[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S
CHILD SEPARATION POLICY:
SUBSTANTIATED ALLEGATIONS
OF MISTREATMENT
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 12, 2019
__________
Serial No. 116-46
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on: http://www.govinfo.gov
http://www.oversight.house.gov
http://www.docs.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
37-315 PDF WASHINGTON : 2019
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland, Chairman
Carolyn B. Maloney, New York Jim Jordan, Ohio, Ranking Minority
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of Member
Columbia Paul A. Gosar, Arizona
Wm. Lacy Clay, Missouri Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Thomas Massie, Kentucky
Jim Cooper, Tennessee Mark Meadows, North Carolina
Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia Jody B. Hice, Georgia
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Jamie Raskin, Maryland James Comer, Kentucky
Harley Rouda, California Michael Cloud, Texas
Katie Hill, California Bob Gibbs, Ohio
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Ralph Norman, South Carolina
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Peter Welch, Vermont Chip Roy, Texas
Jackie Speier, California Carol D. Miller, West Virginia
Robin L. Kelly, Illinois Mark E. Green, Tennessee
Mark DeSaulnier, California Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan W. Gregory Steube, Florida
Stacey E. Plaskett, Virgin Islands Fred Keller, Pennsylvania
Ro Khanna, California
Jimmy Gomez, California
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan
David Rapallo, Staff Director
Russ Anello, Chief Oversight Counsel
Amy Stratton, Clerk
Christopher Hixon, Minority Staff Director
Contact Number: 202-225-5051
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on July 12, 2019.................................... 1
Witnesses
Written opening statements and witnesses' written statements are
available at the U.S. House of Representatives Repository:
https://docs.house.gov.
Panel 1
The Honorable Andy Biggs (R-AZ)
Oral Statement............................................... 6
The Honorable Michael Cloud (R-TX)
Oral Statement............................................... 8
The Honorable Debbie Lesko (R-AZ), Member of Congress
Oral Statement............................................... 10
The Honorable Chip Roy (R-Texas), Member of Congress
Oral Statement............................................... 12
The Honorable Veronica Escobar (D-TX), Member of Congress
Oral Statement............................................... 14
The Honorable Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Member of Congress
Oral Statement............................................... 15
The Honorable Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Member of Congress
Oral Statement............................................... 18
The Honorable Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Member of Congress
Oral Statement............................................... 20
Panel 2
Ms. Jennifer L. Costello, Acting Inspector General, Department of
Homeland Security
Oral Statement............................................... 22
Ms. Ann Maxwell, Asst.Inspector General for Evaluation and
Inspections, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Oral Statement............................................... 23
Ms. Elora Mukherjee, Jerome L. Greene Clinical Professor of Law,
Columbia Law School
Oral Statement............................................... 25
Ms. Jennifer Nagda, Policy Director, Young Center for Immigrant
Children's Rights
Oral Statement............................................... 27
Thomas D. Homan, Former Acting Director, U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement
Oral Statement............................................... 29
INDEX OF DOCUMENTS
------
The documents listed below are available at: https://
docs.house.gov.
* ``Homestead isn't just for kids at the border, it's for kids
living in the U.S. their whole lives,'' article, Miami Herald,
Monique Madan; submited by Rep. Kelly.
* Statutory Definition of Unaccompanied Minor; submitted by
Rep. Kelly.
* Letter from Anti-Defamation League; submitted by Chairman
Cummings.
* Recommendations from Kids in Need of Defense; submitted by
Chairman Cummings.
* Statement from the World Church Service; submitted by
Chairman Cummings.
* Statement from the Center for Victims of Torture; submitted
by Chairman Cummings.
* Letter from Zero to Three; submitted by Chairman Cummings.
* Letter with submission of photos of the Yuma Detention
Center; submitted by Rep. Gosar.
* U.S. Department of Homeland Security Memo; submitted by Rep.
Ocasio-Cortez.
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S
CHILD SEPARATION POLICY:
SUBSTANTIATED ALLEGATIONS
OF MISTREATMENT
----------
Friday, July 12, 2019
House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight and Reform
Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:06 a.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Elijah Cummings
(chairman of the committee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Cummings, Norton, Clay, Lynch,
Cooper, Connolly, Krishnamoorthi, Raskin, Rouda, Hill,
Wasserman Schultz, Sarbanes, Welch, Speier, Kelly, DeSaulnier,
Khanna, Gomez, Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, Tlaib, Jordan, Foxx,
Massie, Meadows, Hice, Comer, Cloud, Gibbs, Roy, Green,
Armstrong, Steube, and Keller.
Also present: Representatives Garcia of Illinois, Gaetz,
and Lawrence.
Chairman Cummings. The committee will come to order.
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess
of the committee at any time.
This full committee hearing is convening regarding the
administration's child separation policy and substantiated
allegations of mistreatment.
I also wanted to briefly address the spectators in the
hearing room today. We welcome you and respect your right to be
here. We also ask, in turn, for your respect as we proceed with
the business of the committee today.
It is the intention of this committee to proceed with this
hearing without any disruptions. Any disruption of this
committee will result in the United States Capitol Police
restoring order and that protesters will be removed.
If a disruption occurs, a Capitol Police officer will go to
the individual, instruct that they cease the demonstrations. If
the individual does cease, no action will be taken. However, if
the person does not cease or begins demonstrating after the
initial warning by the officer, the individual will be removed
from the hearing room.
We are grateful for your presence here today and your
cooperation.
I would also remind all Members to avoid engaging in
adverse personal references.
I now recognize myself for five minutes to give an opening
statement.
Today we examine the Trump administration's inhumane policy
of separating children from their parents at the southern
border.
I use the word ``inhumane'' for a reason. Separating
children from their mothers and fathers causes damage that may
endure for a lifetime. Let me let that sink in. In other words,
until they die.
The Trump administration adopted this child separation
policy intentionally, purposefully, as a tactic to deter people
from coming to the United States and seeking asylum.
You ask the question: How do you know this? Well, let me
answer.
On March 7, 2017, the Secretary of Homeland Security,
General John Kelly, was asked whether the administration was
going to, and I quote, ``separate the children from their moms
and dads.'' He said, quote, ``Yes,'' he said, to, quote,
``deter,'' end of quote, additional movement across the border.
Later, when he became the White House Chief of Staff,
General Kelly confirmed, quote, ``It could be a tough
deterrent--would be a tough deterrent,'' end of quote.
Similarly, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions was asked if
separating children was intended as a deterrent, he said,
quote, ``Yes, hopefully people will get the message.''
As many of you know, this is an issue I care deeply about.
Last year, while Democrats were in the minority, I begged the
Republican leaders of this committee to take action. And when I
say beg, I mean beg. I didn't ask. Asking was too cheap. But
they refused.
I wrote letters seeking information about these children. I
spoke up at completely unrelated hearings to warn about the
plight of these children. But I was ignored.
One Republican, Representative Mark Meadows, agreed to join
me in sending a letter seeking documents. I thank him for that
and for his cooperation. But the administration ignored our
letter, and we never got a single page. Not a single word. Not
a single syllable. I'm sorry to say the Republicans were fine
with that during the last Congress.
Well, that was their watch, and now this is our watch. And
when I say ``our watch,'' I'm not just talking about Democrats.
I'm talking about all of our watch.
And so earlier this year we issued subpoenas to the
Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human
Services, and now we have finally begun to get documents. We've
just begun to get them.
Based on these documents, the committee is releasing a
staff report today that summarizes this preliminary
information. To be clear, the information we have received is
not complete. We're still trying to get information. But even
with this limited data, we can draw a few key findings.
First, the administration's child separations were more
harmful, traumatic, and chaotic than previously known. At least
18 infants and toddlers under two years old were taken away
from their parents at the border and kept apart for up to six
months. Something's wrong with that picture.
At least 241 separated children were kept in Border Patrol
facilities longer than the 72 hours permitted by law. And many
separated children were kept in government custody far longer
than previously known, for more than a year.
Second, the Trump administration has not been candid with
the American people about its purpose in separating children.
The administration claimed that separating children was
necessary to prosecute parents, but the documents describe
parents who were never sent to Federal criminal custody.
Other parents were briefly taken into custody but then
returned, likely because prosecutors declined to prosecute or
they were sentenced to time served. That did not matter,
however, because their children were taken away anyway.
In some cases, the documents show that parents were
returned to the same facilities they left just hours before,
but their children were gone. Imagine that horror. Imagine the
horror of a parent coming back hours later and suddenly their
children, gone.
Third, the nightmare of child separation continues.
Hundreds of additional children have been separated from their
parents since a court ordered an end to the administration's,
quote, ``zero tolerance,'' unquote, policy more than a year
ago. At least 30 children separated under that policy remain
separated today, despite the court's order to reunite them with
their families or place them with sponsors.
And so, overall, the evidence shows that the
administration's policies are causing the problems at the
border, not helping to resolve them. The administration is
detaining thousands of people who do not need to be detained
and are not required to be detained.
The policies are contributing to massive overcrowding,
which is aggravating conditions, draining supplies, endangering
the health and safety of both detainees and government
personnel.
And so I am looking forward to our witnesses today, and
today my hope is that we can agree on several basic points.
Anyone in the custody of our government, especially a child,
must be treated humanely and with respect. Children should not
be separated from their mothers or fathers unless there is a
true need for it. And our government must meticulously track
both children and their parents so they can be reunited or
placed with sponsors as quickly as possible.
And to the members of the committee, and our witnesses, I
hope that we all, as we go through this hearing, will ask one
basic question. My favorite saying is: Our children are the
living messengers we send to a future we will never see. And I
ask you to ask us, of ourselves, the question: How are we
sending these children into their future? How are we sending
them? And another question: Would you allow this for your own
child? Would you allow it?
And so this is, again, this is our watch, and I'm looking
forward to us doing everything in our power to make sure that
we are living up to those values as a Nation.
Now, there will be discussions of things that may have
happened in the past. This is our watch right now. These kids
are suffering right now.
And with that, I yield to the distinguished ranking member,
Mr. Jordan.
Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
What we're going to hear from Democrats this morning is
astonishing, will be truly astonishing. For months they
declared there wasn't even a crisis on the border. Senator
Warren said: ``A fake crisis at the border is fear-mongering of
the worst kind, and we're not falling for it.''
But weeks later, Democrats sure have changed their tune.
The chairman just recently said Congress cannot ignore the
humanitarian crisis at the border.
For years now, Republicans have been warning about the
crisis and working hard to find solutions, and all the while
Democrats have denied there was even a problem.
This is not about politics. It's always been about
preserving the integrity of our border and preventing the
humanitarian crisis that we are all now witnessing.
Democrats are in charge here. They set the agenda. The
chairman could have had this hearing on the border crisis in
January. He could have had one in February or March or April.
Instead, prioritized political hearings, like the hearing--
well, like the hearing we first had, Michael Cohen, months and
months ago.
Think about this. The President made his emergency
supplemental request only two days after that hearing. We knew
even then that it was urgent. Instead of giving a platform to a
convicted felon, we could have come here to address the border
crisis.
Only now the situation has reached the point that Democrats
cannot ignore it and finally decided to acknowledge that there
is, in fact, a real crisis on the border.
After months of the problem being pointed out and urgent
calls for more funding, it wasn't until just before the July
Fourth recess that the House Democrats finally agreed, after
waiting eight weeks, finally agreed for the path to $4.6
billion supplemental emergency funding bill to provide some of
the resources needed at the border. And despite the size and
scope of the crisis, even this funding bill was not supported
by many of the Democrats, including some testifying today.
Once again, they would rather play politics with the border
than work on solutions. They have now gone from denying that
there is a crisis to accusing those working to stop it, our
border agents, of actually creating a culture of cruelty, as
some have said. Just yesterday the chairman of the House
Judiciary Committee gratuitously and erroneously accused our
Border Patrol agents of committing negligent homicide. I was in
the hearing when he said it.
The reality is that our border agents are working
tirelessly on the crisis, which they did not create, and they
are lacking funding and resources from the very Democrats who
are attacking them. Can't vote against funding for a crisis.
And then, Fiscal Year 2019, more than 688,000 illegal
aliens, including nearly 133,000 in May 2019 alone, were
apprehended between ports of entry along the southwest border,
an increase of 80,000 since October 2018.
And while historically most immigrants were single adult
males, 72 percent of all border enforcement actions in the last
month were directed to unaccompanied alien children and family
units.
Fabricating stories of cruelty and besmirching the
hardworking civil servants who are protecting the border and
providing humanitarian assistance does nothing to help solve
the problem. Putting a Band-Aid over the border crisis, like we
did two weeks ago, does not fix the root causes.
If Democrats are serious about solving the border crisis,
then let's address the Flores settlement agreement, let's
address asylum loopholes and the other statutory and judicial
constraints that incentivize aliens to make a dangerous journey
to the United States.
Most of all, they must stop obstructing the border security
wall. This is one of the greatest challenges of our time, and
as we all know, it's getting worse by the day. I hope the
Democrats will stop their obsession with attacking the
President and will actually work collaboratively to fix this
crisis.
And, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to hearing from our
witnesses. I appreciate the fact that even though initially you
were going to have just the Democrats, you allowed the
Republican witnesses from border states to participate in the
first panel as well.
And with that, I yield back.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much.
Let me very quickly preliminarily explain to the committee
how this came about. Ms. Tlaib, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, and Ms.
Pressley contacted me over two weeks ago and they made it clear
that they wanted to go down to the border to observe as a
committee, more of a committee assignment. I told them, go. And
they decided they wanted to go and see for themselves.
And I thank you all for doing that.
Ms. Escobar helped make the arrangements, and it was her
district. But I wanted them to come back to the committee and
tell us what they observed.
I welcome anybody who has gone down there and seen whatever
you may have seen so that the Congress, I think, can be
sensitive to what's going on and so that we can do something
about it.
And so for this panel, we will not have, to the panel, we
will not have questions, and we also won't have exchanges among
the witnesses.
Mr. Meadows. Mr. Chairman, point of information, if I
might?
Chairman Cummings. Yes.
Mr. Meadows. Yes, you indicated they went down. So was this
a codel from this committee? Because I was not invited or was
not even aware they were doing it.
Chairman Cummings. I'm going to say--I'm going to answer
you briefly, and then we're going to move on to these
witnesses.
No, it was not a codel. They called me inquiring as to how
it could be a codel, and I told them: You're going to have to
go on your own MRA. Okay?
Mr. Meadows. Yes, but I don't know that our own MRA
qualifies to actually do that.
Chairman Cummings. Well, whatever they--however they did
it, they did it properly--am I right, ladies?--they did it
properly and within ethical rules. Okay? All right. They took
it upon themselves.
We should applaud our Members, even the Republican Members,
who have visited these facilities concerning their interests.
Taking time from what would normally be their times in their
districts and taking care of their families, they decided to go
down there. Let's applaud them as opposed to----
[Applause.]
Chairman Cummings. No. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I told you not
to disrupt. I didn't mean it like that. But you get the
picture.
But anyway, let's move on.
Ms. Speier. Mr. Chairman, will you yield for one----
Chairman Cummings. I'll yield, yes.
Ms. Speier. To Mr. Meadows, the appropriate procedure--and
we're following that with a codel that we are taking this
afternoon--is to get an invitation from the Member's district
where you want to visit. And upon having that invitation, you
normally have to wait two weeks in order to get the Border
Patrol to accommodate you. And if they followed that, which I'm
sure they did, that is how they were able to make that trip.
I yield back.
Chairman Cummings. I've got to move on. Thank you all.
Now, to our Members, if you have pictures or exhibits, we
are more than willing to see them. But we ask that you please
use them only during your testimony and then take them down.
You will each have five minutes. And we will be happy to
include in the record any additional materials you would like
to submit.
For each of you, the committee would like to know which
specific detention centers you visited, when you went there,
and what you personally witnessed while you were there.
What I am going to--and we have to keep in mind that we've
got a vote coming up at around 11. So it's my hope that we'll
get all of you in before the vote.
But to the Members, to all Members, after the vote, I'm
coming back here to hear from our other witnesses. We have a
very important panel coming after this panel. And I will be
here until midnight if I have to be, because I think it's just
that urgent.
And so I'm going to begin with our Republican
Representatives.
Representative Andy Biggs from Arizona, thank you very much
for being with us.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. ANDY BIGGS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF ARIZONA
Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Chairman Cummings and Ranking Member
Jordan, members of the committee. I thank you for allowing me
to testify before you today.
I represent the Fifth congressional District of Arizona,
which is a suburb of Phoenix just about a hundred miles from
the border. But I grew up in southern Arizona. I've traveled
extensively in Mexico and been to our southern border many
times, and I regularly visit the border today even.
In the past few months I have visited a CBP holding
facility in Yuma, an ICE facility in Arizona. That detention
center is run by a private concern that is required to comply
with Federal regulations. I've led two groups of Congressmen to
the border and invited colleagues from across the aisle to come
as well.
When I led a group to the border a couple months ago, we
were briefed by agents about the extent of human trafficking,
and we learned about an 11-year-old girl that I'm going to call
Maria today to protect her privacy. Agents learned that there
was a human trafficking hub in South Carolina, moving directly
from Yuma across to South Carolina. That's a long way to go.
Working with DEA, ICE, and local law enforcement, agents
located a small house that was the headquarters of a cartel
affiliate. They were surprised to find Maria. They didn't know
about her, or the two small boys that she was required to take
care of by the cartel affiliate. They had been separated from
their families when their parents allowed them to be taken by
human trafficking cartels to create a fake family unit in order
to get more favorable treatment when the adults they were
placed with by the cartel traffickers crossed our border.
Maria and the two little boys were intended to be taken
back by human cartel smugglers to be used again to create a
fake family unit.
I asked how many similar trafficking rings existed in the
United States and was told that there are hundreds all over the
country. And this impacts tens of thousands of children who are
given over to cartels and human traffickers by their parents to
be used to facilitate human trafficking.
I also think of Benito--again, I changed his name--he was a
five-year-old little boy left in the desert by human
traffickers. He was found by CBP agents and was given emergency
life-saving treatment. I've watched videos of agents rescuing
sick or dying individuals in the desert or drowning in the Rio
Grande who were saved, at risk to the life and limb of the
agents.
Most of the time today by agents is no longer spent in
securing the border, but is actually spent on humanitarian
endeavors and actually trying to take care of children.
Family separation for angel families like Steve Ronnebeck,
whose son Grant was murdered by a multiple deportee, or Mary
Ann Mendoza, whose son Brandon was killed by a multiple
deportee, are two families permanently separated who live in my
district.
I visit regularly ports of entry and the vast open tracts
between the ports. I speak to line agents, local law
enforcement, residents on the border, and I visit facilities.
When our group visited the holding facility in Yuma,
designed to hold a maximum of 250 people for only up to 12
hours for processing, I was shocked to see more than three
times that many people there.
CBP had made makeshift arrangements to try and meet the
conditions. People were crammed in. They were out on the patio
area. They were in the parking lot. They were given mats to
sleep on.
We came back and we put in special orders, we did various
statements urging immediate help from our colleagues to the CBP
and thousands of people crossing our border who were
voluntarily surrendering themselves to the agents. We warned of
the difficulties that would be exacerbated if immediately
relief was not undertaken.
Months ago, while many of my colleagues were claiming that
the border situation was a manufactured crisis, we were urging
immediate action because the circumstances were horrible. They
were overcrowded. They were horrible. There was clean water.
There still is clean water. There was food. There was sanitary
supplies. There was bedding supplied. But it was rudimentary.
We needed help then.
And now to refer to these folks who are doing their best
dealing with a horrible situation--at that time, remember, Yuma
was transferring 130 people a day to overcrowded ICE
facilities. They were releasing 120 a day into the community.
But when you're catching or apprehending or people surrendering
at the tune of 4,500, you don't have enough supplies. You don't
have enough facilities.
It is a crisis. It is real. And we do not get anywhere by
blaming the people who are doing their best to help these
people.
We need to look in the mirror. We need to make the changes.
We need to provide the funding necessary to get this done.
Calling these Auschwitz-style concentration camps or indicating
that these people that are trying to enforce the law are
somehow Nazi-type war criminals, or yesterday we heard they
were criminal child abusers, that doesn't help solve the
problem. It's a real problem. We need to solve it. We can do
it. We have to do it.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much.
Representative Cloud.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. MICHAEL CLOUD, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS
Mr. Cloud. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking
Member. And thank you for the opportunity to share the story of
those of us who live in border states and have experienced this
humanitarian and criminal crisis for decades.
First of all, I'd like to thank the men and women of the
Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for their
continued service to this Nation. Many of them are veterans who
view this job as a way to continue their service to our great
Nation. Many have served overseas to preserve our freedom on
the front lines, and defending our borders at home they view as
a way to continue their service back home.
Many of them realize, the men and women serving, realize
that protecting the homeland and defending our border by
fighting back against the corrupting influence of cartels is
just as important to the communities and families across this
Nation as fighting overseas.
Wednesday marked the one-year anniversary from when I was
sworn into office. What I've learned in a year is that many
Members of Congress would rather talk about a problem than
actually fix it. Thankfully, the President has made this a
priority, and it's past time for Congress to do the same.
I cannot understand why we would allow this problem to
continue when we know what would help to fix it: close the
asylum loopholes cartels use to exploit people, fix the Flores
settlement so that we can ensure families remain together, and
many other situations or circumstances or solutions that have
been presented before.
Shortly after I was sworn in, I visited the Texas border,
not for the first time, and I asked Border Patrol: What would
be a win? And they told me: situational awareness. That was in
August of last year, when 16,744 migrants were apprehended by
the RGB sector. In June of this year, that number has nearly
tripled. There were 43,197 apprehensions in that sector alone.
Our current border facilities are not designed to handle
these current numbers. Border Patrol and ICE are doing the best
they can with extremely limited resources that we have given
them. They understand they don't have the tools and resources
they need to even begin thinking about mitigating the influence
cartels have in our Nation because Border Patrol is undermanned
and underfunded, and Congress has done nothing to help.
During our visit just a few weeks ago, the phrase I heard
over and over is: There is no end in sight.
The southern part of Texas' 27th congressional District,
the district I am proud to represent, is roughly two hours from
the U.S.-Mexican border town of McAllen, Texas. If fixing this
crisis had been left up to Texas, we would have done it several
years ago.
Widely recognized as the fatal funnel, two major
interstates, U.S. 281 and U.S. 77, come up from Mexico and feed
right through our district. Why is it called the fatal funnel?
Time magazine ran a story in May 2015 titled, ``The Border
Corridor of Death Along America's Second Border.'' Customs and
Border Protection even warns on their website, if you're
traveling on Highways U.S. 281 and U.S. 77, please be cautious
of your surroundings as smuggling activity runs rampant.
Or take the Houston HIDTA 2018 threat assessment that's
filled with examples of drug and human smuggling conducted by
the Gulf and Los Zetas cartels through the district and
surrounding area. Or take the story of 19 migrants who were
found dead in a back of a tractor trailer truck 10 minutes from
my house in Victoria. They died in a tractor-trailer truck in
the sweltering heat. Authorities found a five-year-old boy who
had died in his father's arms.
