U
.
S
.
GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
WASHINGTON
: 37–315 PDF
2019
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S
CHILD SEPARATION POLICY:
SUBSTANTIATED ALLEGATIONS
OF MISTREATMENT
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
JULY 12, 2019
Serial No. 116–46
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform
(
Available on: http://www.govinfo.gov
http://www.oversight.house.gov
http://www.docs.house.gov
(II)
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland, Chairman
C
AROLYN
B. M
ALONEY
, New York
E
LEANOR
H
OLMES
N
ORTON
, District of
Columbia
W
M
. L
ACY
C
LAY
, Missouri
S
TEPHEN
F. L
YNCH
, Massachusetts
J
IM
C
OOPER
, Tennessee
G
ERALD
E. C
ONNOLLY
, Virginia
R
AJA
K
RISHNAMOORTHI
, Illinois
J
AMIE
R
ASKIN
, Maryland
H
ARLEY
R
OUDA
, California
K
ATIE
H
ILL
, California
D
EBBIE
W
ASSERMAN
S
CHULTZ
, Florida
J
OHN
P. S
ARBANES
, Maryland
P
ETER
W
ELCH
, V
ERMONT
J
ACKIE
S
PEIER
, California
R
OBIN
L. K
ELLY
, Illinois
M
ARK
D
E
S
AULNIER
, California
B
RENDA
L. L
AWRENCE
, Michigan
S
TACEY
E. P
LASKETT
, Virgin Islands
R
O
K
HANNA
, California
J
IMMY
G
OMEZ
, California
A
LEXANDRIA
O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
, New York
A
YANNA
P
RESSLEY
, Massachusetts
R
ASHIDA
T
LAIB
, Michigan
J
IM
J
ORDAN
, Ohio, Ranking Minority Member
P
AUL
A. G
OSAR
, Arizona
V
IRGINIA
F
OXX
, North Carolina
T
HOMAS
M
ASSIE
, Kentucky
M
ARK
M
EADOWS
, North Carolina
J
ODY
B. H
ICE
, Georgia
G
LENN
G
ROTHMAN
, Wisconsin
J
AMES
C
OMER
, Kentucky
M
ICHAEL
C
LOUD
, Texas
B
OB
G
IBBS
, Ohio
R
ALPH
N
ORMAN
, South Carolina
C
LAY
H
IGGINS
, Louisiana
C
HIP
R
OY
, Texas
C
AROL
D. M
ILLER
, West Virginia
M
ARK
E. G
REEN
, Tennessee
K
ELLY
A
RMSTRONG
, North Dakota
W. G
REGORY
S
TEUBE
, Florida
F
RED
K
ELLER
, Pennsylvania
D
AVID
R
APALLO
, Staff Director
R
USS
A
NELLO
, Chief Oversight Counsel
A
MY
S
TRATTON
, Clerk
C
HRISTOPHER
H
IXON
, Minority Staff Director
C
ONTACT
N
UMBER
: 202-225-5051
(III)
CONTENTS
Page
Hearing held on July 12, 2019 ............................................................................... 1
W
ITNESSES
Written opening statements and witnesses’ written statements are available
at the U.S. House of Representatives Repository: https://docs.house.gov.
Panel 1
The Honorable Andy Biggs (R-AZ)
Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 6
The Honorable Michael Cloud (R-TX)
Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 8
The Honorable Debbie Lesko (R-AZ), Member of Congress
Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 10
The Honorable Chip Roy (R-Texas), Member of Congress
Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 12
The Honorable Veronica Escobar (D-TX), Member of Congress
Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 14
The Honorable Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Member of Congress
Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 15
The Honorable Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Member of Congress
Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 18
The Honorable Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Member of Congress
Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 20
Panel 2
Ms. Jennifer L. Costello, Acting Inspector General, Department of Homeland
Security
Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 22
Ms. Ann Maxwell, Asst.Inspector General for Evaluation and Inspections,
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 23
Ms. Elora Mukherjee, Jerome L. Greene Clinical Professor of Law, Columbia
Law School
Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 25
Ms. Jennifer Nagda, Policy Director, Young Center for Immigrant Children’s
Rights
Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 27
Thomas D. Homan, Former Acting Director, U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement
Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 29
(IV)
INDEX OF DOCUMENTS
The documents listed below are available at: https://docs.house.gov.
* ‘‘Homestead isn’t just for kids at the border, it’s for kids living in the
U.S. their whole lives,’’ article, Miami Herald, Monique Madan; submited
by Rep. Kelly.
* Statutory Definition of Unaccompanied Minor; submitted by Rep. Kelly.
* Letter from Anti-Defamation League; submitted by Chairman Cummings.
* Recommendations from Kids in Need of Defense; submitted by Chairman
Cummings.
* Statement from the World Church Service; submitted by Chairman Cum-
mings.
* Statement from the Center for Victims of Torture; submitted by Chair-
man Cummings.
* Letter from Zero to Three; submitted by Chairman Cummings.
* Letter with submission of photos of the Yuma Detention Center; sub-
mitted by Rep. Gosar.
* U.S. Department of Homeland Security Memo; submitted by Rep. Ocasio-
Cortez.
(1)
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S
CHILD SEPARATION POLICY:
SUBSTANTIATED ALLEGATIONS
OF MISTREATMENT
Friday, July 12, 2019
H
OUSE OF
R
EPRESENTATIVES
C
OMMITTEE ON
O
VERSIGHT AND
R
EFORM
Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:06 a.m., in room
2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Elijah Cummings
(chairman of the committee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Cummings, Norton, Clay, Lynch, Coo-
per, Connolly, Krishnamoorthi, Raskin, Rouda, Hill, Wasserman
Schultz, Sarbanes, Welch, Speier, Kelly, DeSaulnier, Khanna,
Gomez, Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, Tlaib, Jordan, Foxx, Massie, Mead-
ows, Hice, Comer, Cloud, Gibbs, Roy, Green, Armstrong, Steube,
and Keller.
Also present: Representatives Garcia of Illinois, Gaetz, and Law-
rence.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. The committee will come to order. Without
objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess of the com-
mittee at any time.
This full committee hearing is convening regarding the adminis-
tration’s child separation policy and substantiated allegations of
mistreatment.
I also wanted to briefly address the spectators in the hearing
room today. We welcome you and respect your right to be here. We
also ask, in turn, for your respect as we proceed with the business
of the committee today.
It is the intention of this committee to proceed with this hearing
without any disruptions. Any disruption of this committee will re-
sult in the United States Capitol Police restoring order and that
protesters will be removed.
If a disruption occurs, a Capitol Police officer will go to the indi-
vidual, instruct that they cease the demonstrations. If the indi-
vidual does cease, no action will be taken. However, if the person
does not cease or begins demonstrating after the initial warning by
the officer, the individual will be removed from the hearing room.
We are grateful for your presence here today and your coopera-
tion.
I would also remind all Members to avoid engaging in adverse
personal references.
2
I now recognize myself for five minutes to give an opening state-
ment.
Today we examine the Trump administration’s inhumane policy
of separating children from their parents at the southern border.
I use the word ‘‘inhumane’’ for a reason. Separating children
from their mothers and fathers causes damage that may endure for
a lifetime. Let me let that sink in. In other words, until they die.
The Trump administration adopted this child separation policy
intentionally, purposefully, as a tactic to deter people from coming
to the United States and seeking asylum.
You ask the question: How do you know this? Well, let me an-
swer.
On March 7, 2017, the Secretary of Homeland Security, General
John Kelly, was asked whether the administration was going to,
and I quote, ‘‘separate the children from their moms and dads.’’ He
said, quote, ‘‘Yes,’’ he said, to, quote, ‘‘deter,’’ end of quote, addi-
tional movement across the border.
Later, when he became the White House Chief of Staff, General
Kelly confirmed, quote, ‘‘It could be a tough deterrent—would be a
tough deterrent,’’ end of quote.
Similarly, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions was asked if sep-
arating children was intended as a deterrent, he said, quote, ‘‘Yes,
hopefully people will get the message.’’
As many of you know, this is an issue I care deeply about. Last
year, while Democrats were in the minority, I begged the Repub-
lican leaders of this committee to take action. And when I say beg,
I mean beg. I didn’t ask. Asking was too cheap. But they refused.
I wrote letters seeking information about these children. I spoke
up at completely unrelated hearings to warn about the plight of
these children. But I was ignored.
One Republican, Representative Mark Meadows, agreed to join
me in sending a letter seeking documents. I thank him for that and
for his cooperation. But the administration ignored our letter, and
we never got a single page. Not a single word. Not a single syllable.
I’m sorry to say the Republicans were fine with that during the last
Congress.
Well, that was their watch, and now this is our watch. And when
I say ‘‘our watch,’’ I’m not just talking about Democrats. I’m talking
about all of our watch.
And so earlier this year we issued subpoenas to the Departments
of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services,
and now we have finally begun to get documents. We’ve just begun
to get them.
Based on these documents, the committee is releasing a staff re-
port today that summarizes this preliminary information. To be
clear, the information we have received is not complete. We’re still
trying to get information. But even with this limited data, we can
draw a few key findings.
First, the administration’s child separations were more harmful,
traumatic, and chaotic than previously known. At least 18 infants
and toddlers under two years old were taken away from their par-
ents at the border and kept apart for up to six months. Something’s
wrong with that picture.
3
At least 241 separated children were kept in Border Patrol facili-
ties longer than the 72 hours permitted by law. And many sepa-
rated children were kept in government custody far longer than
previously known, for more than a year.
Second, the Trump administration has not been candid with the
American people about its purpose in separating children. The ad-
ministration claimed that separating children was necessary to
prosecute parents, but the documents describe parents who were
never sent to Federal criminal custody.
Other parents were briefly taken into custody but then returned,
likely because prosecutors declined to prosecute or they were sen-
tenced to time served. That did not matter, however, because their
children were taken away anyway.
In some cases, the documents show that parents were returned
to the same facilities they left just hours before, but their children
were gone. Imagine that horror. Imagine the horror of a parent
coming back hours later and suddenly their children, gone.
Third, the nightmare of child separation continues. Hundreds of
additional children have been separated from their parents since a
court ordered an end to the administration’s, quote, ‘‘zero toler-
ance,’’ unquote, policy more than a year ago. At least 30 children
separated under that policy remain separated today, despite the
court’s order to reunite them with their families or place them with
sponsors.
And so, overall, the evidence shows that the administration’s
policies are causing the problems at the border, not helping to re-
solve them. The administration is detaining thousands of people
who do not need to be detained and are not required to be de-
tained.
The policies are contributing to massive overcrowding, which is
aggravating conditions, draining supplies, endangering the health
and safety of both detainees and government personnel.
And so I am looking forward to our witnesses today, and today
my hope is that we can agree on several basic points. Anyone in
the custody of our government, especially a child, must be treated
humanely and with respect. Children should not be separated from
their mothers or fathers unless there is a true need for it. And our
government must meticulously track both children and their par-
ents so they can be reunited or placed with sponsors as quickly as
possible.
And to the members of the committee, and our witnesses, I hope
that we all, as we go through this hearing, will ask one basic ques-
tion. My favorite saying is: Our children are the living messengers
we send to a future we will never see. And I ask you to ask us,
of ourselves, the question: How are we sending these children into
their future? How are we sending them? And another question:
Would you allow this for your own child? Would you allow it?
And so this is, again, this is our watch, and I’m looking forward
to us doing everything in our power to make sure that we are liv-
ing up to those values as a Nation.
Now, there will be discussions of things that may have happened
in the past. This is our watch right now. These kids are suffering
right now.
4
And with that, I yield to the distinguished ranking member, Mr.
Jordan.
Mr. J
ORDAN
. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
What we’re going to hear from Democrats this morning is aston-
ishing, will be truly astonishing. For months they declared there
wasn’t even a crisis on the border. Senator Warren said: ‘‘A fake
crisis at the border is fear-mongering of the worst kind, and we’re
not falling for it.’’
But weeks later, Democrats sure have changed their tune. The
chairman just recently said Congress cannot ignore the humani-
tarian crisis at the border.
For years now, Republicans have been warning about the crisis
and working hard to find solutions, and all the while Democrats
have denied there was even a problem.
This is not about politics. It’s always been about preserving the
integrity of our border and preventing the humanitarian crisis that
we are all now witnessing.
Democrats are in charge here. They set the agenda. The chair-
man could have had this hearing on the border crisis in January.
He could have had one in February or March or April. Instead,
prioritized political hearings, like the hearing—well, like the hear-
ing we first had, Michael Cohen, months and months ago.
Think about this. The President made his emergency supple-
mental request only two days after that hearing. We knew even
then that it was urgent. Instead of giving a platform to a convicted
felon, we could have come here to address the border crisis.
Only now the situation has reached the point that Democrats
cannot ignore it and finally decided to acknowledge that there is,
in fact, a real crisis on the border.
After months of the problem being pointed out and urgent calls
for more funding, it wasn’t until just before the July Fourth recess
that the House Democrats finally agreed, after waiting eight
weeks, finally agreed for the path to $4.6 billion supplemental
emergency funding bill to provide some of the resources needed at
the border. And despite the size and scope of the crisis, even this
funding bill was not supported by many of the Democrats, includ-
ing some testifying today.
Once again, they would rather play politics with the border than
work on solutions. They have now gone from denying that there is
a crisis to accusing those working to stop it, our border agents, of
actually creating a culture of cruelty, as some have said. Just yes-
terday the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee gratu-
itously and erroneously accused our Border Patrol agents of com-
mitting negligent homicide. I was in the hearing when he said it.
The reality is that our border agents are working tirelessly on
the crisis, which they did not create, and they are lacking funding
and resources from the very Democrats who are attacking them.
Can’t vote against funding for a crisis.
And then, Fiscal Year 2019, more than 688,000 illegal aliens, in-
cluding nearly 133,000 in May 2019 alone, were apprehended be-
tween ports of entry along the southwest border, an increase of
80,000 since October 2018.
5
And while historically most immigrants were single adult males,
72 percent of all border enforcement actions in the last month were
directed to unaccompanied alien children and family units.
Fabricating stories of cruelty and besmirching the hardworking
civil servants who are protecting the border and providing humani-
tarian assistance does nothing to help solve the problem. Putting
a Band-Aid over the border crisis, like we did two weeks ago, does
not fix the root causes.
If Democrats are serious about solving the border crisis, then
let’s address the Flores settlement agreement, let’s address asylum
loopholes and the other statutory and judicial constraints that
incentivize aliens to make a dangerous journey to the United
States.
Most of all, they must stop obstructing the border security wall.
This is one of the greatest challenges of our time, and as we all
know, it’s getting worse by the day. I hope the Democrats will stop
their obsession with attacking the President and will actually work
collaboratively to fix this crisis.
And, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to hearing from our wit-
nesses. I appreciate the fact that even though initially you were
going to have just the Democrats, you allowed the Republican wit-
nesses from border states to participate in the first panel as well.
And with that, I yield back.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much.
Let me very quickly preliminarily explain to the committee how
this came about. Ms. Tlaib, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, and Ms. Pressley
contacted me over two weeks ago and they made it clear that they
wanted to go down to the border to observe as a committee, more
of a committee assignment. I told them, go. And they decided they
wanted to go and see for themselves.
And I thank you all for doing that.
Ms. Escobar helped make the arrangements, and it was her dis-
trict. But I wanted them to come back to the committee and tell
us what they observed.
I welcome anybody who has gone down there and seen whatever
you may have seen so that the Congress, I think, can be sensitive
to what’s going on and so that we can do something about it.
And so for this panel, we will not have, to the panel, we will not
have questions, and we also won’t have exchanges among the wit-
nesses.
Mr. M
EADOWS
. Mr. Chairman, point of information, if I might?
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Yes.
Mr. M
EADOWS
. Yes, you indicated they went down. So was this
a codel from this committee? Because I was not invited or was not
even aware they were doing it.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. I’m going to say—I’m going to answer you
briefly, and then we’re going to move on to these witnesses.
No, it was not a codel. They called me inquiring as to how it
could be a codel, and I told them: You’re going to have to go on
your own MRA. Okay?
Mr. M
EADOWS
. Yes, but I don’t know that our own MRA qualifies
to actually do that.
6
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Well, whatever they—however they did it,
they did it properly—am I right, ladies?—they did it properly and
within ethical rules. Okay? All right. They took it upon themselves.
We should applaud our Members, even the Republican Members,
who have visited these facilities concerning their interests. Taking
time from what would normally be their times in their districts and
taking care of their families, they decided to go down there. Let’s
applaud them as opposed to——
[Applause.]
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. No. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I told you not to
disrupt. I didn’t mean it like that. But you get the picture.
But anyway, let’s move on.
Ms. S
PEIER
. Mr. Chairman, will you yield for one——
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. I’ll yield, yes.
Ms. S
PEIER
. To Mr. Meadows, the appropriate procedure—and
we’re following that with a codel that we are taking this after-
noon—is to get an invitation from the Member’s district where you
want to visit. And upon having that invitation, you normally have
to wait two weeks in order to get the Border Patrol to accommodate
you. And if they followed that, which I’m sure they did, that is how
they were able to make that trip.
I yield back.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. I’ve got to move on. Thank you all.
Now, to our Members, if you have pictures or exhibits, we are
more than willing to see them. But we ask that you please use
them only during your testimony and then take them down.
You will each have five minutes. And we will be happy to include
in the record any additional materials you would like to submit.
For each of you, the committee would like to know which specific
detention centers you visited, when you went there, and what you
personally witnessed while you were there.
What I am going to—and we have to keep in mind that we’ve got
a vote coming up at around 11. So it’s my hope that we’ll get all
of you in before the vote.
But to the Members, to all Members, after the vote, I’m coming
back here to hear from our other witnesses. We have a very impor-
tant panel coming after this panel. And I will be here until mid-
night if I have to be, because I think it’s just that urgent.
And so I’m going to begin with our Republican Representatives.
Representative Andy Biggs from Arizona, thank you very much
for being with us.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. ANDY BIGGS, A REPRESENTATIVE
IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ARIZONA
Mr. B
IGGS
. Thank you, Chairman Cummings and Ranking Mem-
ber Jordan, members of the committee. I thank you for allowing me
to testify before you today.
I represent the Fifth congressional District of Arizona, which is
a suburb of Phoenix just about a hundred miles from the border.
But I grew up in southern Arizona. I’ve traveled extensively in
Mexico and been to our southern border many times, and I regu-
larly visit the border today even.
In the past few months I have visited a CBP holding facility in
Yuma, an ICE facility in Arizona. That detention center is run by
7
a private concern that is required to comply with Federal regula-
tions. I’ve led two groups of Congressmen to the border and invited
colleagues from across the aisle to come as well.
When I led a group to the border a couple months ago, we were
briefed by agents about the extent of human trafficking, and we
learned about an 11-year-old girl that I’m going to call Maria today
to protect her privacy. Agents learned that there was a human traf-
ficking hub in South Carolina, moving directly from Yuma across
to South Carolina. That’s a long way to go.
Working with DEA, ICE, and local law enforcement, agents lo-
cated a small house that was the headquarters of a cartel affiliate.
They were surprised to find Maria. They didn’t know about her, or
the two small boys that she was required to take care of by the car-
tel affiliate. They had been separated from their families when
their parents allowed them to be taken by human trafficking car-
tels to create a fake family unit in order to get more favorable
treatment when the adults they were placed with by the cartel
traffickers crossed our border.
Maria and the two little boys were intended to be taken back by
human cartel smugglers to be used again to create a fake family
unit.
I asked how many similar trafficking rings existed in the United
States and was told that there are hundreds all over the country.
And this impacts tens of thousands of children who are given over
to cartels and human traffickers by their parents to be used to fa-
cilitate human trafficking.
I also think of Benito—again, I changed his name—he was a five-
year-old little boy left in the desert by human traffickers. He was
found by CBP agents and was given emergency life-saving treat-
ment. I’ve watched videos of agents rescuing sick or dying individ-
uals in the desert or drowning in the Rio Grande who were saved,
at risk to the life and limb of the agents.
Most of the time today by agents is no longer spent in securing
the border, but is actually spent on humanitarian endeavors and
actually trying to take care of children.
Family separation for angel families like Steve Ronnebeck, whose
son Grant was murdered by a multiple deportee, or Mary Ann
Mendoza, whose son Brandon was killed by a multiple deportee,
are two families permanently separated who live in my district.
I visit regularly ports of entry and the vast open tracts between
the ports. I speak to line agents, local law enforcement, residents
on the border, and I visit facilities.
When our group visited the holding facility in Yuma, designed to
hold a maximum of 250 people for only up to 12 hours for proc-
essing, I was shocked to see more than three times that many peo-
ple there.
CBP had made makeshift arrangements to try and meet the con-
ditions. People were crammed in. They were out on the patio area.
They were in the parking lot. They were given mats to sleep on.
We came back and we put in special orders, we did various state-
ments urging immediate help from our colleagues to the CBP and
thousands of people crossing our border who were voluntarily sur-
rendering themselves to the agents. We warned of the difficulties
8
that would be exacerbated if immediately relief was not under-
taken.
Months ago, while many of my colleagues were claiming that the
border situation was a manufactured crisis, we were urging imme-
diate action because the circumstances were horrible. They were
overcrowded. They were horrible. There was clean water. There
still is clean water. There was food. There was sanitary supplies.
There was bedding supplied. But it was rudimentary. We needed
help then.
And now to refer to these folks who are doing their best dealing
with a horrible situation—at that time, remember, Yuma was
transferring 130 people a day to overcrowded ICE facilities. They
were releasing 120 a day into the community. But when you’re
catching or apprehending or people surrendering at the tune of
4,500, you don’t have enough supplies. You don’t have enough fa-
cilities.
It is a crisis. It is real. And we do not get anywhere by blaming
the people who are doing their best to help these people.
We need to look in the mirror. We need to make the changes. We
need to provide the funding necessary to get this done. Calling
these Auschwitz-style concentration camps or indicating that these
people that are trying to enforce the law are somehow Nazi-type
war criminals, or yesterday we heard they were criminal child
abusers, that doesn’t help solve the problem. It’s a real problem.
We need to solve it. We can do it. We have to do it.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much.
Representative C
LOUD
.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. MICHAEL CLOUD, A
REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS
Mr. C
LOUD
. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking
Member. And thank you for the opportunity to share the story of
those of us who live in border states and have experienced this hu-
manitarian and criminal crisis for decades.
First of all, I’d like to thank the men and women of the Border
Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for their contin-
ued service to this Nation. Many of them are veterans who view
this job as a way to continue their service to our great Nation.
Many have served overseas to preserve our freedom on the front
lines, and defending our borders at home they view as a way to
continue their service back home.
Many of them realize, the men and women serving, realize that
protecting the homeland and defending our border by fighting back
against the corrupting influence of cartels is just as important to
the communities and families across this Nation as fighting over-
seas.
Wednesday marked the one-year anniversary from when I was
sworn into office. What I’ve learned in a year is that many Mem-
bers of Congress would rather talk about a problem than actually
fix it. Thankfully, the President has made this a priority, and it’s
past time for Congress to do the same.
I cannot understand why we would allow this problem to con-
tinue when we know what would help to fix it: close the asylum
loopholes cartels use to exploit people, fix the Flores settlement so
9
that we can ensure families remain together, and many other situ-
ations or circumstances or solutions that have been presented be-
fore.
Shortly after I was sworn in, I visited the Texas border, not for
the first time, and I asked Border Patrol: What would be a win?
And they told me: situational awareness. That was in August of
last year, when 16,744 migrants were apprehended by the RGB
sector. In June of this year, that number has nearly tripled. There
were 43,197 apprehensions in that sector alone.
Our current border facilities are not designed to handle these
current numbers. Border Patrol and ICE are doing the best they
can with extremely limited resources that we have given them.
They understand they don’t have the tools and resources they need
to even begin thinking about mitigating the influence cartels have
in our Nation because Border Patrol is undermanned and under-
funded, and Congress has done nothing to help.
