H.R. 9773, Permanent Trump Secure Border Act and Ratification of Subcommittee Assignments
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House Judiciary U.S. House of Representatives
Follow its sittingsChip Roy
What's it going to take before we work together to make sure the border remains secure no matter the occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. When I started working as a staffer in the United States Senate shortly after September 11th, and a group of visa overstayers murdered nearly 3,000 Americans, I thought surely Republicans and Democrats could agree that we should close the loopholes that allowed 19 foreign terrorists to game our immigration system. But the Democrats were only interested in amnesty.
The loopholes remained. During then President Obama's administration, and I want you to hear this, under President Obama's administration, after surges of unaccompanied alien children and families crossed our southwest border illegally, the President, along with then Secretary Jeh Johnson, asked Congress to close certain loopholes that allowed those surges. A Democrat President. House Republicans passed a fix, but Democrats in Congress wouldn't come to the table to do what the President of their party had requested. The loopholes remained.
When President Trump called for additional legislative tools to help secure the border during his first administration, our Democrat colleagues refused to work with us to help the President. The loopholes remained. And even after the Biden-Harris administration unleashed the largest mass illegal immigration in United States history, our Democrat colleagues refused to fix the statutory loopholes that they were abusing to allow and incentivize that mass illegal immigration to occur that resulted in the deaths and destruction of thousands of American people and the flow of fentanyl into our communities. Tens of millions of illegal aliens later, after thousands of Americans were murdered or otherwise violently victimized by illegal alien border crossers, the loopholes still remained. Three years ago, this committee mobilized to pass the critical border security components in H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act, leading to its passage on the House floor, bringing different corners of the Republican conference together to codify common sense border security.
We did it then, and we can do it today. Our nation's future depends on it. I suspect that today, my Democrat colleagues will once again refuse to support common sense statutory changes to secure the United States border. And again, I want to clarify, statutory changes, that is to make permanent changes irrespective of who occupies the White House. But my GOP colleagues cannot lose focus.
We must ensure that border security is not a byproduct of whoever is elected to the presidency. President Trump has succeeded where none other has even tried. He's done so using nearly every available statute and administrative authority. He has done so despite constant rhetoric from open borders advocates, including my Democrat colleagues in Congress. He's done so because that's what he promised the American voters he would do.
But the President only has so many tools at his disposal. And the statutory loopholes that were present decades ago and during the Biden administration remain today, meaning that when President Trump's administration's actions to secure the border go away, the border could once again be abused. Today we consider the Permanent Trump Secure Border Act, which closes statutory loopholes that allow the Biden-Harris administration to flood our country with millions of illegal aliens. Title I enshrines statutorily the changes that the Trump administration made to asylum law and policy by regulation and other executive action. The changes include additional criminal bars to asylum, a requirement that the alien claim fear at a port of entry, an increase of the credible fear standard to deter frivolous claims, and reining in immigration and federal courts' abuse of asylum grounds like, quote, "particular social group," end quote.
Title II clarifies in statute that the DHS Secretary must remove or detain illegal aliens who arrive at the border or place them into a Remain in Mexico type program. There would be no other options. The aliens cannot be paroled or otherwise released into the United States unless an immigration court grants the alien's asylum claim or other immigration benefit claim. If an administration refuses to follow the law, state attorneys general have standing to sue under these provisions. Title II also allows the DHS Secretary to suspend the entry of aliens at the border to gain operational control.
Title III helps end mass unaccompanied alien children migration.
It requires that current law regarding unaccompanied alien children from Mexico and Canada be applied to children from other countries. This means that UACs from non-contiguous countries will be screened for trafficking or a fear of return and if none is found will be sent home and reunited with their family in their home country. Title III will help disincentivize parents to pay violent smuggling cartels to transport their children across the border and it will reduce the exploitation of UACs once in the United States. Title IV closes the so-called Flores settlement agreement, that loophole that has for many years prevented families who cross the border illegally from being detained for the pendency of their immigration court proceedings. As many know, the number of real and fake family units illegally crossing the border skyrocketed over the last decade because these aliens knew they will be promptly released once they get to the United States.
Title V puts visa overstay, currently a civil infraction, on par with illegal entry as a misdemeanor crime and increases penalties for overstay. I will remind people how I introduced this statement, that it was overstays that attacked the towers on 9/11. Finally, Title VI helps end the abuse of immigration parole. Over the years, administrations of both parties have abused statutory authority to allow classes and other large numbers of aliens not otherwise admissible to the United States to enter and remain in the country indefinitely. This despite the purpose of the provision to be case-by-case.
The Biden-Harris administration took such abuse to the extreme, creating several illegal categorical parole programs and paroling into the United States at least two million illegal aliens. I just want everybody to remember what was happening. You can build a wall from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, and I support constructing barriers and support such a wall, but you can do that and if you open the doors wide open to the abuse of parole and asylum, then it does you no good. President Trump has rightly ended that practice. Title VI brings the use of immigration parole back to its intended purpose to allow a foreign national to enter the United States for an emergency purpose for a short period of time, like a surgery or getting acts at some family member or something that's an emergent case-by-case issue.
Americans deserve an administration that is interested in securing the border. In January '25, they got that. They also deserve a Congress willing to do the hard work to ensure the next president can't unilaterally open that border. Kayla Hamilton's family deserves that. Laken Riley's family deserves that.
Jocelyn Nungaray's family deserves that. Rachel Morin's family deserves that. Sheridan Gorman's family deserves that. And to that end, I urge my colleagues to support the Permanent Trump Secure Border Act. I yield back.
Speaker 7
Gentleman yields back. The ranking member is recognized for an opening statement.
Jamie Raskin
Thank you kindly, Mr. Chairman. So for the entire 119th Congress, which is now limping to an historically unproductive finish, we've been urging the majority to set aside the demonization of immigrants to pass comprehensive, common sense immigration reform on a bipartisan basis. We should be able to agree that we need to make it a whole lot harder, as close to impossible as we can, to enter or stay in the United States unlawfully, and a whole lot easier for people to become Americans lawfully. After all, we've got crying labor shortages in nursing, construction, farming, seafood, landscaping, and the hotel and service sectors to name just a few. And after all, America is an immigrant society.
All of us here, except for Native Americans and the descendants of people who were kidnapped and enslaved and brought to the country, all of us are descendants of immigrants in this country. And yet, that's not what's happening. We should be able to agree on these basic values. We should be able to legislate accordingly, and we should be able to get the administration to stop poorly trained ICE officers from killing American citizens and immigrants in service of a lawless, authoritarian, and brutal crackdown on American communities. Two more people have been shot down in cold blood in one week, on July the 7th and on July the 13th.
But instead of engaging with us to map out a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, which the president promised to do a decade ago, instead of working with us to fortify the border to expand the categories and numbers of lawful immigrants, instead of trying to get ICE to change their terrifying police state tactics and just to focus on the worst of the worst as they promised, our colleagues are wasting the last few days of this Congress playing summer rerun anti-immigrant propaganda and ignoring the brutal and often lethal federal government assault on the rights of both Americans and immigrants. Masked immigration officers have shot and killed in broad daylight six human beings in the streets of America, three of them American citizens exercising their First and their Second Amendment rights, three of them immigrants posing no threat to anyone, and two of those not even the target of the operation by which they lost their lives. ICE killings are like having the death penalty in your state without a crime, without an arrest, without a prosecution, without trial, without conviction, without sentencing, without any judicial due process. Just the sudden violent death of mothers and fathers in states that don't even have the death penalty, like Maine and Minnesota, administered by poorly trained and hastily recruited unqualified agents courtesy of billions of dollars provided by the taxpayers via the permanent Trump Republican caucus. Is there no one left in Donald Trump's party who will speak up for the rights of the American people against a federal government killing spree under the pretext of immigration raids?
DHS agents have tear-gassed babies and shot pepper balls at pastors and members of Congress. They've packed tens of thousands of immigrants into mismanaged and dangerous for-profit detention centers whose corporate owners are plundering the taxpayers for billions of dollars while overseeing the deaths of a record 53 people in their custody. ICE has separated families, stolen breastfeeding mothers away from their infants, and caused the death of a three-year-old boy and the sexual abuse of a three-year-old girl. Our refugee system was once a proud, robust, well-vetted program that helped desperate people fleeing tyrants and dictators all over the world. Now it's a closed, whites-only presidential perk operation catering to Elon Musk's fellow Afrikaners in white South Africa.
To be fair, Trump has also issued an emergency visa to a corrupt right-wing Polish minister evading justice while categorically barring anyone from 40% of the countries in the world from even applying for a visa to flee oppression. President Trump today has among the lowest polling numbers of any president in the history since polling began. Immigration used to be his strongest issue, but after the lawlessness, cruelty, and corruption we've seen, it's now one of his worst issues. A post-Ipsos poll from last week found that nearly 60% of Americans disapprove of the way he's handling immigration in our country. And yet here we are again today, rejecting oversight to curtail this reign of terror or the prospect of any reforms to repair our broken immigration system.
The majority brings us another partisan, red-meat, enforcement-only bill to make Trump's policies permanent. Congress has pumped an extraordinary $240 billion into immigration enforcement, and yet this committee has done no oversight of ICE and no oversight of the CBP. Republicans have not brought in a single official from either ICE or CBP or from GEO Group or CoreCivic, the private prison companies that are collecting billions of dollars from our constituents every year to operate these facilities. The only DHS official who's appeared before this committee was former Secretary Kristi Noem, who refused to apologize for defaming Renee Good, a mother of three, and Alex Preddy, a VA nurse, as quote, domestic terrorists, and failed to provide any explanation for her spending of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds to buy luxury jets and lavish personal PR campaigns with pictures of her on horseback at Mount Rushmore. She was fired within 24 hours of appearing before this committee because she actually had to take questions, and one saw the inevitable departure of Ms. Noem.
Why are our Republican colleagues abdicating responsibility to oversee and rein in the continuing corruption and lawlessness at ICE and CBP? ICE has recruited domestic abusers who go out and kill people. In shooting after shooting, we're told there's no body-worn camera footage, either because they lack the funding to provide them to their agents or because the agents who have them can't turn them on because ICE has not paid for the subscription required for the cameras to work, all despite having an unprecedented $240 billion of taxpayer money. Why do our colleagues have nothing to say about the waste, fraud, and abuse that we're seeing throughout that system? The majority wants to give the MAGA ICE bureaucracy even more power to make this cruelty machine permanent.
The bill before us today would take the asylum system already decimated by Trump and then permanently destroy it. It removes protections for unaccompanied children and opens the door to sending them to war-torn countries, traffickers, and abusers. It would allow for the indefinite detention of children and the evisceration of long-standing safeguards for children. America has had enough of the violence and bloodshed and lawlessness. It's time to stop these lawless tactics in the streets of America.
Yield back to you, Mr. Chairman.
Chip Roy
Without objection, all other opening statements will be included in the record. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Texas to offer an amendment in nature of a substitute.
Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.
Clerk will report.
Amendment in the nature of a substitute.
Chip Roy
Without objection, the amendment in the nature of a substitute will be considered as read and shall be considered as base text for the purpose of the amendment. The gentleman from Texas is now recognized.
This amendment makes technical changes to the bill to clarify that state attorneys general have standing to sue an administration for non-compliance with parts of Title II of the bill and to provide an effective date for Title III. I yield back.
Pramila Jayapal
Gentleman yields back. Who seeks recognition? Gentlelady from Washington is recognized.
Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Recognize. Okay. This bill is yet another example of how incredibly out of touch Republicans are with the views of the American public. This weekend, three more U.S. service members were killed in Trump's most unpopular and illegal war on Iran, now making it 17 service members killed, even as gas prices continue to go back up, squeezing Americans everywhere.
Despite all this, Republicans are moving forward with another $60 billion check for this war this week.
Trump has called affordability concerns a "hoax" and even refused to sign a once-in-a-generation housing bill that addresses the housing supply crisis we have across the country. And then there's immigration, the number one way that Republicans have tried to distract Americans from all of their problems by criminalizing and blaming immigrants. Last year, Trump and Republicans handed ICE and CBP 140 billion dollars, even as they stripped healthcare from tens of millions of Americans because apparently we couldn't afford it. Then a few weeks ago, they gave them another 70 billion dollars of taxpayer money to continue to unleash a rogue militia on the streets of America with loaded-up arrest quotas of 2,000 people a day that have led to the killing of at least six people in ICE enforcement activities, and 65,000 people every single day being incarcerated in for-profit detention facilities that cost US taxpayers billions of dollars and don't even meet basic required conditions of human decency. Now just last week, ICE agents killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastian Guerrero in Houston, Texas and Biddeford, Maine, two fathers who left behind US citizen children, families, a three-year-old in Bluey pajamas watching what they did on the streets of America as they snatch people away in unmarked cars with agents that have no body cameras hiding behind masks.
Just imagine, the ICE agent who shot Mr. Guerrero has a record of domestic violence and threw his 13-year-old daughter through a glass coffee table. These are the people who are implementing government policies in our cities and towns. And on Friday, the outrage continued when an employee of GEO Group, who operates ICE's detention center in Aurora, Colorado, shot a 42-year-old woman. Let's just play a short video of footage from just three of these ICE killings. Not a single bit of accountability for any of these.
Imagine that they pulled a man who was shot multiple times out of the car and handcuffed him on the ground while his daughter was watching. Americans, including those who supported Donald Trump in the last election, are clear that this is not what they want. Polling across the country has shifted dramatically, and today two-thirds of Americans are rejecting this cruelty, this lack of accountability, and the outrageous actions of these lawless agencies. Is today's bill recognizing any of this, demanding accountability, putting a stop to ICE and CBP's actions? Quite the opposite.
This bill is doubling down on cruelty in a massive sign of disrespect to families across the country, including the many US citizens and people of every immigration status who have been the targets of ICE and CBP.
This bill eviscerates asylum, strips due process protections for unaccompanied kids, and allows for the indefinite detention of families and children. It is so extreme that it is not clear that it can even pass the House floor because there are some Republicans who oppose it themselves. Instead of demonizing immigrants we should work together to reform an immigration system that has not been modernized in over 30 years because of Republican opposition. We should recognize the value of immigrants who keep our country going every single day and we should demand accountability for an out of control ICE and CBP and stop unleashing cruelty on our communities across the country. I strongly oppose this bill and I urge my colleagues to do the same.
I yield back.
Gentleman's recognized.
Jerrold Nadler
Mr. Chairman, our nation was built by immigrants. For generations we have welcomed people to our shores, whether they were fleeing violence, seeking a path out of economic despair, or simply hoping to start a new life. And our country is much richer for it, both economically and culturally. Our communities have benefited from their ingenuity, their hard work, and their vibrant culture, enriching our society and helping our economy flourish. If our tradition and history of welcoming immigrants to this country represents the very best of America, this bill and the Trump administration policies it seeks to bolster represent the very worst.
This xenophobic and cruel legislation would essentially shut down our asylum system while stripping needed protections from vulnerable children and subjecting them to indefinite detention. It is a shameful abandonment of our fundamental values and ideals. Even worse, this bill completely fails to address the cascade of cruelty and chaos emanating from the White House, ICE, and CPB as they carry out the Trump administration's failed immigration policies. Over the last 13 months, Congress has showered immigration enforcement agencies with 240 billion dollars with no guardrails attached. With this money, these agencies have assembled a massive force consisting of tens of thousands of agents who have flooded our streets to carry out Donald Trump's brutal and reckless mass deportation campaign.
Rather than going after the worst of the worst as the administration repeatedly claims, they're indiscriminately targeting anyone they suspect of being here unlawfully, with the vast majority of people detained having no criminal record. In the process, they are engaging in racial profiling on a massive scale and using dangerous tactics that have already led to the deaths of multiple people, including three American citizens. And when tragedy does strike, the administration has employed a tried and true strategy: they smear the victims, calling them domestic terrorists or some other slander, and then they blatantly lie about the events, trying to tell us not to believe what we can see with our own eyes. It is straight out of the authoritarian playbook. Not only are we seeing unprecedented mayhem and destruction on our streets, but we are also witnessing the highest death rate in immigration detention facilities in decades.
Despite the best efforts of this administration to deny access to these facilities, a few months ago I conducted an oversight visit to Delaney Hall, a privately owned ICE detention facility in Newark, New Jersey. What I learned there was absolutely shocking and appalling. In particular, the medical neglect, denying people access to potentially life-saving care and withholding necessary medicine is truly abhorrent. I saw people diagnosed with cancer and denied any treatment. At Delaney Hall and across the country, detainees are being held in squalor in facilities that do not meet basic sanitary needs.
As if that weren't bad enough, this legislation would dramatically increase the number of children who are subjected indefinitely to such deplorable conditions. That is the very definition of cruelty, but it is standard operating procedure for this Republican majority.
A year and a half into this second Trump administration, a clear picture of its immigration policies and their consequences has emerged. They have sent masked agents to terrorize our communities with aggressive and violent tactics. Arresting, and in some cases murdering, American citizens. They are tearing children away from their parents, and when they are caught violating the law, they've deliberately lied to the American people and even to federal courts, which have called them out at unprecedented levels. And where is this Republican Congress?
Rather than holding this administration accountable, they have served as its enablers, fueling its reign of terror with hundreds of billions of dollars and no accountability measures. And today, they seek to pass legislation that would codify some of the worst and most cruel policies. I understand that marking up this bill was the price that some members extracted from the Speaker in order to allow action to proceed on the House floor. But if this bill were to become law, it is the American people who would pay the cost. I urge all members to oppose this legislation and I yield back.
Gentleman yields back. Gentlelady from California.
Sydney Kamlager-Dove
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I rise in strong opposition... Would you mind moving the mic in front of your... Sorry about that. Thank you.
Appreciate you. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to this bill, the Permanent Trump Secure Border Act. This bill expands detention, reduces due process, strips protections for children, and hands even more unchecked authority to agencies that have already harmed communities like mine in Los Angeles. We already know what an ICE with unchecked power looks like. At Dilley Detention Center in Texas, it looks like children reporting mistreatment, contaminated food, sleeplessness, and inadequate medical care.
In Hawthorne, California, it looks like Carrie Lopez-Alvarado, a nine-month pregnant US citizen, shoved against a truck, handcuffed, chained, and interrogated by ICE agents about where she was born. She later went to the hospital with abdominal pain and gave birth early. In Huntington Park, California, it looks like federal agents using explosive devices outside Jenny Ramirez's home while her one-year-old and six-year-old children were inside. Everyone in that home was a United States citizen. And in my district, I saw firsthand what it looks like.
During my visit to Adelanto ICE Detention Center, I met my constituent, Carlos Ricardo Perez. He's a food bank volunteer, he's been recognized by the city for his good works, he is a father and a husband. And he was shot in the arm during a traffic stop by immigration agents before being taken into custody. Mind you, the judge dismissed those trumped-up charges. But he is still in Adelanto and he is still not receiving the medical treatment that he deserves.
I went to visit him and what I saw was horrifying. He reported severe pain, nerve impairment, swelling, reduced mobility, headaches, vision problems, and a bone infection. It looked to me like his arm will be amputated. And when I was able to get the medical records, it was revealed that for his gunshot wound, he is receiving vitamin D. I was told by the folks at Adelanto that pre-existing conditions are not treated.
I was told that the doctors at Adelanto are not liable for treating any kind of medical issue that occurs before arrival. That is stupid and it is malpractice. Mr. Prias remains in detention and he is still not receiving the medical attention that he deserves. So why are we not marking up legislation to address these abuses? Why are we not conducting the necessary oversight on these conditions?
Why are we so afraid to have the folks responsible for this kind of behavior come before us and answer questions? If you are not afraid of the answers, then you should not be afraid of the questions that will be asked of you. Why are we marking up a bill that rewards inhumane treatment with more authority and fewer safeguards? A bill that imprisons children, a bill that weakens asylum protections, a bill that criminalizes technical errors, a bill that empowers agencies with a documented record of abuse. None of those things in this bill will make us safer.
This is a doubling down on cruelty. And yes, Republicans in this Congress have given DHS 240 billion dollars. That is larger than the budgets of 150 countries. They have more police officers than the cities of Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Washington DC, Vegas, LA combined. And the American people don't want to see more killings on their streets.
And they don't want this bill. They want that madness to stop. If one of these people in any of these videos was your child, your friend, your neighbor, even somebody you didn't like, you would still be pressing for oversight. So let's get to that business instead of this bill. And with that, I yield back.
Speaker 17
Gentlelady yields back. Gentlelady from Pennsylvania. Gentlelady from Pennsylvania.
Gentlelady is recognized.
Summer Lee
Yeah, I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill, which would codify some of Trump's cruelest immigration policies and does nothing to combat the atrocities committed by the Department of Homeland Security on our communities. When immigration officers violate people's constitutional rights or physically harm people or kill people or terrorize communities, it's not an accident or an outlier. It's the Department of Homeland Security's planned policy. It's also not unique to this administration because immigration enforcement was designed to be cruel and callous and lawless. When DHS was formed, it took power away from other agencies that may have been better served to provide the individual services and stuffed them together all in the name of national security.
I move to strike the last word. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Summer Lee
But since its start, it's been responsible for the targeting, the detainment, and family separation of hundreds of thousands of people. The courts are separate, the judges are unaccountable, and detention networks remain deplorable.
This isn't just Trump administration manipulating an otherwise effective agency though. It is rogue by design. DHS has caused so much harm to our communities, yet Republicans keep wanting to throw money at it with no oversight mechanisms to rein in their bad actions. In the last 13 months alone, they've been given 240 billion dollars. DHS has taken that money and hired incompetent and unqualified immigration enforcement officers.
They've thrown the money at private prison corporations to expand detention centers. They've even purchased spyware and people's data to get around the Fourth Amendment protections. Six people have been killed by ICE and CBP during immigration enforcement actions, and another 53 people have died in ICE custody. The agency has gone out of its way to not cooperate with local law enforcement to investigate these killings though. There have been no reports that agents responsible have faced any discipline or consequences.
Often, DHS won't even identify them. DHS has also racially targeted people, smashed into people's houses without warrants, and disappeared people. These arrests are usually based on no real, no cause, no investigation, no hearing with a judge, and no due process. The immigration officers don't care about a person's status, whether a person is actually a citizen, if that person has a child at home, or even if they physically harm the person during an arrest. This committee should be holding hearings with DHS officials demanding transparency and accountability.
We should be examining how DHS's creation allowed the agency to operate outside the law and the Constitution. We should be listening to refugees and asylum seekers about how to improve the intake process and better protect them. Cruelty is the point of the Department of Homeland Security, and this bill fully supports that. I urge my colleagues to grow a conscience and to oppose this bill, and I yield back.
Gentlelady yields back. Anyone seek recognition? Gentleman from California.
Speaker 12
Clerk will report. Point of order reserved by the gentleman from California, the other gentleman from California.
Chip Roy
Without objection, the amendment will be considered as read. The gentleman from California is recognized to explain his amendment.
Lou Correa
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Folks, once again our nation is at war. So far, 17 American service members have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. Hundreds others have been injured. These are soldiers that take an oath to defend our country, to make the ultimate sacrifice when necessary.
These soldiers need to know that we back home have their back. My amendment essentially codifies current President Trump administration policy. HR 2 protects parole only the children and spouses of active duty service men. My amendment would essentially again codify current Trump policy of protecting children, spouses, and the parents of active duty service members, reservists, and veterans. As you know, today, actually very sadly, ICE is willing to go after the military families and specifically the parents who are not protected by this bill again.
ICE is going after the parents of soldiers who are serving in our battlefield today. In my district, Santa Ana, Narciso Barranco, a hardworking, law-abiding man and father of three US Marines. Folks, you make movies about individuals like this. He was pepper sprayed, handcuffed, and beaten while being restrained by ICE agents. After the incident, Mr. Barranco was held in custody for three weeks by our government as they tried to deport him.
After a judge ruled in Mr. Barranco's favor, DHS still worked to appeal the ruling to pause his parole in place application and to deport him. It's important to note he had a parole in place application.
After a judge ruled in Mr. Barranco's favor, DHS still worked to appeal the ruling to pause his parole in place application and to deport him. It's important to note, he had a parole in place application, a father of three Marines, and our U.S. government, DHS, was doing everything in its power to deport this father of three Marines. The second case, in Huntington Beach, Humberto Martinez Martinez was stopped and taken into ICE custody while driving with his daughter Anna to school. He was removed to Mexico within hours. At the time of his arrest, he had a pending parole application in place based on his daughter, his other daughter's active duty military service.
His daughter Jessica Martinez, a Navy aviation ordnanceman serving aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. 20 years old, Navy Abraham Lincoln. On the same day her father was deported, Jessica was deployed aboard the Lincoln to the Middle East amid the conflict with Iran. Folks, this is not the way to reward our soldiers. You have to make sure you let our men and women in uniform that are fighting for our country know that our nation has their back.
My amendment again is simply codifying President Trump's current policy of extending parole in place to again to parents of active duty service members, reservists, and veterans. Since 2013, USCIS has approved over 40,000 applications for military parole in place, including 20,000 applications approved by the Trump administration from 2017 to 2020. Mr. Chairman, I yield.
Speaker 19
Chairman yields back. Does gentleman insist on his point of order from California? Gentleman withdraws his point of order. The gentleman from Texas is recognized.
