Director of citizenship and Immigration Services talks about criminal deportation of undocumented immigrants. This is hosted by the Christian Science monitor. Okay, are we good . But i think we want to start. You should eat because youre going to be doing a lot of talking. Good morning, im linda feldman, Washington Bureau chief of the Christian Science monitor. Our guest today is ken cuccinelli, acting director of the u. S. Bureau of citizenship and Immigration Services, and this is his first appearance at a monitor breakfast, so welcome mr. Cuccinelli. Thank you. Now, a bit of background, mr. Cuccinelli was born in edison, new jersey and grew up in virginia where he graduated from uva and then earned a law degree and a masters an International Commerce and policy. In 2002, mr. Cuccinelli won a special election to the state senate from Fairfax County and in 2009, he was elected attorney general for the commonwealth of virginia. Mr. Cuccinellis time as attorney earned him a reputation as a staunch conservative, which he parlayed into a bid for the governorship in 2013. He lost narrowly, but has remained engaged in politics, serving as head of the Senate Conservatives fund super pac and as an adviser to ted cruz, our last breakfast guest last month in the senators president ial campaign. In june, President Trump appointed mr. Cuccinelli to his current position as acting director of uscis, which brings us back to todays breakfast. Now for the ground rules. We are on the record here, but please, know lobbying or tweeting. In short, no filing of any kind of all the breakfast is underway, and then we end at ten, there is no embargo, so file away. We will email pictures from this breakfast to our reporters here as soon as the breakfast ends and as you know, if you would like to ask a question, please send me a signal and i will call him as many of you as time permits. Now, if you would like to make brief opening remarks, the floor is yours. Well, thank, you and thank you for the invitation. If i am not loud enough, that is not normally a problem for me, but i guess since im working left and right, please just let me know and i will speak louder. I appreciate the chance to be with you all, and really do not have a ton to say is an opening. I will just leave it to your questions. I have been in my current role for a little over four months. I tease mark morgan occasionally but by july i was the senior immigration city Immigration Agency had because when mark morgan moved over to cbp, his seniority stopped and he started over, but we have worked together as a good team and in the department of Homeland Security we obviously face rather unique challenges, particularly associated with the southern border. That is not all of our challenges, but it does draw our resources and it is something of a sign, sadly, of the inaction of congress in addressing some things, including some things that have been left over from the Obama Administration, where the Trump Administration has the same position as the Obama Administration, and yet congress will not act on those, so that leaves us with whatever executive authority exists, and we have been doing that as aggressively as we can, including on the International Stage where the president tough diplomacy at the beginning of 2019 has paid dividends for us with what i think are the best partnerships with mexico and other countries that we have seen, in as long as i can remember, on immigration issues, and those continue to develop, particularly with the northern triangle countries, acting secretary mcaleenan has been down there quite a bit and has been very aggressive in moving those relationships forward, and in turning them into productive, not just diplomatic relations but operational relationships, and that is the direction we are moving there, so i will just leave it with that and we will let you get questions. All, right thank you very much. Have to ask you, i know you are probably expecting this question but i have to ask anyway, any updates on the dhs job . The job of secretary . I have no updates on that, now, no. That is up to you all to decide, but i dont have anything to add. What was the last time he spoke with President Trump . Those, timing and the substance of my conversation with the president i keep to myself and whether i have had not spoken to him on a particular issue is just not something i feel comfortable i do speak to him, what i would call regularly. It goes in bursts depending on what work we have to do at a given time, but yes. Okay, so now i want to ask you a broad question about Legal Immigration and the economy. Through variety of restrictions, the Trump Administration has made moves that would reduce Legal Immigration to the United States. Youve got the october 7th rule, or i guess it was a proclamation requiring immigrants to prove they can afford health care before being granted a visa. You have the low, even lower refugee admissions cap, your rules around public charge which are supposed to go into effect. At the same, time there are lots of blue collar jobs in this country that are going unfilled, hotels, home health aides, these are jobs that immigrants could take and do take. Why reduce Legal Immigration to take potential workers out of the labor force . Lets get the whole picture first. Uscis deals with Legal Immigration. The other two immigration components are i. C. E. Which does removals, and cbp which does all the trade and customs but also border protection. This last fiscal year, we naturalized more citizens than the entire