Transcripts For CSPAN2 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20240622 :

violations because both of those could essentially put someone in the path of a removal action. so the removal after january 2014. so there is a bit more of a bright line. the numbers in that context will change as we move further and further from that day and still there is a future focus as opposed to the rich respective focus and then finally, we really see the importance of extending valuable resources on the person to enter the debate co- into the country illegally in 2014 unless they fall under the one of the priority categories. .. said that as the overall philosophy. the key and critical part of the memo to secretary issues for all intents and purposes and secure communities program and secure communities had been and remain a controversial part of enforcement priorities over the last few years in part because of what it was designed to be, what it became and this is actively noted, what it became as emblematic of everything wrong with the immigration system today. the somehow or other people get caught in a system designed -- that has no grace frankly. once you are in the immigration system there are very few options for getting out of bed. so many of the complaints and opposition from us so many of the city and state ordinances being passed on to the effect people thought why communities are getting trapped in a system that shoot people up and spit them out rather then gave any careful can do to ration. i am not in any way attempting to malign my brothers and sisters because we are talking about institutional systematic issues the secretary was attempting to address. in the course of this they were good individualized decisions made at the critical thing is to find a way to turn off their particular form of enforcement and come up with something new. the new program is the priority enforcement program. we have always got good acronyms. the thing that is critical about tap is where it was something where people in the communities had no control over decisions made or who would end in the immigration stream, pep is designed to engage from the beginning. and a number of ways it is a really exciting development in law enforcement because it is an attempt to marry at the immigration enforcement means we have with the recognition community engagement, community policing and involvement are an important part of creating a successful working enforcement strategy. with that in mind the primary things to know and understand what you have in your materials are it maintains the basic idea there was the founding of secure communities, the need for information sharing when people are arrested in fbi receives information about the biometrics and the information is shared with i.c.e. i.c.e. officers spent a great deal of time looking at information and making decisions about who should we sort of tacked as someone who isn't enforcement priority and only then are they going to reach out to the communities and say this is somebody we want to bring back into our system and put in the removal process. it is not triggered by the mere fact someone is arrested but instead someone is convicted and that is a huge difference but again a critical juncture in decision-making looking at people who have been there. the general pattern will be and is that we actions to notify us 48 hours ahead of time when someone we've identified a separate he is going to be released. in some cases at the jurisdiction agrees we also can put a detainer against the person. in the past whenever the default mechanism, today it is to seek the engagement and involvement in notifying us and that means our folks are going out of working with individual communities to figure out what the dynamic will be. we recognize that all communities have the same priorities for department as so there is a negotiation. it's a radically different process that is done well and will allow us to maintain the need to enforce immigration laws against those who do us harm but ensure that we have a much better handle on creating the mechanism of grace and discretion that will allow us to ensure people who are priorities aren't inadvertently caught in the system. i will admit that. >> been returned to you, great. the secretary is germany was going to read that the program and announce a significant overhaul. i was think of my computer and my frustration that i have to reboot is pretty high. what is reception looking beyond your membership to the advocacy groups more broadly to the changes. is it still a wait-and-see approach? >> thank you for the question. the association ultimately opposed the program described was so much controversy. but largely based on the impact in the community as well as concerns about legality and constitutionality of the requests use on a wide red basis for immigration and custom enforcement would request a locality would hold somebody for a longer period of time for an immigration purpose even though local law enforcement agency was done for the criminal justice or other purposes they might've had. kla opposed committees and on november 20th when the memo came out we were certainly pleased the secretary had signaled the need for reboot of the program. the memo to secretary issued specifically reference concerns that several federal court had issued decisions concerning the constitutionality of the program and the user detainer's in the recognition of the constitutionality. where we stand now we have initiated a specific opposition. the analysis we look at the issue from specifically concerns legality and constitutionality of the program. as mary mentioned, it will no longer be the default mechanism as we are pleased there is some shift away from holding people and depriving them of liberty without probable cause is the basic framework of fourth amendment analysis. at least it won't be the default tax. the memo itself was not crystal clear what circumstances it will still be done and uses language in special circumstances detainer source will be issued. we don't really know yet and from an a-list there, but we detainer us had been issued without a requirement of probable cause, the typical way it is done in criminal justice that has never been the practice for i.c.e. we are waiting to see how it is done in one of the challenges we know i.c.e. and dhs are proactively aggressively meeting with law enforcement sheriff and police do in a sense all the programming team collaboration. there hasn't been transparency from the federal agent he is so as to the baseline for what is going to be acceptable from a constitutional perspective because certain cities in new york or chicago will think thoughtfully how to protect community members but others like sheriff joe r. pio in jurisdictions where there is no jurisdictions and allow them without making sure to protect the constitutional rights of those that apply to them. that would be our concern. the last thing i will mention since he mentioned the issue of sanctuary cities and emerging of the tragic murder of a young woman who shot walking with her father. that blew up the issue in the media can also force congress to look at this carefully during the month of july. will face similar conversations through the upcoming months and they will be looking at it again. the big picture is is some kind of coordination is helpful between states and localities and immigration enforced them. how do you do that without scary immigrant communities to ink if they work with, report crime, go to the police protection that they will end up being deported. a woman came from washington state came and testified before the senate back in july and said there were several examples she is aware of the one in my own mind as a federal court in colorado who was sexually assaulted by somebody in the parent decided we are not going to report this to the police because he'll get deported if you even go to the police. not only is that tragic event of, but a year later the same perpetrator sexually assaulted another young child and it was only at that point these families came forward. that is the other side of the question of how you keep communities safe. if there's too much collaboration from the perspective of the community between immigration and local law enforcement because local law enforcement is community safety, not necessarily immigration which is civil. too much collaboration the community is afraid and that doesn't help anybody in terms of community safety. >> just because i think it's important to recognize and understand people are taking issues very, very seriously and the effort to try to find that balance is one of the reasons the notification component is so important and offers that sweet spot for many communities. they think we also have to step back and recall one of the reasons why the ongoing issue of trust is so great is again part of a systemic problem that we don't have comprehensive immigration reform. occasionally people are like you are going back to the pollyannas to solve everything. but it wouldn't because even if we got comprehensive immigration reform would be a whole series of other things that needed to be fixed. what it would do is recalibrate the balance between enforcement and benefits related issues that exist in the law. as long as we have a system with our best effort there are very few alternatives for people once they are in the process, the fears will be very real and in the most perfect of world we will not be able to fix all of those problems. we can make a great advancement towards it if we start looking not pep program and other initiatives as a way to reach some level of consensus. >> we've heard what the administration has done. a bit of a wait-and-see approach. gary, you are new on the hill and the prioritization of what you have on the fall, is the emotional energy translated into legislative act committee or other priorities up right now? >> i'm supposed to say