Deputy Chief Roy Boyd of the Victoria Country Sheriff's
Office says that gangs are moving more and more into the slave
trade now because of how profitable it is. While a kilo of
cocaine or any drug can be sold once, human beings can be sold
numerous times every day. Boyd says that these migrants are
being sold into slavery, both sex slavery and labor.
The RAND Corporation recently published a study that said:
We found the revenues from smuggling migrants from El Salvador,
Guatemala, and Honduras combined could have ranged from a total
of about 200 million to a total of about 2.3 billion in 2017.
Let's let that sink in when we consider the resources we're
giving to our resources at the border.
Congress is allowing these cartels to massively profit
because we refuse to close off the avenues they are using to
smuggle migrants.
This is not just these gut-wrenching stories either. At the
end of May, I, along with Representatives Grothman and Hice,
went to the border. We were briefed by Border Patrol on who and
what is coming across the border. We were joined by my friend
Hector Garcia and the National Border Patrol Council on a ride-
along through the night to see how these fine men and women of
the Border Patrol use the meager resources they have to
prioritize life, provide for these migrants, and defend our
country.
We visited a ranch where we heard stories of those who live
on the ranch are fearful for their own lives because of the
number of the cartel members smuggling through their own
property. They're afraid to walk their own land. The manager of
that ranch said his wife cannot go on a walk or run around the
property without the dog and a gun.
Cartels cut chains and locks, bust through fences with
their trucks, use private property to avoid stations. Somehow
these are the stories that the media fails to report but sadly
what's become normal for the people of south Texas.
Let me leave you with this story I've shared before but
it's worth sharing. I visited an unaccompanied minor facility.
There were a number of young ladies there, about a couple
hundred. I asked them about the care and what these young
ladies had been through. They said about 40 percent of them had
been sexually abused along their journey.
This is the tragedy we've allowed to metastasize while many
in Congress spent months claiming this was a fake, manufactured
crisis. Real compassion would have been for us to do something
about this and have the wisdom and foresight to avoid the
situation that we've seen over the last couple of weeks instead
of implementing policies that enable what the cartels are
doing.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much, Representative
Cloud.
Representative Lesko. And welcome to our committee.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. DEBBIE LESKO, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ARIZONA
Mrs. Lesko. Thank you and good morning. You know, I don't
know if I should be jealous with all the pictures being taken
over my colleagues or not.
But it's a good morning. And, Chairman Cummings, Ranking
Member Jordan, and Members of Congress, thank you for giving us
this opportunity.
You know, sometimes I feel, have you ever seen a movie
where they have parallel universes, where you're in one world
in this situation, you're in another world in this situation?
Well, that's what I feel like we're in, quite honestly.
In some of my Democrat colleagues' world they seem to think
that all of a sudden, out of the blue, thousands of illegal
immigrants showed up at the border, and they are just
oblivious--oblivious--to the year-long calls by Republicans and
some Democrats for years for immigration reform, knowing that
our loose immigration laws are what's incentivizing people to
come here and what's causing the crisis.
In my world, what I believe is the real world, the crisis
has been mounting for years. And people like me have sounded
the alarm for years, over and over and over again, and tried to
enact legislation to fix it. But, unfortunately, many of my
Democratic colleagues have fought me over and over again at
every turn.
I'm from Arizona. I'm from a border state. I don't live in
a state thousands of miles away. So we've been living this for
many, many years. And I used to serve in the state senate and
the state house. And I was a cosponsor, along with my
colleague, Representative Biggs, on SB 1070, because we knew,
we were there, we were on the ground, and we knew that the
immigration laws were not being enforced, and we thought, okay,
well, let's have the state try to enforce it.
Well, we were fought at every turn by every of my Democrat
colleagues there and the President. In my Democrat friends'
world the crisis at the border, they say, was manufactured. We
heard it for months. In January, Speaker Pelosi and Schumer
said it was a manufactured crisis. House Democrat whip laughed
when asked if there is a crisis at the border and said
absolutely not.
Thirty-eight freshman Democrats sent a letter to Senate
Majority Leader McConnell requesting that Congress end this
manufactured crisis. Democrat Homeland Security Committee
chairman tweeted: The President has manufactured a humanitarian
crisis.
In my world, President Trump and Republicans have been
sounding the alarm for years. I mean, my goodness, we're going
to have over a million illegal immigrants that we apprehend.
That's more than one congressional district a year. And the
pounds, even in Yuma, Arizona, just recently, hundreds of
pounds of meth.
And last year, Republicans led two immigration bills that
we thought were a compromise, where it gave DACA recipients
legal status in one of the bills. Another of the bills, it gave
DACA recipients a pathway to citizenship. But not one of my
Democrat colleagues voted yes, not one single one.
Unfortunately, in my Democrat colleagues' world, in
Judiciary yesterday--I am a member, too--I heard over and over
again how CBP are child abusers. And one member, one of my
colleagues said: Oh, they're getting treated worse than
prisoners of war. I mean, really?
Let's get down to the business of solving the problem. And
I encourage everyone to watch a video by Tucson Sector Border
Chief Patrol Agent Roy Villareal. The video shows clearly that
there are supplies in the detention centers.
And this whole issue about drinking out of the toilet is
wrong. No one drinks out of a toilet. No one is being asked to
drink out of a toilet. There's a combined unit where at the top
you have drinking water, and the Border Patrol Chief drank the
water. They're not drinking out of toilets. So, please,
American public, there is no one asking people to drink out of
toilets.
We really need to solve the root of this problem. We need
to get to the base of it. And I call on my Democrat colleagues,
we're all passionate about this issue, let's actually solve the
root of the problem, work on legislation together, let's get
this done.
And I yield back. Thank you.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much.
Representative Roy.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. CHIP ROY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS
Mr. Roy. I thank the chairman. Thank you for holding this
hearing and allowing us, giving us time to testify this
morning.
As many of you know, I represent Texas 21, Austin, San
Antonio. The southwest edge of Texas 21 is about 95 miles from
the border of Mexico. I've toured facilities multiple times in
my career as a lawyer for the Senate Judiciary Committee, as a
Federal prosecutor, as a staffer for Governor Perry, as a first
assistant attorney general, and now as a Congressman. I've been
to the border multiple times, and I didn't just come recently
putting on a show in front of fences for the media. It's come
over a career of trying to figure out how to secure the border
and do our job.
My chief of staff went to the border this last Saturday,
down to Clint to go to the facility after hearing all of the
horror stories. My chief of staff had a very different
experience in terms of what he saw, in terms of the cleanliness
of facilities, in terms of Border Patrol trying to do its job,
trying to make sure that people are taken care of after a long,
hard journey through Mexico, making sure they do have potable
water, including having water containers right outside the very
cells where we were told that they didn't have water to drink,
having the toothpaste, the food, the diapers, the things that
are necessary to take care of people after a long, hard
journey, while this body has failed to secure the border and
created the very magnet, the very magnet, that is causing these
migrants to come through and be abused by cartels while this
body cowardly sits in the corner doing nothing about it.
The untold stories that are going on by cartels, these are
the stories. At certain stations gangs boarded the trains and
demanded a toll. The rate was a hundred dollars per station.
They threatened us. They said they would hold us until we could
call a relative to arrange to pay. If you couldn't pay, they
would throw you off the roof. Johnny was separated from his
family on a train, and it's unclear what happened to his wife
and children.
Just two weeks ago a 19-year-old woman fell from one of
these trains in Tacotalpa, Mexico, killing her. The train
stopped near the Tabasco state town and the woman hopped off to
buy some cheese-stuffed rolls, and when the train crowded with
migrants began to move again she hustled to clamor back aboard.
But the train suddenly stopped, she lost her grip and fell
beneath its wheels. It dragged her a hundred yards before
jerking forward again in a thunder of shuttering steel.
Coyotes take advantage of our system, leading women and
children to the border, while along the journey one in three
women are sexually assaulted.
This is the reality of what's happening between the
Northern Triangle and Texas. This is what is happening because
we refuse to do our job.
What about Border Patrol? Sergio Tinoco was born into
poverty in south Texas as his mother remained in Mexico and he
was forced to work hard labor on a farm to support himself. He
served in our military for 10 years and then became a Border
Patrol agent protecting the land in which he grew up in the Rio
Grande Valley.
He wanted this comment to be told, quote: The last thing
this son of Mexican immigrants expected was to be compared to
Nazis by America's elites for serving his Nation and protecting
our dangerous border.
He said: Our agents are just completely overwhelmed. They
are exhausted. Not only are they exhausted out in the field,
exhausted inside the stations, processing, they're exhausted
with all of the rhetoric that's coming down through the media
and this Congress. Our own congressional leaders are vilifying
our agents. These are the people holding America's front line.
Add to these thoughts--this is an article that Sergio
Tinoco wrote that appeared July 5, 2019--add to these thoughts
an exhausting 10-hour shift of seeing hundreds of illegal
immigrants at the facility you work in and out in the field at
temperatures over a hundred degrees. Add a countless amount of
mothers and fathers telling the agent that their child is sick
and needs attention. Add being in a facility that can only hold
300 detainees, but is currently holding 1,200, all waiting to
be processed and released because of the immigration loopholes
that brought them here in the first place.
More so, add having just rescued a mother and child from
drowning in the Rio Grande, caring for an infant after being
stung by a swarm of bees in the high brush at the area where
they entered the country illegally. Add the memory of finding a
decomposing dead individual who was left behind by the ruthless
smuggler because of an injury or exhaustion.
A Border Patrol agent should be going home at the end of
shift to decompress and leave all these matters behind at the
workplace. Those things will be waiting for the agent again
tomorrow. There will be another daring rescue, another small
caravan of over a thousand individuals to deal with and try to
fit into an already overcrowded facility. There will be another
set of individuals, or kids requiring medical attention, which
the agents will tend to.
But now, with comments such as these, the Border Patrol
agent must go home and hear about how their families have also
heard those comments depicting mom or dad as a murderer of kids
and their parents, how mom or dad are running gas chambers to
kill all the illegal immigrants.
The fact is both parties have failed. The GOP all too often
want to stand at the Rio Grande with a ``no trespassing'' sign
while winking at immigrants and with a ``help wanted'' sign in
the other. Meanwhile, my Democrat colleagues prefer to stand in
front of chain link fences next to an empty parking lot while
making up hyperbole for clicks, Twitter followers, and cynical
politics.
There is a path to fix this. Take out the cartels,
recognize that they're terrorist organizations, fix our asylum
laws to be welcoming but not tragically abused by cartels, end
catch and release, and give ICE the resources to do their job.
President Obama sent up a bill for $760 million for ICE.
Why were we not funding ICE so that we have a place to be able
to put people when they come through Border Patrol?
It is time for action. This Texan is not going to sit by
and watch his state and Texas communities get overrun and
abused because the coward of the swamp sit idly by and
cynically fail to do their job.
Thank you.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much.
Ms. Escobar, Representative Escobar, let me say this before
you go on. I want to thank you for working so closely with us
to make this hearing happen, and I really appreciate you very
much. Thank you. You may go forward.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. VERONICA ESCOBAR, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS
Ms. Escobar. Chairman Cummings, Ranking Member Jordan,
members of the committee, thank you for calling this hearing
and for the privilege of testifying before you today.
I am proud to live not near but on the U.S.-Mexico border,
in El Paso, Texas, a community that has long been safe and
secure, a modern-day Ellis Island. For seven months, my office
has facilitated delegation visits to El Paso, 10 so far and
more to come, and I'm grateful for all of those who have been
able to or will soon join us to bear witness to what is
happening at the hands of the U.S. Government.
There is no doubt that the increasing number of migrants at
our southern border has presented a challenge. Unfortunately,
in the last two years our country has failed to live up to our
founding values when addressing that challenge.
Before I focus on what our government is doing, let me tell
you what my community is doing. For years, but especially in
this last year, El Paso has stepped up, helping feed, shelter,
and offer hospitality to thousands of migrant families released
by DHS week after week. My community, with a fraction of the
resources available to the Federal Government, has responded
more strategically, thoughtfully, and compassionately than the
Federal Government has.
El Paso knows that this is not a matter of resources, but a
matter of will. El Paso has had to stand up shelters on a
moment's notice, transport hundreds of migrants daily, using
only volunteers, and we've opened our wallets and our hearts to
ensure that every one of those vulnerable souls has a clean,
safe place to stay once out of custody. El Paso made the choice
to employ compassion and good will.
And then we have the choice that our government has made.
Our government, at the hands of this administration, has
exhibited an incompetence and cruelty that has created a human
rights crisis in our own country.
Under the Trump administration, border communities have
borne witness to the deaths of at least six children in
government custody since September.
Family separation, a practice called illegal by the United
Nations, one which, according to the American Academy of
Pediatrics, inflicts deep life-long trauma, a policy so heinous
that the sound of a weeping child secretly recorded in a
detention facility moved even some of the most hardline anti-
immigrant Americans, El Paso was the testing ground for child
separation, a policy that continues to this day.
We've seen severe overcrowding in Border Patrol processing
centers that is so inhumane that the DHS Office of the
Inspector General described it as dangerous because it
represents an immediate risk to agents and migrants alike.
We've seen conditions that dehumanize migrants, stripping them
of their dignity, sending good agents into states of
despondency, giving cover to bad agents who abuse their
authority.
There's long-term detention in ICE facilities where in my
district a group of men requesting asylum who had been detained
for nearly a year became so desperate they went on a hunger
strike. They were force fed and hydrated through tubes that
were placed down their nose. Speaking through their pain and
their bloodied tubes, they told me they would rather die in
America than be sent back to India.
We've seen migrant protection protocols. It's the
administration's practice of sending legal asylum seekers into
another country as they await their hearing, a violation of due
process that puts vulnerable populations in danger. In one
case, a woman had warned CBP about the danger she faced in
Ciudad Juarez, was sent back to Mexico, where she was kidnapped
and brutally gang raped.
My district is ground zero for these atrocities, and
because my office inquires about these cases in line with my
oversight responsibilities, I have become a target.
These policies have created the humanitarian crisis and a
moral one. I commend colleagues who have worked to address
these issues, from Congresswoman Lofgren focusing on the root
causes, to Congressman Raul Ruiz, who's focused on medical
standards for migrants in CBP custody.
I, too, have legislation that will be coming up shortly,
H.R. 2203, the Homeland Security Improvement Act, which would
increase accountability and transparency at DHS so that these
conditions, these deaths, these abuses, can be relegated to a
dark moment in history.
This is not about resources. And to prove it, one only
needs to look at what El Paso, Texas, has done without any.
This is about having the will to treat people with dignity. We
have the power to change this. Do we have the will?
Thank you.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, A
REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Mr. Chair, I would like to be sworn in.
Chairman Cummings. I'm sorry?
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. I would like to be sworn in.
Chairman Cummings. Oh, all right. We usually don't require
a swearing-in, but you want to be sworn in?
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Yes.
Chairman Cummings. All right. Okay. Stand up, please.
Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to
give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help you God?
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. I do.
Chairman Cummings. You may be seated.
Let the record reflect that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez answered in
the affirmative.
You may proceed.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Good morning, Chairman Cummings, Ranking
Member Jordan, and distinguished members of this committee.
When I was asked to testify today, I, frankly, didn't know
where to begin after our visit to the border.
Much has been made about the fact that we have said that
this is a manufactured crisis. And in many ways, it is
manufactured in that it is wholly unnecessary. It is
unnecessary to separate children from their families. It is
unnecessary to have a policy to detain innocent women and
families that have harmed no person and are legally seeking
asylum in the United States of America. It is unnecessary to
have a policy that calls children unaccompanied when they
arrive with older brothers, sisters, and grandparents, and
treat them no differently than human traffickers.
And in speaking of trafficking, it is completely
unnecessary for this administration to choose to implement
policies like metering and so-called ``remain in Mexico''
policies that dump innocent people in dangerous territories,
that puts them right in the crosshairs of human traffickers,
ripe for picking.
This is a manufactured crisis because cruelty--because the
cruelty is manufactured. This is a manufactured crisis because
there is no need for us to do this. There's no need for us to
overcrowd and to detain and underresource. There is no need for
us to arrest innocent people and treat them no differently than
criminals when they are pursuing their basic human rights.
Much has been made about CBP agents in this hearing as well
and that this is not their fault, and in some respects, in many
respects, I agree, because it is a policy of dehumanization
implemented by this executive administration, laid at the feet
of Stephen Miller, that creates a tinderbox of violence and
dehumanization where hurt people hurt people.
I would like to seek unanimous consent to submit the
records of the names of 17 women I met during my trip to the
border.
Chairman Cummings. Without objection.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. I think one of the reasons and what has
been spoken of is that there's two different universes, and it
feels like we're speaking in two different worlds, and one of
the reasons for that, I believe, is because when I and when we
took our tour of the border, one of the first things that we
were told is that we were not allowed to speak to the migrants,
that we were not allowed to have contact with them, that we
shouldn't, and this was given for reasons of, quote, ``their
safety,'' or reasons for--or for the expediency of the tour.
And after we entered and after we were asked to surrender
our cell phones at the beginning of the tour, we went in and
one of the CBP officers, after that morning, it being revealed
by ProPublica--which I would also seek unanimous consent to
submit to the record.
Chairman Cummings. Without objection.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. While it was revealed by ProPublica a
secret Facebook group where CBP members were planning to harm,
or encouraging harm, of myself and Congresswoman Escobar as
well as mocking the deaths of migrant children.
Into that environment, we walked into this facility. We
were asked to surrender our phones and be guarded by the people
without a guarantee that no one there was in that Facebook
group. We went in and one of the officers attempted to sneak a
photograph, a photograph of myself and other congressional
Members, and at that point we asked to enter one of the cells.
We were allowed to speak to the women, and these are the
women that we spoke to. It's their handwriting. And while we
are being asked to speak only to officers, we are not getting
the accounts of migrants, of their treatment, of what they are
experiencing.
And so when these women tell me that they were put into a
cell and that their sink was not working, and we tested the
sink ourselves and the sink was not working, and they were told
to drink out of the toilet bowl, I believed them. I believed
these women. I believed the canker sores that I saw in their
mouths because they were only allowed to be fed unnutritious
food. I believed them when they said they were sleeping on
concrete floors for two months. I believed them.
And what was worse about this, Mr. Chairman, was the fact
that there were American flags hanging all over these
facilities, that children being separated from their parents,
in front of an American flag, that women were being called
these names under an American flag. We cannot allow for this.
[Medical emergency in hearing room.]
Chairman Cummings. Representative Green, who is a medical
doctor, just told me she'll be okay.
Thank you, Representative Green. I really appreciate it.
It's good to have a doctor in the house. Amen.
Miss, since I interrupted you, I'll give you 30--I am
sorry. We'll give you a minute to wrap it up, please.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I know my time
was wrapping up at that time.
And again, we have to make sure that--and over and over
again, when we spoke to these folks, whether it was agents,
whether it was HHS officials, oftentime they said the thing
that we need most is not resources, we need policy change.
So we need to change our metering policies. We need to
change our detention policies. We need to change our policies
on who we call unaccompanied. And that is one of the key areas,
in addition to changing our policy on foreign affairs, on
investment, on being an equal partner in Latin America and the
Western Hemisphere.
Thank you very much.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much.
Ms. Tlaib, again, I want to thank you for your phone call
about two weeks ago when you wanted to pull together things to
get down, go down to the border. Thank you very much. You have
now five minutes.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. RASHIDA TLAIB, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN
Ms. Tlaib. Thank you so much, Chairman.
Honorable members of the committee, thank you all for this
critically important hearing, and
[speaking foreign language], which means thank you,
Chairman Cummings, for always creating a space for us in this
committee. From the first week you said we give you new energy.
I hope that's still the case. So thank you.
By allowing us to testify before this committee and enter
what we observed and experienced in our visit to El Paso border
on July 1, to the CBP Station 1 and the Clint camp into the
congressional record, I appreciate that responsibility, and not
picking on the President, but holding this administration
accountable.
First, no one is illegal. That term is derogatory now
because it dehumanizes people. You can say any other forms of
maybe coming in without regulations or so forth, but the use of
``illegal'' is disrespectful. And I ask my colleagues to try in
so many ways to not dehumanize our immigrant neighbors that are
trying to come in for safe haven.
Mr. Speaker, while working at human service and community
advocacy organizations, I learned early on that to truly bring
power to the table, to see what is at stake, you have to bring
people in the room who can't be here. So I'm asking for
Jakelin, who was age 7 from Guatemala, who died from sepsis
while in our care. She's the same age as my son when I heard
about it.
Mr. Speaker, we do have a crisis at our border. It is one
of morality, as we have seen this current strategy unfold,
intentional and cruelly created by the Trump administration,
dead set on sending a hate-filled message that those seeking
refuge are not welcome in America, in our America, and that the
rule of law, human rights, will not be--will not protect them
here. Instead, Mr. Chairman, it's a dangerous ideology that
rules our Nation right now.
I have been so deeply haunted by the unforgettable image of
a four-year-old boy coming up to me through a glass door of a
cell he was in, with a number of other children, asked me in
Spanish where his papa was, and slid a very small board to me
so I could write something on it. It was like a dry board. I'm
not sure what he needed before an agent asked me to stop
engaging him.
Chairman, again, bringing those who can't be here into this
room, I ask my colleagues to see a drawing from one of the
children in the cages, in the cells, up there, and I want you
to not look away. I ask you and beg you not to look away.
But the suffering in these illegal and immoral camps isn't
just limited to those children. Something I learned, Mr.
Chairman, is that--I was able to travel to Clint, Texas, and
meet face to face mothers, fathers, grandparents who are
suffering, ripped away from their families, not knowing if they
ever see their children and loved ones again.
I won't forget the father from Brazil who held onto his son
with tears in his eyes as he told me in English he just wants
his son to be an American boy. He said his wife--he was with
his wife, his eight-year-old daughter, and teenage boy in a
tent-like space outside of Station 1. He said he has been there
for four days.
I won't forget Daisy, the grandmother who had a red ribbon
on her wrist with the name of the medication she needs, who
said she had been in detention for 40 days, and she hadn't seen
her grandson who was mentally impaired since being separated
from him when they arrived. I wonder every day where she is now
and whether or not she's hungry.
The fear in their eyes won't be forgotten, Mr. Speaker, but
the suffering in these illegal camps cannot be forgotten.
Imagine traveling thousands of miles in grueling and dangerous
conditions because you have no other option, only to be
separated from your family, from your children, thrown into
overcrowded cages, denied a shower, toothbrush, and, yes, Mr.
Chairman, drink water out of the toilet if you're thirsty.
Now imagine doing that while pregnant. In Clint, I met
Bettys, a woman pregnant with her first child. She smiled at
me, and I instantly connected with her. She had a pink hoodie
on.
And I instantly just went toward her, even though they told
us not to talk to anybody, Mr. Chairman. I couldn't not go to
somebody that's smiling at me. And I said hello, and she said
hello in English. And I love that she felt confident to speak
to me in the broken English.