Chip Roy
I thank the chairman. The under current law, members of the United States military can seek an expedited path to LPR status. The legislation that we have contemplated very specifically dealing with the spouse and children with respect to parole for members of the United States military. We believe that is directly reflective of what the administration's doing and reflective of the appropriate policy and that this amendment is unnecessary. Now, I would add in response to some of the rhetoric from my colleagues in their statements regarding the legislation, I want to remind everybody out there who's viewing this, this is legislation that we passed, the construct of this was passed previously in Congress and out of this committee.
This legislation is designed very specifically to codify current practices which have objectively and irrefutably slowed, stemmed, eliminated the border crisis that was resulting directly in the deaths of American people. I'll in a moment, but I just want to finish here in response to the amendment.
That's the purpose here. And I heard my colleagues bringing up other matters involving enforcement, ICE, and things going on, which we can have a full-throated debate about, and we have repeatedly in this room and elsewhere. But what we're talking about here is stopping what happened. Again, we've had repeated testimony in this room from people who were victimized by folks that were released into the United States. In a little bit, I'm not going to do it right now, I've got an entire folder here, an entire folder of the examples of people that I'm going to ask to insert in the record in a little bit of Americans, hundreds, dozens, like all of these pages right here.
These are all Americans, all people, and by the way, all immigrants who were abused by people released into the United States under the previous administration's and my colleagues' policies of abusing asylum and parole that resulted directly in these rapes, murders, and destruction, and death, and fentanyl, and impacts on the state of Texas to the tune of eleven billion dollars of incalculable impact that we're trying to deal with. So here we have legislation designed to codify it. I remember, you know, my daughter's here and we were watching an episode of the West Wing from 1999, 2000, it was the Shibboleth episode. And they were talking about there were some refugee, Christian refugees from China. And there was an entire episode dedicated to credible fear and trying to figure out and determine whether there was in fact credible fear.
And here, fast forward, and we are long gone from the days of Chuck Schumer taking to the Senate floor and talking about the need for border security, or our Democratic colleagues going to the House floor and talking about the need for border security, or a relatively left-leaning television show talking about the law and following the law with respect to credible fear. And instead, we have seen this evolution to abuse credible fear, make it completely meaningless, drive a truck through loopholes of that parole, asylum, and all of the things that are designed to allow us to be a country that does the things I think the gentleman is referring to, right? That we have a country that wants to say that when there's a baby at your doorstep or when there's somebody that is deserving of a parole so they can come here and have a kidney transplant or see their grandmother or do the things we all as human beings and people of faith want to do, we are left having to deal with the exploitation and using loopholes to undo the purpose of the law. And so thus resulted in the countless millions of people in the United States that then harmed Americans. So the purpose of this bill is to leave in place paths, as I said, military, if you're here, there's a path, expedited path to LPR.
If you're the spouse or child of that person, there is a path under parole. This legislation would leave in place a path for asylum, a path for parole, a path to be able to deal with unaccompanied children being able to seek asylum, all of the paths we want to do as people of faith to help individuals, but not allow it to be exploited to dump people onto the streets of our country that have resulted directly in the death, destruction, murder, mayhem of the American people. And with that, I yield back.
Lou Correa
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I've got an amendment at the desk.
Well, we're still on the other amendment. We're still... gentlelady from Washington's recognized.
Thank you. I yield time to Mr. Correa.
Lou Correa
Again, this is President Trump's existing policy on his website. To my colleague from Texas, I want to get you back on point on my amendment.
You mentioned children and spouses of military personnel. My amendment simply adds parents of active duty service members, reservists and veterans. I have my colleagues here in this committee focus on what we're talking about here, on this amendment. You have Jessica Martinez, a Navy aviation ordsman on the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier. Her job is to again load up those F-18s with ordnance as they go off to another mission.
This is a 20-year-old naval personnel in an aircraft carrier. What are we telling her the day you deport her father, the next day you say, please make the ultimate sacrifice for your country. We're talking about keeping this country strong, defending this nation, about soldiers who are human beings. And more importantly, my friend from Texas, I'm essentially codifying with this amendment current Trump administration policy. This is the Trump administration policy.
And if we are here to keep America strong, we got to make sure that we watch and watch the backs of those military officers, those military personnel, men and women fighting for us across the country. This is a common sense legislation, common sense amendment to keep our country strong. Again, Narciso Barranco, the father of three US Marines, who was provide both of these fathers were following the legal process to adjust their status to stay in the United States. ICE went out of their way to arrest them. They deported one individual, the second one they're trying to deport.
What is this all about? Narciso Barranco, father of three Marines, we should be low getting ready to make a movie about this guy. His three sons he raised to be patriots and we want to deport him. Mr. Martinez, daughter, Navy, proud American and we're trying to deport her father. Mr. Chairman, I yield back to Ms. Jayapal.
Pramila Jayapal
Thank you, Mr. Correa. I don't know if there's a misunderstanding, but the Trump policy that's on the website is what this amendment is about. The bill that is in the bill, the military parole option only benefits the spouses and minor children of active military service members. And so in doing so it leaves out the service member's parents and the families of US veterans. It leaves out the families of individuals who served or are currently serving as reservists.
That is different from the Trump policy that is on Trump's website. So Mr. Correa's amendment seeks to codify the one parole program that the Trump administration is actually using. And I don't understand why my Republican colleagues want to restrict a parole program that is actually being utilized by Donald Trump for members of our military. And to your broader point about, you know, the work that we need to do, if only we would actually reform the immigration system. We have spent between 400 to 450 billion dollars on border security over the last 10 years instead of actually providing more legal pathways.
You can't do one without the other and expect one to work. What we need is a functioning immigration system that allows people to have a process whereby they come to the United States. It is orderly, it is humane, we respect the rights of those who are here. We don't try to throw out people who are here and who have committed no crimes, who are working, who are doing all the things. And we have not provided a pathway to citizenship for people in this country, including those who have lived here for 30 years.
Imagine how this country would suffer if we actually succeed in kicking out everybody that Trump and Stephen Miller want to kick out.
I will.
Jamie Raskin
I yield 15 seconds. So my question is this, they're calling this the Permanent Trump Act, but it seems like there's at least one Trump policy they don't like. They're positioning this legislation to the right of Donald Trump. Why are they doing that?
Pramila Jayapal
That's my question, ranking member, that is my question. They are taking away the one parole program for our US service members and their families that Trump actually codified or or put onto his website. They don't want to codify that.
Speaker 24
The gentleman's time is expired. Is there further discussion on the amendment?
I yield back.
I move to strike the last word.
Speaker 23
The gentleman from New York. Wait a sec, is there further discussion on the amendment? Gentleman from Wisconsin is recognized.
I yield my time, Mr. Chairman, to the gentleman from Texas.
Chip Roy
I think the gentleman from Wisconsin, a few data points here that I think are important. Number one, this policy dates back to Obama. It was a Biden policy. So to say it was a Trump policy is not accurate. Number two, this amendment was offered, this amendment was offered when we debated this bill in the last Congress before the current Trump administration.
In other words, this amendment was offered under Biden being president. So the idea that you're trying to say that oh, this is somehow a Trump policy. It is a policy that has it is a policy that I acknowledge has spanned several administrations, folks across the other side of the aisle and Republicans. I agree with that, that that policy has existed, but it was in place hold on one second, that it was that it was put in place under Obama, that it was carried forward under under Biden, that we debated it when Biden was president, we offered the same amendment during that time, and then now yes, it is stayed as the policy. The point of the statutory change is to make the statutory change very specific that does not do anything to change what is already law, that you can seek LPR status if you're the active duty member of the military.
That's currently allowed and under the statutes lawful. But it is putting in place a specific parole category for spouses and children. That is what the legislation does, I think in good faith to deal with this issue broadly speaking for the men and women in military and to provide for that for the direct spouse and children. And whatever the policies are of the administration, they can do that. But this is Congress speaking with one voice with a tight definition with respect to how we handle the men and women in the military and their spouses and children.
And that's the purpose of the legislation. With that, I'll yield back to the gentleman.
The gentleman from Wisconsin. The gentleman from Wisconsin controls.
Speaker 22
I yield back to the gentleman from Wisconsin. And I yield back to the chair.
Daniel Goldman
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to just clarify one thing that my friend from Texas said. It's not a Biden policy or Obama policy or Trump 1.0 policy. We're talking about what the policy is right now under this administration. So stop deflecting to try to put the blame on somebody else for a for a policy that you don't like.
It is this administration's policy, that's what we're talking about. But I want to go back to something that my my friend from Texas said earlier, a couple times, that people of faith are just trying to help other people, I believe you said. That trying to find that inner humanity and that faith to do what is right for the American residents and the American people. The question then becomes, why don't you care about the immigrant children who are being absolutely terrorized and abused by this Department of Homeland Security?
First of all, this administration tried to stop providing counsel to unaccompanied children. Obviously, these unaccompanied children are not making these decisions of their own volition, they are children. They, many don't speak the language, have no idea what this, how this immigration system works. And this Department of Homeland Security wants to take away their legal counsel. Well, thankfully a judge intervened and required the administration to abide by the contracts that it had to provide counsel for unaccompanied children.
Now, recognizing they can't prevent it or withhold it, the administration is now withholding payment under those contracts to the legal services providers. And in fact they are demanding private confidential information, some of which is subject to the attorney-client privilege, in order to be able to, in order to send that money that they are owed. These are not big law firms. These are small nonprofit organizations that cannot survive without getting paid. And yet the administration refuses to do it.
And as of today, more than six months of, of payments have not been made. But that's not it. The average length of time for unaccompanied children in ORR custody in October 2024 was 35 days. In November 2025, it was 185 days. This administration on average is putting children in jail for more than six months.
Many of them are actually eligible for SIJS, for their own protection as unaccompanied children who cannot, who if they are returned to their country will face abuse from a parent. So now this bill says we're going to actually reduce the protections for those children who can show an abusive or violent parent by saying that if they have one parent that they can be with that is not abusive, then they don't qualify for SIJS. But the problem is that one parent is often here in the United States, and so by denying them this lawful parole, they are then going to be deported back to the one parent who is abusing them. So if you really are a person of faith who cares about the humanity of people and wants to do right by people, then why don't you care about children, whether they are immigrant children or American citizen children? Why are you punishing children?
Children. Who often are not making decisions of their own because as we know from our own law, children generally are not considered capable of making decisions on their own.
So I call on your faith. Faith of all of us to care for children. Basic human decency. And I yield back.
Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Nadler.
Jerrold Nadler
Mr. Chairman, I have a very simple question. I would ask the gentleman from Texas. Does he oppose supporting parents of soldiers in the manner that the gentleman's amendment would do? I'm yielding you the time to answer the question.
Chip Roy
If a member of the armed services seeks LPR status, then that individual can then go seek bringing in their... Well, but that's the path right now under our current law, they can do that. And this legislation contemplates spouses and children. And that's what we think is appropriate under this.
Speaker 38
Yes, but why would you oppose this legislation also contemplating parents?
Chip Roy
Well, first of all, the legislation has a number of flaws in it, which we can go into it and that are issues involving...
Jerrold Nadler
Reclaiming my time, the gentleman's amendment would cure this one flaw. Why would you oppose it?
Chip Roy
There are numerous issues with the amendment. We believe the legislation as it is crafted does exactly what we intend to do to ensure that armed services folks have a path, that their spouse and children have a path, and that if you seek LPR, the parents have a path if you seek LPR status. And that that's a tight and good way to do it. That's what the legislation contemplates.
Jerrold Nadler
But not under the parole. I fail to understand the grounds for opposing the amendment that would give parents the same status as children and spouses here.
Chip Roy
As I've said, the legislation allows for that possibility for the member of the armed services to seek LPR.
Why not provide it? Why not simply allow the possibility?
Chip Roy
Well, because our laws that way you know whether the individual is serving the armed services, they want to become an LPR, there's a path to do that expedited, they can do that, and then they can seek status for their parent. But it establishes the parole status for the spouse or the child. Which is good policy.
Jerrold Nadler
Reclaiming my time. Reclaiming my time. It establishes the status of the spouse and the children, but not for the parents. It seems to me there is no logical reason not to establish the same status, the same rights for the parents of a soldier. I yield back.
Tom McClintock
Gentleman yields back. Is there further discussion on the amendment? Mr. Raskin.
Jamie Raskin
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to first thank the gentleman from California for introducing this amendment and for spotting this outrageous departure from even current policy. As I understand it, military parole is in place today and available to people who are the immediate relatives of US military service members and veterans. I'm assuming these are people who've had honorable discharges and people who've nobly served the country and many of them are decorated. But certainly they all have honorable discharges, okay.
And so the military parole is available to people who are their immediate relatives, including their spouses and including their parents. Now, despite the fact that this legislation is called the Permanent Trump Act to codify his policies, they want to... They want to reject the policy and not codify the policy of allowing these immediate family members of veterans to get in categorically, even spouses. They just want to go to active members of the forces, but not allow these people to come in with veterans who may even be decorated war heroes. They want to get rid of that.
And I heard you mention a case of some people who live right near you, which is perhaps why this caught your eye, Mr. Correa. But I wonder if you would tell us exactly what we're talking about in this case, because as I heard you say it, we're talking about three sons, all of whom serve in the US military, and they want to be able to deport their father.
Speaker 33
And that's something that is an ongoing case, is it? Right, would you just apprise us of what's happening?
Lou Correa
Yes, and let me say to you that one of them's a veteran and two are active Marines. Two are actually in the Marine Corps now, one of them honorably discharged, okay? Under the existing policy, Trump policy, the father applied for parole in place, submitted the application, moved ahead, and that's why when he was arrested, okay, he was not immediately deported, but deportation was paused. He went before a judge, the judge ruled in his favor. DHS is essentially coming back and appealing that favorable ruling.
You're talking about three Marines, two active, one essentially a veteran, always followed the law, has not been an individual with any criminal record. This is the individual we're talking about.
Jamie Raskin
Okay, and so if this, if your amendment doesn't pass, essentially the legislation would say you have three sons, say, who served honorably and dutifully in Iraq or Afghanistan, and their father is now petitioning to be part of the military parole in place, he would be rejected because they're veterans at this point and because they're not active service members. And I understand in the case today, it's a mixture of, but they just want to categorically say if you're just a veteran of the United States, you don't get the benefit of this policy. And I gotta believe that this is an oversight, although I'm a little stunned to hear the distinguished gentleman from Texas substantively defend this policy instead of just say this looks like an oversight, certainly the families of veterans should be included as they were under Trump and Biden and Obama. It's a policy so obvious that it has had bipartisan participation by all the presidents. And now for some reason, I guess in an eagerness to demonstrate the anti-immigrant bona fides of the majority, they want to go way to the right of what the current policy is and do some serious damage to people's families.
Mr. Correa, yield to you.
Lou Correa
Yes, just wanted to, this is even more shocking. Jessica Martinez on the SS Abraham in the Middle East, her father also had a parole in place application. But when ICE picked him up, they took him to the Santa Ana ICE detention center. Instead of checking his status, which would have enabled him to stay in the country, when he, when they walked him in, they said our computers are down, sorry, we're sending you to the border immediately. That is what they did.
They said the computers are out, we're taking, we're deporting you immediately. This is a violation of the Trump administration current policy when it comes to the family members of soldiers.
Thank you, I yield back.
Lou Correa
Gentleman's time has expired. Is there further discussion on the amendment? Seeing, Ms. Jayapal?
Has already spoken on this.
Speaker 25
Yeah, Ms. Jayapal's already spoken. Is there further discussion? Seeing none, the question is on the adoption of the amendment offered by the gentleman from California. Those in favor say aye.
Those opposed say no.
The noes appear to have it.
Recorded vote, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Jordan.
Speaker 28
Mr. Biggs. Mr. McClintock. Mr. McClintock votes no. Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Massie.
Mr. Roy. Mr. Roy votes no. Mr. Fitzgerald. Mr. Cline. Mr. Gooden.
Mr. Gooden votes no. Mr. Van Drew. Mr. Nehls. Mr. Moore. Ms. Hageman.
Ms. Hageman votes no. Ms. Lee of Florida. Mr. Hunt. Mr. Fry. Mr. Kiley.
Mr. Grothman. Mr. Knott. Mr. Knott votes no. Mr. Harris. Mr. Harris votes no.
Mr. Onder. Mr. Schmidt. Mr. Schmidt votes no. Mr. Gill. Mr. Baumgardner.
Mr. Raskin. Mr. Raskin votes aye. Mr. Nadler. Mr. Nadler votes aye. Ms. Lofgren.
Ms. Lofgren votes aye. Mr. Cohen. Mr. Johnson. Mr. Lieu. Ms. Jayapal.
Ms. Jayapal votes aye. Mr. Correa. Mr. Correa votes aye. Ms. Scanlon. Ms. Scanlon votes aye.
Mr. Neguse. Ms. McBath. Ms. Ross. Ms. Ross votes aye. Ms. Balint.
Ms. Balint votes aye. Mr. Garcia. Mr. Garcia votes aye. Ms. Kamlager-Dove. Mr. Moskowitz.
Mr. Goldman. Mr. Goldman votes aye. Ms. Crockett. Ms. Lee of Pennsylvania. Ms. Lee of Pennsylvania votes aye.
Mr. Moore. Mr. Moore votes no. Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Tiffany votes no. Ms. Kamlager-Dove, you're not recorded.
Mr. Grothman votes no.
Speaker 37
Mr. Johnson, you're not recorded. Mr. Johnson votes aye. Mr. Fitzgerald. Mr. Fitzgerald votes no. Mr. Onder.
Clerk will report.
Speaker 36
The amendment is not adopted. Seeks recognition, gentleman from Pennsylvania.
Speaker 40
Clerk report. Point of order reserved by the gentleman from California. Without objection, the amendment will be considered as read, the gentlelady is recognized to explain her amendment.
Summer Lee
It's honestly shameful that we even need to offer this amendment, but unfortunately, cruelty knows no bounds under this administration. Thank you, Mr. Chair, this amendment is simple. It would ensure ICE does not use any of its warehouses that it's purchased over the past year for family detention. It's also necessary because Republicans have given ICE over 50 billion dollars just for immigration detention with no guardrails or oversight. This country has way too much practice warehousing human beings.
It's so deep within our history that we have perfected a system where we can strip away someone's humanity and put them in a holding pen, where they are treated as lesser human beings, less deserving of rights and dignity. We have the highest incarceration rate of any developed nation, and Republicans want to expand it further. In February, internal ICE documents revealed plans for what the agency called the ICE Detention Reengineering Initiative. This proposal would replace the current detention system with one centered on 34 ICE-owned facilities, including eight large-scale detention centers that would each hold 7,000 to 10,000 people in refurbished warehouses. ICE has since acquired warehouses in my Commonwealth, Pennsylvania, as well as Georgia, Michigan, New Jersey, Texas, Arizona, Maryland, and Utah at a cost of 1 billion dollars.
Three of these facilities are intended to be large-scale facilities with 7,500 to 10,000 planned beds. A warehouse in Social Circle, Georgia, located 50 miles outside of Atlanta, a warehouse in Socorro, Texas, in the El Paso metro area, and a warehouse in Tremont, PA, in central Pennsylvania. The other six, which have already been purchased, are smaller processing centers with plans to hold 1,000 to 1,500 people each. The goal of the revamped detention and deportation system would, as former acting ICE director Todd Lyons put it, be an Amazon Prime but with human beings. A reminder that Amazon Prime is also a distribution warehouse, so what does that even mean?
But needless to say, this is disgusting. Luckily, the agency has partially reversed course and is now planning to offload seven warehouses by either giving them to other federal agencies or selling them outright. But the casual cruelty of this scale of detention cannot be overstated. The government is essentially treating these people, mothers and fathers and grandpas and little kids, like livestock. These are human beings being held in inhumane conditions, and Republicans want to convince people that this is the source of pride rather than shame.
History will treat these actions as shameful, just as enslaving people was shameful, and putting Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II was shameful, and the Trail of Tears was shameful. Geographical borders should not be the lines that determine how we treat other human beings. If that's the only standard, then we may find that one day we too are not worthy of compassion. Isn't the golden rule in our Christian Bible, do unto others as you would have them do unto you?
When I visited Moshannon Detention Center in Pennsylvania and spoke to the women detained there, they told me about the bad food and toxic water and a lack of proper medical care. Delaney Hall, New Jersey's conditions were so bad that detainees conducted a hunger strike. Rather than do something to improve these conditions, whistleblowers and protesters have been transferred around the country to break up organizing power. These facilities designed for detention with the right infrastructure and it's still terrible. We've seen the disaster that was Allegany Alcatraz in Florida.
Millions of taxpayer dollars funneled into a failed makeshift detention center. Detainees at the facility reported difficulty accessing lawyers and poor conditions like worms in the food or toilets that didn't flush and floors flooded with fecal waste and mosquitoes and other insects everywhere. Detention is bad enough, but a commercial warehouse is no place for a child. I encourage all my colleagues to support this common sense amendment and I yield back.
Speaker 41
Gentlelady yields back. Gentleman withdraws his point of order. Gentleman from North Carolina is recognized. Then we'll come to Texas.
Chuck Edwards
Mr. Chairman, I just, I thank you for the time, but I've got to respond. I don't know that there was one word that I agree with my colleague from Pennsylvania in what she just said. I for one have been to some of these facilities and I actually have been overwhelmed with how the reality of those facilities operate differs from the narrative that we're hearing from the other side of the aisle. One in North Carolina that I was at recently, they have workout facilities, they have recreational courts, they have a video game portal where these detainees can go and play video games. They have movie rentals, they had unbelievably sufficient dining options.
They even cater to individuals' faiths on an individual basis. They have worship facilities, they have free attorney portals. The idea this is somehow anything other than a professional and very humane option is simply dishonest. And for my colleague to say that the United States destabilizes countries in the world and therefore we should welcome millions and millions of people into our country illegally, that's the most specious claim I think I've heard in several weeks, if not months in Congress, which is saying something. My question to the Democrats on the other side is, is there a number that we should cap enrollees?
Is it 10 million, 20 million, 50 million? What about 100 million? If destabilized countries in the world is your threshold, we could triple our nation, our population in a week. We're not talking about, we're not talking about people who come here legally, mind you. We're talking about people in the country illegally.
And there is the reality that our immigration system that your party has supported has weakened the country. So with that, if anyone on this side would like to respond, I'll certainly yield the time, Mr. McClintock.
Tom McClintock
I would, the one, there's one other detail about these detention centers that I think needs to be added. Those who are detained in them can be, can leave them anytime they want for any country that will accept them. They're simply not allowed to return to our country. And the reason for that ought to be self-evident. In fact, the whole purpose of these detention centers is simply to arrange for transportation back to their home countries.
And I yield back to the gentleman.
Anybody else on this side wants to?
Mr. Chairman.
Yes, sir.
Wesley Hunt
Thank you, Mr. Knott. You know, I see the outrage from my colleagues about what's happening at DHS and I just didn't see that in the Biden years.
And the border was wide open. The whole reason we've got this bill before us today is because of the damage that the Democrat administration before this one did. And we wouldn't be talking about this had the border remained secure in the four years prior to President Trump coming back. But we are in this situation because of mismanagement and because of a DHS that harmed the American people for four years. And we can never get answers from the Homeland Secretary when he was here, Mr. Mayorkas.
He sat right there and defied every question that was asked, said the border was secure, lied to this committee, and now here we are. And it's a shame that we've even come to this place, but I applaud your pushback and I thank you, Mr. Roy, for this bill. And I'll just close, Mr. Chairman, again, I do want to know from the Democrats, is there a number that we should cap it of illegal aliens inside the country? Because there was without any question an unchecked harm that's been inflicted on Americans because of... Gentleman yield?
Yes, sir. Mr. Hunt, thank you for that question. And I would say that it takes two, okay? Not only undocumented, these are undocumented workers, taxpayers, hardworking individuals who are hired by honest, law-abiding businesses. That's a broad... that's a broad stroke.
So the answer to your question, sir, is how many employees do our growing economy need to sustain that economic growth? That's the answer to your question, sir. It's not a singular statement or a singular subject. It's the economic growth of the United States. That's the answer to your question, sir.
That is not the answer to my question. Yes it is, sir. Sir, yes it is. I'm reclaiming my time. For you to say that we should hire anybody or we should allow anyone that can be hired...
We need immigration reform and that would be the answer to the question. That doesn't answer the question. We have millions and millions of people who are here illegally that take rather than produce. And your side cannot condemn it. Work, workers that are here supporting our national economy.
Will you say that if someone is taking more than they're producing they should leave? Immigrants support this economy, sir. I'm asking a very simple yes-no question. Immigrants support this economy, sir. To say that every illegal immigrant is a net producer for the country, that is absolutely and improvably false, and I think that you know that.
Gentleman's time... I yield back. Time of the gentleman's expired. The gentleman yields back. Who seeks recognition?
The gentlelady... the gentleman from New York and then I'll go to Washington. Mr. Chairman, I don't know what universe some of the gentlemen on the other side inhabit. But a couple of months ago, Mr. Goldman and I inspected Delaney Hall, which is a large facility, a large privately operated ICE facility in Newark, New Jersey. What we saw there was terrible. We saw maggoty food.
We saw that the food was not prepared at proper temperatures to kill bacteria. I saw a girl who'd been in this country from one year old, who was taken from high school a week before her prom and had no idea what was going to happen to her. I saw two people with advanced cancers who were not being treated at all, literally not being treated. We were told that doctors were available Monday through Friday at 9:00 to 5:00 PM. We were there from 3:00 to 5:00 PM on I think it was a Wednesday.
