Transcripts For CSPAN3 ICE Acting Director Testifies Before House Appropriations Subcommittee 20240714

Thank you for being here this afternoon. As we continue to monitor the challenging situation on the southern border we look forward to hearing your perspective on i. C. E. s operational and Funding Priorities and requirements. As chair of this subcommittee i am committed to ensuring the integrity of our borders and strengthening our immigration system. But i am equally committed to making sure we do so according to all of our laws and in a way that exemplifies our american values. In particular we must assure that in accordance with our laws and values those fleeing must have equal opportunities to seek asylum. We must get this balance right and i believe we can if we work together. It is a false choice to believe more migrants need to be unnecessarily detained and that cruel and exclusionary immigration laws need to be enacted in order to increase security in our country. Our own constitution, federal law and several International Agreements serve as the foundation for the right and preces i believe need to be embodied in our efforts to address the humanitarian crisis we are currently experiencing. We must also be mindful of the resource limitations that we face. There is likely no area of our bill where we have sufficient resources to address noa environments. For instance weve barely addressed the surface to address the sovereign interest in the arctic. The attention is an option that should be reserved where Public Safety or a flight risk is of valid concern. When Public Safety is not a concern i should use alternatives to detention. When used as intended with appropriate Case Management, alternatives to detention have proven to be effective in mitigating flight risks and approving compliance with Immigration Court requirements. For those who detention is appropriate, i remain security concern about substandard conditions at i. C. E. Detention facilities. Negz to what i have personally witness we continue to get alerts from the media, the office of inspector general, the Government Accountability office and embassy organizations about detention facilities that do not meet i. C. E. s minimum standards but are nevertheless allowed to continue operating. Preventing these inhumane conditions can only be achieved if i. C. E. Leadership makes clear that anything less is unacceptable and will have consequences. I will tone to work with i. C. E. To ensure that this happens. On a more positive note, i want to hoy light the good work ooirz does in the areas such as combating Human Trafficking, human smuggling, Child Exploitation and the smuggling of fentanyl and other opioids. In the fiscal year 2019 appropriation the subcommittee provided Additional Resources to Homeland Security investigation for these efforts. This is great example of a mission we have worked together to accomplish shared goals and establishled in our fiscal year 2020 bill. Lastly i want to follow up on a letter i sent you on july 12th about increased interior operation. I suggested you submit some of i. C. E. s written policies and procedures which i describe in that letter. This kind of transparency is very important for us to better understand how i. C. E. s leadership expects its front line officers and agents to operate. I understand you have submitted documents in response, so i thank you for that and i look forward to reviewing them and will follow up accordingly. Before i turn to the director for a summary of his written statement, the text of which will be included in the hearing record, let me first recognize our distinguished Ranking Member mr. Fletchman for any remarks hes like to make. Thank you, madam chair. Thank you for your time and your testimony before this subcommittee today. Theres been a lot of change in leadership, positions at the department iprece department in recent months and its reassuring to me to have an acting director with years, really decades of experience at the helal. Thank you for assuming the awesome responsibility of leading this Law Enforcement and Homeland Security agency. I very much appreciated the other day with you and your most able staff to visit with an update. It helped me understand where we are and where were going. Again i thank you for your hard work. I look forward to working with you and look forward tool your testimony today, sir. Madam chair, i yield back. The order which members will be called to question will be based on the seniority of those present. Also to ensure everyone has ample opportunity to ask questions. I ask each member stay within the allotted five minutes per round. Director, please begin your statement. Good afternoon, chair woman, Ranking Member and distinguished members of the subcommittee. As you are aware the United States is currently facing an unprecedented National Security humanitarian crisis at our southwest border. Over the past year a number of aliens apprehended at or near the southwest border has increased significantly. Today, however, i am here to address other parts of immigration system that remain in desperate need of resources and funding as well as the need for legislation that will help put an end to the Current Border crisis. The fact is the majority are released into the interior United States for immigration proceedings and Immigration Courts currently have a backlog of over 900 cases and growing. The officers of i. C. E. Are responsible for managing those cases as well as those more than 3 million aliens currently on i. C. E. s docket. Many aliens do not approve for their proceedings violating the terms of their release and fail to appear for their hearings or comply with removal orders. The result is that the border crisis has become a National Crisis which requires a strong intear yr enforcement component that lends certainty. The reality is our immigration laws are only in force at the border if you fail to provide adequate resources and ordered removed and with this in mind i come to ask in providing i. C. E. The funding it desperately needs to address not only the ongoing crisis the Current Situation at our border directly impacts this agency and its research requirements. Cbps 780,693 encounters, this represents all southwest border encounters to date. Notably in the last few months i. C. E. Alone has been forced to release more than 215,000 members of families into the interior United States due to the flores Settlement Agreement. I. C. E. s resources has been overburdened by the record number. And congress repeated failure to fund at i. C. E. Requested levels. I. C. E. Is currently detaining due to its very limited detention capacity i. C. E. Must generally reserve its detention space for those who require congressionally mandated detention as well as those who pose National Security, Public Safety or flight risk. However, based on increased enforcement activity on the border transportation funding is urge nltly needed. To ensure the National Security and Public Safety of the United States and the faithful execution of immigration laws passed by congress, i. C. E. Officers may conduct targeted Enforcement Actions against any removable alien. Despite what is often sensationally misreported these are not discriminate raids or sweeps. Approximately 90 are aliens who have prior criminal convictions, face pending charges, or immigration fugitives. However, the crisis on the border has negativity impacted i. C. E. s interior Enforcement Mission and thus the Public Safety of our communities. Resources dedicated to removing dangerous criminals from the streets have been redeploy today manage increased work loads, resulting in 114 decrease in criminal alien arrests this fiscal year. Additionally i. C. E. Has reassigned to help manage the team daukts. The failure to increase funding for operations over the course of the last decade has created a tremendous strain on i. C. E. s ability to arrest specific aliens, fail to comply with removal orders or release conditions including those who have absconded while on atd. It has failed to fund the necessary resources that make the program effective. Without the necessary numbers of fugiti fugitive officers as well as sufficient space for those to be detained once they are arrest while congress has increased the number of funded doj Immigration Judges and support positions during our recent budget cycles and i would like to highlight legislative changes urgently needed. The fy 20 budget request only addresses the symptoms of the crisis. It does not solve the problem. Legislative changes are the only viable option to swiftly put an end to the Current Crisis reducing the victimization of migrants looking for a better life and starving the cartels of a major seshment of their illicit criminal enterprises. The factors they create will only result in more illegal immigration and worsen the humanitarian crisis. We ask you to clarify the governments Detention Authority with respect to alien minors, amend the traffic and victims protection reauthorization act to provide for the prompt repateeration and address the federal career standard, the current standard has proven to be ineffective in screening out those fraudulent claims. These despicable smugglers have created an entire illicit industry with untold millions of dollars being made through the sale, rental of children. Despite this activity Homeland Security investigations has reassigned hundreds of special agents and analysts. These same loopholes also encourage further illegal immigration as the record numbers indicate. These are not talking points. These are facts based on over 25 years law experience. By faithfully executing the laws established by congress to protect the integrity and credibility of our countrys borders as well as our National Security and the safety of our communities nationwide. The increase in the flow of Illegal Migrants and change in those arriving at our borders are putting the migrants particularly Young Children at risk of harm from smugglers, traffickers, criminals and the dangers of a difficult journey. And theyre placing unsustainable pressure on the entire immigration system. Failing to adequately resource interior resource efforts such as fugitive operations, detention beds and i. C. E. Attorneys creates nothing more than the appearance of border enforcement creating a factor that ultimately drives more people to make the dangerous journey to the United States, incentivizes more illegal activity and delays justice for those with meritorious claims to asciolism. As a nation of laws we owe it to the citizens of our country to maintain the integrity of our immigration system especially when faced with a serious ongoing crisis. They have done this despite villainization, personal attacks and the toll it takes on their families and personal lives. They pay this price every day for simply doing their jobs under the laws passed by congress. A crisis at hand, a change is needed and it is your responsibility as members of the congress to act. Thank you again for inviting me to testify today. I am honored and humbled. I ask you provide the funding sought in the present fy 2020 budget. I look forward to your questions. As you know we have serious concerns about i. C. E. s ability to manage the budget within the means provided by congress. The lack of transparency into how i. C. E. Executes its budget also kpar baits our concerns. Under a continuing resolution operations should continue at the level funded in the prior year appropriation. For the current year that means i. C. E. Should have maintained an average daily population of 40,525 during the cr period. And yet for the First Quarter i. C. E. Used detention beds searched from 44,000 to over 46,000. And this was