| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Consider legislation to increase wildfire prevention and improve forest management. | |
| They're also expected to take up a bill calling for medical care for a child born after a failed abortion. | ||
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| To Capitol Hill now for a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on immigration enforcement. | ||
| Live coverage here on C-SPAN. | ||
| We join it in progress. | ||
| ...active obstruction by the states. | ||
| He reprioritized public safety threats in the interior and cut releases of convicted criminals from detention in half. | ||
| He refocused on border security, doubling detention, removing three times as many border crossers as President Trump. | ||
| But it was fixing legal immigration that contributed to ending the crisis. | ||
| Biden restored visa and refugee processing to above 2016 levels. | ||
| Biden also deregulated the parole process to open this lawful pathway to allow asylum seekers to enter in a lawful and orderly way. | ||
| Biden's approach was working. | ||
| Yes, overall crossings increased during the economic recovery, but Border Patrol encounters were down 33% in Biden's final months compared to Trump's final months. | ||
| Criminal crossings had fallen 57%. | ||
| Evasions of Border Patrol were down 42%, falling immediately after President Biden reversed Trump's expulsion to Mexico policy. | ||
| For the first time ever, most immigrants coming to the U.S. border were applying to enter legally through a regulated and screened lawful pathway. | ||
| But the new administration is already undoing all the progress. | ||
| The slew of new executive orders mandate violations of the U.S. Constitution, target peaceful people over violent felons, and by limiting legal immigration, encourage illegal immigration. | ||
| The president has ordered violations of the Constitution's 14th Amendment, denying the legitimacy of millions of Americans, their citizenship, and threatening to deport babies born in America. | ||
| He is threatening to use the military to arrest, detain, and remove people without proving to courts they are removable. | ||
| His orders explicitly declare that he is above U.S. law, and he asserts he can ignore any immigration law that you, members of Congress, write. | ||
| The president may have joked he wanted to be a dictator for a day, but he is not one. | ||
| You, Congress, should defend your powers and the U.S. Constitution and our rights before they're gone. | ||
| America's immigrants are with you. | ||
| They come because America is the land of the free. | ||
| Let's keep it that way. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| We'll finally hear from Ms. Jessica Vaughan. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I appreciate the chance to focus today on the most important things that Congress should do to restore immigration enforcement and integrity in our immigration laws. | ||
| The areas of the law that need to be updated. | ||
| The Border Security Act of 2023, or HR2, was a great start, but more is needed to close loopholes and abuses and to fix the things in the law that just do not work and to address new challenges. | ||
| I particularly want to focus on problems in certain visa and benefit programs. | ||
| One problem is fraud. | ||
| Fraud is often overlooked in discussions of immigration enforcement, but it really is another form of illegal immigration. | ||
| Past reports have identified double-digit fraud in certain benefit programs, but most have never been studied or assessed for the prevalence of fraud. | ||
| Congress needs to demand some investigation into these programs, audits, and benefit fraud assessments to find out just how prevalent it is. | ||
| An even bigger problem is that over time, our immigration law has become a massive, disorganized menu of entry and work permit programs, some created by Congress, some not, that operates almost on autopilot. | ||
| And in the hands of an administration like the previous one that wanted no limits on immigration, any integrity guardrails were dismantled. | ||
| And these programs have now ballooned in size. | ||
| In some cases, the rules themselves do not allow for meaningful controls. | ||
| Some of these programs simply need to be shut down. | ||
| Before I talk about that, I just want to endorse the comments made by my fellow panelists on the need to address sanctuaries, which are a major public safety threat and undermine the integrity of immigration laws. | ||
| But I also want to mention that it's important to allow for a role for state and local officials in restoring integrity of our immigration programs and in enforcement. | ||
| In some of the programs that I'm going to talk about, the states are really a gatekeeper to some of these programs, and so they have a stake in how they are run. | ||
| And enforcement is not just a matter of imposing consequences on those who break the law. | ||
| We need to be more prudent in administering visa and green card programs to reduce opportunities for abuse, either by unqualified applicants or by an administration that opposes limits on immigration. | ||
| Visa overstaying is a chronic problem. | ||
| More than 565,000 people overstayed their visa or visa waiver in 2023, and the State Department has done nothing but let this problem get worse in the last few years. | ||
| Besides lenient entry programs, our immigration system offers too many opportunities for people to prolong their stay and obtain work permits, whether through long-term pretend temporary status or in programs that are a bridge to green cards and citizenship. | ||
| And I'm referring to programs like TPS, OPT, Special Immigrant Juvenile Program, and the UNT visa programs for crime victims. | ||
| All of these are loosely regulated and attract large numbers of fraudulent and frivolous applications. | ||
| All of them have ballooned in size to historic numbers of applicants in the last four years. | ||
| Collectively, these number at least a million and a half and maybe as many as 2 million people, and that exceeds the size of all the other guest worker programs combined. | ||
| For example, the OPT programs were never authorized by Congress but allow hundreds of thousands of foreign students and foreign grads of U.S. schools or fake schools to get a work permit. | ||
| The UNT visas for crime victims have proven to be mostly ineffective in helping prosecute crimes and need to be replaced with a more tightly managed deferred action program that suits the needs of law enforcement agencies. | ||
| Similarly, the Special Immigrant Juvenile Program, which was sold as a humanitarian benefit for trafficked kids in needs of protection, has become an amnesty program for young adults whose claims of abandonment or abuse are often not subject to thorough examination. | ||
| The availability of this benefit, which has few controls or standards, creates demand that gets larger and larger every year. | ||
| These are just a few examples of things that can be fixed by Congress and that I hope you will take up in this next session. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want to thank you all for your testimony. | |
| We'll now proceed to questions under the five-minute rule, and we'll begin with Mr. Biggs of Arizona. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| It is ludicrous for the ranking member of the subcommittee to make the argument that millions of illegal aliens who crossed into the country during the Biden administration invaded the country because the immigration system is, quote, broken, close quote. | ||
| The fact is, these individuals came because of Biden's open border policies: no fence, no detention, no removal, and frankly, no enforcement. | ||
| That's what happened. | ||
| It is rich to decry the pardons of President Trump, yet failed to even insult, discuss, address places like San Diego, which have just become a super sanctuary city, or the California state itself with its sanctuary policies. | ||
| I submit for the record a story about a sanctuary city dweller suffering sexual battery, stranger rapes, murders at the hands of illegal aliens in California. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Without objection. | |
| It is almost silly to say that the Senate plan, which would have allowed 7,500 people a day into the country before the president had to take any executive action at all, would have been a panacea to Biden's failed policies. | ||
| And it is unique, and perhaps we're fortunate that an individual, as the ranking member of the entire committee, is able to condemn pardons, presidential pardons, as the only person that I know of on this dais who's actually received a presidential pardon for his actions. | ||
| The Wong Kim Art case, which basically addressed birthright citizenship, was given because somebody was a permanent legal resident, not illegal aliens who have a child in this country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When this gets to the Supreme Court, they're going to rule that way. | |
| And I'll be right, unlike Mr. Beyer, who made his prediction on President Trump's policies when the Supreme Court upheld his policies. | ||
| To say that the country's border was in a shambles when President Trump was there is ludicrous. | ||
| Apparently, not looking at any of the numbers, such as in Yuma. | ||
| In Yuma, the entire last year, the numbers were about 8,600, I believe it was. | ||
| That was the total encounters, when it was not unusual under the Biden administration to have 8,600 encounters in a weekend. | ||
| Ludicrous argument, specious. | ||
| The numbers came down. | ||
| Why did they come down? | ||
| Because you didn't count people who were applying under CBP1 app. | ||
| You didn't count people who are getting CHNV program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So if you're not counting everybody, well, of course the numbers come down. | |
| And that's where we sit here today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The law is this, Mr. Fabricatori. | |
| An asylum requester is required to remain in custody until that asylum request is adjudicated. | ||