There were no doctors available in the facility at all, a facility that had several thousand people in it. So I don't know how you can say that these are humane facilities. I don't want to say they're designed to, but they certainly have the effect of killing people for lack of cancer treatment, for example. And they're a shame on this nation.
Jerrold Nadler
I can't speak for every single facility, but I certainly can speak for Delaney Hall, which is one of the largest facilities and the one that Mr. Goldman and I inspected. And that facility is terrible, life-threatening. The inmates at one point went on a hunger strike because to protest the maggoty food, which they couldn't eat in any event. So I just wanted to inform the committee of what we actually saw, not what somebody else may say or what the administration may assert, but what Mr. Goldman and I observed with our own eyes and ears.
Will the gentleman yield?
Yes, I will.
Chuck Edwards
Well, I'll just, just to give you some peace of mind, everything I said was first-hand account as well. I went and visited, and I am working with the department to go to Delaney Hall, and I'm going to try to do so with very little notice to see if what you're saying is accurate today. It shouldn't be accurate. But even besides that, I do, I do have to ask, should the American taxpayers be forced with a bill to cover the world's sick? I mean, this, this is a fundamental question that I think a lot of Americans...
You're reclaiming my time. The American taxpayer should not be forced to cover the world's sick, but the American taxpayer should certainly cover the medical expense of people seized by the government and kept in confinement, just as we... Who are here illegally.
Jerrold Nadler
Whether they're here illegally or not, if they're put in a facility and kept there, they should not be killed by lack of medical attention. When we have people in our prisons, we hopefully, guilty of whatever crime they may be, we hopefully give them adequate medical treatment. Same thing here. If someone is held in a facility for whatever reason, valid or invalid, they should be given adequate medical treatment. And I don't think anybody can, can quarrel with that.
And I would hope that if you tour Delaney Hall, you don't give reasonable notice, you give no notice at all. You have a right as a member of Congress to do that. And if you give notice, they may dress up things, they may clean up what you're permitted to see. So go there with no notice, as Mr. Goldman and I did.
Yes, sir. I yield back.
Speaker 44
Gentleman yields back. May I be heard? The gentleman from New Jersey is recognized.
Jefferson Van Drew
Thank the chairman. So I was in Delaney Hall. I looked at it. I heard all this stuff, people are eating maggots, people are being beaten, they don't have medical care, the whole bit. We didn't give them a whole lot of notice at all.
We showed up there, we went through everything, not just on the regular guided tour that they give, but went through each and every part of it. Let me tell you, this comes from a congressman now who was the head of the prison gang task force for the state of New Jersey. So let me give you some information. Delaney Hall was nicer, cleaner, better than any facility that the state has, the state of New Jersey, any of the prisons they have, period. And quite frankly, that's under repeated Democratic governors over and over again.
In fact, recently New Jersey just got in trouble for their state facilities. So let's talk about what I saw. We went there, I saw the law library. I saw the computers and the iPads they can have. Okay, then we saw the lending library, if they're not interested in law, they can get regular books.
I'm a dentist, I met with the physician. The physician showed me the prescriptions, showed me the charts, showed me the people who for the first time in their life ever had medical care. Came into Delaney Hall, never really had medical care before. He's found diabetes, found high blood pressure, found just about every condition that you can think of, high cholesterol, and now they're getting medications that they never had before. And now, if especially if they request it or they think it's needed, the food that they get is for salt-restricted diets or for people that have any kind of medical need, a special diet.
Let's tell the truth. This was a show that I'm sorry to say this that the other side put on to make things look terrible that just weren't true.
Will the gentleman yield?
Jefferson Van Drew
No, I will not, because I want to finish this. If I get time in the end, I will yield. And then we went through the rest of the facility. And I did speak with, I didn't have long conversations, some of them didn't speak English and truth be told, didn't have an interpreter with me, but I spoke to people doing okay and muy bueno, bueno, you know, everything's fine. And by the way, I've said this before, I'll say it again, I don't know how well they work or don't work, but if we want to test who's telling the truth out here, I'll go on a lie detector test anywhere, anytime, with anybody who wants to do this and say, you know, that I'm telling the truth on this.
Because I didn't know what to expect. I was hoping it would be up to state standards of the state prisons I visited and walked through when I was a state senator and found that the standards were much better. But get this, I'm not done yet. So then they, well, they don't have recreation, they can't move around enough. And by the way, in the state facilities they can't.
In the state facilities, because our governor in New Jersey was criticized, they have to stand and eat over their bed. They no longer have a table to eat at. But here they had place to eat, they had the things that they need. And then they said, well, they don't have recreation. Well, hell, I know a lot of people that don't have recreation, but okay, we're a humane society and it's America.
So I, you know, I asked, because they weren't going to take us to that part. I go out and I'm looking at soccer fields. They have soccer tournaments, they play soccer. Most people don't have this. I work out every morning.
I know what gym equipment's supposed to look like. Man, this gym equipment was top-notch, more than most people have or use, and it was typical of what a good gym would have, all kinds of machines for every body part. So come on, man, it's tell the truth time. Stop it. And anytime somebody says this, I'm going to say it, because and that's why I got sick of it, that's why I went there, that's why I looked through, that's what I found.
I know what my eyes see. And we look at, and by the way, the meals, bad food. Look at the food. They have halal for Islamic people. They had kosher for Jewish people.
If anybody else had some other restrictions, they would work with you. That's the real deal. So I will yield.
Speaker 47
Will the gentleman yield? May I reclaim my time? Gentleman yield, gentleman yield, gentleman yield to the gentleman from California.
Tom McClintock
I just wanted to add that that an illegal alien who agrees to voluntarily return to their own country, that is who agrees to obey the law, spends an average of four days in detention. Yield back.
Jefferson Van Drew
And that's a good point, by the way, and I will yield in a second. I reclaim my time. If they want to go back to their country, they absolutely can go back. And by the way, the famous hunger strike, those folks were getting money and they were going into the commissary, because they also have a commissary besides the regular food you get, and they were getting food there, saying they were on a hunger strike. Nobody was on a hunger strike.
Who wanted me to yield?
Your time's up.
Okay, I yield back to the chairman.
Speaker 46
The gentleman yields back, the gentlelady from Washington, and then I'll go to New York.
Pramila Jayapal
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess the question I would have for my colleague on the other side is why are you asking taxpayers to pay for the profits of for-profit prison operators?
The two largest detention operators in this space that occupy the vast majority of detention contracts are GEO and CoreCivic. GEO in 2025 alone had a record-breaking $254 million in net profit. That was 700% more than compared to 2024, and they had a revenue stream of $2.6 billion. They're projecting, the executives at GEO have these stock portfolios that are projecting that they're going to increase their profits to $3.1 billion this year alone. So then you look at CoreCivic, which is the other one, revenue of $2.2 billion, up 13% from the year before.
They just got $1.47 billion in multi-year, in a multi-year deal to either sell or operate specific facilities. They built nine new detention centers in this year alone. So what you're saying is you want taxpayers to foot the bill for profits to these mega-corporations that are using the imprisonment and incarceration of immigrants of every single immigration status. U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents, people who are here with work authorization, people who have committed zero crimes. You want these taxpayers to pay for the profits of these guys that go out and continue to just reap the benefits of this industry, no I will not, has gone absolutely wild.
Absolutely wild because of all the money you've plowed into this system. And you have to ask yourself, well, who are these people that are in detention? Why are they there? Why are we having to hold people in prisons who are legal permanent residents, U.S. citizens, people who have been here for 30 years, never committed a crime? Let's look at ICE's own statistics.
Over 72% have zero criminal record, zero, zero. Most of the people that are being held in immigration detention are being held for civil immigration violations. And I'm going to make the point that I make a hundred times in this committee, I'm going to make it again, immigration is a civil, immigration violations are civil offenses. It is a civil matter. That's why before 9/11, it was all handled out of the DOJ.
These are not for criminal violations. And you're holding people, forcing taxpayers to pay for this while you cut their healthcare, while you launch illegal wars in Iran, while you refuse to do anything about housing or groceries or gas prices. You just want to make this over and over again about so-called criminal immigrants who are bombarding our country and taking over everything. And the reality is that this country would collapse without the contributions of immigrants. We should be providing the legal pathways, but what has this Republican Congress done and this administration done?
They've taken away every legal pathway. They've slowed down all the processing of applications for legal visas, means of legal processing. People show up for their hearings and they're suddenly put into deportation proceedings when they're doing what we asked them to do. So the people that you are holding in these detention, you had your time, Mr. Van Drew, this is my time, I'm going to claim it.
You had your time and I was asking Mr. Nath this and I might just see if he has a response to this, but I have a lot to say on this issue. I'm the ranking member of the immigration subcommittee. Do we have a single hearing on reforming the immigration system? No, you know why? Because Republicans have since 2013, when I was not in Congress and I was advocating for immigration reform, there was a bipartisan bill, it passed the United States Senate with 68 bipartisan votes.
And you know what happened? John Boehner was the Speaker of the House and John Boehner was pressured by his right-wing members to not bring that bill to the floor because what would happen if we passed immigration reform, like a truly humane bipartisan comprehensive reform? We would no longer be able to blame immigrants for everything that you want to distract us from. And so it angers me that people keep putting out the same lies instead of genuinely recognizing that we need legal pathways, we need a reform to an antiquated system, and that is what we should be doing in this committee. I yield back.
Chip Roy
The lady yields back. The gentleman from Texas is recognized.
I thank the chairman. I oppose this amendment. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle claim it will result in indefinite detention of families, which is patently false. I mean, you can look right now, we can see, if you look at the data, which I don't have a chart big enough for people to see, but if you look at the data of the impact of what we see under this current president, you see a massive drop-off here, a massive drop-off in what we're dealing with family units. And it's dropped and plummeted directly correlated to the enforcement measures that have been put in place and the policies of this administration that we're trying to codify here.
And the reality is, I mean, I can sit here and offer into the record articles, phase out of, here we got private, Biden use of private migrant centers grows amid border crisis. Another one about Obama expansive use of private centers. The fact is this has been a part of our policy on this for a long period of time. The reality is that these centers include housing, playgrounds, schools, and meals for families. The guidelines state that they will offer access to reading materials and other programmatic activities such as adult educational classes, organized recreational programs, and groups focused on healthy living.
That, and at the end of the day, the stay in these centers is not supposed to be indefinite. In fact, multiple administrations have created a fast dedicated docket for family-based claims and what we're trying to do is ensure that we're able to do that. As we saw under the Biden-Harris administration, the status quo simply didn't work and for four years these policies incentivized hundreds of thousands of aliens who are part of family units to travel to the southwest border. It allowed cartels to exploit them. It allowed the furtherance of the profiting of the cartel members.
Cartel members are using children to pose as family units. We know this to be true, we know it was documented, and it was all a direct consequence of the open border policies that resulted in the trafficking of children using these policies to do so. We know that this administration lost tens of thousands of children, could not keep up with them, could not know where they are because of the flawed policies of what they are doing, and this legislation is designed to end those perverse incentives, to stop the empowerment of cartels, to protect children, to protect family units, and to be able to get those processed without the perversion of our laws. The fact that there are private centers does not mean we shouldn't have oversight. Of course we should.
The executive branch, Congress, we should have oversight over the quality of the facilities and where they fall short, those should be addressed. But we have private prisons in numerous categories throughout our country, in state incarceration, in federal incarceration, and here with respect to dealing with those that are detained who are here illegally. And look, I mean, I was out in Aurora, Colorado after that center was targeted for protests back in 2019. And I happened to be in Colorado visiting family. So I went out to Aurora and literally spot-checked, walked in.
Didn't, wasn't announced, I just showed up to go say what's going on. And they walked me through the facility. Wasn't pre-gamed out, it wasn't set up to be some sort of cleansed sort of situation. And I walked around the facility and I saw a clean facility. I saw ping-pong tables, video game centers, phone rooms to be able to call home.
I saw dental processes. I saw a big storage warehouse of all of their private effects when they'd come into the center. I saw people there that were engaged in athletic activity and physical activity. I saw people that had iPads being given to them and any number of things that people would, frankly, most taxpayers would say, wait, what? We're doing what?
And we're giving how much and spending how much? And that's where most taxpayers that I represent would say, well, we're 40 trillion in debt and I've got people that are trying to figure out how to rebuild after a flood and trying to deal with what's happening and wait, we're giving iPads to people who are here illegally in a detention center in Aurora and then we're trying to say that somehow that's something we need to, you know, address and undo. Again, to the, I take the gentleman at his word about what he observed in some abhorrent conditions. We should address those and fix those. Those could occur in government-run facilities, those could occur in private facilities that the government's supposed to have oversight over.
But to suggest that we shouldn't allow for the executive branch, be it under Biden or Trump, to be able to use whatever they can in facilities to be able to deal with and manage this so that we can have people properly and appropriately detained and then be able to be removed as appropriate or go through whatever procedures are appropriate to seek asylum or whatever they're doing under our laws, I think is foolhardy and I oppose the amendment. I yield back.
Mr. Chairman.
Speaker 53
Gentleman yields back. The gentleman from, I think it was New York and then Georgia.
Daniel Goldman
Lots to respond to here. Mr. Roy, I'm glad you agree we should do oversight. How come we haven't done a single bit of oversight of ICE? Not one hearing. We have not done a single oversight hearing of ICE and the 240 billion dollars that they have received, the excessive force, the murdering of people who have done nothing wrong, even though, even if they did do something wrong, they shouldn't be murdered.
No oversight hearings. So I appreciate you saying that, we should do it. Well, do it. Do it. Let's do it right here.
My friend from North Carolina, who said that all of these detainees in the facilities, private or public, whichever you want, are here illegally. Wrong. Asylum is a legal pathway. They are here legally. I understand my colleagues on the other side of the aisle do not like the asylum process and frankly, I agree it takes far, far too long to get through the asylum process.
We should absolutely reform it. The James Lankford-Chris Murphy bill would have done that and we need to do it. But stop saying they're here illegally. Asylum is a legal pathway. That is what the law is.
And so all of those people, not all of them, most of those people at Delaney Hall that I spoke to, I'm sorry Mr. Van Drew didn't have an interpreter, I was able to stay for two and a half hours and speak to a number of them. Many spoke English, the ones that didn't were translated by other people. They have no criminal record, they have work authorizations. I was talking to a mother who had an 18-year-old, single mother, 18-year-old, 12-year-old, and 8-year-old.
And she has been there in months with no hearing in sight. Lawfully here, work authorization, working. Her 8-year-old is being taken care of by her 18-year-old because she's in jail. You want to compare this, Mr. Van Drew, to state criminal detention facilities. These are not criminals.
They are not criminals. They are here illegally. 70 percent, just, I will if I have time, 70 percent of those who are arrested have no criminal record whatsoever, and the data is about 5 percent have serious criminal convictions. And they should be deported. But these people are not criminals.
They do not belong in jail indefinitely. And what's worse is you don't have to take my word for it, you can take the word of 88 percent of federal judges in this country. 88 percent. Every single president, I know we all like to name who appointed it because obviously if it's appointed by the other party, it's not legitimate. Well, plenty of Trump-appointed judges.
Since July of 2025, the federal courts have decided 16,400 habeas cases. Of those, 14,350 went against the administration and the detainees were ordered to be released. 88 percent. Let me tell you something, let me ask you something. If your agency had 88 percent of their cases lose, do you think you might change your policy?
Do you think you might say, okay, this is probably not legal. Maybe we should do something different. But no. You know what Stephen Miller wants to do? He wants to suspend habeas corpus because he doesn't like the fact that he can't just do whatever he wants and there's actually a law that he has to follow.
So yes, the criminals should be deported. But that's not who are being kept in these detention facilities indefinitely for months and months and months and months. Many of with work authorizations, paying taxes, having businesses. What are they doing in a criminal jail? They're not criminals.
So yeah, that's all well and good, you want to compare it to a state criminal jail, but these are not criminals and they should not be in jail as 88 percent of federal judges have determined. And I yield back.
Speaker 51
Gentleman from California's recognized. Well, let, the gentleman from New Jersey has some unanimous consent and then I'll come to you.
Speaker 52
How do you see Delaney Hall snack purchases cast doubt on real hunger strikes? Despite a 14 percent drop in detainee population, commissary spending nearly tripled during the supposed hunger strike in Bossier.
Move to strike the last word.
Gentleman's recognized.
Darrell Issa
Mr. Chairman, I patiently listened for five minutes to the word illegal is not a criminal. But I want to go a little further back because it needs to be said. This committee has tried to in previous times, prior to President Trump, to deal with people who drink, who drink and drive and hurt or kill people that are illegally in the country. And the other side has repeatedly turned down with amendments such as, well what if, what if someone did it 10 times, a DUI?
What if they did it 20 times? And in every case, the then-majority Democrats would vote no. So it pales in comparison to the definition that they painted, because of course their definition of criminals, that statistic that was cited, only 5%. Of course, it ignores the DUIs, ignores the wife-beaters, ignores anything except having been convicted of a felony. Now, if 5% of the people you're trying to throw out are criminal felons, and you're having trouble sometimes even getting rid of them, then I don't care if it's 80% of the cases or not.
Of course you continue to do it. And within those who were denied this being held and released, there were lots and lots of people who hadn't held jobs, had were involved in or suspected strongly of being involved in gang and criminal activities, and the list goes on. And yet, the other side says, "Well, we're okay if it's a crime." No, you're okay if the guy's been charged and convicted, unless of course he's going out the back door of one of your sanctuary cities. If he's going out the back door of one of your sanctuary cities, you're okay with releasing him again and again.
So how dare the other party make the statement that somehow, "Well, we're okay with locking up criminals, we're okay with deporting criminals." Your definition of criminals and your treatment of criminals in sanctuary cities, most of the blue states and cities, has shown us that that's just not true. So yes, we are dealing with a good piece of legislation here. We are fighting amendment after amendment, and I'm okay with just voting no on the amendments as appropriate. What I'm not okay with is sitting silent while somebody redefines crime and forgets their own history.
The history of this committee is when Democrats are in charge, nobody gets deported, everybody gets let in. I'm going to close, I'll yield here in just a moment. My grandfather came through Ellis Island, as so many did. That was an orderly way to come in. But even then, if they found or suspected criminal activity, you didn't get off the island.
If you had tuberculosis, you didn't get off the island. If, if, if. The fact is that there was a time under presidents of both parties when people said it's a privilege to come to America. And even when you're invited, you still can be fact-checked. Unfortunately, today we're not talking in those terms.
It is a, this is not the only bill I'd like to see passed, but I'm delighted that it's finally being brought up and I look forward to voting for it, and I yield to my colleague from California.
Tom McClintock
I think I just wanted to make a couple of quick points. The Lankford bill would have prevented President Trump from taking the actions that he took to secure our borders until illegal crossings reached 4,000 a day. That's why we opposed this bill and why Lankford ultimately disowned it. Now remember, the Democrats said there was nothing could be done. The President proved them liars when he enforced the law and illegal crossings immediately dropped more than 95%.
Now we're also told these are not criminals. Well, that's both true and untrue. What's untrue is that they've not violated the law. They have indeed. If they've crossed the border illegally, they've committed a misdemeanor under federal law punishable for by up to six months in prison and a $1,000 fine.
If they re-enter, it's a felony. But what is true is that they are normally not charged for this crime. So their illegal presence is a civil matter. It's remediated by the civil enforcement of deportation.
Deportation is not a punishment. It is a simple recognition that they've got no right to be here. It's analogous to being escorted off the the premises of a property that you have no right to be in, even if you're not charged with the actual crime of trespass. Thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Chairman.
I move to strike the last word.
Gentlelady is recognized.
Zoe Lofgren
I would just note that as usual, the Judiciary Committee is all over the the map without actually talking about the amendment that is before us. The Trump administration has gone all over the country and paid in many cases inflated prices, two or three times the assessed value for a bunch of warehouses. Now, they're having to sell some of them. And what they've found all over the country is that in red states and blue states is the neighbors don't want these warehouses to be converted to detention facilities. The amendment would preclude converting these warehouses to detention facilities for families.
That's what the amendment is. And I I would challenge any of us to go home and explain to our constituents why we think that's not a good idea when the people of the country are saying don't do this, suing in some cases, a red state sheriff cutting off the road access. People don't want this. And that's what the amendment would do. I'm in favor it and with that I would yield the balance of my time to Mr. Goldman.
Daniel Goldman
All right. Thank you to Ms. Lofgren. Just to respond to a couple things that Mr. Issa said and that Mr. McClintock said. First of all, my grandmother also came through Ellis Island. There was no immigration law at that time.
And certainly there was no NCIS where you could look at a database and figure out whether someone has a criminal record from their own country. And those with tuberculosis and other illnesses went into an a huge hospital that they built at Ellis Island in order to rehabilitate people so that they could come in. 98% of the people who arrived at Ellis Island were allowed into this country. So I don't think you want to go back to the quote orderly process unquote that you said Ellis Island is, given everything that you've said here today. Sanctuary cities.
If there's a criminal conviction, and I ask you, please cite me one case where there was a criminal conviction, the defendant served his time and was convicted of a removable offense under the INA and he was not turned over by the city or the state to the Department of Homeland Security. You have not and are unable to provide one is my guess, maybe you'll have one or two, I'm sure that some fall through the cracks. But the policy of sanctuary cities and sanctuary states is that if you are removable after you're convicted, after you complete your sentence, you are turned over to the Department of Homeland Security. The problem you all have is the conviction part. You don't think there should be a conviction.
You think it is enough that someone is arrested for a removable offense. But we have due process here and you're innocent until proven guilty and that's why these people are not turned over before they are convicted. And then finally I'd just go back to to one thing that you talked about. And Mr. McClintock, I believe you brought this up, that there is a crime that says you are that it is a crime to enter illegally.
That is true. But you are also allowed to and this supersedes it to claim asylum. And then you are here legally. And I understand now the policy is that you can only claim asylum if you come through a port of entry. I think that's a worthwhile policy to discuss, but the asylum laws allow you to claim asylum even if you crossover the border illegally.
So it is a defense to that claim. It is not therefore a crime if you can claim asylum, which is a legal pathway. And the the issue I keep coming back to it over and over again. You keep saying everybody here who's detained is illegal. They're not.
They're not. If they claim asylum, they are that is a lawful pathway. I know you don't like it, but it is a lawful pathway. So they are not here illegally. And I wish this administration would stop putting those people in jail indefinitely because when they are simply following the law.
Chip Roy
The lady's time has expired. Gentleman from North Carolina is recognized and then we'll go to
Chuck Edwards
Well just I'll briefly respond to some of that. Number one, claiming asylum does not mean that the United States has to take someone in. A claim can certainly be denied and candidly
Speaker 58
Gentleman, gentleman for one second I will claim the time and I will yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.
Chuck Edwards
Oh thank you. I would argue that that the asylum process has been abused. People come across the border and yell I'm in I'm afraid of something and they're granted entry. And of course the previous administration was far more liberal in granting those requests.
And I will just say I agree with you.
Chuck Edwards
Well, but secondly, I would say and probably importantly, a conviction is not required to deport someone, especially if it is an illegal re-entry. Your presence here is criminal. I mean 8 USC 1326 I used that all the time when I was a federal prosecutor. So being here is sufficient to be detained and deported. But thirdly, the sanctuary jurisdictions do have a very wide paradigm in how they're operated.
You know there's some sanctuary leaning jurisdictions in my home state of North Carolina. We had to pass a law at the state legislature to override the discretion. But we had members of of I believe it was Fairfax County, Steve Descano, where he campaigned on not charging and not leading not not not even hiding the ball, he wanted to plead them down to a non-deportable offense under the INA if they were here illegally. And we heard of numerous cases where that was that was exercised. Number one for me was when he cut loose a a pedophile with overwhelming evidence because the judge said your plea offer is deficient.
So sanctuary cities some there is some merit to some of them, but the other ones they do go far too extreme. And in terms of waiting until an illegal alien is convicted, I would just say that what we're arguing for in that instance is for an American to be harmed, the illegal alien to be caught, the the illegal alien to be convicted before they're deported. And I disagree with that. If they're here especially a second time illegally, I would prefer we not wait for an American to be harmed, that we appropriately seize them and deport them with greater efficiency. And those are my three points.
Speaker 56
Well it's back to the chair. I'm happy to yield to whoever, Mr. Roy and Mr. Goldman, whoever.
Yield to the gentleman from Texas.
Chip Roy
I just want to add just a couple things to this deal, which is the Biden-Harris administration acknowledged this problem with asylum when they said a full between 2014 and 2019 a full 83% of the people who were subject to expedited removal and claimed fear from that window were referred to an immigration judge.
In fiscal year 24, for asylum cases originating with a credible fear claim at the border, only 8% of applications were eventually granted in immigration court. 6% were denied, 34% were not adjudicated, including cases that were terminated or dismissed. 42.7% of cases didn't even bother filing the asylum application. The point here is our effort to streamline this process to make sure that those who are able to claim asylum with credible fear can have it heard without being inundated, without having the system overwhelmed, so that the 85% in the 2024 data under Joe Biden that were not, and by the way, 8% were eventually granted immigration court, so 92% weren't. That number is completely unacceptable and it's indicative of everything that was wrong with our system under the previous administration and why we are seeking to make codification of the policies that have restored order, that have restored sensibility, common sense, that have made it to now where you can actually do your job, where somebody has an asylum claim, you can at least hear it, where you can manage the border without total abject chaos, where ranchers are overwhelmed, rapes are occurring, unaccompanied children are being abused, cartels are being empowered, fentanyl are killing Texans and Americans, and the purpose of this is to avoid that ever happening again irrespective of who is in the White House.