before the significant migrant surge at the border. During the period of the cr did i. C. E. Make any attempt to operate within the funding levs identified by congress for custody operations . And if so, what specific actions did it take . Thank you, madam chairwoman. We continually look to utilize our detention resources in the most efficient manner as possible. Instructions standing instructions to our field offices, our 24yearold field offices continually look at their populations to ensure those individuals that are detained are the most appropriate for the detention. Those Individuals Congress has mandated must be detained by law. 40 of the individuals currently in i. C. E. Custody are subject to mandatory todention under the immigration and nationality act. The vast majority of those other individuals are individuals who are Public Safety threats, gang members or individuals who may not reach the mandatory detention threshold, but we have felt that theyre appropriate for detention and not appropriate for any sort of release back to the community. With regard to your question during the cr, the numbers began an up tick the middle part of last summer and continued to rise through the fall and not to the level weve seen unfortunately during the calendar year fy 19. However in order for a whole sale system we made a conscious decision to try to detain as many people as we possibly could to help prevent a rush on the border. Unfortunately, the numbers continue to come as a result of the fact many of those people we cant detain because they are uac or families. To better understand how i. C. E. Budgets for its operations, the report that accompanied the fy 2019 appropriation directed i. C. E. To brief the committee on a detailed plan for operating within its budget. This was due 60 days after the date of enactsment and was to be provided monthly thereafter. Today we have not received even one and by now we should have received four. Why has i. C. E. Failed to comply with this briefing directive . Ill have to look into that specific directive. I do know we are holding weekly migration callwise the four corners staff during which time both cbp and i. C. E. Provide detailed information with regard to their Ongoing Operations to include detention and funding execution. We have posted a lot of our material on the website. We will go through them and certainly have a detailed response on each one of those. Just as a followup, you know, the departments funding transfer authority exists to address unforeseeable and unavoidable circumstances, but it seems clear to me that i. C. E. Operates under the full expectation it will be bailed out by this transfer authority that it has for some other means. As the acting i. C. E. Director for the coming fiscal year i hope that you can commit to operating within the funding level that is appropriated by congress. I certainly will do my best to do so. I can tell you weve had numerous budget meetings with very hard decisions made all the time with regard to what operations were going to have to curtail or what Funding Initiatives we might not be able to do as a result of the limited funding. Our detention model has been accurate for the past three or four years, the model we utilize. And we ask for 52,000 beds in the fy 19 budget. Just as reminder as we move forward, you know, appropriation bills are also law, and including continuing resolutions with no Less Authority than the immigration and nationality act. Na in fact, the authority of the appropriations bill is derived exactly from article 9, section 7 of the u. S. Constitution and i quote, no money shall be drawn from the traeeasury but in consequence of the appropriations made by law. So when Congress Enacts appropriation bills it does so based on informed analysis provided by the Appropriations Committee on how best to target to use the use of limited resources. So i just want to emphasize that transfer authority is provided by congress to allow executive Branch Agencies to respond to unforeseen events and circumstances and not to routinely augment appropriations for a particular activity. I will pause on my questioning and i will now turn to the chair of the full committee. Passing our final bill of the session. But i am pleased to be here with my colleagues to welcome you. I am very concerned that this administrations policies negatively impact the wellbeing of our immigrant populations. Im especially concerned about the affects on vulnerable populations like unaccompanied children. In april 2018 your predecessor, director holman, signed an agreement with hhs that provides for information sharing between your agencies regarding the vetting of potential sponsors for unaccompanied children. The mere existence of this agreement has had a Chilling Effect on the number of potential sponsors who otherwise had been willing to take these children out of federal custody and care for them. Not only does this make the mental and emotional stress these children already face even worse, it has led to significant additional federal costs as children remain in hhs custody for far longer than necessary. Its clear to me that this agreement is misguided at best. So if i could ask you a few questions first. How many arrests have been made of sponsors, potential sponsors or their household members since this agreement was signed . I dont have the exact number and we havent made any arrests since the appropriations bill that was passed prevented us from utilizing that information. So section 224 of the fy 19 appropriations bill prevents us from using that hhs information to make arrests. So prior to that date its going to be 303rd. However, you have the information from the households to which the youngster is going, isnt that correct . So if the youngster goes to an uncle and in that household there may be three undocumented, four undocumented Family Members, you have that information, is that correct . We wouldnt necessarily have the information with regard to individuals in the household. Hhs had exhibited some of the sharing and the information during the course of this moa. But were prevented from using that. Given that children may already be present in a sponsors household how does i. C. E. Ensure the safety and wellbeing of children excuse me during Enforcement Actions and what arrangements are made for these children . So certainly we take the safety of children of utmost importance as we plan any operation. In fact, the entire moa exists as the vult of some tragic circumstances in which uac replaced some traffickers. This was an attempt to provide some traffickers and other individuals who may do harm from these children from getting sponsors into their custody. Our research as were going through these cases, nearly 40 of the people who were sponsors actually had criminal records. So there are certainly calls for concern with regard to individual sponsoring the children. With regard to your exact question we have extensive training that we provide to all of our field offices. We have field office Juvenile Court enters, juvenile potential Management Unit up at headquarters and a National Headquarters overseas. We do extensive training with that, our officers are trained professional Law Enforcement officers. Were no different from any other Law Enforcement agency. Once you go into a residence as much planning as you can do beforehand, you dont know whats inside that door. And every Law Enforcement agency is faced with challenges when they go into these houses and they find there are children there either unanticipated or need a caregiver to take care of them. We work very closely and generally were able to find it has another parent in the country they can have the child stay with, a Family Member or other Family Member the child can stay with. And most times thats generally what happens. As you know the fy 19 dhs bill included a provision that constrained i. C. E. s ability to use information resulting from this agreement with hhs to deploy a sponsor, potential sponsor or a member of their household with some limited exceptions like felony convictions for child abuse or aggravated felony. Nevertheless the agreement still stands and potential sponsors are still concerned about what would happen to them if they were to offer to become a sponsor. Given that these protections are in place why has i. C. E. Not rescinded the agreement or at least amended it for the protections provided in law or and with these restrictions in place, id be interested to know as i conclude because my time is well, ill just ask the first question. Why havent you reswrinlded this agreement or at least amended it to reflect the protections provided in law . There have been some discussions with regard to how we could tailor the moa in a manner that would be more effective and in compliance with the law. I will reiterate based on the fact appropriations language forbids us from utilizing that information, a large portion of that moa has been rendered largely moot. I thank you madam chair to give me this opportunity since i was on the floor introducing the bill but i do want to say in our discussions with many people in our community theres a real concern about providing enough sponsors because theyre afraid that they will be picked or someone in the household. So i look forward to continuing this discussion. Mr. Fleschman. Thank you, madam chair. Yesterday we heard from sheaf provost in our hearing. As you can imagine we spend a lot of time at the southwest border. As you would surmise because hhs received more funds in the supplemental to care for unaccompanied minors Border Patrol was able to quickly move minors out of cbp sites and into orr facilities. Conversely because yes, i was did not receive funds in the supplemental and didnt receive an increase in the regular fiscal year 2019 bill, cbp is still sitting on a lot of single adults at the border with no relief in sight. Because of this backup and because the numbers of aphengs at the border are still astronomically high cbp facilities of ofo and Border Patrol are beyond capacity every single day. The . Ecter general has published reports in just the week on the dangers to both the migrants and your colleagues at cbp. What are you doing to ensure the southwest Border Apprehensions are a priority for beds and transport within the i. C. E. Systems, sir . Thank you. The team has been doing a tremendous job under the incredibly difficult circumstances there are out there. We are in the process of ramping up our detention. Unfortunately, we made a conscious decision not to acquire additional detention space because we didnt know where the appropriations bill would end up and we did not want to end up further in the hole than we were. As a result of not getting the appropriations until february and starting the process it takes a longer time to turn them on. When hhs gets additional money they have homestead or an act such as that where they can turn on beds quickly. When we want to turn on a facility we generally have to go to a contractor. Lets get the facility up to speed to meet our standards prior to placing individuals into that. Weve turned all about seven or seven beds thus far. And thats the culmination of the process that began once we receive the budgets and started moving forward. So our modeling indicated to us we were going to need to have those beds. We just didnt have the money to turn them on in a timely fashion. Yes, sir and im clearly empathetic and sympathetic to your plight. Is money the only challenge and does this problem extend beyond just dollars, sir . Well, it certainly does. Again, money helps us better deal with the symptoms of the crisis. And that includes being able to getting additional detention funding to relieve