▶ 0:17:20Chair: The committee will now come to order. There has been a significant question raised the past year or so whether or not the president has enough power to fix problems at the border. That is with this hearing will be about, is there enough statutory authority for the president to do what needs to be done at the border.
▶ 0:17:42Chair: We have witnessed an unprecedented erosion of security at our borders, logged by a complete disregard to protect U.S. citizens. 's nearly 11 million individuals have been encountered, attempting to illegally enter the U.S. in his first year in office, resident biden repealed over 80 of president trump's policies that had effectively secured the southwest border.
▶ 0:18:08Chair: What was once a controlled and secure boundary turned into an open-door policy that allowed individuals, many with little to no documentation to show up, state their name, or a name and waltzed right into the country. The biden-harris administration claims they check everyone against criminal databases, but the only do so against U.S.
▶ 0:18:30Chair: And allied nations records, leaving massive blind spots for criminals from countries that don't share information or have rival databases. Criminals and terrorists linked individuals are able to slip into the country undetected, often disappearing without ever appearing at court dates.
▶ 0:18:51Chair: Custom and border protection apprehended nearly 400 suspected terrorists attempting to illegally enter the ports of entry and another 1500 at ports of entry to get these are just the ones that managed to get across. Countless others have evaded detection. During these last few years, the laws that exist to protect this nation were bent, abused and outright ignored. Her role, which is meant to be used sparingly, became a loophole, and silent laws were distorted to justify an open border agenda.
▶ 0:19:22Chair: Tragically, lincoln riley was brutally murdered because the biden administration. Nobody should have to endure the pain they have. President biden has discarded proven strategies that remain in mexico, which was undeniably deterred. The results were immediate and disastrous. During the last full month, when remained in mexico was in effect, order encounters -- border encounters were under 70,000.
▶ 0:19:52Chair: Remember this, do the obama administration, their standard for what constituted a crisis was 1000 attempted crossings in a day. Under the biden-harris administration, on average, over 6000 encounters daily at the southwest border. Yet, they insisted there was no crisis.
▶ 0:20:14Chair: Policies created a pool effect, enticing migrants to pay cartels thousands of dollars for a treacherous journey to the southwest border read the message over the last four years has been show up, we will find a way to get you in, into has benefited? The cartels who profit from terrorists linked individuals exploiting chaos to slip in unnoticed. All the powers needed to address this crisis we believe already exist under current law.
▶ 0:20:43Chair: The president has the authority to implement remain in mexico, and the department of homeland security can immediately return migrants to a foreign country. The president also owns broad powers to suspend or restrict entry for any group deemed detrimental to national interest. Section 208 of the immigration and nationality act says the president and secretary of homeland security may grant asylum, not shall grant asylum.
▶ 0:21:11Chair: Section 28 also allows president trump to make anyone illegally entering the country and eligible for asylum. Under section 212, president trump and stop the entry of illegal aliens altogether. Section 235 authorizes him to immediately place illegal immigrants back down to the mexican side of the border. 2024 election was a clear mandate for the american people to reverse president biden's disasters open border policies.
▶ 0:21:38Chair: We must reinstate remain in mexico and use the other existing authorities. That is why following the hearing, we will vote on affirming the presidents and secretaries of homeland security's legal authority to secure the southwest border, including taking immediate steps to remove illegal aliens and reinstate remain in mexico, and catch and release. The trump administration demonstrated that when the laws enforced properly, it works.
▶ 0:22:09Chair: This resolution reaffirms president trump or any president has broad authority to resolve the ongoing crisis. I urge colleagues to stand with us, uphold the rule of law, and restore order at our nation's borders. I will recognize the ranking member's.
▶ 0:22:27Senator: Thank you. As a member of the committee, I have long made securing our borders a top priority. I've been pleased to work with members on both sides of the aisle to advance bipartisan common sense legislation that strengthens border security and provides tools and resources to support our border security professionals as they carry out their extremely challenging missions. I look forward to working together to continuing these efforts in this congress.
▶ 0:22:55Senator: I recognize we face significant challenges at our southern border, and I'm committed to working in a bipartisan way to address the challenges. Today, we are discussing the policy known as remain in mexico, created during the first trump administration and first implemented in 2019. Under the policy, certain migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-mexico border were processed and returned to mexico to wait for their next immigration court hearings in the U.S.
▶ 0:23:27Senator: Although it is a means of deterring migrants, the real success with stopping fuel into the fire of cartel activity in mexico. This particular policy accelerated dangerous, illegal activity led by cartels in mexico even more. It is estimated that these cartels have raked in billions of dollars from this criminal activity through drug trafficking, extortion, human trafficking, smuggling, and ransom kidnappings of asylum-seekers.
▶ 0:23:57Senator: After the implementation of the remain in mexico policy, a report documented more than 1500 allegations of harm caused by cartels, including homicide, sexual assault and kidnapping in a couple of years. There are numerous reports of cartels extorting asylum-seekers for thousands of dollars so they would not be murdered by the cartels. While they waited in mexico for their scheduled immigration hearings.
▶ 0:24:25Senator: Often over the course of several months. Although today we are discussing a policy and its impact in mexico, we know that cartels bring their criminal activities across their borders and into our communities in the U.S. we should implement policies -- we should not implement policies that will further enrich cartels and to enable their violent criminal enterprise on either side of the border.
▶ 0:24:53Senator: We should be focused on policies that help frontline personnel get ahead of these dangerous cartels. I'm committed to working in a bipartisan way to find common sense solutions and strengthen border security, streamline our immigration and asylum process and ensure dhs personnel have the tools and resources needed to complete their national security mission. I appreciate our witnesses here today for sharing testimony and for contributing to our discussion on securing our borders.
▶ 0:25:22Chair Paul: It is the practice of this committee to swear in witnesses, will each of you raise your right hand? You swear the testimony will give before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god? From 2019 through 2021, Mr.
▶ 0:25:44Chair Paul: Ken cuccinelli first served as acting director of immigration services and then as the acting deputy secretary of the department of homeland security. He was a leading spokesman on immigration, homeland security and election security and was appointed by president trump to serve as an original member of the coronavirus task force.
▶ 0:26:11Chair Paul: In addition to practicing law for over 25 years, he served in the virginia senate from 2002 to 2010 and as virginia's attorney general from 2010 to 2014. Welcome to the committee. You are now recognized her opening remarks.
▶ 0:26:27Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: Thank you for inviting me to discuss the challenges and opportunities in dealing with illegal immigration as we look forward to the second swearing-in of donald trump as president of the united states next monday. The president of the united states does have vast majority to secure america's border and determine who may enter and under what conditions they may enter.
▶ 0:26:49Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: As one example, the president could reestablish the so-called remain in mexico program that did so much in the latter part of 2019 to drive down illegal alien efforts to even enter the united states. I would like to emphasize how important it is that the world knows the president is serious about keeping legal aliens out.
▶ 0:27:10Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: When someone somewhere in the world is contemplating spending large portions of their life savings to try and illegally into the U.S., they would like to know you have a good chance for success before giving away their money and taking that risky trip. The real success of programs like the remain in mexico program is not just that they screen out fake asylum-seekers, but they help deter illegal aliens from coming in the first place.
▶ 0:27:41Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: The goal of true border security is to be so effective that keeping attempted illegal entrance out that they never try to come in the first place. In that lane, the fastest improvement the new administration could make is at the border itself, the swearing-in of donald trump to the presidency will convert 20,000 men on the border patrol from the world's largest group of greeters back into law enforcement officers whose goal it is to defend the border instead of facilitating the
▶ 0:28:11Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: Ongoing invasion that the biden administration has offered up. If they are supplemented immediately by literary personnel and assets moved to the border who actually block legal entrance, instead of uselessly backing up border patrol, then america's southern border could be effectively sealed to illegal alien traffic and most of the accompanying drug traffic between illegal ports of entry in a matter of weeks.
▶ 0:28:39Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: It would be a historic accomplishment and it is attainable. Literally, the only thing required is the president with the political will to do it, and I expect such a president will be sworn in next week. Let me say that in a different way, the assets and authority stated to completely secure our southern border between the legal ports of entry already exist. With no additional legislation or funding needed.
▶ 0:29:06Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: It does not mean those things would not help, but it is at least possible, but securing the southern border is only step one. Every pull factor should be illuminated at the federal and state level, and I might add, given thfact this government is so hopelessly bankrupt, a good place to start is to end every dollar of spending for immigrants of any kind, the illegals and even legal immigrants.
▶ 0:29:31Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: This congress might as well adjust to the day when severe cuts are necessary across the board. Best to start by cutting funding on non-americans as soon as possible, given that such cuts are already overdue. Perhaps the biggest pool factor is work permits. Administration can ensure that only properly vetted and qualified recipients ever receive work permits by regulation, which is the primary source of lamentable authority in the area.
▶ 0:30:02Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: Work permits need to be as severely restricted as the law allows, specifically to only those aliens who have already established legal authority to be president of the united states, coupled with turning the majority of all hsi agents to workplace and enforcement with charges brought against american businesses using illegal aliens in lieu of american workers. In addition, of course, to identifying and deporting those here illegally.
▶ 0:30:32Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: Reinstating third country asylum is critical to keeping the inflow of new cases down all the trump administration works with congress to build the capacity needed to finally catch up on the caseload of illegal aliens already present in the U.S. a situation that is both dangerous and expensive.
▶ 0:30:50Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: This involves expanded deportation capacity, for example, more immigration processors and logistical support, as president trump laid out the largest logistical undertaking of our lifetimes, that being the deportation of the vast majority of illegal aliens present in the U.S.
▶ 0:31:10Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: If the incoming administration made significant progress on the deportation goals, likely with only the cooperation and assistance of congress, then america will reap the benefits of rater security, lower crime, more job opportunities for poor americans, higher wages for poor americans, as we saw in 2019 and more printable and manageable budgets for state and local governments that are so severely affected by the invasion of illegal aliens that america has suffered for so many years.
▶ 0:31:40Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: Thank you.
▶ 0:31:40Chair Paul: Thank you. We also will welcome andrew r. Arthur, the resident fellow in law and policy at the center for immigration studies. Prior to joining the center in april 2017, he served as the staff director for national security subcommittee at the U.S. house of representatives committee on oversight and I know it is a mouthful. Mr.
▶ 0:32:06Chair Paul: Arthur previously served as immigration judge at the york immigration court in york, pennsylvania, where thousands of bond cases and considered applications for asylum and other forms of immigration related relief and has testified before congress on 13 occasions and has been quoted in numerous publications. Welcome to the committee. You are recognized for your opening statement.
▶ 0:32:30Mr. Arthur: Chairman paul, members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to discuss migrant protection protocols better known as remain in mexico. Nppd was an clip -- mpp was implemented in response to adults with family units entering illegally across the southwest border.
▶ 0:32:55Mr. Arthur: Of more than 153,000 migrants caught crossing the border in the first three months of fy 2019, just over 49% were family units. That is an issue for a number of reasons, the most prominent being that as a bipartisan panel revealed in 2019, the children in the family units are traumatized to unconscionable risk during the illegal journey here.
▶ 0:33:23Mr. Arthur: That panel highlighted "reports that female parents and minor children had been raped and many migrants are robbed, and that they and their children are held hostage and extorted for money ." the then secretary declared a border emergency and explain the system was in freefall as her department scramble to care for families in which migrant children were "arriving sick or than ever before," after being "exploited along the treacherous
▶ 0:33:55Mr. Arthur: Trek to the united states echo it was against this backdrop that the trump ministrations first implemented remain in mexico. In section 235, b2c, the immigration and nationality act, they returned migrants back across the border to await designated port courts. Those whose claims are granted were admitted, while migrants whose claims were denied were quickly removed.