I yield back. I yield to the chairman.
Daniel Goldman
Just real quick in response to Mr. Knott, 8 USC 1326 is a federal crime. Whenever anybody is arrested federally and they don't have status, they're not here legally, they go into immigration custody if they're not put into federal custody. The issue is with the sanctuary cities, we're talking about city and state criminal prosecutions. And Mr. Roy, I guess what I would just ask is why is not some of the $240 billion that is being given to our immigration enforcement going to hire many more immigration judges to get out of the backlog of asylum? That's a pretty simple thing.
Instead, it's going to $50,000 bonuses to people who are unvetted, who don't even have their background checks completed, and who are being hired just to terrorize people and arrest them for people who have no criminal.
Chip Roy
Time has expired. There was money was used to get more immigration judges as part of the bill we passed last year. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Georgia.
Henry Johnson
Well, the facts are that Trump has dodged the immigration judges. So you have fewer judges now than you had a year ago or two years ago, and they continue to narrow the funnel from the top where you are putting immigrants into the private for-profit crony capitalist prison industrial complex private detention facilities. You hire 20,000 agents to terrorize the communities across America, arrest people, put them in private detention.
The average stay for an asylum seeker is 700 days in private detention. And the fact is if they're in private detention, they're going to spend more time there at taxpayer expense than they will in a public detention center, a government-run detention center. So this private for-profit prison detention industrial complex is one that makes money for a few people at the top, and those are the crony capitalists associated with Donald Trump. And it's hurting Americans when our neighbors and in some cases our relatives are getting caught up in that funnel. You're putting a bunch of people in, but yet you're adjudicating fewer and fewer cases, meaning more lengthy stays in the detention centers at taxpayer expense.
Connect the dots, it hurts the taxpayers, but it also hurts people on the ground. I want to read parts of an article written by Miriam Jordan, a national immigration correspondent with the New York Times, in an article published yesterday and updated today. She says, quote, "The Trump administration's immigration crackdown is colliding with a demographic reality. Americans are aging rapidly and living longer, creating soaring demand for elder care when the industry is already buckling under the weight of chronic labor shortages. Almost 70 million people in the United States are 65 years of age or older, and government projections estimate that 70% of older adults will need care at some point in their lives.
Millions of immigrants eligible to work in the United States fill positions across the elder care industry, such as nurses, dietitians, fitness instructors, and maintenance technicians, and countless undocumented immigrants care for seniors in their homes, part of a vast informal economy. Immigration enforcement is choking both labor pools." And so when you get older and you don't have anybody to take care of you, you can blame Trump and you can blame MAGA Republicans here in the House of Representatives and also in the US Senate. I'll also talk about the 1.5 million people that the United States Supreme Court, the 6-3 MAGA majority on the United States Supreme Court, has authorized Donald Trump to revoke their temporary protected status and deport them. Where do you think they're going first before they get deported?
They're going into those private for-profit detention centers, reaking more profits for the crony capitalists. So you have 350,000 Haitians which or who President Trump has accused of being dog eaters and cat eaters, our domestic pets, you know. But do you think he gives a damn about them? Those 350,000, many of them work in the nursing homes. Many of them work in the informal economy taking care of yours and mine, our elderly relatives, our mothers, our fathers, uncles and aunts, grandmothers.
And so be careful of what you do. You can talk about illegal immigrants being criminal or being non-criminal, whatever you want to call them, but these are the people who are working in this economy and they are helping make life better for you.
And when they're not there, you have only yourself to blame. And with that, I yield back.
Gentleman from Texas is recognized.
Chip Roy
I thank my friend from Kansas and I thank the Chairman. Let me just juxtapose a couple of things. In the window of time from the time that we passed H.R. 2 in the previous Congress in May of 2023, but that we were being stonewalled by Democrats in the Senate and by the previous administration, during that window of time between then and when President Trump took office and was able to get control of the situation at the border, enacting the very policies that my Democrats clearly support by virtue of the way they're talking about what we want to try to accomplish here and what we're trying to do right now, in that Republicans in that time, we passed the bill. In that window, more than three and a half million illegal aliens encountered at the southwest border alone, five million encountered nationwide. We had millions of illegal aliens released, hundreds of thousands of aliens chauffeured into the country through illegal parole programs, at least two million new cases in immigration court.
Let me repeat that. At least two million new cases in immigration court. We had the preventable murders and deaths of Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, Rachel Morin, Katie Abraham, Sheridan Gorman, Stephanie Mentor, and countless other Americans. All of that since May 2023, since the time Republicans took action and that we are trying to do right now to codify what President Trump did that actually restored order at the border. Let's talk about immigration judges.
The EOIR announces 77 immigration judges and five temporary immigration judges. I'd like to increase, put this into the record without objection from the Chairman.
Without objection.
Chip Roy
The largest class in agency's history. The Executive Office for Immigration Review announced the swearing in of 77 immigration judges and five temporary immigration judges, the largest class of new adjudicators in EOIR's history, growing the total immigration judge corps to nearly 700. It's hired 153 permanent immigration judges this fiscal year, the most in any single year in the agency's history. I would also ask to insert into the record this adjudication statistics, which shows the extent to which initial receipts have plummeted. If you see this chart, you've got to zero in on the screen, the receipts have plummeted under this administration in terms of who's coming into the system.
Yet the total completions of the adjudication of claims is going up under the Trump administration because we took the money that we got under the OBB, we took that and our efforts and we've added to the immigration judges, we've been processing the backlogs, diminishing the numbers, and no longer filling the courts with new people because we're actually doing the job we're supposed to do at the border. So I totally agree that we should be doing exactly what we were doing right now. That's the whole point. We want to codify it and make it to where it's permanent. With that, I would yield back to the gentleman from Kansas.
Gentleman yields back. Gentleman from Kansas yields back. Yes. Gentleman from Kansas yields back. I think it's Ms. Scanlon and then Ms. Crockett.
Mary Gay Scanlon
Thank you. I have found so many of the statements from the other side of the aisle today absolutely astonishing, the way that people can try to justify this detention fantasy that underlies their efforts to justify mass imprisonment of people is just inhumane and immoral and everything else. I mean, it's a house of cards, which if you examine any one of those cards, the whole thing is going to collapse. It starts with this idea that we have all these dangerous criminal immigrants in this country. It's a fantasy.
Even the people they have picked up, the vast majority of them are not criminals. So that card is not structurally sound.
Then we have the lies that all these people came here illegally. That's not true. Many of the people who have been detained have come here legally under visas, under different, under as recipients of TPS, and the rules got changed under them. We also know that there are millions of people who came here legally, and because our immigration system is so broken and all the money is going to detention and border walls, we don't have the resources to process the people who are in line trying to follow the rules. And those people are getting picked up as they go to their court hearings, as they go to meetings in which they are trying to follow our rules.
So it's just one lie after another, which then is used to justify the unconstitutional and inhumane treatment that is being doled out using taxpayer dollars. Prisons, many of them privately run, that are being operated in conditions where there is inadequate clean water, inadequate meals, unsanitary conditions, and a lack of medical care, as court after court after court has found in recent years. We now have thousands of decisions indicating over the last two years that people are being held in inhumane conditions, and if every one of these people could get a lawyer, then we would have thousands more released than have been already. Probably one of the most perverse things is that some of the taxpayer dollars being used to fund these private prisons are actually taxpayer dollars from the people who are being held there now, because so many of the people who have been detained are actually here working legally, working and paying taxes, because as several people have pointed out, our immigrants are a net monetary benefit to this country. The arguments are just not credible, they're not true, and to justify the kind of conditions where we've had over 50 people die in the last just year and a half in ICE facilities, that is vastly more than we've ever seen before, and in so many cases these people died from lack of medical treatment, from inhumane conditions.
And to try to justify continuing that kind of immoral behavior, I think is well beneath this institution and this country. But I do want to make the point that I think kicked off this part of the debate. My colleague from Pennsylvania has offered a very simple amendment saying that we should not be detaining people in warehouses. If we can't even agree upon the fact that we should not treat people like an Amazon package, I have very little hope for anything productive getting done in this body in the foreseeable future, or at least until November. So it is not just the human rights of the folks that are involved, but we have seen across the country as these warehouses have been gobbled up by ICE, often at excessive prices, the local communities are saying, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, our sewer system, our electrical grid, our hospital system can't handle you putting 7,000 or 10,000 people in an Amazon warehouse in our district."
So there are so many other issues here that deserve to be dealt with. I do think an overarching one is the fact that so many of these facilities are being run for private, for-profit prison contractors who, as we heard detailed earlier, are raking in billions and billions of taxpayer dollars, some of which they're turning around then and making millions and millions of dollars of contributions to the White House and to members of Congress, so the whole thing is a very sick, inhumane cycle, and obviously I will be supporting my colleague's amendment and voting against this bill.
I yield back.
Jasmine Crockett
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. And this amendment specifically, um, as it goes back to what my colleague was just saying, it's about these Amazon warehouses. And I know that there's been a lot of talk about sanctuary cities and blue states and red states and things like that. But I want to tell you the story of, um, a town by the name of Hutchins. In the town of Hutchins, there was a proposal for, um, ICE to purchase a building that was a million square feet.
It was a warehouse. It had previously been utilized specifically by Amazon. Um, and the Department of Homeland Security and ICE considered the site to convert it into a massive detention facility, which would have held roughly 9,500 to 10,000 individuals, far exceeding the small town's population of around 6,000 people. Um, in the following weeks, the people rose up and the people decided that they were going to push and use every tool in their tool back toolbox to make sure that this ICE facility did not go through. The town of Hutchins is actually in Texas.
It actually sits in Texas 30. And I do want to applaud not only the people of the town of Hutchins, but also my elected officials on every single level that worked together to make sure that that was shut down. But let's talk about what this is really about. And I know y'all knew it was coming, especially once I showed up. It's racist.
It's just racist, racist, racist, okay? Now let me tell you why it is racist. All right, this ain't about whether or not you're concerned that the immigrant is coming in and the immigrant is going to kill everybody. That is not what it is. It's not.
It's the things like what your fearless leader said when he said they're poisoning the blood, okay? What this is about is racism. Because the last time I checked, supposedly this administration, supposedly not even just this administration, let me just be clear. Your president. He is the one that said white South African refugees needed their own program.
And so therefore, he decided that he would raise the cap on how many refugees could come into the United States, but it was only raised for white South Africans. The administration set a limit of 17,500 slots, planned to admit more white South Africans as refugees this year. So here is the point. Every time I see these images of these officers who obviously are completely incompetent, none of that money that has been given to ICE has been given so that they could be trained up and know how to do the doggone job. Seems like they are specifically targeting people because of how they look.
In fact, earlier, one of my colleagues from across the aisle was talking about let's not forget our history. As he quoted the history of how his family came in, and I guess he was trying to say they came in the right way. Let me be clear about something. The people that were here are the indigenous folk. And you know who ICE been rounding up?
They've been rounding up indigenous people, the people that originally came, not the colonizers, but the original people. So what this is about is whiteness. Everything that this administration has pushed has been about white supremacy. Your fear. In fact, you say things like, oh, you just want them to come in so that they will vote for you because we know that when you look at the numbers, I mean, I'm just being real with this, but white people, they not the ones that carry the Democrats.
They aren't.
Speaker 70
And so this is literally about... you say things, you tell on yourselves. You believe that somehow they will become citizens and they will start voting in the interest of equity. Those are the things you fight against when you say no diversity, equity, and inclusion. You want to sit up here and act like the crime is being perpetrated by people of color, but the statistics stay otherwise. If you look at the real numbers, I know that y'all believe in propaganda and y'all don't want people to know the truth and y'all definitely don't want them to know history because then you got to, again, acknowledge colonizing.
But nevertheless, when you look at the numbers, you want to tell me about one-offs. And listen, as a criminal defense attorney, I have represented people of all colors. Let me tell you, anybody can commit a crime on any given day. The idea that you put a wide sweeping brush on everybody that happens to have a little bit of melanin as a criminal, that is really the crime. When you are elected to represent somebody, you should be understanding that your job is to fight for everybody.
And what makes this country great is our diversity. I'll yield.
Speaker 64
Time is up. Gentleman from Maryland. I think she's... Oh, the gentlelady from California. Gentlelady from California is recognized.
Sydney Kamlager-Dove
Me? Okay. Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair. I support this amendment. I certainly supported that history lesson we just heard, and there's so much to talk about, uh, based on what my colleagues from the other side of the aisle have been saying.
So we want to talk about the border? Well, let me see. If I recall, we had a bipartisan immigration reform bill that did address the border, uh, that in fact Trump tanked because he wanted to make sure that, you know, he had Republicans falling in line so that he could try and win the election in '24. And so in my mind, this bill that we're debating now is like sloppy seconds to a bipartisan piece of immigration reform legislation. Let's talk about immigration and immigrants.
There are all kinds of immigrants. There are the ones that landscape your homes. There are the ones that care for your families. There are the ones that prepare your food. There are the ones that design your Teslas.
There are the ones that come up with vaccines that cure diseases. There are the ones that marry people that ultimately become the president. There are all kinds of immigrants with all kinds of status. So let's not try and lump immigrants into one kind of bucket to push a very perverse narrative about who immigrants are. Let's talk about criminals.
Criminals has come up, I guess, in I don't know what Democrats think about criminals and Republicans. Well, we can talk about criminals. Let's talk about the ones that stormed the Capitol on January 6th. I have not heard anybody say, "Round these people up and put them in jail." I have heard people say, "Give them restitution, give them a job working for ICE, give them a bonus and all of this."
And there are so many other kinds of criminals than just those January 6ers. There are white-collar criminals, there are terrorists, there are folks, and not just immigrants, there are folks, Americans, that are involved in trafficking, human trafficking, drug trafficking. And you know what? We have agencies for this. We have DEA, we have ATF, we have Homeland Security.
And I'm not talking about ICE. And you know what, this administration, you all, you know what you all have done? You all have stopped the thousands of agents working in those departments. You have stopped them from going after criminals. You have stopped them from pursuing their prosecutorial work to go after people that are trafficking children.
And you have put them on ICE detail. Anybody who does that in my mind is a criminal. If you are taking folks away from their job trying to stop child trafficking, then you're a criminal. Let's talk about judges. People have come up with these judges.
Well, there are judges that are saying no to ICE because of these warehouses, because of these detention facilities. These warehouses that are warehousing two-month-old babies, pregnant women. How, what is a two-month-old baby doing? What kind of high crime is a two-month-old baby committing? Crying more than three seconds?
I, what is that? Why are we doing this? Why are we warehousing babies less than a year old? Pregnant women. Why are we shackling pregnant women, putting them in these warehouses?
The judges are saying no. A judge in my district has said no because she said that these warehouses, these detention facilities, y'all's ICE are violating the Fifth Amendment. People are dying because of inhumane conditions of confinement. And so what we are saying through these amendments to try to fix this sloppy second bill is have some oversight. Say the thing.
We are saying the thing. You want to talk about people being killed? Well, you know what, my colleague didn't add Alex Pre- Alex Preddy to the list, Renee Good to the list. Be honest. I really don't understand why no one on the other side of the aisle can be honest about what is happening.
A death is a death regardless of if it fits your narrative. And you should be demanding oversight over your dollars being misused to create inhumane conditions, which is why I support this amendment. I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Speaker 69
Gentleman yield- or gentlelady yields back. The question occurs- gentleman from Maryland.
Jamie Raskin
Mr. Chairman, thank you. Our colleagues want to strike the pose of anti-crime warriors over this legislation, but they are complete bystanders, even enthusiasts, when it comes to certain kinds of crime. White-collar crime, the frauds that are sweeping the country today, any of Donald Trump's crimes in any of the crimes committed by the convicted felons he pardons. Pardoned more than 1,500 felons who attacked and assaulted our police officers, stormed the Capitol of the United States, threatened to assassinate his own Vice President, they did, and tried to overthrow a presidential election. And he pardoned all of them, commuted their sentences, gave them clemency, forgave any fines or restitution that they owed to their victims, including to the United States of America.
And we don't hear a peep from them about that kind of crime. We heard about DUI. Well, a lot of our families have been touched by DUI. Lots of families in America. 12,000 people every year are lost to drunk drivers.
34 deaths a day.
Don't all these families deserve something more than just a rhetorical invocation of DUI in order to pass a terrible anti-immigration bill that everybody knows is going nowhere in the dwindling days of this Congress? Why didn't we have one serious hearing about drunk driving in America and people getting killed every single day? When I was a state senator in Maryland, I advanced legislation which passed to impose a mandatory, compulsory ignition interlock device on the cars of convicted drunk drivers. And yet, what have our colleagues done about that? Nothing.
No hearings, no markup, no legislation, but they will use DUI as a way to make an argument for more immigrant bashing in America. We keep hearing fairy tales about the Obama administration, the Biden administration. If the Democrats had their way, they say, there'd be 100 million illegal aliens swarming the streets of America. If Democrats had their way, there'd be a billion people, the whole world would be here. Well, you know what?
Under the Obama administration, more than 3 million people were removed, deported, and repatriated. Under the Biden administration, more than 4 million people were removed, deported, and repatriated from the country. I went back because I remembered a hearing that we had. The Republican chairs of the Oversight and Homeland committees interviewed the border patrol chiefs for each section of the southern border to try to find out what was going on under Biden. Here's what they said.
You can go back and listen to the whole hearing or check out the report. The Biden administration made investments to address the spike in undocumented immigration and to control the border. There was no open border. They tried everything they could to get one of them to say there was an open border, and they said, no, there was no open border. There was robust drug interdiction at the border.
Gregory Bovino, whom Trump made the commander at large of the border patrol, was the chief patrol agent for the El Centro sector under President Biden, and he testified about the successful border patrol operations he was running, and he discussed applying consequences for those illegally crossing the border and drug traffickers under President Biden. So look, if you want to go off and continue to divide and polarize Americans and demagogue this issue, do it, but stop misstating the historical record when it comes to the administrations of President Biden and President Obama. While America's involved in an illegal, unconstitutional, disastrous war in Iran, taking American lives as well as Iranian lives, they want to replay the best of, the worst of all of their anti-immigrant fantasies, which have turned the vast majority of the country against them, as more than 60% of Americans reject the failed immigration policies of this administration. Tom Paine said when he got over to America in 1774, two years before our revolution, that this country, if it lives up to its ideals and values, will be an asylum to humanity. Not an insane asylum, but a place of refuge for people seeking freedom from political and economic and religious and intellectual persecution from all over the world.
That's who we are as a country. And instead, they want to set Americans against Americans and continue to have ICE agents killing Americans, shooting them down in the streets. And we say, no, enough of this. Let's get together and have serious bipartisan common sense immigration reform.
I yield back to you, Mr. Chairman.
Speaker 78
Gentleman yields back. The question occurs on the amendment offered by the gentlelady from Pennsylvania. All those in favor say aye.
Those opposed, no.
Chip Roy
In the opinion of the chair, the noes have it. The amendment is not agreed to.
We seek a roll call, please.
Roll call being requested. The clerk will call the roll.
Mr. Jordan.
Speaker 28
Mr. Roy votes no. Mr. Fitzgerald. Mr. Cline. Mr. Gooden. Mr. Van Drew.
Mr. Nehls. Mr. Moore.
Mr. Moore votes no. Ms. Hageman.
Mr. Correa votes aye. Ms. Scanlon.
Ms. Ross votes aye. Ms. Balint.
Mr. Goldman votes aye. Ms. Crockett.
Summer Lee
Ms. Lee of Pennsylvania votes aye. Mr. Fitzgerald, you're not recorded.
Chip Roy
The amendment is not agreed to. Who seeks recognition? Gentleman from Maryland. Clerk will report. Gentleman from California reserves a point of order.
Without objection, the amendment will be considered as read. The gentleman from Maryland is recognized to explain the amendment.
Jamie Raskin
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My amendment is about the necessity of ICE agents wearing body cameras, something which I think the vast majority of Americans and people in Congress agree to. We've watched in horror as poorly trained and out-of-control DHS and ICE officers shot more than two dozen Americans and immigrants and killed six of them, including three US citizens, during immigration enforcement operations since Trump has taken office.
Despite these killings in the streets of America, the majority has refused to conduct any investigative oversight into these homicides or to hold the Department of Homeland Security or its agents accountable in any way. To my knowledge, the majority has not sent a single letter, marked up a single bill, or held a single hearing to try to restrain this violence against innocent people on the streets of America, from Texas to Minneapolis to Maine. Democrats have been demanding reform, including a requirement that all DHS officers wear and use fully functioning body cameras when conducting these enforcement operations. But despite repeated assurances from DHS that this would happen, it has not happened. Shortly after agents killed Renee Good and Alex Breddy in Minneapolis in January, DHS vowed to quickly deploy functioning body cameras for every officer across America, but nearly six months later, it still hasn't happened.
And the carnage continues. Earlier this month, ICE officers fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, father of three children, all of them US citizens, in Houston, Texas, during an operation. The officers involved were not wearing body cameras, according to reports, leaving lots of questions about why this happened. Just days later, ICE officers fatally shot Johan Sebastian Guerrero during an operation in Maine. The officers were wearing body cameras this time, but no, they were not turned on, they were not functional.
For both shootings, we've been forced to rely on DHS's official bureaucratic description of events because no body camera footage is available to provide either a corroborating or a contradictory account of what actually took place. And DHS's veracity and credibility have been repeatedly debunked after eyewitnesses, reporters, and judges in federal courts have determined that the government simply did not tell the truth about what happened. Following these most recent crimes against citizens, immigrants, and communities, DHS announced that all agents and officers will be equipped with fully functioning body-worn cameras in the next 60 days, they said. We can only welcome this announcement, but given the administration's bloody track record, we cannot take their word for it. Trust but verify.
We need these cameras yesterday. No more bureaucratic red tape and evasions. DHS and its component agencies have consistently made false and unsubstantiated allegations about the people that its agents shot dead, including Renee Good and Alex Breddy, who the Secretary quickly called terrorists. Terrorists, she called them, a defamatory lie that she refused to retract in this committee. DHS has routinely claimed that its own homicide victims, the people that their agents shot down in broad daylight at point-blank range, were actually attacking the officers and that they had tried to weaponize their cars against them.
All of this has been proven obscenely, demonstrably false, both the false charge of terrorism attributed to moms of three kids and VA nurses and the false assignment of guilt in people causing their own deaths at the hands of DHS and ICE. In each case, evidence emerged that definitively contradicted and debunked the government's claims. In other incidents, it was found ICE agents lied and acted inappropriately, resulting in several of the prosecutions of DHS's victims being dismissed in federal court with prejudice. As a result, Donald Trump's DHS has completely lost the trust of the people that it was created to protect and serve. We need DHS using body-worn cameras to ensure the accountability, bureaucratic transparency, and public safety against a bloated, mass paramilitary force.
This is a basic constitutional requirement, not a partisan complaint. Most law enforcement agencies across America are using body cameras as a standard practice. Just last week, Republican Senator John Cornyn called it a mistake that the officers didn't have body cameras. So, this is not a question of a lack of resources, Mr. Chairman. They've got the resources to do it.
I urge my colleagues to support this constitutionally compelled and common sense amendment, and I yield back.
Speaker 88
Gentleman yields back. Does the gentleman insist on his point of order?
The gentleman's recognized to explain.
Tom McClintock
Mr. Chairman, the gentleman's amendment would have introduced material beyond the scope and purpose of the bill before us and therefore violates House Rule 16, Clause 7. I yield back.
Chip Roy
The gentleman's amendment does not satisfy the subject matter and fundamental purposes test, therefore it is not germane and is out of order.
Speaker 87
Who seeks recognition? The gentleman from Maryland. Mr. Chairman, was there a ruling on this?
Jamie Raskin
Okay, I have another amendment that we can introduce that's written more narrowly, and I'll introduce that one.
Yeah.
What was the ruling?
Gentleman's recognized. Clerk will report.
Chip Roy
Without objection, the amendment will be considered as read. The gentleman's recognized to explain the amendment, point of order being reserved by the gentleman from California. Gentleman from Maryland's recognized.
Jamie Raskin
We're talking about body cameras for ICE agents on the streets of America. And we're talking about in the aftermath of numerous killings of US citizens and also immigrants. Immigrants who were not even the target of the original operation and were not committing any crimes. So, this is a matter that the vast majority of Americans agrees about. These ICE officials should be wearing, these ICE agents should be wearing body cameras the way that the vast majority of local and state police do when they're out on the beat.
And ICE has a lot more money than our local police departments. They've got billions and billions of dollars to do it. They've got a force of agents larger than the local police departments of Washington DC, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Houston, all combined. We're talking about a huge police force and they're going around masked. And they've been killing American citizens as well as immigrants in their work.
We need those body cameras and the administration doesn't disagree. The administration keeps saying yes, we're going to get to that. And now there's a promise within 60 days. Before that it was going to be immediately and so on. Enough.
This has to be a matter of law. And everybody should take a position on this and not try to squirm out of it. Do we believe that ICE agents should be able to continue this masked rampage across America without wearing the body cameras that our police officers back home are wearing to great effect? So that's the purpose of this amendment and I submit it to the judgment of the committee. If you don't like it, vote against it.