overcrowding in Border Patrol stations. Theyre saying about 8,000 single adult males are waiting to be processed and placed into custody. We cant place them into custody until we have a bed to put them and we cant place them until we have those beds. The average length of stay in detention has gone down even while our detention beds have gone up. So we are better utilizing the resources we have been given. But again a crisis means a crisis and there are more bodies that are there than we have the ability to do so. But again were just dealing with the symptoms. Unless the law changes that allows us to detain families during the course of immigration proceeding where theyre entitled to due process. That will be certainly and as i mentioned in my opening statement, fixing the flores Settlement Agreement will be a huge help to that. The credible fear threshold again is part of the problem. A lot of the reason these individuals are holding these these single adults are holding down these beds is because they are getting credible fear because the threshold for that credible fear is so low. When they actually go through court and get in front of a judge only less than 10 of the northern triangle individuals are actually getting asylum. So theres this different standard which creates a situation where were holding these individuals in custody for 60, 70 days as theyre going through that process and in that process youre going to be removed anyway. So it certainly makes sense to have the initial screening be more online with what the ultimate decision factor would be from on immigration judge. Yes, sir. One quick two part question. How quickly are single adults being repatriated back to their home countries and do you know the average length today in an i. C. E. Facility after being turned over to one of the cbp facilities. And im beyond my time so ill ask for a quick response, sir. So it depends on the circumstances. A lot depends on where the individuals are from. Some countries we had scheduled charters lmgs every day if we need them. We can return those individuals, if we have removal or they take the removal and dont claim asylum or the judge orders them removed we can turn them over quickly. I think the average length of stay for a single adult is going to be in the 40day range. Thank you, madam chair and thank you Ranking Member. Director, thank you for being with us here today. I also want to express thanks to your service as well as for all the men and women that work with you in helping to keep our nation safe so thank you very much. I wanted to talk today a llt bit about a couple of things but first of all some thoughts surrounding a disturbing violent attack by an avowed antifa assailant that was conducted just over two weeks ago at one of your facilities in my home state of washington. In fact, thats a facility i had the pleasure of visiting a short time age. And by the way, madam chair, with the conditions i observed i believe that all of them there were being met very well, and so i just wanted to make sure you understood that, the things i observed were in fact above standards i would think. But this man armed with a rifle and an incendiary device if you recall attacked the Detention Center in tacoma on july 13th. He tried to ignite a propane tank. He tossed lit objects as vehicles as well as buildings and lit a car on fire. Authorities found as i had mentioned a rifle and incendiary devices on him as well as a knife and also a collapsible baton, so i think everybody would agree with me this is pretty frightening to have happened. Certainly thankful that no officers, no detainees were injured or killed in this attack. Whats even just as concerning but maybe more so is to hear and read about the things that members of the radical antifa groups are saying about this man. Theyre calling him a martyr and calling for more direct action just like this. Unfortunately, this wasnt the first time this man had attacked one of your facilities. I believe last year same individual had wrapped his arms around a Police Officers throat during a protest. Ive been think about this. I think a lot of us have probably been reflecting about whats going on in our country, our national diskrs both in washington, d. C. And around the country and how perhaps this vehemence against our Law Enforcement and against men and women as you said are doing jobs we asked you to do to protect our nation and up hold our laws, how is that affecting these peoples ability to do their jobs . And i just wondered if you had any thoughts about that, mr. Director. Thank you, congressman. I wish that was an isolated incident. As you mentioned there are significantly increasing numbers of violent protests against our officers who are doing incredibly professional difficult job on the most complex and difficult of circumstances incredibly well. Assaults unfortunately against our officers are up significantly. Theyve been on the rise over the past couple of years both on our officers that are out in the field conducting Law Enforcement efforts as well as officers and even our contractors at our detention facilities where theyre being attacked and assaulted and i think we had a nurse that was punched in the face last year, you know, and the trauma she suffered as a result of that is i mentioned and i said it publicly and ive done some immediate peernls of it, and i mean no disrespect but theyre picketing the wrong people. Congress is responsible for the laws were enforcing. Is there a desire to change the laws and these people wanted to have the laws change, they know where capitol hill is. But to come after the men and women who are american patriots doing the job, again they put their life on the line every day when they go out there. And its not just the Law Enforcement officers. When we had people trying to storm our office in portland we had nonLaw Enforcement officers being threatened, having their cars vandalized. Thats not right and it shouldnt be that way. So i would hope that everybody involved in this process and this issue would take a step back and a deep breath and realize that Law Enforcement officers are the ones that are comporting themselves in the proper manner in this entire process. And its those that are wishing that they didnt exist and are the ones behaving in an unprofessional and unsafe manner. Again, thank you for your service and for being here with us today. Thank you, madam chair. First thing, id like to respond to what you said. Our country is a democracy. I think we have the best country in the world. Theres of us who traveled to other parts of the world appreciate it. Its a check and ballens. I agree you have dedicated men and women who work in Law Enforcement. Theyre good penal. There are also some bad people in Law Enforcement, and that few amount of small people give a bad reputation. I think right now this country is split. I think a lot of it has to do with National Media on both sides of the aisle where people get their information. I think our president has infuriated this issue of immigration. All people coming into this country are bad and wrong and murderers and rapists and whatever, but your job is to enforce the law and i agree. We need to change the law and we need to do that. But i think when the average person in this country sees abuses of children and families, that is where lot of of this comes from, and were concerned about it. Were saying this is not who we are, and there are certain agencies being blamed and youre probably one of the top ones, so how do we deal with this . I feel where you are and i. C. E. Is you need to make sure you focus on the immigration laws, but there are also ways to do this. We just passed a supplementing and youre going to have money coming to you now to deal with issues. Now, because of the debate back and forth youre not going to be allowed to use this money for enforcement. Youre going to be allowed to use this money for issues such as detention facilities that are better, keep people out you cant hold, keep families together. I would personally like to see i. C. E. Focus and youre gone just like the fbi is known for something, the dea is known for something, youre known for focusing on the felons. Thats what you do best. You need to focus on the felons. And when it looks like youre going after imgrnlt families with children and when our president puts out were going to go out there and arrest 25,000 people and or whatever he said that number was, that doesnt help you, it didnt help our system of justice. And it scares the dickens out of these families who are here because they want a better a lot of people in this be country. Thank you. Unfortunately i think theres a lot of misinformation out there, which doesnt help. 90 of the people we arrest are convicted criminals. Im talking about 90 are convicted criminals, charged with a criminal violation. Felony type or automobile, speeding tickets . Again, speeding ticket. The way we find out most individuals are here in the country illegally is here in the criminal justice system. 3 out of 4 people we arrest come out of our criminal alien program. These are individuals sitting in custody of another Law Enforcement agency. Thats how were aware of their presence. 90 . Pending criminal charges. Immigration fugitives and individual who have illegally reentered the country after being deported. To your larger point and with regard to restoring the integrity of the immigration system, if we do nothing else, we have said there is no longer going to be a consequence for anybody coming into this country illegally. Even if you go through the entire Immigration Court process, that order issued by an immigration judge is not worth the pape its written on. Why do we even have the process . No other Law Enforcement agency in this country is being asked to ignore a lawfully issued judges order. I say that because thats the priority. Theres 11 Million People here. You cant go after 11 Million People. Why do you feel that you are being criticized that theres so many people in this country that want to ban i. C. E. From your perspective why do you think thats the case and what do you think need to be done to change that . Again, i think its largely a part of misconception and misunderstanding as to what we do. If you want to talk about abolishing i. C. E. , that means im not saying that. Those that say they want to abolish i. C. E. , what that means is they dont want 140,000 criminals removed from the country every year. They dont want hsi removing 10,000 gang members. They dont want hsi removing 10,000 pounds of fentanyl. 54 of the cases are made out of hsi. That means we no longer want to have counter proliferation investigations. Thats a good answer and thats what you have to get out to the public. My time is up. Mr. Rutherford. Thank you, madam chair. First i want to say thank you for the job that you and your men and women are doing out there and really apologize for the congress and the courts in the position that we have put you in and i know its a very, very difficult situation, because not only have we created bad law, but theres also this sentiment in the country that this respects all authority. The focuses that are talking about banning i. C. E. , you know, there was another group that was marching down the streets of new york chanting, what do we want, dead cops, when do we want it, now. We just saw on television the other night two new York City Police Department Officers having water dumped on them. Youre absolutely right. People need to take a step back, take a breath and start respecting Law Enforcement. Ive got some bad news for you. The president asked for 9. 3 billion so you could do your job. Were only going to give you 8 billion, it looks like. Somewhere in there youre going to have to transfer probably another 1. 