▶ 0:34:23Mr. Arthur: After a phase of implementation and legal challenges, mpp was up and running by october 2019 dhs issued its assessment of the program. Dhs concluded that it was "an indispensable tool in addressing the ongoing crisis at the southern border and restoring integrity to the immigration system border encounters -- immigration system." border encounters dropped and encounters with "central american families where the main
▶ 0:34:55Mr. Arthur: Driver of the crisis," decreased by 80%, according to that assessment. Remain in mexico was implemented with the consent and assistance of the government of mexico. Returnees received access to humanitarian care and assistance, food and housing, work permits and education in mexico.
▶ 0:35:17Mr. Arthur: Our state department funded a $5.5 million project in september 2019 to provide housing and mexican border cities to approximately 8000 third country asylum seekers and others, as well as $11.9 million in cash-based assistance to migrants to move out of shelters while they were in mpp. The biden administration suspended and then twice ended mpp, and the impacts of the decisions are being felt throughout U.S. cities and towns to this day.
▶ 0:35:49Mr. Arthur: Congress has given dhs three deterrence it can use to curb illegal migration to the country , one, barriers and other infrastructure, two, criminal prosecution from intersection, and three, detention, mandated by statute under 235b for illegal entrants and other.
▶ 0:36:13Mr. Arthur: Under 2015 court decision, dhs cannot attain family units for more than 20 days, and separating families has proven unacceptable. Consequently, adult migrants and smugglers use the children as pawns in the effort to remain here indefinitely. In addition, a recent settlement agreement entered into by the biden administration bars them from trying family units with limited exceptions.
▶ 0:36:44Mr. Arthur: While barriers impede legal entry, they can prevent it. Remain in mexico under section 235 b2c is a potential for deterrence because it discourages illegal entrants from getting humanitarian protections by making bogus or weak asylum claims, solely to be released to live and work in the U.S. or years while the claims are being considered. Asylum claims were expedited under mpp and decisions issued more quickly.
▶ 0:37:12Mr. Arthur: They this could begin their new lives sooner than if they had been released. Critics argued mpp were subject to threats and predation while awaiting appearance. In terminating mpp in october 2021, they dhs secretary alejandra mayorkas admitted "it was possible that challenges could be lessened through the expenditure of significant government resources," respectfully, the migrant crisis over the past four years has cost taxpayers tens of hundreds of billions, including at the
▶ 0:37:43Mr. Arthur: State and local level, where officials have no say over immigration decisions. If this is a question of money, my question to you, what price do you put on border security?
▶ 0:37:56Chair Paul: Thank you. We are also pleased to welcome adam isacson, who has worked on defense security and peace building in latin america since 1994. He now directs the washington office on latin america on defense there, and monitors security trends in americas, including U.S.
▶ 0:38:18Chair Paul: Operations with security forces, since 2011, he has focused on border security and visited the U.S.-mexico border over 30 times as I completed -- and has completed field research between guatemala and countries further south along the migration route. Before coming here in 2010, he worked on latin america demilitarization at the center for international policy, welcome to the committee. You are now recognized for your opening statement.
▶ 0:38:50Dir. Isacson: Thank you, chairman paul, ranking member, it is good to be with you today. I did do a lot of fieldwork and data work along the U.S. mexico border with remain in mexico and mpp and the evidence I saw was clear, remain in mexico and reached the cartels. It failed to deter migration and it soured relations with a key ally. Pursuing it again would harm U.S. interests.
▶ 0:39:19Dir. Isacson: Instead, I urged the community on fixing our asylum system, which I agree is broken or get saves tens of thousands of lives every year, but we needed to be fair and efficient. Nobody supports the idea of five-year waits for asylum decisions. Backlogs to create a pull factor of their own, but this is an administered of challenge. It is a question of processing, case management, adjudication, all of which are lacking.
▶ 0:39:46Dir. Isacson: People truly did suffer while waiting in mexico, I heard harrowing accounts of torture and abuse, nearly all the work of organized crime groups and cartels, their cruelty and sadism, it was not just a human rights issue. They are not barbaric just for their own sake, this is their economic model and that an accident national security issue. Organized crime is trying to extract as much money out of love ones as much as they can.
▶ 0:40:15Dir. Isacson: Cartels fight each other for the business. Remain in mexico kept migrants on cartels to her for long periods of time, months or years in mexico border cities, and they created a new market, opportunities for cartels. A big difference and it also requires months long waits to come to U.S. port of entry, but it mx. It easier to wait elsewhere in mexico, parts of mexico that are safer than the border zone, where they are under travel warnings because of cartel crime and kidnapping.
▶ 0:40:47Dir. Isacson: When outsiders are waiting for months and mexico's border zone, they are sitting ducks for the cartels. First, there is extortion. Foreigners have to pay just to exist for a long time and cartel dominated neighborhoods. If you don't pay, it's not safe to go outside your shelter, even if the U.S. helps. Second, people would like to give up on the wait for mpp, but the cartels were there offering coyote services, the chance to cross the border for thousands of dollars. There was kidnapping for ransom.
▶ 0:41:16Dir. Isacson: Cartels held people in horrific conditions, raping, torturing them, and as the relatives in the U.S. had to wire thousands of dollars to get them freed. The financial scale of that exploitation was staggering. Let's imagine that each person in mpp on average had to pay about $1000 in cartel fees.
▶ 0:41:35Dir. Isacson: I ran this number by folks I have worked with on the border, they laughed at the estimate, it if it is right, that is $71 million the cartels made, in addition to what they already made as a result of mpp, an amount you could use to pay the base salaries of 1000 border patrol agents. For all of that, remain in mexico did not do that much to reduce or control migration. For more than 10 years, there has been a series of crackdowns on asylum-seekers.
▶ 0:42:08Dir. Isacson: It mapped out a graphic that looks like this, the crackdowns follow the same pattern, you get an initial drop in migration, it lasts a few months, and then there was a rebound. The classic example is title 42 and the expansions. Even though there was no asylum axis at the border.
▶ 0:42:24Dir. Isacson: After it expanded in june 2019, it fell for four months deeply, and then migration numbers plateaued, same level at the work in 2014, on average for all eight years for barack obama's demonstration, and that is where number stay.
▶ 0:42:41Dir. Isacson: In the first few months of 2020, border apprehension started rising slowly, on pace to grow by double-digit percentage margins in march of 2020, but then covid came and that all but ended 10 days early and title 42 ended up eclipsing remain in mexico with no more hearing dates for anybody and asylum-seekers got expelled. Remain in mexico became irrelevant for the last 10 months of donald trump's administration.
▶ 0:43:10Dir. Isacson: Mpp also strained relations with mexico, the mexican government agreed to it only after heavy pneumatic pressure,, looking cooperation on other shared priorities, and there are a lot in our relationship with mexico, the fentanyl, and number 14 economy in the world, even if we do not have this border, there would be a whole host of interests that we do not want to spend too much on and the
▶ 0:43:41Dir. Isacson: Program actually strengthens drug cartels that is not have that much of an effect on operation, so thank you and I look forward to your discussion. I appreciate it.
▶ 0:43:48Chair Paul: Thank you for your testimony. I'm going to defer my questions for now and recognize ranking member peters.
▶ 0:43:58Sen. Peters: Thank you. I asked for unanimous consent to submit 20 close statements for the record from a wide range of organizations against the reinstatement of this program, including from the nonpartisan american immigration counsel, church world services, and the international refugee and assistance.
▶ 0:44:17Chair Paul: Without objection.
▶ 0:44:19Sen. Peters: Can you tell us who benefited the most from the remain in mexico policy?
▶ 0:44:28Dir. Isacson: The biggest financial benefit went to the cartels who had a large base of people who could extort.
▶ 0:44:35Sen. Peters: Could you walk us through what it look like when and asylum-seekers was returned to mexico under the remain in mexico policy?
▶ 0:44:43Dir. Isacson: It is pretty vivid, even if I walked into matamoros, you would seek cartel spies everywhere. You would see a nice man in a suit standing there, looking to see who was crossing.
▶ 0:44:57Dir. Isacson: The guy selling tamales on the bridges is looking to see he was crossing, now imagine you are someone who was wearing dhs issued sweatpants and a bag that says dhs or shoes with no shoelaces, you are seen as someone who has a right to be held back.
▶ 0:45:15Dir. Isacson: It is widely known that the first half-hour after being returned from mpp, usually the same time of day and at the same exit, was a dangerous time, and then you would be in a shelter, sometimes U.S. funded, sometimes government run or charity run, and it was clear that you cannot leave unless you had an extortion payment to the cartels.
▶ 0:45:37Sen. Peters: How does this type of activity that you described, taken across from the border, how does that impact our national security?
▶ 0:45:46Dir. Isacson: By enriching cartels and giving them a new income stream, we don't want international crime to be wealthier that close to our borderline. In the recent years, even as we have had higher numbers of migrants coming, it has become bigger and bigger business for the cartels and instead of mom-and-pop smugglers, we now have sinaloa and other major national cartels in mexico running the business and fighting each other, and that mix were dangerous for the U.S.
▶ 0:46:14Sen. Peters: And the money the cartels are raising, getting enriched because of the policy, they basically increased other operations like sending fentanyl across the border to poison our kids and people.
▶ 0:46:27Dir. Isacson: It costs $60,000 to set up, so what they are making from extortion could be reinvested.
▶ 0:46:36Sen. Peters: It helps their drug trafficking in the U.S.
▶ 0:46:37Dir. Isacson: It is fungible.
▶ 0:46:40Sen. Peters: Can the remain in mexico policy even be reemployed to do the cooperation of mexico?
▶ 0:46:45Dir. Isacson: It involves their sovereign territory, so I don't know how you could send people back without mexico noticing.
▶ 0:46:52Sen. Peters: We know that cartels have long made money off of the smuggling routes to the U.S., but how did cartels exploit the remain in mexico policy to threaten them? You talked a little about that but maybe elaborate more.
▶ 0:47:08Dir. Isacson: How did they use the policy to threaten people?
▶ 0:47:12Dir. Isacson: They knew people had a gate which to get back to the point of entry and they had to be there, and that motivated them to call more relatives and get that ransom money wired, which, of course, is a crime that involves U.S. soil. It made them more motivatednd raise the prices they could charge.
▶ 0:47:35Sen. Peters: We have seen changes in migration patterns worldwide, and during the initial implementation of remain in mexico, my understanding is a significant portion of migrants encountered were from mexico and central america. We live in a different world today, how would that impact mexico's ability to accommodate a new remain in mexico?
▶ 0:47:58Sen. Peters: 90% of americans were from four countries, now that is only 52%, you have the united nations of people coming here. Now there are people not even from the hemisphere. That is because new gaps have opened up and that means you have more nationalities that mexico may be required to accept. Is mexico going to take chinese people, indians, or even people from brazil or haiti who don't speak spanish?
▶ 0:48:29Sen. Peters: That would be a huge issue to negotiate with the mexicans.
▶ 0:48:32Sen. Peters: My last question, we would like to address border security, it is essential we do that, so what do you believe the U.S. can implement, along with other partners to proactively address these worldwide migration trends that have changed dramatically the last few years?
▶ 0:48:52Sen. Peters: --
▶ 0:48:54Dir. Isacson: Imagine we had an asylum system that could hand out decisions in months, you would have fewer people attempting to enter that system if they knew that decision would be turned around. You are not sitting there five years with a work permit to decide.
▶ 0:49:11Dir. Isacson: Imagine you had a program that made a lot of these entries in mexico, it is not a perfect program, but it did make it more orderly, that would free up more border agents to be on the line instead of doing the processing.
▶ 0:49:25Sen. Peters: Thank you.
▶ 0:49:26Chair Paul: Senator johnson.
▶ 0:49:28Sen. Johnson: Most people have seen this chart by now, it is a lot more famous from when I started developing as chairman of the committee back in 2015, different versions of it.
▶ 0:49:43Sen. Johnson: This chart I gave president trump april 2024, and he liked to start using it in the campaign and on july 13, he turned his head and it saved his life, so that is the biggest benefit from this chart, but prior to that, what I like is it shows cause and effect.