| Is that not true? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely, sir. | |
| That's the way it should be. | ||
| Well, not just what it should be. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's what the law is written. | |
| Yes, sir. | ||
| No administration has been successful at doing that because there's a massive number of asylum requests. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| But under this administration, how many asylum requesters have been released into the country? | ||
| Too many, sir. | ||
| They're just released into the country and not put into detention as they should be. | ||
| If they were actually detained by the way the law requires in which President Trump says he wants to do, he wants to enforce the law, what does that do to incentives to come into this country illegally? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It magnetizes it. | |
| It just forces people to come in because they know they're not going to go into detention. | ||
| They know they're going to get released into the interior of the U.S. If you're not detaining him, that's the magnet. | ||
| But if you do detain him, it becomes a deterrent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It becomes a deterrent. | |
| If we put the tension back into action and we say we're going to detain you when you are asking, that's going to be a deterrent. | ||
| If you remove people, like you have 1.4 million who are actively in the country with removal orders, that doesn't count all the 500,000-plus criminal individuals. | ||
| That is just the 1.4 who've had due process. | ||
| If you begin removing people, what does that do as a deterrent or a magnet? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Again, it deters people from coming. | |
| And the biggest problem with this is they broke into the country. | ||
| They entered illegally. | ||
| They had an opportunity to see an immigration judge. | ||
| That immigration judge ordered them deported, and they still did not leave the United States. | ||
| So compounding just breaking our laws, even doubly so, by not even listening to what the immigration judge had to say. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| My time has expired, but may I put some articles in for unanimous consent. | ||
| Yes, thank you. | ||
| An article, What Democrats Must Learn from Biden's Disastrous Immigration Record. | ||
|
unidentified
|
DIMS finally admit Biden botched the border after 2024 election loss. | |
| We destroyed ourselves. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This one without title by CNN politics, and then this one marked all over the back of it. | |
| I apologize for that. | ||
| Quantifying why Democrats support open borders. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I will submit additional UCs without reading them regarding sanctuary cities and the release of violent criminals into the community. | |
| I have probably 50 or more articles I will submit for the record, sir. | ||
| Without objection, the gentleman's time has expired. | ||
| The chair recognizes Ms. Lofgren for five minutes. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| You know, I think all of us acknowledge that the asylum system broke down. | ||
| The system was overwhelmed. | ||
| And I think it's worth noting that a majority of those who sought asylum in immigration court lost their asylum case. | ||
| So clearly, people who are not eligible for asylum were admitted to the United States. | ||
| Now, why is that a problem in the law? | ||
| Well, Section 208 of A says this. | ||
| This is a law that Congress wrote. | ||
| Any alien who's physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States, whether or not at a designated port of arrival and including an alien who's brought to the United States after having been interdicted in international or U.S. waters, irrespective of such alien status, may apply for asylum. | ||
| That's what the law that we wrote, and people responded to it, and in such numbers that the system broke down. | ||
| We have never provided enough money to detain everybody who is seeking for asylum. | ||
| Not during the first Trump administration, not during Biden, and not now. | ||
| And so I think we need to address this issue in addition to other elements of immigration law that are not functioning properly. | ||
| Mr. Beer, 208A1 provides this really expansive opportunity for people to come and apply. | ||
| It broke down. | ||
| Now Trump has tried to use 212F of the Act basically to override the law. | ||
| My recollection is that when he tried that before, he lost in court. | ||
| Can you enlighten us on that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's right. | |
| 212F is about limiting the entry of people. | ||
| 208A is about asylum. | ||
| It's about applying for a benefit in the United States for people who are already present in the country. | ||
| So it's not 212F does not override the asylum law that you all wrote, explicitly allowing people to enter regardless of how they entered the country. | ||
| And so the law is such that if you come in between the ports of entry, say, surreptitiously, you are president in the U.S., 208A allows you to apply, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's right. | |
| It doesn't matter the manner or the status that you have, you can apply for asylum. | ||
| For one, I think Congress ought to revisit that. | ||
| And I think it is very clear the system has not worked and that we ought to have a different asylum is important. | ||
| There are some people who are seeking refuge. | ||
| This asylum was adopted by all civilized countries after World War II. | ||
| And there is an infamous case of Jews escaping Germany who were refused entry to the United States and by Canada. | ||
| They were sent back to Germany, and most of them were killed in concentration camps. | ||
| And most civilized countries adopted asylum rules subsequent to that war. | ||
| That is important. | ||
| But it is important also that it is for asylees, not people who are seeking economic opportunity. | ||
| I don't dislike or hate someone seeking economic opportunities, but they are not asylees. | ||
| So we need, Congress itself needs to address this issue, put some order so that we can have order at the border. | ||
| And then if we have a need for people who are meeting economic needs in this country, there needs to be a more orderly way to deal with that as well. | ||
| Let me just quickly ask you, if you can, there was an assertion that the 14th Amendment doesn't mean what it says. | ||
| Can you address the 14th Amendment question for us, Mr. Beer? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| So the 14th Amendment says anyone born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States is a U.S. citizen. | ||
| And the subject to, you know, what the executive order says is that all of these people who are children of guest workers or children of people without legal permanent resident status or citizenship are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, which is flatly absurd. | ||
| That would mean they weren't here illegally. | ||
| That would mean they are not subject to U.S. law like a diplomat who has diplomatic immunity. | ||
| Obviously, they didn't think through the implications of making that kind of declaration. | ||
| It is totally out of line with everything, all other constitutional interpretation. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Beer. | ||
| My time has just about expired, so I will yield back, Mr. Chairman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Tiffany. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Mr. Beer, what year was the 14th Amendment ratified? | ||
|
unidentified
|
In the 1860s. | |
| 1868. | ||
| Doesn't that sound correct? | ||
| And that was after which war? | ||
| The Civil War, which was done to end slavery, which preserve the Union and end slavery, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Did the American immigration system become better under the Biden administration? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It improved. | |
| Yes. | ||
| The immigration system in America became better during the Biden years. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| Ms. Vaughan. | ||
| Is the Secretary of State required to halt visas for recalcitrant countries? | ||
| They are not required to. | ||
| They have the authority to do that if they get a request from the Department of Homeland Security to do so because a country will not take their citizens back or doesn't cooperate in getting travel documents to return them after deportation. | ||
| Are there countries like that that are recalcitrant? | ||
| Yes, there are, quite a few. | ||
| Name a couple of the worst offenders. | ||
| Cuba, Venezuela, China, India and Bangladesh don't always cooperate. | ||
| Iran. | ||
| Has the State Department over the last few years done their job to stop those recalcitrant countries from dumping criminals into our country and then not taking them back? | ||
| No, the State Department historically has been very reluctant to use visa sanctions to impose consequences on countries that are not fulfilling their international obligation to take their citizens back. | ||
| So should we be going to the administration and Secretary Rubio and insisting that they do that, or should we make a law change? | ||
| Well, I think it would help to make a law change to say that the Secretary must act in certain situations as defined by Congress to address recalcitrant countries and give even more tools besides visa sanctions like potentially withholding foreign assistance or other diplomatic tools to require the Secretary to do so. | ||
| I mean, it may be that Secretary Rubio would want to do that, but there are not always going to be administrations that want to push this issue. | ||
| So if Congress changes the law, then they will have that obligation. | ||
| You would suggest we should make it a requirement. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Mr. Newman, in regards to categorical parole, the Mariana Islands, the CNMI, they have a program like that where there's no visa needed for people to be able to come in. | ||