During our visit just a few weeks ago, the phrase I heard over
and over is: There is no end in sight.
The southern part of Texas’ 27th congressional District, the dis-
trict I am proud to represent, is roughly two hours from the U.S.-
Mexican border town of McAllen, Texas. If fixing this crisis had
been left up to Texas, we would have done it several years ago.
Widely recognized as the fatal funnel, two major interstates, U.S.
281 and U.S. 77, come up from Mexico and feed right through our
district. Why is it called the fatal funnel? Time magazine ran a
story in May 2015 titled, ‘‘The Border Corridor of Death Along
America’s Second Border.’’ Customs and Border Protection even
warns on their website, if you’re traveling on Highways U.S. 281
and U.S. 77, please be cautious of your surroundings as smuggling
activity runs rampant.
Or take the Houston HIDTA 2018 threat assessment that’s filled
with examples of drug and human smuggling conducted by the
Gulf and Los Zetas cartels through the district and surrounding
area. Or take the story of 19 migrants who were found dead in a
back of a tractor trailer truck 10 minutes from my house in Vic-
toria. They died in a tractor-trailer truck in the sweltering heat.
Authorities found a five-year-old boy who had died in his father’s
arms.
Deputy Chief Roy Boyd of the Victoria Country Sheriff’s Office
says that gangs are moving more and more into the slave trade
now because of how profitable it is. While a kilo of cocaine or any
drug can be sold once, human beings can be sold numerous times
every day. Boyd says that these migrants are being sold into slav-
ery, both sex slavery and labor.
The RAND Corporation recently published a study that said: We
found the revenues from smuggling migrants from El Salvador,
Guatemala, and Honduras combined could have ranged from a
total of about 200 million to a total of about 2.3 billion in 2017.
Let’s let that sink in when we consider the resources we’re giving
to our resources at the border.
Congress is allowing these cartels to massively profit because we
refuse to close off the avenues they are using to smuggle migrants.
This is not just these gut-wrenching stories either. At the end of
May, I, along with Representatives Grothman and Hice, went to
10
the border. We were briefed by Border Patrol on who and what is
coming across the border. We were joined by my friend Hector Gar-
cia and the National Border Patrol Council on a ride-along through
the night to see how these fine men and women of the Border Pa-
trol use the meager resources they have to prioritize life, provide
for these migrants, and defend our country.
We visited a ranch where we heard stories of those who live on
the ranch are fearful for their own lives because of the number of
the cartel members smuggling through their own property. They’re
afraid to walk their own land. The manager of that ranch said his
wife cannot go on a walk or run around the property without the
dog and a gun.
Cartels cut chains and locks, bust through fences with their
trucks, use private property to avoid stations. Somehow these are
the stories that the media fails to report but sadly what’s become
normal for the people of south Texas.
Let me leave you with this story I’ve shared before but it’s worth
sharing. I visited an unaccompanied minor facility. There were a
number of young ladies there, about a couple hundred. I asked
them about the care and what these young ladies had been
through. They said about 40 percent of them had been sexually
abused along their journey.
This is the tragedy we’ve allowed to metastasize while many in
Congress spent months claiming this was a fake, manufactured cri-
sis. Real compassion would have been for us to do something about
this and have the wisdom and foresight to avoid the situation that
we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks instead of implementing
policies that enable what the cartels are doing.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much, Representative
Cloud.
Representative L
ESKO
. And welcome to our committee.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. DEBBIE LESKO, A REPRESENTA-
TIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ARIZONA
Mrs. L
ESKO
. Thank you and good morning. You know, I don’t
know if I should be jealous with all the pictures being taken over
my colleagues or not.
But it’s a good morning. And, Chairman Cummings, Ranking
Member Jordan, and Members of Congress, thank you for giving us
this opportunity.
You know, sometimes I feel, have you ever seen a movie where
they have parallel universes, where you’re in one world in this situ-
ation, you’re in another world in this situation? Well, that’s what
I feel like we’re in, quite honestly.
In some of my Democrat colleagues’ world they seem to think
that all of a sudden, out of the blue, thousands of illegal immi-
grants showed up at the border, and they are just oblivious—obliv-
ious—to the year-long calls by Republicans and some Democrats for
years for immigration reform, knowing that our loose immigration
laws are what’s incentivizing people to come here and what’s caus-
ing the crisis.
In my world, what I believe is the real world, the crisis has been
mounting for years. And people like me have sounded the alarm for
years, over and over and over again, and tried to enact legislation
11
to fix it. But, unfortunately, many of my Democratic colleagues
have fought me over and over again at every turn.
I’m from Arizona. I’m from a border state. I don’t live in a state
thousands of miles away. So we’ve been living this for many, many
years. And I used to serve in the state senate and the state house.
And I was a cosponsor, along with my colleague, Representative
Biggs, on SB 1070, because we knew, we were there, we were on
the ground, and we knew that the immigration laws were not being
enforced, and we thought, okay, well, let’s have the state try to en-
force it.
Well, we were fought at every turn by every of my Democrat col-
leagues there and the President. In my Democrat friends’ world the
crisis at the border, they say, was manufactured. We heard it for
months. In January, Speaker Pelosi and Schumer said it was a
manufactured crisis. House Democrat whip laughed when asked if
there is a crisis at the border and said absolutely not.
Thirty-eight freshman Democrats sent a letter to Senate Majority
Leader McConnell requesting that Congress end this manufactured
crisis. Democrat Homeland Security Committee chairman tweeted:
The President has manufactured a humanitarian crisis.
In my world, President Trump and Republicans have been
sounding the alarm for years. I mean, my goodness, we’re going to
have over a million illegal immigrants that we apprehend. That’s
more than one congressional district a year. And the pounds, even
in Yuma, Arizona, just recently, hundreds of pounds of meth.
And last year, Republicans led two immigration bills that we
thought were a compromise, where it gave DACA recipients legal
status in one of the bills. Another of the bills, it gave DACA recipi-
ents a pathway to citizenship. But not one of my Democrat col-
leagues voted yes, not one single one.
Unfortunately, in my Democrat colleagues’ world, in Judiciary
yesterday—I am a member, too—I heard over and over again how
CBP are child abusers. And one member, one of my colleagues said:
Oh, they’re getting treated worse than prisoners of war. I mean,
really?
Let’s get down to the business of solving the problem. And I en-
courage everyone to watch a video by Tucson Sector Border Chief
Patrol Agent Roy Villareal. The video shows clearly that there are
supplies in the detention centers.
And this whole issue about drinking out of the toilet is wrong.
No one drinks out of a toilet. No one is being asked to drink out
of a toilet. There’s a combined unit where at the top you have
drinking water, and the Border Patrol Chief drank the water.
They’re not drinking out of toilets. So, please, American public,
there is no one asking people to drink out of toilets.
We really need to solve the root of this problem. We need to get
to the base of it. And I call on my Democrat colleagues, we’re all
passionate about this issue, let’s actually solve the root of the prob-
lem, work on legislation together, let’s get this done.
And I yield back. Thank you.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much.
Representative R
OY
.
12
STATEMENT OF THE HON. CHIP ROY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS
Mr. R
OY
. I thank the chairman. Thank you for holding this hear-
ing and allowing us, giving us time to testify this morning.
As many of you know, I represent Texas 21, Austin, San Antonio.
The southwest edge of Texas 21 is about 95 miles from the border
of Mexico. I’ve toured facilities multiple times in my career as a
lawyer for the Senate Judiciary Committee, as a Federal pros-
ecutor, as a staffer for Governor Perry, as a first assistant attorney
general, and now as a Congressman. I’ve been to the border mul-
tiple times, and I didn’t just come recently putting on a show in
front of fences for the media. It’s come over a career of trying to
figure out how to secure the border and do our job.
My chief of staff went to the border this last Saturday, down to
Clint to go to the facility after hearing all of the horror stories. My
chief of staff had a very different experience in terms of what he
saw, in terms of the cleanliness of facilities, in terms of Border Pa-
trol trying to do its job, trying to make sure that people are taken
care of after a long, hard journey through Mexico, making sure
they do have potable water, including having water containers
right outside the very cells where we were told that they didn’t
have water to drink, having the toothpaste, the food, the diapers,
the things that are necessary to take care of people after a long,
hard journey, while this body has failed to secure the border and
created the very magnet, the very magnet, that is causing these
migrants to come through and be abused by cartels while this body
cowardly sits in the corner doing nothing about it.
The untold stories that are going on by cartels, these are the sto-
ries. At certain stations gangs boarded the trains and demanded a
toll. The rate was a hundred dollars per station. They threatened
us. They said they would hold us until we could call a relative to
arrange to pay. If you couldn’t pay, they would throw you off the
roof. Johnny was separated from his family on a train, and it’s un-
clear what happened to his wife and children.
Just two weeks ago a 19-year-old woman fell from one of these
trains in Tacotalpa, Mexico, killing her. The train stopped near the
Tabasco state town and the woman hopped off to buy some cheese-
stuffed rolls, and when the train crowded with migrants began to
move again she hustled to clamor back aboard. But the train sud-
denly stopped, she lost her grip and fell beneath its wheels. It
dragged her a hundred yards before jerking forward again in a
thunder of shuttering steel.
Coyotes take advantage of our system, leading women and chil-
dren to the border, while along the journey one in three women are
sexually assaulted.
This is the reality of what’s happening between the Northern
Triangle and Texas. This is what is happening because we refuse
to do our job.
What about Border Patrol? Sergio Tinoco was born into poverty
in south Texas as his mother remained in Mexico and he was
forced to work hard labor on a farm to support himself. He served
in our military for 10 years and then became a Border Patrol agent
protecting the land in which he grew up in the Rio Grande Valley.
13
He wanted this comment to be told, quote: The last thing this
son of Mexican immigrants expected was to be compared to Nazis
by America’s elites for serving his Nation and protecting our dan-
gerous border.
He said: Our agents are just completely overwhelmed. They are
exhausted. Not only are they exhausted out in the field, exhausted
inside the stations, processing, they’re exhausted with all of the
rhetoric that’s coming down through the media and this Congress.
Our own congressional leaders are vilifying our agents. These are
the people holding America’s front line.
Add to these thoughts—this is an article that Sergio Tinoco
wrote that appeared July 5, 2019—add to these thoughts an ex-
hausting 10-hour shift of seeing hundreds of illegal immigrants at
the facility you work in and out in the field at temperatures over
a hundred degrees. Add a countless amount of mothers and fathers
telling the agent that their child is sick and needs attention. Add
being in a facility that can only hold 300 detainees, but is currently
holding 1,200, all waiting to be processed and released because of
the immigration loopholes that brought them here in the first
place.
More so, add having just rescued a mother and child from drown-
ing in the Rio Grande, caring for an infant after being stung by a
swarm of bees in the high brush at the area where they entered
the country illegally. Add the memory of finding a decomposing
dead individual who was left behind by the ruthless smuggler be-
cause of an injury or exhaustion.
A Border Patrol agent should be going home at the end of shift
to decompress and leave all these matters behind at the workplace.
Those things will be waiting for the agent again tomorrow. There
will be another daring rescue, another small caravan of over a
thousand individuals to deal with and try to fit into an already
overcrowded facility. There will be another set of individuals, or
kids requiring medical attention, which the agents will tend to.
But now, with comments such as these, the Border Patrol agent
must go home and hear about how their families have also heard
those comments depicting mom or dad as a murderer of kids and
their parents, how mom or dad are running gas chambers to kill
all the illegal immigrants.
The fact is both parties have failed. The GOP all too often want
to stand at the Rio Grande with a ‘‘no trespassing’’ sign while
winking at immigrants and with a ‘‘help wanted’’ sign in the other.
Meanwhile, my Democrat colleagues prefer to stand in front of
chain link fences next to an empty parking lot while making up hy-
perbole for clicks, Twitter followers, and cynical politics.
There is a path to fix this. Take out the cartels, recognize that
they’re terrorist organizations, fix our asylum laws to be welcoming
but not tragically abused by cartels, end catch and release, and
give ICE the resources to do their job.
President Obama sent up a bill for $760 million for ICE. Why
were we not funding ICE so that we have a place to be able to put
people when they come through Border Patrol?
It is time for action. This Texan is not going to sit by and watch
his state and Texas communities get overrun and abused because
14
the coward of the swamp sit idly by and cynically fail to do their
job.
Thank you.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much.
Ms. Escobar, Representative Escobar, let me say this before you
go on. I want to thank you for working so closely with us to make
this hearing happen, and I really appreciate you very much. Thank
you. You may go forward.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. VERONICA ESCOBAR, A
REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS
Ms. E
SCOBAR
. Chairman Cummings, Ranking Member Jordan,
members of the committee, thank you for calling this hearing and
for the privilege of testifying before you today.
I am proud to live not near but on the U.S.-Mexico border, in El
Paso, Texas, a community that has long been safe and secure, a
modern-day Ellis Island. For seven months, my office has facili-
tated delegation visits to El Paso, 10 so far and more to come, and
I’m grateful for all of those who have been able to or will soon join
us to bear witness to what is happening at the hands of the U.S.
Government.
There is no doubt that the increasing number of migrants at our
southern border has presented a challenge. Unfortunately, in the
last two years our country has failed to live up to our founding val-
ues when addressing that challenge.
Before I focus on what our government is doing, let me tell you
what my community is doing. For years, but especially in this last
year, El Paso has stepped up, helping feed, shelter, and offer hospi-
tality to thousands of migrant families released by DHS week after
week. My community, with a fraction of the resources available to
the Federal Government, has responded more strategically,
thoughtfully, and compassionately than the Federal Government
has.
El Paso knows that this is not a matter of resources, but a mat-
ter of will. El Paso has had to stand up shelters on a moment’s no-
tice, transport hundreds of migrants daily, using only volunteers,
and we’ve opened our wallets and our hearts to ensure that every
one of those vulnerable souls has a clean, safe place to stay once
out of custody. El Paso made the choice to employ compassion and
good will.
And then we have the choice that our government has made. Our
government, at the hands of this administration, has exhibited an
incompetence and cruelty that has created a human rights crisis in
our own country.
Under the Trump administration, border communities have
borne witness to the deaths of at least six children in government
custody since September.
Family separation, a practice called illegal by the United Na-
tions, one which, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics,
inflicts deep life-long trauma, a policy so heinous that the sound of
a weeping child secretly recorded in a detention facility moved even
some of the most hardline anti-immigrant Americans, El Paso was
the testing ground for child separation, a policy that continues to
this day.
15
We’ve seen severe overcrowding in Border Patrol processing cen-
ters that is so inhumane that the DHS Office of the Inspector Gen-
eral described it as dangerous because it represents an immediate
risk to agents and migrants alike. We’ve seen conditions that dehu-
manize migrants, stripping them of their dignity, sending good
agents into states of despondency, giving cover to bad agents who
abuse their authority.
There’s long-term detention in ICE facilities where in my district
a group of men requesting asylum who had been detained for near-
ly a year became so desperate they went on a hunger strike. They
were force fed and hydrated through tubes that were placed down
their nose. Speaking through their pain and their bloodied tubes,
they told me they would rather die in America than be sent back
to India.
We’ve seen migrant protection protocols. It’s the administration’s
practice of sending legal asylum seekers into another country as
they await their hearing, a violation of due process that puts vul-
nerable populations in danger. In one case, a woman had warned
CBP about the danger she faced in Ciudad Juarez, was sent back
to Mexico, where she was kidnapped and brutally gang raped.
My district is ground zero for these atrocities, and because my
office inquires about these cases in line with my oversight respon-
sibilities, I have become a target.
These policies have created the humanitarian crisis and a moral
one. I commend colleagues who have worked to address these
issues, from Congresswoman Lofgren focusing on the root causes,
to Congressman Raul Ruiz, who’s focused on medical standards for
migrants in CBP custody.
I, too, have legislation that will be coming up shortly, H.R. 2203,
the Homeland Security Improvement Act, which would increase ac-
countability and transparency at DHS so that these conditions,
these deaths, these abuses, can be relegated to a dark moment in
history.
This is not about resources. And to prove it, one only needs to
look at what El Paso, Texas, has done without any. This is about
having the will to treat people with dignity. We have the power to
change this. Do we have the will?
Thank you.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, A
REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW
YORK
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. Mr. Chair, I would like to be sworn in.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. I’m sorry?
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. I would like to be sworn in.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Oh, all right. We usually don’t require a
swearing-in, but you want to be sworn in?
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. Yes.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. All right. Okay. Stand up, please.
Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give
is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help
you God?
16
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. I do.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. You may be seated.
Let the record reflect that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez answered in the af-
firmative.
You may proceed.
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. Good morning, Chairman Cummings, Rank-
ing Member Jordan, and distinguished members of this committee.
When I was asked to testify today, I, frankly, didn’t know where
to begin after our visit to the border.
Much has been made about the fact that we have said that this
is a manufactured crisis. And in many ways, it is manufactured in
that it is wholly unnecessary. It is unnecessary to separate children
from their families. It is unnecessary to have a policy to detain in-
nocent women and families that have harmed no person and are
legally seeking asylum in the United States of America. It is un-
necessary to have a policy that calls children unaccompanied when
they arrive with older brothers, sisters, and grandparents, and
treat them no differently than human traffickers.
And in speaking of trafficking, it is completely unnecessary for
this administration to choose to implement policies like metering
and so-called ‘‘remain in Mexico’’ policies that dump innocent peo-
ple in dangerous territories, that puts them right in the crosshairs
of human traffickers, ripe for picking.
This is a manufactured crisis because cruelty—because the cru-
elty is manufactured. This is a manufactured crisis because there
is no need for us to do this. There’s no need for us to overcrowd
and to detain and underresource. There is no need for us to arrest
innocent people and treat them no differently than criminals when
they are pursuing their basic human rights.
Much has been made about CBP agents in this hearing as well
and that this is not their fault, and in some respects, in many re-
spects, I agree, because it is a policy of dehumanization imple-
mented by this executive administration, laid at the feet of Stephen
Miller, that creates a tinderbox of violence and dehumanization
where hurt people hurt people.
I would like to seek unanimous consent to submit the records of
the names of 17 women I met during my trip to the border.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Without objection.
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. I think one of the reasons and what has
been spoken of is that there’s two different universes, and it feels
like we’re speaking in two different worlds, and one of the reasons
for that, I believe, is because when I and when we took our tour
of the border, one of the first things that we were told is that we
were not allowed to speak to the migrants, that we were not al-
lowed to have contact with them, that we shouldn’t, and this was
given for reasons of, quote, ‘‘their safety,’’ or reasons for—or for the
expediency of the tour.
And after we entered and after we were asked to surrender our
cell phones at the beginning of the tour, we went in and one of the
CBP officers, after that morning, it being revealed by ProPublica—
which I would also seek unanimous consent to submit to the
record.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Without objection.
17
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. While it was revealed by ProPublica a secret
Facebook group where CBP members were planning to harm, or
encouraging harm, of myself and Congresswoman Escobar as well
as mocking the deaths of migrant children.
Into that environment, we walked into this facility. We were
asked to surrender our phones and be guarded by the people with-
out a guarantee that no one there was in that Facebook group. We
went in and one of the officers attempted to sneak a photograph,
a photograph of myself and other congressional Members, and at
that point we asked to enter one of the cells.
We were allowed to speak to the women, and these are the
women that we spoke to. It’s their handwriting. And while we are
being asked to speak only to officers, we are not getting the ac-
counts of migrants, of their treatment, of what they are experi-
encing.
And so when these women tell me that they were put into a cell
and that their sink was not working, and we tested the sink our-
selves and the sink was not working, and they were told to drink
out of the toilet bowl, I believed them. I believed these women. I
believed the canker sores that I saw in their mouths because they
were only allowed to be fed unnutritious food. I believed them
when they said they were sleeping on concrete floors for two
months. I believed them.
And what was worse about this, Mr. Chairman, was the fact that
there were American flags hanging all over these facilities, that
children being separated from their parents, in front of an Amer-
ican flag, that women were being called these names under an
American flag. We cannot allow for this.
[Medical emergency in hearing room.]
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Representative Green, who is a medical
doctor, just told me she’ll be okay.
Thank you, Representative Green. I really appreciate it. It’s good
to have a doctor in the house. Amen.
Miss, since I interrupted you, I’ll give you 30—I am sorry. We’ll
give you a minute to wrap it up, please.
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I know my time
was wrapping up at that time.
And again, we have to make sure that—and over and over again,
when we spoke to these folks, whether it was agents, whether it
was HHS officials, oftentime they said the thing that we need most
is not resources, we need policy change.
So we need to change our metering policies. We need to change
our detention policies. We need to change our policies on who we
call unaccompanied. And that is one of the key areas, in addition
to changing our policy on foreign affairs, on investment, on being
an equal partner in Latin America and the Western Hemisphere.
Thank you very much.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much.
Ms. Tlaib, again, I want to thank you for your phone call about
two weeks ago when you wanted to pull together things to get
down, go down to the border. Thank you very much. You have now
five minutes.
18
STATEMENT OF THE HON. RASHIDA TLAIB, A REPRESENTA-
TIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN
Ms. T
LAIB
. Thank you so much, Chairman.
Honorable members of the committee, thank you all for this criti-
cally important hearing, and
[speaking foreign language], which means thank you, Chairman
Cummings, for always creating a space for us in this committee.
From the first week you said we give you new energy. I hope that’s
still the case. So thank you.
By allowing us to testify before this committee and enter what
we observed and experienced in our visit to El Paso border on July
1, to the CBP Station 1 and the Clint camp into the congressional
record, I appreciate that responsibility, and not picking on the
President, but holding this administration accountable.
First, no one is illegal. That term is derogatory now because it
dehumanizes people. You can say any other forms of maybe coming
in without regulations or so forth, but the use of ‘‘illegal’’ is dis-
respectful. And I ask my colleagues to try in so many ways to not
dehumanize our immigrant neighbors that are trying to come in for
safe haven.
Mr. Speaker, while working at human service and community
advocacy organizations, I learned early on that to truly bring power
to the table, to see what is at stake, you have to bring people in
the room who can’t be here. So I’m asking for Jakelin, who was age
7 from Guatemala, who died from sepsis while in our care. She’s
the same age as my son when I heard about it.
Mr. Speaker, we do have a crisis at our border. It is one of moral-
ity, as we have seen this current strategy unfold, intentional and
cruelly created by the Trump administration, dead set on sending
a hate-filled message that those seeking refuge are not welcome in
America, in our America, and that the rule of law, human rights,
will not be—will not protect them here. Instead, Mr. Chairman, it’s
a dangerous ideology that rules our Nation right now.
I have been so deeply haunted by the unforgettable image of a
four-year-old boy coming up to me through a glass door of a cell
he was in, with a number of other children, asked me in Spanish
where his papa was, and slid a very small board to me so I could
write something on it. It was like a dry board. I’m not sure what
he needed before an agent asked me to stop engaging him.
Chairman, again, bringing those who can’t be here into this
room, I ask my colleagues to see a drawing from one of the children
in the cages, in the cells, up there, and I want you to not look
away. I ask you and beg you not to look away.
But the suffering in these illegal and immoral camps isn’t just
limited to those children. Something I learned, Mr. Chairman, is
that—I was able to travel to Clint, Texas, and meet face to face
mothers, fathers, grandparents who are suffering, ripped away
from their families, not knowing if they ever see their children and
loved ones again.
I won’t forget the father from Brazil who held onto his son with
tears in his eyes as he told me in English he just wants his son
to be an American boy. He said his wife—he was with his wife, his
eight-year-old daughter, and teenage boy in a tent-like space out-
side of Station 1. He said he has been there for four days.
19
I won’t forget Daisy, the grandmother who had a red ribbon on
her wrist with the name of the medication she needs, who said she
had been in detention for 40 days, and she hadn’t seen her grand-
son who was mentally impaired since being separated from him
when they arrived. I wonder every day where she is now and
whether or not she’s hungry.