▶ 0:50:03Sen. Johnson: It showed the effect of different policies and court decisions, but in particular, it showed how effective the migrant protection program was for return to mexico. It is obvious, Mr. isacson and senator peters, I cannot believe you are telling us that mpp, remain in mexico did not work. It obviously works.
▶ 0:50:30Sen. Johnson: This is a crisis for the trump administration -- by the way, caused by deferred action, the catalyst that sparked all of this is it was implemented in june 2012, so when president trump based his immigration crisis, he did something about it and used the existing law. It was a lie the last four years that president biden did not have the executive authority to secure the border. He had it. He used that exact executive authority to open the water backup.
▶ 0:51:02Sen. Johnson: And because this clear danger to america. Mr. isacson, you talk about we are fueling -- we are dumping fuel on the fire of cartels. At this point, I think it is 570 encounters a day, and the record was over 14,000 december 2023?
▶ 0:51:27Sen. Johnson: When you have those migrants paying 5, 7, 10, $15,000 to the cartel, do the math. 10,000 times versus $1000 for the thousands buying protection, so we are protecting people by deterring them from trying to come to the country illegally. There is no doubt about it.
▶ 0:51:52Sen. Johnson: And the cost, I think we have the house subcommittee on this to determine the cost of taking care of this massive flow of illegal immigration, $150 billion a year, again, have you not heard of the tontine trees, the rape trees during this time, where the cartel is basically to
▶ 0:52:26Sen. Johnson: Taunting them by putting the undergarments of the young girls they rape and also getting $10,000 for trafficking, so there's no doubt that the remaining mexico problem worked, and the president has the authority to do this and implement it again. It is important to note that one of the keys was the directive tariffs against mexico. We needed mexico's cooperation here.
▶ 0:52:50Sen. Johnson: We implemented mpp in the summer of 2019, and we still saw numbers rise and saw president trump called up the president of mexico and said we need your cooperation, and you see the dramatic results. So, can you talk again about what authority exists, talk about what a lie we have been told the last four years that president biden did not have the authority, he obviously did and opened up the border and caused the catastrophe.
▶ 0:53:20Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: He absently did, and the cartels have never been so flush with cash because of that border policy. I would point out, we look at the border from the north, and if you think about mexico in the northern part of mexico, but not just the northern part, the federal government and mexico does not control mexico, 1/6 of the country is controlled by the cartels, one sixth is contested by the cartels and the government, and Mr.
▶ 0:53:49Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: Isaacson says within 30 minutes mpp of leaving mpp, the same thing happens over and over. That cannot happen if mexico is actually policing the border, which they are not, and they are not able to do, so I would also add that a lot of the violence that occurred both between mexicans and directed at illegal migrants in mexico by the cartels, over the years, has been fairly widely reported in
▶ 0:54:23Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: Mexico, there are reasons the cartels go after those generalists, but we don't see any of that reporting here, none of it, and it is brutal, vicious, and it is fueled by the explosion in traffic over the last four years, the president has the tools to turn that traffic off.
▶ 0:54:43Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: We saw, as you noted on the chart, that you can have an effect on the direction of the traffic, meaning the numbers, and I fully expect president trump will do that, remain in mexico is just one tool, there are others, as well.
▶ 0:54:59Chair Paul: Senator blumenthal.
▶ 0:55:06Sen. Blumenthal: I agree there are other tools, and in 2013, we passed in the U.S. senate a comprehensive immigration reform that would have implemented those other tools for securing our border. I continue to support more robust efforts and with border security, I believe that is shared by most, if not all of us here in the U.S.
▶ 0:55:33Sen. Blumenthal: Senate, and I'm hopeful we can do another conference of border security and immigration reform that addresses all of the facets of our broken immigration system, and am hoping president trump, once he is sworn in, will pursue that objective, and he will find very favorable responses on both sides of the aisle here in the U.S. congress.
▶ 0:56:06Sen. Blumenthal: As a former prosecutor, and Mr. cuccinelli shares part of my background as a state attorney general, focused on how we actually deal with the nuts and bolts of the cartels.
▶ 0:56:24Sen. Blumenthal: And I think all three of you have extensive, could the mexico government in cooperation with our law enforcement be doing more to counter these cartels under the authority -- and I agree the president has the authority to do more -- and how would those resources be focused ?
▶ 0:56:51Sen. Blumenthal: Specifically, how can we secure more cooperation from the government of mexico? Let me go down the line and I will stop talking so I give each of you the maximum amount of time.
▶ 0:57:04Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: This is an area where congress could be helpful, one of the things thrown out all the time is declaring the cartels foreign terrorist organizations, if you look at the statutes that address foreign terrorist organizations, they come with a very sweeping connections to the rest of the community. That statute was designed with isolated cells of islamists in mind.
▶ 0:57:33Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: The cartels are integrated into the communities and they take advantage of the communities they live in, they make money off of them, and we need a different statute. It would be very helpful if congress formulated a much more surgical approach to dealing with something like the cartels that use terrorist tactics for organized crime goals, and they are quasi-governments because they control territory in mexico that the mexican government will not contest.
▶ 0:58:02Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: This government will not, the last administration would not, and granted, that is a significant challenge, so that is an area where congress could be quite helpful, in providing more of those tools specifically to go after the cartels, and people think in terms of kinetic action, but they are about money. When they boil it down, they are about money.
▶ 0:58:27Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: And any legislation along those lines should include the ability of the treasury department to seek out and sees their assets around the world.
▶ 0:58:35Chair Paul: Thank you --
▶ 0:58:39Sen. Blumenthal: Thank you.
▶ 0:58:44Mr. Arthur: We talk about the impacts that they have on the U.S., they have an equally corrosive effect in mexico, mexico has been waging a drug war since early 2000's, and I could tell you all about that, 37, 37,000 dead, and when you cut off the head of the cartel, it gets worse because the people to come up underneath are even worse. We need to work closely with them.
▶ 0:59:13Mr. Arthur: Ken is right, many fuels the life force of the cartels. I don't think people understand, if they knew that, that would be a game changer. Yes, I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. cuccinelli, we need to have additional authorities go after them, sees the money, cut off the head, and help the mexican government help themselves.
▶ 0:59:41Dir. Isacson: I would add the element of corruption, although it might make the mexican government uncomfortable to talk about it, and organized crime group is not an insurgency, these are not leftist guerrillas, you have not weaken them or gained control over that territory.
▶ 0:59:59Dir. Isacson: Rather, they are harder to fight with the resurgence he because they depend on their leakage of that is correct and the mexican government, for six years, he's now in jail for having worked at the sinaloa cartel. We have to know who we are working with, and if you cannot depend on your partner helped articulate those organized crime groups, you have to take that oxygen with the.
▶ 1:00:22Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: It should be a strategic goal of the U.S. to help the mexican government get control of 100% of mexico, just to put it in strategic national level terms.
▶ 1:00:34Sen. Blumenthal: I think these thoughts are excellent. My time is expired, but I would like to pursue this suggestion that seems to unite all of you that we need to develop the tools, the law enforcement tools to treat these cartels as terrorist organizations.
▶ 1:00:54Sen. Blumenthal: Their ideology is knowledge and sense, it is not about converting the world to another religion or political system, it is about money, and I think they need to be treated as terrorist organizations, even if they are of a different brand, so thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 1:01:16Sen. Lankford: To go back to the dollars and sense of what senator blumenthal talked about, and 2022, I was in the rio grande valley and asked how much do cartels make traffic and people in the region? Just this region, that section of the border, how much do they make traffic and people? The response was we estimate 153 million dollars a week they make traffic and people.
▶ 1:01:42Sen. Lankford: The open border policy that happened the last four years has facilitated incredible financial gain for the cartels, when they made hundred 50 $3 million week moving people through the highest numbers they possibly could, that facilitated this.
▶ 1:02:00Sen. Lankford: In addition, other criminal organizations around the world saw how much money the cartels were making, and they wanted a piece of the travel money, and we started getting isis individuals coming in from jicha stand because they were facilitated by criminal organizations coming in because it was easier to move, so this is important to shut the money down. I agree with senator blumenthal that it is important we use the authority. Mr. cuccinelli, thank you for all the work you've done.
▶ 1:02:30Sen. Lankford: You were very outspoken on hr two, great bill, very thorough, and you were forward to say congress needs to pass this bill. What are the aspects of that that you say still need to be done?
▶ 1:02:42Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: Well, the chairman started with the president's authority to close the border, which I agree, he has now, but hr 2 really starts to get at the longer-term enforcement arc, processing the folks and keeping them out, closing loopholes, even if you close the border between the legal ports of entry, people will still come to the ports of
▶ 1:03:12Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: Entry, and I will call it a bit of an organization and a game about who can get in and who cannot. The last four years, everybody has gotten in. You need to give your ofo officers in the ports of entry the legal tools to turn people away, anyone away who cannot demonstrate a then-current basis to be in the country. And hr2 really advanced that.
▶ 1:03:39Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: As you know, this'll area of law has been tangled up in knots with court rulings.
▶ 1:03:48Sen. Lankford: You talked about florez before, that is an issue, you have to be able to gauge in congress to say what is this going to be because the court literally created the 20 day time period and now we are stuck with it because congress has not been able to respond.
▶ 1:04:05Mr. Arthur: If I could add, there was a truly bipartisan report in 2019 by cpp families and the children care panel. Leon fresco, barack obama's guide to doj, they talked about all of these issues, and they crafted it to where they suggested solutions, including processing at detention centers, but they called on congress to fix it.
▶ 1:04:33Mr. Arthur: Again, when there is a bipartisan recommendation like that, it is almost incumbent on congress to give it a look because this is a huge problem. The kids are suffering. Everything that you have heard today is caused by that.
▶ 1:04:49Sen. Lankford: It is, so I lived at it as an area where we can end the parole abuse, we don't have a clear definition of humanitarian rollout we have to make that clear, dealing with title 42 for emergency moments to say the cartel holds a bunch of folks and they rush a border patrol station and what you can do on that, all these different areas, these are areas that congress has to be able to act
▶ 1:05:19Sen. Lankford: On and provide clarity because courts are going to be defining at in different ways on the rules are even different in texas than what they are in california or arizona based on different court actions, so we have got to be able to have some clarity on this, and that is where congress has to be able to act. Saying all that, the other issue brought up before was about what are called special-interest aliens.
▶ 1:05:41Sen. Lankford: These are folks coming in from other areas that mexicans are not going to take back, these are countries they're not accepting folks back and we also have to put state department pressure on some of these countries, as well, but this is an area that we have to clarify in the law. Any comments from any of you specifically about those individuals?
▶ 1:06:06Mr. Arthur: Senator lee law division for ins, whenever we picked up a special interest alien at the border, they would call me day and night, I got a lot of calls from the command center in the middle of the night. Today, those individuals are released into the U.S. and processed by line border patrol agents, this is a ridiculous situation.
▶ 1:06:33Mr. Arthur: We have heard fbi director christopher wray talk about every light is blinking. We are in a situation -- I served at the ins before september 11, we are in a situation so much worse --
▶ 1:06:45Sen. Lankford: We had 70,000 special-interest aliens that came in last year that we know about this point from dhs goods, and christopher wray, I asked him, he told us point blank that he is not aware of all the sia's and the dhs did not inform him, so we are not tracking those, thank you.
▶ 1:07:06Chair Paul: Senator kim.
▶ 1:07:10Sen. King: Thank you --
▶ 1:07:15Sen. Kim: What I've talked to a wide array of people lined objectives and what we are trying to achieve when it comes to border and immigration, a couple of things came up over and over again. Number one, about making sure we can provide security for our nation, keeping our community and family safe area two, addressing the migrant backlog and that amount of pressure we are feeling in different towns, communities, cities all over the country and, three, how we have
▶ 1:07:46Sen. Kim: To manage that process. Whether air, land or sea, we should have control over sovereign borders. I try to approach this and that kind of lens, and I appreciate your thoughts and other types of categories, but Mr. isacson, when it comes to the security, and you made a compelling argument about challenges faced by cartels, but as Mr. cuccinelli, Mr.