last decade, and the year before that under this president , we naturalized over three quarters of 1 million this year it is 800 some odd thousand, last year was about three quarters of 1 million, which itself was higher than the previous three years before that, so there has been no slow down on the ilLegal Immigration side, per se. The president has made no secret of the fact that he believes the American Immigration system first and foremost is set up to work for america, that means economically and for the people here, and to do that we put out imitations and offerings to people from around the world along the lines that Congress Puts in the law. And the agencies make adjustments to those, within the boundaries of the law. One example, in the employment space, is the age one be regulation change that took effect before i came into the administration that has upped the percentage of masters degree candidates, not candidates, but holders who are coming in by that program. That is roxy for more economic value from that program. There is a lot of pressure in various sectors to utilize more immigrant labor for employment, whether it is high tech or low tech. Various parts of the economy, you mentioned blue collar jobs being sort of in the middle of that, and i would say that really, a long Term Solution for that is not on the horizon until Immigration Reform that the president has talked about passes and we restructure our immigration system to prioritize exactly what we are describing, is the employment side of immigration right now. We are right now is a country, our immigration system in the proportions, humanitarian retired unemployment alaska 12, years both swamped by family immigration. This is sort, of not quite the reverse but nearly the reverse of what most of our allies around the world have productively used, and the australians in particular are happy to talk to you about what they did in the nineties and how it has benefited their economy, and it kind of feel those slots and so theres only so much were going to do by regulation and roll without congress is participation. Right, but nobody expects congress to do anything on this anytime soon so it really is a matter of executive will. Just because congress will not act does not mean the executive branch has more legal authority. We do what we can do, consistent with the president s policies, and he has also made clear it is important to him to protect ordinary American Workers and did not displaced them, and is there are some perfect target point . Maybe there is, but we never want to be able to know it, so which side you are on . And he has repeatedly emphasized how important it is to protect u. S. Workers. Now, he has been clear with me as well, and you all have heard him say it, he wants to see Economic Growth and dynamism and that means, you know, growing companies needing to fill slots, so we are just in a constant battle to balance those things. We are working very hard to make some improvements that we think are within reach. So there is more to come. There is more to come, yes. Can you give us on a hints on what you are looking at . Obviously you have heard the president talk about the reform legislation overall that he is interested in, but i am also hearing about conversations about meaningful bills with coalitions already in place on capitol hill in subject areas that the administration will be interested in working with hill members on. So, you know, hoping to see some bipartisan movement, because none of this passes the law on either side of the aisle. There will have to be some agreement, and that is the history of immigration. You mentioned public charge not going into effect, is worth looking at that law which was passed in 1986 on a wildly bipartisan basis it was so on controversial it went through the senate, if i remember correctly, on a voice vote of bill clinton signed it and none of those administrations had put the rules in place for how to implement the public charge piece of it, which we are working to do and working through the courts to make happen. That was a very bipartisan undertaking. That was the common history, politically, of immigration i think, until a few years ago. It has become a lot more politicized. All, right john busy from newsmax, to your right. As a followup to that, and my other question, number one, can you give any examples of where the administration has reached out to democrats on specific immigration legislation. My second question, is has there been any discussion but within your office about naturalized citizens of the territories becoming american citizens, say, from puerto rico. We have had not had any discussions on that subject, so that is your second question. Tell me first question again . Can you be specific about any legislation. Right. What you restarted the democrats on. So the white house on legislative issues, i certainly hope wants the problem in our area, and they all touch uscis in one way or another, so i am involved in that, but i dont want to get out ahead of the white house, i know that they have had discussions with folks on both sides of the aisle, but the specifics of who they have talked to i dont know, john. I just know they have had those discussions and they have taken some feedback and i have seen adjustments made, i dont know if the connection between particular conversations and adjustments but i anticipate being made, so i cant really make those connections because im not involved in those conversations directly. All right, steve dean from the