3 billion around so you can complete your mission. Thats not on you. Thats on us. So let me ask you this. When we talk about your budget and ways that you can do your job more efficiently, you mentioned the criminal alien program. I was a lifelong Law Enforcement officer, 12 years as a sheriff. I ran a 287 g program in my jail. I know how efficient and safe that was for your officers, for my officers and for every citizen in my city. I have to tell you, my blood boils when i see these cities say theyre not going to work and coordinate with i. C. E. Let me ask. Do you think it is safer for you to go into a jail and arrest these criminal aliens, and these are the criminals that my good friend is talking about down there. 90 of your arrests are out of these jails. Is that safer . Its absolutely safer. It is it cheaper . Its certainly cheaper. To give you perspective, we used to get before this issue came up with sanctuary cities and people not wanting to honor detainers and talking to Field Office Director from los angeles at the time, he said i used to get 200 criminals a day out of l. A. County. Thats dwindled down to a handful now. That is something weve asked congress for. Look x everybody is safer. Every community is safer when Law Enforcement works together. We all take the same oath so were all better when we work together. That said, there are many Law Enforcement agencies that would like to work with us, but due to come Court Decisions or some executive orders or state laws or just the fear of litigation and liability, theyre reticent to do so or the Legal Department wont let them. Weve been asking congress for years to codify the detainer and indemnify sheriffs or local Law Enforcement agencies that honor those detainers. Right. Most sheriffs if they know they are indemnified from tort actions or claim made from individual being held on detainer, then well gladly take them out. The detainer issue, i understand some people throw that up in an argument. All i have to do is call i. C. E. And before that individual is changed into their street clothes, i. C. E. Can be there to pick them up. Its just a coordination effort. I think thats a red herring that folks throw out there that just dont want to help i. C. E. Get these people out of our country. I saw a report in miami saying that 37 florida agencies have agreed or show an interest in being part of the 287 g program, but there were delays in getting these agencies into the program. Can you talk about what some of the other delays might be . Is it budgetary for them or you . Part of it is budget for us. The budget has remained static for the past four or five years. Part of it look if were going to delegate immigration authority, we dont take that lightly. We vet all those individual even though theyve been vetted and have background check by the local agency they work for. We vet them ourselves. Sometimes theres facility infrastructure with regard to t 1 lines so we can install our computers and the like. Were trying to move as quickly as possible. We have a new program called the warrant Service Officer program which is a subset, a very limited delegated authority to just execute warrants on our behalf at the direction of an i. C. E. Supervisor or officer. Florida was the first place we rolled that out. We rolled out nine counties and continue to expand. Thank you for your service. Ms. Wass ewasserman schultz. I dont want to pursue this line of questioning if youre not specifically familiar with the ongoing issues at ero miami in miramar. Are you familiar . Im fairly familiar. Ive been there and i know that my staff back briefed me after they briefed you a couple months ago. So after that meeting with them and we got the detailed answers to questions, there were a number of questions that they really didnt give us an answer for. These issues of poor infrastructure, people standing out in the blazing sun, security that is working with ero miami treating undocumented immigrants rudely, still prohibiting them from being able to have volunteers distribute food and water. Those issues are all continuing and weve gotten insufficient answers related to canopies, bathroom expansion and other issues. I would like you to take this document that i can get you a copy of. I want to share with you the concerns that i have on the answers not being adequate. I still need an answer about what is being done to follow up to make sure that Security Officers at the facility are not treating rudely people who are presenting at the office with an appointment rudely, speaking rudely to them, refusing to speak to them in spanish and really giving them a general hard time. Its a very small parking lot. There is no coverage whatsoever and i realize parking is going to be expanded but that wont happen until next year. I do have some updated question. I have another question i want to ask you. The other issue that was not answered adequately was a letter is sent to an immigrant who is told to come for a specific appointment. When they get there, they are told that they have to call the phone line and not only that the letter isnt sufficient. When they call the phone line, they are not connected with a person who speaks their language. The only option is in english. The answer that i got in writing was insufficient and didnt provide me with an answer other than the policy about whats supposed to happen rather than trying to get to the bottom of whats actually happening. The other insufficient answer related to the distribution of food and water by volunteers. I understand that in the letter that you sent to me in the memo you sent to me, you detailed that theyre instructed in their letter to bring adequate food and water while they wait and that its your liability that is an issue with allowing volunteers to distribute food and water. That makes no sense to me. If you look at the configuration of that parking lot, theres no obstacle or damage or harm that could come if people are simply allowed to bring food and water to make sure we can relieve the difficulty of the people there. If you could answer those questions and give me more substantive specific answers to those concerns, id appreciate it. Sure. So i did ask for an update. I know the outdoor water fountains will be ready for public use on august 9th of this year and the new parking lot will be open august 22nd. In august, not next january. August 22nd right here. Okay. I know theres a permanent canopy project. Its a gsa obviously is involved. Ive been to that fa sicility at a year ago. I expressed concerns with regard to the conditions the employees were working in too because its really cramped. Its really cramped. I know its being reviewed by g gsa and within i. C. E. To put that in. So we are moving forward on that. I appreciate it. We can give you i just need to talk to you more in detail about the concerns. Happy to come talk to you any time. Thank you. I share the military Construction Veterans Affairs subcommittee. What were concerned about is there are conclusions in the report written by gao that looked into i. C. E. s failures to consistently follow your own policies when moving forward with removal proceedings for noncitizen veterans. According to gao, some veterans removed may not have received the level of review and approval i. C. E. Has determined is appropriate for cases involving veterans. I. C. E. Does not know how many veterans have been placed in removal proceedings or removed due to a lack of consistent recordkeeping. These are really disturbing deficiencies. Are you and your agency currently working to ensure consistent implementation of i. C. E. Policy for handling noncitizen veterans or working to develop a policy that makes sure you know how many veterans are in your system and that they are being interviewed properly. And finally the report recommends that i. C. E. Maintain complete electronic records on veterans and removal proceedings or who have been deported. You dont have a system like that. Have you established one yet . The military veterans is something obviously that were very sensitive to. They do require and do get a much higher level of scrutiny than an ordinary removal case. Oftentimes gao report says theyre not. Oftentimes theyre kicked up to headquarters. We dont have and i know its been discussed about trying to find a code in our system that we can put in there so we can readily identify which cases are military. With regard to having a complete electronic record, we simply dont have the system to allow that. Weve made requests in the budget for many years to have upgrades to the systems that havent been funded. Absent funding, we dont have anything like that. Madam chair, these are people who have served our country and they are supposed to be given a heightened level of review as a result of serving our country even three they are undocumented immigrants. If you dont know how many of them are in your system, then tds nearly impossible for you to treat them with the dignity and respect that they deserve and thank them for their service. You cant just say we dont have enough money or the capacity to do that. You have to be able to keep track. I was speaking to your last question with regard to electronic afile system. It is. So you know how many are in your system . Again, the funding for that is not available. We have ways within our existing system that i think can be tweaked that would allow us to do that. A lot of the individuals arent undocumented. They were lawful permit resid t residents that were convicted of aggravate ed felonies. Thats a different situation. Im talking about people who are not. Thank you, madam chair. Thank you mr. Director for being here. I wanted to ask about the Family Case Management Program alternative to detention. In june 2017 i. C. E. Terminated the Family Case Management Program. The daily cost of family detention per individual is approximately 300. However, a Case Management programs cost around 36 a day for one family. Just wanted to ask why i. C. E. Decided to terminate the Family Case Management Program . Thank you. The Family Case Management Program was a program was incredibly expensive for what the ultimate result was. For example, in the 18 or so months a that the program existed, there were only 65 cases concluded. 41 were terminated for noncompliance, meaning the individuals didnt show up to the hearings. 8 selfremoved. 7 were issued a departure order. And 9 received relief. For the 17 billion or so that was invested in that program at the time, we received 15 removals which was about 1. 