The fear in their eyes won’t be forgotten, Mr. Speaker, but the
suffering in these illegal camps cannot be forgotten. Imagine trav-
eling thousands of miles in grueling and dangerous conditions be-
cause you have no other option, only to be separated from your
family, from your children, thrown into overcrowded cages, denied
a shower, toothbrush, and, yes, Mr. Chairman, drink water out of
the toilet if you’re thirsty.
Now imagine doing that while pregnant. In Clint, I met Bettys,
a woman pregnant with her first child. She smiled at me, and I in-
stantly connected with her. She had a pink hoodie on.
And I instantly just went toward her, even though they told us
not to talk to anybody, Mr. Chairman. I couldn’t not go to some-
body that’s smiling at me. And I said hello, and she said hello in
English. And I love that she felt confident to speak to me in the
broken English.
And she said she found out—I said, how long have you been
here? She said 27 days. And she said: I’m with a child. And she
glowed. She was so happy, because she had not known she was
pregnant until she came here.
But by showing up, Mr. Chairman, she is free now. The following
day she is free now, and we are following the asylum process, and
she is now at home. I spoke to her last week. She’s so happy. She
said: You will be part of my family forever.
Ms. T
LAIB
. Mr. Chairman, it needs to be noted into record. I
spoke to CBP agents, even though they told us not to speak to
them too. Remember that? And I said: What do you think we need
to do because you guys are overwhelmed?
They said, one of the: Stop sending money. It’s not working.
Another one said: I wasn’t trained for this. I am not a social
worker. I’m not a medical care worker.
He actually said: I want to be at the border. That’s what I was
trained to be at.
The one other one, the last one, Mr. Chairman, the separation
policy isn’t working, he said. He knew about the separation policy
that he was enacting.
CBP morale is one of the lowest among law enforcement agen-
cies, Mr. Chairman. Since between 2017 and 2018, we had a high
of 100 agents committing suicide. That needs to be put in record.
The dehumanization is not only with those families, but it’s also
with the agents that we’ve had told to do this to these families.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank
you very much.
Ms. Pressley?
20
STATEMENT OF THE HON. AYANNA PRESSLEY, A REPRESENT-
ATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. Chairman Cummings, Ranking Member Jordan,
and colleagues of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to
testify here today. I believe that it is both our opportunity and obli-
gation as Members of Congress to shed light on injustice and to lift
the voices of the unheard. Make clear that I don’t say ‘‘the voice-
less.’’ Every person has a voice, but our institutions do not always
listen. So today I do not speak on behalf of anyone, but I make
space for the stories our Nation so desperately needs to hear in this
moment.
Mr. Chairman, I cannot unsee what I’ve seen; I cannot unfeel
what I experienced. I refuse to, although, admittedly, it robs me of
sleep and peace of mind, but that pales in comparison to the pain
felt by families that have been robbed of their liberty, their legal
rights, and their dignity, and some even the lives of their babies.
During our stop at the El Paso Border Patrol facility, I pressed
my hand to a Plexiglass window. I met the gazes of several women
on the other side. Their shoulders were slumped, their clothes
filthy, their eyes vacant. I turned to a Border Patrol officer and
asked: What is the temperature in this room?
The officer responded: I do not know.
I then asked how they set the temperatures in the room. He
mumbled again he did not know.
Mr. Chairman, on the day of our visit, it was a sweltering 103
degrees in El Paso. What’s the heat index at which you bring folks
indoors, I inquired? Border Patrol responded with no answer. The
most basic of questions about the care and welfare of those held in
the custody of our government were either dismissed or met with
a nonanswer, affirming what we know. This agency was never
built, never designed, never trained for the care and keeping of
families. These families need trauma support, caseworkers, clean
water, adequate and nutritious food. Instead, they have received a
level of degradation we should be ashamed is occurring on Amer-
ican soil.
Once we realized we were not going to get the answers we need-
ed from CBP officers, my colleagues and I pushed our way through
a doorway to speak directly with the group of approximately 10 to
15 women who were detained in a small room. These women held
thin blankets. They sat on the cold concrete. They had tears in
their eyes, and as we walked in, relief and release as they collapsed
at a sign of compassion.
My colleagues Representatives Kennedy and Ocasio-Cortez trans-
lated the women’s stories as quickly as they could. I held the hand
of a woman who heaved sobs, as she explained, her deep fear that
at any moment she could fall to the floor in a seizure. She’s an epi-
leptic, and the medicine she relies on had been confiscated. And,
in fact, she feared that by telling that truth, she would experience
retaliation after we left and her medication would continue to be
withheld.
I spoke to another woman who wept in my arms crying for her
baby. She didn’t care to know my name. She didn’t care to know
who we were. She simply craved compassion. She wanted to be
treated like a human being. She asked me if she deserved to be
21
treated like this, if they deserved to be treated like dogs. Each had
survived a treacherous journey overcoming tremendous obstacles,
and while I’m not fluent in Spanish, Mr. Chairman, I want you to
understand that there was no barrier to understanding in that
room.
We speak the universal language: Of pain, of a mother’s love, of
justice. These women are not voiceless, Mr. Chairman, but they are
cruelly and criminally unheard. Not today. Today, Congress has an
opportunity to listen and to act. After everything these women
have endured—fleeing violence, deep poverty, sexual violence, do-
mestic abuse—they arrive at the crest of this Nation only to be
torn apart from their babies and thrown in cages for seeking asy-
lum, a legal right, a human right, and in spite of all of that, they
believe so fiercely in the promise of this Nation.
Mr. Chairman, on that concrete floor sat women with a deep and
abiding love for a Nation that had known only as a captor. In spite
of the abuse and adversity they had endured, all they desperately
wanted to do was to hold their babies and have this Nation give
them a chance, a chance to make a credible fear claim, a chance
to make it to a court date, a chance to make the case that they
would work so fiercely to make this Nation their home just as gen-
erations and generations before them have done. They begged us
for forgiveness, Mr. Chair. What will we say to this generation of
children and parents we imprisoned for seeking safety. We should
be the ones begging for forgiveness.
All they want is one more chance to make their way to protect
their families to live, and I do not know what is more American
than that.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much.
I want to thank our entire panel, all of you, for laying out the
case, what you have observed and your opinions. I really appreciate
the way you’ve done it. We are now going to move to the next
panel. Again, thank you all.
To the members, the vote is expected at around 11:35, so we’re
going to startup the second panel as soon as they get seated in
about two or three minutes.
[Recess.]
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. We’ll now come back to order. This panel
includes the independent inspectors general who have personally
inspected these facilities, written detailed reports, and provided
photographic evidence of their findings. Jennifer Costello is the
Acting Inspector General of Department of Homeland Security.
Ann Maxwell is the Assistant Inspector General for Department of
Health and Human Services. Elora Mukherjee?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. Mukherjee.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Yes, you, is a law professor, Jerome L.
Greene, clinical, at Columbia Law School. Jennifer Nagda is the
policy director, Young Center for immigrant children’s rights.
Thomas D. Homan, he’s former acting director, U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement.
If you would all please rise and raise your right hand, I will
begin to swear you in. Do you swear or affirm that the testimony
you’re about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth so help you God?
22
Let the record show that the witnesses answered in the affirma-
tive.
And thank you. You may be seated.
I let you know that the microphones are sensitive, so please
speak directly into them.
Without objection, your written statement will be made a part of
the record.
With that, Inspector General Costello, you are now recognized to
give an oral presentation of your testimony. Again, before you
start, we may not get through all of you, but we’ll—but we’re going
to do the best we can with what we’ve got. And each of you have
five minutes, and I’m begging you to stay within the five minutes
because this is a getaway day for a lot of our members and so we
got a lot to do today. All right. Ms. Costello?
STATEMENT OF JENNIFER L. COSTELLO, ACTING INSPECTOR
GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Thank you. Chairman Cummings, Ranking Mem-
ber Jordan, and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting
me here today to discuss our recent work related to conditions at
Customs and Border Protection holding facilities along the south-
ern border. My testimony today will focus on the dangerous over-
crowding and prolonged detention recently observed by DHS OIG
inspectors in both the El Paso Del Norte Processing Center and fa-
cilities in the Rio Grande Valley.
These issues pose a serious and imminent threat to the health
and safety of both DHS personnel and detainees and require the
Department’s immediate attention and action. DHS OIG conducts
unannounced inspections of CBP facilities to evaluate compliance
with CBP’s Transport, Escort, Detention, and Search standards,
otherwise known as the TEDS standards. TEDS standards governs
CBP’s interactions with detainees, providing guidance on things
like duration of detention, access to medical care, access to food
and water, and hygiene.
Our inspections enable us to identify instances of noncompliance
with TEDS standards and to propose appropriate corrective action.
In doing so, we seek to drive transparency and accountability at
the Department of Homeland Security. Although CBP has some-
times struggled complying with standards relating to duration of
detention, our recent unannounced inspections revealed a situation
far more grievous than those previously encountered by our inspec-
tors.
For instance, when our team arrived at the El Paso Del Norte
Processing Center, they found that the facility, which has a max-
imum capacity of 125 detainees, had more than 750 detainees on-
site. The following day that number increased to 900. We have also
observed serious overcrowding among unaccompanied alien chil-
dren, or UACs, at all the Border Patrol facilities we visited in the
Rio Grande Valley.
Additionally, we found that individuals, including children, were
being detained well beyond the 72 hours generally permitted under
TEDS standards and the Flores agreement. For instance, at the
centralized processing center in McAllen, Texas, many children had
23
been in custody longer than a week. In fact, some UACs under the
age of seven had been in custody for more than two weeks.
Under these circumstances, CBP has struggled to comply with
TEDS standards. For instance, although all the facilities we visited
in the Rio Grande Valley had infant formula, diapers, baby wipes,
and juice and snacks for children, two facilities had not provided
children access to hot meals as required until the week we arrived.
Children at three of the five facilities we visited had no access
to showers, limited access to a change of clothes, and no access to
laundry facilities. Additionally, while Border Patrol tried to provide
the least restrictive setting available for children, the limited space
for medical isolation resulted in some UACs and families being
held in closed cells. Space limitations are also affecting single
adults. The lack of space has restricted CBP’s ability to separate
detainees with infectious diseases, such as chicken pox, scabies,
and influenza from each other and from other detainees. According
to management, these conditions also affect the health of Border
Patrol agents who are experiencing high incidents of illness.
There is also concern that the overcrowding and prolonged deten-
tion may be contributing to rising tensions among detainees. A sen-
ior manager at one facility in the Rio Grande Valley called the situ-
ation, quote, a ticking time bomb.
Despite these immense challenges, we observed CBP staff inter-
acting with detainees in a professional and respectful manner and
attempting to comply with standards to the extent possible.
Notwithstanding their efforts, Border Patrol requires immediate
assistance to manage the overcrowding in its facilities. CBP is not
responsible for providing long-term detention to detainees. There-
fore, CBP facilities, like those we visited, are not designed to hold
individuals for lengthy periods of time. However, with limited bed
space at ICE and HHS facilities nationwide, detainees are left in
CBP custody until a placement can be arranged in a long-term fa-
cility.
In its response to our management alerts, DHS described the sit-
uation on the border as an acute and worsening crisis. Our obser-
vations comport with that characterization and that is why we
have called on the Department to begin immediate action to rem-
edy the situation. Although DHS has asserted that it has reduced
the number of UACs in custody in the last few weeks, we remain
concerned that it’s not taking sufficient steps to address the over-
crowding and prolonged detention we observed, particularly with
respect to single adult detainees.
We will continue to monitor the situation at the border and have
already begun new work aimed specifically at identifying the root
causes of some of these issues. We hope this work will assist the
Department in addressing these challenges. In the meantime, DHS
leadership must develop a strategic, coordinated approach that will
allow it to make good on its commitment to ensure the safety, secu-
rity, and care of those in its custody.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I’d be
happy to answer any questions you or the committee have.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much.
Ms. Maxwell?
24
STATEMENT OF ANN MAXWELL, ASSISTANT INSPECTOR GEN-
ERAL FOR EVALUATION AND INSPECTIONS, U.S. DEPART-
MENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Ms. M
AXWELL
. Good morning, Chairman Cummings, Ranking
Member Jordan, and other distinguished members of the com-
mittee.
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss OIG’s work focused on
the health and welfare of children in HHS’ care. To protect the vul-
nerable is a core part of our mission, and as such, we have been
conducting oversight of HHS’ Unaccompanied Alien Children Pro-
gram for the past decade. This program provides immigrant chil-
dren that have been referred to HHS with temporary shelter, care,
and services before releasing them to sponsors in the U.S. to await
their immigration hearings.
This past summer, over 200 OIG staff fanned out across nine
states to visit 45 HHS-funded facilities. We assessed the challenges
the facilities face in keeping children safe and meeting their mental
healthcare needs. We anticipate publishing our results in a series
of reports over the next several months, and we look forward to
briefing the committee on this work, given your strong commitment
and oversight role.
In addition to our work addressing health and safety issues, we
are also reviewing efforts by HHS to identify and reunify children
who were separated by DHS and referred to HHS for care. We re-
leased our first report about this topic in January of this year, and
the second is with the Department now for review and will be
issued in the coming months.
The focus of my testimony today will be our findings released in
January related to the number of children impacted by family sepa-
rations. At that time, we reported the total number of separated
children was unknown, but certainly more than the 2,737 children
reported. A lawsuit that required public accounting of separated
children only covered children that, one, were separated from a
parent and, two, were still in HHS custody as of the date of the
court order, which was June 26, 2018. But before that date, HHS
had released from its custody other children who had been sepa-
rated from a parent.
In fact, HHS staff observed a significant increase in separated
children starting in the summer of 2017. Since the release of our
report, the court has expanded the lawsuit, and in response, the
government is working to identify children who were separated
from a parent dating back to July 1 of 2017. So far, the government
has identified an additional 791 children who were potentially sep-
arated.
It’s worth noting that the government initially estimated that
this effort to identify these children would take one to two years.
Even the six months that the court ultimately granted the govern-
ment reveals how significant the shortcomings were in the data
captured about these children and their families. Judge Sabraw
noted that detainees’ personal property, their money, and docu-
ments were better accounted for than their children were.
To address these serious shortcomings, HHS has taken steps to
improve its ability to identify the children DHS is currently sepa-
rating and referring to HHS. HHS now flags separated children in
25
its case management system and maintains a tracking spreadsheet
that captures information about them. However, concerns remain
about the completeness and accuracy of information about these
children. HHS staff reported that DHS sometimes provides limited
information about the reasons for the separations. Of the 118 chil-
dren we reviewed, DHS reported that 65 were separated because
the parent had a criminal history, which could include such crimes
as unauthorized use of a vehicle or a prior charge for marijuana
possession.
In some cases, though, the nature of the criminal history was not
specified, even when HHS staff requested more information. Incom-
plete or inaccurate information about separated children, including
the reasons for separation impact HHS’ ability to make placement
decisions that are in the best interest of each child.
According to HHS staff, not all criminal histories would prevent
a child from being released back to their parent. In conclusion, we
strongly encourage HHS and DHS to look for opportunities to im-
prove communication and data about separated children, to mini-
mize their ramifications associated with these separations. We can
do better by these children, and we must.
Thank you to the Congress for providing OIG with additional re-
sources to augment our important work in this area. I look forward
to discussing our work with you today and to future conversations
when our ongoing work is completed. Thank you.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much.
Ms. Mukherjee?
STATEMENT OF ELORA MUKHERJEE, DIRECTOR,
IMMIGRANTS’ RIGHTS CLINIC, COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. Thank you, Chairman Cummings, Ranking
Member Jordan, and distinguished members of the committee for
having me here today. I’m a clinical professor of law at Columbia
Law School and director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. For the
last 12 years, I have been working with families and children de-
tained along our southern border.
Over the last five years, I have spent more than a thousand
hours in immigration detention facilities, hundreds of them, inter-
viewing families and children. All of my work has been on a pro
bono basis. I was at the Clint CBP facility last month interviewing
children as a monitor for the Flores settlement agreement. My col-
leagues and I interviewed nearly 70 kids. I want to share with you
what I heard, what I saw, and what I smelled.
At Clint, I saw children who were dirty. They could not wash
their hands with soap because none was available. Many had not
brushed their teeth for days. They were wearing the same clothes
they had on when they crossed the border. Clothes that were cov-
ered in nasal mucous, vomit, breast milk, urine. Multiple children
had a strong stench emanating from them because they had not
showered in days, and they were wearing the same clothes. They
could not even change their underwear.
Because of the smell, it was hard for me to sit close to some of
the children while we spoke. Children were hungry. Children were
traumatized. They consistently cried, and some wept in their inter-
views with me. One six-year-old girl, detained all alone, could only
26
say, ‘‘I’m scared, I’m scared, I’m scared,’’ over and over again. She
couldn’t even say her own name. I couldn’t help her. I had to re-
turn her to the guards. Not being able to do anything for her broke
my heart.
Children were sick. They were coughing. They had fevers. They
had snot running down their faces. There was a flu epidemic and
lice. Children as young as eight years old were required to take
care of even younger children who were strangers to them. Guards
would bring in the little ones and demand: Who is going to take
care of this one?
We met a girl tasked with caring for a two-year-old who did not
have a diaper on. He never speaks, she reported. He peed in his
pants and all over the chair during a meeting with us. The young-
est child I met with at Clint was five months old. At CBP facilities
last month, my colleagues found a newborn detained for seven
days, a two-year-old detained for 20 days, and an eight-month-old
detained for three weeks.
While I was at Clint, I met a teenage boy who had been sepa-
rated from his mother 16 days earlier. He was extremely worried
about his mama. He did not know if she was still alive. When we
asked, CBP confirmed that he had, in fact, been separated from his
mother and that his mother had been released from custody days
earlier. I helped to arrange a phone call so this mother and child
could speak with each other. They wept with relief. Before that
day, no efforts had been made to reunite that child with his moth-
er. No efforts had even been made to identify him as a child who
had been separated from his parent.
At Clint, I met a six-year-old boy who I will never forget. He was
tiny, and he hardly spoke. When I asked him if he was at Clint
with anyone, he began to sob nearly inconsolably for an hour, near-
ly an hour. Through his sobs, he managed to say that he had a
brother. I had to break out of my role as a lawyer. I let him sit
on my lap. I wiped his tears. I wiped his nose, and I rubbed his
back. And I teared up too. Here was a child, the same age as my
son, stuck in a hell hole.
A lawyer for CBP saw us both, eventually a guard brought him
a lollipop as an incentive to take him back to his cell. I pleaded
with CBP counsel to please prioritize appropriate care for this
child. Later that day or the next day, CBP counsel informed me
that they would release him and reunite him with his brother. Why
didn’t that happen sooner? What would have happened if I didn’t
meet with him that day? What is happening to hundreds and thou-
sands of other children like him? Along our southern border today
and every day, children are being forcibly separated from their par-
ents and other family members as a result of cruel policy choices
made by this administration.
For many of these children, the government makes little or no
attempt to reunite them with their family members. Our team de-
manded a tour of Clint and visits with the sickest children who
were in the quarantine. CBP banned us from both. Why wouldn’t
CBP allow us in? We are authorized by the Federal courts to mon-
itor immigration detention centers where children are being held.
I was and I remain shaken to my core by what I witnessed at
Clint.
27
I have three children of my own. They are three, six, and nine.
I do not have the words to explain to them what is happening to
children their age in America right now. Families belong together,
children belong free, and with their loved ones. That is what is re-
quired by our Constitution, by our Federal laws, and by our basic
humanity.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank
you.
This is what we are going to do. We have a vote right now.
There’s 10 minutes left on the vote I think, and so what we’re
going to do is, we’re going to go into recess. We will reconvene at
1:15. At that time—I’m sorry. This is the way it goes. I mean, we’re
dealing with urgent situations, and then we’ll be back at 1:15.
Thank you very much. We stand in recess.
[Recess.]
Mr. R
ASKIN
.
[Presiding.] The committee will reconvene. Members in the front
row who are doing such a great job, you’re welcome to come sit up
here so we can have a more intimate and coherent group. I know
a lot of members have headed back to their districts. Without objec-
tion, the chair is authorized to declare a recess at any time.
And we are now delighted to welcome for her five-minute testi-
mony, Jennifer Nagda, the policy director for the Young Center for
Immigrant Children’s Rights.
STATEMENT OF JENNIFER NAGDA, POLICY DIRECTOR, YOUNG
CENTER FOR IMMIGRANT CHILDREN’S RIGHTS
Ms. N
AGDA
. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Ranking Member Jordan, and
distinguished members of the committee. Thank you for inviting
me to be here today. The Younger Center for Immigrant Children’s
Rights advocates for the best interests of unaccompanied and sepa-
rated children according to well-established and universally accept-
ed principles of child protection.
We are working to create an immigration system that ensures
the safety and well-being of every child, and that recognizes and
treats children as children. Since 2004, our attorneys, social work-
ers, and bilingual volunteers have been appointed by the Secretary
of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement as
the independent child advocate, or best interest guardian ad litem
for thousands of child trafficking victims, and other vulnerable un-
accompanied and separated children in Federal custody who find
themselves in very adult immigration proceedings.
Our statutory mandate is to make recommendations regarding
the best interests of individual children to Federal agencies, includ-
ing the Department of Homeland Security, Justice, and Health and
Human Services. Over the past two years, across eight locations,
we have worked on hundreds of cases where DHS officials unlaw-
fully separated children from their parents.
If I leave you all with one message today, it is this: Children are
still being separated from their parents at the border for reasons
that have nothing to do with child safety, and which would never
pass muster under the child protection laws of all 50 states. De-
spite the end of zero tolerance one year ago this month, the Young
Center has been appointed to more than 100 children taken from
28
their parents during this last year, nearly 20 percent of the re-
ported 700 children newly separated. The average age of these chil-
dren is seven years old, the equivalent of a second grader.
These children spend months in government custody, often thou-
sands of miles away from their families. Our staff, my colleagues,
spend hundreds of hours just trying to find parents who might be
in U.S. Marshals’ custody, or ICE adult detention centers. We nego-
tiate with ICE officers just to speak with the parents and convince
them to let parents speak with their children, often for the first
time in months. And then we work to unravel the reasons for their
separations.
I’m here today to address the reasons for these continuing sepa-
rations and their lasting impact on children. In our experience,
DHS has separated families based on mere arrests, or suspicion of
criminal activity by the parent. No state would permit separation
for these reasons, unless the crime was related to child abuse. In
nearly every case, we have concluded that DHS’s reasons for the
separation had nothing to do with the child’s safety and that the
separation was contrary to the child’s best interests.
In one case, a father with a single DUI and a prior deportation
was separated from his child. In another, the mother of a toddler
was accused of being a gang member, which even if true, does not
by itself justify separation, but she was not a gang member, she
was a victim of extraordinary gang violence, who fled here specifi-
cally to seek protection for her child, only to have her child taken
from her for over eight months.
And we have discovered that in many of these cases, DHS ulti-
mately allows the same family to reunify months later, but only to
deport the family. The split-second decision to separate a child
from her parents can take weeks, or even months, to undo.
In the meantime, the harm to children is indisputable. From the
Supreme Court to state courts, our laws reflect the importance of
parents and family to children’s healthy growth and development.
Scientific research bears this out, documenting the lasting harm to
children’s physical, emotional, and brain development when they
are separated from loving caregivers. Our independent child advo-
cates have witnessed this harm firsthand.
In our written testimony, we tell the story of a six-year-old boy
who believed for months that his father had intentionally left him.
In truth, his father was given no choice. He had gently handed his
son over to prevent officers from forcibly taking his child from his
arms. Their bond can’t be repaired just by putting father and son
together on a plane to home country.