| Isn't that a version of birthright citizenship? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, as I understand it, it's become a major issue of birth tourism in the CNMI. | |
| People just basically coming in to get U.S. citizenship. | ||
| So you have Chinese nationals coming in to this territory and they're able to have a child there and the child becomes a citizen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it's absurd. | |
| It shouldn't exist in a modern civilization. | ||
| Doesn't that seem like that could be a national security threat with all we know about communist China? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record an article from the Wall Street Journal December 22, 2017 in regards to this issue. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Without objection? | |
| Mr. Fabrier Katori, I hope I got your name right there. | ||
| Some people just call you Fab. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| So we know all about the NGOs, including like the International Organization for Migration, IOM, which I saw when I was down at Panama four years ago and saw them processing people in. | ||
| Don't they get significant amounts of money from the taxpayers of the United States? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They absolutely do, sir. | |
| They get a huge amount of money. | ||
| Do you have any ideas? | ||
| And tens of millions? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's tens of millions, higher than tens of millions. | |
| And they've been a vital link, haven't they, in this whole process of illegal immigration into America? | ||
| I mean, we talk about the cartels and the horrible things that they do, but don't those NGOs also serve as a, haven't they served as a vital link over the last four years of being able to bring people illegally into America? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| They have aided in helping illegal immigration enter into the United States. | ||
| Should we pull the money back from those organizations that have assisted in illegal immigration? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, we should pull it back and use that money to help us with our deportation process. | |
| If we're not able to pull that money back, should we reverse, have them help us reverse the flow and perhaps turn them into repatriation centers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That sounds like it would be the right thing to do, sir. | |
| Mr. Chairman, the era of America Last is over, as you said in your opening remarks, and it's time to enforce the laws here in the United States of America. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I yield back. | |
| No argument from me on that point, Mr. Tiffany. | ||
| And Chair, now recognize Mr. Askin for five minutes. | ||
| Thank you kindly, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Mr. Beard, just to be clear, you're with the Cato Institute, which my Republican colleagues generally love and are always quoting you and talking about you whenever we're talking about budget or fiscal affairs or so on. | ||
| They don't like what you're saying about immigration today, and they certainly don't like your message, although I think they were completely stymied and flabbergasted when you said that things had improved marginally under President Biden but had gone way south under Donald Trump. | ||
| Explain why immigration policy was such a nightmare in the first Trump administration. | ||
| Well, we basically didn't have an immigration system by the end of the Trump administration. | ||
| I mean, he basically banned all immigration from abroad, legal immigration from abroad, refugees down 92 percent, immigrant visas down 78 percent, non-immigrant visas down 80 percent. | ||
| We basically didn't have an immigration system available to people at the end of the Trump administration. | ||
| And if you look at what happened with convicted criminals crossing the border, the lack of focus on prioritization of convicted criminals in the interior, yes, the immigration system under the Trump administration led to a disaster. | ||
| And ultimately, it took four years, but the Biden administration improved things significantly from the end of the Trump administration. | ||
| So the new Trump administration inherits a situation that's better in terms of unlawful crossings. | ||
| What is going to be the effect of all of these executive orders at this point? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It seems almost like they're calculated to produce more chaos. | |
| Absolutely. | ||
| He's trying to get rid of the legal channels by which people come into the country. | ||
| He got rid of the refugee program day one. | ||
| He got rid of the parole processes that allow people to enter legally on day one. | ||
| He said we're not going to do any kind of asylum, even for people who are entering the country legally. | ||
| If you do that, what's the alternative? | ||
| It's illegal immigration. | ||
| And really, as long as we have illegal immigration, it's going to be a major touch point politically. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So let's say that he actually turns the whole country into chaos by trying to deport 12 million people, as he's promised. | ||
| What would the economic effect of that be? | ||
| And I ask because I get business people coming to my office all the time from the hotel sector, from the construction sector, from seafood, from agriculture, saying there aren't enough people to do the work now. | ||
| What would happen if we deported 12 million people? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Look, it would be a blow to the economy similar to the Great Recession in size, a $2 trillion blow to the GDP on an annual basis. | ||
| You're talking about a massive blow to the budget. | ||
| The Congressional Budget Office estimates that deficits will be lower by $1 trillion as a result of the immigrant workers that are working in the United States in these industries. | ||
| And look, many American workers depend on the workers that we're talking about. | ||
| In construction, you have 2 million Americans who are working in specialized positions and as managers and supervisors of illegal immigrant workers who are doing the tough manual labor jobs at the low end. | ||
| So there's a complementarity between the U.S. workforce and the immigrant workforce. | ||
| Well, most violent criminals are not undocumented immigrants. | ||
| Most undocumented immigrants are not violent criminals. | ||
| What would it do to our efforts to actually fight real violent crime and gun-based crime in America, the AR-15s, the illegal trafficking guns, if we diverted federal, state, and local law enforcement just to deporting people who have not committed any crimes at all? | ||
| Look, we already don't solve 50% of murders in the United States. | ||
| 75% of sexual assaults go unsolved. | ||
| If you look at property crime, it's almost like we're not trying. | ||
| We need to focus on serious crimes in this country. | ||
| We have a crime problem. | ||
| I completely agree with that. | ||
| But diverting state and local police, in particular, away from getting justice for victims is a terrible idea for the country. | ||
| It will not produce safety. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And do you think it's a step on behalf of law in order to release en masse violent criminals who attacked the U.S. government to interrupt the joint session of Congress and the peaceful transfer of power in America? | ||
| I think people who commit violent crime should have to serve their sentences and be punished accordingly. | ||
| And that was actually the position, I think, taken by our distinguished colleague, Mr. Jordan from Ohio, who repeatedly distinguished between violent and nonviolent offenders. | ||
| I'd like to ask unanimous consent to enter in the record a CNN article in which Chairman Jordan was quoted as being hesitant about the sweeping pardons and saying that they basically should be focused on people who had committed nonviolent rather than violent offenses. | ||
| Without objection. | ||
| Finally, what should we be doing now to fix the immigration system? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Anyone could design a better legal immigration system than the one that we actually have. | |
| We need Congress to sit down and do their job and say, look, if we want people who come who can support themselves, who can contribute to this country, there's a way to do it. | ||
| It's not rocket science. | ||
| You can write a law that says you have to come and be able to support yourself and contribute to the economy. | ||
| We have bills that have done this in the past. | ||
| We just need to pick them up and start that work again. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You'll expire. | ||
| Chairman Jordan. | ||
| Mr. Newman, did the Biden administration improve the immigration system and border security? | ||
| I think the stats show no. | ||
| I mean, we've got a non-disclosure. | ||
| That whole conversation just took place sounded like a bunch of nonsense to me. | ||
| Certainly 77 million Americans don't believe what they just heard from Mr. Raskin and the Democrat witness. | ||
| Ms. Vollin, did the Biden administration improve the immigration system and border security? | ||
| No, the Biden administration dismantled the controls, guardrails, limits, and turned programs into purposes for which they were never. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Every community on the border knows they did it. | |
| Yeah, we just had a five-minute conversation. | ||
| Oh, well, things are just wonderful. | ||
| Joe Biden was the greatest. | ||
| Mr. Fabricator, you've been out on the front lines. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You've dealt with this. | |
| Did the Biden administration improve the immigration system and border security? | ||
| No, we have more illegal alien criminals on the street today because of the Biden administration. | ||
| Yeah, they're trying to say don't believe you're lying, eyes. | ||
| Of course we know it's gotten worse. | ||
| Earlier, Mr. Newman, you said, I think you said the Biden administration invited the crisis. | ||