▶ 1:08:12Sen. Kim: Arthur and others articulated, we continue to face those challenges now and it was not just unique to where remain in mexico was in place. I wanted to ask you when it came to the remain in mexico time, how did that affect our security specifically? I heard about the atrocious behaviors and how it affected those waiting, but was there a particular effect on us there, or is it cumulative?
▶ 1:08:42Sen. Kim: We are experiencing a lot of that now, was there something unique about that moment that remained in mexico empowered the cartels to achieve?
▶ 1:08:51Dir. Isacson: During both that remain in mexico period, and since, with this larger surge in the biting years, you see the cartels get wealthier, you see they consolidate, and rather than smugglers paying a fee for the right to be in the territory, the cartels themselves took over the territory, which made them more wealthy and how does that affect us in the U.S.? It is more indirect, having more cartels that can invest in community crossing the border effects us.
▶ 1:09:22Dir. Isacson: We have not seen what you would call spillover violence where cartels carry out there kidnappings much on the U.S. the same way they would not do that in a wealthy neighborhood in mexico city. They don't do anything on the U.S. side, kids go to school here, etc., and they don't want to trigger a closure, so you don't always feel the day today on the U.S. side but you do feel that indirect.
▶ 1:09:46Sen. Kim: I do not want to linger too long on it, but there is wide agreement across bipartisan about wanting to go after the cartels to make sure we have that security. Mr. isacson, and Mr. cuccinelli, you talked about that board early process, addressing that backlog.
▶ 1:10:07Sen. Kim: There is more than one way we can do that, and remain in mexico try to get it from one angle, but one thing that stretched across was the need for orderly process, whether increase in judges or other aspects of that, that would try to adjudicate this, and that will help bring down the backlog, so I wanted to ask each of you, is that an area where we can find agreement and a place we can drill it on as a committee to address this question mark when we start with
▶ 1:10:39Sen. Kim: Mr. -- address this? Why don't we start with Mr. isacson and work our way down.
▶ 1:10:43Dir. Isacson: If you fear for your life of return, you have the right to ask for asylum and get due process. Whether you will do that partially or gently, right now, you only have 700 judges in 700 asylum officers more or less to do that backlog. We need more capacity --
▶ 1:11:01Sen. Kim: Is everyone in agreement that we need more than 700, Mr. arthur?
▶ 1:11:08Mr. Arthur: Being an immigration judge myself, my wife and son did not see much, but the important thing to keep in mind, when you talk about this, how effective detention is. If individuals know they will be detained until they are granted asylum, people without asylum claim are not going to come. That is good for two reasons, one, the border is easier to control. Two, people who deserve asylum need to be allowed to restart their lives in the U.S.
▶ 1:11:37Mr. Arthur: A lot of them have family back at home who are in danger, too. When I left the bench in 2015, the detention time for people, basically the time it took to do asylum claims, 36 days.
▶ 1:11:52Mr. Arthur: When you contrast that to 100 -- 1013 days, in recent years, that is a problem, what are my facilities that I heard cases from was a county facility in pennsylvania area and nobody would like to detain families, but it was the most humane situation you can imagine. If I say it looked like a college campus, my did not look that well and I went to uba.
▶ 1:12:20Mr. Arthur: You could do it in a humanitarian manner, do it quickly, we need more resources, send more judges in.
▶ 1:12:29Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: We heard you talk about the svp app, and that is what you should be doing with your application, you should be applying from your home country and we should be leaving people in their home country or putting them back pending the outcome of a due process to deter bad actors who come in, but also so we are in a position to process the people who are playing by the rules and fitting within the boundaries of our laws as opposed to breaking them.
▶ 1:12:58Chair Paul: Senator scott.
▶ 1:13:01Sen. Scott: Maybe I don't understand the law well enough, but if somebody -- let's say if they come from a country where they do not want to accept the individual back, today get to mexico when they come to the U.S., why should that be mexico's problem? Why should we say, you are the one who let them into your country, it is not their problem, it is our problem. Raise their tariffs until they do it.
▶ 1:13:31Sen. Scott: They're the ones who opened their border to allow them into the U.S.
▶ 1:13:35Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: Mexico has long had permissive entry into mexico, and they are happy to shuttle people along to our border. I agree 100%, we talk about mpp and agreement to mexico and so forth, but one of the changes, the universe of illegal immigration to borders now is how much the rest of the world and hemisphere showing up there.
▶ 1:14:00Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: I think mexico would finally start to develop some vetting for people coming into mexico if we dumped everybody back into mexico, and there are people in this room who would not like that and it would be ugly for a time, but if people knew they could not get into the U.S.
▶ 1:14:15Frm. Sec. Cuccinelli: And they would not be allowed to wait around for the 1013 days for the hearing they were not show up for, they would not come in the first place overwhelmingly, which allows you to properly treat people playing by the rules who are also delayed because of backlogs.
▶ 1:14:36Sen. Scott: So why don't we do it? So why don't we do it?
▶ 1:14:43Mr. Cuccinelli: I think it is a matter of political will. We want to cooperate with mexico.
▶ 1:14:49Sen. Scott: When they are not cooperative with us.
▶ 1:14:52Mr. Cuccinelli: They need us economically more than we need them, and I would say one of the mistakes people make is to think of mexico as an ally. Mexico is not an ally to the united states. It is a neighbor and we want to get along with our neighbors, but not all neighbors are allies.
▶ 1:15:16Mr. Cuccinelli: Mexico operates in many ways that are very in the medical to the well-being of the united states and our that, frankly, a period of being much tougher, as you described, senator, will result after you get through the hump and the difficulty that will arise with mexico because they won't want to be treated that way, that they will adjust.
▶ 1:15:42Mr. Cuccinelli: When mexico wants to be tough with their immigration laws, they are so much faster than we are and they are so much tougher than we are. It would shock you to see the comparison.
▶ 1:15:52Sen. Scott: Do you think the cartels should be designated as terrorist organizations?
▶ 1:15:58Mr. Cuccinelli: I actually don't support that because with the current foreign terrorist organization designation statute, that sweeps in a massive proportion of the people in northern mexico who you wouldn't really want to be targeting. As I mentioned earlier, it is because that statute was really drafted to get after cells, not an organized crime entity that is integrated itself into the community, and frankly, is a defect of government in many parts of mexico.
▶ 1:16:28Mr. Cuccinelli: -- de facto government in many parts of mexico. We need to give the tools to get after the cartels both as a matter of kinetic action, and when that is appropriate -- you all set the boundaries on that -- and to get after their finances, which frankly I think you be unleashed a great deal more on.
▶ 1:16:47Sen. Scott: Trump has said he will do all of these executive orders day one. What does he need besides what he has the authority to do under the executive orders?
▶ 1:16:56Mr. Cuccinelli: Well, as I mentioned earlier in response to the chair manchin's comments -- chairman's comments, it is a simpler undercurrent of to secure the border than it is to deal with the rest of the problem. All of the backlogs we were talking about, that takes congressional support and help. The deportation effort is going to be complicated. It is logistically challenging. It will take support from the congress to really accomplish that.
▶ 1:17:26Sen. Scott: Is it money or laws?
▶ 1:17:27Mr. Cuccinelli: Both. We talked about flores, when you are all familiar with. It is an incredible hurdle to runi running an orderly immigration system all from one judge in california 30 years ago. And you all can fix those things , senator lankford mentioned, there are major holes that weren't known at the time, tbpra .
▶ 1:17:58Mr. Cuccinelli: But that really only congress can fix.
▶ 1:18:01Sen. Scott: You want to add something?
▶ 1:18:03Mr. Arthur: With respect to tpbra I have no doubt it was passed with the best of intentions. I knew many of the people who worked on it. But he does have the worst results. Kids are trafficked because of tvpra. "the washington post" said it inadvertently provides incentives to non-mexican children to come to the united states.
▶ 1:18:31Mr. Arthur: When ken cuccinelli, barack obama, and "the washington post" all agree on something, it is probably time to take action.
▶ 1:18:39Sen. Scott: Thank you.
▶ 1:18:44Mr. Isacson: I would point out that the flores agreement prevents locking up children, but in a place that is not a licensed childcare security. We don't do that because it is really expensive. As far as the tvpra, we need to find middle ground. He does create very perverse incentives. On the other hand, dropping unaccompanied children off in managua is not something we want to do willy-nilly, either.
▶ 1:19:16Mr. Isacson: We have to find some other way.
▶ 1:19:16Chair Paul: Senator slotkin.
▶ 1:19:19Sen. Slotkin: Thank you for being here today. I'm a former c.I.a. Officer and pentagon official and I did three tours in iraq alongside the military, and my specialty is middle east terrorism and militias, so I feel deeply connected to the mission of protecting the homeland. I think the thing that I struggle with is we are a nation of immigrants with a broken immigration system. It is literally working for no one.
▶ 1:19:49Sen. Slotkin: It works for no one, not employers, not our economy. I am a northern border state, michigan, so we know what an organized border looks like. We know what it looks like when our cbp officers and border patrol are pulled off our border to serve other southern border. They know likey-- they no likey, like we do not like that.
▶ 1:20:13Sen. Slotkin: If we had the same situation, frankly, that texas had with all of these people coming over, michiganders would lose their minds. Lose their minds. So I am -- in the house I did more border legislation than any michigander in the house, democrat or republican, because I feel passionately about it.
▶ 1:20:35Sen. Slotkin: The thing I felt also passionately about is that no matter which administration is in, if we only do border security and that is it and out the immigration part -- not the immigration part, we are attacking the symptom and not the overall system. We all know that the majority of those asylum-seekers who are trying to come over the borders are economic migrants, like many of our grandparents or great-grandparents will they wanted job, they want to make money. We would all in their shoes be looking to do the same thing.
▶ 1:21:03Sen. Slotkin: But our system doesn't work so that they can quickly get in and work at our employers who need them in places like mackinac island or our farms or whatever in michigan. Guess my question, yes or no, are we all in agreement, democrat and republican, that we can attack border security, and I'm here for that, but it is not the entire story, we also have to do immigration reform, and that includes action by this body.
▶ 1:21:29Sen. Slotkin: We are not absolved in this room of responsibility for what is going on at the border. Can I get a yes or no, starting with Mr. cuccinelli?
▶ 1:21:37Mr. Cuccinelli: You are not absolved. There is a lot more than the border. A lot more than the border. You all have a lot of work to do.
▶ 1:21:48Mr. Arthur: Our immigration system is out of line with our leading allies, united kingdom, canada, new zealand, and australia, with who we bring in.
▶ 1:21:58Mr. Isacson: Yes, there has been no important reform to our immigration system since 1990.
▶ 1:22:04Sen. Slotkin: Again, I'm coming from the house I was on the home committee for many years. This is the most politicized issue I've ever seen on both sides of the aisle we all have shame on our heads for not doing our work in this body, and I include myself in that. It's hard, but we have to do it. I actually hope that for all the tough stuff that Mr. trump is saying, it also comes with the border and, all the other things.
▶ 1:22:28Sen. Slotkin: And our employers are the ones screaming from the rooftops on that. I am interested in this idea as someone who spent my first half of my career going after terrorist groups on using some of the designations. Understand, and I think a great, gree, that militarizing and allowing hot pursuit U.S. military active in mexico without their permission creates a whole new set of issues.
▶ 1:22:55Sen. Slotkin: But some of our most powerful financial tools on designating a group as a terrorist group comes from when they have any link in the united states. If isis is working and they've got someone who is sending them money or they have some sort of tie to an american citizen, those laws that we've amended after 9/11 allow us to go -- we have implemented after 9/11 allow us to go after that citizen and attack in a way that is different. Do these cartels, Mr.