and you're not speaking behalf of the house issuing committee or members so that leaves me free to say almost everything. >> let me rephrase my question. [laughter] >> working for the subcommittee selloff and was a vocal opponent of secure communities. it is headed in the right direction. to greg's point, we see concerns the constitutionality of detainer is and will be monitoring as it's implemented. prior to my arrival did take action on a bill h.r. 3009. the house democrat were nearly unanimous in opposition to the bill. it would have taken money away from local law enforcement for those jurisdictions that did not cooperate because of the constitutional issues are the community tries. law-enforcement that greg talked about. the senate has marked as scheduled for september so we will see how that comes down. i think we will maintain our opposition to legislation, legislative proposals that alpine community law enforcement and don't do it can't sushil issues out there. i also think we will see what happens as they get through anything out trumps the issue. pun intended. [laughter] >> to follow up at the end of the fiscal year, there are expired and authorization and immigration from. our folks already looking at those of their own issues in terms of no-space-on and impact the immigration program. >> way for programs that dissent is september 30th. people can invest a million dollars or 500,000 to get a green card for their individual spouse and family members, children. but in the conrad state 30 medical doctor program for doctors to serve in medically underserved areas and there are discussions going on right now to extend the programs. d5 has been a real focus around integrity measures, making sure the projects are subject to security laws and also addressing the target employment areas we don't have gerrymandering and crazily drawn to uas. we are looking at right now and i guess it is cautiously a mistake the program will be extended before the september 30th sunset. another option or possibilities we have a continuing resolution in the programs if we don't have a deal to ask and. >> was turned down to the challenges during the summer with unaccompanied minors. i know the chart is a little tough to read up on the screen. you will see there was nothing short of a significant increase in the number of unaccompanied children who are apprehended or encountered on the southern border beginning the in the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014. to clarify where focus on children from el salvador and honduras. mexico did not be a similar spike. we will turn to greg now to give us a little insight about what is going on and would have been the challenges for the administration on the issue. >> if there is an issue displays the administration in a difficult spot in terms of policy endocrine picture in humanitarian response abilities are those from persecution assigned in the united states, what happened in central america in terms of statistics lynden showed is a difficult moment now. what we saw happen in 2014 was not an increase in the numbers of unaccompanied children from primarily those three countries, el salvador, guatemala and honduras by family units in much larger numbers. about 70,000 unaccompanied children came last year and family unit about the same number. a pretty sizable, but not huge number. tens of thousands of people. the spike was anticipated by those in the state department or international crisis areas largely due to the crisis happening in central america to inability of gang violence, domestic violence and the murder rate in honduras and el salvador are higher than they've ever been. the capitals are in the top two or three murder capitals of the world. domestic violence has little capacity for those governments to respond to incidents of domestic violence and reports either go completely uninvestigated were sanctioned by law enforcement. that is the crisis that killed a large migration out of the countries. that is the root cause that means what i hear. what happened with the spike last year but the obama administration a difficult place and what we saw was increase border restrictions and tightening of apprehensions, placing a famous in detention, short-term detaining of the children in violation of the 2008 bought designed to protect traffic and the dems come into the united states. i would say for an association of 14,000 immigration lawyers we tend to be lawyers that are rather stodgy on any issue. i've never seen an issue galvanized my association with them this in the many years because of the depth of concern for in particular on a continuing basis, families, mothers and young children, toddlers, even infants who are still nursing being detained on house and the people and facility set up very quickly last july and there was someone in new mexico shutdown in november that had 500 or 600 people in the conditions were not adequate and now two are operating in texas but have 1500 people, families detained there. to give you context in 2009 if facilities are used in texas were shut down because of lawsuits brought against conditions in the inhumane situation detaining families in jail like circumstances. that continues now. a few other nonprofits have been trying to provide some legal counsel and i will tell you it is hard raking. i'm on the phone regularly with volunteer staff working in texas near san antonio and these are lawyers who don't do immigration full-time or business immigratiimmigrati ons have decided i'll take a week of my vacation and i'll go work with these families. the attorneys are crying because they are hearing mothers and suicide after his efforts, children losing weight, 12-pound or 15-pound basis that it lost a third of their weight at risk of their health. it is tearing apart my own association come in to gravity. governments need to do this generates from political pressure to demonstrate it has the borders and control in a border policy would not let hundreds of thousands of people come across not as directly intentioned to protect those seeking asylum. the rate at which the people qualify in initial interviews for silent is extremely high. 70, 80, 90% of people interviewed to see if they have a credible fear demonstrated. that is much higher than the national average which ranges 60%. these people flee for their lives. where we stand now is the administration has contended that the policy. i don't think it will change anytime soon. there have been two lawsuits filed out of reach decisions. one of february the court issued a junction and more recently a few days ago federal court in los angeles issued a decision. i won't go into details because at the time, but the summary that there's real concern about the practice of what the government is doing needs to change how it was treating these families and cannot hold them long-term. they need to release them on an expedited basis. the justification wants to deter more people from coming. it has to be done whether the person poses a threat to the community or flight risk. you can't just say we are afraid where people will calm. that is where the situation stand now had feel free with any questions. >> i want to quote on family distinction, the writing is unacceptable, un-american and will end in mind that the florida settlement agreement. >> i do think it's important to point out throughout the entire issue there is consistently been an evolution in the government's approach and the vast majority of people have been a very released on their own recognizance under a bond or otherwise in some form of alternative detention and even the categories of the folks at issue in the lawsuit as lawsuits and other things are progressing , the secretary is moving more and more towards the facilities to very quickly address a lot of the issues in terms of the highest level of reasonable fear people were getting. these things are difficult issues that there really is a great deal to the way the government has attempted to continually reassess what the needs are down there. >> i want to say i want to commend the attorneys who have gone volunteer at the centers. i have been following the process as an academic and forget about immigration law for a second. they've created a whole new model of pro bono service as greg mentioned attorneys instead of taking one case are taking a week and been on site. one of the reasons they need to do it is because these facilities are often in the middle of nowhere, literally and there's no lawyers around. let alone immigration attorneys. thinking broader, the issue really highlight the immigration proceedings because immigration law civil, there is no right to a government funded lawyer. that is moving a little bit in terms of mentally incapacitated individuals, but the crisis shows we need to work towards a broader right to government funding council and immigration removal cases. >> and closing on the topic to point to greg's comment is this is a policy issue the bush administration struggled with in the obama administration has struggled with. the criticism has been pretty striking in the courts. the last question for you, greg, and mcc congress appears stepping up a couple times and try to movers on stabilities between agencies and also does is about what appropriate funding level would be in the question of right to counsel and paint her right to counsel for children is a multifaceted issue or a silver bullet there for congress to deal with on the third try. >> there is a silver bullet. a couple of ideas. [inaudible] a few things given what you mentioned. one, the congressional attention dear year he mentioned during the past summer a letter with 160, 170 members of the house and 30 senators calling attention to the concern and attention paid to that phenomenon. instead of rules and laws regarding how children who arrived unaccompanied without a parent for somebody to take care of and how they should be treated and screen, the ati chub