In our written testimony, we propose eight concrete recommenda-
tions for Congress to stop these unnecessary and unlawful separa-
tions. I’ll leave you with just two: First, no child should ever be
separated from a parent unless there is an immediate risk of harm.
Congress should prohibit separations absent verifiable evidence
that the child is in danger.
And, second, Congress should require each Federal agency to
consider the best interest of unaccompanied and separated chil-
dren, their safety, their wishes, and their well-being in every deci-
sion from the moment of apprehension through the conclusion of
the child’s case. This committee can play a critical role in stopping
29
ongoing separations and ensuring that immigrant children are
treated and recognized as children. Thank you.
Mr. R
ASKIN
. Thank you very much for your testimony, Ms.
Nagda. We come now to Thomas Homan, who is the former acting
director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. You’re
recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF THOMAS D. HOMAN, FORMER ACTING
DIRECTOR, U.S. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT
Mr. H
OMAN
. Sir, my statement is going to take about six min-
utes, I appreciate leeway since other panel members had up to
seven minutes.
Mr. R
ASKIN
. All right. Go for it.
Mr. H
OMAN
. Chairman Cummings, Ranking Member Jordan, and
members of the committee, it is a privilege to appear before you
today, and thank you for this invitation.
I spent 34 years enforcing immigration laws. I started my career
in 1984 as a Border Patrol agent, then as a special agent and
climbed the ranks, one step at a time, to become the acting ICE
director. I have conducted and oversaw criminal investigations into
alien——
Mr. R
ASKIN
. If the gentleman will suspend for just a moment.
We’re not allowed to have graphic poster displays during testimony
of witnesses. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. H
OMAN
. I have conducted and oversaw criminal investiga-
tions into alien smuggling, human trafficking, immigration fraud,
narcotics trafficking, gun trafficking and human trafficking, child
predator crimes and other customs-related offenses. As the execu-
tive associate director of ICE, I oversaw all interior enforcement
operations, to include arrests, detention, removal of those illegally
in United States in order to be removed by an immigration judge.
Mr. R
ASKIN
. Forgive me, Mr. Homan. The gentleman will sus-
pend. Officer, the people who were doing that are allowed to stay
if they agree not to do any more poster demonstrations, so just let
them know that and they can quietly be readmitted. Very good.
Mr. Homan, your time will be compensated for. Thanks.
Mr. H
OMAN
. I returned on January 27, 2017, was asked on that
same day to postpone my retirement and serve as the acting direc-
tor of ICE by the President of the United States. That was a great
honor. I stayed and served for another year and a half until my
second retirement on June 30, 2018.
With more than three decades of immigration enforcement expe-
rience, I am extremely concerned about the growing risk to our Na-
tion’s public safety, security, rule of law, that is all due to illegal
immigration. What is happening at our southern border is unprece-
dented in several ways. The composition of those entering illegally
is unprecedented, because 70 percent of those are either family
units or unaccompanied children.
It is also unprecedented that the majority of those crossing are
abusing the asylum laws, and making fraudulent claims of asylum
and are exploiting the loopholes that Congress has reduced to close.
Also unprecedented is the attack and vilification on the American
patriots that serve this Nation as Border Patrol agents, ICE offi-
30
cers and agents. The biggest problem involves the unwillingness of
Congress to address the loopholes that are causing this crisis.
I and many others have spent the last two years saying what
needs to be done, not only to protect our borders, enforce the law
in a meaningful way, but to also save lives. However, those calls
for action fall has fallen on deaf ears, because there is no more in-
terest in fixing this problem. It is about open border agenda, resist-
ing our President, more interest than that, in securing our border.
This should not be a partisan issue. I don’t care if you’re Repub-
lican or Democrat, you should want to secure our border.
There’s no downside of having a secured border. There’s no down-
side of having less illegal immigration. There is no downside on
less illegal drugs coming into this country. There is no downside in
stopping the bankroll and criminal cartels in Mexico that smuggle
both people and drugs. After all, Border Patrol and ICE are merely
enforcing the laws enacted by Congress.
In the past few weeks, the attacks on the Border Patrol have
swelled. The media and some in Congress want to say that those
in the Border Patrol custody are mistreated. The holding facilities
are overcrowded and there are not enough showers. The DHS in-
spector general also said the facilities are overcrowded, which, in
turn, affects the quality of care within the facility. However, this
should be no surprise to anyone.
Border Patrol leadership and acting DHS Secretary McAleenan
having been warning Congress for months that this system is over-
whelmed, and that more funds are needed so these people can be
moved quickly to a more appropriate facility designed for them.
The same people that vilify the Border Patrol for detention condi-
tions are the same people that refuse to answer their call for help
until it’s too late. I find it disheartened that no one here I’ve heard
today wants to talk about the 4,000 lives that the Border Patrol
saved last year. Over 4,000 people that were found by Border Pa-
trol agents in dire straits, that may have perished if it wasn’t for
the heroic efforts of these agents.
No one talks about how these men and women bring toys from
their home and their own children to these facilities so migrant
children will have something to play with. No one talks about the
sicknesses of these migrants and how these agents take that sick-
ness home to their own families because of that exposure. No one
wants to talk about the how the agents have to go through TB
screening constantly because they have been exposed to that seri-
ous illness.
No one wants to talk about how these men and women who care
for these children that cross illegally into this country, I’m talking
about unaccompanied alien children now, cross into this country in
the hands of criminal organizations that were abandoned by their
own families. No one wants to talk about that. No one wants to
talk about how these Border Patrol agent mom and dads console
these children, and it is disgraceful.
Finally, I want to address the unprecedented attack and vilifica-
tion of the men and women of ICE and the Border Patrol. These
men and women who chose a life of service to this Nation deserve
better, not only from the media, from those here in this committee
31
and other Members of Congress. These men and women who chose
a life of service deserve more.
These men and women are working in extremely difficult envi-
ronments, and dealing with an extraordinary influx of vulnerable
people. They are doing the best they can under the circumstances.
As a 34-year veteran of law enforcement, it is shocking, shocking
to see the constant attacks against those that leave the safety and
security of their homes every day, put on a Kevlar vest and put a
gun on their hip, and risk their own safety to defend this Nation.
Those that attack the professional integrity of those that serve
and blatantly throw unsubstantiated allegations against these men
and women with zero evidence of guilt are wrong and should be
ashamed. Most of these allegations are to be untrue after extensive
investigation, but it’s too late when that happens because the dam-
age has been done.
The agency has been tarnished and the spirit of the men and
women that serve are many times broken, their morale is at an all-
time low. They have to wake up every day and see news reports
and comments from Representatives in Congress that they are
Nazis, White Supremacists, that they operate concentration camps,
that they knowingly abuse women and children.
Those that make those outrageous statements believe that once
you decide to carry an ICE badge or a Border Patrol badge, that
you lose all sense of humanity. They think that no longer do these
people have a heart or they care about other people.
ICE agents and Border Patrol agents are mom and dads too, they
have children. What they see every day in this unprecedented
surge of children and families affects them deeply and emotionally.
It is something they’re going to deal with every day and will stay
with them the rest of their lives.
Over half of Border Patrol agents are of Latin descent. And to
say that they abuse those from Central America with no evidence
of abuse is just plain wrong and insulting to those to have to en-
dure this crisis each and every day.
I ask this: Has any of those who easily attack the men and
women of the Border Patrol, ICE, have you ever walked up to one
and thanked one for serving their Nation? Have you ever walked
up to one and thanked them for putting their lives on the line
every day for this country?
Have you ever attended the honor burial of a Border Patrol agent
or ICE agent that died during their job, died for this country? Have
you ever had to console a small child or spouse of a fallen officer?
I have too many times. Have any of these people who want to at-
tack the Border Patrol and ICE, have you ever walked the walls
of the National Law Enforcement Memorial, just down the street,
and see 21,000 names of men and women that made the ultimate
sacrifice for this country, which includes hundreds of Border Patrol
agents and ICE agents and their legacy agencies? These agents de-
serve better from the Representatives of Congress. With that, I’ll
be available for questions.
Mr. R
ASKIN
. Thank you, Mr. Homan, for your testimony. And I
want to thank all of the witnesses for their excellent testimony. I
now recognize myself for five minutes for questions.
32
I want to shine a light on a key finding in today’s committee staff
report. President Trump and others in the administration have
suggested that the zero tolerance policy is designed to deter illegal
immigration, but at other times, they have said that families are
only separated in order to facilitate criminal prosecutions of the
parents. But the report details several instances where children
were separated from their parents, or a parent, but the parent
never actually served time in jail, or in prison, or in criminal cus-
tody.
For example, Secretary Nielsen said the only thing that had
changed under the zero tolerance policy was that everyone is sub-
ject to prosecution, and that parents would go to jail, and then they
would then be separated from their family. But what actually is
going on? Are there children being separated from their parents
unnecessarily? Ms. Mukherjee, let me come to you and ask for your
insights on that.
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. Yes. Yes. Families are being separated every
day and unnecessarily. Government has admitted to separating
more than 3,500 families. In addition, since the court had an in-
junction last summer, last June, ordering the stop to separations
of parents and children, more than 700 family units have been sep-
arated. Many of these family units are being separated based on
only allegations and arrests that may have nothing to do with child
safety.
Children should only be forcibly separated from a parent or an-
other family member if that adult family member is posing immi-
nent harm to the child. There is no evidence that that is hap-
pening.
Mr. R
ASKIN
. Ms. Nagda, let me come to you. There are reports
that we’ve received that a parent was in criminal custody for less
than a day. They left a facility, and then either charges were not
pressed against them, or they were given time served for the time
they had already been in detention. They returned to the detention
center and their child is already gone. That’s absolutely astounding
to read. Is that taking place, to your knowledge?
Ms. N
AGDA
. What you just described, Chairman, is what was
happening during the zero tolerance policies, where many parents
were being prosecuted for the act of appearing and asking for pro-
tection at the border. And those were often processed just in a day
in a Federal court, and the parents return to find their children
missing.
Today, parents and children are being separated when DHS al-
leges any kind of criminal history, which does not have to be nar-
rowly defined by the parent. It could be an arrest from a decade
ago. It could be an allegation of criminal history in home country.
We have worked with multiple parents whose children were taken
away because DHS accused the parent of having a criminal history
in home country. Our team’s working with other legal services pro-
vider procure documents from home country confirming that there
was no criminal history. So there’s no reason to know what infor-
mation DHS had, but at that point, weeks and sometimes months
have passed.
Mr. R
ASKIN
. Wait, so you’re telling me that’s the policy today? A
parent shows up with a child seeking asylum in the United States.
33
It’s determined that they have an offense, and it could be a very
minor offense that has nothing do with child abuse or child neglect
or anything like that, and yet, they end up losing their child in the
process where the child can be separated from them?
Ms. N
AGDA
. That’s correct. And not only does it not have to be
a minor offense, it doesn’t have to be a conviction. It could be an
arrest where charges were dismissed, or it could be suspicion of
criminal activity. So we have worked with a parent who appeared
to be and was concerned about and may potentially have been a
gang member in home country without no verifiable evidence who
is separated from his toddler son.
Mr. R
ASKIN
. Is there anyone on the panel who believes it is the
right policy to separate children from their parents in order to
deter other people from coming to the United States? Okay. I want
to talk about a specific policy change that the administration could
make right now at no cost to the taxpayers that would reduce the
number of immigrant children living in overcrowded and dangerous
facilities.
I’m talking about rescinding the administration’s April 2018
memorandum of agreement, or MOA, that requires the Department
of Health and Human Services to share information about potential
sponsors for immigrant children with the Department of Homeland
Security. Last year, the administration used data obtained under
this agreement to arrest and deport at least a 170 people who oth-
erwise would have been willing sponsors of the children.
Ms. Mukherjee, what happens to children whose potential spon-
sors are targeted for deportation?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. What happens to the kids is that they are left
for days, weeks, months, without anyone to take care of them who’s
in their family who’s a loved one. Last year, my client, Baby Con-
stantine, just four months old, was forcibly separated from his fa-
ther. His father was then deported without his baby. It took weeks,
months, for Baby Constantine to be return to his family.
Mr. R
ASKIN
. Okay. My time is up, and I’m going to yield now to
the ranking member, Mr. Jordan.
Mr. H
OMAN
. Can I respond to that question?
Mr. R
ASKIN
. Well, Mr. Jordan can—we’re pretty strict about our
time here, so Mr. Jordan can ask you—Mr. Hice is actually going
to take it.
Mr. H
ICE
. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, there’s so many things
going on today, my mind is going in multiple directions. I think im-
mediately how we were corrected, somewhat reprimanded, but I’ll
use the word ‘‘corrected,’’ for even using the word ‘‘manufactured
crisis’’ over and over and over, that the Democrats have said. But
we don’t have to go very far to see that that correction is not justi-
fied.
On February 23 in Laredo, Texas, Speaker Pelosi said, there is
no national emergency at the border. There is no emergency at the
border. She was either misinformed or she was misinforming.
Shortly thereafter, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez called it a fake
national emergency. Again, the word ‘‘manufactured’’ was not used.
It was an outright statement that this is a fake national emer-
gency. She also referred to it as the President was faking a crisis
at the border. I don’t believe that correction today is in order.
34
There has been an absolute about-face and shifting of position
from the Democrats. It’s already been mentioned back in February,
the President called for an national emergency at the border, and
now we’re hearing that there is a national emergency from both
sides, because indeed there is.
In May, the administration requested $4.5 billion in emergency
funding. Eight weeks later, we finally get something done on June
27, but there again, many in this room did not vote for it, and yet
they are talking today as though they have some moral high
ground. The bottom line is there is a root cause. There is an emer-
gency and there is also a root cause to the emergency. And to this
time, we’re still not addressing the problem. And at some point,
this body has got to face reality and deal with the issues.
I’ve got a couple of real quick questions, Ms. Costello, first for
you. Is the Border Patrol responsible for long-term detention?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. No, sir, they are not.
Mr. H
ICE
. That’s correct. They keep short term and then after
that, when they are able, they send them to ICE or DHS, correct?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. HHS, yes.
Mr. H
ICE
. I mean HHS, thank you.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Yes.
Mr. H
ICE
. So the Border Patrol cannot transfer these detainees
if both ICE and HHS are overwhelmed themselves?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Yes. As of now, that is our understanding. We’re
going to be doing further work to try to get to the root causes of
some of the issues we identified in the management alert.
Mr. H
ICE
. Mr. Homan, is that basically your experience of what
the problem is?
Mr. H
OMAN
. Sir, I would—well, the statement made by HHS a
few minutes ago was wrong, and that is a very important thing I
need to address. As far as the policy of HHS, sir, it needs to be
stricter. When I was the ICE director, I tried to create an MOA
with HHS. If you’re a parent and you hire a criminal organization
to have your kid smuggled in the trunk of a car or back of a tractor
trailer, you should come to ICE to get vetted. If you’re illegally in
the United States, we’ll put you in proceedings with a child. We
won’t take you into custody, but you’ll stand shoulder to shoulder
with that child and claim your fears of family. I called that par-
enting, first of all.
You, second, you got to hold them accountable. In the Fiscal Year
2019 appropriations bill, when we finally reopened government,
what did the Democratic side of that caucus do? They added lan-
guage that ICE cannot takes action against anybody the UAC
household. When I said at the time, if you do that, the number of
UACs will swell, you’ll see a surge like never before because these
now these people can operate with no impunity, no consequence, no
deterrence.
And, what happened, sir? A record number of UACs coming
across this country. If we’re really here to talk about protecting
children, then that memorandum of understanding needs to be
more strict.
Mr. H
ICE
. Thank you for that. You know, just this whole hearing
seems to me to be rife with hypocrisy and falsehood. It strikes me
that criticizing Border Patrol and ICE and so forth for overcrowded
35
detention centers. I mean, we don’t condemn teachers for having
overcrowded classes. We don’t blame teachers for illnesses floating
around in overcrowded classrooms. And yet, it’s fair game for us to
do it right here.
And the fault, the problem lies with us right here in Congress
for not addressing the problems, and instead referring to political
theater. And I just, I urge all of us to come to the point of address-
ing the issue straight up.
Mr. Homan, why does ICE not have enough detention beds—and
my time is up, and I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. H
OMAN
. ICE has never had enough detention beds. And I
know it is a big controversy when money was moved around the
Department last year to get more detention beds. They said, What
a travesty. What people need to know, eight out of the last nine
years, that same thing happened. It happened under the Obama
Administration. ICE has never been funded enough beds.
Mr. R
ASKIN
. Okay. Thank you. The gentleman’s time is expired.
Mr. Cooper, you’re recognized for five minutes.
Mr. C
OOPER
. I thank the chair. And I would like to suggest that
the last two days in this committee have been historic ones. Yester-
day, we had the first hearing, I think, in this entire committee’s
history, on the well-being of U.S. children. And today, thankfully,
we’re having a hearing on the well-being of children at the border.
These are important issues, because I think most Americans think
that we can have secure borders and humane borders.
I want to particularly congratulate today’s hearing, because both
panels have been extraordinary. The member panel was something,
unlike anything I have ever seen before in my tenure in Congress.
And it was great that members were able to hear both sides of the
question, both groups of voices. I particularly want to praise my
colleagues who went to the border just last weekend to see first-
hand what these problems are.
But the second panel is no less remarkable. I was particularly
struck by the testimony of Ms. Mukherjee, it is heartbreaking. And
Nashville families have been calling me, opening their hearts and
offering to open up their homes to these poor families, particularly,
to these poor separated children, because I think everybody in
America wants these kids reunited with their families. They cannot
understand a country that is so cold and heartless to have policies
like this.
So, I think just for the general public, we need to understand the
importance of two things: The Flores decision, some court decision
somewhere. I saw in Ms. Nagda’s testimony, that I think it’s first
in your policy recommendations that we keep the Flores protections
in place. Can the panelists describe briefly the importance of that
decision in terms of protecting these poor innocent children?
Mr. H
OMAN
. I’ll address it first. The Flores settlement agreement
needs to be done away with. Because in Fiscal Year 2014 and Fis-
cal Year 2015 under the Obama Administration, when families first
started coming across, we built our first family detention center,
which no one wants to talk about. And we held these families for
40, 45 days so they got to see a judge. 90 percent of them lost their
case. We put them on the airplane and sent them home, as re-
36
quired by law, and guess what, the border numbers declined sig-
nificantly.
It wasn’t until Judge Dolly Gee of the Ninth Circuit, says you
can only hold them for 20 days, that we saw a surge, because now
they know they can’t be held long enough to see a judge. If they
are really escaping fear and persecution, there’s no reason they
can’t stay in the family detention center, not a jail, time enough to
see a judge.
Mr. C
OOPER
. Other witnesses as well?
Ms. N
AGDA
. Thank you for that question. I will just point out
that the Flores Settlement Agreement, which provides baseline
standards for care, things like food and water and beds has existed
for over 20 years. It is not a new piece of law. Similarly, the anti-
trafficking law is over 10 years old. These are the only two ways
in which U.S. law treats immigrant children any differently than
adults.
And with all of the evidence that we have about how fundamen-
tally different childhood is from adulthood, the idea of losing these
two pieces of protection for children is really quite extraordinary.
What we should be focused on is enhancing protections for children
so that we can actually learn their stories, and ensure that they
have a fair day in court. That ought to be something we can all
agree on. The idea that children should have a fair opportunity to
tell their stories.
And the Department of Homeland Security’s own advisory com-
mittee, which I sat on back in 2015 and 2016, all members were
appointed by the Department of Homeland Security, concluded that
children should never be held in detention, including family deten-
tion, solely for the purposes of immigration enforcement ever.
Mr. H
OMAN
. There’s only one way you can guarantee——
Mr. R
ASKIN
. Sir, I’m——
Mr. H
OMAN
. No, I’m sorry. This is about transparency to the
American people.
Mr. R
ASKIN
. Well, the time belongs to Mr. Cooper, and I thought
he was going down the aisle.
Mr. C
OOPER
. Yes, the witnesses.
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. I want to echo everything my colleague said
about the critical importance of the Flores Agreement. Without the
Flores Agreement, my colleagues and I would never have been al-
lowed into Clint to interview the children there and expose what
is happening in our country in our name and with our taxpayer
dollars.
I also want to correct the record. Mr. Homan just claimed that
90 percent of the mothers and children detained at Dilley were or-
dered deported. That is not true. Nearly all of the mothers and
children were ordered deported before pro bono lawyers like me
showed up. I helped to build a system of universal representation
for mothers and children at Dilley. Once we started that program,
every mother and child was granted asylum or another form of im-
migration relief. This shows how important access to counsel is for
detained immigrant children, detained immigrant families, and
those who are outside of detention as well. Thank you.
Mr. R
ASKIN
. And I’m going to permit the other two witnesses to
give quick responses, too, if there’s anything you want to say. No.
37
Mr. C
OOPER
. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I see my time has ex-
pired.
Mr. R
ASKIN
. The gentleman’s time has expired. Meantime, with-
out objection, the distinguished gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Gar-
cia, shall be permitted to join the committee on the dais and be rec-
ognized for questioning the witnesses when the time comes.
Now Mr. Gibbs is recognized for five minutes.
Mr. G
IBBS
. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before I start my ques-
tions, I’m going to let Mr. Homan respond to the previous. Mr.
Homan, over here. Over here. Over here. Over here. Go ahead and
respond.
Mr. H
OMAN
. Sorry. The 90 percent number, the executive Office
of Immigration view—the numbers are clear; 89 to 90 percent of all
Central American families that claim asylum at the border do not
get relief from the immigration court. Because, you know, 50 per-
cent, or actually 48 of those families claiming fear at the border,
never file a case in immigration court. Once they get released,
they’re in the wind. 90 percent, sir. 89.6 percent, I think the latest
number was, of every family from Central America to claim asylum
at the border were not given relief. And any system where there
is 90 percent failure rate needs to be fixed.
Mr. G
IBBS
. Thank you. You know, I sat through the first panel
and the second panel, been great panels. And one thing I’ve no-
ticed, I think everybody sees us and what everybody is saying is
pretty much generally accurate. And I think the problem is here,
the administration, the Trump administration, asked months ago
that we have a crisis at the border, asked for more resources to
change our asylum laws and reform our immigration laws and do
all that, and this Congress failed to act, and now we have it blown
up.
We have got a crisis at the border, because we’ve got people at
the detention facilities that are 10 times or more above capacity,
and it’s a crisis. Now everybody is blaming the Border Patrol and
ICE. And I agree with Mr. Homan, those agents down there, they
are family people, too, they are human beings, they’re Americans,
and we shouldn’t desecrate them because they’re doing their job
with the resources they have. And it’s just unbelievable to me that
this Congress took this long to pass some legislation here the week
before last, $4.6 billion of humanitarian aid, which some people on
this panel voted against, by the way, and it is helping them—Mr.
Homan, what do you think that passage of that legislation, those
resources, what do you anticipate, what do you think is happening?
Mr. H
OMAN
. With the supplemental funding?
Mr. G
IBBS
. Yes, the supplemental funding.
Mr. H
OMAN
. The supplemental funding was late.
Mr. G
IBBS
. Yes.
Mr. H
OMAN
. And that’s why they had the conditions they had,
but it’s working. It’s my understanding that now children are being
moved within 72 hours, as required by statute, which is a good
thing. No one wants a child to be locked up in a Border Patrol facil-
ity. The head of Border Patrol and the Secretary said that numer-
ous times.
Mr. G
IBBS
. See, that’s my point. The people—the entity that
ought to get blamed here is the U.S. Congress for failing to act. I
38
mean, the administration asked months ago, we got a crisis, but we
heard from the other side, it’s a manufactured crisis, it’s not a cri-
sis. Now it’s a crisis, they’re all saying that. Some of them went
down to the border and saw it was a crisis.