washington times. Have you patch things up with Mitch Mcconnell . What is the current relationship there with the majority leader in the senate who made those comments, i am sure you, and then birthright citizenship, the president seems intent on doing, this is there any action on that and you as a former attorney general, what is your position on the executives ability to take action on that . So, other than being in a couple of meetings with the Senate Majority leader, there has not been a lot of interaction there. If you look back at his comments, not surprisingly, given that i lead the Senate Conservatives hardened, not one of his favorite organizations, which maybe the understatement of the breakfast so far, but his concerns were political. I dont know how he would answer, but i think that objective observer would note but i have not engaged in any of that political realm since i have taken this role. When i take a job, i take it with the intent of doing it 110 , and when i saw and sdf, i helped Freedom Works as well fighting regulations, i did not work with peddled to the metal, and when i left those roles and took on my current one, i left those roles and i have done the job i am in now, doing his best i can, to the 110 level and having been engaged in any of the kind of political pugilism that goes on that spf advances in a political arena, in campaigns primarily, so i dont know whether his view was changed, but certainly what i have been doing now is months removed from those comments are referencing, so hopefully, and i know different people have different opinions on my body of work, my current role, but the work i am doing is what i asked to be judged on, and i think in terms of pursuing the president s agenda, we have been doing a good job at uscis, and so that is what i would ask those folks to be judging leon, and met with some of them yesterday, expected to talk to more of them today, but not the Senate Majority leader. inaudible . I have not, in my capacity looked at what executive authority we have to do on that without congress, so i do not know the answer to your question, other than to acknowledge that it is a good question but have not really reviewed it to give you a substantive answer. We need to amend the constitution to change that, since that is the way it is . No, i dont think so. The question that susan is getting out is a question of, Congress Legislate in the area i should say, is it required, if youre going to act in that area, that Congress Legislated, versus candy executive take steps on its own . And i dont know the difference between i dont know the answer to that question, i do know the answer to your question and i do not, at least have a belief in it in that i do not believe you need an amendment to the constitution. I think the question is, do you need congressional action or cut the executive act on their own . Okay, anita kumar from politico. A couple of things at the talk about legislation, i could not quite hear what you were saying regarding that. I am wondering what happened to, for the lack of a better term, Jared Kushners proposal on meritbased immigration. We keep hearing every couple of weeks it is going to come out. I have not seen the language. So is that do you support that . Has that gone away now . I dont really, quick sense you mentioned the campaign, are you going to campaign for President Trump . I cant. Im volunteer time you can. Well, i am caesars wife on the stuff, so my understanding of the edges is that we are more hatch than other people. I am new, as you know, i needed, to the federal government. It was a different world in virginia, and i approach all that extremely cautiously. My understanding is that i cannot do that. And to your earlier question, that was our second question, tell me first again. Jared kushners meritbased plan. So i have been involved in the discussions theyve put that together. I cannot speak to timing, but to your question about whether i support what theyre doing there, are very much to do. And im looking forward to seeing that final product come out. I think it is easy and common in the policy arena for people to say what they are against. But it is important to stake out what you are four and the president is determined to do that. He has charged us all with helping, you, know jared you notice point on that, him to do that and that is work we have spent time on in our agency and i look forward to that. I really dont have an answer to that. I dont know the answer. Rafael bernal, from the hill. Going back to the politics, a lot of you are in acting roles, well, from the secretary downwards. From the inside, how much does that hurt your potential for action, to be able to enforce President Trump s policies, and you want to answer that when we get to the second one . Sure. I dont think it hurts at all, really. The practical effect, and ive been asked variation of this question before, and what matters in the working arena is the work and that sounds simple, but whether i am in an acting capacity or not does not really affect that. The practical effect, not to ignore any of it, i gave you my joke with mark morgan and matt almonds, there is sort of a time in Service Element that there is a benefit to being in a role, or in a department longer. Kevin mcaleenan brought years and years of experience to the acting secretary role, and by way of example, it is not that there are not other benefits. Me coming from the outside, i think i have changed how uscis operates and some of the culture theyre pretty