i was the attorney that argued flores wouldnt apply. That was my job in department of justice. I would argue that in court that the flores agreement didnt apply to families. We did not win that argument. I mean, thats the first thing. I would look at what were trying to do with flores, go back to the intent for in accompanied children. Some court decided it applies to accompanied children as well. Theres an hour youtube clip you can watch me make the argument if you want to. Most of the people as youve heard me articulate, there are a lot of us that believe flores was reinterpretation was correct given what happens to kids in detention. So if that is where the house is going to be, the question becomes whether you all have looked at the alternatives that have been suggested, they have not been piloted in any meaningful way, and whether there are other things we can do. If we go back to the fact that none of us want to have what happens here unnecessarily add to trauma children experience, what other things can we do in terms of access immediately to attorneys, penalizing smugglers who are faking their relationship to the child or exploiting that, and case managing families so they show up and have enough judges so theyre not here for years waiting for their process. There are a lot of suggestions have been made that yes, require resources, but i think again in a bipartisan way targeted resources of some of that could begin to impact numbers too. So i think thats where the practical piece is. We could try to relitigate flores reinterpretation, some agree with it, some of us dont, but it is what it is. Here is my concern about resources. At the current level, i mean, resources, we have to employ here is im not sure we have enough, okay . You could maybe resource this down a couple hundred,000 a year, but we are approaching a million. I am starting to read news accounts on how schools are having to deal with the dispersion. You have children coming in from mountains of guatemala, completely different dialect. You dont have people that speak the language. Plus as james talked about, the large number of 17yearolds. Unaccompanied children, 70 male, 70 over 15. The perfect population if not already gang member coming out of el salvador or guatemala, you dont speak the language, you gravitate toward people that do. Got a good chance of joining a gang. Were not focusing enough from my standpoint on the Human Trafficking element and also the societal challenges, whether it is in the school systems, in the inner cities where gangs might operate. Is that something that the council took a look at in a meaningful way . Probably not to the extent youre suggesting. I mentioned we need to look at this as continuum, as a supply chain. Whats happening down south in northern triangle countries, what is mexico doing to control the border. There have been interesting changes, history is not good being able to sustain efforts. What then happens at the border, unfortunately what gets on nightly news, the horrific situation dealt with at the border, but thats a piece of it. People lose sight of what happens when it goes up the detention to hhs. Short pieces. You talk about when you add the amount of time to come in transit, make it to the border, beyond time spent at the border, theres more at the other end. Looking at after arrival is not being looked at. And to that point, we are now receiving information and briefings that are being scheduled on the consequences. It is the interior consequences as you suggest to schools, communities, and impact of not stemming and what its doing on the interior and will continue to do. So that will be part of our final report, which we expect to have at the end of september. But dr. Cooper, i know youre very focussed on the maltreatment and a National Expert on the maltreatment of children. Yes, very much so. What i was going to say is that, you know, 17 is a magic number. But we have the medical capability with xrays to have a better determination about whether an individual is a fully grown or completely mature adult versus an adolescent. We have that capability. It hasnt been used because we dont have xray machines available, its usually radio graphic evaluations. One of the things that could be beneficial for these we have dna tests. Youre talking about the fraud aspect. Im talking about the age. Age fraud but also fraudulent parents. Yes. You mentioned mexico. The report recommends a Safe Third Country Agreement with mexico. How realistic do you think that is, panel . I think if you can actually take the current president of mexico at his Campaign Promises he was strongly against it. So if hes going to stay true to that, its going to be a real challenge. I think something that has all the lmtd elements of a safe third country, maybe achieving the same objectives without the label of a safe third. I think a safe third is probably not likely. Did you see the Public Opinion poll in terms of mexicans that came out today . Its pretty negative against immigrants. They really have very little publicly over the past years their economy stabilized a little bit. That was one of the factors about slowing the flow to the United States, there was no need to come here. That is whats putting the challenge on mexico. In an ideal world you would have one or two staging facilities where you make the claims and you have the entire hemispheric resettlement program, wed take some, brazil would take some, and we take refugees from all over and do burden sharing. In my view thats a better view. In an ideal world america wouldnt have a demand for drugs yes. So you wouldnt have the drug cartels that destroyed institutions, and the breakdown of theres so many aspects again. I think america bears responsibility. But that is a very longterm project right there because as ive tried