And I’m sure there’s some examples of—because of the over-
whelming conditions—there’s problems and challenges, and I know
I’ve seen the reports of the border agents, and Mr. Homan talked
about it, where agents are bringing stuff in from their own families
out of their personal, you know, items, personal budgets to help,
doing what they want because they’re human beings, too, and
sometimes, I think, we forget that. And they’re really struggling
right now to get this done.
And I want to talk a little bit more about the Flores Amendment
Settlement. You know, Mr. Homan, what has that done to really
impede what you can act on?
Mr. H
OMAN
. I should have been more clear in my statement.
When I’m talking about the Flores Settlement Agreement, when
I’m talking about when the Ninth Circuit decides that they are
going to limit it to 20 days, and they know that it takes about 40
to 45 days in a detained setting to see a judge, they knew it was
going to happen. And I said what was going to happen, but I was
called a fear monger. I said, if that 20 days gets put in, you’re
going to see a surge of families than you never seen before, and it
happened. I was right.
And if you’re really escaping death and persecution from your
home government, the only way we can guarantee you’re going to
see a judge, because we know the absentia rates is out of control,
these families—a lot of these families are not showing up in court
even if they file with the court. The only way we can guarantee due
process if we detain them in the family detention center, which the
Inspector General inspected many times. We’re not talking about
Border Patrol facilities now, we’re talking about a center with child
psychologists, pediatricians, doctors, nurses, educational programs.
Mr. G
IBBS
. But you’re overwhelmed.
Mr. H
OMAN
. We don’t have enough family detention——
Mr. G
IBBS
. You’re overwhelmed——
Mr. H
OMAN
. Because these numbers have just gone through the
roof. But if we had a true sense that we can guarantee people to
see a judge, and those who have failed their claim to asylum, if
they don’t fall within the rules of asylum, and send them home——
Mr. G
IBBS
. I’m almost out of time.
Mr. H
OMAN
. It worked in 2014 and 2015 when we sent planes
of people that failed their interview and failed the judge, and the
judge ordered removal. We said that the numbers went down.
Mr. G
IBBS
. It must be a real challenge for the Border Patrol, mi-
nors coming in with, obviously, a lot of them with their parents,
but obviously, maybe not so. And I’ve seen the reports of recycling
kids and bringing them back.
Mr. H
OMAN
. That’s another thing I haven’t heard today. When
you talk about the separation that occurred at the border when the
judge first ordered the reunification of the first 112 or 102 children,
no one wants to talk about 6 percent of those, based on DNA test-
ing, weren’t even the parents. So if you extrapolate that between
the 2,600, 2,700 people, how many children were reunited with
39
someone who wasn’t even their parent? That is going to shock us
some day.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Mr. Connolly.
Mr. C
ONNOLLY
. I thank the chair. I got to say, Mr. Chairman,
you’ve had two tough hearings in a row. I’d never thought as a
Member of Congress, as an American, I would hear the testimony
I heard today, both from our colleagues who visited the border, and
especially three of the witnesses—four of the witnesses at this
table—as to the simple inhumanity that is facing children and fam-
ilies at the border.
I don’t really care what their motivation was, whether it was an
asylum or economic betterment. They’re not to be treated as sub-
humans. This is not an American way of dealing with the stranger
who comes and seeks succor. You can talk all you want about
whether the poor Border Patrol is overwhelmed. That makes no ex-
cuse for how we are treating children.
If there’s one basic value that ought to unite us as Democrats
and Republicans, as Americans, it is how we treat children. Their
children, our children, it doesn’t matter. That’s our fundamental
value. And I’ve sat here and listened to horror stories. I thought
it was fiction. I thought it was a novel reading from Charles Dick-
ens, and the conditions that prevailed in 19th century London.
Children without soap. Children in filth. Conditions that none of us
would ever countenance with our own children. Well, any child in
our care is our children.
And the equivocation, the enabling, the rationalization, is inex-
cusable. Is there no limit to what you will justify in this adminis-
tration when it comes to the mistreatment of our fellow human
beings? And do you have no shame about the fact, as our colleagues
said this morning, it’s all done in the shadow of the American flag.
As an American, I have a right to protest, because it’s being done
in my name and I don’t agree.
Ms. Costello, you’re the IG for DHS. Is that correct? Acting?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Yes, sir.
Mr. C
ONNOLLY
. Now, if I heard you correct this morning, you
talked about dangerous conditions that constituted an imminent
threat to health and safety.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Yes, sir.
Mr. C
ONNOLLY
. Is that because they’re just overwhelmed and
there’s no solution?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Well, you know, our reporting in the management
alert you’re referring to really does describe the conditions we saw
when our inspectors were down there, what we haven’t been able
to do yet is assess the true causes of why we’re seeing that. So we
can talk about the fact that the overcrowding is dangerous. The
prolonged detention is, you know, continuing. But we don’t really
know what is causing it. We simply know that the conditions are
creating imminent risk.
Mr. C
ONNOLLY
. Imminent risk?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Yes.
Mr. C
ONNOLLY
. Now, did you go down and visit it yourself?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. I did not, my chief inspector and her team did.
Mr. C
ONNOLLY
. And did they find the U.S. officials in charge
were doing the very best they could, they’re just overwhelmed?
40
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. They actually did find that CBP, Border Patrol
agents, you know, were doing their level best to provide care. They
found them to be professional. They found them to be——
Mr. C
ONNOLLY
. Let me interrupt you there just a second. We
heard testimony from my colleagues this morning who did go down
there.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Right.
Mr. C
ONNOLLY
. That’s not exactly what they observed. An agent
walking with a toddler saying to children, which one of you was
going to get this one, take care of this one? That’s hardly humane
care. Now, maybe it’s misconstrued, maybe it was out of context,
maybe it’s an isolated incident, but when we add up the data, you
know, putting 900 people in a facility made for 125 is asking for
trouble. I mean, you know, in prisons, we have court orders that
say you can’t do that, but we’re doing it with children on the bor-
der.
Did you want to comment? You seem frustrated?
Mr. H
OMAN
. I’m extremely frustrated.
Mr. C
ONNOLLY
. Mr. Homan, I’m not calling on you, sir.
Mr. H
OMAN
. Of course not. Of course not. This isn’t about trans-
parency.
Mr. C
ONNOLLY
. This is my time. You’re not at the border. You’re
not at the border right now, you’re in a hearing room. It’s my time.
Ma’am.
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. Thank you very much. I want to respond to
your observation about the inhumanity of this situation. The prob-
lem here is not the lack of money. The Department of Homeland
Security has enough money to provide every child with a tooth-
brush, with soap, and a bed. The problem here is the position of
this administration that this is not required for children. That is
what this government argued before the Ninth Circuit of Appeals
last month.
Mr. C
ONNOLLY
. In other words——
Chairman C
UMMINGS
.
[Presiding.] Time is expired.
Mr. C
ONNOLLY
. Well, Mr. Chairman, I was interrupted and I
think I’m entitled to 15——
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. I’ll give you 30 seconds to ask the ques-
tion.
Mr. C
ONNOLLY
. Yes, thank you. I’m not making a statement—I’m
making a statement, not asking a question.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. All right.
Mr. C
ONNOLLY
. In other words, this is a matter of political will.
This is a willful decision, it’s not about a matter of being over-
whelmed.
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. That is exactly right.
Mr. C
ONNOLLY
. Which is the narrative they want us to believe.
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. That is right. And I also want to contest the
data being put forward by Mr. Homan. We live in a democracy
where there are checks and balances on what the executive branch
says. The judiciary has considered the claims being made by Mr.
Homan and his colleagues, and the Federal court has found that
these claims are specious, questionable, and dubious. You can find
that case in my written testimony on pages 31 and 32.
41
Mr. C
ONNOLLY
. I thank you. The rule of law is often, for some
people, an inconvenient thing. I thank you for your testimony.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Mr. Connolly, I apologize because I
didn’t—I forgot that you had been interrupted. I just wanted to
make sure——
Mr. C
ONNOLLY
. No problem, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much. We will now go to
Mr. Armstrong.
Mr. A
RMSTRONG
. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So I just want to
talk about the legal part of the Flores decision. What I want to talk
about is the time line, because I think this is important and I think
it’s actually important for what is potentially going on in the Sen-
ate.
DHS files a charging document, and then immigration court
schedules a case. If an alien timely files for asylum and asks for
no continuance and is ready to appear and ready to go within 30
days, which already, I mean, I’ve had in custody cases, we’re talk-
ing optimistic, and what I would argue is often unrealistic time
line, as this the resources, judges, immigration attorneys and all of
those things.
So if the judge denies the asylum claim, the alien has 30 days
to file an appeal. Then records, transcripts, audios are ordered,
briefing schedules are ordered, I mean, this process takes 30 days?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. Longer.
Mr. A
RMSTRONG
. So I’ll just use 30, because I’ll make it as
streamlined as possible. Briefing schedules, another 21 days for de-
tention cases, but as a matter of practice, BIA will grant a 21-day
extension, and that’s actually in their rules, right? So we’re already
at 132 days on a 20-day detention case, and that’s before the board
makes a decision, that’s if there’s no other delay tactics, which, I
mean, I’m not saying delay tactics in a nefarious term. I’m a trial
lawyer, so there are reasons why some of those things occur.
So when we talk about having a 20-day detention thing, and this
is what I’m going to ask Mr. Homan, and we have a court case
that, at most, streamlined is at 132 days. Does that make any
sense to you?
Mr. H
OMAN
. No, it does not. Look, there’s only one way. The
absentia rates in immigration court are sky high, anybody can go
to the Department of Justice EOIR website and see that. As a mat-
ter of fact, I think the Secretary just testified a couple weeks ago
that out of the final orders to remove family units, 89, 90 percent
were in absentia, which means didn’t show up. But the numbers
speak for themselves.
When I left ICE there was nearly 600,000 fugitives that had final
orders issued by judges and did not leave, and many of them were
in absentia. This secret is out, you bring a child into this country,
you won’t be detained, you’ll be released, and many won’t show up
in court. And if they get a final order of removal, they won’t leave.
The numbers are the numbers, so, no, the system does not make
sense at all.
Mr. A
RMSTRONG
. And we work toward—just what I’m saying is
when you have a process that can far outweigh what we’re required
to do on a release process, and I’m not sure if these numbers are
100 percent right, so I’m going to ask. We went from last decade
42
to about 1 in 10 of illegal crossings having a child with to now
we’re closer to 50 percent. I mean, that’s—these are what I’m hear-
ing. So is that about accurate?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. Mr. Armstrong, thank you. I’d love to clarify
the misrepresentations in what Mr. Homan is saying. The data
from the U.S. Government is very clear that when families are rep-
resented by counsel, they show up for their hearings 99 percent of
the time. When families participate in the ICE Case Family Man-
agement Program, which was canceled by this administration, they
show up for their hearings 99 percent of the time.
And the administration has admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court
that the notices to appear that are given to immigrant children and
families over the last several years, nearly 100 percent——
Mr. A
RMSTRONG
. On day 21. On day 21——
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
[continuing]. place where families need to ap-
pear.
Mr. A
RMSTRONG
. On day 21, what happens? On day 21, what
happens? Mr. Homan, on day 21, what happens?
Mr. H
OMAN
. If they are in ICE custody, they’ll see a judge, hope-
fully within—in Fiscal Year 2014 and 2015 what we did, they saw
a judge in about 40 days. That’s why with this crisis going on right
now, immigration judges need to surge on these groups coming
across right now, the most vulnerable and having hearings quickly.
The 800,000 backlog, let it sit there.
Mr. A
RMSTRONG
. But it’s not just judges, right?
Mr. H
OMAN
[continuing]. going on right now.
Mr. A
RMSTRONG
. You need judges, you need other personnel,
where there are two different budgets. I mean, a judge—I’ve been
in a lot of courtrooms all over the country, a judge doesn’t run the
entire courtroom, you need other staff, you need lawyers, you need
support personnel, you need all of those people, correct?
Mr. H
OMAN
. Correct.
Mr. A
RMSTRONG
. And without that, what is the actual physical
process that is going on? I mean, why is—the question is, it’s over-
whelming and it’s overwhelming to everybody, and I think we say
that, but you have been down there, you have watched it, how
would you describe it?
Mr. H
OMAN
. What I’m saying is if you detain these families long
enough in a family residential center to see a judge, you’ll have a
significant impact on what’s going on. And despite the political
grandstanding I saw earlier, this isn’t about enforcing the law. If
anybody in this panel don’t like what’s going on, then change the
law, you’re the legislature, we’re the executive branch.
And the reason when someone says—makes an allegation about
children being mistreated, they’re in an overcrowded facility be-
cause Congress’ failure to supply the supplemental funding months
ago. Don’t blame the men and women wearing the uniform doing
the best they can, it’s outrageous. This is political theater at its
best.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Mr. Krishnamoorthi.
Mr. K
RISHNAMOORTHI
. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Costello,
I have a question for you just with regard to the appropriation of
the additional funding to DHS. Congressman Chuy Garcia and I
wrote a letter to the DHS Secretary saying that we wanted a trans-
43
parent timeline for how this money should be spent, and what are
the metrics for success in determining whether the money is spent
in accordance with humanitarian purposes for which it was appro-
priated.
So the first question I would ask you is, you know, in your opin-
ion, or based on what you know about the agency, what should we
be looking for and when? How quickly are the border conditions
going to need to change and will change based on the appropria-
tions process?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Well, I wish I could answer you, but we don’t
have any reporting on that right now. But what I can tell you is
that we’re going to open work, in fact, we’ve opened work—a re-
view of how that money is going to be spent, whether the Depart-
ment is in a position to adequately deploy those resources, how to
adequately plan to use them, and evaluating the effectiveness of
what they’re going to do with a portion of those resources.
Mr. K
RISHNAMOORTHI
. Okay. But how long is it going to take to
get that report?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. It will take a while, I’m not going to lie. But the
point is we’re going to evaluate what’s going to be done with those
funds.
Mr. K
RISHNAMOORTHI
. I’m sorry, that’s an unsatisfactory re-
sponse. A while is not a definite timeline, and we have children
who are suffering at the border. So I need a little more specificity
right now.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Well, sir, we just opened the work and just start-
ed, and the money has to be out there and being used for us to able
to make any evaluations.
Mr. K
RISHNAMOORTHI
. Okay. Ms. Mukherjee, what can they do
right now? Even before the money arrives, what should they be
doing right now, and what should we be expecting?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. Children should be released to their family
members and their loved ones. Nearly 100 percent of children in
ICE custody are released to their parents. More than 80 percent of
children released from ORR custody are released to their family
members. Children do not need to be in detention.
Mr. K
RISHNAMOORTHI
. I’m sorry, let’s step back for one second,
I just have limited time. Let’s talk about CBP. I’m sorry, I just
have just limited time. Let’s talk about CBP for a second, okay. Be-
cause they need to release their children to HHS within 72 hours,
okay. We have appropriated a lot of, like, $3 billion to HHS, to beef
up their capacity on absorb folks from CBP, but in the meantime,
what should they do, the people in CBP?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. Children should be released from CBP now.
During the week of June 17, there were 2,600 kids in CBP custody.
Within two weeks, there were 300 children left. This isn’t about
money, this isn’t about bed space, this is about cruelty and callous
disregard for children’s well-being. Media attention and the public
outcry is what got thousands of children released from CBP cus-
tody.
Mr. K
RISHNAMOORTHI
. So we’re saying that we can identify loved
ones and relatives in the community who would be able to take on
these children and house them temporarily until we can arrive at
their final disposition. Is that what you’re saying?
44
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. Exactly.
Mr. K
RISHNAMOORTHI
. Ms. Nagda, could you comment on that,
please.
Ms. N
AGDA
. I was just going to point out to the Representative
that under the prior administration, the government had what was
known as the Family Case Management Program, which allowed
families to be released as families from detention on an alternative
to detention basis, which meant their release could be expedited
quickly, and then they could live in the community, access sup-
portive services, and come to court, which over 99 percent of them
did.
So there are options that would expedite the release of families
from CBP custody as well.
Mr. K
RISHNAMOORTHI
. Okay. Ms. Maxwell, did you want to com-
ment on this?
Ms. M
AXWELL
. No.
Mr. K
RISHNAMOORTHI
. Ms. Maxwell, that is HHS now. You folks
are going to get the vast majority of the funding that has been ap-
propriated within the last two weeks, about $3 billion coming to
HHS, for the purposes of more long-term shelter for these children.
Can you tell me what are going to be the milestones for success,
and how quickly we can kind of beef up your capacity to deal with
these children?
Ms. M
AXWELL
. Well, like Ms. Costello, I’m the IG for HHS and
we are going to be providing oversight of how they spend that
money. I know that HHS has already opened a new influx facilitate
in Carrizo Springs that is operational at the end of June, and they
are looking to ramp that up. So it’s my understanding that HHS
is already in the process of expanding their capacity, and we will
be providing oversight to that expansion, and any other expansion
that comes with the money that you appropriated.
Mr. K
RISHNAMOORTHI
. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you. Mr. Comer.
Mr. C
OMER
. I have to begin with clarifying something that Rep-
resentative Tlaib said in her opening remarks when we had the
portion of the hearing when the legislators were asked to give re-
marks for five minutes. Representative Tlaib, you were offended by
the term ‘‘illegal,’’ and said we did not need to use the term ‘‘ille-
gal’’ to describe people that were—certain people that were here in
America, that no one was an illegal.
But if anyone is in the United States of America unlawfully, then
they are, in fact, an illegal. And I just want to clarify that because
when I go home to Kentucky, that’s something that offends the
overwhelming majority of people that watch what goes on in Con-
gress, specifically in this committee.
And let me be clear, this is not a manufactured crisis. This is a
problem that is getting worse every day. Yet this Congress con-
tinues to do nothing about the real problem at the border. What
I have not heard today in this hearing is a real solution to the
problem. Just letting people go freely when they cross the border
illegally constituates open border. We cannot have that in America.
And let me just quote Jeh Johnson in an op-ed, and he was
President Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security. He said that
we cannot embrace a policy, and I quote, ‘‘not deport those who
45
enter or remain in this country illegally unless they commit a
crime.’’ This is tantamount to a public declaration repeated and
amplified by smugglers in Central America that our borders are ef-
fectively open to all. This will increase the recent levels of monthly
apprehensions at our southern border about or more than 100,000
by multiples. End quote.
He’s right. President Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security is
right about the real problem we have at the border. We have to get
serious about this problem at the border. Mr. Homan, you’re clearly
an expert. What can Congress do to fix this problem?
Mr. H
OMAN
. They need to close the loopholes in asylum to make
them meaningful. They can change the TVPRA with children of
Mexico—the children of Central America are treated the same way
as children of Mexico, once it’s ascertained they are not a victim
of trafficking. They can be removed. They need to change the Flo-
res Settlement Agreement.
And I’m sitting here, and let me explain to you why I’m sitting
here so frustrated. Because I’m the only one in this room that has
worn a green uniform and been on that line. I’m the only one in
this room that found dead aliens on a trail that were abandoned
by smugglers, just left them there because they weren’t worth any
money anymore. I’m the only one in this room that stood in the
back of a tractor trailer surrounded by 19 dead aliens, including a
five-year-old little boy that suffocated to death in his father’s arms.
I was there. And I saw and I smelled it, and it’s terrible. And I still
have nightmares to this day.
It was in Phoenix, Arizona, when you couldn’t pay the smuggling
fees, you were tortured. One person was stabbed in the face 22
times because he couldn’t pay a smuggling fee. Any we keep talk-
ing about open borders, abolish ICE, let’s not detain anybody. Let’s
let everybody go. That entices more people to come. This isn’t just
about enforcing law, this is about saving lives.
I found enough dead bodies in my day. I have a stack of dead
bodies here. I have seen a lot of pictures today, but no one wants
to see these pictures, because they’re angel moms and dads. Each
of them died here at the hands of people that crossed the border
because we have an open border. The more we entice people to
make this journey, 31 percent of women are being raped. Children
are dying.
And I said months ago, if we don’t close the loopholes, more
women will be raped, more children will die. It’s like no one is lis-
tening. We can fix this. Sir, we can fix this. There are three things
we can do to fix this. And Congress, if they don’t like what ICE
and CBP do, then do your job. Fix it. Congress has failed the Amer-
ican people for three decades I’ve been doing this job in fixing this.
They would rather point to the men and women at Border Patrol,
and men and women at ICE who have an American flag on their
shoulder and serve their Nation.
I’m extremely frustrated because what I’ve seen today is mis-
leading the American people. People are dying, not in ICE custody.
If you compare, people that have died in ICE custody to every
state, Federal system, we got the lowest rate, we got a hell of a lot
lower rate than the city of New York, but no one wants to talk
about us. We need to save lives, we need to secure our borders.
46
Nothing wrong with this. There’s nothing wrong with a secure bor-
der.
Mr. C
OMER
. I can assure you, Mr. Homan, this side of the aisle
is serious about securing the border. The President is serious about
securing the border. And I hope my colleagues on the other side of
the aisle will get serious about securing the border so we can have
a real solution to the problem that we have at the southern border.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much.
Ms. Hill, our vice chair.
Ms. H
ILL
. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Homan, I want to clarify a couple of things, because you
mentioned earlier that no one’s been to the law enforcement memo-
rial.
I’m from a law enforcement family, 100 percent from a law en-
forcement family, and I represent Border Patrol agents, and I rep-
resent agents that work for ICE. And I don’t believe that it is the
agents that are solely responsible for any of this that’s happening.
I don’t think that that’s the case. And as far as the law enforce-
ment memorial goes, I was there just a few weeks ago, because I
have family that’s on that.
So I want you to know that the questions that I’m asking have
nothing to do with blaming the agents who are working on the
front lines. But I do think it’s important that we talk about the pol-
icy, and the policy that is still problematic, because I believe that
what we do have, this crisis of people who are coming here, I be-
lieve, honestly, that they’re coming out of desperation. They’re
hugely being taken advantage of by criminals, by traffickers, by
people who are willing to leave them to die anywhere.
That is all true, we’re not arguing there. But there are policies
in place here, within the United States of America, that go against
our values, and one of those is family separation.
So I want to talk to you about your beliefs on family separation.
And you’ve been on the record defending President Trump’s policy
of separating families at the border many times. Can you clarify
how you feel about that today?
Mr. H
OMAN
. No, I cannot. As you recognize in your report here,
it’s under litigation. I’m a part of that litigation. And I’ve been in-
structed by the attorneys that I’m not allowed to speak about that,
other than in a courtroom setting, which this is not.
Ms. H
ILL
. Okay. So that’s fine.
So you have said, though, that you believe that families should
be held indefinitely until they have a court hearing.
Mr. H
OMAN
. Well, court hearing and indefinitely are two dif-
ferent things. I think they should be held long enough to see a
judge in a family residential center.
Ms. H
ILL
. Family residential center?
Mr. H
OMAN
. It worked in Fiscal Year 2014 and Fiscal Year 2015.
Ms. H
ILL
. Okay. But you cannot comment at all about family
separation right now?
Mr. H
OMAN
. Well, I was the Director of ICE. If anybody was sep-
arated, they’re separated on the border by another agency.
Ms. H
ILL
. Okay. Well, you have been on the record many times
defending that policy.
47
But I also want to point out that on June 14, President Trump
told ‘‘Fox & Friends’’ that you, Tom Homan, will be returning to
the Trump administration as the border czar. Is that true?
Mr. H
OMAN
. I have not accepted any position with the adminis-
tration.
Ms. H
ILL
. Well, yes, as of four days ago, you said that you
haven’t accepted a position yet. But you also said that: If I can help
this President, I certainly will.
Mr. H
OMAN
. If I can help my country, like I’ve done for the last
34 years, I come back from retirement once, I’m not going to say
never say never.
Ms. H
ILL
. You didn’t say help my country. You said help this
President.
Mr. H
OMAN
. Well, helping this President is helping my country.
He’s the President of the United States.