| I think you're being nice when you use the word invited. | ||
| I think they intentionally, deliberately, what's my opening statement, willfully created the crisis. | ||
| And I want to know, why would they do that? | ||
| Why would an administration deliberately create the chaos we have seen, upwards of 10 million people coming in the country, these border communities, it's interesting, these border communities, that's been the biggest change in voting Democrat to voting Republican has taken place in those communities because they've felt it firsthand. | ||
| Mr. Biggs brought this up. | ||
| We were in Yuma, Arizona. | ||
| The cost to the education system, the health care system, the public services in those communities, unbelievable. | ||
| So why would they intentionally, why would they do this? | ||
| That's what I've been trying to figure out. | ||
| Why would an administration say we're going to deliberately create the chaos that 77 million Americans, I think all Americans know, has taken place over the last four years? | ||
| I can't pretend to know the motive of the administration, but whatever. | ||
| I'm asking you to hazard a guess as an expert in this area. | ||
| Looking at what they've done and looking at the policies, what's very clear is that there's been an intentional desire to get as many people into the country as possible and keep them here. | ||
| Ms. Vaughan, can you take a run at that question? | ||
| Why would they do it? | ||
| I think all kinds of Americans ask that question. | ||
| Why would our government do this to our nation? | ||
| Because they don't want any limits on immigration and because no one could stop them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Fabracatori? | |
| There was a definite open border agenda at the last four years, and that is exactly the way that I see it. | ||
| You think there's, again, hazard to guess at the motivation. | ||
| What do you think the motivation is? | ||
| You know, it's hard to guess at allowing so many illegal aliens to enter into the United States. | ||
| It's something that when you actually look at it and you look at the numbers, it's unfathomable to even think that that many people were allowed. | ||
| The gotaways, the 2 million gotaways that were allowed in this country, that we have no idea who they are. | ||
| To me, I have no idea why they would allow that to happen. | ||
| I don't get it either, particularly when you think about what happens to kids on this journey when they come to the country, what happens to women, the terrible things that take. | ||
| I don't get it. | ||
| And for them to try to say it was wonderful and it was an improvement, I don't get that either because nobody, nobody believes that. | ||
| I think earlier the ranking member said the asylum system was overwhelmed during the Biden administration. | ||
| Why was it overwhelmed? | ||
| Because they just opened everything up. | ||
| No wall, no remain in Mexico. | ||
| And when you get here, as you pointed out in your testimony, Mr. Fabrikatori, you won't be detained. | ||
| You'll be released. | ||
| Now, what do we have to do to fix it? | ||
| Mr. Fabricator, the guy who's on the front lines, what do we have to do to fix it? | ||
| Number one, we need to make sure that we're giving the money to, especially enforcement removal operations, to go out and detain, arrest, detain, and remove illegal aliens. | ||
| That's the bottom line of what we have to do. | ||
| We have to say this is a situation that we have. | ||
| We need to put money toward this so that we can be effective. | ||
| Once you start repatriating, once you start removing individuals who came here illegally, that's going to send a message. | ||
| That's going to create an incentive, I think, in the right way. | ||
| Because right now, all the incentives are the wrong way. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| No wall, no wait, and you won't be detained. | ||
| Everyone comes. | ||
| So you've got to change those incentives. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That will start to do that. | |
| It absolutely will. | ||
| Letting the men and women know of ICE, of ERO, that they have your backing and they can go out on the street and actually enforce the immigration law. | ||
| That's all that they're asking to do. | ||
| That's what President Trump wants to do. | ||
| He wants to make sure that we go out and the immigration law is actually enforced. | ||
| 15 seconds, Mr. Newman, I'll give you the last 15. | ||
| It's that. | ||
| You have to fund the resources for ICE to get the job done. | ||
| You have to show to people in this country illegally that you could be caught and you could be sent home. | ||
| Well, this committee is committed to helping the administration have the resources to enforce the law and fix the problem. | ||
| I yield back to the chairman. | ||
| Ms. Cameron. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| You know, just because someone repeats fiction over and over and over again doesn't make it true. | ||
| We all want an immigration system that works, a border that is secure, and a country that's safe. | ||
| But our immigration laws are broken and vastly outdated and underfunded for the world that we live in today. | ||
| And that's an issue that Congress needs to solve comprehensively and responsibly. | ||
| But after taking the oath of office this week, the new president signed more than 200 divisive and politically motivated executive actions that don't further that process of reforming and fixing our border or our immigration system. | ||
| Included among those orders were several that seemed destined to create more chaos in our immigration system and at our southern border, not less. | ||
| Because these orders aren't solutions, but political posturing. | ||
| What do they do? | ||
| They eliminate pathways that have been successfully lowering border crossings. | ||
| They reinstate failed programs of the past. | ||
| They make it harder to prioritize serious national security threats for enforcement. | ||
| They have blocked the resettlement of Afghan allies who have been thoroughly vetted and have been waiting years for entry into this country. | ||
| And there's an attempt to overturn the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, which everyone from the ACLU to the Catholic Church has condemned as being both unconstitutional and inhumane for making those children stateless. | ||
| These actions do not make our country safer. | ||
| But the new president and his allies are so deep in the fiction that they have created with their own cynical narrative, one that's designed to sow chaos and anger, that they can't acknowledge reality, much less solve problems. | ||
| So it's not surprising because these are the same people who blocked the bipartisan border security bill that was negotiated last year. | ||
| So these orders, this is not new behavior. | ||
| We saw it all before during the first Trump administration when failed and inhumane immigration policies weakened our economy, undermined our moral standing in the world, and inflicted cruelty upon children and families. | ||
| We can never forget that the Trump administration's practice of family separation, led by his current borders are, was condemned as purposeful government torture under the Geneva Convention and other international human rights standards by organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians, Amnesty International, and faith-based leaders across the country and across the political spectrum. | ||
| And of course, none of these fixed the issues at our border or made us more secure. | ||
| Now, Mr. Beer, in your statement, you point out that in his first administration, the policies imposed by President Trump and his allies actually obliterated the, if that's your term, the immigration system and shredded enforcement. | ||
| Will the executive orders that we're seeing now or the proposed policies have a different impact just because it's a few years later? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, it's going to make the problem worse because right now we have, as I said, a majority of the people who are coming to the border right now are applying to enter legally through a regulated, screened, lawful pathway. | |
| So getting rid of that is actually going to make the problem significantly worse. | ||
| We didn't have these lawful pathways when he entered the last time. | ||
| So getting rid of all of these legal channels, getting rid of the refugee program, all of these is designed to increase illegal immigration. | ||
| It's sending a message around the world that the way to come to the United States is to come illegally if you shut down the legal channels. | ||
| And then of course that creates chaos in scenes at the border that allow someone to run again and again and again on the idea that they alone can fix it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And if you look at what happened, you see the Haitians and the Cubans are a perfect example of this. | ||
| They for decades had entered legally. | ||
| Almost 100% crossed the southwest border legally to apply for asylum. | ||
| The Trump administration came along, they shut down the process to process people at ports of entry, and then they crossed illegally. | ||
| And we created a problem where there was no problem. | ||
| The Biden administration came in, they corrected that mistake, and now almost 100% of those groups are entering legally, or at least they were until the Trump administration took over on January 20th. | ||
| I just wanted to turn to one of the current paths, and we're hearing a lot about, oh, you have to follow the rules, you have to follow the legal path. | ||
| One of the executive orders or actions that occurred this week was to eliminate the app that was allowing immigrants to make an appointment to file a legal claim. | ||
| So now we have people who've been waiting in Mexico for months to get their appointment, and suddenly that was wiped out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The gentlelady's time has expired. | |
| We take that as a statement. | ||
| Mr. Roy. | ||
| I thank the chairman. | ||
| Thank you for holding this hearing. | ||