welfare principles children should be not held in jail but a there's been discussion about whether or not those laws need to be improved. the most recent law and not did in 2008, which lynden has on the screen. there was discussion about what the standards should look like. there's the double standards that treats mexican children different from these countries and mice protection. the protections be improved to bring them on power. that is another issue. i'm funding, the only thing i will mention is this debate has brought a lot of attention regarding not just handling on the orders. there is a request for detention facilities on 300 million. fila is spending more money for detention for these kinds of families. also more attention paid to the need for funding overseas, foreign aid assistance for the countries to build the state's capacity to improve conditions there. >> let's wrap up at the very end here on the reforms. you have heard on the earlier panel from the regulatory team at the department of homeland security about a few priorities. the visa modernization recommendation report included 50, 50 different recommendations for enhancing medical immigration, focusing on efficient vm accessibility from the streamlining the legal immigration system and helping people stuck in the green card backlog making it easier for employees to change employers and strengthening the humanitarian system through the use of parole and authorities the speakers have talked about today. final question for the panelists here with a look at the regulatory agenda, is there a significant major controversial complex rulemaking, many of which involve multiple agencies. elisabeth and immigration regulations. d.c. given air traffic control situation to see congress and weighing in on the process. >> legislatively? >> a regular pressure on the agency to prioritize its first prioritize that. >> we certainly our. we have waded weighed in and will continue to weigh in on the employment issues around extreme hardship center for certain immigration waivers which is nearing completion as we speak in the employment side as well. >> in a final thought in terms of priorities, do you see the list of balding in the last year and a half based on litigation or political campaigns come anything like that or is this that no implementation for the final year? >> you never say never but you never say yes. i think these are very serious effort to identify what we could get done with the time remaining and in the context of a litigious society and challenges posed by resources and time. we have spent a lot of time looking at the implementation and framework for the very document the white house issued. our goal right now is to get them done and the faster we move on is the better. that is the plan right now is full steam ahead. >> i would say she applauded so many of the recommendations that came out on november 20th. the one with the most attention in the media, but many other reforms that have dramatic positive improvement to the way the system works and i will mention two very quickly. one is the program that would revive parole for lunch maneuvers do want to invest or start a business that's operating here. the parole program is something immigration lawyers have one of her a long time. we are very pleased to see it come out. our hope is they will be implemented in inexpensive and flexible way. we're still waiting to see this happen and we are hopeful it will come soon. another program is a provision that would allow for waivers to be given to people already in the united states that need to leave the country in order to obtain their visa to return to the united dates because they have unlawful presence. a few years ago the government created a system for allowing somebody to get away for to come back here and now they'll expand not to apply to a larger group of individuals. we are looking forward to seeing that change come forward because it will help thousands of families. that is another provision. there's a lot of work to be done and we are looking forward to working with the government. dhs has been corrected and stakeholder conversations and phone calls with an open process so we look forward to that. >> i hope all of you will join me in thanking our panelists today. [applause] we do not have time for questions but we will linger in the hallway for a couple minutes and make room for the next panel. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] >> this daylong conference on homeland security hosted by the american viruses nation will continue shortly. they are in a break for now. it should last 15 minutes or so. when they resumed their when they were soon there will be a panel discussion on the role of attorneys and emergency preparedness and response. they expect to start in 15 minutes from now on we will have it live on c-span2 when it gets underway. right now remarks from stephen pinal, general counsel and earlier talked about the changes to the department of homeland purity. >> good morning, everyone. thank you, joe for the kind introduction. i am fortunate to be one of your successors at general counsel of dhs and although it has been a while since you last, all of us at og c. and across the entire department continue to benefit from your leadership in our formative years. they say the years two to five are the most important and you are there in the beginning. thumbnails to thank josh for his leadership in not only helping to get the conference organized by working with joe. your leadership in helping to establish the discipline of homeland security in a bar in the space i think is an important area for people to draw together the different aspect of law and policy that shape what we do. frankly it is one of the things that makes us no interest in is all of these different strains of law coming together around a common set of challenges. thank you not only for religious texts but also the top leadership. i am honored to be here today and my plan is to start by describing the top challenges facing the department today and given the scope of dhs responsibilities that will limit myself to just a few. in fact, i will provide a high-level overview of four areas but i don't mean by doing that to suggest that there aren't a lot of other important things that are senior leadership thinks about and focuses on. after highlighting top challenges, i will put on my general counsel hat and try to talk a little bit about trends and themes and homeland security law although i did notice this is not a cle eligible programs are not going to say anything insightful with respect to the law. if they have some time at the end i would be happy to take questions. let me start with what we've been spending our time on at the department and when i say we am talking about my clients and to a certain extent the lawyers and the operational policy challenges. the first challenge i want to does gus' counterterrorism. as joe and others know well, counterterrorism is the founding mission of the department and continues to be the cornerstone of what we do and compared to what we faced in 2003, the terrorism threat today is in some ways more challenging, more decentralized, more diffused, certainly more complex. we are presently concerned about foreign fighters who leave this country or other countries, travel to a country and take up the fight as they work on the link up with a terrorist organization that may return home with a terrorist purpose whether this country or elsewhere. we are concerned about terrorist organizations adapt to skilled use of the internet to publicly recruit and inspire individuals including so-called levels to conduct attacks in their own countries. to combat threat of been working hard with international partners to prevent the travel of foreign terrorist fighters. and may the secretary represented the united states in an interior ministry session at the whole to discuss the problem of foreign fighters and encourage implementation of u.n. security council resolution 2178 including the enhanced information sharing, cooperative application of border security expertise and other security programs. we are also making security enhancements to the visa waiver program which allows travelers from her g8 countries to travel to the united states without a visa. last year but added elements to the system for travel authorization. application with a lethal strain and security of the program while maintaining substantial economic benefit of that the visa waiver program provides. we are working closely in a collaborative way with state and local law enforcement in coordination with the fbi to more quickly and efficiently share threat information and intelligence of joint terrorism task forces comes a fusion centers, local police chiefs and sheriffs. we have greatly stepped up efforts to counter violent extremism through greater community outreach in the face of the internet ipo isil it's imperative to strengthen communities and reach out to individuals who may be vulnerable to recruitment and might be prone to turn to violence. in 2014, dhs held 70 meetings and other events in 14 cities across the country and the secretary participated in a number of meetings in a variety of locations. cybersecurity is the second area i want to emphasize and has emerged in recent years and more so in recent and has become one of the department and the entire administration's top priority is. one internal reflection is expanding our regular intelligence briefings we have for senior leadership to include much greater detail about cyberthreats and miss insurers are senior leadership across the department has a deeper awareness of current security concern in the cyberrealm as well as physical. the recent data breach highlights the fact that federal talk of cybersecurity is not where it needs to be. the same can be said for many networks in the private sector including systems that operate in price or critical infrastructure. we have been