16 million per removal. With regard to compliance, the rates under fcnp were a little bit lower than the Standard Program intensive supervision program. In fact, this shows some of the challenges with dealing with cases in a nondetained environment. Three quarters of those cases still havent been decided by the Immigration Courts. If we kept this program at the cost, weve probably be up to 36 million dollar. There were some things in this program that we found useful that weve incorporated into our current existing Case Management system thats outside of fcmp. Those that weve implemented weve put that in there. The reports that the alternative Detention Program had compliance rates of 99 for i. C. E. Checkins and appointments and 100 attendance at Immigration Court hearings, when youre measuring success of the program, does i. C. E. Include immigrants that it removed from the program who then later failed to comply with the requirement . And shouldnt the program only measure compliance of those who were consistently and activity within the program . Well, the ultimate purpose of the Immigration Court system is for an individual to be available for due process and make their case in front of an immigration judge as to whether or not they have the lawful right to remain in the United States. So the ultimate measure should be whether or not the order issued by the judge is actually adhered to. What we have seen is that the number of individuals that are actually removed, which most of the individuals at the end of this process receive a removal order. Thats just the way it is. Most of the individuals that make asylum claim or other form of relief generally dont get that. Most end up with a removal order. Atd over the past several years has been fairly level at removing about 2700 people that are on atd. In fact, between 2014 and 2017 the atd budget more than doubled from 91 million to 183 million. As a result of that 92 million investment, we removed 273 more people. Thats it. If that same dollars had been put into detention, we could have removed ten times the number of people as we did that were on atd. You mentioned that there were parts of the program that have been useful. These programs are more humane, helping vulnerable families with young kids, pregnant women, people with health concerns, victims of domestic violence. Would there ever be potential to improve programs like this such as working with nonprofit organizations. A lot of them are more equipped to provide Case Management assistance to immigrants within the communities that they serve. And i just wanted to know what the status of incorporating nonprofit organizations into these sorts of programs to provide gap services . We work closely with nonprofits. We were given some Additional Fund in 2019 and supplemental which were utilizing. Its asked frequently both here and in the media. You hear these cases of individual that have been here six, seven, eight years, have been complying with all their checkins and why does i. C. E. Arrest them . Thats what the back end of atd enforcement looks like. Those individuals have been here for six or seven or eight years have most times been appealing their case to the board of immigration appeals, to the circuit court. Those cases drag out. When we talk about a crisis, having 3 million cases on the Immigration Court system as well. It takes these cases so long to get through the process that these individuals are here for six or seven years. Ultimately the judge orders that individual removed. Were sworn to execute that order. The immigration order says you shall take into custody. If youre looking at the entire enforcement contin tcontinuum, make whatever claims they want and have them adjudicated in a short time frame while theyre in custody in a safe and secure environment that is sanitary and wellrun and meets all of our standards and we can have a decision on that case in 40, 50, 60 days, to me thats a lot more humane than having some individual out on the streets for five or six or seven years where they get married, have a family, develop roots when they know all along they cant be in the country. I think its more humane to do on the front end and let them have their day in court. If theyre entitled to stay, the judge will let them stay. That will reduce the pressure on the border. The reason youre seeing all these people coming to the border is because they know we cant hold them. I want to end by thanking you for acknowledging the importance of humane and swift treatment for these families, keeping them together. You talked about all the Legal Options they pursue. That is their legal right to do so. Thank you. I yield back. Mr. Aguilar. One item that concerns me, youve talked about u. S. Citizens in response to questions u. S. Citizens that have been detained. I. C. E. Has a history of incorrectly detaining u. S. Citizens. Two citizens in my district were detained by i. C. E. And were later awarded settlements to compensate them for the arrests. We required i. C. E. To issue statistics on the detention of u. S. Citizens. The bill gave i. C. E. Six months to complete the report which was due in may. We vhavent received any of tha information. If a person can prove their citizenship with a passport or birth certificate, why are they being held further by i. C. E. . Ill check on the reports, first off. Ill look into that. We have a specific policy with regard to how we handle individuals who are making claims to United States citizenship that are in our custody. I. C. E. Does not have the Lawful Authority to say anybody or is not a citizen. What we do is when we are private epr provided that an individual in our custody looks to be a citizen, well release that individual from custody and instruct that individual what to do to get a naturalization certificate or a documentation of citizenship, whatever the case may be. So thats the process utilized. A lot of people that end up being citizens in our custody didnt even know they were citizens. Its very complex. Its very complex and some of the individuals dont even know theyre citizens until we actually start to investigate their background and we realize they are in fact a citizen. Im not talking about cases where an individual finds out theyre a u. S. Citizen. Im talking about cases where individuals have clearly said theyre citizens. What troubled me with your answer is someone looks to be a citizen. Ive got a list here of nine guaido ptwo days detained, five days detained. These are u. S. Citizens or people who were born in the United States or have been naturalized. These arent individuals who found out they were u. S. Citizens. These are individuals who told your officers that they were u. S. Citizens and youre talking within the process of this that you advance it when they look to be a citizen. It strikes me that all of these individuals are latinos and youre talking about how someone looks. I was not referring to anybodys appearance. That was clear if anyone listened to the context. Im saying when we review the individual, look at their documentation, if the document shows that they have evidence, probative evidence of being a citizen, thats when we release them from custody. I can tell you from my experience, many individuals who are citizens in a border environment, primarily when theyre involved in criminal activity will claim to be a noncitizen especially when theyre a mexican. They would claim to be a Mexican National because they knew they would get turned around five hours later. They werent going to be prosecuted and they could come back in at will. We look at all the information that is in front of us to make that determination. We have no Lawful Authority to hold u. S. Citizens. We dont want to hold u. S. Citizens. But its also difficult. In prior discussions weve had, we found out that within the dropdown box that you had for where an individual is from, United States isnt in that drop down box. So its even difficult for you to track how many u. S. Citizens you detain even for a small portion of time. What type of racial profiling, education, what type of training do your officers receive specifically applying to u. S. Citizens so we can be certain that doesnt happen as much . Two days, three days, five days, three weeks . Theres been cases in the press where u. S. Citizens, members of congress finding u. S. Citizens detain eed not in i. C. E. Custod. I want to make sure were learning through this. Can you talk a little bit about the training you receive specific to racial profiling. Sure. Theres no tolerance to racial profiling in i. C. E. It starts at the basic training level where our officers and agents receive training on racial profiling at the very beginning of their Law Enforcement career. We abide by dhs policy, doj policy with regard to racial profiling. It is continually something that is stressed in our in service trainings. There is no tolerance for racial profiling. I guess id still like to follow up a little bit more on the documentation piece. If someone has these documents and is claiming to be a u. S. Citizen, why are they continued to be detained . I appreciate it. Thank you, madam chair. Thank you. I represent a lot of Border Patrol agents, a lot of cbp officers, men and women in blue, a lot of i. C. E. Officers from san antonio to la rredo and the mcalm mcallen area. The current law and some of the immigration laws we have have been around for years. It usually says laws passed by congress, you shall do certain things. I just want to just make sure if theres a bad apple, we go after that bad apple. I think you agree with me but i just want to say that your men and women are probably the same people that were working under the Obama Administration, now under the trump administration. Again, not the men and women but the policies. If someone wants to change the shall do certain things to law, then congress should go ahead and do that. You also have certain protocols that you follow, because there are folks that say there are no protocols. For example, you have the Performance Based National detention standards of 2011, which i think was revised in december of 2016. That took input from nongovernmental organizations to improve mental, medical services, improve communication with detainees that have limited proficiencies, et cetera. On top of that we also have in the appropriations. I started i guess in 2014 so im looking from 2014 on. There are riders that weve added, both myself and other members that talk about detention standards, that talk about transparency in i. C. E. Detention centers, that talk about i. C. E. Detention facility contracts for example. One of the sections that prohibits i. C. E. Operation and support funds for being used to continue any contract for the provision of detention servicse. So there is other provisions dealing with i. C. E. On this. So one is to make sure we understand theres a particular protocol and language that we have there. Also on top of that, i think the i. C. E. Nondetained dok eed dock4 million individuals roughly. Were adding about 10,000 cases to the Immigration Courts every week. Theres over 1 million subject to final orders of removal that we have. Then out of the detained docket, i think its less than 2 of the undocumented individuals are actually in i. C. E. Custody across the 200plus facilities that you have. Tell me your response on the protocols, the laws, the workload that you have and the environment. Again, i want to make sure that we treat people with respect and dignity. Im talking about the folks that are under your facilities on that. So give me a quick perspective on what i just laid out on the structure that we have there. I whole heartedly agree that it is imperative that those individuals that are within our custody are kept in a safe and secure environment and are treated humanely and professionally and with dignity. That is what we endeavor to do. Our pbm from 2011 is probably thicker than this. Were actually in the process of revising some of our Detention Centers. Weve worked closely with our Custody Management Division with regard to updating some of those standards. So youre working with the appropriation committee. We have ngos. We invited Law Enforcement because theyre the ones that have to implement and use some of these standards. So we want to make sure that what we do is meaningful. Some of the standards that we have are 20 years old that arent relevant anymore. For example, when you talk about the need to have a locksmith on their staff, some of these jails dont have key locks anymore. So we would have to ding them or give them a waiver when we do those inspections. Were trying to make them more relevant to todays technology. Thank you. Mr. Price. Thank you, madam chair. Mr. Director let me return to the line of questioning about the targeting of detention and deportation, the i would say very