Ms. H
ILL
. Okay. Is it true that you are a FOX News contributor
and have been since your retirement?
Mr. H
OMAN
. Yes.
Ms. H
ILL
. Okay. And is it also true that on your LinkedIn profile,
one of your key achievements was that you removed 369,000 aliens
from the United States?
Mr. H
OMAN
. Probably.
Ms. H
ILL
. Okay. So I want to return back to the family separa-
tion issue. And even though a Federal court ordered separations to
stop last June, the Trump administration has separated at least
700 additional children over the last year. And I believe I heard
one of our witnesses say that that number is even higher.
This administration claims that it is only separating children
under narrow exceptions to the court’s order, when there’s a spe-
cific concern for child safety or certain criminal history issues.
Ms. Nagda, based on your experience, are all of those additional
separations necessary to protect children?
Ms. N
AGDA
. No. It has been our experience that in the vast, over-
whelming majority of family separation cases, those separations
were unjustified and unnecessary, either to protect the safety of the
child or anyone else.
Ms. H
ILL
. Has your organization worked with children separated
since last June?
Ms. N
AGDA
. We have worked with more than 120 children who
were separated after the policy ended.
Ms. H
ILL
. And, Ms. Mukherjee, you’ve shared a number of stories
about how you’ve spoken with children who have been separated
from their parents since the end of the zero-tolerance policy. Is
there anything you would like to add or to quantify those ongoing
separations?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. The ongoing separations of children from their
parents and family members continue every day and I have here
emails from Mr. Homan, including his name, with him having au-
thorized family separations, including of a child and mother who I
represented, who were granted asylum, who are bona fide refugees
in the United States.
Ms. H
ILL
. So I have a couple of other examples that we’ve seen
in public court filings. For example, in one case, an arrest warrant
from 10 years ago, which itself was based on mistaken identity,
48
used as the basis to separate a child. Another parent was sepa-
rated from his three daughters due to his HIV status. And to me,
this appears that the administration is trying to circumvent the
court’s order and separate children from their parents all over
again.
Are all of these separations required by law in any way, shape,
or form?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. No. All of these separations are contrary to our
Constitution, our Federal laws, our regulations, the TEDS stand-
ards that govern how CBP is supposed to treat children and fami-
lies.
Ms. H
ILL
. So these continued separations, as far as I’m con-
cerned, are a complete outrage and are contrary to the June 2018
court order ending zero tolerance. The Trump administration must
stop these unnecessary separations, and I’m seriously concerned
that the potential new border czar believes that these are good pol-
icy.
I yield back.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much.
Mr. Jordan.
Mr. J
ORDAN
. Mr. Homan, the actions you took when you were Di-
rector of ICE were entirely consistent with the law of the land,
weren’t they?
Mr. H
OMAN
. Yes. When someone is prosecuted for a crime, the
child can’t go to jail with the parent. That happens to American
families every day.
Mr. J
ORDAN
. Yes. And if we, as you said I think earlier, if we
don’t like the law, last time I checked, it’s the folks sitting up here
got to change it.
Mr. H
OMAN
. Yes.
Mr. J
ORDAN
. And you’ve offered, I think, no more than four
times, three changes to the law that would help the situation. Is
that right?
Mr. H
OMAN
. Yes, sir.
Mr. J
ORDAN
. Maybe make it a fifth time. Can you say it a fifth
time for this group? Just, you know, because again, we’re the ones
that have to change the law. So give us that recommendation a
fifth time, the three things that we’ve got to do.
Mr. H
OMAN
. If we would close the loopholes in the TVPRA,
where children who are sent to America are treated the same as
children in Mexico; if we would change the Flores settlement agree-
ment so we can actually detain families in family setting long
enough to see a judge and plead their case; and if we can change
the rules of asylum so it makes more sense, so 90 percent of the
people who don’t pass the first interview, a lot fewer are passed in
front of a judge, those three things would mean a big—would make
a big difference on the border and decrease the illegal entry.
Mr. J
ORDAN
. Because those three things go to the heart of the
matter. They go to the incentive. Is that right?
Mr. H
OMAN
. They go to incentive, along with the other things,
such as talking about abolishing ICE, having no detention, free
education.
Mr. J
ORDAN
. Yes.
49
Mr. H
OMAN
. Free medical care. Citizenship for those who are
here illegally.
When you keep offers and incentives for people to come—sanc-
tuary cities—come to this country, you’ll be protected from ICE, as
long as you keep having this——
Mr. J
ORDAN
. Those kind of statements——
Mr. H
OMAN
[continuing]. people who are vulnerable people are
going to keep trying to come.
Mr. J
ORDAN
. Those kind of statements made by Democrats in the
U.S. Congress or in positions of influence in this country, they have
an impact, don’t they?
Mr. H
OMAN
. They have a significant impact.
Mr. J
ORDAN
. When a Member of Congress says abolish ICE,
when another Member of Congress says abolish DHS, when the
Speaker of the House says walls are immoral, when the person who
gave the State of the Union response to the President’s State of the
Union says she’s okay with noncitizens voting, that all has an im-
pact, doesn’t it, just like the law that you’re sworn to uphold and
impact and do, when you’re the Director of ICE?
Mr. H
OMAN
. It has a significant impact. And if this would have
been fixed years ago, we probably wouldn’t have seen zero toler-
ance. We wouldn’t see the conditions on the border today.
Mr. J
ORDAN
. But because the laws haven’t been changed, because
of the statements that have been made, there was a crisis, there
is a crisis on the border. And that just didn’t happen yesterday.
You think about this. There was a crisis. The administration
asked for help. Democrats say it’s contrived, it’s manufactured, it’s
fake, it’s not real. Then, when the crisis, the real crisis, gets actu-
ally worse, the Democrats blame the administration for the very
crisis they helped create by the things they said and the fact they
won’t change the law. But somehow it’s your problem. Somehow it’s
the President’s problem.
And we have Ms. Costello, who went down there, her team went
down there and looked this all over, the Inspector General, said
there is some concerns that she has and the cause of the concerns
they’re trying to ascertain.
Now, she also said agents are doing—I think your statement was
agents are doing their level best. Is that right, Ms. Costello?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. That’s the experience of our inspectors at their
visits.
Mr. J
ORDAN
. So the Inspector General goes down there with your
team, and you conclude the agents, the people that Mr. Homan
used to represent, are doing their darned best they can do, but
they’re overwhelmed.
And then you also said in your statement, in your answers a few
minutes ago, you’re trying to ascertain the cause. Well, that’s pret-
ty simple to figure out the cause. It’s the numbers. In October,
60,000 apprehensions and inadmissibles on the border, October of
last year. You know what it was in May of this year? 144,000.
We know the cause: They’re all coming. And they’re coming be-
cause things the other side’s saying and the fact we won’t change
three fundamental things in the law.
And it also might help, Mr. Homan, it also might help, because
these are the ones that—these are apprehensions, these people are
50
presenting themselves at ports of entry—it also might help if we
build a border security wall, right? Instead of having the Speaker
of the House say they’re immoral, even though there’s one in her
state, it might actually help if we built the border security wall
that the American people voted this President in office to do. It
might actually help if we did that. Would you agree, Mr. Homan?
Mr. H
OMAN
. Absolutely. Every place they’ve built a border bar-
rier, every single place they’ve built a border barrier, illegal immi-
gration decreased.
Mr. J
ORDAN
. Yes. It would help with some of the tragic things
that we have heard about, tragic situations that we have heard
about the last couple days, this entire week in this committee, that
no one wants to see happen. The young mother who lost her daugh-
ter, it’s tragic. No one wants those. But if we did the things you’re
talking about, we could help avoid some of those kind of incidents
from happening in the future. Is that right, Mr. Homan?
Mr. H
OMAN
. Yes. If I could respond to that——
Mr. J
ORDAN
. And you’re the guy—you’re the guy who’s lived it,
breathed it, felt it, managed it. You know more than—you have
more expertise in this area than anyone in this room. Is that right?
Mr. H
OMAN
. I believe so.
Mr. J
ORDAN
. I know so.
Mr. H
OMAN
. But let me respond to the one child that died as
tragic.
Mr. J
ORDAN
. Sure is.
Mr. H
OMAN
. But as long as we’re showing a lot of pictures, if I
could have just 30 seconds.
Here’s a picture. Her name was Serenity. She was nine months
old—nine months—raped and murdered by an illegal alien because
of open borders policy.
Here’s Alana, she was five years old, raped repeatedly and mur-
dered by an illegal alien.
Here’s Louise Solowen, she was 93, multiple rapes and murdered
by an illegal alien.
Here’s a 16-year-old.
Here’s a law enforcement officer.
I got hundreds of these in my desk drawer.
So I’ve seen tears from people today, and I understand that, it’s
tragic when anybody dies. But let’s not remember—let’s forget the
Angel Moms and Dads who I’ve all met and got to know, their chil-
dren died, and they’re separated forever. It’s not a matter of loca-
tion. They’re dead.
And a secured border would help prevent some of this. Sanctuary
cities does not help this. Sanctuary cities, this will increase because
of the push of sanctuary cities, come to our country, we’ll protect
you. You can even commit a crime, be in our county jail, we’re not
going to let ICE into the jail.
Recidivism rates, anybody can look them up. Fifty percent re-
offend the first year, up to 75 will recidivate within 5 years.
They’re in the country illegally in violation of Federal law. They’re
locked up in a county jail. Let us have access to them and do our
job.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much.
Ms. Kelly.
51
Ms. K
ELLY
. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
You know, I would just ask Mr. Homan—like my colleague said,
Ms. Hill, I come from a law enforcement family, too—and I would
just ask—and you made some comment about, we want to do away
with ICE. I never said I wanted to do away with ICE, and I just
feel like there’s a lot of generalizations going on.
And, you know, we talk about, oh, we’re inviting people in and
making it easier. My district is urban, suburban, and rural, and I
have 1,200 farms in my district, and I know a lot of my farmers
are Republican, and they’ve told me that they have migrants work-
ing for them, undocumented folks working for them.
So if we would have done better with improving immigration or
making a pathway and where there was a bipartisan Gang of Eight
in the Senate, and we didn’t even entertain the bill in the House,
when we had a Republican Speaker.
So we can always say there’s things that could have been done,
and I can think of things, since I’ve been here in my last six years,
that could have been done that haven’t been done.
And I know people that are Republican, just like I know people
that are Democrat, that feel like we need to do a much better job.
So, you know, all this condemning is very interesting.
But anyway, I wanted to focus in on the Homestead shelter in
Florida. Homestead is the Nation’s largest facility to house and
care for immigrant children. It is run by a not-for-profit.
Ms.—and I want to say your name correctly—Mukherjee, you
testified you interviewed children at the Homestead facility and
that you were, quote, concerned about the numerous violations of
the Flores settlement agreement. Can you describe what your con-
cerns are and what the conditions are?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. Homestead is a facility that houses thousands
of children, more than 2,000 at this point, and it’s set to expand
to more than 3,000. It is an environment that is not conducive to
children’s well-being. Children get lost in the cracks there.
When I interviewed children there in March 2019, my colleagues
and I found a 14-year-old boy there who was legally blind. He
weighed 66 pounds and was 4’9’’ tall. He was an indigenous lan-
guage speaker. His first language is Opteko (ph). He had been de-
tained there 120 days.
We subsequently received incident reports. We were extremely
concerned about his well-being. So we requested his full file. We
learned that there were documented incidents, multiple incidents,
where he had been assaulted, including being punched in the stom-
ach by other children, punched in the groin.
I called his father. I was worried that maybe his father didn’t
have the resources to take care of a child with a disability. But his
father had been desperately trying to reunite with this child. It
took us threatening to sue to get this child out of Homestead.
Ms. K
ELLY
. Okay. Ms. Maxwell, is the Office of Inspector General
investigating conditions at this facility?
Ms. M
AXWELL
. Indeed. I mentioned we went to 45 facilities last
summer, and Homestead was one of them. Since then, we’ve been
down there several times, offering technical assistance and out-
reach to that facility, and we continue to provide oversight of
Homestead.
52
Ms. K
ELLY
. How can they stay open with reports like this?
Ms. M
AXWELL
. Well, the work that we did from our site visit is
still ongoing. So I’m going to have to pause and wait until that
work becomes public. At that point, I’d be happy to brief you and
your staff about what we found there, as well as what we found
across the country. We looked at a host of safety issues that affect
children in HHS-funded facilities.
Ms. K
ELLY
. And, Mr. Chair, I’d like to enter this article for the
record, which is by Monique Madan.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Without objection, so ordered.
Ms. K
ELLY
. The article explains the story of a 15-year-old boy
who was stripped from his family by CBP during a traffic stop and
transferred to ORR custody and treated as an unaccompanied
minor. This child has lived in the United States since he was nine
months old. Lawyers say they have represented at least 20 other
children at Homestead who have been torn from their families,
children that have been living in the U.S. for nearly their entire
lives.
So as I said, I’d like to enter into the record the statutory defini-
tion of an unaccompanied minor also, which includes there’s no
parent or legal guardian in the United States, and no parent or
legal guardian in the United States is available to provide care and
physical custody. This 15-year-old, by our own statutory definition,
is not an unaccompanied minor.
Ms. Costello, are you aware of this practice?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. We are aware of separations, but currently we
have no public reporting on any of that, those issues that you de-
scribed.
Ms. K
ELLY
. And what is your policy when entering undocu-
mented children in the interior U.S.?
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. The gentlelady’s time has expired, but you
may answer the question.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. So as the Inspector General, we provide over-
sight. We’re not responsible for implementing policy or creating pol-
icy in any way.
Ms. K
ELLY
. Can I just make one more?
I’m going to request that you open an investigation into this im-
mediately.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Ms. Kelly, I just want to make clear, you
were trying to admit one document or two?
Ms. K
ELLY
. Two, I’m sorry.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Oh, I didn’t——
Ms. K
ELLY
. The article.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Okay. Fine.
Ms. K
ELLY
. And then the definition of unaccompanied minor.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Without objection, so ordered, to both of
those documents.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Ms. Tlaib.
Ms. T
LAIB
. Thank you, Chairman. I really do appreciate this
hearing.
Thank you all so much for being here.
I believe in the importance of whistleblowers—you know, some-
times we call them truth tellers—especially to this committee. We
know that employees have decided to stick to their livelihood—de-
53
cided to stick out their livelihood and their way of life and put
courage and their country first.
And to the chair, before I begin questioning, I would like to sub-
mit two documents. The first is a July 17, 2018, letter to Senate
Whistleblower Caucus chairs and a comment submitted on the pro-
posed rule by Immigration and Custom Bureau—Customer Bu-
reau—on the——
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Without objection, so ordered.
Ms. T
LAIB
. Thank you. Dr. Scott—Doctors Allen and McPherson
are two whistleblowers that serve as subject matter experts for
DHS. They tried to warn your office, Ms. Costello, the migrant chil-
dren were going to die in custody. Does that sound familiar at all?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. We get a number of complaints every year. That
one, in particular, is not ringing any bells right now.
Ms. T
LAIB
. They had warned—they had wrote, quote, ‘‘We
warned DHS that a migrant child could die in custody,’’ yet these
whistleblowers were completely ignored by the office. Their lawyers
tell us that no one ever responded to their concerns at all, despite
attorneys’ multiple attempts to connect with you.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. So as you said, we take whistleblower concerns
extremely, extremely carefully. We take all of those cases and alle-
gations into consideration. I’m not familiar with the issue that
you’re talking about, but my office can get back to you with some
information.
Ms. T
LAIB
. I do appreciate that.
The next thing I want to talk about is, you know, we brought for-
ward obviously children, and there’s a lot of back-and-forth,
about—you know, there seems to always be this sense—and maybe
because I’m new—but a sense of who to blame, where did it start,
what the cause is.
The problem is, the crisis is here, and everybody wants to stick
in how we got here. But we’re here now, and the responsibility is
on us to address it. And there is a sense of urgency, on at least
my part, to addressing this.
But one of the things that really was profound was when one of
those CBP agents took me aside, even though all on their trucks,
if you look at any of the trucks anywhere, there’s a term, it goes,
honor first. Are you familiar with that, anyone? Mr. Homan? It
says, honor first.
And I thought it was spectacular. I said, ‘‘Oh, what does this
mean?’’ And they kind of looked and said, ‘‘Exactly what it says.’’
But there’s also this sticking together, not telling on each other,
this kind of culture.
But a couple, three different agents, one said, ‘‘Stop sending
money, it’s not working.’’ He literally said that to me in a whisper.
One, you know, very tearful said, ‘‘You know, we weren’t trained
to do this. I am not a social worker, nor a medical care worker.’’
And another very courageously—again, this is somebody that many
of my colleagues would be surprised to know said this to me—but
he said the separation policy isn’t working.
The morale has been, out of all law enforcement offices, the mo-
rale of the agents in CBP are among the lowest, and suicide has
actually increased over a hundred agents, even when you were
there, Mr. Homan. And you know, we talk about the dehumaniza-
54
tion of the children and so forth. Well, we also understand there
is a number of stress. And I can actually feel it from you, Mr.
Homan, right now, like—but I also felt this hesitation even when
I was shaking every single person’s hand up there, that you even
hesitate to shake my hand.
And I wanted you to know, I paused and I thought, you know,
did I do anything for you to pause and not shake my hand, even
though I was telling the truth, what I saw.
And I’m not blaming the agents. I’m not blaming. I’m blaming
the broken immigration system, just like you are. And we have to
decide and have courage in this Chamber whether or not we pro-
ceed in fixing it. And if it’s your route of closing borders and all
that, great, let’s debate that.
But one of the things I’m taken aback is the average of children
is seven years old that we’re separating at the border. Average age
is seven years old. The trauma we’re going to create is going to be
a generation that I don’t think we’re going to ever be able to truly
address.
And, Mr. Homan, I know you can’t talk about it, but I agree with
that agent that separation policy isn’t working to what we’re doing
there, and we know that the administration, and you may not be
able to speak about it, was trying in ways to prevent people from
coming. But it didn’t.
It wasn’t about asylum. I’ll tell you right now, that man that was
from Brazil, when I told him in English—and he understood a little
bit, because his Portuguese—his Spanish, he didn’t have any—he
didn’t speak Spanish, so he had a lot of issues of language.
And I’m sorry, Mr. Chairman, just—do you know he—I told him,
‘‘You know they might separate you from your child. He said, ‘‘No.
No, no, no. No, no, no, no. That can’t happen.’’ And I said, ‘‘But
that’s the policy right now that we have, is that you might not see
your 14-or your eight-year-old daughter anymore.’’
And I just can’t sit by and say that is okay. The one thing we
can do in this Chamber is we can agree the separation policy needs
to stop and that more money toward supporting the separation pol-
icy needs to stop, because I don’t want an agent to kill themselves.
I don’t want a tearful agent who is in top level, not one that is even
at the border, that said, ‘‘Put me at the border,’’ he said, ‘‘that’s
where I belong, not here with these children.’’
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much.
Mr. Green.
Mr. G
REEN
. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to ask everybody to think of a busy emergency depart-
ment, a busy emergency department in an inner city, and a mas-
sive natural disaster occurs, and there are hundreds of patients
now flooding that emergency department. They’re treating people
in the hallways. They’re treating people in the parking lot. It is a
crisis, a massive crisis, there are patients everywhere.
It’s not the doctor’s fault that patients are everywhere. It’s not
the nurse’s fault that the crisis has suddenly overwhelmed that
emergency department. And it is ridiculous to assert that.
The problem is, is that the pipe isn’t big enough. You can only
flow so much water or so many patients through an emergency de-
55
partment if there’s 30 beds or 35 beds or 40 beds. And nobody
builds emergency departments for thousands of patients. You can’t
do that.
And when the crisis happens, it’s not the doctor’s fault. It’s not
the nurse’s fault. It is the diameter of the pipeline.
Well, how do you get the pipeline to have a bigger diameter?
Well, you have to have more beds, right? You have to have more
space. You have to have more money.
So for months, we’ve been asking for budget. And we’ve got peo-
ple sitting on this committee who voted against money to go to the
problem—in fact, some people want to close the Department of
Homeland Security entirely—yet at the same time screaming: We
need more resources on the border. How ridiculous is that? It’s the-
atrics. It’s just theatrics. That’s all it is.
In the 1960’s, the progressive liberals called our soldiers baby
killers. Remember that? They came home from Vietnam and were
spat on. And now CBP is being called Nazi concentration camp op-
erators. How insane is that, how ridiculous. And it harkens back
to a dark day in America when we called our soldiers baby killers,
when, in fact, they were just doing what the country had asked
them to do. Theatrics.
Let me begin by setting the record straight. This notion that Re-
publicans and conservatives are somehow unconcerned about the
plight of people is just wrong and unfair.
I run two free healthcare clinics in Tennessee out of my own
pocket, and I get, you know, people who are progressive liberals
telling me, ‘‘We need more taxes to take care of more people.’’ And
I say, ‘‘Well, come volunteer in my clinic and help these people who
are in need if you really care.’’
You know how many have taken me up on it in four years? None.
Not a single one has come and volunteered in my free healthcare
clinics, while I’ve offered it and offered it. Theatrics.
As Politico reported in an article last month, the U.S. Border Pa-
trol apprehended nearly 85,000 family members in May, a 44 per-
cent increase over the prior month, a historic high. For comparison
the Border Patrol apprehended approximately 107,000 family mem-
bers in all of 2018.
We’ve had a natural disaster and the ER is overwhelmed. They
need resources. They need Congress to do our job.
But what does the left want to do? Oh, we didn’t acknowledge
it was a crisis when we probably should have, so let’s just blame
President Trump. We’ll say he’s the one putting these kids in
cages. Oh, wait, that picture was from 2015. Obama was President.
Right. We didn’t recognize it was a crisis. We tried to play it off
as not one. And oh, now we’ve been caught, and oh, well, let’s just
blame the President. Theatrics.
Listen, it’s time for Congress to do its job and get the resources
to these men and women who are on the border, taking care of this
crisis.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the opportunity to share my per-
spective, and I yield my time back.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Before I go to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, let me
say this. I think we all, on both sides of the aisle, I think we need
to be careful about how we talk about the motives of our col-
56
leagues. I believe that everyone is operating in good faith, and I
just want us to be very careful with that.
With that, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Earlier my colleague from Maryland, Mr. Raskin, asked the
panel, how many people here believe that child separation is an ef-
fective policy in deterrence? And no one on the panel raised their
hand. I just wanted to note that for the record, Mr. Chair.
I wanted to ask a question from Professor Mukherjee. Is the
United States violating—or violated—human rights agreements set
by the United Nations in a family separation policy?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. Yes. International law is clear that family unity
should be prioritized.
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. So we, as members of the United Nations,
signed on into an international human rights agreement, saying
very clearly that family separation is a violation of international
human rights, and then we pursued a policy that violates human
rights.
You know, Mr. Chair, I was looking, how did we get to this
point? How did we get to this point, where we take children out
of mothers’ and fathers’ arms? And, you know, it dated back—fam-
ily separation, the way that we have seen it, where we take chil-
dren away from their parents without due process, began last year
under Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. But I had to dig further, and our
staff dug further. But where did this start within the administra-
tion? She implemented it.
And we found a memo, it dates back to April 23 of 2018, where
there was an official recommendation to, quote, ‘‘pursue prosecu-
tion of all amenable adults who cross our border, quote, ’illegally,’ ’’
even though this applied to legal asylum seekers in practice, ‘‘in-
cluding those presenting with a family unit, between ports of
entry,’’ in coordination with DOJ.
Here is the memo that I would like to submit to the congres-
sional Record.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. What is the date of that?
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. It is a memo—memorandum for the Sec-
retary from Homeland Security.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Date?
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. April 23, 2018, subject, ‘‘Increasing prosecu-
tions of immigration violations.’’
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Without objection.