working with a renewed sense of urgency to encourage full implementation of the einstein system which is a basic layer of cyberprotection that we had dhs make available to all federal, civilian agencies and departments. we also expand the end check which i'm sure you know stands for the cybersecurity and communication integration center and that is the government's 24/7 hub for information sharing and was on thin cord nation. let me say a little more about that. 13 u.s. departments and agencies and 16 private sector entities have regular dedicated liaisons to the end kick and well over 100 private sector entities collaborate and share information on a routine basis. it shares information on cyberthreats and in demand and provides on-site assistance to victims of cyberattacks and in this year alone it has shared over 16,000 bulletins, alert the morning then responded on-site to 32 incidents, over double the number of on-site responses for the prior year. it is also the place to be managed system. let me say her ability to improve cybersecurity is limited by her current statutory authorities and we are working with congress to try to get legislation to address that and specifically blue-collar should expressly authorized in the program and eliminate any remaining legal obstacles to its deployment across the entire federal government. second, we must incentivize the private sector to share cyberthreat indicators that the federal government in a matter that provides protection from civil and criminal liabilities for private entities and also protects privacy. third, we believe we need a national data breach reporting system instead of the existing patchwork of state laws on the subject. let me now turn to aviation security. much of our homeland security we are constantly making measures to respond to new threats and try to stay ahead of adversaries. that is in response to changes in the threat environment started requiring enhanced screen and select overseas territories of direct flights to the united states. they've also prioritized expansion of preclearance operations at foreign airports. preclearance allows custom importer officials overseas to screen passengers bound for the united states at the front end thereby protecting the plane, passengers and ultimately our country. we now have 15 preclearance site overseas in six different countries operated by 601 prison officers and agricultural specialists. it was set up flash or not the david and since that time we party screen more than 500,000 passenger and crew bound for the united states and denied boarding the 785 individuals including a number who were found to be on the terrorist screening database. we are now entering negotiations to expand preclearance operations in 10 new foreign airports. >> we will go back live now to the discussion on homeland security hosted by the american bar association. this afternoon the next panel will be a discussion on the role of attorneys in emergency preparedness and was on. this is live on c-span2. >> the next topic is a very serious one which is reflected upon by her piano and moderating the panel is the perfect person to be part of the segment is joshua feller. i know josh on the service at the department of homeland security. dishonor president of security strategies in washington is becoming homeland security consulting firm specializing in risking capability assessments, exercises and evaluations. is served in the state and local coordination for the u.s. department of homeland security. josh co-opted the presidential directive eight on national preparedness was followed early in homeland security. he served on numerous boards to include the homeland security policy and attitude at george washington university. he is welcome josh filler. josh, thank you. [applause] >> thank you ,-com,-com ma joe. good afternoon, everyone. i will be serving as the moderator on today's panel. when we think about emergency preparedness and response we generally think of firefighters and police officers and sheriff's deputies and the like. while that makes a lot of sense, it is true lawyers for the agencies there was -underscore for also play a very important role in where privilege today to have enough in a panel lawyers from various agencies at the federal and local level. found now in private practice who have served important roles or do so today and to give us some insight about the role of the lawyer and preparedness and was on. i would like to introduce the panel by having them introduce themselves to you and then we look at bringing to it. >> good afternoon. and it should count of the federal emergency management agency. i've been with fema since 2000 so about 15 years. about a variety of positions at the agency so i deployed to the joint field office setup of the president declares a major disaster or me. i hold positions including the council for a number of years and i didn't chief counsel for about a year now. >> i am dan connolly. i started my curse prosecutor in new york city and served as counsel in mayor giuliani's administration in new york for eight years culminating in serving as his liaison to the federal government and the app or not in september 2001 incident then i've been in private practice both on the consulting side initially helping and more recently a good old-fashioned practicing of law. >> good afternoon. my name is george grasso. i started in government as a new york city police officer at 22 years old in 1979 and went to law school on the job and worked my way through various uniform rains, ultimately becoming deputy commissioner for legal matters at the n.y.p.d. in 1997 which is essentially the chief legal counsel of the n.y.p.d. i held the job for five years until 2002 during which unfortunately new york city had to endure the 9/11 attacks. among other things i'll discuss in more detail but on that day i was assigned to the police commissioner of the city of new york his liaison representative with the fbi command center where dan and i had already been working closely on a variety of topics. they put a team together in the first several months after that. in 2002, ray kelley made his first police commissioner was the number two n.y.p.d., a job i had for eight years for mayor in 2010, mayor bloomberg made me a judge in the criminal court of the city of new york and in 2012 i was appointed by the administrative judges a criminal court to be the supervising judge for city raymond in the city of new york position i now hold. >> good afternoon. my career is not as colorful as my colleagues. my name is marie claire brown. i am at the district of columbia department of health. i was in private practice for 12 years after which i decided to move to the government. i've been a district of columbia attorney for the past 18 and a half years so i am currently a senior assistant general counsel for the department of health, helping merchants the preparedness and response administration and in that capacity i do a lot of what we are here to talk about today and i am looking forward to a great panel. >> very good. let's start with you. fema has developed a disaster operations legal reference. that's a lot of large document that goes through a number of different issues that fema and others have to deal with from a response per spec is. what was the impetus behind putting the document together health benefits have accrued as a result of having distracted it? >> my office is charged with reviving primarily what we do. we advise emergency managers within the feed prior to and after disasters and emergency declaration. we work very hard to facilitate, and powered and give our staff what they need to work in that environment. we give them laptops, ipod, smartphones operated with the hot dog. we give them tools such as tear sheets that are quick and dirty reference material on 60 to 70 legal issues that come up in post-disaster requirement. one of those tools is the legal reference recall the dollar by its acronym and that is 4500 pages reference material that covers everything and emergency management lawyer might face in a post-declaration environment and it's not by any means an authoritative recitation of the law. on all the topics that come up, it provides a very sustained easy-to-understand explanation along with the appropriate statutory and regulatory references. it is really a great tool they have at their disposal on the ipad. wherever they go what is with them and for them. >> since putting that together and making it a tool for lawyers, how would you say it's improved your counsel and advice and state and local agencies they may be seeking disaster assistance. >> from when i started in 2000, i can remember literally sitting on the floor somewhere without conductivity to the internet, with whatever he could carry with me in terms of reference materials until someone could set up a table in computer for me. today the attorney may still be sitting on the floor but they will have internet connectivity and the reference material and they can hit the ground running and time is that the essence in a response environment and said they are never at a loss for the materials they need and responsiveness has improved dramatically and of course the timeliness of art guys is critical and these tools, technology we provide has made a huge difference in terms of the timeliness factor. >> suki been on point here on the preparedness side of things, the district put together a big old handbook, some would argue modeled off of theme is dollar. but was the driving force behind the district taking that step that quite frankly jurisdictions have not taken. >> as adrian said, is a situation where time is that the essence. what we have several different these responsible for several different aspects of response and as we all know, there are always i loathe. in this particular situation, the district was going through updating the preparedness framework and district response plan in early 24 to teen -- 2014, this became -- forgive me i'm not with the department of homeland security, which actually the district department actually the district department of homeland security and emergency management prepared this document, but i was one of the persons involved with this development. .. and we use thumb drives and handed them out to whoever needed to have them. at the end of the day you don't know what's going to happen. internet will be the first thing to go down in an emergency. so we have these at our fingertips and it's not quite as in-depth as our document about the asset size and it includes checklists for those that may be called on to respond to various things. so it is tied to the structure, and for example the department of health we have a specific role and then we work down from there coordinating with other agencies and their counsel. it's just been a great thing and what it has led to is the department of health is in the process of public and to publishing the preparedness legal manual bench book because we recognize not only do the agency councils need to have this information but the judiciary is often have forgotten and so we have been working with the courts doing a seminar on 9/11 of this year. so all of these are in an evolving process. it is a living document and as things happen for example, when this was released, ebola wasn't on anyone's mind. i .