▶ 1:23:27Sen. Slotkin: Cuccinelli, because you were most recently in, do they have american links that would allow us to be effective if we use that?
▶ 1:23:32Mr. Cuccinelli: They do have extensive american links. They are criminal networks by which they wake which they make money. There are two ways to make money, drug trafficking and human trafficking. In recent years human trafficking has rivaled the money they make from drug trafficking. We talk about the sinaloa cartel.
▶ 1:23:55Mr. Cuccinelli: They in turn work with ms-13 and so forth. There are relationships from mexico into international gangs in our communities for the when I was a virgin a ag-- virginia a.g., the most violent crimes that was ms-13. No I've seen others rivaled that in speed and violence. They do have connections.
▶ 1:24:25Mr. Cuccinelli: I wouldn't say they are necessarily connecting to american citizens. They are importing their allies through illegal immigration who are working with gangs. The exception to that is where there is a financing arrangement where people over the cartel-- owe the cartels money after they arrived into the united states.
▶ 1:24:51Mr. Cuccinelli: Running those to ground, and frankly, banks in central america participate in executing those transactions.
▶ 1:24:59Sen. Slotkin: I know my time is up. I am super interested in that concept. Military force is something a little different and I would be real cagey to be quickly authorizing something like that in mexico. But on the financial stuff it is an area of interest for a lot of us.
▶ 1:25:16Chair Paul: And since you are new, we are not going to institute the waterboarding. [laughter]
▶ 1:25:22Sen. Slotkin: Please.
▶ 1:25:24Mr. Arthur: Mr. chairman, if I could add one more thing ruefully. -- -this is an issue on the northen border. We have seen and colorado reports they are setting up cells in places like montana. People like drugs in the united states. They shouldn't, they do. People like drugs in canada, too. The last thing we want is more organized crime in the united states.
▶ 1:25:52Chair Paul: I would like to interject briefly on h the question is border security. What about lawful immigration? Can't we do something? I'm one who is for more lawful immigration. Not everybody in my party is. But I'm zero on illegal immigration. But I'm more than willing to double the legal amount, or increase the legal amount.
▶ 1:26:18Chair Paul: I have bills on employment-based visas, to double the numbers and takeoff country caps. That is not a particularly radical thing, and I have addressed to people across the aisle. The complaint I always get is don't want to do a little bit, we want to do comprehensive. The word "conference of" has been -- the word "comprehensive" has been bandied about for a decade.
▶ 1:26:43Chair Paul: The big sticking point is those of us who are open to more lawful immigration are not open to making 18 million people who came here illegally voters it changes the country and if secures things. I've not seen is pulled on, but if you were to poll people illegally -- it is harder to poll them --would you accept work if you didn't involve voting?
▶ 1:27:11Chair Paul: We wouldn't make you go back to mexico. I would say that if you are a law-abiding person, you go to work here, but you don't get to vote. That would be the in-between. But most of the time the debate devolves one side is voting, quick voting, and the other side says we not going to do that. That is held up a small or incremental. H.
▶ 1:27:38Chair Paul: H2a bill, all of these things could be made a little better and expand the numbers on, but we never get there. I think the impasse in my opinion is on the aspect of quick voting for people became an illegally. That is just my opinion. Next is senator moreno.
▶ 1:27:55Sen. Moreno: I will say something that has never been to everett and the united states of america can I think there is common ground between ohio and michigan on this topic. [laughter] so I thank you for your willingness to help on this.
▶ 1:28:08Chair Paul: Don't remember that football game in november?
▶ 1:28:13Sen. Moreno: Can we strike that from the record? [laughter] when is michigan playing on monday -- oh, they're not. Just wanted to point that out. All right. [laughter] we can agree on the lions.
▶ 1:28:31Sen. Moreno: For me this is a very, very personal conversation, because I'm the one person probably here on the panel testifying that would not literally be here if it wasn't for a legal immigration system to this country. It wasn't born here, was born in colombia. This country welcomed me and my family. This issue does not have to be difficult. We have made it very, very difficult.
▶ 1:28:58Sen. Moreno: I can tell you after campaigning 2000 miles a week to every corner of the state of ohio,, I hear voters and I'm sure my colleagues do ,too, saying "why can't you fix this?" this is not intellectually complicated, it really isn't. I will start with a simple premise I asked the three of you to answer.
▶ 1:29:20Sen. Moreno: Should we have an immigration system that benefits the united states of america as the number one criteria for any legal immigration, yes or no?
▶ 1:29:32Mr. Cuccinelli: That absolutely should be the priority. Immigration for america is for the benefit of america first and foremost. It is true that the immigrants benefit, but that is a secondary benefit to the focus of a nation. We have to take care of ourselves first and we haven't done that for decades.
▶ 1:29:50Mr. Arthur: U.S. citizenship is the most precious status in the world and we should treat it accordingly, and we should use it to the benefit of all americans.
▶ 1:29:58Mr. Isacson: Absolutely and I have heard points of agreement in this room today, which surprises me.
▶ 1:30:04Sen. Moreno: And I think that is how we can move forward on this. To senator paul's point I don't think we have to boil the ocean all at once. We can agree that we are talking about the hyper specific legal status of asylum, that we can remember what it means. I'd ask each of you to define to me what it means to be a refugee seeking asylum.
▶ 1:30:30Sen. Moreno: For the people who may not be into this topic every single day, what does that mean to be a refugee seeking asylum?
▶ 1:30:38Mr. Cuccinelli: To put it in street terms, it's someone who is -- easy to use countries as an example -- cuba, who's persecuted for their political views by a communist regime. I think if you think of it in terms of persecution by the government, and only the government, then you can start to simplify this.
▶ 1:31:04Mr. Cuccinelli: For example, in the western hemisphere there is probably not a good reason for any other countries other than venezuela and cuba to ever have any asylees, period. If you can't be one from the other countries because it is not the 1980's in central america, colombia, you can streamline rather dramatically the western hemisphere piece of that equation.
▶ 1:31:32Sen. Moreno: And do you -- to follow up on the outcome is there a scenario in which there are actual refugees from mexico? Would you classify mexico as even in the realm of possibility of having actual refugees, people being persecuted for their race, nationality, or religion from mexico?
▶ 1:31:55Mr. Cuccinelli: No, and mexico is, as noted, the 10th largest country in the world populationwise. And it is the belief of the U.S. government, has been for a long time, that if an individual who is a mexican citizen is being persecuted somewhere in mexico, they can go elsewhere in mexico. That is their solution.
▶ 1:32:18Mr. Cuccinelli: Which is why the caveat of persecution by the government is so important to qualify as an asylee. Refugees can be different, they can be people who are displaced by war, for example. We are one of the few countries that uses those two terms somewhat differently, asylee and refugee.
▶ 1:32:42Mr. Arthur: Persecution is defined -- you are eligible for asylum if you show past persecution and fear future persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, or political opinion -- I took Mr. isacson's line. It is also important, Mr. cuccinelli mentioned that has to be inflicted by the government or proved that the government cannot or will not control.
▶ 1:33:09Mr. Arthur: When I was a judge I heard asylum claims from ireland, united kingdom, germany, and australia. There are safe places in this world and we probably need to work harder diplomatically to make this place safer so that people can return to them.
▶ 1:33:22Mr. Isacson: There are a lot of asylum claims in the U.S. and aggression court from mexican citizens. --immigration court from mexican citizens. They have a low approval rate, but it is not zero. The argument is the mexican government cannot or will not protect them from organized crime or being just committed against.
▶ 1:33:41Sen. Moreno: So would it be reasonable not to allow asylum-seekers to cross through a nondesignated port of entry? Would that be reasonable, something we can all agree on?
▶ 1:33:52Mr. Cuccinelli: You mean would it be reasonable to not accept asylum requests from people not coming through a legal part of entry? That would be eminently reasonable. It is unreasonable not to implement that sort of vetting.
▶ 1:34:04Sen. Moreno: He would agree, -- you what a great, Mr. isacson?
▶ 1:34:09Mr. Isacson: That is the rule in place and it does hurt some vulnerable people. There does have to be some process.
▶ 1:34:15Mr. Arthur: When we talk about money paid to the cartels, cartels charge a piece across their territory to help you get across the border illegally. If you come through the port, you take the money out of the cartel's pocket.
▶ 1:34:28Chair Paul: One follow-on to senator moreno's question, he mentioned having a definition and having it be governmental, and Mr. cuccinelli you and Mr. cuccinelli y, you thought just cuba and venezuela. Do you think the law permits the president to define asylum that way? Cuba and venezuela, but nobody else's eligible because there is no systemic --
▶ 1:34:52Mr. Cuccinelli: I think the regulatory authority for the implementation of asylum exists to do that. I would note that the state of arm and historically wildly uncooperative --state department has been historically wildly uncooperative doing anything of that nature.
▶ 1:35:08Chair Paul: Senator ernst?
▶ 1:35:11Sen. Ernst: Thank you, Mr. chair, and thank you gentlemen for being here today. I would like to paint a little bit of a picture for everyone. We have already purchased border wall materials, lots of border wall materials. And they were basically abandoned by the biden administration, and so they are sitting in arizona and other places unused and they are collecting dust in the desert.
▶ 1:35:39Sen. Ernst: Here is the kicker for everyone, is that they are not just sitting there, they are actually protected by a fence. So if anybody sees the iranian that- -- sees the iron y in that, I do, and I sighed personally. The administration did everything with these materials except to build a wall.
▶ 1:36:09Sen. Ernst: We are talking about $250 million worth of materials that were purchased. They are paid for, and they could have altered a security, but instead we just -- bolstered our security, but instead we just left them there to waste. And every month, and this is to add insult to injury, the army corps of engineers spends $160,000 to store these materials.
▶ 1:36:40Sen. Ernst: 20,822 unused panels. These materials were eventually auctioned off by the biden administration, and those that purchase the materials paid pennies on the dollar to buy those items. A huge loss for taxpayers. Mr. cuccinelli, why don't we start with you, please?
▶ 1:37:03Sen. Ernst: Can you talk about the role that physical barriers play in securing our border, and the message that it's ascending to the cartels and other bad or illicit groups when the federal government just leaves these materials unused, they are resting aw-- rusting away in the desert, and how we should be thinking about border barriers in the future with the incoming trump administration?
▶ 1:37:28Mr. Cuccinelli: So thank you, senator, for that question. First of all, the intentional abandonment of the border wall materials was part of the open-borders policy and narrative. It was a visual part of that narrative. Unfortunately, it was effective in inviting people from all over the world to come across our border. We saw the numbers in the last four years on one of the charts. They exploded. Absolutely exploded.
▶ 1:38:00Mr. Cuccinelli: Because it isn't just our hemisphere overwhelmingly any longer, we have massively complicated every aspect of dealing with those illegal immigrants. The border barriers work when the political will is behind those barriers to actually protect immigration law. The barrier itself, however tall you make it, people can get over. And if they get over and know they can stay, you might as well not put it up in the first place.
▶ 1:38:30Mr. Cuccinelli: But I will say that putting those barriers up strategically, intelligently, helps keep your border patrol agents safer, it helps them manage the legal flow -- illegals flows in ways that are more predictable, and thus they can respond to them better. You get more efficiency in your law enforcement, and you get more safety. No that is important to you and everyone on this committee.
▶ 1:38:55Mr. Cuccinelli: -- I knkow that is important to you and everyone on this committee could all of those folks are safer when they have that wall and delights in the technology are in -- and the lights in the technology are in place that allow detection to take place out edited since and allow your border patrol agents to respond effectively, efficiently, and not in a harried last-minute sort of matter.