quickly. That is a benefit. But you know, there are trade offs to both, but in terms of getting work done. I have not experienced a problem either being an acting or working with fellow acting director second missionaries. There is technically a rule about senate approval, i think it is the tsa administrator, this entire table can correct me if i am wrong. Doesnt that limit the political side of you know, naming the next secretary, when you have the limitations of Senate Republicans who have expressed, for instance, but they dont they havent supported her candidacy so far. How do you pack who is next . Well, first, on my interaction with the senators, i have not had a problem interacting with any of them, in terms of getting work done and with respect to the i will call them a federal employee laws governing who can do what, honestly i have resisted diving down into that and using up valuable brain Storage Space on things like that, and from my perspective, i leave that to the white house to work out and rely on them to do that. I really dont have not looked at it, and i am the farthest thing from a federal Employment Law expert. I do management, i know regulatory law i, can go through a lot of things in a lot of detail, but the rules surrounding the kind of succession you are describing are not one of those things i can dive into. All right. Camille additional us of sikh you roll call. Hi, thank you so much for coming here. Sure. So we have a few reports about the fact that uscis is can training cbp officers to conduct asylum interviews. Can you talk a little bit more about the training involved, about where our engine are signaling but they are going, down how are we seeing the officers being trained . First of, all we have trained, i want to say 60 up to this point, and three classes, there might be a fourth in process, i dont remember exactly. And as a former attorney general, have a lot of Law Enforcement interaction, so let me give you just a comparison that i found surprising. So, it is not uncommon for a Law Enforcement officer to do line training. For instance, Mental Health training, they can spend a week doing that. Active shooter training, they can spend three days doing that, meeting they are pulled off the line to do these kinds of trainings. The classroom and practical part of our training for Border Patrol agents is three weeks. For every single Border Patrol agent i have talked to, and ive talked to a number of them, it is far and away the longest, most thorough in service training, my term, not theirs, of their entire career and they are deployed both in person by the Border Patrol and by phone, because credible fear interviews and some other things can be done by phone, can be done remotely. And i do expect that to continue. It is really more up to the Border Patrol. We are perfectly willing to continue to do the trainings and the practical, man and when i say practical, i mean part of it is a week where they are doing interviews with oversight and so forth, hands on. And of course they are trained in making legal decisions already as Law Enforcement officials, particularly in the roles there in at cbp, so its not like a new subject area to them, it is just a new element of it. And i do expect to see more of this across training. I would look backwards for part of my answer, all the way back to when i ans was one agency. I think that breaking inf up into three agencies, and there are of course some other shifts that happened, trade being one example, was a mistake, and i say that, just bureaucratically, structurally as a manager, we work intimately with ice and cbp, and agencies, as agencies make their own decisions, so to some extent, we grow apart and overtime, or we can, and that creates communication and operational challenges. The kind of cross training that you and i are talking about would have been thought nothing of under inf, but now we are two different agencies so it looks at least different, and it is from the last 15 years and we are trying to build those kinds of connections back up again at an i. T. Level and at an operational level. This is one very important piece of that, and it has been, to my, mind very successful. Morgan would say it has been very successful, i think he probably would, but from our perspective it has been a successful partnership. You say there is someone supervising cpp agents while the conduct these interviews . For their initial interviews, yes, and, you know, it is not practice, they are real but it is done with close oversight and not surprisingly, we borrowed from the training we use for our own on boarding asylum officers and tailored it to the Border Patrol agent situation, so once they leave that three to five weeks, two weeks of reading, three weeks a classroom environment, they operate like anyone else in our agency, do incredible fear interviews, for instance, but those are always under supervisory oversight. I dont need somebody else on the phone with them, but the cases are reviewed, typically. All right, at the end of the table, i dont your name, sorry. Top open. Oh, of course. I have two, questions i wanted to follow up on that and then switch to another subject, but you mention that in your view, the concern is because you are two separate agencies that the criticism is actually that the asylum interview is not designed to be an adversarial interview, that Law Enforcement officers have a role in apprehension and asylum officers are trained for a completely different purpose, which is taking people who may be traumatized