And she said she found out--I said, how long have you been
here? She said 27 days. And she said: I'm with a child. And she
glowed. She was so happy, because she had not known she was
pregnant until she came here.
But by showing up, Mr. Chairman, she is free now. The
following day she is free now, and we are following the asylum
process, and she is now at home. I spoke to her last week.
She's so happy. She said: You will be part of my family
forever.
Ms. Tlaib. Mr. Chairman, it needs to be noted into record.
I spoke to CBP agents, even though they told us not to speak to
them too. Remember that? And I said: What do you think we need
to do because you guys are overwhelmed?
They said, one of the: Stop sending money. It's not
working.
Another one said: I wasn't trained for this. I am not a
social worker. I'm not a medical care worker.
He actually said: I want to be at the border. That's what I
was trained to be at.
The one other one, the last one, Mr. Chairman, the
separation policy isn't working, he said. He knew about the
separation policy that he was enacting.
CBP morale is one of the lowest among law enforcement
agencies, Mr. Chairman. Since between 2017 and 2018, we had a
high of 100 agents committing suicide. That needs to be put in
record. The dehumanization is not only with those families, but
it's also with the agents that we've had told to do this to
these families.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank
you very much.
Ms. Pressley?
STATEMENT OF THE HON. AYANNA PRESSLEY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS
Ms. Pressley. Chairman Cummings, Ranking Member Jordan, and
colleagues of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to
testify here today. I believe that it is both our opportunity
and obligation as Members of Congress to shed light on
injustice and to lift the voices of the unheard. Make clear
that I don't say ``the voiceless.'' Every person has a voice,
but our institutions do not always listen. So today I do not
speak on behalf of anyone, but I make space for the stories our
Nation so desperately needs to hear in this moment.
Mr. Chairman, I cannot unsee what I've seen; I cannot
unfeel what I experienced. I refuse to, although, admittedly,
it robs me of sleep and peace of mind, but that pales in
comparison to the pain felt by families that have been robbed
of their liberty, their legal rights, and their dignity, and
some even the lives of their babies.
During our stop at the El Paso Border Patrol facility, I
pressed my hand to a Plexiglass window. I met the gazes of
several women on the other side. Their shoulders were slumped,
their clothes filthy, their eyes vacant. I turned to a Border
Patrol officer and asked: What is the temperature in this room?
The officer responded: I do not know.
I then asked how they set the temperatures in the room. He
mumbled again he did not know.
Mr. Chairman, on the day of our visit, it was a sweltering
103 degrees in El Paso. What's the heat index at which you
bring folks indoors, I inquired? Border Patrol responded with
no answer. The most basic of questions about the care and
welfare of those held in the custody of our government were
either dismissed or met with a nonanswer, affirming what we
know. This agency was never built, never designed, never
trained for the care and keeping of families. These families
need trauma support, caseworkers, clean water, adequate and
nutritious food. Instead, they have received a level of
degradation we should be ashamed is occurring on American soil.
Once we realized we were not going to get the answers we
needed from CBP officers, my colleagues and I pushed our way
through a doorway to speak directly with the group of
approximately 10 to 15 women who were detained in a small room.
These women held thin blankets. They sat on the cold concrete.
They had tears in their eyes, and as we walked in, relief and
release as they collapsed at a sign of compassion.
My colleagues Representatives Kennedy and Ocasio-Cortez
translated the women's stories as quickly as they could. I held
the hand of a woman who heaved sobs, as she explained, her deep
fear that at any moment she could fall to the floor in a
seizure. She's an epileptic, and the medicine she relies on had
been confiscated. And, in fact, she feared that by telling that
truth, she would experience retaliation after we left and her
medication would continue to be withheld.
I spoke to another woman who wept in my arms crying for her
baby. She didn't care to know my name. She didn't care to know
who we were. She simply craved compassion. She wanted to be
treated like a human being. She asked me if she deserved to be
treated like this, if they deserved to be treated like dogs.
Each had survived a treacherous journey overcoming tremendous
obstacles, and while I'm not fluent in Spanish, Mr. Chairman, I
want you to understand that there was no barrier to
understanding in that room.
We speak the universal language: Of pain, of a mother's
love, of justice. These women are not voiceless, Mr. Chairman,
but they are cruelly and criminally unheard. Not today. Today,
Congress has an opportunity to listen and to act. After
everything these women have endured--fleeing violence, deep
poverty, sexual violence, domestic abuse--they arrive at the
crest of this Nation only to be torn apart from their babies
and thrown in cages for seeking asylum, a legal right, a human
right, and in spite of all of that, they believe so fiercely in
the promise of this Nation.
Mr. Chairman, on that concrete floor sat women with a deep
and abiding love for a Nation that had known only as a captor.
In spite of the abuse and adversity they had endured, all they
desperately wanted to do was to hold their babies and have this
Nation give them a chance, a chance to make a credible fear
claim, a chance to make it to a court date, a chance to make
the case that they would work so fiercely to make this Nation
their home just as generations and generations before them have
done. They begged us for forgiveness, Mr. Chair. What will we
say to this generation of children and parents we imprisoned
for seeking safety. We should be the ones begging for
forgiveness.
All they want is one more chance to make their way to
protect their families to live, and I do not know what is more
American than that.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much.
I want to thank our entire panel, all of you, for laying
out the case, what you have observed and your opinions. I
really appreciate the way you've done it. We are now going to
move to the next panel. Again, thank you all.
To the members, the vote is expected at around 11:35, so
we're going to startup the second panel as soon as they get
seated in about two or three minutes.
[Recess.]
Chairman Cummings. We'll now come back to order. This panel
includes the independent inspectors general who have personally
inspected these facilities, written detailed reports, and
provided photographic evidence of their findings. Jennifer
Costello is the Acting Inspector General of Department of
Homeland Security. Ann Maxwell is the Assistant Inspector
General for Department of Health and Human Services. Elora
Mukherjee?
Ms. Mukherjee. Mukherjee.
Chairman Cummings. Yes, you, is a law professor, Jerome L.
Greene, clinical, at Columbia Law School. Jennifer Nagda is the
policy director, Young Center for immigrant children's rights.
Thomas D. Homan, he's former acting director, U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement.
If you would all please rise and raise your right hand, I
will begin to swear you in. Do you swear or affirm that the
testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth so help you God?
Let the record show that the witnesses answered in the
affirmative.
And thank you. You may be seated.
I let you know that the microphones are sensitive, so
please speak directly into them.
Without objection, your written statement will be made a
part of the record.
With that, Inspector General Costello, you are now
recognized to give an oral presentation of your testimony.
Again, before you start, we may not get through all of you, but
we'll--but we're going to do the best we can with what we've
got. And each of you have five minutes, and I'm begging you to
stay within the five minutes because this is a getaway day for
a lot of our members and so we got a lot to do today. All
right. Ms. Costello?
STATEMENT OF JENNIFER L. COSTELLO, ACTING INSPECTOR GENERAL,
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Ms. Costello. Thank you. Chairman Cummings, Ranking Member
Jordan, and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me
here today to discuss our recent work related to conditions at
Customs and Border Protection holding facilities along the
southern border. My testimony today will focus on the dangerous
overcrowding and prolonged detention recently observed by DHS
OIG inspectors in both the El Paso Del Norte Processing Center
and facilities in the Rio Grande Valley.
These issues pose a serious and imminent threat to the
health and safety of both DHS personnel and detainees and
require the Department's immediate attention and action. DHS
OIG conducts unannounced inspections of CBP facilities to
evaluate compliance with CBP's Transport, Escort, Detention,
and Search standards, otherwise known as the TEDS standards.
TEDS standards governs CBP's interactions with detainees,
providing guidance on things like duration of detention, access
to medical care, access to food and water, and hygiene.
Our inspections enable us to identify instances of
noncompliance with TEDS standards and to propose appropriate
corrective action. In doing so, we seek to drive transparency
and accountability at the Department of Homeland Security.
Although CBP has sometimes struggled complying with standards
relating to duration of detention, our recent unannounced
inspections revealed a situation far more grievous than those
previously encountered by our inspectors.
For instance, when our team arrived at the El Paso Del
Norte Processing Center, they found that the facility, which
has a maximum capacity of 125 detainees, had more than 750
detainees onsite. The following day that number increased to
900. We have also observed serious overcrowding among
unaccompanied alien children, or UACs, at all the Border Patrol
facilities we visited in the Rio Grande Valley.
Additionally, we found that individuals, including
children, were being detained well beyond the 72 hours
generally permitted under TEDS standards and the Flores
agreement. For instance, at the centralized processing center
in McAllen, Texas, many children had been in custody longer
than a week. In fact, some UACs under the age of seven had been
in custody for more than two weeks.
Under these circumstances, CBP has struggled to comply with
TEDS standards. For instance, although all the facilities we
visited in the Rio Grande Valley had infant formula, diapers,
baby wipes, and juice and snacks for children, two facilities
had not provided children access to hot meals as required until
the week we arrived.
Children at three of the five facilities we visited had no
access to showers, limited access to a change of clothes, and
no access to laundry facilities. Additionally, while Border
Patrol tried to provide the least restrictive setting available
for children, the limited space for medical isolation resulted
in some UACs and families being held in closed cells. Space
limitations are also affecting single adults. The lack of space
has restricted CBP's ability to separate detainees with
infectious diseases, such as chicken pox, scabies, and
influenza from each other and from other detainees. According
to management, these conditions also affect the health of
Border Patrol agents who are experiencing high incidents of
illness.
There is also concern that the overcrowding and prolonged
detention may be contributing to rising tensions among
detainees. A senior manager at one facility in the Rio Grande
Valley called the situation, quote, a ticking time bomb.
Despite these immense challenges, we observed CBP staff
interacting with detainees in a professional and respectful
manner and attempting to comply with standards to the extent
possible.
Notwithstanding their efforts, Border Patrol requires
immediate assistance to manage the overcrowding in its
facilities. CBP is not responsible for providing long-term
detention to detainees. Therefore, CBP facilities, like those
we visited, are not designed to hold individuals for lengthy
periods of time. However, with limited bed space at ICE and HHS
facilities nationwide, detainees are left in CBP custody until
a placement can be arranged in a long-term facility.
In its response to our management alerts, DHS described the
situation on the border as an acute and worsening crisis. Our
observations comport with that characterization and that is why
we have called on the Department to begin immediate action to
remedy the situation. Although DHS has asserted that it has
reduced the number of UACs in custody in the last few weeks, we
remain concerned that it's not taking sufficient steps to
address the overcrowding and prolonged detention we observed,
particularly with respect to single adult detainees.
We will continue to monitor the situation at the border and
have already begun new work aimed specifically at identifying
the root causes of some of these issues. We hope this work will
assist the Department in addressing these challenges. In the
meantime, DHS leadership must develop a strategic, coordinated
approach that will allow it to make good on its commitment to
ensure the safety, security, and care of those in its custody.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I'd be
happy to answer any questions you or the committee have.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much.
Ms. Maxwell?
STATEMENT OF ANN MAXWELL, ASSISTANT INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR
EVALUATION AND INSPECTIONS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN
SERVICES
Ms. Maxwell. Good morning, Chairman Cummings, Ranking
Member Jordan, and other distinguished members of the
committee.
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss OIG's work focused
on the health and welfare of children in HHS' care. To protect
the vulnerable is a core part of our mission, and as such, we
have been conducting oversight of HHS' Unaccompanied Alien
Children Program for the past decade. This program provides
immigrant children that have been referred to HHS with
temporary shelter, care, and services before releasing them to
sponsors in the U.S. to await their immigration hearings.
This past summer, over 200 OIG staff fanned out across nine
states to visit 45 HHS-funded facilities. We assessed the
challenges the facilities face in keeping children safe and
meeting their mental healthcare needs. We anticipate publishing
our results in a series of reports over the next several
months, and we look forward to briefing the committee on this
work, given your strong commitment and oversight role.
In addition to our work addressing health and safety
issues, we are also reviewing efforts by HHS to identify and
reunify children who were separated by DHS and referred to HHS
for care. We released our first report about this topic in
January of this year, and the second is with the Department now
for review and will be issued in the coming months.
The focus of my testimony today will be our findings
released in January related to the number of children impacted
by family separations. At that time, we reported the total
number of separated children was unknown, but certainly more
than the 2,737 children reported. A lawsuit that required
public accounting of separated children only covered children
that, one, were separated from a parent and, two, were still in
HHS custody as of the date of the court order, which was June
26, 2018. But before that date, HHS had released from its
custody other children who had been separated from a parent.
In fact, HHS staff observed a significant increase in
separated children starting in the summer of 2017. Since the
release of our report, the court has expanded the lawsuit, and
in response, the government is working to identify children who
were separated from a parent dating back to July 1 of 2017. So
far, the government has identified an additional 791 children
who were potentially separated.
It's worth noting that the government initially estimated
that this effort to identify these children would take one to
two years. Even the six months that the court ultimately
granted the government reveals how significant the shortcomings
were in the data captured about these children and their
families. Judge Sabraw noted that detainees' personal property,
their money, and documents were better accounted for than their
children were.
To address these serious shortcomings, HHS has taken steps
to improve its ability to identify the children DHS is
currently separating and referring to HHS. HHS now flags
separated children in its case management system and maintains
a tracking spreadsheet that captures information about them.
However, concerns remain about the completeness and accuracy of
information about these children. HHS staff reported that DHS
sometimes provides limited information about the reasons for
the separations. Of the 118 children we reviewed, DHS reported
that 65 were separated because the parent had a criminal
history, which could include such crimes as unauthorized use of
a vehicle or a prior charge for marijuana possession.
In some cases, though, the nature of the criminal history
was not specified, even when HHS staff requested more
information. Incomplete or inaccurate information about
separated children, including the reasons for separation impact
HHS' ability to make placement decisions that are in the best
interest of each child.
According to HHS staff, not all criminal histories would
prevent a child from being released back to their parent. In
conclusion, we strongly encourage HHS and DHS to look for
opportunities to improve communication and data about separated
children, to minimize their ramifications associated with these
separations. We can do better by these children, and we must.
Thank you to the Congress for providing OIG with additional
resources to augment our important work in this area. I look
forward to discussing our work with you today and to future
conversations when our ongoing work is completed. Thank you.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much.
Ms. Mukherjee?
STATEMENT OF ELORA MUKHERJEE, DIRECTOR, IMMIGRANTS' RIGHTS
CLINIC, COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL
Ms. Mukherjee. Thank you, Chairman Cummings, Ranking Member
Jordan, and distinguished members of the committee for having
me here today. I'm a clinical professor of law at Columbia Law
School and director of the Immigrants' Rights Clinic. For the
last 12 years, I have been working with families and children
detained along our southern border.
Over the last five years, I have spent more than a thousand
hours in immigration detention facilities, hundreds of them,
interviewing families and children. All of my work has been on
a pro bono basis. I was at the Clint CBP facility last month
interviewing children as a monitor for the Flores settlement
agreement. My colleagues and I interviewed nearly 70 kids. I
want to share with you what I heard, what I saw, and what I
smelled.
At Clint, I saw children who were dirty. They could not
wash their hands with soap because none was available. Many had
not brushed their teeth for days. They were wearing the same
clothes they had on when they crossed the border. Clothes that
were covered in nasal mucous, vomit, breast milk, urine.
Multiple children had a strong stench emanating from them
because they had not showered in days, and they were wearing
the same clothes. They could not even change their underwear.
Because of the smell, it was hard for me to sit close to
some of the children while we spoke. Children were hungry.
Children were traumatized. They consistently cried, and some
wept in their interviews with me. One six-year-old girl,
detained all alone, could only say, ``I'm scared, I'm scared,
I'm scared,'' over and over again. She couldn't even say her
own name. I couldn't help her. I had to return her to the
guards. Not being able to do anything for her broke my heart.
Children were sick. They were coughing. They had fevers.
They had snot running down their faces. There was a flu
epidemic and lice. Children as young as eight years old were
required to take care of even younger children who were
strangers to them. Guards would bring in the little ones and
demand: Who is going to take care of this one?
We met a girl tasked with caring for a two-year-old who did
not have a diaper on. He never speaks, she reported. He peed in
his pants and all over the chair during a meeting with us. The
youngest child I met with at Clint was five months old. At CBP
facilities last month, my colleagues found a newborn detained
for seven days, a two-year-old detained for 20 days, and an
eight-month-old detained for three weeks.
While I was at Clint, I met a teenage boy who had been
separated from his mother 16 days earlier. He was extremely
worried about his mama. He did not know if she was still alive.
When we asked, CBP confirmed that he had, in fact, been
separated from his mother and that his mother had been released
from custody days earlier. I helped to arrange a phone call so
this mother and child could speak with each other. They wept
with relief. Before that day, no efforts had been made to
reunite that child with his mother. No efforts had even been
made to identify him as a child who had been separated from his
parent.
At Clint, I met a six-year-old boy who I will never forget.
He was tiny, and he hardly spoke. When I asked him if he was at
Clint with anyone, he began to sob nearly inconsolably for an
hour, nearly an hour. Through his sobs, he managed to say that
he had a brother. I had to break out of my role as a lawyer. I
let him sit on my lap. I wiped his tears. I wiped his nose, and
I rubbed his back. And I teared up too. Here was a child, the
same age as my son, stuck in a hell hole.
A lawyer for CBP saw us both, eventually a guard brought
him a lollipop as an incentive to take him back to his cell. I
pleaded with CBP counsel to please prioritize appropriate care
for this child. Later that day or the next day, CBP counsel
informed me that they would release him and reunite him with
his brother. Why didn't that happen sooner? What would have
happened if I didn't meet with him that day? What is happening
to hundreds and thousands of other children like him? Along our
southern border today and every day, children are being
forcibly separated from their parents and other family members
as a result of cruel policy choices made by this
administration.
For many of these children, the government makes little or
no attempt to reunite them with their family members. Our team
demanded a tour of Clint and visits with the sickest children
who were in the quarantine. CBP banned us from both. Why
wouldn't CBP allow us in? We are authorized by the Federal
courts to monitor immigration detention centers where children
are being held. I was and I remain shaken to my core by what I
witnessed at Clint.
I have three children of my own. They are three, six, and
nine. I do not have the words to explain to them what is
happening to children their age in America right now. Families
belong together, children belong free, and with their loved
ones. That is what is required by our Constitution, by our
Federal laws, and by our basic humanity.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank
you.
This is what we are going to do. We have a vote right now.
There's 10 minutes left on the vote I think, and so what we're
going to do is, we're going to go into recess. We will
reconvene at 1:15. At that time--I'm sorry. This is the way it
goes. I mean, we're dealing with urgent situations, and then
we'll be back at 1:15. Thank you very much. We stand in recess.
[Recess.]
Mr. Raskin.
[Presiding.] The committee will reconvene. Members in the
front row who are doing such a great job, you're welcome to
come sit up here so we can have a more intimate and coherent
group. I know a lot of members have headed back to their
districts. Without objection, the chair is authorized to
declare a recess at any time.
And we are now delighted to welcome for her five-minute
testimony, Jennifer Nagda, the policy director for the Young
Center for Immigrant Children's Rights.
STATEMENT OF JENNIFER NAGDA, POLICY DIRECTOR, YOUNG CENTER FOR
IMMIGRANT CHILDREN'S RIGHTS
Ms. Nagda. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Ranking Member Jordan, and
distinguished members of the committee. Thank you for inviting
me to be here today. The Younger Center for Immigrant
Children's Rights advocates for the best interests of
unaccompanied and separated children according to well-
established and universally accepted principles of child
protection.
We are working to create an immigration system that ensures
the safety and well-being of every child, and that recognizes
and treats children as children. Since 2004, our attorneys,
social workers, and bilingual volunteers have been appointed by
the Secretary of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee
Resettlement as the independent child advocate, or best
interest guardian ad litem for thousands of child trafficking
victims, and other vulnerable unaccompanied and separated
children in Federal custody who find themselves in very adult
immigration proceedings.
Our statutory mandate is to make recommendations regarding
the best interests of individual children to Federal agencies,
including the Department of Homeland Security, Justice, and
Health and Human Services. Over the past two years, across
eight locations, we have worked on hundreds of cases where DHS
officials unlawfully separated children from their parents.
If I leave you all with one message today, it is this:
Children are still being separated from their parents at the
border for reasons that have nothing to do with child safety,
and which would never pass muster under the child protection
laws of all 50 states. Despite the end of zero tolerance one
year ago this month, the Young Center has been appointed to
more than 100 children taken from their parents during this
last year, nearly 20 percent of the reported 700 children newly
separated. The average age of these children is seven years
old, the equivalent of a second grader.
These children spend months in government custody, often
thousands of miles away from their families. Our staff, my
colleagues, spend hundreds of hours just trying to find parents
who might be in U.S. Marshals' custody, or ICE adult detention
centers. We negotiate with ICE officers just to speak with the
parents and convince them to let parents speak with their
children, often for the first time in months. And then we work
to unravel the reasons for their separations.
I'm here today to address the reasons for these continuing
separations and their lasting impact on children. In our
experience, DHS has separated families based on mere arrests,
or suspicion of criminal activity by the parent. No state would
permit separation for these reasons, unless the crime was
related to child abuse. In nearly every case, we have concluded
that DHS's reasons for the separation had nothing to do with
the child's safety and that the separation was contrary to the
child's best interests.
In one case, a father with a single DUI and a prior
deportation was separated from his child. In another, the
mother of a toddler was accused of being a gang member, which
even if true, does not by itself justify separation, but she
was not a gang member, she was a victim of extraordinary gang
violence, who fled here specifically to seek protection for her
child, only to have her child taken from her for over eight
months.
And we have discovered that in many of these cases, DHS
ultimately allows the same family to reunify months later, but
only to deport the family. The split-second decision to
separate a child from her parents can take weeks, or even
months, to undo.
In the meantime, the harm to children is indisputable. From
the Supreme Court to state courts, our laws reflect the
importance of parents and family to children's healthy growth
and development. Scientific research bears this out,
documenting the lasting harm to children's physical, emotional,
and brain development when they are separated from loving
caregivers. Our independent child advocates have witnessed this
harm firsthand.
In our written testimony, we tell the story of a six-year-
old boy who believed for months that his father had
intentionally left him. In truth, his father was given no
choice. He had gently handed his son over to prevent officers
from forcibly taking his child from his arms. Their bond can't
be repaired just by putting father and son together on a plane
to home country.
In our written testimony, we propose eight concrete
recommendations for Congress to stop these unnecessary and
unlawful separations. I'll leave you with just two: First, no
child should ever be separated from a parent unless there is an
immediate risk of harm. Congress should prohibit separations
absent verifiable evidence that the child is in danger.
And, second, Congress should require each Federal agency to
consider the best interest of unaccompanied and separated
children, their safety, their wishes, and their well-being in
every decision from the moment of apprehension through the
conclusion of the child's case. This committee can play a
critical role in stopping ongoing separations and ensuring that
immigrant children are treated and recognized as children.
Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much for your testimony, Ms.
Nagda. We come now to Thomas Homan, who is the former acting
director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
You're recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF THOMAS D. HOMAN, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, U.S.
IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT
Mr. Homan. Sir, my statement is going to take about six
minutes, I appreciate leeway since other panel members had up
to seven minutes.
Mr. Raskin. All right. Go for it.
Mr. Homan. Chairman Cummings, Ranking Member Jordan, and
members of the committee, it is a privilege to appear before
you today, and thank you for this invitation.
I spent 34 years enforcing immigration laws. I started my
career in 1984 as a Border Patrol agent, then as a special
agent and climbed the ranks, one step at a time, to become the
acting ICE director. I have conducted and oversaw criminal
investigations into alien----
Mr. Raskin. If the gentleman will suspend for just a
moment. We're not allowed to have graphic poster displays
during testimony of witnesses. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. Homan. I have conducted and oversaw criminal
investigations into alien smuggling, human trafficking,
immigration fraud, narcotics trafficking, gun trafficking and
human trafficking, child predator crimes and other customs-
related offenses. As the executive associate director of ICE, I
oversaw all interior enforcement operations, to include
arrests, detention, removal of those illegally in United States
in order to be removed by an immigration judge.
Mr. Raskin. Forgive me, Mr. Homan. The gentleman will
suspend. Officer, the people who were doing that are allowed to
stay if they agree not to do any more poster demonstrations, so
just let them know that and they can quietly be readmitted.
Very good.
Mr. Homan, your time will be compensated for. Thanks.
Mr. Homan. I returned on January 27, 2017, was asked on
that same day to postpone my retirement and serve as the acting
director of ICE by the President of the United States. That was
a great honor. I stayed and served for another year and a half
until my second retirement on June 30, 2018.
With more than three decades of immigration enforcement
experience, I am extremely concerned about the growing risk to
our Nation's public safety, security, rule of law, that is all
due to illegal immigration. What is happening at our southern
border is unprecedented in several ways. The composition of
those entering illegally is unprecedented, because 70 percent
of those are either family units or unaccompanied children.
It is also unprecedented that the majority of those
crossing are abusing the asylum laws, and making fraudulent
claims of asylum and are exploiting the loopholes that Congress
has reduced to close. Also unprecedented is the attack and
vilification on the American patriots that serve this Nation as
Border Patrol agents, ICE officers and agents. The biggest
problem involves the unwillingness of Congress to address the
loopholes that are causing this crisis.
I and many others have spent the last two years saying what
needs to be done, not only to protect our borders, enforce the
law in a meaningful way, but to also save lives. However, those
calls for action fall has fallen on deaf ears, because there is
no more interest in fixing this problem. It is about open
border agenda, resisting our President, more interest than
that, in securing our border. This should not be a partisan
issue. I don't care if you're Republican or Democrat, you
should want to secure our border.
There's no downside of having a secured border. There's no
downside of having less illegal immigration. There is no
downside on less illegal drugs coming into this country. There
is no downside in stopping the bankroll and criminal cartels in
Mexico that smuggle both people and drugs. After all, Border
Patrol and ICE are merely enforcing the laws enacted by
Congress.
In the past few weeks, the attacks on the Border Patrol
have swelled. The media and some in Congress want to say that
those in the Border Patrol custody are mistreated. The holding
facilities are overcrowded and there are not enough showers.
The DHS inspector general also said the facilities are
overcrowded, which, in turn, affects the quality of care within
the facility. However, this should be no surprise to anyone.
Border Patrol leadership and acting DHS Secretary McAleenan
having been warning Congress for months that this system is
overwhelmed, and that more funds are needed so these people can
be moved quickly to a more appropriate facility designed for
them.
The same people that vilify the Border Patrol for detention
conditions are the same people that refuse to answer their call
for help until it's too late. I find it disheartened that no
one here I've heard today wants to talk about the 4,000 lives
that the Border Patrol saved last year. Over 4,000 people that
were found by Border Patrol agents in dire straits, that may
have perished if it wasn't for the heroic efforts of these
agents.
No one talks about how these men and women bring toys from
their home and their own children to these facilities so
migrant children will have something to play with. No one talks
about the sicknesses of these migrants and how these agents
take that sickness home to their own families because of that
exposure. No one wants to talk about the how the agents have to
go through TB screening constantly because they have been
exposed to that serious illness.
No one wants to talk about how these men and women who care
for these children that cross illegally into this country, I'm
talking about unaccompanied alien children now, cross into this
country in the hands of criminal organizations that were
abandoned by their own families. No one wants to talk about
that. No one wants to talk about how these Border Patrol agent
mom and dads console these children, and it is disgraceful.
Finally, I want to address the unprecedented attack and
vilification of the men and women of ICE and the Border Patrol.
These men and women who chose a life of service to this Nation
deserve better, not only from the media, from those here in
this committee and other Members of Congress. These men and
women who chose a life of service deserve more.
These men and women are working in extremely difficult
environments, and dealing with an extraordinary influx of
vulnerable people. They are doing the best they can under the
circumstances. As a 34-year veteran of law enforcement, it is
shocking, shocking to see the constant attacks against those
that leave the safety and security of their homes every day,
put on a Kevlar vest and put a gun on their hip, and risk their
own safety to defend this Nation.
Those that attack the professional integrity of those that
serve and blatantly throw unsubstantiated allegations against
these men and women with zero evidence of guilt are wrong and
should be ashamed. Most of these allegations are to be untrue
after extensive investigation, but it's too late when that
happens because the damage has been done.
The agency has been tarnished and the spirit of the men and
women that serve are many times broken, their morale is at an
all-time low. They have to wake up every day and see news
reports and comments from Representatives in Congress that they
are Nazis, White Supremacists, that they operate concentration
camps, that they knowingly abuse women and children.
Those that make those outrageous statements believe that
once you decide to carry an ICE badge or a Border Patrol badge,
that you lose all sense of humanity. They think that no longer
do these people have a heart or they care about other people.
ICE agents and Border Patrol agents are mom and dads too,
they have children. What they see every day in this
unprecedented surge of children and families affects them
deeply and emotionally. It is something they're going to deal
with every day and will stay with them the rest of their lives.
Over half of Border Patrol agents are of Latin descent. And
to say that they abuse those from Central America with no
evidence of abuse is just plain wrong and insulting to those to
have to endure this crisis each and every day.
I ask this: Has any of those who easily attack the men and
women of the Border Patrol, ICE, have you ever walked up to one
and thanked one for serving their Nation? Have you ever walked
up to one and thanked them for putting their lives on the line
every day for this country?
Have you ever attended the honor burial of a Border Patrol
agent or ICE agent that died during their job, died for this
country? Have you ever had to console a small child or spouse
of a fallen officer? I have too many times. Have any of these
people who want to attack the Border Patrol and ICE, have you
ever walked the walls of the National Law Enforcement Memorial,
just down the street, and see 21,000 names of men and women
that made the ultimate sacrifice for this country, which
includes hundreds of Border Patrol agents and ICE agents and
their legacy agencies? These agents deserve better from the
Representatives of Congress. With that, I'll be available for
questions.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Mr. Homan, for your testimony. And I
want to thank all of the witnesses for their excellent
testimony. I now recognize myself for five minutes for
questions.
I want to shine a light on a key finding in today's
committee staff report. President Trump and others in the
administration have suggested that the zero tolerance policy is
designed to deter illegal immigration, but at other times, they
have said that families are only separated in order to
facilitate criminal prosecutions of the parents. But the report
details several instances where children were separated from
their parents, or a parent, but the parent never actually
served time in jail, or in prison, or in criminal custody.
For example, Secretary Nielsen said the only thing that had
changed under the zero tolerance policy was that everyone is
subject to prosecution, and that parents would go to jail, and
then they would then be separated from their family. But what
actually is going on? Are there children being separated from
their parents unnecessarily? Ms. Mukherjee, let me come to you
and ask for your insights on that.
Ms. Mukherjee. Yes. Yes. Families are being separated every
day and unnecessarily. Government has admitted to separating
more than 3,500 families. In addition, since the court had an
injunction last summer, last June, ordering the stop to
separations of parents and children, more than 700 family units
have been separated. Many of these family units are being
separated based on only allegations and arrests that may have
nothing to do with child safety.
Children should only be forcibly separated from a parent or
another family member if that adult family member is posing
imminent harm to the child. There is no evidence that that is
happening.
Mr. Raskin. Ms. Nagda, let me come to you. There are
reports that we've received that a parent was in criminal
custody for less than a day. They left a facility, and then
either charges were not pressed against them, or they were
given time served for the time they had already been in
detention. They returned to the detention center and their
child is already gone. That's absolutely astounding to read. Is
that taking place, to your knowledge?
Ms. Nagda. What you just described, Chairman, is what was
happening during the zero tolerance policies, where many
parents were being prosecuted for the act of appearing and
asking for protection at the border. And those were often
processed just in a day in a Federal court, and the parents
return to find their children missing.
Today, parents and children are being separated when DHS
alleges any kind of criminal history, which does not have to be
narrowly defined by the parent. It could be an arrest from a
decade ago. It could be an allegation of criminal history in
home country. We have worked with multiple parents whose
children were taken away because DHS accused the parent of
having a criminal history in home country. Our team's working
with other legal services provider procure documents from home
country confirming that there was no criminal history. So
there's no reason to know what information DHS had, but at that
point, weeks and sometimes months have passed.
Mr. Raskin. Wait, so you're telling me that's the policy
today? A parent shows up with a child seeking asylum in the
United States. It's determined that they have an offense, and
it could be a very minor offense that has nothing do with child
abuse or child neglect or anything like that, and yet, they end
up losing their child in the process where the child can be
separated from them?
Ms. Nagda. That's correct. And not only does it not have to
be a minor offense, it doesn't have to be a conviction. It
could be an arrest where charges were dismissed, or it could be
suspicion of criminal activity. So we have worked with a parent
who appeared to be and was concerned about and may potentially
have been a gang member in home country without no verifiable
evidence who is separated from his toddler son.
Mr. Raskin. Is there anyone on the panel who believes it is
the right policy to separate children from their parents in
order to deter other people from coming to the United States?
Okay. I want to talk about a specific policy change that the
administration could make right now at no cost to the taxpayers
that would reduce the number of immigrant children living in
overcrowded and dangerous facilities.
I'm talking about rescinding the administration's April
2018 memorandum of agreement, or MOA, that requires the
Department of Health and Human Services to share information
about potential sponsors for immigrant children with the
Department of Homeland Security. Last year, the administration
used data obtained under this agreement to arrest and deport at
least a 170 people who otherwise would have been willing
sponsors of the children.
Ms. Mukherjee, what happens to children whose potential
sponsors are targeted for deportation?
Ms. Mukherjee. What happens to the kids is that they are
left for days, weeks, months, without anyone to take care of
them who's in their family who's a loved one. Last year, my
client, Baby Constantine, just four months old, was forcibly
separated from his father. His father was then deported without
his baby. It took weeks, months, for Baby Constantine to be
return to his family.
Mr. Raskin. Okay. My time is up, and I'm going to yield now
to the ranking member, Mr. Jordan.
Mr. Homan. Can I respond to that question?
Mr. Raskin. Well, Mr. Jordan can--we're pretty strict about
our time here, so Mr. Jordan can ask you--Mr. Hice is actually
going to take it.
Mr. Hice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, there's so many
things going on today, my mind is going in multiple directions.
I think immediately how we were corrected, somewhat
reprimanded, but I'll use the word ``corrected,'' for even
using the word ``manufactured crisis'' over and over and over,
that the Democrats have said. But we don't have to go very far
to see that that correction is not justified.
On February 23 in Laredo, Texas, Speaker Pelosi said, there
is no national emergency at the border. There is no emergency
at the border. She was either misinformed or she was
misinforming. Shortly thereafter, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez
called it a fake national emergency. Again, the word
``manufactured'' was not used. It was an outright statement
that this is a fake national emergency. She also referred to it
as the President was faking a crisis at the border. I don't
believe that correction today is in order.
There has been an absolute about-face and shifting of
position from the Democrats. It's already been mentioned back
in February, the President called for an national emergency at
the border, and now we're hearing that there is a national
emergency from both sides, because indeed there is.
In May, the administration requested $4.5 billion in
emergency funding. Eight weeks later, we finally get something
done on June 27, but there again, many in this room did not
vote for it, and yet they are talking today as though they have
some moral high ground. The bottom line is there is a root
cause. There is an emergency and there is also a root cause to
the emergency. And to this time, we're still not addressing the
problem. And at some point, this body has got to face reality
and deal with the issues.
I've got a couple of real quick questions, Ms. Costello,
first for you. Is the Border Patrol responsible for long-term
detention?
Ms. Costello. No, sir, they are not.
Mr. Hice. That's correct. They keep short term and then
after that, when they are able, they send them to ICE or DHS,
correct?
Ms. Costello. HHS, yes.
Mr. Hice. I mean HHS, thank you.
Ms. Costello. Yes.
Mr. Hice. So the Border Patrol cannot transfer these
detainees if both ICE and HHS are overwhelmed themselves?
Ms. Costello. Yes. As of now, that is our understanding.
We're going to be doing further work to try to get to the root
causes of some of the issues we identified in the management
alert.
Mr. Hice. Mr. Homan, is that basically your experience of
what the problem is?
Mr. Homan. Sir, I would--well, the statement made by HHS a
few minutes ago was wrong, and that is a very important thing I
need to address. As far as the policy of HHS, sir, it needs to
be stricter. When I was the ICE director, I tried to create an
MOA with HHS. If you're a parent and you hire a criminal
organization to have your kid smuggled in the trunk of a car or
back of a tractor trailer, you should come to ICE to get
vetted. If you're illegally in the United States, we'll put you
in proceedings with a child. We won't take you into custody,
but you'll stand shoulder to shoulder with that child and claim
your fears of family. I called that parenting, first of all.
You, second, you got to hold them accountable. In the
Fiscal Year 2019 appropriations bill, when we finally reopened
government, what did the Democratic side of that caucus do?
They added language that ICE cannot takes action against
anybody the UAC household. When I said at the time, if you do
that, the number of UACs will swell, you'll see a surge like
never before because these now these people can operate with no
impunity, no consequence, no deterrence.
And, what happened, sir? A record number of UACs coming
across this country. If we're really here to talk about
protecting children, then that memorandum of understanding
needs to be more strict.
Mr. Hice. Thank you for that. You know, just this whole
hearing seems to me to be rife with hypocrisy and falsehood. It
strikes me that criticizing Border Patrol and ICE and so forth
for overcrowded detention centers. I mean, we don't condemn
teachers for having overcrowded classes. We don't blame
teachers for illnesses floating around in overcrowded
classrooms. And yet, it's fair game for us to do it right here.
And the fault, the problem lies with us right here in
Congress for not addressing the problems, and instead referring
to political theater. And I just, I urge all of us to come to
the point of addressing the issue straight up.
Mr. Homan, why does ICE not have enough detention beds--and
my time is up, and I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Homan. ICE has never had enough detention beds. And I
know it is a big controversy when money was moved around the
Department last year to get more detention beds. They said,
What a travesty. What people need to know, eight out of the
last nine years, that same thing happened. It happened under
the Obama Administration. ICE has never been funded enough
beds.
Mr. Raskin. Okay. Thank you. The gentleman's time is
expired. Mr. Cooper, you're recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Cooper. I thank the chair. And I would like to suggest
that the last two days in this committee have been historic
ones. Yesterday, we had the first hearing, I think, in this
entire committee's history, on the well-being of U.S. children.
And today, thankfully, we're having a hearing on the well-being
of children at the border. These are important issues, because
I think most Americans think that we can have secure borders
and humane borders.
I want to particularly congratulate today's hearing,
because both panels have been extraordinary. The member panel
was something, unlike anything I have ever seen before in my
tenure in Congress. And it was great that members were able to
hear both sides of the question, both groups of voices. I
particularly want to praise my colleagues who went to the
border just last weekend to see firsthand what these problems
are.
But the second panel is no less remarkable. I was
particularly struck by the testimony of Ms. Mukherjee, it is
heartbreaking. And Nashville families have been calling me,
opening their hearts and offering to open up their homes to
these poor families, particularly, to these poor separated
children, because I think everybody in America wants these kids
reunited with their families. They cannot understand a country
that is so cold and heartless to have policies like this.
So, I think just for the general public, we need to
understand the importance of two things: The Flores decision,
some court decision somewhere. I saw in Ms. Nagda's testimony,
that I think it's first in your policy recommendations that we
keep the Flores protections in place. Can the panelists
describe briefly the importance of that decision in terms of
protecting these poor innocent children?
Mr. Homan. I'll address it first. The Flores settlement
agreement needs to be done away with. Because in Fiscal Year
2014 and Fiscal Year 2015 under the Obama Administration, when
families first started coming across, we built our first family
detention center, which no one wants to talk about. And we held
these families for 40, 45 days so they got to see a judge. 90
percent of them lost their case. We put them on the airplane
and sent them home, as required by law, and guess what, the
border numbers declined significantly.
It wasn't until Judge Dolly Gee of the Ninth Circuit, says
you can only hold them for 20 days, that we saw a surge,
because now they know they can't be held long enough to see a
judge. If they are really escaping fear and persecution,
there's no reason they can't stay in the family detention
center, not a jail, time enough to see a judge.
Mr. Cooper. Other witnesses as well?
Ms. Nagda. Thank you for that question. I will just point
out that the Flores Settlement Agreement, which provides
baseline standards for care, things like food and water and
beds has existed for over 20 years. It is not a new piece of
law. Similarly, the anti-trafficking law is over 10 years old.
These are the only two ways in which U.S. law treats immigrant
children any differently than adults.
And with all of the evidence that we have about how
fundamentally different childhood is from adulthood, the idea
of losing these two pieces of protection for children is really
quite extraordinary. What we should be focused on is enhancing
protections for children so that we can actually learn their
stories, and ensure that they have a fair day in court. That
ought to be something we can all agree on. The idea that
children should have a fair opportunity to tell their stories.
And the Department of Homeland Security's own advisory
committee, which I sat on back in 2015 and 2016, all members
were appointed by the Department of Homeland Security,
concluded that children should never be held in detention,
including family detention, solely for the purposes of
immigration enforcement ever.
Mr. Homan. There's only one way you can guarantee----
Mr. Raskin. Sir, I'm----
Mr. Homan. No, I'm sorry. This is about transparency to the
American people.
Mr. Raskin. Well, the time belongs to Mr. Cooper, and I
thought he was going down the aisle.
Mr. Cooper. Yes, the witnesses.
Ms. Mukherjee. I want to echo everything my colleague said
about the critical importance of the Flores Agreement. Without
the Flores Agreement, my colleagues and I would never have been
allowed into Clint to interview the children there and expose
what is happening in our country in our name and with our
taxpayer dollars.
I also want to correct the record. Mr. Homan just claimed
that 90 percent of the mothers and children detained at Dilley
were ordered deported. That is not true. Nearly all of the
mothers and children were ordered deported before pro bono
lawyers like me showed up. I helped to build a system of
universal representation for mothers and children at Dilley.
Once we started that program, every mother and child was
granted asylum or another form of immigration relief. This
shows how important access to counsel is for detained immigrant
children, detained immigrant families, and those who are
outside of detention as well. Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. And I'm going to permit the other two witnesses
to give quick responses, too, if there's anything you want to
say. No.
Mr. Cooper. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I see my time has
expired.
Mr. Raskin. The gentleman's time has expired. Meantime,
without objection, the distinguished gentleman from Illinois,
Mr. Garcia, shall be permitted to join the committee on the
dais and be recognized for questioning the witnesses when the
time comes.
Now Mr. Gibbs is recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before I start my
questions, I'm going to let Mr. Homan respond to the previous.
Mr. Homan, over here. Over here. Over here. Over here. Go ahead
and respond.
Mr. Homan. Sorry. The 90 percent number, the executive
Office of Immigration view--the numbers are clear; 89 to 90
percent of all Central American families that claim asylum at
the border do not get relief from the immigration court.
Because, you know, 50 percent, or actually 48 of those families
claiming fear at the border, never file a case in immigration
court. Once they get released, they're in the wind. 90 percent,
sir. 89.6 percent, I think the latest number was, of every
family from Central America to claim asylum at the border were
not given relief. And any system where there is 90 percent
failure rate needs to be fixed.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you. You know, I sat through the first
panel and the second panel, been great panels. And one thing
I've noticed, I think everybody sees us and what everybody is
saying is pretty much generally accurate. And I think the
problem is here, the administration, the Trump administration,
asked months ago that we have a crisis at the border, asked for
more resources to change our asylum laws and reform our
immigration laws and do all that, and this Congress failed to
act, and now we have it blown up.
We have got a crisis at the border, because we've got
people at the detention facilities that are 10 times or more
above capacity, and it's a crisis. Now everybody is blaming the
Border Patrol and ICE. And I agree with Mr. Homan, those agents
down there, they are family people, too, they are human beings,
they're Americans, and we shouldn't desecrate them because
they're doing their job with the resources they have. And it's
just unbelievable to me that this Congress took this long to
pass some legislation here the week before last, $4.6 billion
of humanitarian aid, which some people on this panel voted
against, by the way, and it is helping them--Mr. Homan, what do
you think that passage of that legislation, those resources,
what do you anticipate, what do you think is happening?
Mr. Homan. With the supplemental funding?
Mr. Gibbs. Yes, the supplemental funding.
Mr. Homan. The supplemental funding was late.
Mr. Gibbs. Yes.
Mr. Homan. And that's why they had the conditions they had,
but it's working. It's my understanding that now children are
being moved within 72 hours, as required by statute, which is a
good thing. No one wants a child to be locked up in a Border
Patrol facility. The head of Border Patrol and the Secretary
said that numerous times.
Mr. Gibbs. See, that's my point. The people--the entity
that ought to get blamed here is the U.S. Congress for failing
to act. I mean, the administration asked months ago, we got a
crisis, but we heard from the other side, it's a manufactured
crisis, it's not a crisis. Now it's a crisis, they're all
saying that. Some of them went down to the border and saw it
was a crisis.
And I'm sure there's some examples of--because of the
overwhelming conditions--there's problems and challenges, and I
know I've seen the reports of the border agents, and Mr. Homan
talked about it, where agents are bringing stuff in from their
own families out of their personal, you know, items, personal
budgets to help, doing what they want because they're human
beings, too, and sometimes, I think, we forget that. And
they're really struggling right now to get this done.
And I want to talk a little bit more about the Flores
Amendment Settlement. You know, Mr. Homan, what has that done
to really impede what you can act on?
Mr. Homan. I should have been more clear in my statement.
When I'm talking about the Flores Settlement Agreement, when
I'm talking about when the Ninth Circuit decides that they are
going to limit it to 20 days, and they know that it takes about
40 to 45 days in a detained setting to see a judge, they knew
it was going to happen. And I said what was going to happen,
but I was called a fear monger. I said, if that 20 days gets
put in, you're going to see a surge of families than you never
seen before, and it happened. I was right.