| Thanks for the witnesses for being here. | ||
| Mr. Beer, a quick question. | ||
| Have you visited with or met Alexis Nungare? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not to my knowledge. | |
| You haven't sat down and talked with Alexis Ngare. | ||
| Alexis Ngare was my guest to the inauguration festivities. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She was my guest to one of the balls since she wasn't able to attend the inauguration since it was inside. | |
| Alexis' daughter, Jocelyn, was murdered last July. | ||
| Her 13-year-old beautiful little girl was murdered by individuals associated with TDA, dangerous gang of Venezuela, who were released by this administration. | ||
| This administration, well, I should say the previous administration, the Biden administration, the one we're referring to. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Biden administration released these individuals onto the streets of Texas. | |
| And now Alexis' daughter is no longer with us. | ||
| Alexis chose life when she was a 14-year-old little girl. | ||
| Alexis is only 28 herself now. | ||
| I was proud to have her with me this weekend. | ||
| She is a testament to the greatness of this country. | ||
| Her parents, her family, migrants themselves, they followed the law. | ||
| They did it the right way because it has been possible for years to do it the right way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ms. Vaughan, is it not correct that we have upwards of 3 million people that are put into the United States every year through visas and other programs, student visas, access to becoming an LPR, et cetera? | |
| Well, there are more than 10 million people who come in on non-immigrant visas, and even more than that come in under the visa waiver program. | ||
| And yeah, it's a huge entry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There is an enormous opportunity to come here legally right now, correct? | |
| Through student visas and our normal programs of immigration. | ||
| More than a million immigrant visas, probably close to a million people who get temporary visas for various purposes as well. | ||
| We have one of the most generous immigration systems in the country. | ||
| One million green cards, a million guest worker visas, a million student visas. | ||
| Does that sound correct to you? | ||
| Well, I count the student visas under the million. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So my point being, we are the most generous country in the world by an order of magnitude. | |
| And yet, this administration has been violently disregarding our laws to dump people in the United States through the abuse of the parole system and putting people on our streets that have led directly to the murder of American citizens. | ||
| And my colleagues on the other side of the dais here wonder why what happened in November happened. | ||
| HR2, Mr. Newman, do you agree that HR2 has significant reforms in it that we should adopt this Congress, the HR2 that was passed in the previous Congress in the spring of 2023? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| That bill set out to reform asylum laws, set out to reform parole laws, set out to end the abuse of catch-and-release through the florist settlement and then TVPRA with unaccompanied alien children. | ||
| Did we fix a lot of those broken problems in HR2? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Would that bill have demonstrably changed the ability for a Biden administration to abuse our laws to allow them to be open and endanger the American people? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Do you believe that this Congress should take up HR2 in its current form in the form that was passed in the last Congress, close, you know, give or take, take that bill up and pass it in this Congress? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Do you believe that the so-called bipartisan legislation that was tried to move in the last Congress in the Senate, but never passed the Senate, never passed out and moved in any serious fashion, do you believe that bill should be brought up in this Congress? | ||
| No, not at all. | ||
| Do you agree with me that that bill had enormous flaws in it? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That it would have codified a lot of the releases in the broken systems under the Biden administration. | ||
| They would have failed to reform asylum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| They would have failed to reform parole. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| That it would have given more money to NGOs to violate our laws and ignore our borders. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| In other words, that bill is a joke, a laughingstock. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you agree? | |
| Absolutely. | ||
| With respect to TDA, Mr. Fabragatori, a congressman from the jurisdiction that I believe you ran in in Aurora, Colorado, tried to dismiss what was happening in apartment complexes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
True or false, I went out and visited with you. | |
| True or false, TDA is active in the apartment complexes in Aurora, Colorado, and other places around the country. | ||
| It is absolutely true, sir. | ||
| Absolutely 100% true. | ||
| And you witnessed the danger with your own eyes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I witnessed that danger. | |
| I've been to those apartment complexes, and recently more people were arrested in those apartment complexes for kidnapping and extorting other people in those apartment complexes. | ||
| And you would agree with me that it is a scourge across our country, including in Texas, in my own district in San Antonio? | ||
| Absolutely, sir. | ||
| It is happening. | ||
| Well, we don't have any legal scholars. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'll come back to birthright citizenship in the future, but just suffice it to say, there is significant and ample evidence with what we understand about birthright citizenship that subject to the jurisdiction thereof does not mean that you have a right to citizenship simply for being on our soil and being born on our soil. | |
| We'll talk about that in another hearing. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Chairman, I have a unanimous consent request. | |
| Speaking of felons who've been released, I seek unanimous consent to introduce the arrest warrant for Daniel Charles Bell, a man who was convicted of throwing explosive devices at law enforcement during the January 6 riots. | ||
| He's just been arrested on federal gun charges by the Trump-led Washington. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The gentlelady recognized for a unanimous consent request. | |
| The request has been made and without objection granted. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mrs. Ross. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the witnesses for being here. | ||
| The fact is that enforcement alone will not fix our immigration system. | ||
| We need a comprehensive approach that balances effective enforcement with the needs of our country. | ||
| We must strengthen and expand lawful immigration pathways. | ||
| This is a common sense solution that will ease pressure on our border and ensure that individuals seeking a better life and to improve the United States and our economy have a clear and orderly path to enter our country legally. | ||
| Creating and enhancing a legal pathway is critical towards enhancing national security and protecting our economy. | ||
| The reality is that cutting lawful pathways only exacerbates the crisis at the border. | ||
| For instance, the decision to end the CPB1 app, which was essential to make sure that people could come when they knew they had an appointment, and we actually saw people at the border using that app when we did our CODEL to the southern border. | ||
| Getting rid of it threatens to upend progress, threatens chaos, and it is not a solution for unlawful migration. | ||
| Additionally, we must consider the humanitarian and economic consequences of mass deportations. | ||
| Deporting every undocumented immigrant in the country would destroy families, devastate industries, and make our economy less secure. | ||
| I represent North Carolina. | ||
| Without immigrant labor, we would have no agriculture industry. | ||
| We would not have a food service industry. | ||
| Many of our tech industry executives beg for more lawful pathways to immigration. | ||
| Our hospitality industry, our construction industry, I hear from them every single day. | ||
| Furthermore, the President's efforts to eliminate birthright citizenship are deeply disturbing. | ||
| Not only does this fly in the face of the Constitution, but it creates legal uncertainty for millions of children born in the United States. | ||
| And that chaos will overwhelm our legal system, sow confusion, and create an underclass of stateless individuals, all in violation of the Constitution. | ||
| As we discuss the future of immigration enforcement, I urge my colleagues to consider the broader implications of these policies and work together to enact solutions that reflect our values and our needs as a nation. | ||
| We can secure our border and have enough people in this country to perform essential services. | ||
| Dr. Beyer, or Mr. Beyer, since Congress created the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, we have spent approximately $409 billion on immigration enforcement and tens of billions more on border barriers and other immigration enforcement-related infrastructure projects. | ||
| Despite this massive infusion of money, the system is still broken. | ||
| Can you explain why focusing on enforcement alone will not fix our broken immigration system? | ||
| As long as there is demand for labor in the United States, people are going to try to come in order to fill that demand. | ||
| We saw it under the Trump administration, the Bush administration, the Obama administration, the Clinton administration. | ||
| You can go all the way back. | ||
| As long as there is no legal way for them to fill jobs, they're going to come illegally. | ||