from what is happening the home countries, putting them in a situation where they are going to be at ease, and the concern is not that you have two different agencies working on the same thing but rather that you have a completely ill suited role being switched, so i wonder if you could respond to that criticism. We expect them to perform, and they know this, they are told this, in the same manner as an asylum officer when they are undertaking this role, and an awful lot of this is done remotely by phone and so, the other participant, they know the name, they hear the voice, but they do not have any idea, for most of these, that they are even dealing with a Law Enforcement officer, so it almost cant come into play for most of the situations, but they are not, they are not let me put it in the affirmative. In this role, they are stepping in the same way and are expected to, as asylum officers would, do incredible fear interviews and performing the function in the same way, so i understand and appreciate the concerns but we think the training they are getting is very thorough and their performance of their role has been done on a very professional manner, so we really dont have any complaints. Of course, supervisors given suggestions, just like a supervisor would for any person for whom theyre responsible, in terms of their case work, to help them improve and do a better job. But that is not unique to the Border Patrol agent participating supervisory asylum officers also do that, for asylum officers, so dont think that is a problem, the practical impact. I understand that people may have a concern but in the real world we do not see him playing out. Switching to another topic, as im sure you are aware, many of us watch your twitter feed, which is different than many government officials, lets say, but one of the things that you see there, is you engage a lot on i. C. E. s mission, uscis is directly it had been more of a visa granting agency as opposed to necessarily an enforcement agency, and really saw itself that way, whereas under this administration, starting with your predecessor and now under you, it seems to be there is a much heavier focus on rooting out fraud but also carrying out the enforcement from cbp and i. C. E. Into uscis, so i was just hoping i could talk a little bit about youre thinking on why you are so engaged with the other missions, and the redirection. A good question, a couple of points about it. First of, all my predecessor francis is not really focused, i will say at the vision, level on the question of who is the customer. We are not a dmv just issuing something some new comes from the window. We are first constituency of service, the American People, not actually most of the immigrants coming. We serve the American People by conducting the immigration business fairly, efficiently, etc, and doing all those things as well as we can. A focus for me has been that we are first a Voting Agency before we are a benefits agency and that is a cultural question within the agency. Im a strong believer, as a manager, in the importance of corporate culture. We have about 19,000 people at any given time at uscis. We are authorized for i would say about 20, 000, and so, im never going to meet all those people, right . Even in the Attorney Generals Office a 450 people, maybe i met all of them by the time i was done there, but it is a slow going process, and so, how do you structurally manage an organization and a line the culture with the mission . Those are things that is why french asked the customer question, is why emphasize the vetting piece that i do. I noted to you, you know, the ten year high of the citizenship grant, which beat last, year which was three quarters of 1 million, which is better than the five years before that, because there are things that we are doing quicker, faster, and we are adjusting. Some visas her down and some are up. I grant you that a lot of our resources are being drawn away from traditional visas. The way we operate, it is worth noting, is more like a business than most federal agencies. We are at 96 plus percent of fee funded, and we couldnt carry money over a year to year, but the result of that is we are not in the appropriations game. We dont just go to congress and say give us more money so we can do more of this or that. Weve got to operate within our boundaries and people dont pay for asylum and refugee and credible fear and reasonable fear, all of that is free and so to them which means that the fees coming from all the other Immigration Services cover that cost, which it is supposed to be that way, theres not anything new. Congress set us up that way a long time ago, but what it does mean is that when we have a pull on our resources like we have with the southern border crisis, it does inhibit our ability to do other things, for, instance we are in a hiring surge right now. We are in a hiring surge in the asylum portion of the agency. Thats the only place where we are on a hiring surge, because we have a 340,000 plus cases backlog here, and we are determined to try to get at that, but until the numbers, until we get the numbers coming across our border to report we are completely more cases than we are getting each year, which is not been the case for a number of years now, we will not be able to knock them down, we will not be able to get that backlog, true backlog where over half the caseload is over two years old, and that is something that im very determined to try to attack, but until we can see these numbers keep going down at