And if you're really escaping death and persecution from
your home government, the only way we can guarantee you're
going to see a judge, because we know the absentia rates is out
of control, these families--a lot of these families are not
showing up in court even if they file with the court. The only
way we can guarantee due process if we detain them in the
family detention center, which the Inspector General inspected
many times. We're not talking about Border Patrol facilities
now, we're talking about a center with child psychologists,
pediatricians, doctors, nurses, educational programs.
Mr. Gibbs. But you're overwhelmed.
Mr. Homan. We don't have enough family detention----
Mr. Gibbs. You're overwhelmed----
Mr. Homan. Because these numbers have just gone through the
roof. But if we had a true sense that we can guarantee people
to see a judge, and those who have failed their claim to
asylum, if they don't fall within the rules of asylum, and send
them home----
Mr. Gibbs. I'm almost out of time.
Mr. Homan. It worked in 2014 and 2015 when we sent planes
of people that failed their interview and failed the judge, and
the judge ordered removal. We said that the numbers went down.
Mr. Gibbs. It must be a real challenge for the Border
Patrol, minors coming in with, obviously, a lot of them with
their parents, but obviously, maybe not so. And I've seen the
reports of recycling kids and bringing them back.
Mr. Homan. That's another thing I haven't heard today. When
you talk about the separation that occurred at the border when
the judge first ordered the reunification of the first 112 or
102 children, no one wants to talk about 6 percent of those,
based on DNA testing, weren't even the parents. So if you
extrapolate that between the 2,600, 2,700 people, how many
children were reunited with someone who wasn't even their
parent? That is going to shock us some day.
Chairman Cummings. Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Connolly. I thank the chair. I got to say, Mr.
Chairman, you've had two tough hearings in a row. I'd never
thought as a Member of Congress, as an American, I would hear
the testimony I heard today, both from our colleagues who
visited the border, and especially three of the witnesses--four
of the witnesses at this table--as to the simple inhumanity
that is facing children and families at the border.
I don't really care what their motivation was, whether it
was an asylum or economic betterment. They're not to be treated
as subhumans. This is not an American way of dealing with the
stranger who comes and seeks succor. You can talk all you want
about whether the poor Border Patrol is overwhelmed. That makes
no excuse for how we are treating children.
If there's one basic value that ought to unite us as
Democrats and Republicans, as Americans, it is how we treat
children. Their children, our children, it doesn't matter.
That's our fundamental value. And I've sat here and listened to
horror stories. I thought it was fiction. I thought it was a
novel reading from Charles Dickens, and the conditions that
prevailed in 19th century London. Children without soap.
Children in filth. Conditions that none of us would ever
countenance with our own children. Well, any child in our care
is our children.
And the equivocation, the enabling, the rationalization, is
inexcusable. Is there no limit to what you will justify in this
administration when it comes to the mistreatment of our fellow
human beings? And do you have no shame about the fact, as our
colleagues said this morning, it's all done in the shadow of
the American flag. As an American, I have a right to protest,
because it's being done in my name and I don't agree.
Ms. Costello, you're the IG for DHS. Is that correct?
Acting?
Ms. Costello. Yes, sir.
Mr. Connolly. Now, if I heard you correct this morning, you
talked about dangerous conditions that constituted an imminent
threat to health and safety.
Ms. Costello. Yes, sir.
Mr. Connolly. Is that because they're just overwhelmed and
there's no solution?
Ms. Costello. Well, you know, our reporting in the
management alert you're referring to really does describe the
conditions we saw when our inspectors were down there, what we
haven't been able to do yet is assess the true causes of why
we're seeing that. So we can talk about the fact that the
overcrowding is dangerous. The prolonged detention is, you
know, continuing. But we don't really know what is causing it.
We simply know that the conditions are creating imminent risk.
Mr. Connolly. Imminent risk?
Ms. Costello. Yes.
Mr. Connolly. Now, did you go down and visit it yourself?
Ms. Costello. I did not, my chief inspector and her team
did.
Mr. Connolly. And did they find the U.S. officials in
charge were doing the very best they could, they're just
overwhelmed?
Ms. Costello. They actually did find that CBP, Border
Patrol agents, you know, were doing their level best to provide
care. They found them to be professional. They found them to
be----
Mr. Connolly. Let me interrupt you there just a second. We
heard testimony from my colleagues this morning who did go down
there.
Ms. Costello. Right.
Mr. Connolly. That's not exactly what they observed. An
agent walking with a toddler saying to children, which one of
you was going to get this one, take care of this one? That's
hardly humane care. Now, maybe it's misconstrued, maybe it was
out of context, maybe it's an isolated incident, but when we
add up the data, you know, putting 900 people in a facility
made for 125 is asking for trouble. I mean, you know, in
prisons, we have court orders that say you can't do that, but
we're doing it with children on the border.
Did you want to comment? You seem frustrated?
Mr. Homan. I'm extremely frustrated.
Mr. Connolly. Mr. Homan, I'm not calling on you, sir.
Mr. Homan. Of course not. Of course not. This isn't about
transparency.
Mr. Connolly. This is my time. You're not at the border.
You're not at the border right now, you're in a hearing room.
It's my time. Ma'am.
Ms. Mukherjee. Thank you very much. I want to respond to
your observation about the inhumanity of this situation. The
problem here is not the lack of money. The Department of
Homeland Security has enough money to provide every child with
a toothbrush, with soap, and a bed. The problem here is the
position of this administration that this is not required for
children. That is what this government argued before the Ninth
Circuit of Appeals last month.
Mr. Connolly. In other words----
Chairman Cummings.
[Presiding.] Time is expired.
Mr. Connolly. Well, Mr. Chairman, I was interrupted and I
think I'm entitled to 15----
Chairman Cummings. I'll give you 30 seconds to ask the
question.
Mr. Connolly. Yes, thank you. I'm not making a statement--
I'm making a statement, not asking a question.
Chairman Cummings. All right.
Mr. Connolly. In other words, this is a matter of political
will. This is a willful decision, it's not about a matter of
being overwhelmed.
Ms. Mukherjee. That is exactly right.
Mr. Connolly. Which is the narrative they want us to
believe.
Ms. Mukherjee. That is right. And I also want to contest
the data being put forward by Mr. Homan. We live in a democracy
where there are checks and balances on what the executive
branch says. The judiciary has considered the claims being made
by Mr. Homan and his colleagues, and the Federal court has
found that these claims are specious, questionable, and
dubious. You can find that case in my written testimony on
pages 31 and 32.
Mr. Connolly. I thank you. The rule of law is often, for
some people, an inconvenient thing. I thank you for your
testimony.
Chairman Cummings. Mr. Connolly, I apologize because I
didn't--I forgot that you had been interrupted. I just wanted
to make sure----
Mr. Connolly. No problem, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much. We will now go to
Mr. Armstrong.
Mr. Armstrong. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So I just want to
talk about the legal part of the Flores decision. What I want
to talk about is the time line, because I think this is
important and I think it's actually important for what is
potentially going on in the Senate.
DHS files a charging document, and then immigration court
schedules a case. If an alien timely files for asylum and asks
for no continuance and is ready to appear and ready to go
within 30 days, which already, I mean, I've had in custody
cases, we're talking optimistic, and what I would argue is
often unrealistic time line, as this the resources, judges,
immigration attorneys and all of those things.
So if the judge denies the asylum claim, the alien has 30
days to file an appeal. Then records, transcripts, audios are
ordered, briefing schedules are ordered, I mean, this process
takes 30 days?
Ms. Mukherjee. Longer.
Mr. Armstrong. So I'll just use 30, because I'll make it as
streamlined as possible. Briefing schedules, another 21 days
for detention cases, but as a matter of practice, BIA will
grant a 21-day extension, and that's actually in their rules,
right? So we're already at 132 days on a 20-day detention case,
and that's before the board makes a decision, that's if there's
no other delay tactics, which, I mean, I'm not saying delay
tactics in a nefarious term. I'm a trial lawyer, so there are
reasons why some of those things occur.
So when we talk about having a 20-day detention thing, and
this is what I'm going to ask Mr. Homan, and we have a court
case that, at most, streamlined is at 132 days. Does that make
any sense to you?
Mr. Homan. No, it does not. Look, there's only one way. The
absentia rates in immigration court are sky high, anybody can
go to the Department of Justice EOIR website and see that. As a
matter of fact, I think the Secretary just testified a couple
weeks ago that out of the final orders to remove family units,
89, 90 percent were in absentia, which means didn't show up.
But the numbers speak for themselves.
When I left ICE there was nearly 600,000 fugitives that had
final orders issued by judges and did not leave, and many of
them were in absentia. This secret is out, you bring a child
into this country, you won't be detained, you'll be released,
and many won't show up in court. And if they get a final order
of removal, they won't leave. The numbers are the numbers, so,
no, the system does not make sense at all.
Mr. Armstrong. And we work toward--just what I'm saying is
when you have a process that can far outweigh what we're
required to do on a release process, and I'm not sure if these
numbers are 100 percent right, so I'm going to ask. We went
from last decade to about 1 in 10 of illegal crossings having a
child with to now we're closer to 50 percent. I mean, that's--
these are what I'm hearing. So is that about accurate?
Ms. Mukherjee. Mr. Armstrong, thank you. I'd love to
clarify the misrepresentations in what Mr. Homan is saying. The
data from the U.S. Government is very clear that when families
are represented by counsel, they show up for their hearings 99
percent of the time. When families participate in the ICE Case
Family Management Program, which was canceled by this
administration, they show up for their hearings 99 percent of
the time.
And the administration has admitted to the U.S. Supreme
Court that the notices to appear that are given to immigrant
children and families over the last several years, nearly 100
percent----
Mr. Armstrong. On day 21. On day 21----
Ms. Mukherjee [continuing]. place where families need to
appear.
Mr. Armstrong. On day 21, what happens? On day 21, what
happens? Mr. Homan, on day 21, what happens?
Mr. Homan. If they are in ICE custody, they'll see a judge,
hopefully within--in Fiscal Year 2014 and 2015 what we did,
they saw a judge in about 40 days. That's why with this crisis
going on right now, immigration judges need to surge on these
groups coming across right now, the most vulnerable and having
hearings quickly. The 800,000 backlog, let it sit there.
Mr. Armstrong. But it's not just judges, right?
Mr. Homan [continuing]. going on right now.
Mr. Armstrong. You need judges, you need other personnel,
where there are two different budgets. I mean, a judge--I've
been in a lot of courtrooms all over the country, a judge
doesn't run the entire courtroom, you need other staff, you
need lawyers, you need support personnel, you need all of those
people, correct?
Mr. Homan. Correct.
Mr. Armstrong. And without that, what is the actual
physical process that is going on? I mean, why is--the question
is, it's overwhelming and it's overwhelming to everybody, and I
think we say that, but you have been down there, you have
watched it, how would you describe it?
Mr. Homan. What I'm saying is if you detain these families
long enough in a family residential center to see a judge,
you'll have a significant impact on what's going on. And
despite the political grandstanding I saw earlier, this isn't
about enforcing the law. If anybody in this panel don't like
what's going on, then change the law, you're the legislature,
we're the executive branch.
And the reason when someone says--makes an allegation about
children being mistreated, they're in an overcrowded facility
because Congress' failure to supply the supplemental funding
months ago. Don't blame the men and women wearing the uniform
doing the best they can, it's outrageous. This is political
theater at its best.
Chairman Cummings. Mr. Krishnamoorthi.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Costello,
I have a question for you just with regard to the appropriation
of the additional funding to DHS. Congressman Chuy Garcia and I
wrote a letter to the DHS Secretary saying that we wanted a
transparent timeline for how this money should be spent, and
what are the metrics for success in determining whether the
money is spent in accordance with humanitarian purposes for
which it was appropriated.
So the first question I would ask you is, you know, in your
opinion, or based on what you know about the agency, what
should we be looking for and when? How quickly are the border
conditions going to need to change and will change based on the
appropriations process?
Ms. Costello. Well, I wish I could answer you, but we don't
have any reporting on that right now. But what I can tell you
is that we're going to open work, in fact, we've opened work--a
review of how that money is going to be spent, whether the
Department is in a position to adequately deploy those
resources, how to adequately plan to use them, and evaluating
the effectiveness of what they're going to do with a portion of
those resources.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Okay. But how long is it going to take
to get that report?
Ms. Costello. It will take a while, I'm not going to lie.
But the point is we're going to evaluate what's going to be
done with those funds.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. I'm sorry, that's an unsatisfactory
response. A while is not a definite timeline, and we have
children who are suffering at the border. So I need a little
more specificity right now.
Ms. Costello. Well, sir, we just opened the work and just
started, and the money has to be out there and being used for
us to able to make any evaluations.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Okay. Ms. Mukherjee, what can they do
right now? Even before the money arrives, what should they be
doing right now, and what should we be expecting?
Ms. Mukherjee. Children should be released to their family
members and their loved ones. Nearly 100 percent of children in
ICE custody are released to their parents. More than 80 percent
of children released from ORR custody are released to their
family members. Children do not need to be in detention.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. I'm sorry, let's step back for one
second, I just have limited time. Let's talk about CBP. I'm
sorry, I just have just limited time. Let's talk about CBP for
a second, okay. Because they need to release their children to
HHS within 72 hours, okay. We have appropriated a lot of, like,
$3 billion to HHS, to beef up their capacity on absorb folks
from CBP, but in the meantime, what should they do, the people
in CBP?
Ms. Mukherjee. Children should be released from CBP now.
During the week of June 17, there were 2,600 kids in CBP
custody. Within two weeks, there were 300 children left. This
isn't about money, this isn't about bed space, this is about
cruelty and callous disregard for children's well-being. Media
attention and the public outcry is what got thousands of
children released from CBP custody.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. So we're saying that we can identify
loved ones and relatives in the community who would be able to
take on these children and house them temporarily until we can
arrive at their final disposition. Is that what you're saying?
Ms. Mukherjee. Exactly.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Ms. Nagda, could you comment on that,
please.
Ms. Nagda. I was just going to point out to the
Representative that under the prior administration, the
government had what was known as the Family Case Management
Program, which allowed families to be released as families from
detention on an alternative to detention basis, which meant
their release could be expedited quickly, and then they could
live in the community, access supportive services, and come to
court, which over 99 percent of them did.
So there are options that would expedite the release of
families from CBP custody as well.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Okay. Ms. Maxwell, did you want to
comment on this?
Ms. Maxwell. No.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Ms. Maxwell, that is HHS now. You folks
are going to get the vast majority of the funding that has been
appropriated within the last two weeks, about $3 billion coming
to HHS, for the purposes of more long-term shelter for these
children.
Can you tell me what are going to be the milestones for
success, and how quickly we can kind of beef up your capacity
to deal with these children?
Ms. Maxwell. Well, like Ms. Costello, I'm the IG for HHS
and we are going to be providing oversight of how they spend
that money. I know that HHS has already opened a new influx
facilitate in Carrizo Springs that is operational at the end of
June, and they are looking to ramp that up. So it's my
understanding that HHS is already in the process of expanding
their capacity, and we will be providing oversight to that
expansion, and any other expansion that comes with the money
that you appropriated.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you. Mr. Comer.
Mr. Comer. I have to begin with clarifying something that
Representative Tlaib said in her opening remarks when we had
the portion of the hearing when the legislators were asked to
give remarks for five minutes. Representative Tlaib, you were
offended by the term ``illegal,'' and said we did not need to
use the term ``illegal'' to describe people that were--certain
people that were here in America, that no one was an illegal.
But if anyone is in the United States of America
unlawfully, then they are, in fact, an illegal. And I just want
to clarify that because when I go home to Kentucky, that's
something that offends the overwhelming majority of people that
watch what goes on in Congress, specifically in this committee.
And let me be clear, this is not a manufactured crisis.
This is a problem that is getting worse every day. Yet this
Congress continues to do nothing about the real problem at the
border. What I have not heard today in this hearing is a real
solution to the problem. Just letting people go freely when
they cross the border illegally constituates open border. We
cannot have that in America.
And let me just quote Jeh Johnson in an op-ed, and he was
President Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security. He said that
we cannot embrace a policy, and I quote, ``not deport those who
enter or remain in this country illegally unless they commit a
crime.'' This is tantamount to a public declaration repeated
and amplified by smugglers in Central America that our borders
are effectively open to all. This will increase the recent
levels of monthly apprehensions at our southern border about or
more than 100,000 by multiples. End quote.
He's right. President Obama's Secretary of Homeland
Security is right about the real problem we have at the border.
We have to get serious about this problem at the border. Mr.
Homan, you're clearly an expert. What can Congress do to fix
this problem?
Mr. Homan. They need to close the loopholes in asylum to
make them meaningful. They can change the TVPRA with children
of Mexico--the children of Central America are treated the same
way as children of Mexico, once it's ascertained they are not a
victim of trafficking. They can be removed. They need to change
the Flores Settlement Agreement.
And I'm sitting here, and let me explain to you why I'm
sitting here so frustrated. Because I'm the only one in this
room that has worn a green uniform and been on that line. I'm
the only one in this room that found dead aliens on a trail
that were abandoned by smugglers, just left them there because
they weren't worth any money anymore. I'm the only one in this
room that stood in the back of a tractor trailer surrounded by
19 dead aliens, including a five-year-old little boy that
suffocated to death in his father's arms. I was there. And I
saw and I smelled it, and it's terrible. And I still have
nightmares to this day.
It was in Phoenix, Arizona, when you couldn't pay the
smuggling fees, you were tortured. One person was stabbed in
the face 22 times because he couldn't pay a smuggling fee. Any
we keep talking about open borders, abolish ICE, let's not
detain anybody. Let's let everybody go. That entices more
people to come. This isn't just about enforcing law, this is
about saving lives.
I found enough dead bodies in my day. I have a stack of
dead bodies here. I have seen a lot of pictures today, but no
one wants to see these pictures, because they're angel moms and
dads. Each of them died here at the hands of people that
crossed the border because we have an open border. The more we
entice people to make this journey, 31 percent of women are
being raped. Children are dying.
And I said months ago, if we don't close the loopholes,
more women will be raped, more children will die. It's like no
one is listening. We can fix this. Sir, we can fix this. There
are three things we can do to fix this. And Congress, if they
don't like what ICE and CBP do, then do your job. Fix it.
Congress has failed the American people for three decades I've
been doing this job in fixing this. They would rather point to
the men and women at Border Patrol, and men and women at ICE
who have an American flag on their shoulder and serve their
Nation.
I'm extremely frustrated because what I've seen today is
misleading the American people. People are dying, not in ICE
custody. If you compare, people that have died in ICE custody
to every state, Federal system, we got the lowest rate, we got
a hell of a lot lower rate than the city of New York, but no
one wants to talk about us. We need to save lives, we need to
secure our borders. Nothing wrong with this. There's nothing
wrong with a secure border.
Mr. Comer. I can assure you, Mr. Homan, this side of the
aisle is serious about securing the border. The President is
serious about securing the border. And I hope my colleagues on
the other side of the aisle will get serious about securing the
border so we can have a real solution to the problem that we
have at the southern border. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much.
Ms. Hill, our vice chair.
Ms. Hill. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Homan, I want to clarify a couple of things, because
you mentioned earlier that no one's been to the law enforcement
memorial.
I'm from a law enforcement family, 100 percent from a law
enforcement family, and I represent Border Patrol agents, and I
represent agents that work for ICE. And I don't believe that it
is the agents that are solely responsible for any of this
that's happening. I don't think that that's the case. And as
far as the law enforcement memorial goes, I was there just a
few weeks ago, because I have family that's on that.
So I want you to know that the questions that I'm asking
have nothing to do with blaming the agents who are working on
the front lines. But I do think it's important that we talk
about the policy, and the policy that is still problematic,
because I believe that what we do have, this crisis of people
who are coming here, I believe, honestly, that they're coming
out of desperation. They're hugely being taken advantage of by
criminals, by traffickers, by people who are willing to leave
them to die anywhere.
That is all true, we're not arguing there. But there are
policies in place here, within the United States of America,
that go against our values, and one of those is family
separation.
So I want to talk to you about your beliefs on family
separation. And you've been on the record defending President
Trump's policy of separating families at the border many times.
Can you clarify how you feel about that today?
Mr. Homan. No, I cannot. As you recognize in your report
here, it's under litigation. I'm a part of that litigation. And
I've been instructed by the attorneys that I'm not allowed to
speak about that, other than in a courtroom setting, which this
is not.
Ms. Hill. Okay. So that's fine.
So you have said, though, that you believe that families
should be held indefinitely until they have a court hearing.
Mr. Homan. Well, court hearing and indefinitely are two
different things. I think they should be held long enough to
see a judge in a family residential center.
Ms. Hill. Family residential center?
Mr. Homan. It worked in Fiscal Year 2014 and Fiscal Year
2015.
Ms. Hill. Okay. But you cannot comment at all about family
separation right now?
Mr. Homan. Well, I was the Director of ICE. If anybody was
separated, they're separated on the border by another agency.
Ms. Hill. Okay. Well, you have been on the record many
times defending that policy.
But I also want to point out that on June 14, President
Trump told ``Fox & Friends'' that you, Tom Homan, will be
returning to the Trump administration as the border czar. Is
that true?
Mr. Homan. I have not accepted any position with the
administration.
Ms. Hill. Well, yes, as of four days ago, you said that you
haven't accepted a position yet. But you also said that: If I
can help this President, I certainly will.
Mr. Homan. If I can help my country, like I've done for the
last 34 years, I come back from retirement once, I'm not going
to say never say never.
Ms. Hill. You didn't say help my country. You said help
this President.
Mr. Homan. Well, helping this President is helping my
country. He's the President of the United States.
Ms. Hill. Okay. Is it true that you are a FOX News
contributor and have been since your retirement?
Mr. Homan. Yes.
Ms. Hill. Okay. And is it also true that on your LinkedIn
profile, one of your key achievements was that you removed
369,000 aliens from the United States?
Mr. Homan. Probably.
Ms. Hill. Okay. So I want to return back to the family
separation issue. And even though a Federal court ordered
separations to stop last June, the Trump administration has
separated at least 700 additional children over the last year.
And I believe I heard one of our witnesses say that that number
is even higher.
This administration claims that it is only separating
children under narrow exceptions to the court's order, when
there's a specific concern for child safety or certain criminal
history issues.
Ms. Nagda, based on your experience, are all of those
additional separations necessary to protect children?
Ms. Nagda. No. It has been our experience that in the vast,
overwhelming majority of family separation cases, those
separations were unjustified and unnecessary, either to protect
the safety of the child or anyone else.
Ms. Hill. Has your organization worked with children
separated since last June?
Ms. Nagda. We have worked with more than 120 children who
were separated after the policy ended.
Ms. Hill. And, Ms. Mukherjee, you've shared a number of
stories about how you've spoken with children who have been
separated from their parents since the end of the zero-
tolerance policy. Is there anything you would like to add or to
quantify those ongoing separations?
Ms. Mukherjee. The ongoing separations of children from
their parents and family members continue every day and I have
here emails from Mr. Homan, including his name, with him having
authorized family separations, including of a child and mother
who I represented, who were granted asylum, who are bona fide
refugees in the United States.