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. And so I looked at this memo, and it seems
like this is the source of it, and it seems as though, Mr. Homan,
that you are the author. It says here, from yourself, Kevin
McAleenan, and Francis Cissna. Is this correct? Did you sign the
memo?
Mr. H
OMAN
. I’d have to see what you——
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Give him——
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. I’d be happy to provide it. And we’ll provide
it over. But I would like to note that here, it says the official rec-
ommendation, there were three different options presented. The
third included the option for family separation: This initiative
would pursue prosecution of all amenable adults, including those
presenting with a family unit.
57
Mr. Homan, your name is on this. Is this correct?
Mr. H
OMAN
. Yes, I signed that memo.
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. So you are the author of the family separa-
tion policy?
Mr. H
OMAN
. I am not the author of this memo.
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. You’re not the author, but you signed the
memo?
Mr. H
OMAN
. Yes, a zero-tolerance memo.
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. So you provided the official recommendation
to Secretary Nielsen on family—for the United States to pursue
family separation?
Mr. H
OMAN
. I gave Secretary Nielsen numerous recommenda-
tions on how to secure the border and save lives.
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. But it says here that you—you gave her nu-
merous options, but the recommendation was option three, family
separation.
Mr. H
OMAN
. What I’m saying, this is not the only paper where
we had given the Secretary numerous options to secure the border
and save lives.
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. And so the recommendation—of the many
that you recommended—you recommended family separation.
Mr. H
OMAN
. I recommended zero tolerance.
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. Which includes family separation.
Mr. H
OMAN
. The same as it is with every U.S. citizen parent that
gets arrested when they’re with a child.
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. Zero tolerance was interpreted as the policy
that separated children from their parents?
Mr. H
OMAN
. If I get arrested for DUI and I have a young child
in the car, I’m going to be separated. When I was a police officer
in New York and I arrested a father for domestic violence, I sepa-
rated that father from——
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. Mr. Homan, with all due respect, legal
asylees are not charged with any crime.
Mr. H
OMAN
. When you’re in the country illegally, it’s a violation
of eight United States Code 1325.
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. Seeking asylum is legal.
Mr. H
OMAN
. If you want to seek asylum, go through the port of
entry, do it the legal way. The Attorney General of the United
States has made that clear.
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. Okay. Mr. Chair, the memo is submitted to
the record for review.
Inspector General Costello, one last thing. Is there a record—
based on reports through the year and in our hearing earlier this
year there was—we spoke with Ms. Juarez, a mother who lost her
child due to inhumane conditions in the facilities. We learned that
there is no accurate record and no policy being held of people who
are pregnant and people who endure miscarriages.
Is there a record of who enters and leaves these facilities?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. I’m not familiar with the instance you’re talking
about, but I do believe the facilities keep custody logs and logs, but
I’m not familiar with the incident you’re talking about.
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. And where would we find those records?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. I believe all the facilities keep them onsite, CBP
and ICE facilities.
58
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. And if you believe that the records are not
accessible—or if we find that the records are not accessible, do you
believe the committee should seek to request records from DHS on
the location of children and those that are detained?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Well, we would never opine about what the com-
mittee would request and not request, so——
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. Thank you very much.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much.
Ms. Pressley.
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I’m very proud to represent and to call the Massachusetts Sev-
enth my home. It is home to—40 percent of our residents are immi-
grants. And today those residents, those families, are living in con-
stant fear. At the hands of this administration, a fundamentally
broken immigration system has truly been weaponized.
On Wednesday, we heard heartbreaking testimony from Yazmin,
a mother from Guatemala who lost her 19-month-old baby girl
Mariee after pleading with ICE officials to provide her baby with
adequate medical care and medicine. I have no shortage of fury for
this injustice, this tragedy, this callousness. But in the time allot-
ted to me as a Member of Congress, I would instead like to focus
on trying to save a life.
Mr. Homan, I agree with you, there has been much too much
death. So in that vein, I want to enlist your partnership, your part-
nership in saving a life.
Right now, ICE is depriving an asylum seeker, Mariana, of ade-
quate medical care. Mariana fled state-sponsored, gender-based vi-
olence in Angola and is being held in Laredo, Texas, at a facility
operated by CoreCivic, a private, for-profit detention facility. Her
five-and seven-year-old babies were separated from her and sent
thousands of miles away to Chicago.
A doctor at the detention center said she is at risk for a
hysterectomy if she is not released and receive the proper medical
attention. Despite notifying detention center staff of her serious
health condition, they refuse to grant her access to adequate care.
Earlier this week, Mariana lost consciousness. Her lawyers and her
family are desperate to get her medical care.
So, Mr. Homan, in your expert view, can you instruct and advise
me how to elevate Mariana’s case and ensure that she gets the
medical care she needs?
Mr. H
OMAN
. Well, on your first comment about the callousness
of ICE medical, let me be clear on that case that was talked about
yesterday. I remember that case. In 20 days of detainment, they
had 10 medical appointments—10—and the mother didn’t go to two
of them.
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. Mr. Homan, I’d like to reclaim—this is my time,
I’d like to reclaim my time right now.
Mr. H
OMAN
. You can’t make a statement about callousness of
medical care——
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. Mr. Homan, as tragic as—but we can all agree
that it was a tragedy that that baby died. Okay? I don’t want—I’m
not talking about the past, I’m talking about the present, and we
have an opportunity to save a life. And I’m asking you, in your ex-
pert opinion, what should be done and how can we elevate——
59
Mr. H
OMAN
. I am not going to let your comment about callous-
ness stand without a response. This is about transparency to the
American people, is it not?
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. Mr. Homan, a woman’s life is in jeopardy——
Mr. H
OMAN
. I’m telling you, that mother was given 10 medical
appointments. And she, as required by law, she will be released
after 20 days.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Hold up, hold up, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait,
wait a minute, wait a minute. Let me just understand what’s going
on here. We’re talking about two cases. Is that right?
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. Yes. I was referencing the tragedy of a baby that
we’ve already lost.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Right.
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. There is a woman in care right now——
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. You’re talking about that——
Ms. P
RESSLEY
[continuing]. who lost consciousness.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Okay. That’s what I—I just wanted to
make sure I was clear.
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. And I’m just seeking his expert counsel on what
is the procedure and what can be done to elevate this woman’s
case, to get her the medical attention that the detention doctors
have said are essential to keeping her healthy and alive.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Very well.
Let me just ask you real quick, so—and tell you what you can
do, too, to help in that situation.
Then we’ll restart your time.
All right, go ahead. Sir.
Mr. H
OMAN
. Well, to make a statement about a baby that didn’t
die in ICE custody——
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. Reclaiming my time. Let me state the question
again.
Mr. H
OMAN
. Is this hearing for transparency to the American
people or not?
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. Reclaiming my time. Mr. Homan, I am not revis-
iting the past.
Mr. H
OMAN
. Of course not.
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. I’ve offered it for context. And I said it was a trag-
edy and we can all agree there have been far too many tragedies.
You said there’s been a lot of death. Let’s stop the death.
Mr. H
OMAN
. You can’t blame the first death on ICE.
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. We have an opportunity to save a woman’s life.
You are an expert. I am asking you——
Mr. H
OMAN
. Contact—contact—contact Acting ICE Director
Matt——
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. Reclaiming the time. In your expert opinion,
where a person loses consciousness in custody and has been sepa-
rated from her babies for months, how does a Member of the U.S.
Congress get an answer about her case from ICE?
Mr. H
OMAN
. I would make an urgent phone call, if that’s—your
facts are accurate—I would make an urgent phone call to Acting
Director Matt Albence. ICE spends nearly a half a billion dollars
on medical care in our facilities. So I’m sure all the facts you pre-
sented probably aren’t the facts.
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. Reclaiming my time.
60
Ms. Costello, in you view, what does it take to elevate a case to
ensure a woman who is detained receives medical care?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. So obviously you can contact my office and issue
a complaint through a hotline, you can send a letter to us. But as
Mr. Homan is suggesting——
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. Reclaiming. How does your office inspect facilities
to ensure the detained individuals have access to healthcare spe-
cialists and outside care?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. We do periodic unannounced inspections of both
CBP and ICE facilities and compare the situations we observe
against either the TEDS standards or the PBNDS standards for
ICE facilities. And when we identify issues of grave concern, we re-
port on them, and we notify ICE as part of that process.
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. And since September 2018, at least seven immi-
grant children have died while or after being in Federal immigra-
tion custody. Ms. Costello, based on what your office has seen and
reported on, do you have any concerns that the conditions in deten-
tion centers at the border could lead to more deaths?
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. The gentlelady’s time has expired, but you
may answer the question. Go ahead.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Based on what we reported in our management
alerts and what I testified to today, we are gravely concerned about
the conditions that we see in the CBP facilities at the border. And
we are concerned that it could lead to additional security incidents
and obviously high risk of disease.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much.
Mr. Homan, I can’t sit here as a Member of Congress and hear
about somebody possibly dying and not do what I can to save them,
and I think we all feel the same way, on both sides of the aisle.
I would just say—and I’m not knocking you. I’m glad that you
have agreed that as soon as this hearing is over, to make that
phone call, because we do want to save every life that we possibly
can.
Mr. H
OMAN
. If you can provide the information, I’ll make the
phone call.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Yes, we—her staff will get it to you before
you get—you know, before we leave.
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. Thank you.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. All right. Thank you very much.
And to you, Ms. Costello, I’m sure that Ms. Pressley will be in
touch with you, too, and do all that you can to help us out. All
right?
Thank you very much. I really appreciate all of it.
Now we will move on to Mr. Clay.
Mr. C
LAY
. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, Ms. Costello, in response to media reports, a CBP spokes-
person said, and I quote, ‘‘It’s important to note that the allega-
tions of a sexual assault is already under investigation by the De-
partment of Homeland Security’s Office of IG.’’ Can you confirm
and share any details about the scope of this investigation?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Yes, sir. Typically we would never confirm or
deny the existence of an investigation to protect the integrity of the
investigation. But since CBP has already confirmed that we are in-
vestigating that allegation that came out of Yuma, I will confirm
61
for you today that we are, but I can’t share any details with you
about our activity.
Mr. C
LAY
. Has any disciplinary action been taken?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. We just opened the case. We just received the al-
legation at the end of June. So we’re in the very initial stages of
that case.
Mr. C
LAY
. And that’s the one with the 15-year-old girl from Hon-
duras?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. I believe if that’s—if it’s the allegation you’re re-
ferring to coming out of Yuma.
Mr. C
LAY
. Let me ask Ms. Mukherjee and Ms. Nagda, have you
heard of other sexual assaults or harassment of detainees at border
facilities?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. Last month when I was in Clint, children re-
ported to me that officers were—had pushed children who needed
to use the bathroom and prevented them from using the toilet
when they needed to. Three children reported to me that a child
had been grabbed by the back of his neck and had been pulled out
of his cage.
Other children consistently reported that guards yelled at them
and that the children were terrified and that they were so terrified
of the guards that they couldn’t even bring themselves to ask for
more food.
Now, that said, I also heard about one guard who was kind with
the children and who gave the little ones an extra chocolate pud-
ding when he was able to.
Mr. C
LAY
. Thank you.
Ms. N
AGDA
.
Ms. N
AGDA
. Representative, we start from the position that when
children talk to us and choose to disclose, that they are telling the
truth. What we find, though, is that children do not tell stories in
very linear ways, the ways in which an adult who is fully devel-
oped might tell that story. And so we do hear a lot of stories from
children about trauma and violence that they have experienced,
both in home country and as they arrive at the border.
Mr. C
LAY
. And in these facilities, what impact might this have
on those children, what kind of psychological effect?
Ms. N
AGDA
. So I think what is undisputed, Representative, is
that what is causing families to flee and what is causing children
to flee is extraordinary violence in their home countries. It is very
different depending on the country. It is different depending on the
region. It may be violence perpetrated by gangs. It may be domestic
violence. Children may be coming from countries where there are
no resources like we might have here in the United States to ad-
dress situations of domestic or community violence.
But the point is, they have experienced extraordinary trauma be-
fore they make that migration journey, and then they take the mi-
gration journey and experience, in many cases, additional trauma.
And then they arrive at the United States and are placed in deten-
tion.
And though I’m not a medical expert, it is my understanding
that what they’re experiencing at that point is something referred
to as complex trauma, based on a complex trauma history.
62
That very much compounds what they are experiencing. It can
limit their development. It can certainly affect their ability to tell
their stories, which is why the idea of rushing children through im-
migration proceedings or keeping them locked up through their
court date is really a horrifying one for anyone who works with
children, who understands that that is not an environment in
which a child will ever be able to tell their story in a way that al-
lows us to understand what has happened and make a fair decision
in their case.
Mr. C
LAY
. All of this is extremely disturbing. Now, one of the cli-
ents stated that the water tasted like chlorine. The client disclosed
that there were about 30 minors in the detention center as well.
The other minors started to complain about the food and water
that was provided to them, and the client stated that the minors
started protesting about it, and because of it, the officers took out
all of the sleeping mats. Are you familiar with other instances of
retaliation like that?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. Yes. When we were in Clint, we talked with a
girl who was in a cell with about 20 other girls, 10 to 20 other girls
who were very young. And the nurse would bring in two lice combs
so that all the girls could share the lice combs, which is exactly the
opposite of what you’re supposed to do when you have lice. And
sometime later, a guard came back to get those two lice combs
back. One of the lice combs was missing. In retaliation, as punish-
ment for losing a lice comb, every mat and blanket was taken out
of that room, and the girls had to sleep on the cement floor.
Mr. C
LAY
. That’s nothing but pure evil.
My time’s up, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much.
Ms. N
ORTON
.
Ms. N
ORTON
. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
It was very important to lay out with some particularity what
has been happening. I know that we passed a very controversial
supplemental appropriation, but at least we got some money into
the pipeline. As controversial as it was, I’ll tell you one thing: With
Democrats in charge of this House, had we allowed this session to
go—had we gone on recess with no more money on the border, then
the blame would have been more than it already is.
I think both sides have to take responsibility for what is hap-
pening on that border, and I certainly think that the Trump ad-
ministration should not get away with blaming the Congress en-
tirely on—blaming the problem entirely on Congress. This Con-
gress has just taken over, so, obviously, there’s a lot of blame that
could be cast.
I want to look at the administration’s zero tolerance policy that
forced the separation of 2,800 children, and we’re still hearing and
still living with and led to overcrowding and delays that nobody
would want to justify. Ms. Mukherjee, was that decision to sepa-
rate children required by law?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. Absolutely not. Absolutely not.
Ms. N
ORTON
. So that had to have been made at the administra-
tion’s level?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. Yes. And a Federal court has held that it is un-
constitutional to separate children from their families for deter-
63
rence purpose. The Fifth Amendment of the United States Con-
stitution protects family integrity.
Ms. N
ORTON
. So not only required by law but unconstitutional as
it happened. Now, it should be clear that that policy overloaded the
system. One of my friends on the other side talked about what hap-
pens when the Emergency Department of a hospital is overloaded.
But let me look at alternatives that were available. Apparently,
this very administration did permit the release of immigrant fami-
lies. The date I’m given is June 2017, and they were—had to report
back in to ICE, and they had to frequently check in, and not until
this hearing did I learn that there was a 99 percent success rate.
I mean, we finally got success on something. We didn’t all grab it
and say: Thank goodness; let’s go from there.
Look, I bet we don’t have a 99-percent success rate when we do
bail for criminals in our own criminal justice system.
Why in the world did that end, Ms. Nagda, and what decision,
what effect—why did it end? What effect did that have on immi-
grant children, with separating immigrant children from their fam-
ilies?
Ms. N
AGDA
. Thank you, Representative.
I can’t speak to why the program ended. I do know that when
the program ended, we lost a very effective tool that allowed indi-
viduals to live in the community together to find attorneys. And we
do know that when families and children have counsel, they appear
at their hearings. They participate in their cases, and there’s a
chance——
Ms. N
ORTON
. It’s almost like they’re afraid not to appear, that,
you know, they already were afraid at the border, and then, if you
get here and don’t appear and you have the full force of law, that
you can understand the intimidation to say: I better go. I better go
there.
I’m not sure what there was to be afraid of.
I was interested. I had my staff, I said: Please explain this thing
called metering to me.
The DHS inspector system issued a report that found that meter-
ing may have led to additional border crossings. Now, we’re trying
to cut down on border crossings, but, apparently, metering, I found
out, what does that mean? Limits the number of people who can
request asylum at the border. Could you tell me how that, Ms.
Mukherjee, how did that prove—have the opposite effect from what
was desired?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. I was in Tijuana earlier this year, and I wit-
nessed firsthand the problems with the metering system. There are
hundreds——
Ms. N
ORTON
. Explain—if you could, explain metering. Explain
the jargon to us. Go ahead.
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. There are hundreds of asylum seekers who
want to present themselves lawfully at a port of entry. A port of
entry is where CBP officers work. They want to go to those CBP
officers and request asylum. The United States has blocked off
ports of entry throughout our southern border and limits the num-
ber of asylum seekers who can enter the country every day.
The first day that I got to Tijuana, zero asylum seekers were al-
lowed to cross at that port of entry. In subsequent days, I saw the
64
numbers go up to 40 asylum seekers, 60 asylum seekers, but that
is what is helping to contribute to massive problems on the south-
ern side of the U.S. border.
Ms. N
ORTON
. Like unlawful border crossings?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. Exactly.
Ms. N
ORTON
. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you, Ms. Norton.
Mr. Garcia, welcome to our committee.
Mr. G
ARCIA
. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I’m very grate-
ful for the opportunity to participate as a part of this panel asking
questions of the witnesses today.
I’d like to just remind everyone of a couple things, that it was
the then chief law enforcement of the land, Jeff Sessions, who in-
troduced zero tolerance policy, that that was the message that the
Trump administration wanted to send to the world, and it was that
announcement that led to the pecking order of other functionaries
within the administration to develop what is laid out in the memo
previously mentioned, that Mr. Homan and others signed on to.
They were responsible for operationalizing zero tolerance policy.
That is at the root of family separation that we have come to know
and many of the horror stories that we have heard here this after-
noon.
Ms. Costello, the Inspector General’s Office that you head re-
ported that some of the most atrocious and inhumane conditions
that our country has ever heard of and witnessed at the border
have taken place. To your knowledge, Ms. Costello, did any chil-
dren die at the border during the Obama Administration?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. I don’t have any reporting or facts on that, sir.
Mr. G
ARCIA
. Thank you. I’m deeply concerned by the findings
from multiple independent reports that the government failed to
adequately track separated families, which made it much harder to
reunify them later on.
Ms. Maxwell, the January 29 HHS OIG report found, quote, that
HHS faced significant challenges in identifying separated children,
including the lack of an existing integrated data system to track
separated families across HHS and DHS and the complexity of de-
termining which children should be considered separated. Why
would an integrated tracking system have been important?
Ms. M
AXWELL
. It was important to be able to make sure you
identify the children that were separated and the people and the
parents that they were separated from. We are concerned today,
though, with ongoing issues with that data system, in particular,
the quality of information in that system about current children
that are being separated from their parents and the reasons for
those separations.
Mr. G
ARCIA
. What impact did the absence of a tracking system
have on the reunification of separated children?
Ms. M
AXWELL
. It meant that the government had to spend sig-
nificant time just identifying who those children were. So, in the
absence of a system to track the children and their families, the
government faced an intensive effort in which they had to look at
60 data bases across both programs. They looked at 12,000 case
files and, even then, had to go to the grantees to get certifications
just to identify the children.
65
Mr. G
ARCIA
. And produce more delays. These egregious and cruel
conditions and policies are not accidental. Mr. Homan, during your
time as Acting ICE Director, deterrence was the order of the day
for you. The memo bears that out. Exactly what you planned for.
The Trump administration claimed they had no choice but to rip
children from their parents because they were criminally pros-
ecuting the parents pursuant to zero tolerance policy, again, in
policies that the administration created and that you, Mr. Homan,
accepted and forced and championed as we’ve seen. Let me remind
everyone that the Trump administration tried to ban asylum seek-
ing and started the process of metering, which then prevents peo-
ple from coming through legal ports of entry. That exacerbated the
crisis. People are desperately waiting months just to get in line and
be granted the inalienable right to due process.
Mr. Homan, you have said that most immigrants are, quote, not
criminals other than the criminal act that they do when they enter
the country illegally. That is why I think we ought to revisit de-
criminalizing desperation, striking sections 1325 and 1326 of title
8 of the U.S. Code, the statutes that the administration has lever-
aged to separate thousands of children from their families.
Mr. Homan, do you understand that the consequences of separa-
tion of many children will be lifelong trauma and carried across
generations? Have we not learned from the internment of Japanese
Americans, Mr. Homan? I’m a father. Do you have children? How
can you possibly allow this to happen under your watch? Do you
not care? Is it because these children don’t look like children that
are around you? I don’t get it. Have you ever held a deceased child
in your arms?
Mr. H
OMAN
. First of all, your comments are disgusting. I’ve
served my country.
Mr. G
ARCIA
. I find your comments disgusting as well.
Mr. H
OMAN
. I’ve served my country 34 years. I served my coun-
try for 34 years, and yes, I held a five-year-old boy in my arms in
the back of that tractor-trailer. I knelt down beside him and said
a prayer for him because I knew what his last 30 minutes of his
life were like, and I had a five-year-old son at the time.
What I’ve been trying to do in my 34 years serving my Nation
is to save lives. So, for you sit there and insult my integrity and
my love for my country and for children, that’s why this whole
thing needs to be fixed, and you’re the Member. Fix it.
Mr. G
ARCIA
. We agree on that, but I disagree—but I also dis-
agree with your characterization of it——
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. The gentleman’s time has expired. It’s my
time now.
Mr. J
ORDAN
. Mr. Chairman?
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. It’s my time.
Mr. J
ORDAN
. Well, I just—the gentleman ripped off about seven
different questions designed to go at the character of Mr. Homan,
and Mr. Homan should be given a chance to respond. It was ridicu-
lous, the way he just rattled them all off and wouldn’t let him re-
spond to them.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Let me say this. I understand that, but
first of all, I’m going to have civility in my hearings, all right. No.
I have the floor.
66
Mr. J
ORDAN
. I understand, and I agree with you.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. I’m going to have civility. That’s why we’re
banging so that we could hear each person speak. I have been very
courteous and very kind.
Now, Mr. Homan, do you have something to say?
Mr. H
OMAN
. No one in this room has seen what I’ve seen in my
34-year career.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Very well.
Mr. H
OMAN
. No one has experienced what I have experienced. I
saw many dead bodies coming across this border. You want to talk
about a memo? This memo is one option to stop death; not just
about enforcing the law, stop death. If you want to legalize illegal
immigration, good luck with that because it’s going to get a hell of
a lot worse on that border. If you say, ‘‘Okay, from now on, there
will be no consequence, no deterrence, it’s not illegal to come to this
country illegally,’’ more families will come; 31 percent of women
will be raped; more children will die.
We’re a Nation of laws. If you don’t like it, sir, change it. You’re
the legislator. I’m the executive branch. And I’ve served my country
honorably for 34 years, and I will not sit here and have anybody
say that I don’t care about children because they’re not the same
color as my children.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much. It is my time. I
have not asked questions yet, and I have quite a few.
First of all, let me say this to Mr. Homan. I have never, and I
don’t—I’m hoping that—you know, I’ve listened to all of this, and
sometimes I think we put issues on top of issues, and there are
quite a few issues swirling around here.
I think all of us appreciate our Border Patrol and those people
that work for our Federal Government, and I want to thank you
for being here today, and I can kind of understand why you could
get a little bit upset. I got that.
But I also say we’ve got to be—we need to concentrate on, and
I think it was Ms. Pressley that said it, you know, on the living
and just not the dead and just not all the problems, but we’ve got
to figure out some solutions, and I think you’ve presented some.