the border, were going to have a hard time not in the overall number down. And that affects a lot of the other things that we do. I believe ive seen some tweets from you on our volunteer force. The dhs has asked components to help contribute people to deal with the work rush at the border. We have done that. Uscis has been very generous about that, that has been on a volunteer basis. We are still doing that to a limited extent. That is the kind of focus that we have to have as an organization we. Are part of the Department Homeland security. The coast guard has been fantastic trying to provide medical support. The tsa has sent a lot of people as volunteers, and we are part of that, and it does draws away from our other tasks. I dont deny that. It feels, i have to say it, a little silly in 2019 to be talking about finally going to Electronic Filing for everything in terms of missed opportunities, but that is what we are in the midst of. Im hoping that we will have all our forms capable of Electronic Filing by early calendar year 2021. The internal target is still 2020 but i am a pessimist or a realist depending on how you want to look at that and i think that is probably going to slip a little bit. As we get some of those pieces in place, and then integrate them with the rest of our systems, we are going to be able to speed things up. We are literally still a paper based agency, overwhelmingly, you are all sitting here putting away on your laptop, you are not sitting here with typewriters, you know . It is hard to imagine an agency that still has to call it the missouri and say, hey, send me this file and it comes in the mail, but that is how we are operating on the overwhelming proportion of our workload, and in my own mind, i think, in terms of desperately trying to move away from that, because we are going to become a better, more efficient agency, eight, were going to be able to do better analysis and so will you. There will be better Information Available to just look at the work that has been done and consider the policy implications and all of those kinds of things that frankly are an overwhelming task when you are a paper based agency. Sorry yes, i just view, i will comment briefly, i u. S. As being in corporate, mark morgan said in a meeting, notice the difference. Now, you are at this table knows the difference but ordinary americans cannot name the eighth component agencies of the department of Homeland Security and they dont necessarily know how we operate and so, well, some people have asked, here you are talking about i. C. E. Stuff, it is because ordinary americans do mine trying to communicate do not know, nor do they care about the difference. They care about what is being done, what is not being done, why. Is it being done well . Is it being done fairly . All those kinds of questions. And we try to address that at the metal level in some of those communications, including, with a little fun, through twitter. So we have a lot of people who have questions, 20 minutes to, so one question each and im sorry, your name is claire hanson. Plants, and u. S. News. I want to ask you about the collaborative asylum agreements that the u. S. Has signed with northern tribal countries last couple of months. Are you able to give us more details about those, specifically the more recent one side with el salvador, and others going to be able to use to be seen to send people back to this country is . I dont know that i can give you any more details on the agreement themselves. I can talk to you about the operational efforts being made in cooperation with those countries, which are going on continuously, and have been very positive from a diplomatic standpoint. And we are not only bringing our own expertise to the table, but we have engaged unhcr in this effort, and their expertise in doing this all around the world, built in capacity for asylum and refugee work, as their name suggests and they are deeply involved in it as well. Assessments are being made at the capacity of each of the governments to carry their responsibilities under these agreements, because we will not proceed operationally with them if that box is not checked, so to speak, if they are not able to demonstrate their ability to carry this, which leads to the last part of your question, which, the answer is yes, the point of these is that if people seeking asylum come to the u. S. Border and they are amenable, based on the agreement each country, and each agreement is a little bit different, then they would be then sent for asylum consideration to one of these three countries. That is when all three are in place. They will not all come online at the same time, i just for claritys sake, for those of you not following me, i will just use guatemala as an example. The guatemala agreement is on line, guatemalans will not be going back. Hondurans and el salvador owns, would be going back under that agreement. You know, a guatemalan does not seek asylum in their own country, but the International Consensus on dealing with refugees and asylum is always that you try to deal with the problem as close to home as possible. This is consistent with that theory, and obviously it has other implications for us in terms of the southern border, given the massive proportion of the rush we have seen in the last few years that has come from there. There are cases, especially Montgomery County, where the sanctuary efforts in the county have allowed the release of some illegal aliens who have gone on to commit some pretty terrible crimes. Is the situation