Ms. Hill. So I have a couple of other examples that we've
seen in public court filings. For example, in one case, an
arrest warrant from 10 years ago, which itself was based on
mistaken identity, used as the basis to separate a child.
Another parent was separated from his three daughters due to
his HIV status. And to me, this appears that the administration
is trying to circumvent the court's order and separate children
from their parents all over again.
Are all of these separations required by law in any way,
shape, or form?
Ms. Mukherjee. No. All of these separations are contrary to
our Constitution, our Federal laws, our regulations, the TEDS
standards that govern how CBP is supposed to treat children and
families.
Ms. Hill. So these continued separations, as far as I'm
concerned, are a complete outrage and are contrary to the June
2018 court order ending zero tolerance. The Trump
administration must stop these unnecessary separations, and I'm
seriously concerned that the potential new border czar believes
that these are good policy.
I yield back.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much.
Mr. Jordan.
Mr. Jordan. Mr. Homan, the actions you took when you were
Director of ICE were entirely consistent with the law of the
land, weren't they?
Mr. Homan. Yes. When someone is prosecuted for a crime, the
child can't go to jail with the parent. That happens to
American families every day.
Mr. Jordan. Yes. And if we, as you said I think earlier, if
we don't like the law, last time I checked, it's the folks
sitting up here got to change it.
Mr. Homan. Yes.
Mr. Jordan. And you've offered, I think, no more than four
times, three changes to the law that would help the situation.
Is that right?
Mr. Homan. Yes, sir.
Mr. Jordan. Maybe make it a fifth time. Can you say it a
fifth time for this group? Just, you know, because again, we're
the ones that have to change the law. So give us that
recommendation a fifth time, the three things that we've got to
do.
Mr. Homan. If we would close the loopholes in the TVPRA,
where children who are sent to America are treated the same as
children in Mexico; if we would change the Flores settlement
agreement so we can actually detain families in family setting
long enough to see a judge and plead their case; and if we can
change the rules of asylum so it makes more sense, so 90
percent of the people who don't pass the first interview, a lot
fewer are passed in front of a judge, those three things would
mean a big--would make a big difference on the border and
decrease the illegal entry.
Mr. Jordan. Because those three things go to the heart of
the matter. They go to the incentive. Is that right?
Mr. Homan. They go to incentive, along with the other
things, such as talking about abolishing ICE, having no
detention, free education.
Mr. Jordan. Yes.
Mr. Homan. Free medical care. Citizenship for those who are
here illegally.
When you keep offers and incentives for people to come--
sanctuary cities--come to this country, you'll be protected
from ICE, as long as you keep having this----
Mr. Jordan. Those kind of statements----
Mr. Homan [continuing]. people who are vulnerable people
are going to keep trying to come.
Mr. Jordan. Those kind of statements made by Democrats in
the U.S. Congress or in positions of influence in this country,
they have an impact, don't they?
Mr. Homan. They have a significant impact.
Mr. Jordan. When a Member of Congress says abolish ICE,
when another Member of Congress says abolish DHS, when the
Speaker of the House says walls are immoral, when the person
who gave the State of the Union response to the President's
State of the Union says she's okay with noncitizens voting,
that all has an impact, doesn't it, just like the law that
you're sworn to uphold and impact and do, when you're the
Director of ICE?
Mr. Homan. It has a significant impact. And if this would
have been fixed years ago, we probably wouldn't have seen zero
tolerance. We wouldn't see the conditions on the border today.
Mr. Jordan. But because the laws haven't been changed,
because of the statements that have been made, there was a
crisis, there is a crisis on the border. And that just didn't
happen yesterday.
You think about this. There was a crisis. The
administration asked for help. Democrats say it's contrived,
it's manufactured, it's fake, it's not real. Then, when the
crisis, the real crisis, gets actually worse, the Democrats
blame the administration for the very crisis they helped create
by the things they said and the fact they won't change the law.
But somehow it's your problem. Somehow it's the President's
problem.
And we have Ms. Costello, who went down there, her team
went down there and looked this all over, the Inspector
General, said there is some concerns that she has and the cause
of the concerns they're trying to ascertain.
Now, she also said agents are doing--I think your statement
was agents are doing their level best. Is that right, Ms.
Costello?
Ms. Costello. That's the experience of our inspectors at
their visits.
Mr. Jordan. So the Inspector General goes down there with
your team, and you conclude the agents, the people that Mr.
Homan used to represent, are doing their darned best they can
do, but they're overwhelmed.
And then you also said in your statement, in your answers a
few minutes ago, you're trying to ascertain the cause. Well,
that's pretty simple to figure out the cause. It's the numbers.
In October, 60,000 apprehensions and inadmissibles on the
border, October of last year. You know what it was in May of
this year? 144,000.
We know the cause: They're all coming. And they're coming
because things the other side's saying and the fact we won't
change three fundamental things in the law.
And it also might help, Mr. Homan, it also might help,
because these are the ones that--these are apprehensions, these
people are presenting themselves at ports of entry--it also
might help if we build a border security wall, right? Instead
of having the Speaker of the House say they're immoral, even
though there's one in her state, it might actually help if we
built the border security wall that the American people voted
this President in office to do. It might actually help if we
did that. Would you agree, Mr. Homan?
Mr. Homan. Absolutely. Every place they've built a border
barrier, every single place they've built a border barrier,
illegal immigration decreased.
Mr. Jordan. Yes. It would help with some of the tragic
things that we have heard about, tragic situations that we have
heard about the last couple days, this entire week in this
committee, that no one wants to see happen. The young mother
who lost her daughter, it's tragic. No one wants those. But if
we did the things you're talking about, we could help avoid
some of those kind of incidents from happening in the future.
Is that right, Mr. Homan?
Mr. Homan. Yes. If I could respond to that----
Mr. Jordan. And you're the guy--you're the guy who's lived
it, breathed it, felt it, managed it. You know more than--you
have more expertise in this area than anyone in this room. Is
that right?
Mr. Homan. I believe so.
Mr. Jordan. I know so.
Mr. Homan. But let me respond to the one child that died as
tragic.
Mr. Jordan. Sure is.
Mr. Homan. But as long as we're showing a lot of pictures,
if I could have just 30 seconds.
Here's a picture. Her name was Serenity. She was nine
months old--nine months--raped and murdered by an illegal alien
because of open borders policy.
Here's Alana, she was five years old, raped repeatedly and
murdered by an illegal alien.
Here's Louise Solowen, she was 93, multiple rapes and
murdered by an illegal alien.
Here's a 16-year-old.
Here's a law enforcement officer.
I got hundreds of these in my desk drawer.
So I've seen tears from people today, and I understand
that, it's tragic when anybody dies. But let's not remember--
let's forget the Angel Moms and Dads who I've all met and got
to know, their children died, and they're separated forever.
It's not a matter of location. They're dead.
And a secured border would help prevent some of this.
Sanctuary cities does not help this. Sanctuary cities, this
will increase because of the push of sanctuary cities, come to
our country, we'll protect you. You can even commit a crime, be
in our county jail, we're not going to let ICE into the jail.
Recidivism rates, anybody can look them up. Fifty percent
reoffend the first year, up to 75 will recidivate within 5
years. They're in the country illegally in violation of Federal
law. They're locked up in a county jail. Let us have access to
them and do our job.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much.
Ms. Kelly.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
You know, I would just ask Mr. Homan--like my colleague
said, Ms. Hill, I come from a law enforcement family, too--and
I would just ask--and you made some comment about, we want to
do away with ICE. I never said I wanted to do away with ICE,
and I just feel like there's a lot of generalizations going on.
And, you know, we talk about, oh, we're inviting people in
and making it easier. My district is urban, suburban, and
rural, and I have 1,200 farms in my district, and I know a lot
of my farmers are Republican, and they've told me that they
have migrants working for them, undocumented folks working for
them.
So if we would have done better with improving immigration
or making a pathway and where there was a bipartisan Gang of
Eight in the Senate, and we didn't even entertain the bill in
the House, when we had a Republican Speaker.
So we can always say there's things that could have been
done, and I can think of things, since I've been here in my
last six years, that could have been done that haven't been
done.
And I know people that are Republican, just like I know
people that are Democrat, that feel like we need to do a much
better job. So, you know, all this condemning is very
interesting.
But anyway, I wanted to focus in on the Homestead shelter
in Florida. Homestead is the Nation's largest facility to house
and care for immigrant children. It is run by a not-for-profit.
Ms.--and I want to say your name correctly--Mukherjee, you
testified you interviewed children at the Homestead facility
and that you were, quote, concerned about the numerous
violations of the Flores settlement agreement. Can you describe
what your concerns are and what the conditions are?
Ms. Mukherjee. Homestead is a facility that houses
thousands of children, more than 2,000 at this point, and it's
set to expand to more than 3,000. It is an environment that is
not conducive to children's well-being. Children get lost in
the cracks there.
When I interviewed children there in March 2019, my
colleagues and I found a 14-year-old boy there who was legally
blind. He weighed 66 pounds and was 4'9'' tall. He was an
indigenous language speaker. His first language is Opteko (ph).
He had been detained there 120 days.
We subsequently received incident reports. We were
extremely concerned about his well-being. So we requested his
full file. We learned that there were documented incidents,
multiple incidents, where he had been assaulted, including
being punched in the stomach by other children, punched in the
groin.
I called his father. I was worried that maybe his father
didn't have the resources to take care of a child with a
disability. But his father had been desperately trying to
reunite with this child. It took us threatening to sue to get
this child out of Homestead.
Ms. Kelly. Okay. Ms. Maxwell, is the Office of Inspector
General investigating conditions at this facility?
Ms. Maxwell. Indeed. I mentioned we went to 45 facilities
last summer, and Homestead was one of them. Since then, we've
been down there several times, offering technical assistance
and outreach to that facility, and we continue to provide
oversight of Homestead.
Ms. Kelly. How can they stay open with reports like this?
Ms. Maxwell. Well, the work that we did from our site visit
is still ongoing. So I'm going to have to pause and wait until
that work becomes public. At that point, I'd be happy to brief
you and your staff about what we found there, as well as what
we found across the country. We looked at a host of safety
issues that affect children in HHS-funded facilities.
Ms. Kelly. And, Mr. Chair, I'd like to enter this article
for the record, which is by Monique Madan.
Chairman Cummings. Without objection, so ordered.
Ms. Kelly. The article explains the story of a 15-year-old
boy who was stripped from his family by CBP during a traffic
stop and transferred to ORR custody and treated as an
unaccompanied minor. This child has lived in the United States
since he was nine months old. Lawyers say they have represented
at least 20 other children at Homestead who have been torn from
their families, children that have been living in the U.S. for
nearly their entire lives.
So as I said, I'd like to enter into the record the
statutory definition of an unaccompanied minor also, which
includes there's no parent or legal guardian in the United
States, and no parent or legal guardian in the United States is
available to provide care and physical custody. This 15-year-
old, by our own statutory definition, is not an unaccompanied
minor.
Ms. Costello, are you aware of this practice?
Ms. Costello. We are aware of separations, but currently we
have no public reporting on any of that, those issues that you
described.
Ms. Kelly. And what is your policy when entering
undocumented children in the interior U.S.?
Chairman Cummings. The gentlelady's time has expired, but
you may answer the question.
Ms. Costello. So as the Inspector General, we provide
oversight. We're not responsible for implementing policy or
creating policy in any way.
Ms. Kelly. Can I just make one more?
I'm going to request that you open an investigation into
this immediately.
Chairman Cummings. Ms. Kelly, I just want to make clear,
you were trying to admit one document or two?
Ms. Kelly. Two, I'm sorry.
Chairman Cummings. Oh, I didn't----
Ms. Kelly. The article.
Chairman Cummings. Okay. Fine.
Ms. Kelly. And then the definition of unaccompanied minor.
Chairman Cummings. Without objection, so ordered, to both
of those documents.
Chairman Cummings. Ms. Tlaib.
Ms. Tlaib. Thank you, Chairman. I really do appreciate this
hearing.
Thank you all so much for being here.
I believe in the importance of whistleblowers--you know,
sometimes we call them truth tellers--especially to this
committee. We know that employees have decided to stick to
their livelihood--decided to stick out their livelihood and
their way of life and put courage and their country first.
And to the chair, before I begin questioning, I would like
to submit two documents. The first is a July 17, 2018, letter
to Senate Whistleblower Caucus chairs and a comment submitted
on the proposed rule by Immigration and Custom Bureau--Customer
Bureau--on the----
Chairman Cummings. Without objection, so ordered.
Ms. Tlaib. Thank you. Dr. Scott--Doctors Allen and
McPherson are two whistleblowers that serve as subject matter
experts for DHS. They tried to warn your office, Ms. Costello,
the migrant children were going to die in custody. Does that
sound familiar at all?
Ms. Costello. We get a number of complaints every year.
That one, in particular, is not ringing any bells right now.
Ms. Tlaib. They had warned--they had wrote, quote, ``We
warned DHS that a migrant child could die in custody,'' yet
these whistleblowers were completely ignored by the office.
Their lawyers tell us that no one ever responded to their
concerns at all, despite attorneys' multiple attempts to
connect with you.
Ms. Costello. So as you said, we take whistleblower
concerns extremely, extremely carefully. We take all of those
cases and allegations into consideration. I'm not familiar with
the issue that you're talking about, but my office can get back
to you with some information.
Ms. Tlaib. I do appreciate that.
The next thing I want to talk about is, you know, we
brought forward obviously children, and there's a lot of back-
and-forth, about--you know, there seems to always be this
sense--and maybe because I'm new--but a sense of who to blame,
where did it start, what the cause is.
The problem is, the crisis is here, and everybody wants to
stick in how we got here. But we're here now, and the
responsibility is on us to address it. And there is a sense of
urgency, on at least my part, to addressing this.
But one of the things that really was profound was when one
of those CBP agents took me aside, even though all on their
trucks, if you look at any of the trucks anywhere, there's a
term, it goes, honor first. Are you familiar with that, anyone?
Mr. Homan? It says, honor first.
And I thought it was spectacular. I said, ``Oh, what does
this mean?'' And they kind of looked and said, ``Exactly what
it says.'' But there's also this sticking together, not telling
on each other, this kind of culture.
But a couple, three different agents, one said, ``Stop
sending money, it's not working.'' He literally said that to me
in a whisper. One, you know, very tearful said, ``You know, we
weren't trained to do this. I am not a social worker, nor a
medical care worker.'' And another very courageously--again,
this is somebody that many of my colleagues would be surprised
to know said this to me--but he said the separation policy
isn't working.
The morale has been, out of all law enforcement offices,
the morale of the agents in CBP are among the lowest, and
suicide has actually increased over a hundred agents, even when
you were there, Mr. Homan. And you know, we talk about the
dehumanization of the children and so forth. Well, we also
understand there is a number of stress. And I can actually feel
it from you, Mr. Homan, right now, like--but I also felt this
hesitation even when I was shaking every single person's hand
up there, that you even hesitate to shake my hand.
And I wanted you to know, I paused and I thought, you know,
did I do anything for you to pause and not shake my hand, even
though I was telling the truth, what I saw.
And I'm not blaming the agents. I'm not blaming. I'm
blaming the broken immigration system, just like you are. And
we have to decide and have courage in this Chamber whether or
not we proceed in fixing it. And if it's your route of closing
borders and all that, great, let's debate that.
But one of the things I'm taken aback is the average of
children is seven years old that we're separating at the
border. Average age is seven years old. The trauma we're going
to create is going to be a generation that I don't think we're
going to ever be able to truly address.
And, Mr. Homan, I know you can't talk about it, but I agree
with that agent that separation policy isn't working to what
we're doing there, and we know that the administration, and you
may not be able to speak about it, was trying in ways to
prevent people from coming. But it didn't.
It wasn't about asylum. I'll tell you right now, that man
that was from Brazil, when I told him in English--and he
understood a little bit, because his Portuguese--his Spanish,
he didn't have any--he didn't speak Spanish, so he had a lot of
issues of language.
And I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman, just--do you know he--I told
him, ``You know they might separate you from your child. He
said, ``No. No, no, no. No, no, no, no. That can't happen.''
And I said, ``But that's the policy right now that we have, is
that you might not see your 14-or your eight-year-old daughter
anymore.''
And I just can't sit by and say that is okay. The one thing
we can do in this Chamber is we can agree the separation policy
needs to stop and that more money toward supporting the
separation policy needs to stop, because I don't want an agent
to kill themselves. I don't want a tearful agent who is in top
level, not one that is even at the border, that said, ``Put me
at the border,'' he said, ``that's where I belong, not here
with these children.''
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much.
Mr. Green.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to ask everybody to think of a busy emergency
department, a busy emergency department in an inner city, and a
massive natural disaster occurs, and there are hundreds of
patients now flooding that emergency department. They're
treating people in the hallways. They're treating people in the
parking lot. It is a crisis, a massive crisis, there are
patients everywhere.
It's not the doctor's fault that patients are everywhere.
It's not the nurse's fault that the crisis has suddenly
overwhelmed that emergency department. And it is ridiculous to
assert that.
The problem is, is that the pipe isn't big enough. You can
only flow so much water or so many patients through an
emergency department if there's 30 beds or 35 beds or 40 beds.
And nobody builds emergency departments for thousands of
patients. You can't do that.
And when the crisis happens, it's not the doctor's fault.
It's not the nurse's fault. It is the diameter of the pipeline.
Well, how do you get the pipeline to have a bigger
diameter? Well, you have to have more beds, right? You have to
have more space. You have to have more money.
So for months, we've been asking for budget. And we've got
people sitting on this committee who voted against money to go
to the problem--in fact, some people want to close the
Department of Homeland Security entirely--yet at the same time
screaming: We need more resources on the border. How ridiculous
is that? It's theatrics. It's just theatrics. That's all it is.
In the 1960's, the progressive liberals called our soldiers
baby killers. Remember that? They came home from Vietnam and
were spat on. And now CBP is being called Nazi concentration
camp operators. How insane is that, how ridiculous. And it
harkens back to a dark day in America when we called our
soldiers baby killers, when, in fact, they were just doing what
the country had asked them to do. Theatrics.
Let me begin by setting the record straight. This notion
that Republicans and conservatives are somehow unconcerned
about the plight of people is just wrong and unfair.
I run two free healthcare clinics in Tennessee out of my
own pocket, and I get, you know, people who are progressive
liberals telling me, ``We need more taxes to take care of more
people.'' And I say, ``Well, come volunteer in my clinic and
help these people who are in need if you really care.''
You know how many have taken me up on it in four years?
None. Not a single one has come and volunteered in my free
healthcare clinics, while I've offered it and offered it.
Theatrics.
As Politico reported in an article last month, the U.S.
Border Patrol apprehended nearly 85,000 family members in May,
a 44 percent increase over the prior month, a historic high.
For comparison the Border Patrol apprehended approximately
107,000 family members in all of 2018.
We've had a natural disaster and the ER is overwhelmed.
They need resources. They need Congress to do our job.
But what does the left want to do? Oh, we didn't
acknowledge it was a crisis when we probably should have, so
let's just blame President Trump. We'll say he's the one
putting these kids in cages. Oh, wait, that picture was from
2015. Obama was President. Right. We didn't recognize it was a
crisis. We tried to play it off as not one. And oh, now we've
been caught, and oh, well, let's just blame the President.
Theatrics.
Listen, it's time for Congress to do its job and get the
resources to these men and women who are on the border, taking
care of this crisis.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the opportunity to share my
perspective, and I yield my time back.
Chairman Cummings. Before I go to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, let me
say this. I think we all, on both sides of the aisle, I think
we need to be careful about how we talk about the motives of
our colleagues. I believe that everyone is operating in good
faith, and I just want us to be very careful with that.
With that, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Earlier my colleague from Maryland, Mr. Raskin, asked the
panel, how many people here believe that child separation is an
effective policy in deterrence? And no one on the panel raised
their hand. I just wanted to note that for the record, Mr.
Chair.
I wanted to ask a question from Professor Mukherjee. Is the
United States violating--or violated--human rights agreements
set by the United Nations in a family separation policy?
Ms. Mukherjee. Yes. International law is clear that family
unity should be prioritized.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. So we, as members of the United Nations,
signed on into an international human rights agreement, saying
very clearly that family separation is a violation of
international human rights, and then we pursued a policy that
violates human rights.
You know, Mr. Chair, I was looking, how did we get to this
point? How did we get to this point, where we take children out
of mothers' and fathers' arms? And, you know, it dated back--
family separation, the way that we have seen it, where we take
children away from their parents without due process, began
last year under Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. But I had to dig
further, and our staff dug further. But where did this start
within the administration? She implemented it.
And we found a memo, it dates back to April 23 of 2018,
where there was an official recommendation to, quote, ``pursue
prosecution of all amenable adults who cross our border, quote,
'illegally,' '' even though this applied to legal asylum
seekers in practice, ``including those presenting with a family
unit, between ports of entry,'' in coordination with DOJ.
Here is the memo that I would like to submit to the
congressional Record.
Chairman Cummings. What is the date of that?
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. It is a memo--memorandum for the
Secretary from Homeland Security.
Chairman Cummings. Date?
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. April 23, 2018, subject, ``Increasing
prosecutions of immigration violations.''
Chairman Cummings. Without objection.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And so I looked at this memo, and it
seems like this is the source of it, and it seems as though,
Mr. Homan, that you are the author. It says here, from
yourself, Kevin McAleenan, and Francis Cissna. Is this correct?
Did you sign the memo?
Mr. Homan. I'd have to see what you----
Chairman Cummings. Give him----
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. I'd be happy to provide it. And we'll
provide it over. But I would like to note that here, it says
the official recommendation, there were three different options
presented. The third included the option for family separation:
This initiative would pursue prosecution of all amenable
adults, including those presenting with a family unit.
Mr. Homan, your name is on this. Is this correct?
Mr. Homan. Yes, I signed that memo.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. So you are the author of the family
separation policy?
Mr. Homan. I am not the author of this memo.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. You're not the author, but you signed
the memo?
Mr. Homan. Yes, a zero-tolerance memo.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. So you provided the official
recommendation to Secretary Nielsen on family--for the United
States to pursue family separation?
Mr. Homan. I gave Secretary Nielsen numerous
recommendations on how to secure the border and save lives.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. But it says here that you--you gave her
numerous options, but the recommendation was option three,
family separation.
Mr. Homan. What I'm saying, this is not the only paper
where we had given the Secretary numerous options to secure the
border and save lives.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And so the recommendation--of the many
that you recommended--you recommended family separation.
Mr. Homan. I recommended zero tolerance.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Which includes family separation.
Mr. Homan. The same as it is with every U.S. citizen parent
that gets arrested when they're with a child.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Zero tolerance was interpreted as the
policy that separated children from their parents?
Mr. Homan. If I get arrested for DUI and I have a young
child in the car, I'm going to be separated. When I was a
police officer in New York and I arrested a father for domestic
violence, I separated that father from----
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Mr. Homan, with all due respect, legal
asylees are not charged with any crime.