-full-stop they are. >> we will definitely be talking about ebola. moving a little past on the preparedness side and actually diving into the real-world incidence i'm going to start with george and dan and start by asking on september 11, 2001 could you briefly describe where you were and what you were doing? >> we were supposed to be together in washington, d.c. today and that i mentioned it has evolved as a bit of a team with me being the chief and dan being the city liaison in the council and also there had been an issue regarding the economic form that was being planned in 2001 and actually the federal government have wanted 1,000 new york city police officers to come to dc to help to police the event. dan and i were responsible to find out how it worked and frankly, we have some concerns pertaining to the civil liability issues pertaining to police officers should there be incidence of new york city police officers because it would have been a novel circumstance. dan was here setting up the meeting and the attorney general's office and i was going to break the commissioner in the morning and getting trained. >> i was here in dc and then spends much of the next. it was an unprecedented situation. i have to remark on listening to a fellow panelist and the programs that have been put in place. it's been done on a blue sky day in preparing for what's to come no matter even if you have it directly anticipated in the disaster that will be brought to bear. we spent a lot of time in the administration with all first responders. preparing for the disasters. we didn't think of preparing for this disaster. but all of the techniques and concepts everybody's role was roughly understood in advance and having to fall back on the playbook. what fema has done is enormously valuable and when we look at the situation we often times think about the situation and responding to disasters or attacks we think of the major cities that are robust and mature in the response capabilities that we need to be thinking about those areas in the united states that are less robust first responder capabilities. so in any event, for me it was getting back to new york teaming up with the then commissioner and now judge getting briefed by the mayor. it was going to be my role in the event of a disaster to be the liaison. it was plugged in nicely by 24 hours after the attack. george and i were in a position with the federal agencies very cleverly the decision was to separate the governance in the city and state. had the temporary headquarters appeared. the federal government and federal agencies have set up in a hidden garage as it was a secret. it was important the federal government agencies be protected in the event of a secondary attack coming and it was quite serious. i get there into the garage on the west side. but in front of it they have sandbags. >> you might give it away. in terms of practicality and overarching take away concept. i can sum up in one word the overarching quality that was required on that day and would be going forward in the flexibility. one thing about new york city and the nypd, we like to have plans and it's great. as i said, i came up through the ranks as a police officer. so widely i fully understood that. but a lot of that, what we did and some of what i was doing in the first 20 for hours there was the playbook and you know what happened is that it was just a cascading series of events. i gave the precursor how i started the day and i are member very clearly i was driving in on the long island expressway focusing - was kind of a big deal to me to be going to the attorney general's office. to start scoping out this plan as we had never done before. so, obviously i'm taking that and i'm entering the midtown tunnel from the first work in that they. as we try to pick up the call we lost contact and to make a long story short, by that time i tried to reconnect, thinking that we were going to be talking about what we were going to be doing in washington i gets to the secretary and as she was getting ready to put me in she started screaming about a plane hitting the trade center and just as that happened i was coming on to the fbi just to see the first building that had been hit in the north tower and it was just as monstrous. it's tremendously scary. and that was very close to the building. and i went into the building with a friend of mine that had been instrumental in taking action to stop what would have been a major terrorist attack in new york by entering the department at brooklyn where some were planning to bomb subways which is another story so we are looking at each other thinking is that what we are dealing with or is it an accident? just as i got into the building i went into the commissioner's office to see, and that's where i saw the second plane coming. so fast forward i'm thinking about my brain is racing and all of a sudden the whole thing was such a big deal shortly it is completely forgotten. thinking what are we going to do and what should my role be and not working with any kind of a disaster playbook that what i typically do for the job was a particularly good at, and you know, it dawned on me that we had a top commanders commanders, operational commanders on the scene in the face of the world trade center trying to figure out how they were going to direct things operationally and having that from the previous training, one of her great problems had been as everybody in the rubble tried to respond to the scene to create this gridlock in the atmosphere nobody can do anything about it so i thought to myself that we get to the scene. i said let me find him. he's going to be there. if anything i can start running interference and all the different city and state people, federal people, trying to create some space for the operational people to do their job. so i made a point of passing 75 parkway which is a stone's throw from the tower and that's where mayor giuliani was setting up with the police commissioner and that's when i ran in and told him what i wanted to do and he said you know, we were looking at the towers and literally what we could see at the time it looked like from a parade of that was actually the netherlands body. that's to see what we were looking at from the top towers. it was something ripped out of science fiction. joe said to me he would rather i go back to headquarters because they were setting up a situation room and as bad as that was at the time, we didn't see the towers coming down. in fact it was five minutes before the first tower came down. but we didn't see that happening. so, we were looking at and unprecedented disaster like the long-term fire and we needed to persist setting up the situation room at the command center in the one police plaza headquarters. so, that probably saved my life because it turned me around for about a block and in the other direction. and then when the south tower came down i actually thought a third plane hit. i was right there and then i - >> let's start to beat coastal prepare for a second. i want to come back to that in a moment. but i want to bring into the conversation because unlike 9/11 which was a no notice a vent for us, literally planes coming out of nowhere. super storm cindy already had a tremendous devastating impact on the just the northeast. you knew that it was coming. we could all see on the weather channel. what were you doing in that time leading up to the disaster as either the deputy counsel at the time trying to assist your leadership in what everybody knew was good to be a catastrophic event. >> before i address that is just very briefly on that no notice event, the vast minority of the states don't have attorneys dedicated to the emergency management. and so, oftentimes the attorneys called upon are from the department of health or other emergency responders legal counsel offices and one of the things that is important for them to remember and be mindful of is you have as you have to make sure the legal office itself can function. what if your offices destroyed office is destroyed by fire or flood or a hurricane you can you perform your function? so i just want to put a plug in for all of the legal office is in the public sector to be aware where is your backup data, how do you reach your attorneys if you are able to report to the office all of that is imported so you have the capacity to at least access your data and we have noticed that fema has the luxury of a couple hundred attorneys that are spread across the country that we can deploy and activate. the role of the playing field offices we have these