▶ 1:39:17Sen. Ernst: Yes, thank you very much. Eons ago I served as a military engineer, and part of the role of military engineers is to shape physically the battlefield and directed the flow of the enemy. I'm not saying everyone coming to the border is an enemy, but you understand the illustration there. Mr. arthur?
▶ 1:39:40Mr. Arthur: If I could, one, I would note the fact that you and 39 of your colleagues sent a letter to the comptroller general in march 2021 about this. I disagree with the comptroller general's opinion. But the more important part of that is when we talk about the border wall, we talk about the border wall system. It is the wall in the road and the lights and the fiber-optic cable.
▶ 1:40:06Mr. Arthur: When you are in the middle of the desert, when you are away from civilization, border patrol agents can't just pull out their phone and use cells because there is no cell tower. The fiber-optic cable would have enabled them to communicate. When president biden shut down the portable system, he stopped the cable. The lights sit unhooked up. We literally leave our agents in the dark blind because we don't have those things.
▶ 1:40:34Mr. Arthur: The quicker we can get that up and running, the better, the safer it is going to be for everybody.
▶ 1:40:39Sen. Ernst: Thank you very much. I yield back.
▶ 1:40:42Chair Paul: Senator gallego.
▶ 1:40:45Sen. Gallego: Thank you, Mr. chair, and thank you for being here. As we examine the first trumpet administration's remaining mexico policy, there is no substitute for comprehensive immigration reform as part of the overall study, and congress has the sole authority and responsibility for making that happen. We owe it to our border communities and all americans to fix the system. Mr. isacson, I have a couple questions for you.
▶ 1:41:15Sen. Gallego: In your testimony you emphasize that the remaining mexico policy enriched hotels, giving a new large base of -- enriched cartels, giving them a new large space of migrants. You mentioned that smokeless looking to profit from illegal border crossings -- smugglers looking to profit from illegal border crossings profit from remaining mexico. It crosses into our border towns and further into tucson and phoenix and beyond and endangers everyone.
▶ 1:41:46Sen. Gallego: Any action that will increase cartel activity is a major concern for me and obviously for U.S. citizens. What actions could be trump administration have taken to keep cartels from benefiting from remaining mexico? Not saying he should have done it, but obviously it happened, but what could have done to stop the benefit that they ended up receiving from it in your opinion?
▶ 1:42:06Mr. Isacson: If the trumpet were in fact moving people still into mexico several months at a time, first of all, have the capacity to address these cases more quickly. Don't make people wait for several once in mexico. Have enough judges on hand, invest way more in shelter and protection, and check on whether the mexican government was providing that shelter and protection and keeping the cartels at a distance from these people come which they absolutely were not.
▶ 1:42:35Mr. Isacson: I don't favor the program as a whole, but there are ways to mitigate that.
▶ 1:42:39Sen. Gallego: Your testimony discuss impacts of remain in mexico on our bilateral relationship with mexico. President trump impose tariffs on mexican goods on till immigration through mexico was remedied. He also floats high tariffs for the next administration. From my experience in arizona, we are arbiter state because of border trade. -- we are a richer state because of border trade.
▶ 1:43:07Sen. Gallego: $800 billion in bilateral trade, $1.5 million per minute. Major hubs of transnational trade, benefiting that we both benefited from that relationship. How do you anticipate that the united states trade relationship with mexico would be impacted by the implementation of remain in mexico?
▶ 1:43:30Mr. Isacson: If mexico were unwilling to implement remain in mexico or didn't like the list of countries, etc., you would likely see a tara fred. You would see maybe -- you would see a tariff threat. He would see maybe tariffs implement it. If they were high enough, it would be the equivalent of an embargo and mexico and the $800 billion would shrink quite a bit. At the port of entry things would be a lot quieter.
▶ 1:43:57Sen. Gallego: And how would this be different than the effects we saw under the last administration?
▶ 1:44:02Mr. Isacson: Mexico did agree to the last remain in mexico, and ultimately the effects of ports of entry were not great. A lot of the tent courts and people forced to return were at ports of entry were cargo is not crossing very much. Of course it took some bandwidth away from cbp, who had to handle all of this, but ultimately wasn't a huge effect.
▶ 1:44:24Sen. Gallego: There was discussion about asylum-seekers that come from countries where if we wanted to deport them back, we wouldn't be able to come and part of deterrence is for people to understand you will be deported, you have a process of deportation, and why waste your time, money, why pay a coyote if there is a high-likelihood chance that you are going to be deported, you're going to be rejected.
▶ 1:44:50Sen. Gallego: But what about the countries that we don't have a solution -- the countries that will not accept them back? Cubas, venezuelas? What can the administration do to ensure we can send these people who are deemed inadmissible?
▶ 1:45:04Mr. Isacson: It's tough because of somebody that is coming from a country that is so badly governed, they may have a strong asylum case. These countries are not our friends for a reason because their governments are really bad. You have to give them a fair hearing.
▶ 1:45:19Sen. Gallego: Even if we give them a fair hearing and they say you don't have a good case for asylum, where do we deport them? Because we have to do something, is what I'm saying. In arizona when we see surges, it is likely from these countries where they will not take back asylum-seekers.
▶ 1:45:39Mr. Isacson: There is no great answer to that. You could be diplomacy to have burdens shared throughout america's come and some countries like colombia are doing a heck of a lot, but other countries could be doing more. That was being started with the los angeles declaration process in the biden administration. Ultimately, yeah, there is no place to put somebody from venezuela. There is 600,000 of them the last couple years.
▶ 1:46:03Sen. Gallego: Thank you, Mr. chair.
▶ 1:46:05Chair Paul: Senator hassan.
▶ 1:46:08Sen. Hassan: Thank you in the ranking this hearing. Congress needs to work on a bipartisan basis to improve border security. We had a bipartisan border security deal last year that made major improvements to security at the southern border, including important changes to asylum standards. It also included a hiring significant additional law enforcement personnel. It had the support of the national border patrol council.
▶ 1:46:37Sen. Hassan: And I strongly supported that deal. Unfortunately as we all know, president-elect trump decided to kill that deal for purely political reasons. So I am hope that we can move past politics and get back to work on the kind of bipartisan deal that I think we are hearing agreement about in this room. Like senator slotkin, I am a northern border senator, so I also don't want us to take our eyes off the need for a northern border strategy.
▶ 1:47:05Sen. Hassan: Senator cramer and I have had bipartisan legislation that this committee passed, and I hope we will revisit that as well. Going forward, we need to work together to examine the most effective way to secure the border and weaken cartels. Part of that is examining the effects of the remain in mexico program during president-elect trump's first term. Mr. isacson, I want to follow up on senator gallego's questions a little bit.
▶ 1:47:34Sen. Hassan: Your testimony states that the previous remain in mexico policy in which to the cartels. I want to repeat that, it enriched the drug cartels that are poisoning our country and create enormous violence. They kidnapped and extorted immigrants waiting in border towns for their court date.
▶ 1:47:51Sen. Hassan: Public reporting showed that ransom payments routinely cost $4000 to $7,000 per person, and a single criminal gang in a single border town could steal $35,000 a day from people. Mr. isacson, your testimony notes that in 2019 and 2020, cartels and criminal gangs extorted at least $70 million over the two years in this way, in large part fueled by the remain in mexico program.
▶ 1:48:21Sen. Hassan: If the remain in mexico program were reinstated, how would you expect the cartels to attempt to profit from extortion and ransom?
▶ 1:48:28Mr. Isacson: I think the cartels would continue to extort at higher rates because they are more powerful now than they were then, and they have those three income streams, ransoms, extortions, and coyote services. That is a very conservative estimate. The money would be more.
▶ 1:48:48Sen. Hassan: I also want to touch on the issue of cooperation with the mexican government. Law enforcement in the united states works closely with mexican of 30 to interdict drug smuggling, human trafficking, and other crimes committed by the cartels. Mr. arthur, I think it was you who said we need to continue to work to reduce drug demand in this country. That is something I've heard from the mexican government, too.
▶ 1:49:14Sen. Hassan: The other thing we have worked on in a bipartisan way on this committee is our southbound weapons and cash to the cartels are a real problem, and senator lankford and I have worked together on a bill that would do much more screening southbound to stem the flow of cash and weapons to the cartels from this country, which are used as payment for the illicit drug.
▶ 1:49:37Sen. Hassan: But one of the things that we do with that the mexican government is mexico allows our homeland security investigation agents to work with mexican authorities to target drugs and precursor chemicals that are being shipped from china to mexico, made interventional, and that just made into fentanyl -- made into fentanyl, and then in the U.S.
▶ 1:50:02Sen. Hassan: How would reinstating the remain in mexico program impact cooperation with mexico to impact drug smuggling?
▶ 1:50:08Mr. Isacson: The question is how we were to go about it. If the administration decides to push and bully and publicly humiliate to go until they agreed to take these people, mexico would be much less will and to cooperate on other things like fentanyl.
▶ 1:50:24Sen. Hassan: I think it -- I was pleased to hear a kind of consensus growing around thinking through what targeted legislation would look like to really treat the cartels as the kind of hybrid organizations they are, using terrorist techniques but for organized crime purposes. I think it was really interesting that all three of you seemed to coalesce around some important ideas in that regard.
▶ 1:50:53Sen. Hassan: As one of the states that has been particularly hit by the fentanyl academic, I would be very interested -- fentanyl epidemic, I would be very interested and colleagues on both sides of the aisle would, too, on going after those cartels. We have comprehensive immigration reform, to be sure, but that should not stop us from going against the most predatory criminal organizations in the history of mankind. Thank you.
▶ 1:51:18Chair Paul: Senator hawley.
▶ 1:51:21Sen. Hawley: Mr. isacson, if I could just start with you, in march 2024 euros "the murder of a nursing student in georgia has a lot of people on the right talking about migrant crime like it's an actual issue." with that be liken -- laeken riley?
▶ 1:51:48Mr. Isacson: Laken riley was an unusual case.
▶ 1:51:54Sen. Hawley: Here is laken riley. Her death not an actual issue?
▶ 1:52:00Mr. Isacson: It's a tragedy . Migrant crime is much less of an issue than U.S. citizen crime.
▶ 1:52:08Sen. Hawley: Not an actual issue?
▶ 1:52:10Mr. Isacson: Of course it's an issue, it's a tragedy.
▶ 1:52:14Sen. Hawley: What did you mean by your post? It's not an actual issue? Senate is wasting his time on the laken riley acts? What is your advice to us?
▶ 1:52:27Mr. Isacson: I think the laken riley act could do a lot of harm. It would allow me to say this person shoplifted and that would be enough probable cause to get somebody --
▶ 1:52:38Sen. Hawley: Interesting. Who invited you to this committee hearing, Mr. isacson?
▶ 1:52:44Mr. Isacson: The minority party.
▶ 1:52:47Sen. Hawley: Interesting. You are here as a spokesman for the minority party. I just want to make sure record is clear on this. The spokesman for the minority party is advising the senate that the laken riley act is a bad idea and we ought to stop it. Spokesman for the minority party is a saying that laken riley's death is not an actual issue. I can't frankly believe that I am -- you said it's not an actual issue!
▶ 1:53:11Mr. Isacson: I said that migrant --
▶ 1:53:14Sen. Hawley: You said the murder of a nursing student in georgia has a lot of people on the right talking about migrant crime -- you put it in quotation marks just like it's a natural issue. She is dead because of migrant crime, right? Let us try some thing else. Do you know this is? Do you know who this young man is?
▶ 1:53:36Mr. Isacson: I do not.
▶ 1:53:38Sen. Hawley: Travis wolf, 12 years old, from my state, murdered by an illegal migrant, who was also illegally paroled by the last administration.
▶ 1:53:49Mr. Isacson: Is your expectation that no --
▶ 1:53:52Sen. Hawley: Let me tell you what my expectation is, that those who commit crimes in this country will be appropriately dealt with and we should not be allowing migrants who commit crimes into this country, and that yes, migrant crime that kills people like travis wolf, whose death was shocking, whose death is inexplicable, indefensible -- wait a minute, it's my time, Mr. isacson! I want the record to be clear on this, that migrant crime is a real issue.