But if you do like it and you stand with most of the American people, vote for it. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Chip Roy
Gentleman yields back. We're not trying to squirm out of anything, we're just trying to follow the rules. If it's germane, the amendment will be allowed, we'll debate it and we'll vote on it. If it's not germane, it'll be ruled not germane. That's how it operates.
The gentleman from California, does he insist on his, withdraws his amendment. Imagine that. The gentleman from Texas is recognized, the gentleman from California is recognized to speak on the amendment.
Tom McClintock
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The ranking member laments the fatal encounters with ICE officers and we join him in that. But it must be remembered that no one, not ICE officers, not rioters, not fugitives, and not bystanders have ever been injured, let alone killed, when ICE officers have been able to arrest illegal immigrants while they're already in custody. But the Democrats' sanctuary laws don't turn them over when they can be safely arrested. They release them back into our streets to prey upon innocent Americans instead, and by the way, prey upon immigrants, until squads of ICE officers have to go out, track them down, and take them back into custody by force.
And when they do that, they must often encounter violent mobs, often incited by the Democrats, or confront violent fugitives. And people get injured and they get killed. Indeed, a Democrat member of Congress last year doxxed an ICE officer to a violent mob in California who then set upon him and put him in the hospital. Another Democrat member of Congress stands indicted for assaulting law enforcement officers at an ICE facility in New York. You cannot lament these injuries and deaths while defending the sanctuary laws that cause them.
But now to the point of the body cameras. We support body cameras on all law enforcement. Republicans appropriated $20 million for this purpose. But I need to remind the ranking member that he and his colleagues voted to shut down DHS for 75 days, the longest government shutdown in American history, during which time they could not draft RFPs to start the bid process to obtain these cameras. They're now in that process, but the gentleman and his colleagues are the reason we're 75 days behind in achieving this objective.
And I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Texas.
Chip Roy
I concur with my friend from California. I mean, I do think it merits repetition of what the gentleman just said for the record. That we in fact funded said cameras. The administration has publicly stated their intent to implement and are in the process of implementing said cameras.
That my colleagues on the other side of the aisle stonewalled for about half of this year our ability to easily fund ICE and Border Patrol, which delayed their ability to have funds that they knew that they were going to have in place and why they were shutting it down while we worked to use a reconciliation process to do what we should have done through appropriations. But my colleagues on the other side of the aisle refused to do it. So they literally are now complaining about not implementing something that they held up for months on end without being willing to fund ICE and Border Patrol to do their basic duty and their basic job. Then Congress, Republicans in leadership, had to step in the breach, use reconciliation to solve the problem, and did so. I would also note that the structure of this amendment is flawed in the sense that it is it is going to exacerbate the problem by trying to withhold implementation of the of the codification of the policies that we ought to have put in place that would make permanent our ability to not have the situation where we have people in America and in our streets that have to have enforcement.
So we would delay and not allow the implementation of the codification of the very policies that would help avoid the problem that we're having to deal with by having people here who are not supposed to be here under our laws. We funded it. We put it in place. Democrats opposed it. And now they want to try to turn this legislation, which is designed to codify and improve our policies with respect to who gets into our country under what procedures so they can't be abused by a future president as they were under the previous president under asylum, parole, catch and release, and all of the other policies, unaccompanied children, that created this situation that resulted in the death of Americans, that resulted in the death of immigrants.
And now they want to try to do this when we all agree that we want to have the problem, the administration agrees that we want to have the problem addressed, and that they themselves delayed by delaying the funding of ICE and Border Patrol in the spring. And with that, I would yield back to my friend from California.
And I yield back. Gentleman yields back. Gentleman from Tennessee is recognized.
Steve Cohen
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Firstly, I appreciate the ranking member for bringing this amendment. It's so pertinent and important that body cameras be on ICE officers. We can't make sure they don't turn their cameras off when they're doing something, or the cameras aren't on them and or happen to be working, which happens in most many cases in my city with the police, for some reason or other the body camera's not working. But this is an attempt.
And I agree with Mr. McCullough and Mr. Mr. Roy about the need for for ICE agents. We do need customs patrol and and immigration control. But this ICE group is out of control. They are out of control. I've written to the secretary, who is amazing to me that he's a secretary with a capital S, that that want to know what they're what ICE is made up of.
If there are any people in there that are January 6th folks who've been convicted, if there are people that are policemen at other departments who were dismissed for some reason, what are their criteria for hiring officers? And we haven't had an answer yet, but it was recently sent. I've seen pictures on the street of ICE agents. This is no DEI thing. But I've never seen a person that looked like they were black as an ICE agent, looked like they might have been Asian, never seen anybody look like an immigrant.
It's all white, white, white. It's the color of the Proud Boys. It's the color of all of those groups that tried to destroy democracy on January 6th and came up here. So I'd like to know who they hire, what their criteria is, and what training they get. And there was a gentleman on television recently who was a whistleblower, I believe, and he said that they didn't they their training, and he was a trainer in in deadly force, was very limited.
And they didn't have nearly as much as police officers have, and that they don't have really good training on when to shoot and when not to shoot. And they were given improper information about shooting at cars. In Memphis, the police department, and I was the legal advisor for the police department many years ago, they're prohibited from shooting at a at a vehicle because if you hit the person, you're liable to have the car go off and kill somebody else. But they shoot, shot Ms. Good in in the car, and they shot Mr. Priddy. And these people are up there and they're holding up these posters, Democrats are trying to we're trying to stop not trying to protect you.
Well, Mr. Priddy and Ms. Good were American citizens. And we were try, hoping they'd been protected by body cameras or some other better use and choice of who the ICE officers are. The people that were shot in Maine and Texas, shot the wrong guy in Texas. They shot the wrong person in Maine too. We need a force that is properly trained and properly chosen.
Not just what we've got out there, which has got some people that are not qualified and like the power they've got. The ones that got up in Minneapolis after they took the weapon that Mr. Good had a right, Mr. Priddy had a right to. Licensed in Minneapolis and Minnesota allows you to carry. They took his, one guy took his gun and ran. And as soon as he took the gun out of his back pocket, which he never tried to use, and he ran towards across the street, the other officer next to him immediately shot him.
And shot him. And shot him. And then the other guys got away, turned away and turned back. And two of them shot him. And shot him.
And shot him. That's wrong. It's murder. There's no question it's murder. And yet they're not cooperating with the Minneapolis Police Department.
They need to cooperate with local law enforcement and find out which of these ICE agents committed murder and don't understand the law. They had no business killing that man. And the same thing goes with Ms. Good. The officer got in the way. And they said sometimes officers get in the way intentionally of a car to be able to justify shooting.
And the gentleman I think in Maine was shot three times in the face in his car. Shot directly into the car. The man was in front of him. You have to have the rule of law. And you have to have public order.
Will the gentleman yield?
I yield to the ranking member.
Jamie Raskin
Thank you. Our colleagues invite us to believe that sanctuary cities are the cause of ICE agents shooting people in the face, shooting people in the streets of America. Well, let's take a controlled case study. Let's look at what happened in Texas. Texas banned sanctuary cities.
But that didn't stop ICE agents from going out in the community and killing Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston a couple weeks ago when he wasn't even the target of their operation. A father of three with no criminal record, no criminal charges against him, shot down in cold blood by ICE agents who must have not known that Texas had banned sanctuary cities. Because they proceeded to completely embarrass the argument of my colleague who claimed that it's sanctuary cities that are at fault for ICE's misbehavior.
Wesley Hunt
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The American people elected President Donald J. Trump with a clear mandate, that was to secure our border and restore the rule of law, which is exactly what he has done by putting the American citizen first. That's exactly why the Permanent Trump Secure Border Act, and I want to thank my colleague from Texas, Mr. Roy, for doing this common sense immigration enforcement measure so we could codify this into law and to do exactly what the American people asked him to do.
Now for years, we have sat through hearing after hearing in this very room listening to grieving mothers and fathers describe the unimaginable pain of burying a son or daughter because our border was deliberately left unsecured by the left. We have heard stories of Americans murdered by people who should have never been in this country in the first place. And I'll be damned if I have to listen to the defense of people that have no business being in this country in the first place, murdering other Americans. Sheridan Gorman, Katie Abram, Chloe Polson, Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, Rachel Morin. Their names, say their names.
Yet my colleagues on the left continue to oppose the very policies that would have prevented these tragedies. I want to thank my law enforcement officers. I want to thank federal law enforcement officers. I want to thank ICE agents. I want to thank local police officers.
I want to thank law enforcement individuals specifically for their desire to put their lives on the line to keep everybody here in this country safe and unharmed. I want to thank them from the bottom of my heart. If I played a drinking game and every time I heard the word white, white, white or white supremacist while watching CNN, watching MSLSD, I mean NBC, or listening to my colleagues on the left talk about white supremacy and white people all day every day, I would be drunk after an hour and I would die of alcohol poisoning. What are we talking about? This is about protecting every single American regardless of your race, religion, color or creed.
And I can assure you, as I have said in this room many a day, I've been black for my entire life, I'm not a white supremacist. What I want to do is be safe in my own communities regardless of what you look like. And that's exactly what my colleague from Texas Chip Roy is trying to do here. That's exactly what we have done, secured our borders to ensure that people that have no business in this country harm and arbitrarily murder our children. This is not hard.
I thank God every day I'm not a lawyer, I'm just a soldier, I'm just an American, I'm a father, a follower of Christ and somebody that believes in this great nation and ensuring that we have safety for the future. That's literally all I care about. And that goes for every single red-blooded American regardless of your race, religion, color or creed. And with that I yield my time to my colleague from Texas if he has anything to say.
Chip Roy
I appreciate my friend from Texas. I would, I would note that it merits repetition that my colleagues literally voted against funding the very thing and implementing the very thing by delaying ICE and Border Patrol funding for four months. That's no small thing. We were sitting there in February and ICE and Border Patrol funding was entirely shut down and blocked by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. And we had to save it by backdooring into something that is not the, the typical use of reconciliation in order to fund the very operations of government that would carry out the implementation of the thing my colleagues are raising.
And with that I yield back to my friend from Texas.
Will the gentleman yield?
Sure, I yield.
Daniel Goldman
Thank you. Was 175 billion I think it was, that wasn't enough to pay for the body cameras, Mr. Roy?
Chip Roy
They're funded. I mean what, they were funded by the OBB. You guys blocked implementation of ICE and Border Patrol having funding to be able to carry out their operations.
Chip Roy
The, the, the dollars that were put in place to be able to get cameras put in place, that funding has been put forth by, by us in this administration.
The problem is you guys blocked ICE and Border Patrol being able to operationalize for four months. You stopped them from being funded.
Speaker 90
Wait, are you talking about OBB or are you talking about the second reconciliation?
Chip Roy
The reconciliation, the second reconciliation package literally just funded the operations of ICE and Border Patrol because you all wouldn't. That's what we did.
Daniel Goldman
You shut them down. We had the reconciliation bill had put how much money into the Department of Homeland Security?
Money that's there for the cameras to be implemented.
Daniel Goldman
$175 billion. And that was not enough to pay for the cameras and the issue here is it's not just whether there's funding for it but whether it's required and why would you not want the ICE agents enforcing our immigration laws to have to be required to wear body cameras so that they can be held accountable for the work that they're doing. What is the argument against it?
Chip Roy
The time of the gentleman from Texas, this gentleman from Texas, is has expired. And the chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Pennsylvania, Ms. Scanlon.
Mary Gay Scanlon
Thank you. I just wanted to interject some revisions to the revisionist history we're getting here. So first off, we heard that the reason people were killed in the last two weeks in Houston and in Maine was because there'd been rioting and criminals and sanctuary cities, but I think we do need to recall the fact that there were no riots taking place, that neither of these people were criminals, in fact they were family men driving to work and neither of them was the target of enforcement. So yet another reason why we need some accountability here. The second piece of the revisionist history is the idea that the incredibly overfunded, well-funded, whatever, DHS hasn't been able to get body cams in place because Democrats blocked them.
I mean, that's just bullshit. I mean, the reason Democrats refused to allow additional funding for DHS and ICE was because we were demanding that there be guardrails put around their conduct after they killed two US citizens in Minnesota in January. So Republicans refused to put in place common sense safety guidelines for the American public and anyone else residing in the US and that is why there were delays in funding. It was Republicans and the White House refusing to come to the table to put those guardrails in place. They continued to refuse to do so, whether in connection with this bill, with the budget bills that are moving forward, and they were so adamant that they wouldn't put in place those guardrails, they passed a completely partisan reconciliation bill in order to fund DHS for billions of more dollars.
And then finally, I mean, if we're going to talk about hypocrisy here, how about the hypocrisy of endorsing and consorting with people who are here, the Tate brothers, Andrew and Tristan Tate, who were here on the Hill this past week hanging out with some of our members here who were just so adamant that their highest duty is to protect Americans from things like rape and sex trafficking and human trafficking when they are openly hanging out with people who not only have been charged with that but are now in US custody for those crimes. So, you know, if you're going to be all in there for you support body cams, you support expelling criminals, you support all measures to take to prevent sex trafficking and rape and human trafficking, let's have a little consistency.
Will the lady yield?
Speaker 93
Thank you. Would you go a little further on what the guardrails were that held up the passage of the budget with the DHS and what the Democrats held back on and why what those guardrails were?
Mary Gay Scanlon
I mean, a large part of it was making sure there was proper training, that there were warrants in place before homes were broken into. I think body cams were some of it. There was also a requirement that these agents not be masked and that they be in fact identifiable as federal agents. But none of those things have been enacted, and I would defer to the chairman or someone else who might have a more top-of-mind recollection of the very short list.
Steve Cohen
Those were common sense things. Not that they can't wear a mask. Policemen don't wear masks in the city. Why are they in their masks?
Mary Gay Scanlon
Well, these were elements that every other law enforcement agency in the country is held to because they are things that do keep all of our populations safe.
Steve Cohen
So we were trying to protect the public. The sign they got up about two years or two months or 60 days or whatever it is, trying not defending the public out there. We were trying to defend the public from officers who weren't properly trained and uniformed.
Mary Gay Scanlon
Not properly trained, not properly uniformed, and we were trying to do this with the very real evidence of what happens when you don't have those guardrails in place. Citizens die, citizens' homes are invaded, people are detained without probable cause, etc.
Steve Cohen
The officer from Maine shot the man and killed him. His wife said he was thrown hot water at her when she was pregnant, holding her baby, said he tried, daughter said she came in one time and he had a gun to his head. There were several other incidents that were reported, and he was hired as an ICE agent. He was on the edge, on the edge. He was a racist, he had racist beliefs and violent tendencies, as his ex-wife said.
And they hired him. He was perfect for ICE. I yield back.
Thank you, and I would yield to the gentleman from New York.
Daniel Goldman
Well, Mr. Roy said we want to do oversight earlier. I've heard rumblings that that officer still has not had his background check completed. So if you want to do oversight, let's send a letter to the Department of Homeland Security and ask whether that officer who killed the gentleman in Maine had his background check completed before he was hired.
Thank you, and I would yield back.
Chip Roy
The gentlelady's time has expired. The gentleman from New Jersey is recognized.
Jefferson Van Drew
So just a couple quickies here. One, masks. First of all, I do believe in body cams, we all do, we're going to have them. It's kind of a moot point, we've already said it's going to be. But masks.
Masks are needed because unfortunately this has been made a political argument and we have people on the other side of the aisle that are continually defending criminal illegal aliens. Period. And agents have been told over and over again, we're going to get you, we're going to get your family, we're going to get anybody that's related to you or friends with you and we're going to hurt you or kill you. And there's tons of testimony to back that up. So there's a reason there are masks.
It is different, unfortunately, than regular police officers or normally what you would find. Second thing is, we are also forgetting, I'd like to get back to the basics, thousands and thousands of felons, murderers, drug dealers, rapists, child abusers, the list goes on and on. I mean, have done horrific things, have been caught since we've put this system in place and since ICE is there. If ICE wasn't there, we would go back to the old days. And that is what I want to refresh everybody's memory.
Why are we here? Why do we need this legislation? Why are we having this debate? Why does this discussion exist? Because we were actually, we are preventing a clear and present danger to American citizens and legal American immigrants who came here.
And then finally, when we think about the people that are here and we think about why they're here, immigration is good. Somebody said before they keep mixing illegal felon immigrants and they just say immigrants. Immigrants are good. We love immigrants. I'm going to say it over and over again.
But the bottom line is again, this legislation addresses what we've abused. We've abused our parole system and gone around Congress and are doing much more and allowing people in that never should have been in. Asylum, we were letting people in at all different points of our borders that were coming in, many of whom were criminals and were responsible for horrendous illegal activity. Catch and release, what was going on under the last administration. We are doing all this.
We are where we are because of what the horrible policies were in the last administration. So, you know, in those days we were catching people, didn't matter what they were or what they did or if they're criminal or not, and pretty much were releasing, and we have the proof of it, releasing criminals back into the American public, which is why all the horrible things happen. Let's not do this in a vacuum. Let's understand why this legislation is here. Let's understand why we are here and what the American people demanded.
They want us to be humane. They want us to be decent. When we're detaining people, they want us to be to do it the right way, and we are. But we also should not endanger our law enforcement who are trying to do their job. And finally, contrary to what some people said on the other side, in most cases where there is a problem, it is because with ICE, because they are given responsibilities that they shouldn't even have to have.
There should be cooperation among county law enforcement, state law enforcement, local law enforcement, and ICE. And in those cases, it works out well. And in most areas where that's done that way, it works out well and we don't have these problems. The problem is when you try, when you're not cooperating with ICE at all and they've got to go into the streets and pick up people, other folks get scooped up. That's not their fault and it's not the fault quite frankly of Republicans.
It's the fault of sanctuary cities, states, and communities that won't cooperate. And by the way, Chairman, just I it's not germane completely to this discussion, just hot off the news in case people haven't heard, now the governor of my state of New Jersey admits they've found at least 70,000 illegals who were on the election rolls. The governor just admit it today. Are you kidding me? 70,000.
I think that was the number. I'd have to look.
Seven.
Jefferson Van Drew
Okay. Still bad. 7,000? No, that's funny. 7,000 are bad.
I just heard it. I don't think it's funny. I don't think that 7,000 people voting, some of whom are criminal, all of them who are illegal, are actually and that's what she's admitted. God knows what the real number is. It may be close to 70.
How wrong is that? I'm going to say one thing. I don't think that's funny. I don't think if it's seven, I don't think if it's 7,000 or 700,000 that illegal criminals are voting in my beautiful state of New Jersey. I'm sick of it.
I'm tired of it. And so are people.
Becca Balint
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to go back to something my colleague on the other side said earlier. He's now stepped out. He said, you know, Americans voted for this.
He said Americans wanted this. And I just want to be clear that I, unlike many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, will admit that President Trump did win this election. And part of what he ran on was about going after the worst of the worst. Hundreds of times he said that in gatherings with his supporters, we're going to go after the worst of the worst. We're going to go after the criminals.
We're going to go after the rapists. We're going to go after the drug dealers. Americans actually do not support where we are right now because he actually is not going after the worst of the worst and all the data points show that. But I just want to level set here so that we can see what we're talking about in terms of the supersizing of the ICE budget. Because you can look at all of the years that are leading up from 2017 till today.
And the dark orange is where the ICE budget has been. And then you see this incredible increase in the budget under the one big beautiful bill, which I've noticed they've stopped calling that because they know it's incredibly unpopular right now. But this is what we're talking about. This now, they have created the largest law enforcement agency in the country by far. So if you could, if you combined law enforcement in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Washington, D.C., Las Vegas, and Dallas, you would then have the amount of officers that are being hired and deployed through ICE.
170 billion dollars to DHS and then an additional 70 billion more because that 170 plus was not enough. That's 240 billion taxpayer dollars to fund ICE. And no, Americans did not ask to have ICE agents stopping them on the street based on the color of their skin or the accent they're using. When I was in Chicago and Minneapolis, when the ranking member on the subcommittee on immigration led trips to witness what was happening in those two cities, what we saw were Americans not just being stopped, but being detained. We saw in very similar cases to what we just saw in Biddeford, Maine, the man was gunned down in front of his kid.
He was there legally. He had papers to work. And so it is so hard to sit in this committee because it is, it is this incredible brainwashing that has been done to the American people saying, don't worry, trust us with the dollars, trust us with what ICE is doing, even though we can't still seem to get body cameras. We got people with masks. We got people who are not identified.
You got people chasing after you in unmarked cars. Of course you're going to be scared. Of course you're not going to know exactly what to do. And so no, the American people didn't ask for this. And so right now the polling for President Trump in terms of approval on the way that he's handling immigration sits at about 37 percent.
Meanwhile, 80 percent of Americans consider immigration a net positive. So two-thirds of the people have seen more than enough of what is being done in our name with our taxpayer dollars. And there is not majority support, far from it, for what ICE is perpetrating against innocent people across this country. It would be a very different conversation if in fact this president and ICE were going after the so-called worst of the worst, but we're not seeing it. And that's why the people of Biddeford, Maine stood up this week when this tragic killing happened and said, we are good people.
He was a good man going to work and this never should have happened. And I know the ranking member would like to jump in here.
Jamie Raskin
Thank you, Ms. Balint. The distinguished gentleman from New Jersey said that he supports body cameras. We all do, and we're going to get them. Therefore, everybody should be voting for this amendment, seriously, to hold the executive branch to account. Then he says that ICE agents uniquely need to wear masks, whereas our police officers don't, because they're somehow in more hazardous duty than the police officers who are out there every day going after real criminals and not innocent people.
You know, when El Chapo and Maduro were apprehended by federal agents, those agents were not wearing masks. And so the gentleman basically invites us to be more afraid of concerned US citizens like Renee Good and Alex Preddy than we are of El Chapo and international narcotraffickers. I yield back.
Gentleman yields back. The question occurs...
I move to strike the last word.
The gentlelady from... Mr. Jordan. I think it's the gentlelady from...
Speaker 101
Mr. Chairman, on the amendment. Have I spoken on this amendment? Okay, I didn't think so.
Gentleman's recognized.
Chip Roy
Hard to keep track. I think it merits a return to what we're talking about here. We're talking about codifying the policies that have led to a 94% drop of what we're dealing with at the border. Daily border encounters have plunged 94% since President Trump took office. The reason for that is because of policies that are now consistent with our laws with respect to asylum, with respect to parole, with respect to catch and release, etc.
And we're trying to codify this to ensure that we can adhere to those policies so that we no longer have the abuses of the previous administration. I would like to enter into the record a document here with 42 pages of individual news accounts of people that have been murdered, raped, otherwise assaulted or harmed by the people who were released into the United States of America through the abuse of parole, through the abuse of asylum, through flawed catch and release policies, through the abuse of the unaccompanied alien children that allowed cartels to use these children to harm them and to harm Americans. And I could, if I wanted, under the rules of the committee, I could, with under the rules of the committee, instead of burning five minutes of time, I could just sit here and enter each one of these articles one by one. We could just sit here. I'm not going to do that, but I'll use this time to highlight a few.
From November 23, illegal immigrant who posed as a minor while crossing border charged with murder in Florida, stabbing the person in the house that brought the individual into their home. Number two, Afghan allegedly molested 12-year-old and 14-year-old boys at Fort McCoy. A 20-year-old Afghan refugee that sexually abused a 12-year-old and 14-year-old immigrant sitting at the base where Democrats thought it was okay to have them all cohabitated. September 21, Afghan pleads not guilty to strangling wife on Wisconsin military base. That's the article, but it went on to be prosecuted and dealt with.
March 2022, the Biden administration released a suspected terrorist into the United States after illegally crossed the border. March 22, Biden's DHS released illegal alien on terrorism watchlist. Illegal aliens released in the United States by Biden's DHS linked to robbery gang in the sanctuary state of New York. Illegal MS-13 gang member accused of murdering 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton. Illegal alien freed into the United States by Biden DHS now wanted for drug trafficking in Brazil.
Illegal alien charged with raping teen girl released into the United States by Biden's Department of Homeland Security.
Migrant arrested charged with capital murder in death of another migrant. Illegal alien freed into the United States by Biden's HHS denied bail for allegedly raping and murdering 11-year-old girl. We just stop on each one of these headlines, and every single one of them are about releases by the Biden administration flouting and using loopholes in the laws that we are seeking to codify, to tighten. Illegal alien freed into the United States from southern border charged with killing 11-year-old Aiden Clark. Peruvian illegal immigrants' alleged murder victim is US citizen.
Another one, ICE arrested African illegal immigrant wanted in Senegal for terrorist offenses released into the United States. Another one, Virginia sanctuary county frees from illegal alien accused of child rape after Biden's DHS freed him into the United States. Another one, illegal migrant released by Border Patrol charged with rape after local police ignored ICE and let him go. I could go on and on and on on 43-odd pages with three or four of these articles with summaries on each one. I'm going to insert it into the record.
I may go back to it and and make sure that we continue to focus on what has happened to our people in this country that have been murdered, raped, had fentanyl put into their communities, have lost loved ones, and not just the ones we've had here testifying. Not just having Alexis Nungaray talking about Jocelyn. And we name a wildlife refuge, which is great, and we invite her to come talk to us, but she's still at home without her daughter. Kayla Hamilton's family is still sitting there without Kayla. All of these, this little 11-year-old girl that was raped was in fact raped by someone released into our country because we completely abuse the very policies we put in place to try to help people.