we secure cities, counties, states getting better, getting worse and what can you do about it . Well, there is no single element to it. With the tenth amendment, states and localities have a substantial range of free decisionmaking, but it is not without consequence, as you note. Some of the people, Montgomery County had a nine week string there where they had basically a Sexual Assault a week by a reportable alien, and some of them, and these are the preventable ones, repeat participants in the Montgomery CountyJustice System. Those are the preventable crimes and as you note, to children sexually assaulted, you have attempted murders, if it did not happen and we talk about afterwards, people would say oh, you are just being hyperbolic, but here it is and the consequences are terrible and the one and only excuse that i hear from these localities is they want to preserve the community of interest from fear within the community. Let me tell you something. I have worked on criminal Justice Reform for many, many years i know a lot of the statistics about crime, and one of them is that, pecker type of criminal, by race, by ethnicity, however you want to do, it statistically they most victimized people like themselves, so whether it is black, white, hispanic, asian, the most likely crime victim is black, white, hispanic, asian, so in fact the excuse given on a Public Safety level for the sanctuary policies is just that, it is an excuse. If you want to actually keep the community safe, you remove dangerous criminals from the community, and i. C. E. Gives him the opportunity to do that. They decline for political reasons and they have the Political Freedom to do that, but again it is not without severe and tragic consequences and a lot of reporters have said their rate of crime is no higher than this or that, and i dont even engage in that discussion because you are talking about literally crimes that never should have happened in this country because they are people who upon their first interaction with the Justice System should have been deported after the punishment for whatever it is they initially encountered the criminal Justice System as a criminal over, and we would not have to wait a problem. We would not have the later victims and unfortunately inaudible . Not nothing, but it does take a high level engagement, you you need congressional action on some of these things. Weve seen some cases, this is one area where i would say that the administration has not beard as well in court as i would have liked, necessarily. It is not a regulatory arena per se, it is a dispute about who has what authority to begin with, but we do take these things into account. I certainly i use the twitter account he pointed to Police Officers in these departments that there is a tip line they can call, confidentially and identify deportable eons themselves without themselves being identified, as we saw in Fairfax County some, of these departments will take action against officers who strangely enough, attempt to enforce the law at the federal level. Mark turnbull from the monitor. The administrations policies of favoring the more educated immigrants are coming at a time when the world has a lot of refugees and asylum seekers, not just to america but worldwide. Do you think there is a risk of backtracking through this policy on americas tradition as a beacon of hope, a land of opportunity that anyone can come and make a better life for themselves, and with the public charge in particular, many of the safety net programs in america are for not just known working people, people often have a job and qualify for this program, so im just interested in your thought on whether it is fair to shift the policy so much towards the educated. There are few different elements in there. One, even though we have have different discussions about a refugee number for this coming year, and that humanitarian relief is the same Legal Standard as asylum, it is a question of where if we pick up in a system, outside the country, at our borders, are inside the country, and the United States as a permanent resolution to more of those people last year then the next three countries combined, by a lot. We continue to provide the most money and the most long term permanent relief in the world, so our position is that the number one most generous country in the world is not at any risk under President Trump. We have continued that tradition and the president , i know he is aware of that and take that seriously and i would know, similar to our earlier discussion with the anticipation of a refugee number under 30,000 right now, the last proposal was 18, the same people work refugee cases as work asylum cases and they are both under the humanitarian umbrella, those same people are going to be working the same humanitarian workload, some of the asylum side roads in the refugee side, so that generosity in our position as being first in the world and the most generous country in the world is not at risk. The focus, now you see a 20 example earlier on educational attainment, certainly got is to drive economic benefit to the United States of that portion of our immigration. On the republican charge peace, we have this hundred 40 or so year federal tradition of maintaining self sufficiency, and thousands and thousands of potential immigrants have been turned away under it, in the hundred 40 years of that history. The most recent iteration of it being the 1996 law the bill clinton signed that i mentioned past very strongly on a bipartisan basis, including