▶ 1:54:22Sen. Hawley: I think the laken riley act is absolutely necessary. I propose an amendment to the laken riley act that would cover people like travis wolf. I think ice ought to be required to detain those illegal migrants who commit violent crimes against children, like travis wolf.
▶ 1:54:40Sen. Hawley: And yes, I happen to think is a former prosecutor, I happen to think that there violent murders are actual issues, and the fact that you would say otherwise, sit here and advise the senate that the laken riley act is a bad idea, that the holding is not an issue, made up, I think it's outrageous! I think it's absolutely outrageous, and effective you were invited to give this testimony is stunning to me, I have to say. Absolutely stunning to me. Mr. cuccinelli, let me ask you something else that Mr.
▶ 1:55:08Sen. Hawley: Isacson has said, the remain in mexico policy was a program of death. A program of death. Is that your experience having seen it implemented?
▶ 1:55:19Mr. Cuccinelli: As part of implementing it, my answer would be no, it's quite the opposite. As I said in my statement, the deterrent effect for illegal aliens to comje that was gained by the migrant protection protocols, remain in mexico program, prevented a lot more abuse, child abuse, abuse of women on the journey and death along the way, than any of the
▶ 1:55:51Mr. Cuccinelli: Crimes that occurred addressed to the people where the people in remain in mexico were the victims. Anytime we have illegal immigration going on, we have victimization of that population.
▶ 1:56:07Mr. Cuccinelli: It would be my view, and the dollars played out since the 19, that the idea that the cartels benefited from the remain in mexico program is relatively ludicrous compared to the alternative. The alternative we've lived with the last four years is the greatest in riching of the most evil, vicious people in the western hemisphere in the history of this hemisphere.
▶ 1:56:29Sen. Hawley: I wish the remain in mexico program had still been in effect when the killer of travis wolf cross the border and was paroled illegally into the country. He might still be alive today. If is not an actual issue, I don't know what is. Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 1:56:45Chair Paul: You know, I think we've had a good discussion on the issue. I think it's an important issue and we have to have these discussions. Both sides have to be heard and we have to figure out how to move forward. The one sort of dispute we have, like in a court of law you have the facts and you hear both sides and someone says this is the fact and someone says this is the fact, there is something that is in contention, and that is whether or not the remain in mexico policy enriched the cartels.
▶ 1:57:12Chair Paul: This chart is kind of similar, not as famous as senator johnson's chart, but similar in that you see remain in mexico, encounters come down to 20,000 or so. Here they are up around 300,000. You have essentially a tenfold increase.
▶ 1:57:31Chair Paul: If we say and understand that cartels make money by getting people across the border, it seems hard to me to argue that when you have 300,000 encounters, they wouldn't make more money here than they would make here. I just find it really hard. I would like to give each of you a chance to respond to that. Why don't we start with ken cuccinelli?
▶ 1:57:54Mr. Cuccinelli: Mr. chairman, you are right, and the cbp intel assessments, we don't audit the cartels. But the intel folks who track what they do as best we can believe that their financing, the money they were making on human trafficking probably passed drug trafficking in the biden administration. The chart serves as a proxy, the money they were making --
▶ 1:58:25Chair Paul: If we wanted to know more for certain -- it's an estimate because it's done illegally -- is someone who makes an estimate of this, someone in our intel --
▶ 1:58:35Mr. Cuccinelli: The intel shop these are best --
▶ 1:58:39Chair Paul: You think they make an estimate month by month? It is still going to be an estimate, but if we wanted further information we could ask the cbp.
▶ 1:58:48Mr. Cuccinelli: Correct.
▶ 1:58:50Chair Paul: Mr. arthur?
▶ 1:58:51Mr. Arthur: Absolutely, senator, and it is not just the cartels it is the smuggling organizations. ,it is important to keep the two separate. Smugglers do the heavy lifting. Cartels skim cream off of the top to let the individuals cross their territories. And then you have the human traffickers that can feed in that environment as well. When you're talking about the money that is floated to the pockets of the cartels, right there. But it is not simply taking fees and shaking down migrants.
▶ 1:59:24Mr. Arthur: When you set large numbers of people cross the border, you create what chief rodney scott, the cbp commissioner-designee, called controllable core doors. To send a bunch of kids and adults over, border patrol rushes over to get them, and it creates a void in the land that the cartels used to run drugs through the united states. They are feasting right now.
▶ 1:59:48Chair Paul: So you agree that the argument that when there are more encounters and more trafficking, it would be proportional to more profits, not the reverse?
▶ 1:59:56Mr. Arthur: Absolutely.
▶ 1:59:58Chair Paul: Remain in mexico down here, it is hard to argue they're making more money when there is a lot less people going across the border as opposed to here.
▶ 2:00:06Mr. Arthur: Absolutely, also a lot less human carnage, senator. Doctors without borders did a report 2017 in which they estimated about 68-plus-percent of all migrants are physically abused during that illegal journey to the uted states. Just under one third of all women are sexually abused.
▶ 2:00:30Mr. Arthur: When you click on the number of people coming, you cut down the number -- cut down the number peoplecoming, you cut down the crimes.
▶ 2:00:38Chair Paul: Mr. isacson?
▶ 2:00:40Mr. Isacson: That low point was the beginning of covid, and remain in mexico was almost done between then and when it was actually terminated. You have 4000 or 5000 people in the program. It was hardly in existence.
▶ 2:00:54Chair Paul: Say it little louder, please?
▶ 2:00:56Mr. Isacson: Remain in mexico was hardly in existence from the time that covid began until it was terminated when joe biden was not greeted. 84,000 --maybe 4000 to 5000 people. Title ii had been on people's minds --
▶ 2:01:12Chair Paul: You are making the argument that quite a bit of the dip is covid?
▶ 2:01:16Mr. Isacson: Biden era, title 42.
▶ 2:01:22Mr. Arthur: The pandemic was not declared until march 2020. One of the things that opponents of title 42 would say is the numbers were inflated because of recidivism. I would gently disagree with Mr. isaacson. When you look at that right there you get people stopped under 42, they turned back and they come around because there is no deterrent effect no punishment for reentering under title 42.
▶ 2:01:51Chair Paul: So if the trump administration is saying they want to correct the problems of people who have been paroled and millions of people are here, one of the big complaint is that their hearing won't come up for 1000 days or whatever, three or four years does the president have the power if you wish to to say all the hearings will be in one month and designate enough people to hear these?
▶ 2:02:19Chair Paul: If you basically came up with a rule and said cuba is eligible and venezuela is eligible and nobody else is eligible, and the proceeding will be that you show up and someone will ask where you are from and if you can prove you are from cuba, venezuela, you're going to get hearing, and if you don't, you're hearing is over and concluded, there is speeding up of process? We will start with Mr. cuccinelli. You think that power exists?
▶ 2:02:46Mr. Cuccinelli: It's a good question. It is probably a close question about whether the power exists. It would certainly be litigated because everything will be litigated. But I believe there has been -- there is already existing a lot more authority by the president to not consider asylum petitions from various countries.
▶ 2:03:12Mr. Cuccinelli: Whether that's -- excuse me -- by the third country regulation being reinstated, so if you passed through mexico and he don't apply for asylum there, you don't get to apply for asylum here, that was extremely effective, but it was lost in the wash statistically of covid.
▶ 2:03:34Mr. Cuccinelli: We're looking at one program, but there were other programs -- for example, expedited removal was used more heavily starting in 2019. It is hard to disentangle the data. The dhs report about the success of mbp is the best source of information for how that was successful and the fact that it was very successful in keeping people out and deterring others.
▶ 2:04:01Chair Paul: On the sims line -- same lines, Mr. arthur, if the definition of change could be controlled by the president, with his help --would this help with the expediting of all the cases? If we just made the job easier -- I think most of these people by definition should be ineligible bfor the process.
▶ 2:04:24Chair Paul: But even looking backwards, we tell people your detention hearing is next month and he was about to go back to where you came in illegally. If that is in texas, you are supposed to go back.
▶ 2:04:37Chair Paul: It would be a directive to people, at least those who will voluntarily do as they are told, to go back, and if they break that law and you tell me I've got to be there in two months and they are not there, you have grounds for no hearing, they are broken a law that is the law and would be meagerly deported, wherever they are. This immediately deported, wherever they are -- immediately deported, wherever they are. What about whether we could expedite their hearing?
▶ 2:05:07Mr. Arthur: Many of you may not be aware of this, the law says asylum claims must be heard from beginning to end in 180 days. They have just ignored congress's admonition.
▶ 2:05:19Chair Paul: Between two and 180?
▶ 2:05:23Mr. Arthur: No, beginning to end, 180 days. The other part of that is the way the asylum statute is written has two parts. One, anybody can apply for one, anybody can apply f there is a separate section for who can be granted. The financial argument is yes, the president could say anybody -- the potential argument is yes, the president could say anybody can apply but only these people can be granted. The president used 212-f powers.
▶ 2:05:54Mr. Arthur: Mr. cuccinelli knows all about that. It was stopped in the ninth circuit. Respectfully toward the judges, it was an awful decision. It was poorly reasoned. Had it gone to the supreme court, it would've gotten overturned. Basically that is what the biden administration is doing now. Mr. isacson has referred to that -- we are not allowing those individuals to apply for asylum, with exceptions.
▶ 2:06:19Chair Paul: Mr. isacson?
▶ 2:06:20Mr. Isacson: You got 1.5 million or more asylum cases pending. That is a matter of appropriations. You have to have the capacity, you have to have people, no matter what you are doing. Banning certain countries, I personally don't think the statute back that up. 212f. To be usable to block some one from coming to the united states, but once they are here asking for protection, that is a different case. This would be litigated to get if you were to try that.
▶ 2:06:49Chair Paul: I think the hearing has been useful and very informative. Thank you all for coming. We are going to vote in just a couple minutes. Before we adjourn, if anybody has a pressing question, senator peters, anybody else?
▶ 2:07:04Sen. Moreno: If I could add, may be a recap of what we agree on would be worthwhile. There is broad consensus that you should only be able to claim asylum at a legal port of entry and that you should be barred from claiming asylum at a legal port of entry if you have not made that application in mexico. Would you agree with that?
▶ 2:07:25Mr. Cuccinelli: Absolutely. And in terms of incoming flow, it would do an awful lot to throttle the numbers, most particularly targeting really baseless cases. I should note since this is an mpp-focused hearing, if you look at the asylum claims that came out of it, they were granted at something like a tenth or less of the rate of the average asylum caseload.
▶ 2:07:55Mr. Cuccinelli: Those are decided by the exact same case officers and judges as decide all the other cases. Mpp successfully screened out an awful lot of fraudulent asylum seekers, and the numbers bear that out.
▶ 2:08:10Mr. Arthur: Senator, I would note the fact that every country in the western hemisphere except for cuba, an island, and guyana, an enclave on the coast, granted some sort of asylum. If you need protection, you can go to any of those countries. People cross through 7, 8, 10, 20 countries to come here -- colombia, your home country. You don't have to come here, you don't have to take the risk and risk your children.
▶ 2:08:38Mr. Isacson: You got 20 million people in migration around the whole region and not all coming here. Should people be able to come to a port of entry instead? Yes, I think we would need a lot more capacity than we have right now at ports of entry. You don't have people in mexico for so many months. You would have to have some exception for the most vulnerable, the most urgent cases, I would die if I stay here.
▶ 2:09:04Sen. Moreno: But that is not going to be the situation if they're in mexico. Mexico is a safe country and you can go to another part of mexico, and they somehow made it to mexico, which in and of itself is a pretty incredible accomplishment for somebody in great danger. You have traversed nine countries to make it to the northern border of mexico. You are not necessarily somebody -- I think we've got broad consensus.