things called incident management assistance teams of trained together and they all have attorneys in different regions across the country and so as they begin to activate, lawyers are activated right along with all of those elements and their can be many attorneys and for an encouraging hurricane we would have 40 to 50 attorneys dedicated to just that function. we have that luxury because that is what we do for living and so we have a lot of attorneys devoted to that. most state and local governments don't have that many attorneys and so it's really important that especially folks along the coastal area that have the ability to have the notice of an event really be attention to the various preparedness and the activities that you can undertake to at least be able to take into those when need be. >> marie claire didn't have an impact on the district although i know having been here at the time that it was something that we were all looking out for. but there was another more recent incident that affected the globe coming out of africa barely into was affecting us all if not directly and that was the crisis of ebola. tell us a little bit about and that began to unfold and got a lot of media attention perhaps. what was your leadership looking for in terms of how the district was going to respond to that if in fact you had a case breakout inside the district? >> as far as ebola, the department of health -close-brace possible for all things in the district, and i am the sole counsel for the emergency preparedness but at least we have one. we had the benefit of getting a lot of our authorities into those requirements together so whatever the circumstance was we would be able to push out the emergency declaration but i will step back and say that the district of columbia, the department of health cannot declare the public health emergency unless the mayor declared a public emergency first. and the department of public health cannot declare an emergency. so getting ready for ebola, there were a lot of things that were happening at the same time. and while the focus primarily was what was going on in the new york and the new jersey new jersey area, there was a similar situation with the dallas airport being one of the major international airports as well. there was a series of documents that needed to be created quickly things that nobody really thought about in the laws, regulations, but nothing specific to this case and we had to work closely with our regional partners in carving out a something that was going to work for everybody and the district of columbia. people are filling out a form if they are determined to be likely candidates for follow-up if they miss some of the criteria at the airport they reported they were going to a hotel in springfield and they might really be coming to the ritz-carlton in washington, d.c.. and so we don't really have control over what was happening. we have to take people's information of the face value. that was a situation that raised hairs. what we did in the district doctor garcia determined he wasn't going to force the quarantine. so what we did is created to agreements one being the voluntary reporting on the mandatory reporting on a dalia basis which was reported to the disease surveillance epidemiology folks. we then had for persons that have been exposed, we had a voluntary isolation in the agreement that would be signed. and those people also had to report on a dalia basis. before we got any of those things together i will say for the new yorkers here i got on the phone and i spoke with a couple of other people in new york city to have some consistency. so we were ready to move forward on the same battle rhythm. the attorneys do what attorneys do and we've received notice from an attorney that the client wasn't going to force the quarantines and was challenging the forced quarantine. it was resolved so we never had any issues with the news media. that is one of the things we had to do but there was a series of documents that we had to come up with. we had to come up with all of the authorities because we knew that we were going to get challenges so that is ensuring the legal folks have been involved. it's in attracting and an attracting and the resolution of the cases. >> let's pick it up. obviously they've gone in and you're scrambling. talk to us a little bit about what ultimate assignments were given by the mayor and the police commissioner. >> again i'm starting with my overriding theme of the flexibility and initiative. nobody was on the enemy assignments. i was getting myself assignments. as i talked about how i was going through the towers and i saw dawn told me to go back to the building and get to the eighth floor and start getting the situation in the command center. he thought he was great good to spend a little time with the mayor. the police commissioner state attached to the mayor and joe ended up in one piece running the operations from the building which was absolutely crucial. but then the explosion i'm sure everybody has seen those clouds. when you watch on television they can look like those clouds were a little slow. i actually saw them hit in and was monstrous. we got hit with the clouds and when that happened i throw that in just in the context that we are talking about all kinds of disasters. so you have to be able to deal with that. i thought i was dead but i wasn't. fortunately we got through that cloud and me and one of my main got inside of a little delicatessen store and then we were strategizing what do you do and we kind of thought and i stayed focused on well, look at the last thing they told me go to the building. in my mind set i was thinking just about everybody behind me and i knew i was leaving the police commissioner. i got back into the headquarters again and i'm emphasizing when you are working with limited and evolving information we were running around doing texting. texting came into the police department after this incident because it was one of the few things that held up that day. so i got into headquarters knowing more planes were coming in and the headquarters of the police headquarters could be a substantial target, and not knowing where the hierarchy was. so i've made my way i made my way up to the command center on the eighth floor and it was helpful for me and this depends where you find yourself in an agency. i kind of grew up in that agency. so, i knew how it worked. i knew how the people worked. but the more you know if you are in the were in the general counsel, the more you can figure out to the inside out of the agencies that are not just policies and laws but who the people are somehow things have gone. it's crucial. and the whole variety of respects. first task that i assigned myself as a top ranking person because it is the civilian authority of the police department advises the deputy commissioner i grabbed the chief and i didn't want to panic anybody that i've had a couple of cops out to figure out my number one goal of the time where is the mayor and the police commissioner, where is the line of authority. and also, to start figuring out the logistics were. fortunately about a half-hour into this they came in covered in the same stuff. and i was happy because he's my friend and i felt frankly that a burden had been lifted. and the chief in the department came and the department came in and invited the first thing that i did is facilitated the conversation with them about whether we stay in the police headquarters and we have to think that through because by the time we figured out the building had fallen. it would make sense that the police headquarters could be a target, so i put it upon myself to facilitate the conversation and we decided to stay in the police headquarters. so as time went on from there, these were all self assignments. i was just mixing and adapting to the situation. then we got word from the federal government who hadn't yet moved to the garage. at the time they moved in 26 broadway which was the main operation. the further variety of concerns they moved across the street to the location on church street. we had a communication with them. that's when i got an assignment. so that's when i got the police commission and the department if they need a high-level person we have to get somebody else there and start communicating in real time. now a funny story that josh asked me to tell because we also worked together as well he works for the mayor at the time so we were intersecting in various ways. but when i was leaving the building to go over to 290 broadway, they brought down a metal gate that we had never used. they were all trapped and nobody could figure out how to get them back up. so i was incredulous of data. somebody said we have a welder. so anyway, you know, these are the crazy things that happen. >> so i got over to the fbi and introduced myself to the new york office and i hadn't worked with them before in the southern district into the whole team of people were beginning to assemble. and a job of the day i will let him and with what he wants maybe as we go into the observation the job of the day was communication. it is the first tangible thing that i did in that assignment just to show how bad the communication was in that sense. throughout the entire point, the head of the fbi's new york office they hadn't met directly yet. fortunately since i was able to get there i had a car and i brought them physically to the police academy 20th street where mayor giuliani set up and was perfect timing because we had the man, had the governor, and just to give everybody the sense of the scope, the unprecedented scope of what we were all dealing with at this time the crime scene, at that time it was everything south of 14th street. everything south of 14th street in the tip of manhattan and the big decision that had to be made is whether or not we were going to keep it from 14th street were over to the canal street which the mayor and the governor did