people like nancy pelosi, Chuck Schumer running for this law. The Clinton Administration put a temporary memo in place that said, role to follow. Well, the rule never followed. The Bush Administration did not put out a rule. The Obama Administration did not put out a role, so we have done that. It is complicated in part because of the growing complexity of the modern welfare state. Being a public charge in 1882 meant something very different than it means today. Today, it means someone like me to go on welfare, and the way we talked about the role. Back then, it really meant becoming a burden on the Community Organizations that carried the load of the social safety net. And it is the same legal tradition, but very different ways that the burden can land on us, so to a certain extent we intended to send the message that we expects self sufficiency among family and employment immigrants. It is not apply in the humanitarian space or to refugees and so forth and it will have an impact we work our way through these court cases, however long it may t no, the president was having some discussions with members of congress, i guess last year, and they seem to have stopped. I fully expect that to recommence, them, as we close in on november 12th, the date of argument for that case, but presuming that law is found to be as illegal as president obama said it was over 20 times before he signed it, then it will depart the legal world, and this people will not be in the position there today, they are here illegally under whatever circumstances they may have come, they will join the ranks of millions of people in that circumstance, would i rather expect to see some discussion with the congressional president ial level over that, i think the president has already public publicly signal that he is willing to do that, as of members of congress on both sides of the aisle, so i think you could see some movement in that direction, i want to get in front of that. What if there is no deal . Then what. Well then there in the same pool as the 22 Million People who are here illegally. They dont have any orders against them, but they are not here with legal presence and they are under the same legal potential as others in that state. There is a little over 1 million removal orders already in place for people in the country, and those are the ones that i. C. E. Operations go to remove. It is not that they are starting a case but, that they are finishing one when you see those operations, typically, i. C. E. Has their prioritization and still top of the priority list are criminal aliens and people not in that circumstance are basically in with the rest of the pool of approaching 20 Million People. Molly otoole from the los angeles times. How do you enter concerns from your asylum officers that you represent, asylum officers and usgs personnel brought large, because many of us but spoken to these rank and file officers and their concerns that many of these policies being handed down by the Trump Administration particularly targeting asylum, whether it is michael protection protocols, were in mexico, the safe third country agreement, whenever we are calling it these days, and elector their concerns about its policies being handed down are in fact illegal, that they are being ordered to implement policies that are illegal, given that you have emphasized in this top but you do believe that there are boundaries to executive authority when it comes to immigration, given their stance that these are in direct contradiction with immigration laws passed by congress . Well they are not impacting contradiction or we would not be utilizing them, and the last administration implemented policies that they believe were within the boundaries the law. I do not expect any to investing quickly agree on all of this, but i do expect that the professional employees uscis will implement the policies in place. We have course, when courts tell us you cannot go down that path, they know very well because they have been suddenly stopped from undertaken particular courses of action in the professional duties, that we stop doing that, but they are part of the executive branch, and so long as we are in a position of putting in place what we believe to be legal policies that have not been found to be otherwise, we fully expect them to implement those faithfully insincerely and vigorously. So, it is 9 59, we squeeze in one more . Lets, see your name is inaudible , i want to ask you about the proclamation about visas to get health insurance. How do you plan on assessing that . I think there are a lot of questions about implementation of what that will look like. Sure, that will be largely implemented by the department of state and so within our agency, obviously we will provide that as well, but a big statistical point, i keep jumping over to the left side of my brain, as much attention as there is on the border, and have talked a lot about it here today, of the millions of people who are here illegally, most of them did not come across the border illegally, that came here illegally on a visa and then illegally stayed, and that that has been true for a long time in terms of the numbers. I dont have the last couple of years play out on that, but in the balance of the people who are here illegally, that is still the majority and the president obviously does not want us in a position where we could be caught carrying the burdens of people who said they were either visiting or doing business here or doing all of those kinds of things, so a policy o9i