▶ 2:09:29Sen. Moreno: One last thing, chairman, if you can indulge me, we should agree that congress should not be absolved. You said it, Mr. cuccinelli. What is preventing congress from just passing laws so that we don't need to have executive orders to solve our aggression problem --immigration problem?
▶ 2:09:50Mr. Cuccinelli: Well, that's a tough --
▶ 2:09:55Sen. Moreno: Freshman question.
▶ 2:09:57Mr. Cuccinelli: I would just note that when I was the acting deputy secretary, many of your colleagues would call me on the annual h2b, for example, and I would get pitched and pitched and pitched, because you would give the secretary the authority to raise that number one year at a time, and every single senator I said the same thing, this is your job. This is your job, this isn't my job.
▶ 2:10:26Mr. Cuccinelli: You were supposed to tell us the number. "I know, I know, but we just can't manage it." every single senator, and I talked to a half-dozen, all conceded the process wasn't working for the congress to be legislating on those things. You have noted areas of agreement. Looking back 20 years, one of them is literally the physical ports of entry. Mr. isacson manchin capacity.
▶ 2:10:51Mr. Cuccinelli: There is also the question of physical capacity at the ports of entry that you could probably achieve bipartisan agreement on updating and upgrading those. You do need to do that, and if you do the southbound, I will call it inspections, you must expand your ports of entry, and if you do that southbound type of investigation that senator hassan was talking about, you take mexico's biggest excuse off
▶ 2:11:22Mr. Cuccinelli: The table. That is their biggest national government excuse, and by that I mean for the U.S. government. But that is something that needs to happen, and to use things like the nonintrusive technology for doing those searches at the border can happen a lot faster, but it is when a take upgrading those facilities -- going to take operating those facilities, they are long overdue.
▶ 2:11:46Chair Paul: Senator lankford?
▶ 2:11:47Sen. Laknkford: We are wrapping this up but thanks,, y'all. Congress needs common ground and look at the tvpra and figure this out. If a child comes from mexico, we return them to the parents from mexico. If a child comes from guatemala, even if they have a parent from guatemala, we keep them here. That makes no sense.
▶ 2:12:13Sen. Laknkford: I've heard from governments in central america saying point-blank, give us our children back, why does the united states keep our children. The other thing I heard is the designated terror organizations figuring out how we get this resolved where we can put more financial pressure on these cartels. Thank you again for the testimony.
▶ 2:12:31Chair Paul: I would like to thank our when this is for joining us today and for their testimony and expertise. The record for this hearing will remain open for 15 days until 6:00 p.m., thursday, january 23, for this omission of statements and questions for the record. The hearing is now adjourned. We will meet again in about two minutes to begin our markup on voting.
▶ 2:13:11Chair Paul: C1
▶ 2:19:15Chair Paul: >> pursuant to the>> notice on january 9, 2025, the committee will consider two items, the rules package and a resolution on remain in mexico. I note the presence of a quorum. The committee will proceed to consideration of the updated rules of the procedure of the committee on homeland security and government affairs that has been distributed.
▶ 2:19:40Chair Paul: I will say something briefly with regard to this and then I will let senator peters. I think over the past 150 years, really woodrow wilson on, the executive branch has gotten bigger and bigger. The ministry of state has gotten bigger.
▶ 2:20:01Chair Paul: Madison wrote in the federalist papers the checks and balances would be not republicans democrat but branch against branch that we would pit ambition against ambition. For the legislature as a whole to maintain power and the executive branch to take power and back and forth. They have gotten arrogant and I do not mean this as a republican or democrat thing.
▶ 2:20:29Chair Paul: All executive branches are again and try to hide the ball on everything. I want to work as an oversight committee to make sure we are watching them. I pledge to the minority party and opposition party that I am very open and dashed to records requests from the minority as well, so I picture this as the legislature doing its duty, not anything to do with party.
▶ 2:21:01Chair Paul: Senator peters.
▶ 2:21:03Sen. Peters: Thank you. Today, we will discuss two items, the committee's new rules and the resolution. For those of us who have been on this committee in the past and are welcoming our new members to the committee, the committee has always had a reputation of working in a bipartisan fashion, especially when it comes to approving rules. For the past eight congress is, the committee has unanimously approved the rules. We have come together.
▶ 2:21:33Sen. Peters: When you set rules that pass unanimously, that leads to the bipartisan collegiality that we expect in this committee and I am disappointed we have made changes to these rules.
▶ 2:21:47Sen. Peters: I have been working with chairman paul on a number of items and some accommodations were made for our subcommittee, so I appreciate the chairman is willing to negotiate that and make changes to the original proposal that he has. But when you think about a bipartisan way when it comes to investigations, it is about standing up to the administration regardless of who it is.
▶ 2:22:15Sen. Peters: It is about us versus them and we talked about that in the hearing as well. We did investigate the failures of hurricane katrina response, the january 6 failures. We dealt with those here in a bipartisan way and on the attempted assassination attempt of president-elect trump worked together and that was about collecting documents, getting information we needed to interview witnesses.
▶ 2:22:48Sen. Peters: So one of those minority rights is the minority gets to be consulted. We will get notice and we have extended notice by an extra day. It does not allow us to say at some point -- this is rarely used, but it is still in the minority power. At some point, you can need a vote of the committee.
▶ 2:23:08Sen. Peters: When you are asking for subpoenas and getting information, a vote for committee often strengthens the subpoena because it shows broad bipartisan support to get the documents from either administration. That has been weekend, so I am concerned about that.
▶ 2:23:25Sen. Peters: I am also taking assurances from the chair that the chair will work with the minority side to make sure if we have requests, if there are things we would like to get from agencies that is something we can do and he will fully cooperate with that and be supportive.
▶ 2:23:45Sen. Peters: I have been encouraged by the work we have done over the last few months where we have worked collaboratively, so I am going to support these rules so hopefully we can pass them unanimously, as has been the process over many congresses, but that is also going to be an agreement between the chair and ranking member, that we will continue to work in a collaborative way and understand we have to reassert our authority as congress to make sure we are getting information
▶ 2:24:16Sen. Peters: We need to provide oversight that we are constitutionally granted.
▶ 2:24:20Chair Paul: Without question. The other thing I want to do and we are going to get done is any information gathered from the executive branch, we are going to have a way you can log on to a server. You do not have to ask me to print it out. We will put it all on the server. It is government records of everybody. We will have some kind of sign in mechanism that you or your staff or office will be able to log onto this where it will be easier access to things that are accumulated.
▶ 2:24:52Chair Paul: Will there be some exceptions? Of course. We will figure those out as we go. In general, government records should not be secret from you and should not be secret from the public as well. I appreciate cooperation. Does any member wish to offer an amendment? Hearing none, the question is on the adoption of the updated rules of procedure on the committee of fallen security and government rules and affairs as distributed yesterday evening.
▶ 2:25:25Chair Paul: Those in favor, say aye. Those opposed? The rules will be recorded. On the second issue, this is the -- I have been told to skip remarks because some important people need to leave. I will skip my remarks, but it is about remain in mexico.
▶ 2:25:48Chair Paul: Do we think the president has power under current law to do a lot of things by executive order that he did in a previous administration?
▶ 2:25:56Sen. Peters: I would offer an amendment to speed things up. I would like to offer them meant number two -- amendment number two to this resolution. It deals with concerns that I think were raised in our hearing today. I think broad concerns that we have generally with these policies. I think we all agree we have to have strong borders. We have to enforce the borders.
▶ 2:26:26Sen. Peters: We have to use whatever tools are available to do that. I think it was a productive hearing that we had today, but I also think what came out of the hearing is this is obviously a complex situation. We have to look at it in a comprehensive way as to how we effectively protect the border. And the consequences of policies put in place as to whether they actually are protecting the border and advancing what we want to see.
▶ 2:26:56Sen. Peters: That is what the amendment addresses. Before -- certainly we support the president doing everything he can to strengthen the border, but we also ask and urge the president to certify to congress that any action taken by the administration involving immigration and border management, including the reinstatement of the migrant protection protocols commonly known as remain in mexico that
▶ 2:27:26Sen. Peters: We discussed this morning, will not. As we are strengthening the border, we hope they will not do these things. They will not, if remain in mexico policies put back in place, it will not lead to the rape, murder, or kidnapping of asylum-seekers while they are waiting for their asylum hearing. It will not contribute to human trafficking domestically or internationally.
▶ 2:27:52Sen. Peters: It will not contribute to violence from cartels and transnational criminal organizations or enable such organizations to profit from exploitation of asylum-seekers and will not increase the smuggling of fentanyl into the united states. It will not result in separation of families or undermine protections currently in place to care for the treatment of children.
▶ 2:28:17Sen. Peters: I hope my colleagues would agree as we are doing all this resolution does, we will do this. Remember this is -- having this resolution is also a departure for the committee. This committee is about actually dealing with tangible legislation that addresses problems. This is the resolution.
▶ 2:28:39Sen. Peters: This is messaging that may make people feel good but does not actually deal with the problems we have and I hope in the future committee time is spent on actual solutions to problems and ways we can address a serious issue that we have in this country, but I think this is a statement about who we are as well. We wanted to be tough on the border but also make sure there are not unintended consequences from these policies.
▶ 2:29:02Sen. Johnson: Reinstituting remain in mexico will absolutely guarantee that rapes will decline. Human trafficking will decline. Violence from cartels will decline. Smuggling fentanyl will decline. You're going from at the bottom of 500 counters to -- per day two I think the largest is 14,000 a day.
▶ 2:29:31Sen. Johnson: That is driving rape and human trafficking and sex trafficking and smuggling. This resolution is completely unnecessary and I'm going to vote no. The amendment is unnecessary.
▶ 2:29:47Sen. Peters: If you believe we will not do this, I appreciate your support on the mend meant, that basically says I would like your vote to actually stand behind those statements might not just you making statements.
▶ 2:29:56Chair Paul: The reason I will vote know is I agree with the sentiment of what senator johnson is saying. The problem is we are in a dangerous situation where people are being raped and murdered with or without remain in mexico. Some of that is still going to go on.
▶ 2:30:13Chair Paul: There is not a practical way we can say we are going to vote for something to make the numbers less but no way we can guarantee there will be no rape and murder because rape and murder -- it is a lawless place that cartels control, so it is well-intentioned but I cannot vote for something that we could not provably say we will eliminate all violence. I do not think it is practical. I will vote no. Any other quick comment?
▶ 2:30:40Chair Paul: We are going to call the roll, but I recommend that you call senator scott first and out of order because he is chairing a hearing if that is ok. >> senator scott.
▶ 2:30:54Sen. Scott: Thank you for the opportunity to say no. >> senator lankford. Senator scott of florida. Senator hawley. Senator marino. Senator ernst. Senator peters. Senator hassan. Senator blumenthal. Senator fetterman. Senator kim. Senator gallego. Senator paul.
▶ 2:31:30Sen. Scott: Mr. chairman, on the vote the y eas are six and the nays are seven. The memo does not agree to. Some of us on I want to be clear -- Sen. hassan: on the testimony was unanimous that remain in mexico results in enriching cartels that are poisoning our country.
▶ 2:31:58Sen. Scott: I know there are differences on the rest of it, but that is why -- one of the reasons I will not be voting for it.
▶ 2:32:04Chair Paul: We will call role on the passage of the resolution. >> Sen. scott:. >> aye. >> Sen. johnson. Senator hawley. Centre marino. Senator ernst. Senator peters. Senator blumenthal. Senator fetterman. >> no by proxy. >> senator gallego.
▶ 2:32:37Chair Paul: Senator paul.
▶ 2:32:37Chair Paul: Aye. >> on the vote of those present, the yeas and the nays are six. The motion is agreed to.
▶ 2:32:53Chair Paul: Thanks. We are adjourned. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap.org]