| And whether you could say greater or lesser extent, they're going to come, and we're going to continue to deal with this problem. | ||
| The most critical area is that right now, for lesser skilled jobs, there is no visa, no work visa at all for year-round jobs not requiring a college degree. | ||
| So where are all the people who are crossing the border going? | ||
| They're going into those jobs. | ||
| So we absolutely need to reform our legal immigration system. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
| Mr. Van Drew. | ||
| Thank you, Chairman. | ||
| First, I want to take this opportunity to thank you, Chairman. | ||
| Thank you for your work that you've done on this issue. | ||
| Thank you for your constant persistence in bringing it up over and over again. | ||
| You have made a difference on the issue, a significant one, and a difference in the United States of America, and I mean it. | ||
| I'm proud of the work you've done. | ||
| Mr. Baer, I can't say the same for you. | ||
| Man, you know, I don't even have the words, and I would need an hour and a half with you one-on-one alone to go through it. | ||
| And please, for me. | ||
| I'd be happy to. | ||
| Anytime. | ||
| Maybe we'll take you up on that. | ||
| Let me tell you, I mean, the things that you said to me, and I mean, I'm not being disrespectful because I always try to be respectful to everybody, are bizarre. | ||
| I believe like I'm in bizarre a world. | ||
| I don't even know where these statements come from. | ||
| I got all the statistics in my statement. | ||
| Let me ask you a question, sir. | ||
| Mr. Roy, I want to associate some of the words that he said. | ||
| I wish you could sit in front of the families, and it isn't just Lake and Riley. | ||
| I can give you name after name after name of men and women and children who were beaten, who were raped, who were abused, who were disfigured, who were harmed. | ||
| And we keep overlooking that because we say, well, there wasn't that many of them. | ||
| We don't care about the 400 people that got into this country, the best that we can tell, that are on the terror watch list. | ||
| Well, it's just not that many of them. | ||
| Let me tell you, to the mother or the father or the son or the daughter that loses somebody, one is enough. | ||
| And to have this intellectual argument as we sit here in our comfortable chairs in our warm room, where Lake and Riley, for example, fought for 20 minutes not to be raped and then finally was beaten so badly and her skull crushed in that she lost her life while her mother was calling her wondering where she was. | ||
| That's what matters to me. | ||
| So, you know, today's theme is a simple one. | ||
| Actions have consequences. | ||
| President Biden's dozen of executive orders crippled our border security and opened up the floodgates of the southern border. | ||
| That is a fact. | ||
| Mr. Baer, I don't care what you say, it's a fact. | ||
| We see it, we feel it. | ||
| That's why Americans know it. | ||
| That's why the election that occurred occurred. | ||
| Congressional Democrats refused to pass H.R. 2, which was a good piece of legislation, and the floodgates opened more. | ||
| State and local Democratic leaders opened their cities and spent billions upon billions of dollars to care for illegal immigrants. | ||
| Legal immigration is good. | ||
| When my colleagues on the other side speak about immigration, let's make sure we all understand there is a big difference between legal and illegal immigration. | ||
| Under President Biden, U.S. customs and border protection encountered, and the number changes. | ||
| It fluctuates, but it's about 10 million inadmissible aliens from January 2021 to December 2024. | ||
| That's three times the number encountered during the Trump administration. | ||
| Let's talk about the real numbers and the real facts. | ||
| The Biden administration deliberately dismantled the effective protocols and tools that we had. | ||
| It instituted catch and release. | ||
| That had an effect. | ||
| It ended the construction of the wall. | ||
| That had an even worse effect. | ||
| They ended Title 42. | ||
| That had another bad effect. | ||
| And they ended the Remain in Mexico policy, which hurt us as well. | ||
| Over and over and over again. | ||
| Everything to open up the borders. | ||
| No nation prevails with open borders. | ||
| And the negligence has introduced us to serious international and national danger. | ||
| Nearly 400 individuals, as I said, on the terror watch list. | ||
| They're not hypotheticals. | ||
| They're real people. | ||
| They're real men and women that have been hurt. | ||
| And, you know, the gentleman, good man on the other side, the ranking member, Mr. Raskin, said, most illegals are not violent. | ||
| Most illegals are not violent. | ||
| I agree with that. | ||
| Most are not violent. | ||
| They're still breaking the law. | ||
| But damn it, enough of them are. | ||
| That is scary. | ||
| Tell all those families that most of them are not violent. | ||
| They don't care about most of them. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| Let's get in the real world. | ||
| And it's not compassionate what my friends on the other side of the aisle are doing. | ||
| It hurts us. | ||
| And it hurts illegals. | ||
| It hurts children. | ||
| It hurts American families. | ||
| It hurts legal immigrants as well. | ||
| So I have a question for Mr. Fabricatori. | ||
| I hope I pronounced your name, sir. | ||
| I was the first non-Italian to marry my wife's family, and they're probably listening to this, and I'll get in trouble if I scoot it up. | ||
| I think we shouldn't fund sanctuary cities and sanctuary states. | ||
| We're sending federal money over there. | ||
| They're purposely breaking the law. | ||
| What do you think, and what's the specific impact cutting off this federal funding would have? | ||
| We should not fund them. | ||
| Sanctuary cities do not protect American citizens. | ||
| They only protect criminal illegal aliens. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| The gentleman, as time as it's time. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
| Mr. Garcia. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to all the witnesses today. | ||
| To no one's surprise, President Trump continues again using nativist rhetoric to demonize all immigrants to scare the public. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now the House and the Senate have passed a bill to turn those words into devastating action. | |
| So my first question for Mr. Beer is this. | ||
| Mr. Beer, on January 7th, you tweeted that the Lake and Riley Act pretends to be about stopping illegal immigration, immigrants who commit crimes. | ||
| In fact, it's a Trojan horse designed to destroy legal migration. | ||
| End of quote. | ||
| As you know, the Lake and Riley Act permits the Attorneys General to sue DHS for perceived failures in immigration enforcement. | ||
| So I'd appreciate you spelling it out here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What are the dangers of that section in the Lake and Riley Act, and specifically, how can it be weaponized by state officials to dismantle legal immigration? | |
| Look, people who commit crimes are already priorities for removal. | ||
| They were priorities for removal under the Biden administration. | ||
| They're priorities for removal right now. | ||
| So there's no difference there. | ||
| What is different about this act is the empowerment of state attorneys generals to go to courts and force the Secretary of State to stop issuing visas to countries that delay deportations to their countries. | ||
| So India, China, the largest origin countries, Cuba, Venezuela, these are all countries that are on the list. | ||
| We would have to stop admitting Afghan allies from Afghanistan, of course. | ||
| So it basically takes the authority away from the Secretary of State, Secretary of State Future Rubio. | ||
| In this case, would not have the ability to make that determination. | ||
| It would be turned over to the courts and result in a huge slash in legal immigration and really no change in interior enforcement. | ||
| So it really provides unprecedented powers to Attorneys General in the states over a federal matter. | ||
| Let's switch gears to the Alien Enemies Act. | ||
| This is an executive order recently invoked by the President. | ||
| It was enacted in 1789, was designed to address threats during times of declared war, but it's been criticized since it was implemented in the 18th century, and it continues to be invoked to strip the rights from entire groups based on their national origin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
For example, to justify the detainment of Japanese Americans, Italian, German Americans during World War II, or more recently, Trump's Muslim ban. | |
| President Trump signed an executive order to use the Alien Enemies Act to do mass deportations without due process, raising significant constitutional questions. | ||
| How does this align with the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees due process to all individuals within the United States, Mr. Beer? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so if he invokes the Alien Enemies Act, it would give him power to use the military to detain, arrest, and remove people without proving that they're in the country illegally or are removable from the United States. | |
| That's an incredibly dangerous power that threatens the rights of all Americans. | ||
| It also could apply even to legal permanent residents and other non-citizens who could be removed. | ||
| Again, we're not subject to an invasion by a foreign government as required by the act. | ||
| So I don't know where he's going to be able to justify the use of this authority that was designed for cases of war. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And in one minute, I want you to comment on another debate going on regarding the 14th Amendment. | |
| Some argue that the framers did not consider illegal immigrants when drafting the citizenship clause. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Could you elaborate on your perspective regarding the 14th Amendment? | |