and i was able to decision. we are going to reduce the crime scene to canal street. then we have to make had to make decisions about the bridges and tunnels and nobody knew what could happen under those circumstances. and we are working with extremely limited information. so what you see as i keep going back to that word flexibility whether it was originally thinking i was going to go to the actual scene, whether or not i was going to set up the command center, whether or not i was good to make decisions as to what the hierarchy of the government was going to be that was relevant to the police operations, whether or not we were going to stay in the building or leave the building these were things that a lot of it was self assignment and just using all his experience in working through the situation. >> on the minds of the plans, apropos of preparedness in the breaches now, i had the emergency workers so i thought very cleverly i have a binder of all of them printed out and the 1990s technology and i have two sets one week after the emergency command center which was destroyed in the first minutes of the attack and the other i kept in the trunk of my car that i had parked near my office on church street which was destroyed so we didn't have the benefit. what we thought we had the idea. an earlier speaker from the department of homeland security was and i was raising at the agency was 15-years-old and much like a teenager and the pros and cons sitting in the back thinking that was quite interesting and i think if you put yourself back in the time the same set of awareness of preparedness or maturity thinking about how to approach these issues was more like an infant or maybe even embryonic. there was a lot of creativity that was required in those times there are the issues that were coming up literally every second and your job as the lawyer was a lawyer was to figure out a way to make it work. at one point in a moment of clarity the deputy mayor asked me because we have closed the bridges in the tunnel and two of the tunnels collect and have been with another state and he asked me does the mayor have that authority and the response is sometimes who is going to sue us at that point. the job. we take them to institutionalize the buildings, the infrastructure of the local and state government, all these lessons learned so that you are not making this up on the fly. having said that, you are still as the council always going to have to be creative. so, we can know that superstores and he is heading our way. but you may know idea of the infected is going to have in the certain regions or the type of flooding associated with it. we lost a big chunk of the subway system in that storm is so that's the real challenge and i think that we have come a long way. it will never be quite fair. we try to train the attorneys to function in a way that often many local governments at state and city governments will have attorneys that have the case of the situation before and you really do have to let go of the ordinary risk analysis to sometimes just say in these circumstances, who cares. we don't have any other choice. and that can be very important in the attorney to reassure the client but what they need to do operationally is okay. go ahead and do that and we will clean up after the fact. >> i would like to do before we open up the floor is to focus on two things obstacles and lessons learned, and come back to the new york 9/11 on the issue george and dan were tasked with that is as liaisons for information with a lack of information between the federal government and the city of new york. and talk about some of the obstacles that you encountered in performing that role and some of the lessons that you learned as a result of that unprecedented task that you were given. >> so, several obstacles fly off the page. all of the modes of communication other than face-to-face communication and they are at least for several weeks if not more to the event. so so the modes of medication were down to the need for the information skyrocketed. and in the garage we call it the garage operation. the best way that i can help you visualize it is if anybody here has ever seen the movie staying that's kind of what this was. they have kind of like a wire room operation and have these long tables and we had every - all the time and at about 100 it was about 100 or 150 people in a garage on every federal city and state and to the agency to think of people have liaisons at the garage and then they had this desk so they had a pile of leaves and they were just coming in by the dozen. and nobody thought - one thing to throw things out but i know people will be familiar with, there's the whole anthrax scare that came up in the middle of this with people actually dying. stuff was happening. so, we were tasked and i set up a little table literally right outside of the door of the office and, you know, with no previous background and training and counterterrorism and things like that, he and let me in and we were involved in these congress calls and information that was coming around the country, and we had to figure out what was hot, what we needed to push through in the hierarchy and what we needed to push for mayor giuliani and there was a couple of controversial things for significant things we had to run into bitterly find the mayor physically and he was tremendously supportive throughout, i would have to say, as would be expected. so here is another thing that is crucial. there was a culture we were going against culture and it's on the federal and there were various issues among the federal government themselves in the intelligence side and criminal side and who communicates with a who. the fbi had a certain information, and then we were thrust into the middle of all of that. and it was extremely murky and frankly i'm not going to - a couple of tiny - the framework had to be kind of bold in the service. it's to say it's not about me. i'm not here for me. i'm here as a crucial vehicle and if there is information here that can be relevant to protecting the city of new york, i need to get that and take it where other people ultimately went along with it. one of the tangible things that we did because the timing is a short, seeing that i had the police department actually starting in the fall of 2001 work on the federal legislation that ultimately became the homeland security information sharing act. probably one of the fastest moving pieces of information from between the fall of 01 and the fall of 02. you can look it up in the relevant sections 891 to 893 where we actually incorporated we were starting with the patriot act that we didn't quite get what we needed the patriot act to get everything lined up and the follow-through on the homeland security act if you look on the first page, section 891 you will see a lot of stuff about the federal government relies on state and local personnel to protect against the terrorist attacks, and it acknowledges the fact that information sharing is crucial and it sets up a framework with specifics like the government has to grant clearances, the government needs to be sent to the declassification of information where appropriate, create a framework. so we saw that as a problem and it went away as we were dealing with stuff in real time. i assigned lawyers in the nypd lawyer counseled to work in the corporation counsel, and josh was the government liaison. it was very convenient that is how we have worked had worked together previously in terms of getting legislation. and we were dealing with us on september 11 we have a whole round of meetings with some of the top people in washington who were involved in senators and congressmen who were involved in making this happen for us. now, that going back to the morning of 9/11, even remotely thinking of anything like this, no. but you saw what the problems were into the obstacles. but in terms of how we should think about these things my job when i was thrown into that was not to come back into report problems to the nadir and the police commissioner and the hierarchy. my job was to figure out what they needed to know and find a way to get it to them and we were dealing with obstacles and i started thinking what can we do among other things legislatively to deal with that. sometimes when we talk about legislation as lawyers we talk about legislation in and the way to get out of stuff. what we really need is legislation so let's work on the legislation and that isn't what we were doing on 9/11. you work in stereo and do what you can with what you have while you are there and to the extent you see the legislative solution you work on it in real-time. to get federal law from the concept to the delivery to actually passing by congress and signed by the president inside of the year, on something this significant was quite unusual but it was an unusual type of shows what can be done. and i'm proud of the fact that as lawyers and the general counsel these are the kind of things that we were able to do. to get. >> the single biggest mines have - in 20 seconds i will say the biggest obstacle, and i still think that it exists to a certain degree but much less so now was mindset. we were all reinventing the way that we communicated with each other. we were leaving each other in some circumstances for the first time. and we were in the garage there were members of the fbi essentially meeting other members of the fbi who worked on the intelligence side versus the criminal side. none of the infrastructure communication, none of the mindset existed. we were inventing that in the middle of the storm. that permeated everything we do. we were all trying to catch up to where we needed to be. and today, the work that is being done at the dhs and fema we are so much better at it. this generation will be okay. hopefully we build all of this into the infrastructure and institutions for all time. but it was unfortunately a brave new world that required immediate governmental response. and it was quite challenging under the circumstances. the mexicana we will have some questions in a second. if you could talk about the legal lessons learned that we will open up to to request an. >> i would say very briefly in general, what we've learned is how important it is to have all of the legal stuff taken care of ahead of time. the form documents spent a lot of time. we put together agencies to do things. we know we are going to do that in an event. so now we have prescriptive documents so that we can pull it off the shelf and execute it very quickly. hispanics put it in a safe place, multiple locations. the idea of keeping stuff in the trunk is not a bad idea. sometimes it is even the backup failed. so it is as lawyers that readiness and preparedness function. 