And, Ms. Mukherjee, Mr. Homan five times now has presented
three things that he thought ought to be done and that could re-
solve this problem. But you said something that is really bothering
me, and you know, it’s going to make me—it makes me think. You
said it’s not necessarily about the money; it’s about a will. So I’ve
got two pieces of that. I want you to talk about what Mr. Homan,
a man who has been at his job—over 30 years, Mr. Homan?
Mr. H
OMAN
. Yes, sir.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Over 30 years and who is a dedicated pub-
lic servant, his recommendations, and then I want you to elaborate
a little bit on that issue of it doesn’t have to be this way, in other
words, just because of the money. You go ahead. Keep your voice
up, please.
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. Thank you. So, in terms of Mr. Homan’s rec-
ommendations, they will not work. The children and families who
I represent are refugees. They are fleeing terrible violence. They
are coming to the United States to seek safety. The United States
is not the only country in our region that has seen an increase in
67
refugees and asylum seekers. All of the countries surrounding the
Northern Triangle—Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—have
seen marked increases in the number of asylum seekers coming to
their countries.
What we need is not to end the Flores settlement agreement.
What we need is not to change the Trafficking Victims Protection
Reauthorization Act. Those are two critical pillars that protect im-
migrant children in Federal custody, that limit their time in CBP
facilities to 72 hours and require that children be released to fam-
ily members after appropriate vetting as quickly as possible.
Let me offer you five solutions: One, let independent doctors into
these facilities. Two, let public health experts inspect these facili-
ties and give them authorization to order remediations. That is
what the plaintiff’s counsel in the Flores case sought just two
weeks ago in Federal court. The administration’s response to those
requests was no. The administration argued, and I quote, that that
would be a coercive remedy.
The third recommendation that I have is to ensure that children
are not in CBP custody for any longer than 72 hours. This adminis-
tration has refused, has failed to provide plaintiffs’ counsel in Flo-
res with any data about how long children are being held in CBP
custody. You have oversight powers on this question.
Fourth, children should not be separated from their parents. Im-
migration officers should not be separating children from their
mothers, their fathers, their brothers, their grandmothers, absent
a reason to believe that there is imminent risk of harm to the child.
Now, finally, my fifth recommendation is that we look at the
data and do what works. When families have access to a lawyer,
they appear at their immigration court hearings 99 percent of the
time. When families are offered support from a social worker
through the ICE family case management program, they show up
for their immigration proceedings 99 percent of the time.
Children and families belong together. They do not belong in de-
tention. They should be released, and they should be free. And
doing that would be far less expensive than what we’re doing now.
The ICE case family management program costs only $38 a day per
family unit. To detain one person in a family detention center, it
costs on average $320 per day. To detain a child at Homestead like
the legally blind child I found there in March, it costs the U.S. tax-
payers between $750 and $775 a day. That child was detained
there about 120 days unnecessarily when he had a father who was
desperate, desperately trying to get his son back.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Let me ask you this, then. So we are
spending a minimum of $300 a day, minimum, on these children.
Is that what you’re telling me?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. That is the rate that we are paying for one per-
son a day at the family detention centers.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. And if any of us were given $300 a day to
take care of our child, that’s quite a bit of money, and you could
do all kinds of things. Am I right?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. That’s right.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. All right. Let me go on.
Ms. Costello, I want to ask you about DHS’ inspector general’s
inspections of several immigration detention centers on the south-
68
ern border. These reports were shocking to the conscience, and I
think they will shock any American who takes the time to read
them or even to look at the pictures.
In May 2019, you issued a report on, quote, dangerous over-
crowding and prolonged detention, quote, at a border facility in El
Paso, Texas. I understand that your team saw 900 detainees in an
facility intended for only about 125. Is that right?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Yes, sir.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. The IG report found that some detained
immigrants, quote, had been held in standing-room-only conditions
for days or weeks, end of quote. And the report goes on to say,
quote, with limited access to showers and clean clothing, detainees
were wearing soiled clothing for days or weeks. The report con-
cludes that these conditions present, quote, an immediate risk to
the health and safety, not just of the detainees but also the DHS
agents and officers. Ms. Costello, in all your years in government
service, had you ever seen any conditions like this?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. No, I have not, but more importantly, the inspec-
tion team that did the work on the ground for me has not, and
they’ve been doing this for years. The reason we issued those man-
agement alerts is because they had never seen anything like what
they saw in both the El Paso center we reported on and the facili-
ties in the Rio Grande valley.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. But this is not an isolated incident. Just
last week, your office issued another report describing, quote, dan-
gerous overcrowding and prolonged detention, end of quote, at five
different border facilities in Texas. Together, these facilities held
over 2,500 young people. You reported that nearly one-third of
these children had been held longer than the 72-hour limit. Ms.
Costello, what were conditions like for the children in these facili-
ties?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. It was similar to the situation in El Paso for the
children. The overcrowding was dangerous, significant. Again, my
inspectors described the situation like they had never seen before.
That is the picture.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. That is the picture?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Yes.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Can you tell us what is in that picture,
please?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. It is an overcrowded facility, you know. It is fami-
lies in a facility in a space that they can’t possibly fit in. I think
the caption underneath may describe—does it describe—no. I don’t
know that it describes the number.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. No. So you mean people had to be like
that pretty much 24/7?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Yes. Although to clarify, they visited on the days
that they visited, so, you know, that’s their observation from that
snapshot in time. But the understanding is that folks have been in
that position for a while.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. So, when you went in, you all were—the
Inspector General’s Office was allowed to take the photo?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Yes. You know, that’s part of how we do our
work. It’s how we collect our evidence. It, frankly, would never
occur to me, sir, not to have our team go in and take pictures.
69
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much. How long were
these children kept in these conditions?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. In that facility?
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Yes.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. In the Rio Grande valley, the information that we
have is that children were—31 percent of them were there for more
than 72 hours; 165 were there longer than a week. So that’s chil-
dren. With regard to unaccompanied alien children, we had 50
under seven, under the age of seven who were there for over two
weeks.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Now, give me that picture. Let me ask you
this. I just note—I’m just curious. Where are the toilet facilities in
this? Do you know?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. No. I don’t actually know.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Okay.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. But children are supposed to have access to toi-
lets in the holding rooms.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Ms. Mukherjee, do you have a comment?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. Yes. So, in facilities like this, and this is knowl-
edge based on interviewing hundreds of immigrant children and
families, the toilets are open. There is no privacy to use the toilet.
Children try to use those foil wrappers that you see to cover them-
selves when they’re toileting, and this leads to problems.
In Clint, we talked to girls who were so embarrassed that boys
could see them while they were using the toilet. We talked to a boy
who tried not to eat because he was so embarrassed to use the toi-
let. Every day, these children are being degraded by having no ac-
cess to any privacy when they’re using the toilet.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Yes, Ms. Costello.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. I want to clarify. A member of my team was able
to clarify for me. You can’t tell from the picture——
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Yes.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
[continuing]. but apparently the toilet is in back
of that wall.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. In back of that right there?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Yes. Yes, sir. You can’t see that, obviously, clearly
from the picture, but apparently that’s where it’s located.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Okay. One officer interviewed described
the security situation as a, quote, ticking time bomb. Ms. Costello,
CBP has detailed standards it is required to follow when detaining
these children. Based on your inspections, do you believe the CBP
is meeting those standards?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Not for every one of the standards, sir. I do want
to emphasize that when we visited the facilities, they were well
stocked, as I said in my prepared statement, with diapers, juice,
snacks.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Did they know you were coming?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. No.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Okay.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. All of our inspection are unannounced——
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Okay.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
[continuing]. and that’s really only the way to do
it. What they’re not meeting standards are obviously the crowding,
the prolonged detention, some of the hygiene that the children are
70
supposed to have, but it would be impossible to do so in the condi-
tions that we saw there. It’s shocking.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Does it shock you that we’re spending a
minimum of $300 per day?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. I don’t have information that validates that par-
ticular number.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. That’s not what I asked you.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. I know, sir.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. That’s not what I asked you. I said, would
it shock you to know that we were spending a minimum of $300
a day for folks to live in a facility like that?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. If that were an accurate number, sir, yes.
Mr. H
OMAN
. Sir, can I answer that question for you?
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Sure.
Mr. H
OMAN
. $300 a day is for family residential centers, and the
reason that price is $300 a day is because we have to provide child
psychologists, pediatricians, educational programs. The pictures
you are being shown are Border Patrol facilities. There’s not a cost
per day there. The $300 per day, that’s an ICE facility, a different
facility.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Well, we’re spending something, though,
right, wherever the picture is. We’re spending some money. They’re
not coming for free.
Mr. H
OMAN
. I don’t know what the Border Patrol facilities cost.
I’m just—the $300 figure is an ICE facility.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. I got you. I understand.
Did you have a comment on that, Ms. Mukherjee?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. I wanted to agree with Mr. Homan. That’s cor-
rect.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Wow. That’s—thank you very much.
So, now, Ms. Costello, you’ve testified that DHS, quote, has not
developed a long-term plan to address the issues within detention
centers along the southern border, end of quote, and that the steps
DHS has taken to alleviate overcrowding continue, these are your
words, to fall short. Is that accurate?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. You know, I think the efforts to put tents in place
and try to create more space to illuminate the overcrowding are
first steps, but as I did testify earlier, it’s about moving children
and families and adults out of these facilities to begin with. The
CBP facilities were never intended to house folks for—as many
folks on the panel have testified today for longer than 72 hours. We
are currently engaged in efforts to try to identify why they’re stay-
ing there for longer than 72 hours and to offer some recommenda-
tions for things that we can do about that.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. How soon do you expect those rec-
ommendations to be made?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. We’re just getting involved in that work.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. That’s not what I asked you.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. I know.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Okay.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. But you know if I promise you a date and then
I don’t——
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. You know I’m going to have you up in
here.
71
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. I know you’re going to ask me again, sir.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Yes. I certainly will.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. It will take some time for us to get there. I think
we have several lines of work that we’re engaged in on all of these
issues that have been discussed today. Some of them will be ready
this fall. That one, probably not yet.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. You know, I want you to understand that
we—this is very unusual for us to be here this late on a Friday,
on a getaway day.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. I know, sir.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. But it’s urgent for us. It’s a life-and-death
situation, and that’s why I’m kind of pressing you a little bit here.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Yes.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. I just want—like somebody said on the
other side, we’re looking for solutions. And sometimes to get to so-
lutions, you have to have accountability, and you have to have
pressure. So we want to see something get done as fast as we can.
Yes, ma’am.
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. I want to add to the record that CBP has dealt
with larger number of apprehensions in the past without causing
and creating a health and safety crisis. So, if apprehensions con-
tinue at the rate that they’ve been in 2019 without the drop that
we saw last month, without the 28-percent drop from June 2019,
we’ll see no more than 67 percent of the number of apprehensions
that we saw in 1986, in 1998, 1999, and in 2000.
And the Flores settlement agreement was reached in 1997. It re-
quires the government to plan for an influx. Two weeks ago, a Fed-
eral court recognized that the government has had 22 years to plan
for an influx, and the court ordered the government to do so forth-
with. So I agree with you, Chairman, about the urgency of the situ-
ation and that the administration needs to act now to care for
these children and release them promptly.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Ms. Costello, you’re going to get back to
me, right, let me know when you kind of realize—I mean, believe
you can get that done?
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Of course, we will, sir.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. I really would appreciate that.
Do you have anything else because I’m going to let each one of
them ask one question. Okay. Fine. Yes.
We’re going to let—you all have been so kind, Members, to stay
here, and I just want to check to see if you all had a question or
two. We will go to Mr. Raskin and then come back down this way.
Mr. R
ASKIN
. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. And I’m very
proud to be a member of your committee with all the extraordinary
work we did this week to open America’s eyes to what’s going on
in the name of every American citizen at the border.
Ms. Mukherjee, I wanted to ask you, because you’ve been doing
this kind of work, as I understand it, since you were a law student
in a clinical program in 2003, so you have some historical sense of
this looking at it as a human rights advocate and a lawyer from
that perspective. Can you compare the conditions that you’ve seen
at immigration facilities over the last year to what you saw before
this? Because the truth is, I think, I’m like most Americans, who
are not in the immigration law field, and I haven’t paid close atten-
72
tion to this, but is this what it’s always been like, or are, as we
have seen, a degradation and deterioration of the conditions? How
do we understand this in historical context?
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. I have never seen anything like this. I have
been involved in suing three administrations to try and seek better
protections for immigrant children in detention, but never before
have I seen what I saw, heard, and smelled as what I did in Clint
last month. Never before have we learned of 700 children being de-
tained in a facility designed for 100 adults. Never before have I
met with children detained in CBP custody for even a week, much
less several weeks. Never before has my team of lawyers had to di-
rectly intervene to get babies admitted to the hospital.
The week of June 10th, my colleagues, a pediatrician and several
lawyers, did interviews in McAllen, Texas, at the Ursula facility,
and they identified five babies who were so sick that they needed
to be admitted to the neonative intensive care unit of the local hos-
pital.
For nearly a decade, as the committee knows, there were no re-
ported deaths of children in Federal immigration custody. In just
the past year, seven children have died in custody or just after
being released. This is different than what I’ve ever seen before.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much.
Mr. R
ASKIN
. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Mr. Comer.
Mr. C
OMER
. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Homan, you’re clearly the expert. You’re clearly the person
that’s performed the sacrifice to try to defend the border, to try to
protect Americans, to try to save lives from Americans and others
who are here legally or illegally or however they’re here. Do you
have any closings remarks because I know that you’ve been cutoff
a lot today. I’m very sorry that a member on the other side ques-
tioned your integrity because, clearly, you are credible. You have
served this country with honor, and I just wanted to give you an
opportunity to have some closings remarks or touch on anything
that’s been mentioned in the last 30 minutes.
Mr. H
OMAN
. I will just say this: I’ve served my country for 34
years, and there was a comment made earlier that I—in my
LinkedIn, that I oversaw 300-and-some thousand. Actually, in the
four years of my leadership, we oversaw a million illegal aliens
being removed and be deported. And I got a Presidential Rank
Award from President Obama for distinguished service. I’ve worked
for six Presidents, and I respect each and every one of them be-
cause they’re the President of the United States, but my job as a
career law enforcement officer is to execute a mission within the
framework provided me, the framework being money, resources,
and policies. I executed the mission under President Obama in a
leadership role at ICE, and I’ve executed the mission under Presi-
dent Trump for a year and a half. I did my job. And a lot of this
back and forth today—and I’ll leave it with this. This situation at
the border is the failure of Congress to act. These children are in
bad conditions. My heart breaks for them. They shouldn’t be in—
Border Patrol jails weren’t built for a vulnerable population like
women and children. So give these people the—HHS—the money
they need to get these people to the facility that is built and
73
planned for them. No one wants to see that, but we need to stop
the vilification of the men and women who are doing the best they
can under very difficult circumstances. I was a Border Patrol
agent. I know many Border Patrol agents, and they’ve shed many
a tear of what’s going on. I hope Congress will work with this ad-
ministration and try to fix it. I do.
I think we’re a country of laws. We need to enforce the law. And
for anybody in Congress to say, ‘‘Well, ignore the law because we’d
rather not fix it,’’ is just the wrong way to go. I ask the Border Pa-
trol and ICE to do their job. I ask Congress to do theirs.
Mr. C
OMER
. Two things, and I’ll yield back, Mr. Chairman. First
of all, something that’s good to point out. These facilities, correct
me if I’m wrong, were not built to house children.
Mr. H
OMAN
. They’re jails.
Mr. C
OMER
. No. 2, you have given three solutions that I agree
100 percent would begin to solve the problem. And I can assure you
that this side of the aisle is going to do everything we can to work
with the Trump administration to implement that. It takes 218
votes to pass legislation and move to the Senate. We have about
198. And I hope that we can work in a bipartisan way because to
get to a solution in this Congress, it’s going to take bipartisan sup-
port.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much.
Ms. P
RESSLEY
.
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Homan, I wanted to—just for my own edification, I was won-
dering if you could answer a couple of questions that I was unable
to get answered during our visit at CBP. Are you aware of exactly
what is the temperature that the—where families are being de-
tained should be at?
And then, secondarily, what does the heat index need to be out-
side for people to be moved from tents inside?
Mr. H
OMAN
. I don’t know the answer to that question, ma’am. I
can say that the biggest complaint you hear from folks is that the
Border Patrol cells many times are very cold. They call them ice
boxes. And the reason for that is because many of these people
from Central America don’t experience air conditioning on a 24/7
basis. But I don’t know if they have—to be honest with you, I don’t
know if they have a limit on where it should be at. I don’t. I don’t
have an answer to that question.
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. Okay. Is there anyone on the panel that could
speak to a recommended temperature?
Ms. N
AGDA
. Representative, I don’t have those numbers, but I
know that advocacy groups have pulled that information in the
past, and I’d be happy to share it with you. They’ve prepared re-
ports in terms of what they have been told are the standards and
what ought to be the standards.
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. Okay. Does that include anything so far as a lava-
tory and a toilet because I would be curious, you know. Again, we
make this about funding. If you send equipment some place and
more goods, and you send one toilet to serve 500 people, that is not
sanitary. That is a public health issue. So I would be curious to
know for my own edification what is recommended.
74
Ms. N
AGDA
. I don’t think we’ve ever had those recommendations
because we’ve never been in a circumstance where we had to say
how many toilets are needed for children——
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. Right.
Ms. N
AGDA
[continuing]. is privacy required. Things have never
been this bad. So those reports don’t exist, but I suspect they are
on the way.
Ms. P
RESSLEY
. Okay. All right. And then Mr. Homan, I just
wanted to thank you for your commitment on the record to partner
with me to do everything we can to save this Angolan detainee
Mariana. My chief of staff, Sarah Groh, is in the back. She’ll ap-
proach you as this hearing adjourns so that we can get on the
phone right away. Thank you.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
Ms. O
CASIO
-C
ORTEZ
. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
When we were at these facilities, one of the things that I had no-
ticed was that there were these tents in the back with—I mean,
they looked like cages, and I know that a lot of the migrants, they
call the cold rooms ‘‘hieleras,’’ and they call these pens ‘‘perreras,’’
dog pounds. There were a lot of them, but they were all empty
when I arrived.
And we had heard reports that there were hundreds of people in
the El Paso border station. And so I asked some of the migrants:
Is it true that there were people here, or is there anyone else here?
And they said: No. There’s no one else here.
And I said: Were there people here? We had been hearing that
there were hundreds of people being kept in this facility.
And they said: Yes. They took them away.
And I had heard from these migrants but in other—from other
facilities we had visited, a kind of a welcome station for families,
and we had heard similar things from the pastor there as well,
that CBP changes up facilities when they know—when they have
advance notice if a congressional delegation is coming. I’m curious
if you all have heard anything about this or heard any accounts to
corroborate what they have said.
Ms. M
UKHERJEE
. What I can say is that the government had 3
weeks’ notice that we were coming to the El Paso sector and that
the officers on the ground at the Clint facility knew days in ad-
vance that we were coming. And what we saw was so appalling
that we had to share it with America. We had no other choice, and
very quickly thereafter, we learned that children were being moved
out of the facility in the hundreds and that CBP was releasing
thousands of children.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Thank you very much.
I’m going to just make one closing statement, but I have two or
three questions, and we’ll be finished in the next five minutes.
Ms. Costello, I was shocked to read the reports about the racist
and sexist posts on a Secret Service Facebook page used by current
and former Border Patrol agents. Can you confirm today whether
your office is investigating this issue? And before you answer, I un-
derstand that you have certain limitations. I’m just asking that
question. Go ahead.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. I can answer it in this case.
75
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Okay.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. But if you’ll just allow me to elaborate.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. Go ahead.
Ms. C
OSTELLO
. Those kinds of complaints, we do get them, and
because they relate to violations of the behavior and code of con-
duct, usually the CBP Office of Professional Responsibility handles
those because we get so many complaints that we want our crimi-
nal investigators to focus on corruption and crime and very high-
level administrative misconduct. So the individual behaviors, we
still feel those are appropriate for CBP’s Office of Professional Re-
sponsibility.
However, given that there were allegations that leadership knew
that they used this Facebook page to get information, that they
didn’t take action earlier when they knew, we do feel that that’s
an appropriate issue for my office to look into, but it won’t be a
criminal investigation, sir. It will be done out of our Office of Spe-
cial Reviews, which is the same office that did the management
alerts.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. I understand.
As we conclude, you know, I’ve sat here, and I’ve listened to ev-
erybody, even you in your testimony. I was looking at it. I was in
a meeting but watching it. You, Mr. Homan, I heard your testi-
mony. I heard everybody’s testimony. And as I sat listening to all
of what has happened today, I go back to what I said a little bit
earlier. I think we really have got to concentrate on these children
who are trying and their parents are trying to simply live a better
life and many of them escaping from just pure horror stories. And,
you know, when you use, Ms. Costello, words like ‘‘imminent dan-
ger’’—I forget who used it—but to me, that’s life and death stuff.
That’s—you know, I immediately go to a whole ’nother gear be-
cause it’s about saving somebody’s life, saving a lot of people’s lives.
And then there’s another piece to this, and I think what hap-
pens, Mr. Homan, a lot of—I listened to your testimony and what
you—particularly the last statements that you made in answer to
Mr. Comer’s giving you that opportunity. You know, you have got
a good point. You’re trying to carry out the law, and if it’s anything
is to happen, we need to do it. But in the meantime—it’s the mean-
time that I’m worried about—what happens?
I tell my children that whenever you go into a storm, you have
to respect the storm. In other words, you don’t go into an icy condi-
tion speeding. You have to respect the storm. In other words, we
have to—right now, I think we’ve got to go the extra mile to try
to make sure we do the things immediately to bring comfort to
these children.
We had a hearing yesterday where we talked about the effects
of trauma on children. And I’m telling you, it was chilling, and I
could not help when I was listening to our witnesses but think
about these children. You heard me say at the beginning of this
hearing our children are the living messengers we send to a future
we will never see. The question is, how do we send them? How are
we sending them? I mean, you think about a child walking around
with a dirty diaper, no toothpaste, torn away from their parents,
smelling bad.
76
I mean, there’s some kind of way—and I’m not blaming you, Mr.
Homan, and I don’t think anybody here is doing that. What we’re
saying is we too want to find solutions to resolve this issue. These
children will grow up when we’re dead. We’ll be dancing with the
angels. And what kind of message will we have sent? And I think
that’s the reason why we have so much interest in these hearings.
Our members on both sides are concerned about, who is this young
man, this little baby, who is now 4 years old, going to grow into?
What’s he going to be like?
And it is our duty. This moment is our watch. We are on watch
right now, and what we do now, we can put our hand prints and
our fingerprints on their futures and on their destinies. And so part
of this hearing is about trying to change the trajectory of their des-
tinies, trying to change the trajectory of their destinies. And so
help me God, I’m going to do everything in our power and work
with our entire committee to try to resolve these issues as fast as
we possibly can.
Without objection, the following items shall be entered into the
hearing record, a letter from the Anti-Defamation League, a rec-
ommendation from Kids in Need of Defense, a statement from the
Church World Service, a statement from the Center for Victims of
Torture, a letter from the organization of Zero to Three.
Chairman C
UMMINGS
. These documents set forth recommenda-
tions to stop separating the children from their families and unnec-
essary detentions and ensure we provide humane treatment to ev-
eryone in government custody.
Again, I would like to thank our witnesses for testifying today.
It’s been a long day. And I want to thank all of you, all of you, all
the Members, who most of you all would have been on a plane by
now going to where the places you’ve got to go, but you felt that
it was so important that you be here, and I appreciate that.
Without objection, all members will have five legislative days
within which to submit additional written questions for the wit-
nesses to the chair, which will be forwarded to the witnesses for
their response. I ask our witnesses to please respond as promptly
as possible and as fast as you possibly can.
Again, I want to thank all of you, and this hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:39 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
Æ