to explore, how do you get the drug cartels . They control a large percentage of communities in Central America, mexico, those communities are supported by the drug cartels. Not like you can go in surgical strikes and get rid of a drug cartel. This is a problem because of our demand for drugs. You missed all the solutions, we got it all figured out without you, commander carpenter. Winston churchill used to say success is never final . Yes. We have a hearing going on in the Environment Public Works Committee focussed on environment change and they rolled out electric vehicles and how we need to recycle the batteries from electric vehicles and we generate jobs from that. So pretty good stuff. Sorry i had to slip out and miss part of what youre saying. I understand from my staff, abby gave me this notice. I understand i missed discussion around Operation Safe return. For my benefit would you please summarize twisting your arm, too. Some of the risks and benefits of that pilot and what are things we need to do to make it better . Three things we need to do to make it better. Do you want to start . Sure. I did not endorse or not endorse Operation Safe return. I personally dont view the expedited removal process as the ideal way to go through this, because i think the Legal Standard is an ilLegal Standard that if youre doing it correctly will lead to high credible fear determination and if youre doing it incorrectly will lead to litigation which will not create the returns you want. So my focus im not saying its ideal. Fair enough. We have all options that are suboptimal, im with you there, senator. So my only point is this is just me. Im not speaking for the Homeland Security advisory committee. I would want to say you have resources now. Congress doesnt have to change the law. You could get people lawyers on day one, put them in the normal removal process, not the expedited removal process and see if we can get removal hearings done as quickly as possible. Not expedited removal process because the expedited removal hearing will end, 80, 90 of the time with a credible fear determination saying yes, and now were back so weve wasted all of those 20 days. If we dont do anything i agree. I would say im happy to have Operation Safe return morph into Something Better and better. Continuous improvement. I look at that as a first step. I want to move in that exact same direction, just not sure if we can. But Operation Safe return would allow us a program that can morph into something more effective. Are you in support of it . Im not in support of or not support of. I want to talk to your staff a salesman. Yes. I hate saying anything to not be supportive. I can tell you something from a historical and operational perspective from 30 years. Anything you do that has a consequence on the flow is positive. For that this body needs to look at that as beginning a pilot. It is a very, very small first step, make no mistake. But the legislative requirements are still there. But anything sending a message to the northern triangle countries is important. Beyond the numbers that would be put into removal proceedings, the impact that could have on the messaging down in the origin countries could be more significant. But again it starts, its the beginning of a process, its not a huge leap forward. The other interesting thing is the final rule from dhs and doj on the last 24 hours on asylum is going to have an impact on flow as well. But really impacting those pull factors this country put out there is important to manage the flow. We talked about children for a large part of this hearing, a lot of those things go away and become easier to manage if we reduce the flow. These are steps that need to be taken Going Forward. I would just add, snoenator, that if congress is unable to change the law and put flores back to where it was with only unaccompanied children addressed, and if tvpra is not going to be amended, Operation Safe return, to the extent its within existing authorities and within existing resources, is something that absolutely should be pursued. It is a step. And to the extent that it is described as as a research, an opportunity to as an experiment, if you will, to see if it will work, i think it could provide very valuable data. There is a facility in texas where it is underutilized right now. And it has all of the capability of implementing Operation Safe return. Our colleagues, dr. Cooper and jay ahern, were there just a couple weeks ago. Where is it . Dilly. Where is that . 65 miles south of san antonio. It has four or five courtrooms established, video capability to get the judges to video in if the theyre not physically there. Its currently 2400 capacity and 600 people were there at the time . Yes, and it has excellent medical facilities. Xray, anything you need to handle Health Care Issues that arise. Even in a group setting. Convinced me. Come on. So its not a panacea, senator, but i think its an important step. If the other things are not going to happen that we recommended, its a very important step and will give you some kind of data to know how to factor in the laws, the legal changes that should be made and what the Legal Framework should be. So to that extent, and because its something that can be done right now, and it could be done right now, i do think its an important first step. Data collection, that was senator peters input in the process. Excellent input. You need to know if it works for sure. One final point, obviously. Try to come up with policy your fingerprircnts are all over it so you might as well sign on. How you operation it, becomes important. Dealing with the operational impacts, as karen mentioned you dont want to forecast to the trafficking organizations what corridor theyre going to run that day or week, they can go to dilly, that would be fine. We