9/11 taught us that communication can be completely wiped out. our offices can be wiped out. our cars can be wiped out and therefore we really need to have those template and documents you know you are going to need in an event ready and set to go. >> and also as far as the communication coming yes having the actual template and other things can be as great but also developing advanced messaging and i think that is one of the things that is a cure to the chaos and messaging not just for the public but for the attorneys. one of the other lessons learned i think is that we need to - we discovered there are other areas that we never considered in responding to the emergencies and that is personal issues. so that his people that are essentially required to come to work and union issues. you know there's a potential for the abandonment of of patience of patients and assignments and those types of things we have to come in contact with independent whole medical records. one thing i would recommend for all of the council that are involved in this is to sit down and take some training so that you know exactly how things are being handled. you know the lines of communication coming to know the chain of command, and you are ready to respond to the emergency on a legal basis and we do have a plan at my house i am set up to violin to my office and as is everyone in my specific administration so that the business continues as usual we can violin to the server from wherever we are. so, it's just the issues well never have them all addressed but one thing we didn't think about is the transgression of bodies where there is no crematorium in the district. so you know those are the kind of things that we have to start thinking about in crossing the state lines. >> spinnaker and the former u.s. department and i live in harlem in the development under the jurisdiction br d. because the - related to the job council what are their responsibilities? we survived the storm and had things like who will be responsible for the damage? i didn't know if this was the private respond to responsible your city or government lawyer responsibility in case of emergency. is it? >> it depends on the nature of the housing but if it is under the jurisdiction to have the preservation department in the first incident certainly the emergency response. after you get past the first phase of the emergency response it becomes more individualized and the responsibility may become more. but when you are talking about the life safety and criticality for example when it's the middle of the winter or serious threats to the structure - gimmick that >> gimmick that is at the corporate counsel that we hired to be there to the flexible body and so forth, so is that the role that we are talking about here is a lawyer and emergency response? >> click >> it can be. >> sure. >> thank you for that. let's give a big round of applause to the excellent panel. >> and thank you for participating. >> we will have the panel rounds starting in just a few minutes. >> [inaudible conversations] the american bar association hosting today's homeland homeland security conference. live coverage here in washington, d.c.. a short break now between the panels. we expect the next panel to get underway in ten minutes or so at 3:00 eastern when the conference comes back the panel discussion on drones and unmanned aerial vehicles. while we wait for that to get started an earlier panel from sitting on the regulations and legislation with lawyers from the house and senate homeland security committees. we will watch part of that. >> good morning everyone. and thank you for joining us and thanks for the kind introduction. gainfully employed is probably the better monitor for that. we are excited to have the panel this morning joining us to give you an overview of the department's latest legislative regulatory updates. in particular as i'm introducing the panel i would like to know we like to keep things very fresh and current which means that i will introduce them in the order of the panelists. the representative from the department is tia johnson who yesterday was a senior adviser to to the director and last night was named as the new assistant secretary for the legislative affairs for the department. [applause] we have been keeping our fingers crossed so that she could join us on the panel this morning. i will give you a bit of background in the remainder so that we have a great and is distinguished lineup. the director is the judge judge advocate and specialized in the international security law participated in many panels. so you may actually know her from those interactions as well. she served as the legal advisor in the department of defense in the u.s., korea, italy and bosnia and with the teaching department at the school and became the first african-american female to be selected to the rank of colonel in the core in 2002 it is and is a graduate of the temple university school and holds the lom from the school of law. next on the panel side is another long-term veteran department christina mcdonald and is the assistant associate general counsel for the regulatory affairs and that the dhs served with joe and i and others and served as the deputy attorney advisor in the regulatory division and prior to that was the trial attorney at the federal railroad administration as a graduate of franklin marshall and the university of maryland school of law and the two representatives from the senate and the house side for the general counsel for the security supported the chairman and she's been in the council since 2011, and has been interactive on a lot of the topics including privacy, civil liberties and other constitutional questions and is now the general counsel helping to implement the legislative agenda. earned jd from the law school and also has several distinguished clerkships and participate last but not least the chief counsel for homeland security in the senate and the senate committee for homeland security governmental affairs has been with the senator in that role for several years since 2011 and prior to that if you google steven stephen and other panelists some of his articles when he was at the congressional research service as well. so, with that great panel and what we want to do is just note that as we are looking at the legislative and regulatory agenda for the department, we are almost 15 years and in operations and policies of the department and the homeland security act when it was passed in the great evidence of bipartisanship and signed into law november of 2002 signed off an amazing reorganization as the department multiple 22 agencies that came together with multiple directorates and new fresh ideas of what the government should be looking like from the infrastructure side and also from a policy site and also how to respond in the need of 9/11 in the post-9/11 world. but that was the teen years ago almost and so our operations inside of the department have continued to evolve to meet the present day needs be on the immigration it on the immigration press, the infrastructure, the cyber front that impacts the legislative priorities in the regulatory priorities and so what we want to lay out for you today and is a presentation that looks at how internally the dhs is responding to the homeland security needs through its regulatory agenda. i've asked to put her on the spot early in the morning to get a couple of minutes with the knowledge that she is two and a half hours in. but we are looking at this from the perspective of what you are constantly responding to to operational policy needs both internally and those of public and those most certainly of the per partners on capitol hill. also looking at the two points on the hill first held that congress legislatively is responding to the needs of the the department of homeland security and the actions they are undertaking in the nominations and other steps that are if you will do day to day needed to sustain the operations and ensure that we have what we need while in gauging and robust debate on the policy issues on the immigration, cyber and others. and then in conference to that of c. and i hope in the materials that you have available to you is how congress as the creator creator if you love the department of homeland security through the homeland security act is not only active and supportive of the mission that also now evaluating the potential changes to the homeland security act 12 years and under the reauthorization and that is something that we will focus on linked to the article so with that i want to take a couple of minutes and turned over t. - tia. prior to that, tia has an extensive background. she and i chatted on the ground coming back to not only the founding of the department also prior to that the homeland issues so we shared a conversation about thoughts about how that might impact the agenda. .. >> i was teaching at the school at the time and in the wake of the september 11th attack -- >> join us for the drone panel. i will change the room around to make it easier on you so you don't have the change the place you arett

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