baffling claims and counterclaims that have often been made in this area. You gadidnt give us a breakdow and i want to ask you to do that. It was the ero arrests was the category. And you said 90 of those arrests either have prior criminal convictions or pending criminal charges or theyre immigration fugitives or they were previously removed from the country and illegally reentered. Whats the breakdown of that 90 in terms of those four categories . About 66 are convicted criminals, about 21 are pending criminal charges, 2 are the fugitives and 1 would be the illegal reentrants. Whats the range . The range of criminal convictions is the same as utilized throughout the Law Enforcement community, anybody who has been convicted of a criminal violation. In fact, we only get fingerprints from local Law Enforcement agencies when they submit them for a criminal violation. So is entering the country illegally, being apprehended, coming back in i just want to get clear. How many of these people are violent criminals, you know, as we often say a threat to the community . So our 2018 report is online. Off the top of my head, ti thin the top charge is dui. Then i know within that top five is drugs and assaults. I dont have those numbers directly in front of me but they are on the website. We could certainly get them to your office this afternoon easily enough. Well, it would help to i would say break down these categories a little more straightforwardly, knowing that as we discuss the prioritization, the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, you know, the point of that discussion is to prioritize dangerous people in terms of whatever else we do in the area of detention and deportation, to pro prioritize people who are a threat to the country. There would be a much more helpful way to present these statistics. You know, 90 sounds great, of course. I know why you would frame it this way. But even 66 prior criminal convictions, i mean, that begs for a further breakdown. Just being very straightforward here about the purpose of the policy, the purpose of the discussion, the purpose of the targeting which on this subcommittee we have worked on for many, many years. And by the way, nobodys saying everybody else gets a free ride. We have said for years that given limited resources, given the fact that we are going to deport maybe 400,000 of people a year out of 11 Million People a year, there is going to be discretion exercised. That discretion needs to be gently and appropriately exercised to remove dangerous people. So it would help at least to have statistics that are responsive to that concern. I fully agree. I whole heartedly support being transparent. We have quarterly calls with the media with regard to all our statistics when it comes to Immigration Enforcement. Im going to ask you to break down that prior criminal convictions category more precisely. Happy to do so, sir. So we know to what extent were dealing with violent criminals. Let me just quickly give you an example of another way to frame this. This has to do with the daily count of detainees, a slightly different universe. From september 16 to december 18, there was a 22 increase in the daily count of detainees. Thats from 39,000 to 47,000. But the number of individuals who had committed serious crimes dropped by over 1200 despite that overall increase and the number of immigrant detainees who had never been convicted of even a minor violation grew by 8300 people. Now, thats a different framing of statistics that puts a very different light on the situation. I just think in a way the beginning of an intelligent discussion here, especially a discussion of appropriate targeting and prioritization and the exercise of discretion needs to be a more straightforward presentation of the facts. And i think what i just gave does indicate that weve had some slippage, considerable slippage in the degree to which were targeting dangerous people. Exactly what happened there is exactly whats going on at the border now. That is a result of all border cases. All those noncriminal border cases that are in our custody are mandatory detention cases because theyre under the expedited removal process and the reason the criminals dropped is because i had to redeploy offices from working with criminals to deal with the border surge cases. That is a direct result. When we say its a crisis, it affects the entire enforcement continu continuum. Were down 14 . Were going to arrest 15, 18,000 less criminal this is year directly because of whats going on at the border. This crisis is not limited to the border. Theyre disbursing to the country and we have to manage those cases. Some of those individuals are getting involved in criminal activity and we have fewer and fewer resources to actually deal with that unfortunately. Well return to this. Thank you. Director, before i ask my question, i just want to respond to something that you mentioned in your response to ms. W wasserman schultz, a question about the ability to provide reporting about i. C. E. Detention and removal of military veterans. You mentioned that part of the problem is due to lack of funding to modernize your systems. Congress provided an additional 6 million for this purpose and in 2020 i recommended an additional 2. 5 million. Both additions are above the administrations budget request. Im also recommending an additional 2 million for your Law Enforcement systems and Analysis Division who do the analysis and the reporting. Im trying to help by adding funding above what youre asking for. And if this isnt enough, i think its important that you tell us exactly what it is you need so that you can be more transparent about your operations. Id like to follow up a little bit more on some in regards to detention facilities and the conditions there. I have several questions. First of all, its really unacceptable the sub standard conditions at i. C. E. Facilities that have been reported and which i have myself seen in my visits. Im hoping that well be able to make some progress on that together. One of my questions is, have you carried out a full review and take of the necessary corrective actions to ensure that the recommendations from the oig and the gao and i. C. E. s own standards and oversight recommendations are being implemented at every detention facility that i. C. E. Operates . Yes. We have. We have a comprehensive Oversight Framework that we utilize. I would say that our detention facilities receive more scrutiny and appropriately so and we have no reason not to have that certainty and we welcome transparency. We have Detention Service monitors that work for headquarters at overseas facilities out there in the field. We have assistant directors on the ground. Some of these Detention Service monitors are on site. And thanks to you and the committee for Additional Funding for opr, we were able to fund 14 more positions. What is the status of that . The 14 positions will be on board by the end of this fy. We expect to be able to do i thought we were planning to do about 15 more inspections this year than last year based on the Additional Funding. Once we get those new inspectors, that will increase going forward. We continue to hear disturbing reports that i. C. E. Is contracting for additional detention capacity where basic zands are not bein standards are not being met. One example is a new facility in texas that does not allow contact visitation. Contact visitation should be provided especially when minor children are involved. We are talking about civil detention, not criminal detention. Do you believe its acceptable for i. C. E. To enter into these agreements to provide civil Detention Services where reasonable opportunities for contact visitation with families and attorneys cant or wont be required, which is contrary to your agencys own standards. Im not familiar with that facility but ill certainly look into it. On the larger question, as you well know, all of our contracts that were required to enter into is supposed to be at the 2011 standards. If we dont meet those standards, then we are supposed to notify congress 30 days prior to actually entering into that contract, which we have done. Those notifications have actually probably been fair ly few. I know all the new contracts were contracting at the pbm 2011 level. The note that i have here is this is in Montgomery County and started using it in october of 2018. If i could get some Additional Information. Happy to look into it. Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you again, madam chair. Thank you director. This system is very informational and helps us all do our job. Mr. Director, the dhs secretary sent a letter dated march 28th that states, and i quote, without additional assistance we will be forced to increase the releases of the single Adult Population from i. C. E. The only population for which we can currently effectively enforce u. S. Immigration laws. When meeting with Border Patrol agents, the point is made time after time that if we cant keep up with detaining and returning single adults, weve lost the border. Question, do you agree, does the sentiment of the march 28th letter still hold . Without a doubt. How can we make sure that we dont lose ground on this population, sir . Again, just dealing with the symptoms now, absent additional capacity, i dont know how you would do it. There is not a way to move these cases through the system really much quicker than they currently do and we certainly need to make sure that the individuals have all ability to access their due process rights. So if they want to have appeals of their cases and the like, they certainly are free to do so. Absent additional capacity, theres only so many beds we have and so quickly we can turn them around. From your testimony earlier and from what ive seen its evident that resources alone wont fix this crisis. This is a very complicated set of issues. Going back to the march 28th letter, secretary referenced a legislative proposal to congress in the coming days to address the immigration and asylum policies. Do you know the status of an immigration proposal from the department or administration and will we see an official proposal, sir . I dont know the exact status. I can tell you that i know what the proposal contained. The three main items i mentioned in my testimony with regard to flores, the tvpra and the credible fear threshold. We can certainly check and get back with you. Yes, sir. Recent outbreaks of measles, mumps and chickenpox have closed thousands of beds as you try to limit exposure. How are you managing to contain the outbreak and how many detainees are ill and how many beds are affected . So it changes. Im not sure how many we have. For the past six to eight months its generally been around 4 or 5,000 beds that are cohothe res of diseases. When we have to quarantine a whole wing, at any one time we may have 1500, 2,000 beds that are vacant but they are quarantined. What efforts are you making to ensure detainees at the affects sites specifically and across i. C. E. Facilities have unfettered access to medical care and what efforts are underway to make sure the population isnt introduced to new outbreaks. We utilize all standard practices within the detention environment to ensure those individuals are quarantikwarqua not released from custody until were certain theyre past incubation period and theyre clear. Thank you to the committee for the additional medical funding that was in the supplemental that we put directly to use. Weve been leveraging some Additional Resources from Public Health. We have sworn commissioned Public Health officers that oversee our medical program. That includes doctors, nurse practitioners, social workers, the whole plethora of medical services