The whole point of asylum, the whole point of parole. But yet we abuse it and then bad things happen. That's why we're here, to codify these things. With that, I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Gentleman yields back. Chair recognizes gentlelady from California.
Sydney Kamlager-Dove
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, you know, bad things are going to happen in this world because people make mistakes. Um, so we should just not try to create some fantasy about how we're going to never have any bad thing to happen. Bad things happen all the time. You know, service men and women were recently killed because of this war in Iran that people don't want, that certainly people don't want to pay for.
That was a bad thing that happened. So this is certainly not the committee that's going to erase or mitigate any kind of bad thing from happening. I, you know, also just want to say that my colleague from the other side of the aisle was talking about all of the things that we have abused, that you all have abused. I mean, one thing that's been abused has been the Constitution as a result of all of these shenanigans, um, that you all are actually allowing to happen by funding DHS and ICE without any oversight or without any guardrails. But I don't want to go down that rabbit hole, um, because my head is starting to swim.
You stay too long in this committee, that's what happens. I do want to get back to the amendment, which is about body cameras. And I don't know why anyone would be opposed to this amendment.
Law enforcement officers support wearing body cameras. And they don't say, oh, just have, you know, local LAPD or police officers wear it, but not sheriffs, or just have sheriffs, but not ICE. Distinctions without a difference. Law enforcement is law enforcement. And law enforcement support wearing body cameras because it also protects them.
It is a two-way street. I have been in court. I have watched criminal cases. And you know who often testifies? Law enforcement.
And you know what they do? They refer to objective evidence. And you know where the evidence comes from? From the body camera. They want it.
It builds trust in communities. You know I'm not going to do anything crazy because I have this little camera on my chest to make sure that you're protected and that I'm protected. You know, oftentimes law enforcement get hurt when they are responding to domestic violence calls. They get injured. And you know how all of that is discerned?
From the body camera. It provides objective evidence. It does build trust in the community. And you know what else it's used for? For training.
So these are the dos and these are the don'ts, so that you have people who are properly trained to do the job, which is very important. Bless you. Which is to keep communities safe, including them. So I don't know why you would be opposed to it other than it's a Democratic amendment. But if you want to, if you're espousing support for law enforcement, then you should be like, I do support wearing body cameras.
And that's all this says. This title and amendment made by this title shall not take effect until the Secretary of Homeland Security has deployed functional body-worn cameras on all US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who are engaged in civil immigration enforcement actions. I mean, that is simple. Wear a camera so you know what's going on, so I know what's going on. If you try to lie on me, I can show you the evidence.
But no, you all want folks running around, masked up, no IDs, no warrant, ragtaggy individuals going rogue, running down the street, shooting folks in cars, which is not legal, yanking them out of the car while they're bleeding, having their three-year-old baby in pajamas wailing. That's y'all's idea of a good time. It makes no sense to me. And it doesn't make sense to the American people. Sixty-five percent of voters say wear a body camera because maybe if you do that, every two or three weeks we won't have to be traumatized watching another killing take place that you all have paid for.
And you continue, you continue to pivot and deflect from the accountability piece. I mean, I don't know how y'all live. In my home, there's accountability. You don't take out the trash and you're asked to, something's going to happen. There's a consequence.
You know, you don't pay a bill from your credit card, something's going to happen. There's a consequence. Well, how about this? You shoot somebody and you're not supposed to because you're masked up without a warrant, there should be a consequence. And with that, I yield back.
Chip Roy
Gentlelady yields back. The committee will be in recess for votes on the floor and will resume as soon as votes are completed on the floor.
Committee will come to order. The question in front of the committee is on the amendment offered by the gentlelady from Pennsylvania, if I remember correctly. Is that... no, Mr. Raskin. Mr. Raskin, the gentleman from Maryland. Close enough to Pennsylvania to be confused, maybe.
The... all those in favor say aye.
Those opposed, no.
Chip Roy
Recorded vote being requested. Clerk call the roll on the amendment by the gentleman from Maryland.
Mr. Jordan.
Speaker 28
Mr. Jordan votes no. Mr. Issa. Mr. Biggs. Mr. McClintock. Mr. Tiffany.
Mr. Massie. Mr. Roy.
Speaker 28
Mr. Moore votes no. Ms. Hageman. Ms. Lee of Florida. Mr. Hunt. Mr. Fry.
Mr. Kiley. Mr. Grothman. Mr. Knott. Mr. Harris.
Speaker 28
Mr. Harris votes no. Mr. Onder. Mr. Schmidt. Mr. Gaetz. Mr. Baumgardner.
Mr. Raskin.
Ms. McBath votes aye. Ms. Ross.
Ms. Ross votes aye. Ms. Balint.
Mr. Gaetz votes no. Mr. Schmidt.
Mr. Schmidt votes no. Mr. Fitzgerald, you're not recorded.
Mr. Gooden votes no.
Mr. Cline votes no.
Speaker 121
Mr. McClintock votes no. Mr. Issa, you are not recorded. Mr. Issa votes no. Mr. Cohen, you are not recorded. Mr. Cohen votes aye.
The clerk will report.
Speaker 117
The nos have it and the amendment is not agreed to. Who seeks recognition?
The gentlelady from North Carolina.
Speaker 28
Amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute to H.R. 9773 offered by Ms. Ross of North Carolina. Page 58, line 2.
Jefferson Van Drew
Point of order reserved by the gentleman from California. Without objection, the amendment will be considered as read. The gentlelady from North Carolina is recognized.
Deborah Ross
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As currently drafted, Title V of this bill would make overstaying a visa a crime for the first time in our history. My amendment would amend Title V to ensure that minor dependents who overstay their visas are not criminally liable. It's important to remember that if a person overstays their visa, they are already subject to removal. The addition of a criminal penalty is cruel, unnecessary, and expensive for our justice system and for our jails and prisons.
This bill is extraordinarily punitive, with far-reaching implications that may go beyond what my colleagues have intended. Unless they want to make the following current immigration law a crime, punishable up to six months in prison and a fine of up to $1,000 for overstaying a visa. This bill has no exceptions or flexibility when it comes to overstaying a non-immigrant visa, and there are no exceptions based on age or dependent status. As the bill is currently written, if a two-year-old is on a family vacation in the United States and their parents decide to extend their trip 10 days beyond the validity of their visitor's visa, unless the two-year-old somehow miraculously leaves the country on their own, that two-year-old could be thrown into federal jail for up to six months and face a fine of $1,000.
I certainly hope that this was simply an oversight. Surely all of my colleagues agree that we shouldn't be prosecuting children for something that is beyond their control. If that's the case, we should have no problem passing this amendment. Minors should not be imprisoned for overstaying their visa, something they have no control over. So if we care about protecting children, saving money, we should remove that as a possibility right now with this amendment.
Our immigration system needs reforms, and we are absolutely interested in bold ideas to fix it. But as currently drafted, this bill isn't one of them. It's not the kind of policy that I can support and that the American people can support. And I yield back.
Speaker 122
The gentlelady yields back. Who seeks recognition? The gentleman from Texas.
Chip Roy
The, under current law, when you're coming here and re-enter, that's a crime, right? A crime that comes with a possibility of penalties, and we don't make exceptions based on age or circumstance and so forth. The fact is, we're going through the motions here to try to find every way possible to stand with those who don't want to follow our laws. Overstaying visas is one of the primary ways that bad actors come to the United States and endanger the people here, 9/11 being the most notorious example, but there are literally tens of thousands of other examples. And this would simply change that.
Prosecutorial discretion is a thing. When I was a prosecutor, and as the gentlelady knows and those learned in law that many prosecutors here in here, you have to use discretion. I think, you know, I had to prosecute felons in possessions of weapons, which by the way is now being constitutionally challenged as we all know in the Supreme Court, and we'll figure out, we'll see what the court does on that, raises interesting questions. But, you know, there was a woman that was, you know, she had a weapon, she was a felon, but she was trying to get her life in order and she was trying to protect herself against some of the bad actors that she had formerly affiliated with. And I didn't pursue it.
I didn't think it was appropriate. I looked at the totality of the circumstances and made a decision not to. There are times that that's how you deploy prosecutorial discretion. And, you know, at the end of the day, we've got, as I said, existing examples where we don't draw an exclusion or an exception for every category of person. But without question, we have got to have policies in place that make it much stricter when you overstay your visa.
This is every bit as pernicious as those who are, and in fact in many ways much more so than those who are, you know, using the cartel coyote system to come across the Rio Grande or are even coming to our borders and claiming asylum and the administration allows release under I think faulty interpretations of asylum or lack of full, you know, vetting and then releasing and so forth under Flores, all the things we're addressing in this bill. But managing and dealing with the overstays is one of the most critical functions. And again, this legislation is designed to deal with the question of when people are getting here. It's border security both in the sense that we had pieces that were dealing in the original bill with wall and with all of the things of managing flow at the border. But this has everything in the world to do with how people get here and under what circumstances they get here and how they can apply for asylum, how paroles applied, or in this case, hey, we granted you the ability to be here on a visa, but then you stick around.
Like, stop doing that. And, you know, our current system is not adequately stopping people from overstaying their visas with sufficient penalty. I believe prosecutorial discretion takes care of this as I noted before. We have other, like again, if you come in here and you're guilty of re-entry, children would be in the same category.
I'm unaware of anybody where we're going to be going after a two-year-old or a six-year-old with respect to prosecutorial discretion I just don't think we have to constrict every single application of of the law I yield back
Jefferson Van Drew
gentleman yields back who seeks recognition the gentleman the ranking member
Jamie Raskin
thank you very much Mr. Chairman I just want to speak strongly in favor of Ms. Ross's amendment the the only substantive reply I really heard there was well the prosecutors wouldn't do anything ridiculous and the prosecutors wouldn't do anything ridiculous like maybe prosecute someone for throwing a subway sandwich we saw that happen or the prosecutors would not prosecute my constituent a three-time Olympic canoeist in his 70s for putting his hand in the reflecting pool in order to deflect the president's responsibility for the waste of millions and millions of taxpayer dollars they're prosecuting him right now they want to send him to jail for 10 years so I'm sorry this is just a bad time to make the argument that we'll let the statute be drawn in an overly broad loose way because we can trust the prosecutors even the federal judges have said they are now rejecting the so-called presumption of regularity which is that Department of Justice lawyers could be trusted to be telling the truth and saying the right thing because they're saying there are just way too many cases where the Department of Justice lawyers are lying or evading the truth and disobeying court order
so somebody should come up with a better argument than that because I don't think it's going to work happy to yield to Ms. Ross
Deborah Ross
absolutely and these minors don't always have the ability to leave the country if they even if they wanted to leave the country because they're with their parents the other thing that this provision it's so overbroad and punitive doesn't take account of is people who have been here legally are on visas and may have to wait a little bit longer to go through the process because this administration doesn't want to help them get whatever the next thing is so just say you're a minor and you decide you want to get and your and your visa's about to expire but then you want to get a visa an educational visa if you stay for more than 10 days you're a criminal even if your educational visa has been delayed by two weeks this is overbroad it's punitive it's ridiculous and it's frankly a waste of prosecutor's time to deal with this
and so to not understand that this goes too far that this absolutely these are not people who came here illegally these are people who came here legally and to not understand what if somebody gets sick and they have to be in the hospital a kid gets sick and has to be in the hospital for two weeks they're automatically a criminal under this law there are some things wrong
and please reclaim your time
Jamie Raskin
I'm reclaiming my time in order to ask you a question, Ms. Ross, about this. Just to be clear, everybody, regardless of age, whose visa is up, is civilly removable from the country.
Jamie Raskin
So it's about stigmatizing someone as being a criminal and putting a young person in a facility, theoretically, where they could be in real danger. And we're talking about people who are here lawfully, and now we're talking about children. I mean, you know, if our colleagues are not moved by the fact that there have been overzealous and ludicrous prosecutions under this Department of Justice, maybe they're just moved by the politics of it. This just looks ridiculous. It's going to make America look ridiculous in the eyes of the world that we're calling kids criminals.
Speaker 130
Well, I just think we shouldn't go down this road, and I wanted to yield to the gentlelady from California. I think she also had something to say here.
Sydney Kamlager-Dove
Yeah, thank you. I also agree in supporting this, and as I'm thinking, there are some hearings ago when we actually were talking about legislation to cut federal funding. So you want to cut the courts. You want to cut funding going to the courts. You're going to have these federal charges.
These are courthouses that are already under-resourced and overwhelmed. We are throwing more things on their calendar because we are trying to, you all are trying to pass these preposterous pieces of legislation that only do more harm to the court system. And then you're going to add to that by detaining kids. Now, maybe, and I love it, the colleague from Texas said, "I don't think you need to be so prescriptive," but actually we do have to be prescriptive because prosecutorial discretion is all about the discretion that someone has. And so we cannot leave it up to rogue prosecutors.
You do need to be precise, which is why we should be supporting this kind of legislation to lay out very specifically that we are not trying to, that we don't want to detain children, we don't want to charge children. And there are two-month-old babies actually in these detention facilities right now.
Mark Alford
I thank you, Mr. Chairman, to speak against the amendment. Mr. Chairman, this is no time to be watering down the visa overstay part of this very important bill. In fact, I believe this is one of the most important parts of this, of this bill. You know, prior to the Biden open border policies, the majority of our, the illegal aliens in our country were visa overstayers, including at least several of the September 11th, 2001 hijackers, including Mohammad Sabray Soloman, who was the Boulder, Colorado terrorist who yelled "Free Palestine" and threw ignited Molotov cocktails on... Let me finish and then I'll yield.
...at peaceful demonstrators advocating for the release of October 7th hostages, and also including an illegal alien visa overstayer from the Middle East who sexually assaulted two female victims in my own county of St. Charles, Missouri. So I think this is a very important part of the legislation before us today, and I do not believe we should be watering it down. Thank you, and I yield back. I will yield back to the representative from Texas.
Chip Roy
Oh, not to me. Thank you.
The, the point that I'd like to make is we do prosecute under current law juveniles for reentry. We do it under 1825 regularly. Under the Obama years in 2010, 191 cases, 2011, 153, 2012, 138. These are all the Obama years. And then, you know, fast forward and, you know, we even did some during the Trump years.
There was sort of a decline. I can go look at the numbers or throw the chart up. And then it dropped off precipitously, but there was a handful during the Biden administration. Notably that that means by definition they were carrying out because of the number, they were carrying out prosecutorial discretion and choosing not to. For better or worse.
I'm willing to bet that if I pry these numbers back, that there's a whole hell of a lot of 17-year-olds and 16-year-olds that were up to no good that were that were a part of those significant numbers under Obama. I'd be willing to take that bet. And I'm pretty sure I'd win that bet. And so the reality is we do it, we've done it, and the evidence bears out that under our existing laws that prosecutorial discretion is at play, again, for better and worse. With that I yield back to the gentleman from Missouri.
Speaker 126
I just wanted to know whether the examples that you gave involved minors.
Mark Alford
You know, I don't know exactly at what age each of the 9/11 hijackers entered the country, but, you know, again, when we say minors, that can mean 16 and 17-year-old gang members.
Mark Alford
Yeah, and overstayed and then committed, some of them committed illegal acts in our country, which is what brings them to the attention of law enforcement and gets them in ICE detention unless they're in a sanctuary city.
Deborah Ross
Well, this isn't about that. This is about automatically making them a criminal before they've done anything, before they've committed, they haven't, all they did was stay here for more than 10 days. That's all we're talking about. We're not talking about people who are terrorists. We're not talking about people who committed crimes.
We're talking about people who overstay a visa by definition becoming a criminal.
And again, as my colleague from Texas has pointed out, these things can be handled with prosecutorial discretion. And with that I yield back.
Well, the last time I looked.
Speaker 124
The gentleman yields back. I recognize myself for just a few moments. You know, again. Oh, I'm sorry, it does have to go to a Democrat. I'm sorry.
Who seeks recognition? The gentlelady from California.
Speaker 128
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to yield some more of my time back to my colleague from North Carolina, but I do want to say I remain fascinated by these posters on the other side of the aisle, these three-hour posters. And I was thinking, well, it's like three hours of Republicans running from the truth. It's three hours of Republicans holding a committee hostage debating a bad bill. It's three hours of, I guess, some pinky agreement that was made about vote for this to have this kind of hearing.
And so I just, I'm amazed. Yes, three hours and we have not heard from the other side of the aisle any real substantive discussion about oversight and about what is happening with Department of Homeland Security and ICE. And now we're talking about overstaying visas for just a short period of time and doing harm to these young people. And so we're talking about, yes, another bunny ear situation, five-year-old Liam Ramos. There was a child, a minor, who attempted suicide at the Dilley detention facility.
Sydney Kamlager-Dove
There was a one-year-old in a detention facility that got COVID. There was a nursing mother who was detained with her six-month-old. There was a six-month, another six-month-old child being put in harm's way because of these grotesque practices. And the average time that these young people are in these facilities is almost two months, almost two months. I mean, we are supposed to be a free world here, one of the richest, most resourced, and this is what we're doing to children.
And not minors like at the 16, 17, 18-year-old mark, children less than 10, less than five. I could get into a whole thing about like people we know who could have been deported but weren't, who've overstayed their visas, you know, but I'm not going to get into it. But there's a ton of them. So it really isn't about anyone that overstays their visa. It's about profiling certain folks in our community who may have overstayed their visa and not even really knowing if they have, but picking them up.
You know, that's what they do out in these streets, you know. They say, well, there's a 50% chance that this person might have overstayed their visa, might have strange immigration status, might have a weapon. I'm just going to roll the dice, pick them up and see, and that is not how we should be implementing law enforcement. So I'd like to yield the rest of my time to my colleague from North Carolina.
Deborah Ross
So I just want the gentleman from Texas to know that I'm not applying this to everybody. I'm a lawyer. I actually believe in narrowly tailoring laws to the actual problem. That is what this amendment does. You are talking about giving prosecutorial discretion to an administration that has been admonished by judges of all political stripes for how they use their prosecutorial powers.
And we're seeing things that we rarely see, grand juries refusing to indict. What happened to the expression you can indict a ham sandwich? Grand juries are seeing prosecutorial malpractice. And you're asking us to take an overbroad law and trust the people who have abused the law? There is something very seriously wrong with that picture.
This is the Judiciary Committee. Rarely does it act like the Judiciary Committee. It mostly acts like a three-ring circus of a bunch of posers. But I'm acting like a lawyer today because that is our job. And there is no reason to write an overbroad criminal law that sweeps in minors, particularly minors who have absolutely no ability to have a mens rea for this, to get themselves out of the country if they're here with their parents and maybe under difficult circumstances.
And I cannot categorically trust this administration to do the right thing when it can't do the right thing under our current law. And I yield back.
Sydney Kamlager-Dove
Say, Lamonica McIver is my example of misuse of prosecutorial discretion. That woman was doing her job, doing her job as a member of Congress.
Jefferson Van Drew
The lady's time has expired. I recognize myself for a moment.
This didn't happen in a vacuum. Again, we look at history. We see what's happened. We see what happened when the borders were open. We see what happened when we had so many individuals overstayed.
And some of them, we don't like to talk about it, but some of them committed other crimes much more serious than the overstay. In fact, many of them who were in that 16, 17-year range of age certainly did. So this didn't happen in a vacuum. It's not something that somebody made up just for the heck of it. And I would hope and I would believe that at least the majority of prosecutors in the United States of America have the ability and the understanding to realize what their responsibility is.
And if somebody is just overstayed and they're a minor, nobody's putting them in jail. Nobody's hurting them. But if it's an individual who's a gang member who's committed felonies, it's a different story. That's the point. This is just one more mechanism to get those folks that would do harm to Americans.
And with that, unless somebody on my side has anything to say, I yield to the gentleman from Kansas.
Tracey Mann
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was listening to our colleague from North Carolina and her I thought, you know, well-placed principle that we ought to act like the Judiciary Committee. And I would ask you, Mr. Chairman, because I don't know this answer. I've never been a federal prosecutor. But listening to this, certainly the vast majority of juvenile proceedings in this country are handled in state court.
And on very quick research, I've been doing a little reading about the Federal Juvenile Delinquency Act, which is characterized as suggesting that when you have a federal prosecution of a person under the age of 21, not just 18, federal authorities have three choices. First, under federal law, they can refer the juvenile to state authorities. I presume that wouldn't apply here since there's no state crime. Second, they can initiate federal delinquency proceedings, not the underlying criminal proceeding. Or third, if the case is retained in the federal system and involves a serious offense, they can then petition the federal court to transfer the juvenile for trial as an adult.
And I'm just wondering, Mr. Chairman, if you know, would the Federal Juvenile Delinquency Act apply here? And if so, would it render the amendment unnecessary because it already resolves the concern of the gentlelady from North Carolina?
Speaker 134
Gentleman yields back. I'm going to defer to Mr. Roy because he is a prosecutor. Or was a prosecutor.
Chip Roy
I was. So your time, you've gone to him, it's yielded to me. I'm unadvised. What's that? I mean, lawyers here, counsel said what they believe it would.
I'm unadvised. It's a reasonable question. I was going to bring up the Juvenile Delinquency Act earlier. I decided not to because I'm not expert on it, and so I wasn't going to dive into it. I would point out, just as a reminder here, 40% of the illegal aliens here are visa overstays.
I'm just going to use my time to put that out there. But which is part of what we're trying to address. And the reality is, back to my point about the prosecutorial discretion, whether the gentleman's question is on point or whether you're just simply talking about 17-year-olds, 16-year-olds, and others that then abuse the system and then for whatever circumstances find themselves in having overstayed the visa with or without the parents or whatever the situation may be, I'm certainly comfortable leaving it up to prosecutorial discretion for them to make decisions about what to do about it. The point here is, is when you've given a time, then you're given the time to be here and a 10-day extension or a 10-day grace period, if you're not going to follow our laws, then there should be consequences and they should be significant enough to deter it. I yield back.
Jefferson Van Drew
Gentleman yields back to the gentleman from Kansas. We will get you a more robust answer and maybe for in time before this hearing is over as well. Who seeks recognition? The question occurs on the amendment offered by the gentlelady from North Carolina.
Those in favor say yes.
Those opposed say no.
Speaker 132
Doesn't sound like that to me, Mr. Chairman, but I'm asking for a recorded vote.
Jefferson Van Drew
A recorded vote, recorded vote is requested. The clerk will call the roll.
Speaker 28
Mr. Jordan. Mr. Issa. Mr. Biggs. Mr. McClintock. Mr. Tiffany.
Mr. Massie. Mr. Roy.
Mr. Schmidt votes no. Mr. Gill.
Mr. Raskin votes aye. Mr. Nadler.
Mr. Nadler votes aye. Ms. Lofgren.
Ms. Lofgren votes aye. Mr. Cohen.
Speaker 28
Ms. Jayapal votes aye. Mr. Correa. Ms. Scanlon. Mr. Neguse. Ms. McBath.
Ms. Ross.
Ms. Ross votes aye. Ms. Balint.
Speaker 28
Ms. Kamlager-Dove votes aye. Mr. Moskowitz. Mr. Goldman. Ms. Crockett. Ms. Lee of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Issa, you're not recorded.
Zoe Lofgren
Clerk will report. Point of order reserved by the gentleman from Texas. Amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute. Without objection, it will be considered as read and the gentlelady from California is recognized to explain the amendment.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This amendment strikes the provision prohibiting government funds from being used to provide counsel to unaccompanied children and replaces it with a requirement that the government appoint or provide counsel to unaccompanied children. I think this is just a common sense. You know, children should not be appearing in immigration court without legal representation.
And just envision what it's like. You've got, and this has been reported publicly, a six or seven-year-old child in immigration court. They're facing an ICE trial attorney and an immigration judge. And that kid is by themselves. And obviously, they're not in a position to adequately represent themselves.
Children fleeing persecution, violence, trafficking, as many of these unaccompanied children are, should be given additional protections such as appointed counsel. We should not expect children to act like adults. They have unique developmental needs. And it's really absurd to think that justice can be served with a small child appearing by themselves in immigration court. This prohibition in the bill would achieve statutorily what the Trump administration sought to achieve administratively, an effective end to the Office of Refugee Resettlement legal services program for unaccompanied children.
In March of 2025, ORR unlawfully terminated funding for legal representation of over 26,000 unaccompanied children. Now, a federal court enjoined the termination, finding that this action violated, among other things, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. And I would ask the committee to recall that at that time, that trafficking bill was a bipartisan bill. We all realized that childhood trafficking victims needed protection. More recently, ORR has refused to pay legal service providers for essential services.
And already, one legal service provider has pulled out of the program after they refused payment, I think unlawfully. Now, this bill does really abandon the long-standing bipartisan support for efforts to provide counsel to unaccompanied children. In the Homeland Security Act of 2002, Congress required the Office of Refugee Resettlement to develop a plan to ensure the timely appointment of counsel for each unaccompanied child. And in 2005, ORR contracted with the Vera Institute of Justice to advance this goal. In the TVPRA, as I mentioned earlier, ORR was required to ensure to the greatest extent practicable that all unaccompanied children are represented by counsel.