did this in the drug days together, you want jump capability so youre trying to play a predictable game with the cartels and the people youre dealing with today. So to have a good Operational Program thats attached on how they do the implementation. Thats something we have to implement from day one. Any other comments or questions . I led a congressional delegation down to the guatemala el salvador in the beginning of the years. We were looking at numbers in terms of the illegal immigration. Numbers were pretty flat as you look at the chart back there, flat until november and then it exploded. Among the things we focus a lot and its important we do focus on the symptoms of the problems at the border, what we see at the border but its also important that we try to figure out whats going on down there that theyre sending these people up here. El salvador, the serge has been less dramatic, they elected a new president down there and people have hope that theres going to be a better day. Meanwhile, in honduras last year the president got the court to declare their constitution was unconstitutional and he got to run again. He won a razor thin election and won, and people are angry. And in guatemala, the president turned out to be a bitter disappointment. The un is there to try to go after the corruption and so forth. When they had their president ial election, the best person on the ballot was not allowed to come in the country and campaign, the former attorney general who was like death on corruption when she was attorney general. So people are fed up. Plus you have the situation with climate problems. People cant grow coffee in the highlands. Theres a lot going on there. So its important we focus on the stuff were talking about here today, but also be mindful of the things i mentioned. One of my favorite songs is a song called hope in a hopeless world. This is not an easy problem to solve, but there is hope. And the work the four of you and your presence here of your chairman and Ranking Member hosting this round table today gives me hope in what is for many people an all too hopeless world. I wont sing. Im sorry . I wont sing. That would probably keep people here. Senator, we are looking at those push factors and traveling to the northern triangle, to guatemala and honduras, that is next month. But we are receiving briefings from the state departments, ngos and others with regard to the matters you talked about, corruption, extortion, and other issues in the northern triangle affecting the flows. Our report was an emergency report focussing on the pull factors and trying to stem the flow quickly on the family unit side. We are yet to address the push factors which will be in our final report in september. Good. The congress and senate in a bipartisan way have been focussing on three major causes for people that want to get out of the countries, hope, economy, and corruption. What were doing with the hope for alliance prosperity, we get 5 or 6 or 7 from other sources to address those three major push factors. Thank you. Senator peters . Anybody else want to make any further comments . In. On behalf of the panel, we sincerely appreciate the opportunity to talk about the issues as we saw them, our interim report, and are grateful for your focus and we have we have high hopes as well, senator, and look forward to the outcome. Let me say, i want to echo what senator carp was talking about, how much we appreciate what youve done. Often Times Congress will set up a commission, this was done by the department of Homeland Security but a really well designed council from my standpoint, i think really well staffed, talking about the members, and the fact that you do have a Broad Spectrum and you are coming together and youre accommodating each others views and doing a thoughtful job of problem solving. We talk about it all the time, defining the problem, and defining goals. All of our discussions youre going through that process. I appreciate the fact you recognize this is an emergency and you had to issue an emergency interim report. Im looking forward to the september final report but also continue to work with you, because i think this council can really have an impact. Again, because the bipartisan ill call it i prefer using the term nonpartisan nature. I think this committee has a good track record, its just tradition here. So i think working together we really can move the needle on this, but well take ill take the incremental. Ill keep twisting leons arm to get support for that baby first step, but its a step. Otherwise we sit back and do nothing and keep yakking about this. Again, i was i think we were all moved by that picture of that, you know, father and his daughter. I called up gary that morning and said, okay, arent you sick of this had . Lets start doing different. Lets start having these. I thought this was a good discussi discussion. Wide ranging, and maybe not as focussed as i would have it, but thats the nature of the beast. Well continue to have these discussions with a sincere desire of starting to develop solutions, improve the situation on a continuous basis. Again, i cant sing your councils praises enough and all f of your involvement and thank you for doing it. Thank you. With that the hearing record will remain open for 15 days, august 1st, for submission of statements. This round table is adjourned. Thank you. Coming up at 1 00 p. M. Eastern live on cspan 3 well bring you a news briefing from House Speaker nancy pelosi. Right now on cspan 3, the start of the hearing that just ended on the conditions at the u. S. mexico border. Good morning, i want to call this business round table to order. I want to thank the participants for taking your time and working on the Homeland Security Advisory Council. From my perspective, producing a really good report. A r