| Well, if they didn't think about illegal immigrants, then they couldn't possibly have written an exception to them, to the general rule that anyone born in the United States is a U.S. citizen. | ||
| Obviously, if they weren't thinking about illegal immigrants, they couldn't have written that exception into the law. | ||
| And obviously, it doesn't apply in this case because if illegal immigrants are not subject to the laws of the United States, then they're not illegal immigrants. | ||
| So it's a circular argument that makes no sense and I assume will be laughed out of the courts. | ||
| And thus the absurdity of attempting to deny birthright to those born in this country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, completely absurd. | |
| And it's not even just illegal immigrants we're talking about, their children, also the children of legal residents who have been invited here by our government under visa categories, guest workers, international students, even the former vice president, Kamala Harris, would be potentially affected by this illegal and unconstitutional. | ||
| The gentleman's term has expired. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Mr. Moore. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| And I think we'll talk more about the 14th Amendment. | ||
| Obviously, it passed right after slavery was eradicated in the United States. | ||
| So all those children born to the slaves were allowed to be citizens. | ||
| If you look at the congressional record when they debated that, it's pretty clear. | ||
| But we will talk about that today. | ||
| You know, President Trump said yesterday in his inaugural speech to restore common sense to America. | ||
| Just common sense. | ||
| And so I'm reminded of lies, and I'm going to give you the Southern Baptist version, lies, dang lies, and statistics. | ||
| Now, Mr. Baer has given us a lot of statistics today, but the reality is that 76 million people elected Donald Trump to fix the chaos that is the U.S.-southern border right now. | ||
| And what I've seen in my communities, and You've heard testimony in here, I had a 14-year-old girl in one of my districts drug into a bathroom and raped by Nicaraguan, who had a prior criminal record, Mr. Fabrikatori, but he came here 31 years old and claimed to be a minor. | ||
| And we did no background checks. | ||
| We turned that man loose into the community, and he raped a girl in a bathroom in a restaurant in Watumpka, Alabama. | ||
| That's the kind of chaos that we've seen on the border. | ||
| Sheriff Daniels testified. | ||
| He came here and testified under oath that in 40 years of working a border town, he had never seen the border any better than it was in 2018 and never any worse than it was when he was here just a few months ago. | ||
| Mr. Fabricator, what do you think changed? | ||
| What changed? | ||
| Was it anything we did here in Congress? | ||
| What changed was the Biden administration letting in millions of people unvetted. | ||
| The vetting at the border was abysmal at best. | ||
| was only checking for histories within the United States. | ||
| So if you had someone that had committed crimes in another country, you don't have a history in this country. | ||
| We did not know many people who came in. | ||
| We did not know what their criminal histories were. | ||
| Is that how a 31-year-old man claims to be a minor and comes in as an unaccompanied minor to this country? | ||
| Because we weren't vetting anybody. | ||
| The vetting was horrible. | ||
| And that instance happens a lot where we have them claiming to be juveniles, criminal illegal aliens claiming to be juveniles because they know it will be easier to enter the United States and they probably won't get put into detention. | ||
| And the Biden administration allowed that to happen. | ||
| You know, and Ms. Vaughn, certainly we've seen this across the country, the fentanyl desks and the sort of things that are happening in our communities. | ||
| Over 100,000 kids we lost to fentanyl desks, pouring across the U.S. southern border. | ||
| And in Yume, Arizona, when we had the hearing there, folks, we literally had people coming across in labor. | ||
| They were taking them to a hospital. | ||
| And those ladies were delivering children in the ERs to the point that even the U.S. citizens could not get a bed when they were in labor and delivery. | ||
| And the crazy, one of the most astonishing things that I saw was that the hospital, by federal law, was required to provide them car seats. | ||
| And so they were running out of car seats for ladies who were having children in our hospitals while the American citizens could not get a labor and delivery bed. | ||
| That was going on under the prior administration. | ||
| Now, so I let out with President Trump said something about common sense. | ||
| I'm going to give you an opportunity, each of you guys, to tell me the one thing that you think Congress needs to do that makes common sense. | ||
| How do we fix this crisis that we have? | ||
| How do we fulfill the promise of securing the U.S.-southern border and making America safe again? | ||
| Mr. Fabricatori, Mab, I'll let you go first. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| Make sure ICE is funded. | ||
| Make sure enforcement removal operations has the officers necessary. | ||
| Increase detention beds. | ||
| We need a massive increase in detention beds from what we have now, which is around 40,000, to probably in excess of 70,000. | ||
| We need to make sure that we can fund this so that we can take care of this problem today. | ||
| The chairman mentioned that. | ||
| As this committee and as Congress, we are going to make sure that we find the President's priorities to round people up and get them out of here. | ||
| Ms. Vaughn. | ||
| Another thing that would help a lot would be to eliminate all of the programs that allow people who've managed to get into the country to have their status laundered essentially into a program, a visa program, or a benefit that gives them a work permit. | ||
|
unidentified
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How do you, Ms. Vaughan, how do you launder a status? | |
| That's interesting. | ||
| Well, you apply for a program like a U visa program, special immigrant juvenile or TPS sometimes can be granted. | ||
| Even though you entered illegally, you're allowed to stay and you get a work permit. | ||
| And the systems are so bogged down, you get this benefit even before your application has been evaluated or you've had a background check. | ||
| And many of these have a path to citizen. | ||
|
unidentified
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Talking about bogging the system down, folks, and you, my Arizona, had the testimony. | |
| They were getting a cell phone, $800 a month, and we were turning them loose. | ||
| And then the phones are sold we could call them to come to their court case, but they would take our phones and not our calls. | ||
| It's quite astonishing. | ||
| Mr. Newman, one quick common sense fix. | ||
| Pass HR2. | ||
| Stop the loophole. | ||
| Very good. | ||
| Very good. | ||
| You know, we passed that in the House, but the Democratic Control Senate would not pass it. | ||
| You know that? | ||
| You aware of that? | ||
| We'll bring it back. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
|
unidentified
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Time has expired. | |
| Ms. Crockett. | ||
| Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. | ||
|
unidentified
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I am going to try to get through a lot quickly. | |
| As one of the few people sitting on the dais who actually practice criminal law in the state of Texas, as well as I'm licensed in Arkansas and practice there, as well as federal courts, one of the things that you said earlier, Mr. Beer, really stuck with me is that there are already laws on the books as it relates to those violent criminals. | ||
| And I know this because even though I hail from the great city of Dallas, I can tell you that when someone would come in and they were being held in custody for, say, a crime, they also had an ICE hold, okay? | ||
| And that was for those that had maybe been deported before and had re-entered illegally and things like that. | ||
|
unidentified
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And so no matter what type of city you're in, I do want to be clear. | |
| Federal law already, no matter if it's under the Biden administration or if it's under a Republican administration, we all agree that we want to be safe. | ||
| And I think that's the first premise that we're losing because there isn't something that is tatted on my head that says that I'm a Democrat and therefore you illegal bad person, don't come for me. | ||
| Go for the ones that have the R's on their forehead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now, let me be clear about this as well because we've talked about crime and we've talked about fentanyl specifically. | |
| And this is also something that I have dealt with, unlike some of my other colleagues. | ||
| And listen, I'm going to be honest because I actually want to fix problems. | ||
| And I actually have a really good senator in Texas. | ||
| And I'm sure y'all can guess which one is the good one. | ||
| But let me tell you, if we care about fentanyl, I have multiple bills for that. | ||
| I started on the state level before everybody started talking about it. | ||
|
unidentified
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And I have federal bills, bills that my senior senator has signed on to. | |
| So I welcome my colleagues because I actually want to make sure that my communities are safe. | ||
| But as we start to talk about crime and statistics, Mr. Beer, I want to play a little game with you. | ||
| It's called rhetoric versus reality. | ||
| And so I want to ask you my first question. | ||
| Is this rhetoric or reality? | ||
| Immigrants commit more crimes than U.S. citizens. | ||
| On a per capita basis. | ||
| Rhetoric or reality. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, it is rhetoric. | |
| Okay, thank you so much. | ||