This bill would put an end to those efforts and make it more likely that unaccompanied children would appear without a lawyer in immigration court while the federal government is represented by an effective and usually pretty aggressive trial attorney from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I'd note also that children with attorneys are more likely to appear for their court dates. Children who are represented by counsel have a very high appearance rate. And the Executive Office for Immigration Review, fondly known by those of us in the immigration world as EOIR, their data covered completed immigration court cases from fiscal year 2018 through the first half of fiscal year 2021. And it illustrates that this due process imperative, revealing that unaccompanied children without counsel were almost 100 times less likely to obtain legal relief in immigration court than unaccompanied children with counsel.
Now the National Association of Immigration Judges has weighed in on this and obviously those judges are in in the courtroom and some of the observations that they shared is that children may feign compliance to please the judge as an authority figure and it's hard for a judge to need time to figure out if the child actually understands what's being communicated. Immigration judges really need to take more time with children who've been victims of emotional and psychological trauma and that often is no longer the case in these proceedings. Children in proceedings need time to gather corroborating documentation if they're seeking relief and immigration judges can conduct proceedings more expeditiously and resolve cases more quickly when children are represented by counsel. Counsel can direct their clients to available legal options instead of relying on an immigration judge to guess what the relief should be. This is a quicker process.
It meets due process requirements that we strive to meet guaranteed in our Constitution. I think it's common sense and I hope that we can adopt the amendment. I yield back.
Speaker 148
Gentleman yields back. Committee will just suspend for a moment while we look at the germane issue. Committee will come to order. Does the gentleman insist on his point of order?
I do Mr. Chairman.
Speaker 144
The amendment would introduce material beyond the scope and purpose of the bill before us and therefore violates House Rule 16 clause 7.
Chip Roy
Gentleman is correct.
The gentlewoman's amendment does not satisfy the subject matter and fundamental purpose test, therefore it is not germane and is out of order. Who seeks recognition?
Mr. Chairman.
Zoe Lofgren
I disagree with the finding, but having anticipated that that might be the finding, we have a redrafted provision that I believe would meet germaneness.
I do.
Speaker 152
Okay, the clerk will report. Point of order being reserved by the gentleman from Texas. Clerk will report the amendment. Objection, the amendment will be considered as read. The gentlelady from California is recognized to explain the amendment.
Zoe Lofgren
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Essentially, this strikes lines 3 through 9 in paragraph B, paragraph 5, and it strikes "and who are not described in subsection A2A have counsel or represent legal proceedings" and inserts "have counsel appointed or provided by the Secretary at government expense to represent them in immigration proceedings." I think this accomplishes in a less fulsome way the same goal as the prior amendment, which is that small children should not be appearing in immigration court, or frankly any court, by themselves, facing a bunch of grown-ups who are talking about things they probably don't even understand. The idea that we could meet due process in such a setting in that way is preposterous, really. And there is no other circumstance in American jurisprudence where we would allow this.
I mean, if a child is in court in state court, they have representation. And that's only makes sense because we all know, we have children, we have grandchildren, you know, when you're a little guy, you don't necessarily understand all of this. And these are important issues. And many of these children, as we recognized when the committee did the trafficking bill, my recollection is it was unanimous, but it was certainly bipartisan, many of these children are victims, they've been traumatized, and to have them appear in court by themselves and to try and cope with that is just unreasonable. So I recommend this amendment number 2 to solve that problem.
And with that, Mr. Chairman.
I would be happy to yield, Mr.
Jamie Raskin
Well, thank you for pressing the point, Ms. Lofgren. It strikes me that this is a really essential question for the United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. Not all of us, but the vast majority of us are lawyers. And we understand, all of us, the difference between somebody going to court alone, by himself or by herself, or going with a lawyer. And if you can't put yourself in the shoes of a 10-year-old kid who's probably terrified and shamed and embarrassed and anxious about the situation, put yourself in the shoes of our president, who has had hundreds of lawyers, hundreds of lawyers.
He's got 34 felony convictions, he's an adjudicated sexual offender, he's been involved in thousands of cases, and he always had a lawyer. His right to counsel was always vindicated. But now we want to turn around and say a kid can appear before a federal judge or magistrate without a lawyer? Someone who's entire life is maybe flashing before their eyes at that moment? I mean, I just don't know how we do that as the House Judiciary Committee.
I really hope that we haven't sunk to that point. And I thank you, Ms. Lofgren, for the time.
Chip Roy
I thank the Chairman. I oppose the amendment and there's a number of reasons why. I want to rewind the clock for a second and go back some 20 years or 18 years or whatever the the gentlelady from California will remember better than I the exact year. But, you know, when we did all this, I'm not even sure I remember the nature of the markup of the UAC provision. You know, I was a lawyer on Judiciary Committee, left, prosecutor, then I was back.
So I can't remember which things happened when, but my recollection was that that was then done separately and pushed into the bill as it was headed to the floor or something along those lines. But we could debate that whether it was happened or not. My main point is you fast forward just a few years, however the UAC provisions were adopted with respect to TVPRA, and you had President Obama in a letter to then Speaker Boehner on June 30th, 2014, outlining the severe problems with the UAC program and laying to bare those issues and asking for Congress to act, which the Republican-led Congress did act. The Senate did not. In in providing the DHS Secretary additional authority to exercise discretion in processing the return and removal of unaccompanied minor children from non-contiguous countries like Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and trying to manage the very broken system that we created and that has now taken what began to be a problem that was being observed under President Obama was, you know, gaining notoriety around the world and kids riding on top of train cars and all the things that we saw that was horrific and the extent to which the cartels were making large sums of money moving these children for profit.
And then we had President Obama highlighting the issue, Congress then failing to actually respond to the issue, and we've been trying to solve the problem now for a while. And we did in in HR 2. We are seeking to do it again now. And we we note that in the last however many years, there's been significant people observing and not even just on a partisan fashion the extent to which our own federal government is essentially closing the loop on the child trafficking cycle and and being part and parcel to the entire process, having created this system by which these children are exploited. So now we come to, all right, we have a system that our taxpayers are forced to pay for to deal with all of this and to process people, which thank goodness this administration under these policies has diminished the numbers massively by virtue of carrying out the policies that we should carry out.
And we're again trying to codify those so we can carry that forward. And we're being asked taxpayers are being asked to foot the bill for that, to foot the bill for the proceedings, to then foot the bill for prosecution, of course. And and then in this case, there are myriad NGOs and nonprofits that are funding the the litigation defense for or or cases for these individuals. And and they have significant opportunities to avail themselves of those organizations. But the the goal here ought to be to minimize and in fact to end the extent to which we have this problem by tightening the policies.
The government is already having to spend an enormous amount of money to deal with this problem. We believe that it is certainly possible for the NGOs and pro bono counsel, pro bono lawyers, as the lawyers here in this room know, myriad hours, in fact, by requirement typically of their law firms and their often engagement in the bar, they engage in tons of pro bono hours and can carry out that work to do this. American taxpayers shouldn't shoulder the burden of funding the expenses incurred by the government during immigration removal proceedings and the other side. And with that, I would yield back to the chairman.
Would the gentlelady yield?
I think the gentlelady from Washington's hand was up first.
Speaker 153
Thank you, and I'll yield to the gentlelady from California just first, just for a little bit, and then I have my own comments to make. Go ahead.
Zoe Lofgren
Thank you very much. I would just note that, you know, I went down to the border when during the Obama administration and it was there were huge problems. The gentleman from Texas is correct, and there were policy issues that related to that. I'm not defending that. On the other hand, you know, we have enough money to spend, you know, a billion dollars on a ballroom or many other things, but not a rather modest amount for small children who are in this country, who are in immigration court by themselves.
That's unreasonable. And I think I don't agree with everything that the Trump administration has done at the border, but I will say that I think there were failures during the Biden administration in their border policies that were on their way to being corrected. I don't think we should conflate those two as a reason to deny a little kid the chance to be represented in an adversarial proceeding in a court. To me, that's just unconscionable. And certainly all of the things that we're spending in Iran and on ballrooms and settlement funds for J6 rioters, I think we can afford to keep a little kid in court with somebody to stand up for him.
And I thank the gentlelady for yielding.
Pramila Jayapal
Thank you so much to the gentlelady from California. I want to thank you for this amendment because I think it is very important and it goes to the core values of who we are as human beings, who we are as Americans. I have been to the court to witness a kids' docket, and I can tell you if you haven't been to one, you should go. It is stunningly horrific. I sat in a courtroom that was packed with probably 75, 100 kids as young as three years old, four years old.
One of them had a stuffy with him that he was just sitting on the on the benches in the courtroom. And basically the judges give an 18-minute crash law crash course in immigration law. And they say, you have the right to be represented by an attorney. You have the right to question the witnesses before you. They're talking to three-year-olds and four-year-olds.
And these kids are sitting through hours-long proceedings without any counsel. And how on earth is a three-year-old or four-year-old or even a 10-year-old or 12-year-old going to argue against the judge will say to them, you have the right to question any witnesses that are that are testifying against you.
How are they supposed to question anyone? How are they supposed to go up against an attorney that is skilled in immigration law, which is the most complicated form of law other than tax law in this country? And to watch these children sit through these proceedings without any counsel and then to have to bear the brunt and the consequences of that is actually why we do say right now, the law is that you have to provide counsel to the extent practicable, that that is what what is currently the policy. And I want to say that there are a lot of people where we're not providing counsel for. What this bill does is it actually takes away even that language.
And I think that if there's, you know, you're asking about how we can ask taxpayers to pay for this, I actually think if we were to put a poll out there and ask the American public if they would rather spend money on this or if they would rather spend money on the illegal war in Iran or Trump's ballroom or the reflecting pool that was done so badly because it was a no-contract bid, they would say this. I actually think the American people would want to make sure that children, young children, minors are provided with counsel in these immigration proceedings. I think that is that is very much what people would want to spend money on, not on all of the things that we're spending money on. And just remember that this is in the context of giving the Republicans giving 210 billion dollars, billion with a B, billion dollars to ICE and CBP and now saying we are going to not only not provide attorneys, we're going to cancel the contracts. I mean, ORR has refused to pay legal services providers for their essential services even though that money was approved.
So I think that this is something where if we put this question out to the American public, they would all say, yes, we should pay for children, unaccompanied children to have counsel. And that is exactly what Ms. Lofgren's amendment does. It's why I think it is so important that we stand up for our values as Americans and that we approve this amendment.
The gentleman from Tennessee is recognized.
Steve Cohen
Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's hard to imagine we're sitting here and having discussions about giving children legal representation when they're subject to deportation. They have, you know, a hearing is supposed to be confrontational between two sides or adversarial, and to have a child without representation against an attorney is not a fair process. And they do have a right to a hearing, y'all understand that, and at the hearing they need to have there needs to be fairness. And the fact that we're discussing that is just hard to fathom.
And Mr. Raskin and Ms. Lofgren's first proposals were ruled out of order. This whole committee's out of order when they can't recognize the fact that children should have help at counsel and they can't make their own decisions and they don't know how to deal with the system. It's unfair. It's something America doesn't countenance. We've always been the land that sought fairness as part of our due process and justice system.
This is the opposite of it. We have it in our laws to require children to have legal representation. The, uh, what's the name of this law? But anyway, several laws that do give representation or say you should try to get it. The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, requirement that the ORR ensure counsel for unaccompanied children to the greatest extent practicable.
Trump administration has appealed that ruling. They want nothing, the Trump administration. And you gotta realize where this is coming from.
This is coming from Donald Trump. This is what he wants. He wants to deport as many people as possible. That's the message he gave to the Department of Homeland Security is deport. And Stephen Miller gave them a head count.
They wanted I think 3,000 people a month or something like that. And they have to meet their head count. And they go out and they do it. And they do it sometimes illegally. And they do it sometimes they kill people because they make mistakes and they don't really understand what they're doing in the law.
The President of the United States needs to resign. He's doing so many just unimaginable things to this country and to justice and due process. If you go overseas what people say they value about the United States is our system of justice and due process. We don't have it here anymore. He appoints his own people to the different committees that regulate the building of the ballroom which is unnecessary.
He's deporting all the people who'd be waiters and cooks. Who's going to work there for a thousand people? They're not going to have them. Every great society has people at the bottom who do work. And they're necessary.
And we're deporting them. We're deporting people who do work and keep our communities active. They've deported a lot of people in Memphis. They've come there with their safe task force. It hasn't helped reduce crime.
Crime just like in Washington is about the same. He doesn't even know about the killings. He mentioned one time oh there was a killing over there near Lafayette Square. That was the woman and the National Guardsman that was killed because Trump made them come here. He's responsible for that death.
He's responsible for all those deaths because he's put people out there and he's created a lot of hate. Now he's talking about putting an eight-foot high fence around Lafayette Square. Lafayette Square where people go and sit and talk and have discussion. He's going to put an eight-foot high fence. I guess there'll be a gate that gets you open and lets you out.
Maybe they just want to swing the gate and lock people in if they choose to do that. That's insane. It's like going in front of the church and holding the Bible upside down and claiming you're doing something in front of the church. The most irreligious sacrilegious person ever to be in our government probably. He golfs on Easter.
He doesn't go to church. He doesn't believe in religion. He doesn't believe in doing unto others as you do unto yourself. He doesn't know any of the good principles that come out of it about the person that's naked and giving him clothes, the person's hungry and feeding him. He doesn't know Matthew whatsoever.
He doesn't know he knows Corinthians 2. What a joke. He doesn't know jack about religion. He's irreligious and he's terrible and his values are doesn't exist. It's all about him.
It's a centered one-person narcissistic grifter. And that's who's guarding this country and that's who's put these laws in effect. He doesn't want anybody to have counsel except himself. He wants Roy Cohn and Roy Cohn-spirited people to give him counsel. And he's got one with Stephen Miller and he's got one with the new guy he's got in to be head of the Department of Justice quote-unquote with a small j.
Roy Cohn taught him never admit you're wrong. Never back down. Never admit you're wrong. Roy Cohn was evil and one of the worst people ever on this earth and he's the mentor of the President of the United States. Get it?
I yield back.
Henry Johnson
Thank you. I rise in support of the Lofgren amendment. You know, a few weeks ago it was Donald Trump's birthday and to commemorate his birthday he had a cage match on the grounds of the White House. And a lot of my friends on the other side of the aisle were there to witness a number of contestants trying to beat the pulp out of their opponent and then stand up and talk about former First Lady Michelle Obama after that. But I mention the cage match because I wonder if my friends on the other side of the aisle would go to the White House for a cage match that featured a full-grown male lion versus a newborn kitten.
You know, I wonder if you would find enjoyment in that kind of a match. But that is exactly what happens in immigration court for minors and for little babies and little children, preschoolers. So I rise in support of this amendment because the underlying bill strips all legal counsel programs for children and declares that the government should never pay for lawyers for children. Even if by some miracle these children can find and pay for lawyers on their own, the underlying bill gives them at most two weeks before their immigration hearing, which is not nearly enough time. I strongly support Representative Lofgren's amendment for the same reasons that I was an original co-sponsor on her Fair Day in Court for Kids Act.
Little toddlers are showing up in court unable to speak English, often traumatized, and perhaps clutching their doll or stuffed animal. Their feet may barely touch the floor when they sit down as they stare silently at a judge in a black robe speaking a language they do not understand. They are scared and overwhelmed and cannot possibly navigate complex legal proceedings by themselves. They are just like that little newborn kitten. Yet we have set them up to be alone against a government-trained full-grown lion, a lawyer, to decide if they should be deported back to countries where they face persecution, trafficking, or death.
Do we really think that a toddler should be able to learn immigration law? The numbers show how dire the consequences are for children who cannot obtain counsel. Immigration judges are nearly 100 times more likely to grant relief to unaccompanied children who have a lawyer. And that makes sense. We provide counsel to adults who are charged with federal crimes because we want to ensure their fundamental right to a fair trial.
If a grown adult needs a lawyer for a fair trial, it's obvious that a toddler does as well. Children lack the capacity, emotional maturity, and legal knowledge to understand their rights, gather necessary evidence, and formulate legal claims. Yet we just pretend that they do. It's heartbreaking, it's unjust, it's unfair, it's cruel. If not for the children, at least vote for Ms. Lofgren's amendment for the immigration courts and the immigration judges.
A courtroom cannot function when one side is represented by a literal baby. Judges cannot oversee cases efficiently and the court system becomes destabilized, clunky, time-suck. Having unrepresented children in court hearings is bad for everyone, and I strongly urge my colleagues to support this amendment as well because we cannot expect babies to serve as their own lawyers. I mean, if you get satisfaction from watching a cage match with a kitten and a full-grown male lion, then vote no on this amendment. If you think that there's no utility or usefulness in watching such a display, then vote yes for this amendment.
And I yield back.
Jamie Raskin
Thank you Mr. Chairman. First of all I've got to say that I'm concerned that so many of our members I think more on your side of the aisle Mr. Chairman are not present here. In fact I want to commend the Democrats for staying here for this important legislation. I'm just concerned that some people are going to come back and then just vote in a way they don't even really understand what we're talking about. This language that's currently in the bill repeals a critical part of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
Trafficking victims. That's what's being repealed by this legislation. Minors, kids who are coming in to court to be heard about a claim of human trafficking or gang violence or government violence now go by themselves. How many of us would send one of our kids, an eight-year-old kid, a ten-year-old kid to the movies by themselves? How many would send a kid to the doctor by themselves?
How many of us would send a kid to the dentist by themselves? Maybe Mr. Van Drew, he probably knows a dentist or I'm sure he'd be in good hands there. But you get my point. I don't think we send our kids to the store by ourselves. And yet now we want to say that at a time when as Ms. Jayapal's pointed out we're spending billions of dollars, 130 billion dollars already on an illegal, unauthorized, unconstitutional, disastrous war in the Middle East.
A billion dollars they want to rebuild the bulldozed White House which was done illegally. Or just take the relatively modest example of just 15 or 20 million dollars for the President to play around with the color of the water in the reflecting pool. During that time we're going to strip from children the right to have a lawyer with them when their whole future is at stake? How much money do we think we're going to save doing that? I don't know if anybody has quantified it.
Is it a million dollars? Is it 400,000 dollars? So let's say one of these kids, imagine that one of these kids actually has a valid claim. Okay, if everybody can engage in that empathic hypothetical leap. Imagine one of these kids has a valid claim.
Say that their family has been targeted by the government because they belong to the right political party. And that's why the family sent them to America. Imagine that it's a teenage boy, perhaps the most suspect demographic category in the world, a teenage boy who is running away from a gang that's insisting he join the gang. And he wants to come here to the country, to the land of the free and the home of the brave. Maybe he saw the Statue of Liberty.
Imagine the core paradigm target of the Human Trafficking Act which is being repealed by this language. Say you've got a 12 or 13-year-old girl who's being subjected to human trafficking, threats and violence, intimidation. Maybe they don't even speak the language but maybe they actually have a valid claim to asylum. And now we've reached the point where we're going to strip them of a lawyer under an administration headed up by a President who has had literally hundreds of lawyers. He doesn't go anywhere without a lawyer.
We know the names of his lawyers. Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani. Todd Blanche declared, I'm his lawyer the other day. That's why he shouldn't be Attorney General, he should just go back to being in one of, one of Donald Trump's battalion of lawyers. How about we show the tiniest bit of compassion.
What America was made for. That's what our country is. For the tired and the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, have we forgotten all of that? Well, so you know, a whole bunch of people are going to come into the room and they're just going to go ahead and vote no because somebody's going to tell them to vote no. I warn them they do that at their own political peril when America finds out what's going on here right now.
I, I find it absolutely shocking and mesmerizing that they would walk into this position and I urge everybody to rethink it and I want to thank Ms. Lofgren for spotting this subtle change in the language. And they say, oh well, just get pro bono lawyers. Yeah, the ones that still exist because they haven't been shaken down by the president for hundreds of millions of dollars of free pro bono assistance because he issued an executive order against their law firms. I yield back.
Mr., Mr. Chairman.
Chip Roy
Yeah, just a few things to respond to.
I will, I will claim the time and yield to the gentleman from Texas.
Well thank you. A few things to respond to. First of all, when we talk about the number of NGOs and the amount of people that are out there with money that are funding vast armies of pro bono lawyers in this case, they all receive significant taxpayer funds. All of them, bucketloads. Catholic Charities alone responsible for resettling 600,000 aliens in 2021.
Catholic Charities usually receives 1.4 to 3.7 million dollars from the federal government each year, in 2023 it received 18.8 million dollars. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in 2024 received 113 million dollars from the federal government in part to support the resettlement of aliens in the American interior. The Lutheran Immigration Refugee Service, 95% of its funding comes from the government. And all of these organizations are funding enormous armies of lawyers on a pro bono basis. There are literally billions of dollars going out in taxpayer funds for this very purpose and it's going out through NGOs and it's literally documented out there.
And when we talk about the actual numbers, I have the numbers from 2026 in terms of what we're dealing with in terms of relief granted for, for the children in question. And I said, well I don't want to look at 2026 because it might be said, well the Trump administration is being too harsh. I asked for the information from 2024 to go back to the Biden information. And I look at the data from second quarter 2024, the last year of the Biden administration, of the 40,000 pending UAC cases, 9100 decisions at the time, 118 had relief granted. 118 out of the 9,186.
The rest were dismissals, terminations, removals, voluntary departures. And my point of all of that is not to say that there's not a case that shouldn't have a good competent lawyer adjudicating the case. I believe that pro bono lawyers are doing that and I believe that they're getting that. It is to say that we have created the problem. We Congress have created the problem with the legislation and then the administration, the previous administration in particular, but with all due respect, President Obama at least recognized the problem and asked for it to be fixed.
Literally sent us a letter begging us to fix the problem that is causing these children to be put in, we talk about we wouldn't put our children out to go, go to the store by themselves. Well we sure as hell will put them out to be trafficked by cartels by themselves, to be sent across the border, to be abused by themselves because we create the very climate that makes it occur. This is what is so galling about this.
These children will get representation, I assure you, if you look at the money that is flowing to these NGOs, literally billions of dollars of taxpayer money. They are getting the taxpayer funds. And what we're saying here is is that we should be right now minimizing these cases. That is the purpose of this bill. That is the purpose of moving forward to codify what the President is doing, because this administration finally is trying to bring some sanity to the border.
And with that I yield back to the chairman.
Would the gentleman yield? Could I ask you a question? I would I would ask the gentleman the question, if I'm not mistaken, didn't the Biden administration during the four years that they allowed 10 million approximately 10 million illegal migrants to enter the country, didn't they lose track of kids?
They lost track of tens of thousands of kids, depending on the numbers you look at. And Tom Homan has been very clear about what they've been doing and trying to track down those children. And they literally couldn't tell us where 350,000 kids were at one point. We started narrowing it down and there are still tens of thousands we haven't locked down.
Correct.
Speaker 159
Losing track that we're they're giving us a lecture on compassion. I don't see the compassion in that.
I do not either.
Speaker 159
I don't see the compassion in those thousands of people we saw under what was it, the Del Rio Bridge, day after day after day living in those conditions and then being put in these temporary shelters. I mean where's the compassion in that? Or what happened in Eagle Pass, what we saw there on the trip. We saw that for four years. This bill's designed to stop that.
But that's the problem. The Democrats, they don't want to stop that. They want that to continue.
Chip Roy
And in my first year in Congress, I was down and I'd known this before being a Texan and I was familiar with working with law enforcement, I was down at the border and I still have a picture of this little girl and never did anything with it because I didn't want her picture out there, of of a phone number on her arm, which is all she had. And talking to the the two fellows in front of her about her status and what they knew about her, because she was not really talking to folks, and what they knew about how she'd been abused on the on the trail. And they walked through the extent to which this beautiful little seven or eight year old girl was abused on that trail all the way up through the process by a situation we created, by a situation that we allowed to occur and that we empowered cartels and evil actors to carry out. The reason that I feel so strongly about proceeding with this legislation to curtail the problem of the abuse under UACs, under the catch and release Flores, the abuse of asylum and parole, is to stop the madness. This President's doing it.
We should codify it. I yield back.
Gentleman yields back. The gentlelady from I think California and then we'll come to Vermont.
Sydney Kamlager-Dove
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I I just want to say this is incredibly dystopian to have to have this conversation about young children unaccompanied minors not being able to have representation. I mean we've had a conversation about money, all this money, what the taxpayers are I don't know. But you know, this President has contributed 11 trillion dollars to the debt. And I don't see anybody up in arms talking about that.
This President asked us to cut a trillion dollars in healthcare. I'm sure all of us have constituents in our districts that are going to be hurt because of that. I don't see anybody from the other side up in arms about that. And as it relates to these children, you know, I have been to the courts. And going into these courtrooms for these hearings, it is a daunting scary process if you're an adult, if you're an adult with an attorney.
It's even worse if you're an adult and you're pro per, representing yourself. And now you're saying children? Children to represent themselves? It makes, it actually boggles the mind. In some instances, what I've seen, there are children where language is a barrier and they don't really understand what they're saying.
They're hearing words they don't understand. In some instances, you have children that are, have developmental disabilities, they're on the spectrum. They're not getting additional help or support for that. And now you have courtrooms that are so overwhelmed that the judges are restricting continuances and sometimes they are noticing hearings with less than 24 hours advance. So that's even hard for an adult with an attorney to manage because an attorney probably has more than just that one client.
And just all of the machinations to get it together to go before a judge. And you're asking for all of that to be managed by a minor. A minor who might be on the spectrum, a minor who might not understand everything, a minor who might have English as a second language, and a minor who is just scared out of their wits. And there's no context about the backstory for that child. How that child got here.