Mr. Homan. When you're in the country illegally, it's a
violation of eight United States Code 1325.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Seeking asylum is legal.
Mr. Homan. If you want to seek asylum, go through the port
of entry, do it the legal way. The Attorney General of the
United States has made that clear.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Okay. Mr. Chair, the memo is submitted
to the record for review.
Inspector General Costello, one last thing. Is there a
record--based on reports through the year and in our hearing
earlier this year there was--we spoke with Ms. Juarez, a mother
who lost her child due to inhumane conditions in the
facilities. We learned that there is no accurate record and no
policy being held of people who are pregnant and people who
endure miscarriages.
Is there a record of who enters and leaves these
facilities?
Ms. Costello. I'm not familiar with the instance you're
talking about, but I do believe the facilities keep custody
logs and logs, but I'm not familiar with the incident you're
talking about.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And where would we find those records?
Ms. Costello. I believe all the facilities keep them
onsite, CBP and ICE facilities.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And if you believe that the records are
not accessible--or if we find that the records are not
accessible, do you believe the committee should seek to request
records from DHS on the location of children and those that are
detained?
Ms. Costello. Well, we would never opine about what the
committee would request and not request, so----
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you very much.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much.
Ms. Pressley.
Ms. Pressley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm very proud to represent and to call the Massachusetts
Seventh my home. It is home to--40 percent of our residents are
immigrants. And today those residents, those families, are
living in constant fear. At the hands of this administration, a
fundamentally broken immigration system has truly been
weaponized.
On Wednesday, we heard heartbreaking testimony from Yazmin,
a mother from Guatemala who lost her 19-month-old baby girl
Mariee after pleading with ICE officials to provide her baby
with adequate medical care and medicine. I have no shortage of
fury for this injustice, this tragedy, this callousness. But in
the time allotted to me as a Member of Congress, I would
instead like to focus on trying to save a life.
Mr. Homan, I agree with you, there has been much too much
death. So in that vein, I want to enlist your partnership, your
partnership in saving a life.
Right now, ICE is depriving an asylum seeker, Mariana, of
adequate medical care. Mariana fled state-sponsored, gender-
based violence in Angola and is being held in Laredo, Texas, at
a facility operated by CoreCivic, a private, for-profit
detention facility. Her five-and seven-year-old babies were
separated from her and sent thousands of miles away to Chicago.
A doctor at the detention center said she is at risk for a
hysterectomy if she is not released and receive the proper
medical attention. Despite notifying detention center staff of
her serious health condition, they refuse to grant her access
to adequate care. Earlier this week, Mariana lost
consciousness. Her lawyers and her family are desperate to get
her medical care.
So, Mr. Homan, in your expert view, can you instruct and
advise me how to elevate Mariana's case and ensure that she
gets the medical care she needs?
Mr. Homan. Well, on your first comment about the
callousness of ICE medical, let me be clear on that case that
was talked about yesterday. I remember that case. In 20 days of
detainment, they had 10 medical appointments--10--and the
mother didn't go to two of them.
Ms. Pressley. Mr. Homan, I'd like to reclaim--this is my
time, I'd like to reclaim my time right now.
Mr. Homan. You can't make a statement about callousness of
medical care----
Ms. Pressley. Mr. Homan, as tragic as--but we can all agree
that it was a tragedy that that baby died. Okay? I don't want--
I'm not talking about the past, I'm talking about the present,
and we have an opportunity to save a life. And I'm asking you,
in your expert opinion, what should be done and how can we
elevate----
Mr. Homan. I am not going to let your comment about
callousness stand without a response. This is about
transparency to the American people, is it not?
Ms. Pressley. Mr. Homan, a woman's life is in jeopardy----
Mr. Homan. I'm telling you, that mother was given 10
medical appointments. And she, as required by law, she will be
released after 20 days.
Chairman Cummings. Hold up, hold up, whoa, whoa, whoa,
wait, wait a minute, wait a minute. Let me just understand
what's going on here. We're talking about two cases. Is that
right?
Ms. Pressley. Yes. I was referencing the tragedy of a baby
that we've already lost.
Chairman Cummings. Right.
Ms. Pressley. There is a woman in care right now----
Chairman Cummings. You're talking about that----
Ms. Pressley [continuing]. who lost consciousness.
Chairman Cummings. Okay. That's what I--I just wanted to
make sure I was clear.
Ms. Pressley. And I'm just seeking his expert counsel on
what is the procedure and what can be done to elevate this
woman's case, to get her the medical attention that the
detention doctors have said are essential to keeping her
healthy and alive.
Chairman Cummings. Very well.
Let me just ask you real quick, so--and tell you what you
can do, too, to help in that situation.
Then we'll restart your time.
All right, go ahead. Sir.
Mr. Homan. Well, to make a statement about a baby that
didn't die in ICE custody----
Ms. Pressley. Reclaiming my time. Let me state the question
again.
Mr. Homan. Is this hearing for transparency to the American
people or not?
Ms. Pressley. Reclaiming my time. Mr. Homan, I am not
revisiting the past.
Mr. Homan. Of course not.
Ms. Pressley. I've offered it for context. And I said it
was a tragedy and we can all agree there have been far too many
tragedies. You said there's been a lot of death. Let's stop the
death.
Mr. Homan. You can't blame the first death on ICE.
Ms. Pressley. We have an opportunity to save a woman's
life. You are an expert. I am asking you----
Mr. Homan. Contact--contact--contact Acting ICE Director
Matt----
Ms. Pressley. Reclaiming the time. In your expert opinion,
where a person loses consciousness in custody and has been
separated from her babies for months, how does a Member of the
U.S. Congress get an answer about her case from ICE?
Mr. Homan. I would make an urgent phone call, if that's--
your facts are accurate--I would make an urgent phone call to
Acting Director Matt Albence. ICE spends nearly a half a
billion dollars on medical care in our facilities. So I'm sure
all the facts you presented probably aren't the facts.
Ms. Pressley. Reclaiming my time.
Ms. Costello, in you view, what does it take to elevate a
case to ensure a woman who is detained receives medical care?
Ms. Costello. So obviously you can contact my office and
issue a complaint through a hotline, you can send a letter to
us. But as Mr. Homan is suggesting----
Ms. Pressley. Reclaiming. How does your office inspect
facilities to ensure the detained individuals have access to
healthcare specialists and outside care?
Ms. Costello. We do periodic unannounced inspections of
both CBP and ICE facilities and compare the situations we
observe against either the TEDS standards or the PBNDS
standards for ICE facilities. And when we identify issues of
grave concern, we report on them, and we notify ICE as part of
that process.
Ms. Pressley. And since September 2018, at least seven
immigrant children have died while or after being in Federal
immigration custody. Ms. Costello, based on what your office
has seen and reported on, do you have any concerns that the
conditions in detention centers at the border could lead to
more deaths?
Chairman Cummings. The gentlelady's time has expired, but
you may answer the question. Go ahead.
Ms. Costello. Based on what we reported in our management
alerts and what I testified to today, we are gravely concerned
about the conditions that we see in the CBP facilities at the
border. And we are concerned that it could lead to additional
security incidents and obviously high risk of disease.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much.
Mr. Homan, I can't sit here as a Member of Congress and
hear about somebody possibly dying and not do what I can to
save them, and I think we all feel the same way, on both sides
of the aisle.
I would just say--and I'm not knocking you. I'm glad that
you have agreed that as soon as this hearing is over, to make
that phone call, because we do want to save every life that we
possibly can.
Mr. Homan. If you can provide the information, I'll make
the phone call.
Chairman Cummings. Yes, we--her staff will get it to you
before you get--you know, before we leave.
Ms. Pressley. Thank you.
Chairman Cummings. All right. Thank you very much.
And to you, Ms. Costello, I'm sure that Ms. Pressley will
be in touch with you, too, and do all that you can to help us
out. All right?
Thank you very much. I really appreciate all of it.
Now we will move on to Mr. Clay.
Mr. Clay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, Ms. Costello, in response to media reports, a CBP
spokesperson said, and I quote, ``It's important to note that
the allegations of a sexual assault is already under
investigation by the Department of Homeland Security's Office
of IG.'' Can you confirm and share any details about the scope
of this investigation?
Ms. Costello. Yes, sir. Typically we would never confirm or
deny the existence of an investigation to protect the integrity
of the investigation. But since CBP has already confirmed that
we are investigating that allegation that came out of Yuma, I
will confirm for you today that we are, but I can't share any
details with you about our activity.
Mr. Clay. Has any disciplinary action been taken?
Ms. Costello. We just opened the case. We just received the
allegation at the end of June. So we're in the very initial
stages of that case.
Mr. Clay. And that's the one with the 15-year-old girl from
Honduras?
Ms. Costello. I believe if that's--if it's the allegation
you're referring to coming out of Yuma.
Mr. Clay. Let me ask Ms. Mukherjee and Ms. Nagda, have you
heard of other sexual assaults or harassment of detainees at
border facilities?
Ms. Mukherjee. Last month when I was in Clint, children
reported to me that officers were--had pushed children who
needed to use the bathroom and prevented them from using the
toilet when they needed to. Three children reported to me that
a child had been grabbed by the back of his neck and had been
pulled out of his cage.
Other children consistently reported that guards yelled at
them and that the children were terrified and that they were so
terrified of the guards that they couldn't even bring
themselves to ask for more food.
Now, that said, I also heard about one guard who was kind
with the children and who gave the little ones an extra
chocolate pudding when he was able to.
Mr. Clay. Thank you.
Ms. Nagda.
Ms. Nagda. Representative, we start from the position that
when children talk to us and choose to disclose, that they are
telling the truth. What we find, though, is that children do
not tell stories in very linear ways, the ways in which an
adult who is fully developed might tell that story. And so we
do hear a lot of stories from children about trauma and
violence that they have experienced, both in home country and
as they arrive at the border.
Mr. Clay. And in these facilities, what impact might this
have on those children, what kind of psychological effect?
Ms. Nagda. So I think what is undisputed, Representative,
is that what is causing families to flee and what is causing
children to flee is extraordinary violence in their home
countries. It is very different depending on the country. It is
different depending on the region. It may be violence
perpetrated by gangs. It may be domestic violence. Children may
be coming from countries where there are no resources like we
might have here in the United States to address situations of
domestic or community violence.
But the point is, they have experienced extraordinary
trauma before they make that migration journey, and then they
take the migration journey and experience, in many cases,
additional trauma. And then they arrive at the United States
and are placed in detention.
And though I'm not a medical expert, it is my understanding
that what they're experiencing at that point is something
referred to as complex trauma, based on a complex trauma
history.
That very much compounds what they are experiencing. It can
limit their development. It can certainly affect their ability
to tell their stories, which is why the idea of rushing
children through immigration proceedings or keeping them locked
up through their court date is really a horrifying one for
anyone who works with children, who understands that that is
not an environment in which a child will ever be able to tell
their story in a way that allows us to understand what has
happened and make a fair decision in their case.
Mr. Clay. All of this is extremely disturbing. Now, one of
the clients stated that the water tasted like chlorine. The
client disclosed that there were about 30 minors in the
detention center as well. The other minors started to complain
about the food and water that was provided to them, and the
client stated that the minors started protesting about it, and
because of it, the officers took out all of the sleeping mats.
Are you familiar with other instances of retaliation like that?
Ms. Mukherjee. Yes. When we were in Clint, we talked with a
girl who was in a cell with about 20 other girls, 10 to 20
other girls who were very young. And the nurse would bring in
two lice combs so that all the girls could share the lice
combs, which is exactly the opposite of what you're supposed to
do when you have lice. And sometime later, a guard came back to
get those two lice combs back. One of the lice combs was
missing. In retaliation, as punishment for losing a lice comb,
every mat and blanket was taken out of that room, and the girls
had to sleep on the cement floor.
Mr. Clay. That's nothing but pure evil.
My time's up, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much.
Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
It was very important to lay out with some particularity
what has been happening. I know that we passed a very
controversial supplemental appropriation, but at least we got
some money into the pipeline. As controversial as it was, I'll
tell you one thing: With Democrats in charge of this House, had
we allowed this session to go--had we gone on recess with no
more money on the border, then the blame would have been more
than it already is.
I think both sides have to take responsibility for what is
happening on that border, and I certainly think that the Trump
administration should not get away with blaming the Congress
entirely on--blaming the problem entirely on Congress. This
Congress has just taken over, so, obviously, there's a lot of
blame that could be cast.
I want to look at the administration's zero tolerance
policy that forced the separation of 2,800 children, and we're
still hearing and still living with and led to overcrowding and
delays that nobody would want to justify. Ms. Mukherjee, was
that decision to separate children required by law?
Ms. Mukherjee. Absolutely not. Absolutely not.
Ms. Norton. So that had to have been made at the
administration's level?
Ms. Mukherjee. Yes. And a Federal court has held that it is
unconstitutional to separate children from their families for
deterrence purpose. The Fifth Amendment of the United States
Constitution protects family integrity.
Ms. Norton. So not only required by law but
unconstitutional as it happened. Now, it should be clear that
that policy overloaded the system. One of my friends on the
other side talked about what happens when the Emergency
Department of a hospital is overloaded.
But let me look at alternatives that were available.
Apparently, this very administration did permit the release of
immigrant families. The date I'm given is June 2017, and they
were--had to report back in to ICE, and they had to frequently
check in, and not until this hearing did I learn that there was
a 99 percent success rate. I mean, we finally got success on
something. We didn't all grab it and say: Thank goodness; let's
go from there.
Look, I bet we don't have a 99-percent success rate when we
do bail for criminals in our own criminal justice system.
Why in the world did that end, Ms. Nagda, and what
decision, what effect--why did it end? What effect did that
have on immigrant children, with separating immigrant children
from their families?
Ms. Nagda. Thank you, Representative.
I can't speak to why the program ended. I do know that when
the program ended, we lost a very effective tool that allowed
individuals to live in the community together to find
attorneys. And we do know that when families and children have
counsel, they appear at their hearings. They participate in
their cases, and there's a chance----
Ms. Norton. It's almost like they're afraid not to appear,
that, you know, they already were afraid at the border, and
then, if you get here and don't appear and you have the full
force of law, that you can understand the intimidation to say:
I better go. I better go there.
I'm not sure what there was to be afraid of.
I was interested. I had my staff, I said: Please explain
this thing called metering to me.
The DHS inspector system issued a report that found that
metering may have led to additional border crossings. Now,
we're trying to cut down on border crossings, but, apparently,
metering, I found out, what does that mean? Limits the number
of people who can request asylum at the border. Could you tell
me how that, Ms. Mukherjee, how did that prove--have the
opposite effect from what was desired?
Ms. Mukherjee. I was in Tijuana earlier this year, and I
witnessed firsthand the problems with the metering system.
There are hundreds----
Ms. Norton. Explain--if you could, explain metering.
Explain the jargon to us. Go ahead.
Ms. Mukherjee. There are hundreds of asylum seekers who
want to present themselves lawfully at a port of entry. A port
of entry is where CBP officers work. They want to go to those
CBP officers and request asylum. The United States has blocked
off ports of entry throughout our southern border and limits
the number of asylum seekers who can enter the country every
day.
The first day that I got to Tijuana, zero asylum seekers
were allowed to cross at that port of entry. In subsequent
days, I saw the numbers go up to 40 asylum seekers, 60 asylum
seekers, but that is what is helping to contribute to massive
problems on the southern side of the U.S. border.
Ms. Norton. Like unlawful border crossings?
Ms. Mukherjee. Exactly.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you, Ms. Norton.
Mr. Garcia, welcome to our committee.
Mr. Garcia. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I'm very
grateful for the opportunity to participate as a part of this
panel asking questions of the witnesses today.
I'd like to just remind everyone of a couple things, that
it was the then chief law enforcement of the land, Jeff
Sessions, who introduced zero tolerance policy, that that was
the message that the Trump administration wanted to send to the
world, and it was that announcement that led to the pecking
order of other functionaries within the administration to
develop what is laid out in the memo previously mentioned, that
Mr. Homan and others signed on to. They were responsible for
operationalizing zero tolerance policy. That is at the root of
family separation that we have come to know and many of the
horror stories that we have heard here this afternoon.
Ms. Costello, the Inspector General's Office that you head
reported that some of the most atrocious and inhumane
conditions that our country has ever heard of and witnessed at
the border have taken place. To your knowledge, Ms. Costello,
did any children die at the border during the Obama
Administration?
Ms. Costello. I don't have any reporting or facts on that,
sir.
Mr. Garcia. Thank you. I'm deeply concerned by the findings
from multiple independent reports that the government failed to
adequately track separated families, which made it much harder
to reunify them later on.
Ms. Maxwell, the January 29 HHS OIG report found, quote,
that HHS faced significant challenges in identifying separated
children, including the lack of an existing integrated data
system to track separated families across HHS and DHS and the
complexity of determining which children should be considered
separated. Why would an integrated tracking system have been
important?
Ms. Maxwell. It was important to be able to make sure you
identify the children that were separated and the people and
the parents that they were separated from. We are concerned
today, though, with ongoing issues with that data system, in
particular, the quality of information in that system about
current children that are being separated from their parents
and the reasons for those separations.
Mr. Garcia. What impact did the absence of a tracking
system have on the reunification of separated children?
Ms. Maxwell. It meant that the government had to spend
significant time just identifying who those children were. So,
in the absence of a system to track the children and their
families, the government faced an intensive effort in which
they had to look at 60 data bases across both programs. They
looked at 12,000 case files and, even then, had to go to the
grantees to get certifications just to identify the children.
Mr. Garcia. And produce more delays. These egregious and
cruel conditions and policies are not accidental. Mr. Homan,
during your time as Acting ICE Director, deterrence was the
order of the day for you. The memo bears that out. Exactly what
you planned for. The Trump administration claimed they had no
choice but to rip children from their parents because they were
criminally prosecuting the parents pursuant to zero tolerance
policy, again, in policies that the administration created and
that you, Mr. Homan, accepted and forced and championed as
we've seen. Let me remind everyone that the Trump
administration tried to ban asylum seeking and started the
process of metering, which then prevents people from coming
through legal ports of entry. That exacerbated the crisis.
People are desperately waiting months just to get in line and
be granted the inalienable right to due process.
Mr. Homan, you have said that most immigrants are, quote,
not criminals other than the criminal act that they do when
they enter the country illegally. That is why I think we ought
to revisit decriminalizing desperation, striking sections 1325
and 1326 of title 8 of the U.S. Code, the statutes that the
administration has leveraged to separate thousands of children
from their families.
Mr. Homan, do you understand that the consequences of
separation of many children will be lifelong trauma and carried
across generations? Have we not learned from the internment of
Japanese Americans, Mr. Homan? I'm a father. Do you have
children? How can you possibly allow this to happen under your
watch? Do you not care? Is it because these children don't look
like children that are around you? I don't get it. Have you
ever held a deceased child in your arms?
Mr. Homan. First of all, your comments are disgusting. I've
served my country.
Mr. Garcia. I find your comments disgusting as well.
Mr. Homan. I've served my country 34 years. I served my
country for 34 years, and yes, I held a five-year-old boy in my
arms in the back of that tractor-trailer. I knelt down beside
him and said a prayer for him because I knew what his last 30
minutes of his life were like, and I had a five-year-old son at
the time.
What I've been trying to do in my 34 years serving my
Nation is to save lives. So, for you sit there and insult my
integrity and my love for my country and for children, that's
why this whole thing needs to be fixed, and you're the Member.
Fix it.
Mr. Garcia. We agree on that, but I disagree--but I also
disagree with your characterization of it----
Chairman Cummings. The gentleman's time has expired. It's
my time now.
Mr. Jordan. Mr. Chairman?
Chairman Cummings. It's my time.
Mr. Jordan. Well, I just--the gentleman ripped off about
seven different questions designed to go at the character of
Mr. Homan, and Mr. Homan should be given a chance to respond.
It was ridiculous, the way he just rattled them all off and
wouldn't let him respond to them.
Chairman Cummings. Let me say this. I understand that, but
first of all, I'm going to have civility in my hearings, all
right. No. I have the floor.
Mr. Jordan. I understand, and I agree with you.
Chairman Cummings. I'm going to have civility. That's why
we're banging so that we could hear each person speak. I have
been very courteous and very kind.
Now, Mr. Homan, do you have something to say?
Mr. Homan. No one in this room has seen what I've seen in
my 34-year career.
Chairman Cummings. Very well.
Mr. Homan. No one has experienced what I have experienced.
I saw many dead bodies coming across this border. You want to
talk about a memo? This memo is one option to stop death; not
just about enforcing the law, stop death. If you want to
legalize illegal immigration, good luck with that because it's
going to get a hell of a lot worse on that border. If you say,
``Okay, from now on, there will be no consequence, no
deterrence, it's not illegal to come to this country
illegally,'' more families will come; 31 percent of women will
be raped; more children will die.
We're a Nation of laws. If you don't like it, sir, change
it. You're the legislator. I'm the executive branch. And I've
served my country honorably for 34 years, and I will not sit
here and have anybody say that I don't care about children
because they're not the same color as my children.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much. It is my time. I
have not asked questions yet, and I have quite a few.
First of all, let me say this to Mr. Homan. I have never,
and I don't--I'm hoping that--you know, I've listened to all of
this, and sometimes I think we put issues on top of issues, and
there are quite a few issues swirling around here.
I think all of us appreciate our Border Patrol and those
people that work for our Federal Government, and I want to
thank you for being here today, and I can kind of understand
why you could get a little bit upset. I got that.
But I also say we've got to be--we need to concentrate on,
and I think it was Ms. Pressley that said it, you know, on the
living and just not the dead and just not all the problems, but
we've got to figure out some solutions, and I think you've
presented some.
And, Ms. Mukherjee, Mr. Homan five times now has presented
three things that he thought ought to be done and that could
resolve this problem. But you said something that is really
bothering me, and you know, it's going to make me--it makes me
think. You said it's not necessarily about the money; it's
about a will. So I've got two pieces of that. I want you to
talk about what Mr. Homan, a man who has been at his job--over
30 years, Mr. Homan?
Mr. Homan. Yes, sir.
Chairman Cummings. Over 30 years and who is a dedicated
public servant, his recommendations, and then I want you to
elaborate a little bit on that issue of it doesn't have to be
this way, in other words, just because of the money. You go
ahead. Keep your voice up, please.
Ms. Mukherjee. Thank you. So, in terms of Mr. Homan's
recommendations, they will not work. The children and families
who I represent are refugees. They are fleeing terrible
violence. They are coming to the United States to seek safety.
The United States is not the only country in our region that
has seen an increase in refugees and asylum seekers. All of the
countries surrounding the Northern Triangle--Guatemala,
Honduras, and El Salvador--have seen marked increases in the
number of asylum seekers coming to their countries.
What we need is not to end the Flores settlement agreement.
What we need is not to change the Trafficking Victims
Protection Reauthorization Act. Those are two critical pillars
that protect immigrant children in Federal custody, that limit
their time in CBP facilities to 72 hours and require that
children be released to family members after appropriate
vetting as quickly as possible.