provided. They do a tremendous job. Their sole existence is to ensure the safety and care and health of the individuals in our detention. One final question. When do you anticipate the outbreak will pass and what actions do you need to make the facility safe to use again . If i knew that one, id be in vegas. New people come in every day. The Border Patrol has no idea what theyre going to catch and what diseases they may have. Its not a new phenomenon. Weve had to do this in the detention realm for as long as weve held aliens. Madam chair, i yield back. I want to talk about the alternative tovisited the bordee was significant overcrowding. The Biggest Issue we have right now is volume. Whether its judges dealing with this problem, i said yesterday in the hearing that the Border Patrol agents said we make arrests. It used to be wed see them in court or whatever. Now you have a whole other dynamic to your mission and thats holding these individuals. I want to talk about discretion with respect to your agency. You have the discretion to release nonflight, nonviolent detainees on monitoring. Looking to what your mission is and what i think congressman price and i both have tried to focus on the bad people, the individuals that are really, that we need the expertise of i. C. E. Officers to go after. Thats where i would like to see your mission and i would like this country to understand that. What a lot of people are seeing is that were going to come out and get you and theyre a fr e and local governments arent working with you. Its not where it needs to be. The question is we provided 20 million for alternatives to detention. These programs are less costly to american taxpayers, more humane in standard detention. And they come with Court Compliance rates up to about 90 when you put people in these type of situations. How fast can you expand alternative to Detention Programs to reduce this overcrowding, which i believe helps you, it helps our country, it helps the image of what a lot of people are seeing as abuse of people and families and children. So most of the, in fact, every unless the small percentage that claimed negative credible fear and are found not to have it are released into the community. We have about 101,000 individuals on atd. We could put based on existing funding about 64,000 people on the gps bracelet annually and keep them on there. At our current volume, thats about half of the number of people that came in in the month of may, at which point we would not be able to put anybody else on a bracelet until those individual came off. Those cases may go, three x five, seven years such that we would be able to put very few individuals on a bracelet from that point forward, meaning everybody else would just be released. Frankly what weve seen is that the absconder rate for these families is far higher than it ever was for the single adults we used to use it on. Its about 26 of the absconder rate for families that are on gps. We have individuals under surveillance and watching them come off the bracelets. Again, i think a lot of it comes from the fact that these arent real families. Its individual that are single adult males that are renting a child in mexico, paying a smuggler or the cartel for that child, bringing them into the country and as soon as theyre processed and released, they could carele less what happenedo the child and they go on about their way with their bracelet off. Let me stop you there. In policing, your job is to protect our society when people break the law. In some area you have im from the baltimore region. Theyve got a bad rep right now. We have to work on turning that around. Part of that is do you have a system of somebody focusing on Community Type policing . Instead of everyone who is here waiting whatever needs to be done, theyre not going to fear i. C. E. Other than if they get arrested theyre going to be treated that way. Because youve got an image issue. As a member of congress, i dont want you to have an image issue because you have a mission. That mission is based on the laws that weve passed, but youve got to work on this. This is my last question because my time is up now. Do you have any type of program trying to work on your image now that whether you believe it or not is not good for 50 of the country. I would love the media to publish all the tremendous things that we do. And we try diligently to get our story out there. Unfortunately its not sensat n sensational to say i. C. E. Did a good job and removed this aggravated felon or i. C. E. Seized a thousand pounds of fentanyl or rescued this child from active sexual exploitation. Those stories dont get picked up. I can do as many testify shv sh want and a lot of it falls on deaf ears. I want to point out the amount of arrests for traffic, 26,000 traffic offense, 30,000. That seems like it would be the highest numbers. Thats part of our issue. Mr. Price has to deal with that. I yield back. Thank you, madam chair. Director, do you or your officers get to decide who will actually be deported out of custody . Again, unless the individual already has had their day in Immigration Court and received a final order of removal from an immigration judge, we are the front end of that process just as a local cop or detective is in the criminal justice system. We are making the arrest based on probable cause and filing a notice to appear. Your men and women make no deportation decision, correct . Correct. In limited circumstances there are some cases in which individuals under the law are not spite entitled to a hearing regard to the removability issues but they are entitled to a hearing for asylum or other form of relief. You dont get to pick and choose what laws youre going to enforce. So one of the things that i think people need to understand and it really kind of came up on the military issue. Your officers when they oh oh o your officers, when they go to a facility and pick up an individual on a container, that individual has been charged. You dont have a choice, you picked them up. Whether they have military service in their background or not and how that will impact on their individual case is really up to the judge, not you or your officers, is that correct . Thats correct. The judge makes the decision on moveability. While there was a decrease in the number of migrants in the middle of may, still hearing about them going over the border, detention facilities over capacity and you just received 2. 9 million in a supplemental bill. My question today is do you anticipate that will get you through the end of the year . That will be enough . Whats the burn rate on that . So, the money that we were given, and we are appreciative of it, areas in transportation, medical services and money we gave to hsi to do additional investigations and that was very successful and went right to work. Unfortunately, from a detainment perspective were still short and still short in the transportation area. Our request in supplemental was around 110 million and the need still remains. I tried to move 600 million to you guys over forfeitures and seizures to address the detention beds. That failed. After a Successful Pilot in may, you mentioned rapid dna processing. I. C. E. , you all awarded a 5. 2 Million Contract for additional dna testing and supplies. Can you give me an idea how that program is going . The rollout . Hows it looking . Its looking good, i mean that from an operational perspective. From criminal justice and victimization perspective its looking bad. We ran the first week of it last week. We opened up in seven different facilities and we have two machines in each facility with more machines to come. Within the first week there were 102 referrals to us. We found 17 instances of fraud based on the dna test. 14 of the individuals broke to the fact they werent really family units to begin with. At all. Before they even took the dna test because they saw that was potential for them. Were continuing to pursue that as it rolls autoand we have additional machines and capability and the results will go up and there will hopefully be deterrent effect as well. The word spreads. How many different groups where its not a parent but aunt and uncle . We have a couple Different Things going on at one time. You look at the family fraud investigations going on in the surge we brought down there going on for several months, weve had about 3,000 cases referred to us. Through the investigative process we found about 400 to be fraudulent. Most of them there are some that are Family Members. Usually what happened were saying theyre fraudulent, theyre presenting themselves as if they actually are father and son or mother and son, whatever the case may be, or were finding theyre actually adults. You have an uncle 32 years old and kid 19 years old and comes in, says, this is my 17yearold kid, a family unit. We have 790 prosecutions during this time and 680 accepted for prosecution. What were also seeing very troubling to us, doing our best to come bait, individuals claim to be uacs arent uacs were seeing them 24 years old coming up with 16, 17yearold birth secretary. Were extremely worried about that. And they will go in juvenile custody. The last thing we want is a 24yearold in detention with 16yearold boys. We want to keep the safety of those children. We identified 59 of those. 58 have been prosecuted. Theyve been a tremendous help to us. Thank you. I render my time back. Thank you. On two times you said the reason the i. C. E. Raids were successful they had the element of surprise. When the media is drawn to the attention of i. C. E. Raids it inhibits their ability to do their job. Is that a fair summary . Im not sure we had the element of surprise with all the media. Typically when congressional overpasses ask for Additional Information about rumored raised, i. C. E. Tells us that information cant be shared because of pending operations. You know thats generally the response we receive, is that correct . That is correct except i think its a disservice to classify them as raised. We were after target individuals who had gone through the immigration process and the judge ordered it knowing who they were. Calling them raids heightens it. When a sheriff or Police Officer execute as warrant on somebody, they dont called it a raid an say we will arrest this guy. Thats what were doing. Sure. Theres collateral arrests and my interpretation and we can talk about trust within the agency. You talked a lot and i know thats a point of frustration for folks about that relationship in the community. That comes with trust. When the collateral numbers increase pretty significantly by field offices even thats a concern for us. As a policymaker, and when you get into a classification, i would call a raid when there are significant collateral arrests made. If you want to target someone, you can highlight the criminality, thats fine. When you get into the collateral pieces and start grabbing other folks in proximity, breaking windows, pulling people out of cars, those are things that heighten the level i want to make sure you understand that thats what were talking about . I certainly do. Collateral arrests have occurred throughout the time of Immigration Enforcement and Law Enforcement. Our Law Enforcement practices are the same as state and local Law Enforcement agencies. When they go to a residence and they have a warrant and they will identify for their safety as well as the residents of that house they will identify those individuals and determine if they have warrants or if that individual, maybe they have a gun on them, is committing a crime in their presence, will arrest them. With dea, almost every time we went into a house and arrested the target of our warrant, there is almost someone else