| Mr. Chair, I'd like to ask for unanimous consent to enter into the record this article, which states that undocumented immigrant offending rate lower than U.S.-born citizen rate. | ||
| And this is from nij.ojp.gov. | ||
| Without objection. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| The next one, immigrants are just living off the federal government and contribute nothing. | ||
| That would be rhetoric. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Chair, I would ask unanimous consent to enter a study that says undocumented immigrants pay almost $100 billion in taxes. | |
| This is from the Alabama Reflector. | ||
| Without objection. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| My final rhetoric or reality question is: immigrants only enter at the southern border. | ||
| Rhetoric. | ||
| Okay, right, because they enter all kinds of ways. | ||
| I just wanted to make sure that I put that out there. | ||
| In fact, I have a few more questions because I still got a little bit of time, which I usually run out of time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have talked again about crime, and there's been this overemphasis on it. | |
| And honestly, I can tell you that I don't want anyone to be killed, whether it's here or anywhere else. | ||
| There is nothing about me as the child of a preacher that makes me say that I want people to die, okay? | ||
| So I feel as if my colleagues from across the aisle have decided that they are going to make immigrants the boogeyman. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's insanity to me, but they also are showing compassion for victims, which they should, but they have no compassion for people that are contributing to making us great in this country. | |
| So, interestingly enough, I'm curious to know, Mr. Beer, if you know if immigrants contributed to these particular crimes. | ||
| There was a mass shooting in Buffalo, New York that killed a number of African Americans as they were trying to shop for groceries. | ||
| Was the defendant an immigrant in that case? | ||
| Do you know? | ||
| No, he was a U.S.-born citizen. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Charleston, South Carolina, there were black churchgoers trying to praise the Lord. | ||
| They were killed. | ||
| Was that an immigrant that perpetrated that or not? | ||
| No, that was a U.S.-born citizen. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now, coming home to Texas, there was an El Paso shooting. | |
| Do you know if that was an immigrant or not? | ||
| No, they were targeting immigrants in that case. | ||
| In fact, each of these cases, it was white supremacists. | ||
| And so, the last unanimous consent that I'd asked for is this article that states that white supremacists behind over 80% of extremism-related U.S. murders in 2022. | ||
| Without objection. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Gentlemen, ladies, time has expired. | ||
| Mr. Grothman. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Eventually, some sort of immigration bill is going to be passed this Congress. | ||
| We're trying to look for some common ground. | ||
| Mr. Beer, we've talked about this before. | ||
| In the past, I've introduced something called the Safeguarding Benefits for Americans Act, which prevents non-citizens from receiving what we'll normally refer to as welfare benefits. | ||
| I just want to confirm that you think that would be a good idea, probably improving the quality of immigrants we have coming here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| Immigrants should be self-sufficient when they come to the United States. | ||
| Very good. | ||
| Well, there's maybe something we can receive bipartisan support for when we move an immigration bill. | ||
| Next thing I'd like to point out, and Mr. Moore's always handled this to a degree, I want to point out that in the 14th Amendment, it does not say all persons born in the United States become citizens of the United States. | ||
| It's all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. | ||
| That amendment was passed coming out of the Civil War. | ||
| There's a reason it was passed coming out of the Civil War. | ||
| Congress was afraid the Democrats would try to undermine the results of that war by forbidding former slaves from voting. | ||
| And clearly, that's what the amendment was supposed to deal with. | ||
| It did not include anybody who just happened to show up here and have a baby and moved on. | ||
| Any congressman at that time, as can be seen from the debate on the floor at that time, no congressman felt that resulted in what we are now referring to as birthright citizenship. | ||
| It was supposed to be limited to slaves. | ||
| You did not have, you were not subject to the jurisdiction, or you were only subject to the jurisdiction of if you were a former slave. | ||
| A person who came here from France and was just passing through, their child would not become a citizen. | ||
| That should be obvious. | ||
| Now, we want to get on to a few more questions. | ||
| I'm going to ask these, Ms. Vaughan. | ||
| When a child arrives at the border, okay, one of the heartbreaking stories you sometimes hear in this country is parents get divorced, one parent grabs the child and flees to somewhere like Pakistan or somewhere. | ||
| The other parent is here in the United States and they can't get that child back. | ||
| In other words, it results in a broken family, which is just horrible. | ||
| And I do think we have to do all we can to keep families together. | ||
| In this country, under the Biden administration before that, if a child shows up with one parent and they come in this country, is any effort made to see whether the local courts say the child comes here from Guatemala, Cuba, wherever, that the local court has said that they want the parents separate, or do we just assume that the other parent would be okay with this and not seeing his child again? | ||
| Well, if you're referring to cases in which the child is seeking an order of protection from, say, a state family court, is that the scenario? | ||
| Well, let's say there's a divorce. | ||
| Or at the border itself? | ||
| At the border, families who arrive, or a person who, an adult who arrives with a child, is not detained. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Do you think there should be? | ||
| Do you think that we should do something to make sure that we don't have a situation like I described where one parent takes a child to Pakistan and they're gone? | ||
| I mean, again, if a parent shows up at the southern, one parent with a child, we don't know what, where the other parent is, we don't know whether that parent is, the parent who shows up is fleeing the other parent, trying to raise that child without a parent. | ||
| Is that of concern to you? | ||
| Well, it is because our state family courts are not in a position to evaluate those claims made if the alien child, for example, is seeking a special immigrant juvenile visa, seeking to stay here permanently. | ||
| There's just no way they're not held to the same standards of evidence that, say, an American kid would have to receive an order of protection. | ||
| So this leads to abuse. | ||
| You think it'd be a good idea when we pass our immigration law if we said that if a child is here with one parent, we have to make sure legally somehow that the other parent is okay with that, or it's in accordance with the local courts, and like I said, Guatemala, Cuba, wherever, that the local courts have said it's okay that we're permanently breaking up the family, which I think should happen very rarely. | ||
| Yeah, that's a tough thing for the American legal system to deal with something that happened, a separation that occurred in the home country. | ||
| Well, we wouldn't have to deal with the system if we insisted having both parents here in the first place. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Mr. Coleman. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chair. | ||
| Mr. Beer, let me ask you. | ||
| Somebody asked you a question about the Lake and Riley case, and you said that people who were criminals or felons were already prioritized. | ||
| Isn't that if they are convicted? | ||
| That's right. | ||
| You need a criminal conviction to be subject to mandatory detention. | ||
| You don't need a criminal conviction if you are in the country illegally already, and the administration can go out and arrest that person even without a criminal conviction. | ||
| But Lake and Riley, I believe, was the bill we had that expanded that to people who were charged with, not convicted, mischievous. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, I mean, you didn't even need an arrest to be subject to mandatory detention. | ||
| So there's a difference. | ||
| There is discretion for ICE to go get someone who is fleeing or evading charges. | ||
| But if someone has just been arrested and then they are never charged because they didn't commit the crime, it would be wrong to subject someone to mandatory imprisonment in a case where they were cleared. | ||
| So you think there should be some priorities in who we try to deport? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| We need to focus on people who have violated the rights of Americans, who have committed crimes with victims. | ||
| Those are the people that we need to seek justice for, not just if they are immigrants, but in general, that is what law enforcement should be focusing on. | ||
| Even on pardons, if you had people that tried to overthrow the government in January 6th, that you should go after people that were maybe beat cops up and led the operation as distinguished from people that just showed up and kind of hung out. | ||
| I absolutely believe that we should focus on violent offenders and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. | ||
| Mr. Is it fabricatory? | ||
| Affirmative, sir. | ||
| Yes, thank you. | ||
| Do you agree with what Mr. Beer said that we should have priorities on who we go after? | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| I do not. | ||
| I believe we should focus. | ||
| I think we have to DACA kids who have been in this country for maybe 20 or 25 years and been good citizens. |