Let me offer you five solutions: One, let independent
doctors into these facilities. Two, let public health experts
inspect these facilities and give them authorization to order
remediations. That is what the plaintiff's counsel in the
Flores case sought just two weeks ago in Federal court. The
administration's response to those requests was no. The
administration argued, and I quote, that that would be a
coercive remedy.
The third recommendation that I have is to ensure that
children are not in CBP custody for any longer than 72 hours.
This administration has refused, has failed to provide
plaintiffs' counsel in Flores with any data about how long
children are being held in CBP custody. You have oversight
powers on this question.
Fourth, children should not be separated from their
parents. Immigration officers should not be separating children
from their mothers, their fathers, their brothers, their
grandmothers, absent a reason to believe that there is imminent
risk of harm to the child.
Now, finally, my fifth recommendation is that we look at
the data and do what works. When families have access to a
lawyer, they appear at their immigration court hearings 99
percent of the time. When families are offered support from a
social worker through the ICE family case management program,
they show up for their immigration proceedings 99 percent of
the time.
Children and families belong together. They do not belong
in detention. They should be released, and they should be free.
And doing that would be far less expensive than what we're
doing now. The ICE case family management program costs only
$38 a day per family unit. To detain one person in a family
detention center, it costs on average $320 per day. To detain a
child at Homestead like the legally blind child I found there
in March, it costs the U.S. taxpayers between $750 and $775 a
day. That child was detained there about 120 days unnecessarily
when he had a father who was desperate, desperately trying to
get his son back.
Chairman Cummings. Let me ask you this, then. So we are
spending a minimum of $300 a day, minimum, on these children.
Is that what you're telling me?
Ms. Mukherjee. That is the rate that we are paying for one
person a day at the family detention centers.
Chairman Cummings. And if any of us were given $300 a day
to take care of our child, that's quite a bit of money, and you
could do all kinds of things. Am I right?
Ms. Mukherjee. That's right.
Chairman Cummings. All right. Let me go on.
Ms. Costello, I want to ask you about DHS' inspector
general's inspections of several immigration detention centers
on the southern border. These reports were shocking to the
conscience, and I think they will shock any American who takes
the time to read them or even to look at the pictures.
In May 2019, you issued a report on, quote, dangerous
overcrowding and prolonged detention, quote, at a border
facility in El Paso, Texas. I understand that your team saw 900
detainees in an facility intended for only about 125. Is that
right?
Ms. Costello. Yes, sir.
Chairman Cummings. The IG report found that some detained
immigrants, quote, had been held in standing-room-only
conditions for days or weeks, end of quote. And the report goes
on to say, quote, with limited access to showers and clean
clothing, detainees were wearing soiled clothing for days or
weeks. The report concludes that these conditions present,
quote, an immediate risk to the health and safety, not just of
the detainees but also the DHS agents and officers. Ms.
Costello, in all your years in government service, had you ever
seen any conditions like this?
Ms. Costello. No, I have not, but more importantly, the
inspection team that did the work on the ground for me has not,
and they've been doing this for years. The reason we issued
those management alerts is because they had never seen anything
like what they saw in both the El Paso center we reported on
and the facilities in the Rio Grande valley.
Chairman Cummings. But this is not an isolated incident.
Just last week, your office issued another report describing,
quote, dangerous overcrowding and prolonged detention, end of
quote, at five different border facilities in Texas. Together,
these facilities held over 2,500 young people. You reported
that nearly one-third of these children had been held longer
than the 72-hour limit. Ms. Costello, what were conditions like
for the children in these facilities?
Ms. Costello. It was similar to the situation in El Paso
for the children. The overcrowding was dangerous, significant.
Again, my inspectors described the situation like they had
never seen before. That is the picture.
Chairman Cummings. That is the picture?
Ms. Costello. Yes.
Chairman Cummings. Can you tell us what is in that picture,
please?
Ms. Costello. It is an overcrowded facility, you know. It
is families in a facility in a space that they can't possibly
fit in. I think the caption underneath may describe--does it
describe--no. I don't know that it describes the number.
Chairman Cummings. No. So you mean people had to be like
that pretty much 24/7?
Ms. Costello. Yes. Although to clarify, they visited on the
days that they visited, so, you know, that's their observation
from that snapshot in time. But the understanding is that folks
have been in that position for a while.
Chairman Cummings. So, when you went in, you all were--the
Inspector General's Office was allowed to take the photo?
Ms. Costello. Yes. You know, that's part of how we do our
work. It's how we collect our evidence. It, frankly, would
never occur to me, sir, not to have our team go in and take
pictures.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much. How long were these
children kept in these conditions?
Ms. Costello. In that facility?
Chairman Cummings. Yes.
Ms. Costello. In the Rio Grande valley, the information
that we have is that children were--31 percent of them were
there for more than 72 hours; 165 were there longer than a
week. So that's children. With regard to unaccompanied alien
children, we had 50 under seven, under the age of seven who
were there for over two weeks.
Chairman Cummings. Now, give me that picture. Let me ask
you this. I just note--I'm just curious. Where are the toilet
facilities in this? Do you know?
Ms. Costello. No. I don't actually know.
Chairman Cummings. Okay.
Ms. Costello. But children are supposed to have access to
toilets in the holding rooms.
Chairman Cummings. Ms. Mukherjee, do you have a comment?
Ms. Mukherjee. Yes. So, in facilities like this, and this
is knowledge based on interviewing hundreds of immigrant
children and families, the toilets are open. There is no
privacy to use the toilet. Children try to use those foil
wrappers that you see to cover themselves when they're
toileting, and this leads to problems.
In Clint, we talked to girls who were so embarrassed that
boys could see them while they were using the toilet. We talked
to a boy who tried not to eat because he was so embarrassed to
use the toilet. Every day, these children are being degraded by
having no access to any privacy when they're using the toilet.
Chairman Cummings. Yes, Ms. Costello.
Ms. Costello. I want to clarify. A member of my team was
able to clarify for me. You can't tell from the picture----
Chairman Cummings. Yes.
Ms. Costello [continuing]. but apparently the toilet is in
back of that wall.
Chairman Cummings. In back of that right there?
Ms. Costello. Yes. Yes, sir. You can't see that, obviously,
clearly from the picture, but apparently that's where it's
located.
Chairman Cummings. Okay. One officer interviewed described
the security situation as a, quote, ticking time bomb. Ms.
Costello, CBP has detailed standards it is required to follow
when detaining these children. Based on your inspections, do
you believe the CBP is meeting those standards?
Ms. Costello. Not for every one of the standards, sir. I do
want to emphasize that when we visited the facilities, they
were well stocked, as I said in my prepared statement, with
diapers, juice, snacks.
Chairman Cummings. Did they know you were coming?
Ms. Costello. No.
Chairman Cummings. Okay.
Ms. Costello. All of our inspection are unannounced----
Chairman Cummings. Okay.
Ms. Costello [continuing]. and that's really only the way
to do it. What they're not meeting standards are obviously the
crowding, the prolonged detention, some of the hygiene that the
children are supposed to have, but it would be impossible to do
so in the conditions that we saw there. It's shocking.
Chairman Cummings. Does it shock you that we're spending a
minimum of $300 per day?
Ms. Costello. I don't have information that validates that
particular number.
Chairman Cummings. That's not what I asked you.
Ms. Costello. I know, sir.
Chairman Cummings. That's not what I asked you. I said,
would it shock you to know that we were spending a minimum of
$300 a day for folks to live in a facility like that?
Ms. Costello. If that were an accurate number, sir, yes.
Mr. Homan. Sir, can I answer that question for you?
Chairman Cummings. Sure.
Mr. Homan. $300 a day is for family residential centers,
and the reason that price is $300 a day is because we have to
provide child psychologists, pediatricians, educational
programs. The pictures you are being shown are Border Patrol
facilities. There's not a cost per day there. The $300 per day,
that's an ICE facility, a different facility.
Chairman Cummings. Well, we're spending something, though,
right, wherever the picture is. We're spending some money.
They're not coming for free.
Mr. Homan. I don't know what the Border Patrol facilities
cost. I'm just--the $300 figure is an ICE facility.
Chairman Cummings. I got you. I understand.
Did you have a comment on that, Ms. Mukherjee?
Ms. Mukherjee. I wanted to agree with Mr. Homan. That's
correct.
Chairman Cummings. Wow. That's--thank you very much.
So, now, Ms. Costello, you've testified that DHS, quote,
has not developed a long-term plan to address the issues within
detention centers along the southern border, end of quote, and
that the steps DHS has taken to alleviate overcrowding
continue, these are your words, to fall short. Is that
accurate?
Ms. Costello. You know, I think the efforts to put tents in
place and try to create more space to illuminate the
overcrowding are first steps, but as I did testify earlier,
it's about moving children and families and adults out of these
facilities to begin with. The CBP facilities were never
intended to house folks for--as many folks on the panel have
testified today for longer than 72 hours. We are currently
engaged in efforts to try to identify why they're staying there
for longer than 72 hours and to offer some recommendations for
things that we can do about that.
Chairman Cummings. How soon do you expect those
recommendations to be made?
Ms. Costello. We're just getting involved in that work.
Chairman Cummings. That's not what I asked you.
Ms. Costello. I know.
Chairman Cummings. Okay.
Ms. Costello. But you know if I promise you a date and then
I don't----
Chairman Cummings. You know I'm going to have you up in
here.
Ms. Costello. I know you're going to ask me again, sir.
Chairman Cummings. Yes. I certainly will.
Ms. Costello. It will take some time for us to get there. I
think we have several lines of work that we're engaged in on
all of these issues that have been discussed today. Some of
them will be ready this fall. That one, probably not yet.
Chairman Cummings. You know, I want you to understand that
we--this is very unusual for us to be here this late on a
Friday, on a getaway day.
Ms. Costello. I know, sir.
Chairman Cummings. But it's urgent for us. It's a life-and-
death situation, and that's why I'm kind of pressing you a
little bit here.
Ms. Costello. Yes.
Chairman Cummings. I just want--like somebody said on the
other side, we're looking for solutions. And sometimes to get
to solutions, you have to have accountability, and you have to
have pressure. So we want to see something get done as fast as
we can.
Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Mukherjee. I want to add to the record that CBP has
dealt with larger number of apprehensions in the past without
causing and creating a health and safety crisis. So, if
apprehensions continue at the rate that they've been in 2019
without the drop that we saw last month, without the 28-percent
drop from June 2019, we'll see no more than 67 percent of the
number of apprehensions that we saw in 1986, in 1998, 1999, and
in 2000.
And the Flores settlement agreement was reached in 1997. It
requires the government to plan for an influx. Two weeks ago, a
Federal court recognized that the government has had 22 years
to plan for an influx, and the court ordered the government to
do so forthwith. So I agree with you, Chairman, about the
urgency of the situation and that the administration needs to
act now to care for these children and release them promptly.
Chairman Cummings. Ms. Costello, you're going to get back
to me, right, let me know when you kind of realize--I mean,
believe you can get that done?
Ms. Costello. Of course, we will, sir.
Chairman Cummings. I really would appreciate that.
Do you have anything else because I'm going to let each one
of them ask one question. Okay. Fine. Yes.
We're going to let--you all have been so kind, Members, to
stay here, and I just want to check to see if you all had a
question or two. We will go to Mr. Raskin and then come back
down this way.
Mr. Raskin. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. And I'm very
proud to be a member of your committee with all the
extraordinary work we did this week to open America's eyes to
what's going on in the name of every American citizen at the
border.
Ms. Mukherjee, I wanted to ask you, because you've been
doing this kind of work, as I understand it, since you were a
law student in a clinical program in 2003, so you have some
historical sense of this looking at it as a human rights
advocate and a lawyer from that perspective. Can you compare
the conditions that you've seen at immigration facilities over
the last year to what you saw before this? Because the truth
is, I think, I'm like most Americans, who are not in the
immigration law field, and I haven't paid close attention to
this, but is this what it's always been like, or are, as we
have seen, a degradation and deterioration of the conditions?
How do we understand this in historical context?
Ms. Mukherjee. I have never seen anything like this. I have
been involved in suing three administrations to try and seek
better protections for immigrant children in detention, but
never before have I seen what I saw, heard, and smelled as what
I did in Clint last month. Never before have we learned of 700
children being detained in a facility designed for 100 adults.
Never before have I met with children detained in CBP custody
for even a week, much less several weeks. Never before has my
team of lawyers had to directly intervene to get babies
admitted to the hospital.
The week of June 10th, my colleagues, a pediatrician and
several lawyers, did interviews in McAllen, Texas, at the
Ursula facility, and they identified five babies who were so
sick that they needed to be admitted to the neonative intensive
care unit of the local hospital.
For nearly a decade, as the committee knows, there were no
reported deaths of children in Federal immigration custody. In
just the past year, seven children have died in custody or just
after being released. This is different than what I've ever
seen before.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Cummings. Mr. Comer.
Mr. Comer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Homan, you're clearly the expert. You're clearly the
person that's performed the sacrifice to try to defend the
border, to try to protect Americans, to try to save lives from
Americans and others who are here legally or illegally or
however they're here. Do you have any closings remarks because
I know that you've been cutoff a lot today. I'm very sorry that
a member on the other side questioned your integrity because,
clearly, you are credible. You have served this country with
honor, and I just wanted to give you an opportunity to have
some closings remarks or touch on anything that's been
mentioned in the last 30 minutes.
Mr. Homan. I will just say this: I've served my country for
34 years, and there was a comment made earlier that I--in my
LinkedIn, that I oversaw 300-and-some thousand. Actually, in
the four years of my leadership, we oversaw a million illegal
aliens being removed and be deported. And I got a Presidential
Rank Award from President Obama for distinguished service. I've
worked for six Presidents, and I respect each and every one of
them because they're the President of the United States, but my
job as a career law enforcement officer is to execute a mission
within the framework provided me, the framework being money,
resources, and policies. I executed the mission under President
Obama in a leadership role at ICE, and I've executed the
mission under President Trump for a year and a half. I did my
job. And a lot of this back and forth today--and I'll leave it
with this. This situation at the border is the failure of
Congress to act. These children are in bad conditions. My heart
breaks for them. They shouldn't be in--Border Patrol jails
weren't built for a vulnerable population like women and
children. So give these people the--HHS--the money they need to
get these people to the facility that is built and planned for
them. No one wants to see that, but we need to stop the
vilification of the men and women who are doing the best they
can under very difficult circumstances. I was a Border Patrol
agent. I know many Border Patrol agents, and they've shed many
a tear of what's going on. I hope Congress will work with this
administration and try to fix it. I do.
I think we're a country of laws. We need to enforce the
law. And for anybody in Congress to say, ``Well, ignore the law
because we'd rather not fix it,'' is just the wrong way to go.
I ask the Border Patrol and ICE to do their job. I ask Congress
to do theirs.
Mr. Comer. Two things, and I'll yield back, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, something that's good to point out. These
facilities, correct me if I'm wrong, were not built to house
children.
Mr. Homan. They're jails.
Mr. Comer. No. 2, you have given three solutions that I
agree 100 percent would begin to solve the problem. And I can
assure you that this side of the aisle is going to do
everything we can to work with the Trump administration to
implement that. It takes 218 votes to pass legislation and move
to the Senate. We have about 198. And I hope that we can work
in a bipartisan way because to get to a solution in this
Congress, it's going to take bipartisan support.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much.
Ms. Pressley.
Ms. Pressley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Homan, I wanted to--just for my own edification, I was
wondering if you could answer a couple of questions that I was
unable to get answered during our visit at CBP. Are you aware
of exactly what is the temperature that the--where families are
being detained should be at?
And then, secondarily, what does the heat index need to be
outside for people to be moved from tents inside?
Mr. Homan. I don't know the answer to that question, ma'am.
I can say that the biggest complaint you hear from folks is
that the Border Patrol cells many times are very cold. They
call them ice boxes. And the reason for that is because many of
these people from Central America don't experience air
conditioning on a 24/7 basis. But I don't know if they have--to
be honest with you, I don't know if they have a limit on where
it should be at. I don't. I don't have an answer to that
question.
Ms. Pressley. Okay. Is there anyone on the panel that could
speak to a recommended temperature?
Ms. Nagda. Representative, I don't have those numbers, but
I know that advocacy groups have pulled that information in the
past, and I'd be happy to share it with you. They've prepared
reports in terms of what they have been told are the standards
and what ought to be the standards.
Ms. Pressley. Okay. Does that include anything so far as a
lavatory and a toilet because I would be curious, you know.
Again, we make this about funding. If you send equipment some
place and more goods, and you send one toilet to serve 500
people, that is not sanitary. That is a public health issue. So
I would be curious to know for my own edification what is
recommended.
Ms. Nagda. I don't think we've ever had those
recommendations because we've never been in a circumstance
where we had to say how many toilets are needed for children--
--
Ms. Pressley. Right.
Ms. Nagda [continuing]. is privacy required. Things have
never been this bad. So those reports don't exist, but I
suspect they are on the way.
Ms. Pressley. Okay. All right. And then Mr. Homan, I just
wanted to thank you for your commitment on the record to
partner with me to do everything we can to save this Angolan
detainee Mariana. My chief of staff, Sarah Groh, is in the
back. She'll approach you as this hearing adjourns so that we
can get on the phone right away. Thank you.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
When we were at these facilities, one of the things that I
had noticed was that there were these tents in the back with--I
mean, they looked like cages, and I know that a lot of the
migrants, they call the cold rooms ``hieleras,'' and they call
these pens ``perreras,'' dog pounds. There were a lot of them,
but they were all empty when I arrived.
And we had heard reports that there were hundreds of people
in the El Paso border station. And so I asked some of the
migrants: Is it true that there were people here, or is there
anyone else here?
And they said: No. There's no one else here.
And I said: Were there people here? We had been hearing
that there were hundreds of people being kept in this facility.
And they said: Yes. They took them away.
And I had heard from these migrants but in other--from
other facilities we had visited, a kind of a welcome station
for families, and we had heard similar things from the pastor
there as well, that CBP changes up facilities when they know--
when they have advance notice if a congressional delegation is
coming. I'm curious if you all have heard anything about this
or heard any accounts to corroborate what they have said.
Ms. Mukherjee. What I can say is that the government had 3
weeks' notice that we were coming to the El Paso sector and
that the officers on the ground at the Clint facility knew days
in advance that we were coming. And what we saw was so
appalling that we had to share it with America. We had no other
choice, and very quickly thereafter, we learned that children
were being moved out of the facility in the hundreds and that
CBP was releasing thousands of children.
Chairman Cummings. Thank you very much.
I'm going to just make one closing statement, but I have
two or three questions, and we'll be finished in the next five
minutes.
Ms. Costello, I was shocked to read the reports about the
racist and sexist posts on a Secret Service Facebook page used
by current and former Border Patrol agents. Can you confirm
today whether your office is investigating this issue? And
before you answer, I understand that you have certain
limitations. I'm just asking that question. Go ahead.
Ms. Costello. I can answer it in this case.
Chairman Cummings. Okay.
Ms. Costello. But if you'll just allow me to elaborate.
Chairman Cummings. Go ahead.
Ms. Costello. Those kinds of complaints, we do get them,
and because they relate to violations of the behavior and code
of conduct, usually the CBP Office of Professional
Responsibility handles those because we get so many complaints
that we want our criminal investigators to focus on corruption
and crime and very high-level administrative misconduct. So the
individual behaviors, we still feel those are appropriate for
CBP's Office of Professional Responsibility.
However, given that there were allegations that leadership
knew that they used this Facebook page to get information, that
they didn't take action earlier when they knew, we do feel that
that's an appropriate issue for my office to look into, but it
won't be a criminal investigation, sir. It will be done out of
our Office of Special Reviews, which is the same office that
did the management alerts.
Chairman Cummings. I understand.
As we conclude, you know, I've sat here, and I've listened
to everybody, even you in your testimony. I was looking at it.
I was in a meeting but watching it. You, Mr. Homan, I heard
your testimony. I heard everybody's testimony. And as I sat
listening to all of what has happened today, I go back to what
I said a little bit earlier. I think we really have got to
concentrate on these children who are trying and their parents
are trying to simply live a better life and many of them
escaping from just pure horror stories. And, you know, when you
use, Ms. Costello, words like ``imminent danger''--I forget who
used it--but to me, that's life and death stuff. That's--you
know, I immediately go to a whole 'nother gear because it's
about saving somebody's life, saving a lot of people's lives.
And then there's another piece to this, and I think what
happens, Mr. Homan, a lot of--I listened to your testimony and
what you--particularly the last statements that you made in
answer to Mr. Comer's giving you that opportunity. You know,
you have got a good point. You're trying to carry out the law,
and if it's anything is to happen, we need to do it. But in the
meantime--it's the meantime that I'm worried about--what
happens?
I tell my children that whenever you go into a storm, you
have to respect the storm. In other words, you don't go into an
icy condition speeding. You have to respect the storm. In other
words, we have to--right now, I think we've got to go the extra
mile to try to make sure we do the things immediately to bring
comfort to these children.
We had a hearing yesterday where we talked about the
effects of trauma on children. And I'm telling you, it was
chilling, and I could not help when I was listening to our
witnesses but think about these children. You heard me say at
the beginning of this hearing our children are the living
messengers we send to a future we will never see. The question
is, how do we send them? How are we sending them? I mean, you
think about a child walking around with a dirty diaper, no
toothpaste, torn away from their parents, smelling bad.
I mean, there's some kind of way--and I'm not blaming you,
Mr. Homan, and I don't think anybody here is doing that. What
we're saying is we too want to find solutions to resolve this
issue. These children will grow up when we're dead. We'll be
dancing with the angels. And what kind of message will we have
sent? And I think that's the reason why we have so much
interest in these hearings. Our members on both sides are
concerned about, who is this young man, this little baby, who
is now 4 years old, going to grow into? What's he going to be
like?
And it is our duty. This moment is our watch. We are on
watch right now, and what we do now, we can put our hand prints
and our fingerprints on their futures and on their destinies.
And so part of this hearing is about trying to change the
trajectory of their destinies, trying to change the trajectory
of their destinies. And so help me God, I'm going to do
everything in our power and work with our entire committee to
try to resolve these issues as fast as we possibly can.
Without objection, the following items shall be entered
into the hearing record, a letter from the Anti-Defamation
League, a recommendation from Kids in Need of Defense, a
statement from the Church World Service, a statement from the
Center for Victims of Torture, a letter from the organization
of Zero to Three.
Chairman Cummings. These documents set forth
recommendations to stop separating the children from their
families and unnecessary detentions and ensure we provide
humane treatment to everyone in government custody.
Again, I would like to thank our witnesses for testifying
today. It's been a long day. And I want to thank all of you,
all of you, all the Members, who most of you all would have
been on a plane by now going to where the places you've got to
go, but you felt that it was so important that you be here, and
I appreciate that.
Without objection, all members will have five legislative
days within which to submit additional written questions for
the witnesses to the chair, which will be forwarded to the
witnesses for their response. I ask our witnesses to please
respond as promptly as possible and as fast as you possibly
can.
Again, I want to thank all of you, and this hearing is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:39 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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