that was arrested. The same thing we do when we go in. The last thing we want is a tragedy and have somebody jump out of a closet and scare one of our officers . Orders of remove is not the same as a drug dealer with the dea. I reject that comparison. I wanted to have that conversation about the announcement of targeted enforcements, you dont want to call them raised, do announcements impact officers effectiveness . What we try to do when we do an operation, we have as much Operational Security as possible. When we walk on the door, we notify local Law Enforcement to make sure we dont have a blue on blue situation and make sure people in this community in the position need to know do know. The fewer people that know the more effective and probably better for officer safety, is that fair to say . Again, depends if youre talking specifics or generalities. Specifics like when our Operational Plan was leaked to the media and there were specifics, thats disconcerting, yes. The president announced on multiple occasions large scale operations were going to detain undocumented immigrants as part of Operation Border resolve. Did you did you or the department know the president was going to announce those pending operations . I dont believe they reached out for our unput . Putting officers assist in danger . The Washington Post put it out in the fall. When we do this they know we are going our teams arrest 300 to 400 out there everyday. Its no secret were behind there. The president amps it up significantly. I would caution. I hear you talk about the rhetoric of this conversation. I dont think thats limited to members of congress is all i would offer you, sir. Thank you. Mr. Director, i know weve been talking a lot about immigration. I want to thank the men and women that work on the cross border activity which includes financial crimes, money laundering, smuggling, commercial fraud, intellectual property theft, cyber crimes, human rights violations, smuggling and Human Trafficking and other work that yall do. I do want to thank them for the other work that they do even though we do spend a lot of time on immigration. The other thing is, i feel if you go to another country you have Immigration Courts at the border. Your people have been a little resistant about having courts at the border and give me different excuses. I think we ought to hold court at the border and give them their day an process. 88 will be rejected from asylum claims and 12 will be accepted. Unfortunately, we left people into the country here 2, 3, 4, 5 years, whatever it is. Immigration courts tell us 44 dont show up after given the notice to appear. I think were doing it backwards. I think the trump and Obama Administration are doing it backwards and we should have them there. I would ask you to have your folks reconsider the positions they have taken in the past where we have Immigration Courts as much as possible. We talk about Immigration Courts, we added 315 since we started working on it, i guess, since 2014. The first thing they do, we want to do video conference. As you know, the reason why they send judges to houston, new york, San Francisco and all that, because they release people and want to put judges where they have been released. I think were doing it backwards. The other thing, we have been adding judges. I think your office of legal principle advisors needs a little bit of help. You probably need 128 additional attorneys and 41 Additional Support staff so the Immigration Judges can do the work. I think what were missing right now is court space. We have more judges than court. Were hoping through this appropriation process we have court space. Number one. Number two, that we add those attorneys because you dont have those attorneys, its hard for the judges to do the work. I would ask you also because i do know a lot of Immigration Judges, look at the old show called night court. I understand your attorneys leave at 5 00 or so. From what i hear from judges, 5 00, 6 00. In many ways, we ought to look that show and if we should do extra work we should look at a night shift to address the backlog. We want to be supportive adding moneys on that and like to get your thoughts on what i just mentioned. Certainly. I agree. We cant keep doing the same thing and expect it to change. I agree and setting up these courts and holding the hearings, i think we can leverage vtc for that both for elr. They own the courts and a lot of that a lot of this falls on their shoulder. We work closely with them. I think it holds promise. The challenge comes into now so many family units being the largest number of cases coming in, we cant hold them under flores long enough to get through that immigration core process. Thats one of the biggest challenges. I testified when i was at ead, i will say it again, i will take 200 attorneys before i take 200 officers at this point. The bottleneck is there. I will get more productivity from those attorneys than i will from those officers just because the work is there. Were working closely with them to try to find some way to do these things if we can leverage technology. We have opened up courtrooms to move cases through rapidly. Its resource dependent. Youre right. Its not attorneys, courtrooms and facilitates and support staff. We will take what we can get plus some. Mr. Price. Thank you, madam. Mr. Director, let me briefly look at the statistics on what youre reporting to underscore a request. Ive been looking at some figures about the breakdowns we were discussing. Appears 3 of the top 4 category as criminals, criminal convictions, three of those four categories are drug offenses, di. Traffic offenses more generally, and immigration offenses. Other crimes here are very serious. Many of them violent. As far as the numbers are concerned, i would return to my prior assertion, overall, a 90 figure is not helpful. The appearance is, but its obscuring the discussion more than its helping with it given the fact the discussion has been and needs to be on prioritizing dangerous people, a threat to the community. I appreciate your comments of diversion of personnel from the interior to the border surge has compromised your abilities. On the face of it, it doesnt seem to me that would affect the ratio. Yes, it affects the overall number who you detain and deport, shouldnt affect the overall ratio of dangerous criminals to others. If theres any numbers on that, i would appreciate it further. We certainly need a breakdown of that 90 . Let me turn to something thats been of headlines in my own district. It puzzles me nationwide. I want you to comment on it. There is a very often very difficult situations involving people taking sanctuary in places of worship. How are you putting pressure on those immigrants and those supporting them . Thats the question. A recent case, a 38yearold mother of four taking sanctuary in chapel hill sanctuary in my district, one of five taking sanctuary in North Carolina and one of 50 across the country. July 1, she receives notice i. C. E. Intends to fine her 314,07 for wilfully planning to leave the United States or wilfully plan it. That amounts to 379 a day for each day shes been in sanctuary. Apparently shes one of fewer than 10 in sanctuary received this notion of a fine, this impossibly high sum they cant possibly pay. Its my understanding the financial penalties for violating immigration laws do exist. Theyve existed since the mid90s. Its very rare theyve gone above 1,000. Whats this all about . Why is i. C. E. Using these extremely severe financial penalties to target this group of individuals . How did you determine it should be 799 a day . Actually, the law states Civil Penalties for immigrants should be Something Like 500. It states not more than 500 a day. Whats going on with these fines and how are you choosing whom to impose them on . Thank you. Weve been looking at this and trying to hold individuals accountable and restore integrity to the rule of law and immigration system. We are applying Laws Congress has passed and authorized us to do. They authorized civil fines be levied on certain offenses or certain behavior. One includes a fine for an individual to ignore a voluntary departure by an immigration judge. A fine for that. Fine for failure to depart for removal. There are very strict criteria that must be met in order for that to happen. One is the order was issued in person. The individual cant say they didnt know that. It has to be an in person order essential. The 799, we did this last year, when we began the process, is accounted for inflation and how it came to that amount. If were going to have any integrity of the immigration system i dont think we can have a system somebody can avail themselves of all due process, work the system for five, six, seven, eight years, get a result they dont agree with, go to a church where they know the sanctuary policy prevents Law Enforcement from getting them. We are going to use all the tools available to try to gain compliance with the lawfully issued judges order. If we want a secure border, there has to be consequences for illegal entry. You have to leave the country if youre ordered to leave by an immigration judge. If you failed to leave the country and a way to fine you civilly, we will do that, too. You think theres any doubt these people have youre on their case . No. Why are you doing this now . How did you pick the 10 people around the country that you were going to slap these fines on . Weve been doing it, ill be off a month or two maybe, october of last year, we started this process. Weve been going through each of the field offices. Theres very defined criteria you have to meet to be eligible for a fine. It takes quite a while to review the case, to see if they meet all the factors required by law and statute, to be amenable to be fined. Were going through various field offices and theyre going through their fugitives that avoided departure. Some of the individuals, when we found them we arrested and removed them instead of fining them. Those we were unable to locate that take sanctuary. There are more sanctuary cases than were fined. And those that reviewed and didnt meet the legal criteria for a fine. If you can let us know what that criteria is, a mystery to me and my community. Thank you, madam chairman. We are past the time to end and appreciate your agreeing to stay here beyond the 3 00 schedule we had originally given you. I do have some other questions i will submit particularly in regards to the treatment of pregnant women in detention ill be following up. Thank you very much for your time and look forward to continuing to work with you on some of the issues raised. As do i. Thank you. Watch our live coverage as the nations governors meet in Salt Lake City and recognizing americas space program. Then, 11 30, a conversation about safer and smarter roads. After 3 00 p. M. Eastern, infrastructure with governor larry hogan and the summer meeting live friday on cspan2 and cspan. Org and listen with the free cspan radio app. I was on an airstrip in the remote jungles of guyana just having finished a tour with congressman ryan. We were ambushed and shot. Congressman ryan was shot 45 times and died on that airstrip and one defector of the peoples temple were shot and i was shot on the right side of my body. Congresswoman Jackie Speier talks about it. When people say it was a mass suicide, it was not. They were forced to drink this toxic brew lie jones and he had many guards around the pacificion to do as they were told. Sunday night on cspan eastern, q a. For 40 years, cspan has been providing information on public courts and around the world presented to you by cable in 1989. Cspan, your unfiltered view of government. Up next, fbi director, christopher ray