What that child is running from. What that child may face if they're deported. And all of those things, all of those things must be taken into consideration. Well, the, the courtrooms that I've been in for proceedings, an attorney, an attorney would bring all of those things up so that the judge could make a coherent decision based on all of the information provided. See, the attorney is the advocate and you're essentially saying you want a child to go in there without an advocate.
And last year, actually, Trump partially terminated the program that would allow children to be represented. So then folks had to file an injunction. And so all of these legal service providers that you all are talking about, you know, they had waiting lists upon waiting lists of kids that they couldn't help because of all of these shenanigans with this administration that you all are trying to co-sign. You're double-downing on the co-signing with this bill. But the value proposition, the value proposition is, are you okay with sending a child, regardless of their circumstance, into a courtroom without having an advocate?
And you're saying yes. And so all these other hearings where folks have said, what about the kids, do no harm to the kids, I'm trying to find out what kind, what children you're talking about when you're saying do no harm to the kids. Because every single child that you're throwing in a courtroom without an advocate, without any kind of representation, you're doing incredible harm to. And you're not going to recount the story of that child being deported and then raped or murdered or killed or dismembered because they went back into a really terrible situation. You're not going to put that child's name on your note card to read out into the record.
So that's why you should be voting yes on this amendment. And with that, I yield back.
Becca Balint
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I associate myself with the remarks of the member from California and also strongly support the Lofgren amendment.
So to level set here, what we're talking about is that the bill that the Republicans are trying to push through this committee right now would end any government-sponsored counsel for unaccompanied children. Children. It puts the onus on kids to find and pay for their own counsel in court. Which, of course, is going to force many children to not be represented at all. And as the member from California said earlier, Ms. Lofgren, there's no other area of jurisprudence where unaccompanied minors would have to appear without legal counsel in front of a federal judge or a magistrate.
So the only way I think you can get to this position is if you don't think that these children or these unaccompanied minors are worthy of basic human dignity. That you are putting them in some other file in your head. That there are somehow worthy children that are entitled to counsel in front of a judge and then there are unworthy children. And I can say as a parent of a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old, I wouldn't even want those children who have a highly educated mom who serves in Congress to be in front of a judge without counsel. So to be thinking about kids, as you said, the member from Washington, as young as four, five, six years old, sitting in front of a judge, having the judge talk about what the proceedings are going to entail.
The only way that you can be okay with that is if you don't believe those kids are entitled to basic human dignity. So we can talk about many other provisions of this bill. This one to me is just absolutely shocking that we can't all agree on this. That there should be a line for all of us who say we care deeply about children in this country that we would send kids into a courtroom and claim somehow we don't have the money to pay for this where we've all talked about all the ways in which this administration is wasting taxpayer money. We haven't even talked about the Qatari jet that has sent us back hundreds of millions of dollars that the president can't even use at this point because it's not safe.
So it's not a question of money and when we have the money. It's where the money is being spent. And I can tell you, I agree with what a member on my side said earlier. If it were between spending money on those things or actually spending money to make sure that children have representation in court, I think I know where most Americans would come down. And I yield back.
Speaker 157
Gentlelady yields back. The gentleman from Illinois is recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move to strike the last word. I rise in support of this amendment for reasons that my colleagues have clearly and unequivocally laid out, but I also wish to speak to the underlying bill. Because here we go again, marking up a bill by the most powerful to inflict violence on the most vulnerable. And once again, this markup is just a show because this disgraceful piece of legislation is so extreme that it doesn't even have the votes in the anti-immigrant Republican Party.
And that's why we didn't mark up this bill until now. The Speaker and the Chairman know it doesn't have the votes.
So the folding caucus threw a longer tantrum on the rule this time, and now we all have to listen to the Republicans pretend that they're going to pass this garbage. But even if this markup is a joke, the policies in this bill are not. They reflect the shameless cruelty of the Trump, Miller, and their mass death squads, and what they're inflicting on our communities. It's real and it's paid for by our tax dollars. They're executing innocent people on our streets.
They're racially profiling people. It happened just three days ago in my district, on a US citizen. They're breaking up into people's homes without a warrant, and the Republicans gave them 240 billion dollars to do it. Think about that. Working people in this country struggle to put food on the table, buy a house, and pay for healthcare.
Many don't even make a living wage. And the people elected to represent them spend 240 billion of their tax dollars to pay a bunch of racist thugs to terrorize random people on the street the way they do in my district every day. Not on healthcare, not on housing, not on nutrition assistance, not on public schools, not on child or elder care. They're paying sadistic criminals like David Brulet, who murdered John Sebastian Duran Guerrero in Maine, or Charles Exum, who shot Marimar Martinez, my constituent, five times in Chicago. These are the violent mercenaries who brag about shooting and murdering people.
And because the Republican Party has no purpose other than to persecute immigrants, give tax cuts to the rich, and destroy democracy, they have no choice but to double down on the cruelty. And that's why this bill. They want to inflict more violence on children, on people who accidentally overstay a visa, on people who are fleeing war, natural disasters, or persecution in their countries of origin. It's especially sickening that in many cases, people are forced to leave their countries partly because of our policies of our government. We cut off food, medicine, and energy to civilian populations, as in Syria and Venezuela, Iran and Cuba.
We fund war and mass destruction, like in Gaza and Iran. We overthrow governments and occupy countries, like Venezuela. And then, as innocent people flee the only homes they've ever known, we deny them asylum. We criminalize them, and in some cases, we kill them. And while our constituents struggle to make ends meet because these same politicians gutted their healthcare, education, and nutrition assistance to fund ICE.
This is not a redeemable piece of legislation, which could be improved with a few tweaks here and there, or by going back to the status quo, even though there are valiant efforts to try to do that. And this is not a redeemable political vision. This is a vision of persecution and exploitation, of pitting working people across borders against each other while the rich and powerful rob them over and over again.
There is a better way. I saw it earlier today when I stood with colleagues, advocates, and union leaders advocating for a discharge petition to bring the Dream and Promise Act for some sensible immigration reform that Americans support. Thank you. I yield back.
Speaker 167
Gentleman yields back. The question occurs, the gentleman from New York is recognized.
Ranking member is recognized.
Jamie Raskin
And I want to thank the distinguished gentleman from New York for yielding. This thing is actually even worse than I thought now that I'm able to do some down and dirty legal research on it. In March of last year, the Trump administration abruptly cut off all funding for the nationwide legal services programs that serve unaccompanied children, the Unaccompanied Children's Program. That cancellation order was not explained. It was not justified.
There was no attempt to make it consistent with the law, which requires it. And the consequences were immediate. There were 26,000 unaccompanied kids across the country who faced losing an attorney under the dreadful circumstances all of my colleagues have just described so eloquently. There was a group, and I'm not familiar with the group, but I certainly applaud them, COSEPA versus HHS, which brought a lawsuit on behalf of 11 legal services groups and co-counseled with the Justice Action Center and Gibson Dunn and the Immigrant Defenders Law Center to challenge this totally unprecedented, unlawful termination in federal court, US District Court in California. And the a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order, then issued a preliminary injunction, and found that the government's actions cannot stand, totally outside of the law.
The government has tried multiple times to overturn these rulings, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has repeatedly rejected it. Okay, so they weren't able to get their way and wipe out legal representation for kids just by cutting off all the money, because it's very clear that that was contrary to law. So now they want to sneak it through this legislation in a few words. I see in parentheses, first it says to to get them legal representation to the greatest extent practicable, and then in parentheses, at no expense to the government. Those are the critical words, at no expense to the government.
Now, I I come back to my my friend from Texas, who I must say I'm going to miss so much when you leave, Mr. Roy, and it's always a pleasure to get to work with you on this stuff. I certainly did not understand the full extent of this. I'm not sure you did, because your argument to me seemed to be we don't need government funding because you've got these not-for-profit groups that will pick up the slack. But the whole point of that parenthetical is to strike at the government funding that those not-for-profits get, which allow them to send lawyers in. They just want to get rid of it.
And in fact, there's not a lot written about this, but I found something from the mcdowellsocialjusticecenter.org, Unaccompanied Children Have a Legal Right to Counsel, the Government Cannot Ignore the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. And then in this, what it says is what's actually going on is that there's an attempt to privatize the whole thing. Well, what do you know? There's a profit motive at the center of this particular effort to strip this basic right that kids and all human beings have in court. And what does it say?
The as reported by The Lever, it's a journal I admittedly don't know, I don't recognize it, as reported by The Lever in its investigation, President Trump is poised to privatize legal aid for migrant children, seeking to privatize all legal representation for unaccompanied children. So, the move likely shifts these services to a for-profit ICE contractor and imposes dangerous requirements, replaces in-person services with virtual videos, slashes funding through fixed-fee contracts designed for private vendors, and results in significantly fewer children receiving any representation at all.
You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of what the federal district judge down in Florida just found about the completely illegal, outrageous and discredited 1.8 billion dollar political slush fund they tried to set up for the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, which even Todd Blanche now says is not moving forward, but we need to put that into law for obvious reasons. He says it's not moving forward now, but the judge said that was a collusive litigation. You were on both sides of the issue. And that's exactly what they want to do here.
They want to abolish a real lawyer for these kids and put in a for-profit ICE contractor, so you basically have the government being represented on both sides of the issues and they would impose that on little children whose entire lives are at stake. That is wrong. And we should vote that down today, unanimously, in this committee. Thank you and I yield back.
Speaker 165
I simply say that the ranking member's observations are obviously correct and I urge that this amendment be adopted. I yield back.
Chip Roy
Gentleman yields back. The question now occurs on the amendment offered by the gentlelady from California, I believe. All those in favor say aye.
Those opposed no.
Chip Roy
In the opinion of the chair, the noes have it and the amendment is not agreed to.
Seeking roll call vote.
Mr. Clerk, call the roll.
Mr. Jordan.
Mr. Massie. Mr. Roy.
Mr. Van Drew.
Speaker 28
Mr. Van Drew votes no. Mr. Nehls. Mr. Moore. Ms. Hageman. Ms. Lee of Florida.
Speaker 28
Ms. Lee of Florida votes no. Mr. Hunt. Mr. Fry. Mr. Kiley. Mr. Grothman.
Mr. Knott. Mr. Harris.
Speaker 28
Mr. Harris votes no. Mr. Onder. Mr. Schmidt. Mr. Gill. Mr. Baumgardner.
Mr. Raskin.
Mr. Raskin votes aye. Mr. Nadler.
Mr. Nadler votes aye. Ms. Lofgren.
Ms. Jayapal votes aye. Mr. Correa.
Ms. McBath votes aye. Ms. Ross.
Ms. Ross votes aye. Ms. Balint.
Ms. Balint votes aye. Mr. Garcia.
Mr. Onder.
Mr. Onder votes no. Mr. Moore.
Mr. Moore votes no. Mr. Cline.
Speaker 158
Ms. Lee of Pennsylvania votes yes. Mr. McClintock votes no. Mr. Issa votes no. Mr. Grothman votes no.
Mr. Gill, you're not recording. Mr. Gill, that's no.
Speaker 9
The amendment is not agreed to. Gentlelady from Washington. Clerk will report. Point of order reserved by the gentleman from Texas.
Speaker 172
Amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute to H.R. 9773 offered by Ms. Jayapal of Washington. Page 53.
Pramila Jayapal
Without objection, the amendment will be considered as read. The gentlelady from Washington is recognized to explain the amendment.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In a normal world, I would say this would be a simple bipartisan amendment. But I certainly hope that's the case, but not much seems normal and given the conversation over the last several hours, I have no doubt that my colleagues will raise objection. This title of the section 4 of the bill claims that the legislation is about "uniting families." However, the bill as written allows for the detention of entire families without regard to whether any of the children are U.S. citizens.
As the majority knows, U.S. citizens cannot be detained under current law. That is why my amendment simply clarifies that families with U.S. citizen children may not be detained under this bill. If the majority claims that's not what they meant and that's not what the bill does, great, we've got the solution. The bill language is poorly drafted and a plain reading of it explicitly allows for families with U.S. citizen children to be detained and or for immigrants to be indefinitely in family detention facilities separated from their U.S. citizen children. Five and a half million U.S. citizen children live in households with at least one undocumented person.
Just under two million U.S. citizen children live with two undocumented parents. This bill would authorize the Secretary of Homeland Security to throw millions of children into immigration detention if ICE puts their parents into removal proceedings. Remember, this title is also retroactive, throwing families into limbo even if they lived here for years. The Supreme Court recently reaffirmed the plain meaning of the 14th Amendment that those born in the United States are U.S. citizens despite Trump's obsession with trying to change it. Now, I want to be very clear, family detention is barbaric and it is a traumatizing process to which no child regardless of citizenship should be subjected.
The harm of detaining children is clear according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, "there is no evidence that any amount of time in detention is safe for children." "Even in fact, even short periods of detention can cause psychological trauma and long-term mental health risks for children." According to a physician and psychiatrist who investigated the family detention facilities for the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, "shorter lengths of detention did not sufficiently mitigate the harmful conditions that we observed and their deleterious consequences." "Most of the harms we documented were in families detained less than 20 days."
We have seen the effects of detention on children under the Trump administration. Children detained in the South Texas Family Detention Center in Dilley, Texas, have gotten sick and received improper medical care. They have received inedible food. They have become depressed. A 13-year-old girl attempted suicide with a plastic knife and hitting her head repeatedly.
The idea that my Republican colleagues would not only endorse these horrors but actively seek to impose them on more children, including US citizens, is grotesque. But sadly, unless there is a drafting error, that is exactly what this bill does. And before my colleagues say that's not what was meant and DHS doesn't detain US citizens, we know that's all false. Take the case of Jackie Merlos. Immigration officers arrested Jackie and her family, including her four US citizen children, at Peace Arch State Park where they went to see her sister who lives just over the border in Canada.
When Jackie went to hug her sister, agents arrested the whole family, accused them of attempted alien smuggling, and took everyone but the sister, who remained across the border in Canada, into custody. The whole family remained in custody for weeks, and DHS was working to get passports for the US citizen children so they could deport the entire family. Fortunately, family members and friends were able to get the children out of custody, but ICE detained Jackie for several months until the case against her was thrown out. Jackie's family is not the only one to experience this. We have heard countless stories from across the country of US citizen children being detained and even deported, including multiple children with cancer.
And with this bill, Republicans want to subject even more families to this horror. My amendment would make a horrific bill just a little bit better by preventing US citizen children from experiencing this nightmare. And again, I would just call on my colleagues across the aisle to have a little bit of humanity here, and also to follow the law. You cannot detain US citizens. I hope my colleagues will join me in protecting US citizen children and accept this common sense amendment.
I yield back.
Speaker 183
Gentlelady yields back. Gentleman from Texas withdraws his point of order and is recognized.
Chip Roy
Thank the chairman. I guess my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are for family separation now, because that's effectively what they're calling for. The purpose here is to make sure that we keep families together. That's the point. When you have someone who came here illegally, you have illegal alien parents and they have a child, for the vast majority of cases, it would be an illegal alien child.
To the extent that it is not an illegal alien child and it is a alleged or actual citizen child, it is almost certainly often going to be the case that it is the product of so-called birthright citizenship, notwithstanding the Supreme Court's erroneous ruling. The reality is that's going to be almost certainly the case in a number of these situations of the hypothetical put forward. My point is just this. We have already, by the way, in the funding mechanism in the OBBB, we have this exact language in place, very specifically. And this would be in alignment with that.
And it is purposeful to hold families together. That's the point. We are trying to make assessments. And by the way, if we embrace the policies we're talking about, we're decreasing the pressure at the border. We're taking power away from the cartels.
We are trying to make it to where you can manage cases, which the evidence is now bearing out. We're putting more immigration judges in place. We're processing these claims and cases faster. We're making decisions where in the limited cases, as the data also is evidenced under both presidents, under Biden and President Trump, in the cases of asylum when there's a tiny fraction that are granted asylum or a tiny fraction that are the unaccompanied alien children who can stay, etc., we're processing them quicker so the backlog is reduced.
That is the point. And so rather than the current system, which is everybody come in, everybody be able to claim asylum, everybody be able to get categorically paroled, everybody get released, hope you show up one day, and you can't by the way deal with the situation of a family unit, you're stuck in this impossible decision where it's either flout the law and hold the family unit together or release the entire family unit, you can't manage the proper problem. All this would do is say, look, keep the family together. And if it's a citizen child by virtue of birthright citizenship or otherwise, it is better for the family that they be together while we're adjudicating whatever claim that they allege to have, which by the way is statistically improbable based on all of the evidence we have, that it would be highly likely that they don't have a claim. But to the extent they do have a claim, that it would be able to be adjudicated under asylum, whether it's parole or whatever we might be dealing with, and it is better served if you do it as a family unit.
That's the point. We believe this is the humane thing to do. We believe this is the right thing to do. Keep people together, adjudicate the claim, and then make the case going forward as a family. When you separate them, when you empower cartels to intervene, when you create perverse incentives to make false claims about citizenship or not, when you make incentives to be able to claim children and be able to use them for fake family units and so forth, we think that is harming children, harming aliens, empowering cartels, undermining our security, and so forth.
So for that reason, I oppose the amendment. I yield back to the chairman.
The someone, I recognize Mr. Raskin to yield to you.
Speaker 176
I yield to the gentlelady from Washington, but save me some time because I've got some things to say.
Pramila Jayapal
Okay, you got it. I just wanted to respond to the gentleman from Texas's comments because we are explicitly fixing an error in your bill that says that either you have to detain US citizen children with their families or you have to separate them. We are saying no, let's exempt the families who have US citizen children so that you can keep families together. This is all about keeping families together, uniting families, which is in the title of your bill. And so I want to clarify that if you support not separating families, you should support this amendment because it fixes the language in your bill that essentially says you can detain entire family units with US citizen children or you separate them.
That's what your bill does. And I'll yield back to the ranking member.
Jamie Raskin
I'm glad you clarified that. It's an essential point. But you know, we've now reached a moment I think that really the whole country's got to pay attention to because Thomas Jefferson was someone who warned that if the government was to be allowed to violate the rights of non-citizens, it would inevitably come to violate the rights of citizens as well. And this particular language is a very vivid demonstration of that principle. Why is that?
Because in the United States of America, US citizens cannot be held unless they are convicted of a crime or unless they're charged with a crime. That's what habeas corpus is all about. If you're being held by the government and you're a US citizen, you've got the right to get out. The government can't hold you. There are only two exceptions to that I'm aware of.
I think are enemy combatants in war if they constitute a threat to society.
And in certain cases, I remember, and somebody maybe can look this up, there were certain cases where US citizens who were material witnesses to a crime could be held even without charges until they testified or until they gave a report. But in any event, none of that has anything to do with what's going on here. This legislation, which the gentlelady from Washington is trying to correct with her excellent amendment, this legislation would actually say that citizens of the United States who happen to be minors can be held against all due process, against habeas corpus, and I take it indefinitely. Am I right about that? Can we get that on the record, Ms. Jayapal?
They could be held indefinitely as US citizens under the language of this bill.
That's correct.
Jamie Raskin
Okay. So, it's an old story. Thomas Jefferson warned about this during the Alien and Sedition Acts. He said if we are willing to sacrifice and surrender the rights of non-citizens who are being rounded up and arrested and deported without any due process at all, it is going to come back to haunt us. And we know that they're US citizens, and one of them was in my district, who've been held for many days in ICE deportation or detention facilities.
That's happened to lots of US citizens. Somebody please find me the numbers on that. We know there's lots of citizens, but this is an attempt to codify it and to say that US citizen children can be held indefinitely by Homeland Security and ICE because one of their parents is being held and we'll just sweep in the whole family. And they rejected, I believe it was Ms. Balint's amendment to deny the right of family detention. I can't remember if that one was yours.
It was Ms. Jayapal's amendment. They rejected that. So now they want to sweep the whole family in, whether you're a non-citizen or a citizen. Look how far we have come. And this is an old story.
It's an old story not with democracies. Democracies like to respect everybody's rights, but it's an old story with empires. Empires would extend their reach over lots and lots of land. And so you had to be a citizen and not a subject in order to exercise rights. But inevitably, because of imperial practices, the rights of citizens would be sacrificed and denigrated and diluted, just like the rights of the non-citizens.
Let's get back on the path towards being a democratic republic and not acting like an empire with paramilitary forces that kill US citizens without warrant, that kill immigrants without any reason. I yield back.
Chip Roy
Gentleman yields back. The question occurs on the amendment offered by gentlelady from Washington. All those in favor say aye.
Those opposed no.
Jamie Raskin
All right, I'm going to have to ask for a recorded vote on that call.
Mr. Jordan.
Speaker 28
Mr. Cline votes no. Mr. Gooden. Mr. Van Drew. Mr. Nehls. Mr. Moore.
Ms. Hageman. Ms. Lee of Florida.
Speaker 28
Mr. Knott. Mr. Harris. Mr. Onder. Mr. Schmidt. Mr. Gaetz.
Mr. Baumgardner. Mr. Raskin.
Mr. Raskin votes aye. Mr. Nadler.
Mr. Nadler votes aye. Ms. Lofgren.
Ms. Lofgren votes yes. Mr. Cohen.
Mr. Cohen votes aye. Mr. Johnson.
Ms. Jayapal?
Ms. Jayapal votes aye. Mr. Correa?
Ms. McBath votes aye. Ms. Ross?
Ms. Ross votes aye. Ms. Balint?
Ms. Balint votes aye. Mr. Garcia?
Speaker 28
Mr. Garcia votes aye. Ms. Kamlager-Dove? Mr. Moskowitz? Mr. Goldman? Ms. Crockett?
Ms. Lee of Pennsylvania? Mr. Moore votes no. Mr. Issa?
Mr. Grothman votes no.
Clerk will report.
Chip Roy
The amendment is not agreed to. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Grothman.
Glenn Grothman
I am sorry, I've had other committee hearings today, but I hear some things I want to clarify.
Go right ahead.
Glenn Grothman
First of all, there are people who say that we're only going to remove the people from this country who are the worst people. If we're going to have an immigration law in this country, and we're very, very generous with people from other countries. Every year about 800,000 people come here and are naturalized. 800,000. We're at a point where one out of six people in America was born in another country.
That's more than even it was in the late 1800s. So we're very generous, but I don't know who thought up this idea that if you come here and you shouldn't be here, the only people we're going to remove are people who are like committing murders. We'll remove them too, but if we're going to have an immigration law, we can't just say anybody comes here. So we should be removing those people. Then, I don't know if this bill is going to get to the floor, but if it gets to the floor, I feel in the interest of trying to hold families together, there ought to be a provision in which our immigration laws do not allow families to break up because they come here.
In other words, if there's a woman from, I don't know, Honduras, and she comes here with her child and the father of the child is still staying in Honduras, we shouldn't allow that to happen, right? In this country, if you go through a divorce proceeding, you may have an order that, you know, the two parents have to kind of stick together in the same town. One parent can't just take the child and vamoose to California. And it's the same thing with our immigration laws. If there is a mother and father and they're both in wherever, Colombia, we shouldn't say that one of those parents can take the child to the United States and break up that little child's home.
So I think in the future when we do one of these bills, or if it gets to the floor this session, we should say that we're not going to allow a child to lose one of their parents because one parent's going to the US, right? We should keep those parents together. So I'd like to thank the chairman for indulging me and I never heard of those worst of the worst stuff. That's not the ship I'm on. So thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have an amendment at the desk.
Speaker 189
Clerk will report. Point of order reserved by the gentleman from Wisconsin.
Lucy McBath
Without objection, the amendment will be considered as read. The gentlelady is recognized to explain the amendment.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. My amendment will add the mens rea requirement that to be criminally liable, a person must knowingly and willingly overstay their visit. As Ms. Ross pointed out earlier today, Title V would make overstaying a visa a crime, really for the very first time in American history. This is an egregious bill that has no exceptions or flexibility when it comes to overstaying a non-immigrant visa. Currently, there's no intent or knowing requirement provided in this new proposed crime, meaning that an individual can be punished even if they make an honest mistake about when they need to depart the country, or they're physically incapable of departing the country, or are unable to return because of circumstances beyond their control in their home country.
That is why my amendment adds a common sense requirement that the person only be guilty of this crime if they knowingly and willingly overstay their visit. For example, a person who has a medical emergency in the United States cannot leave within 10 days of their visa expiring, you know, that would violate this new law and they'd face up to six months in prison and a fine of up to $1,000, even if they're under medical care in a hospital or they're recuperating. So take into consideration that maybe a natural disaster prevents an individual from returning home for more than 10 days past the expiration of their status. They would be guilty of this crime and face six months in federal prison. My Republican colleagues have repeatedly called for mens rea reform, citing existing criminal statutes that fail to explicitly require a mens rea standard, but it appears Republicans' commitment to due process simply does not extend to immigrants, even those that are here legally.
Last summer, we marked up HR 59, the Mens Rea Reform Act, which would insert a knowledge requirement in every existing criminal or regulatory statute that lacks an explicit mens rea standard.
Republicans passed that bill out of this committee over Democrats' objections to an imprecise one-size-fits-all approach that could lead to unnecessary, unintentional mistakes. My amendment would make sure that this new criminal statute embodies the drafting standard that my Republican colleagues claim to favor by explicitly requiring proof of knowledge and willfulness to obtain a conviction. Without my amendment, this bill would create yet another statute of the kind that Republicans claim to dislike. And it's not an adequate response to claim that prosecutorial discretion will address this issue. As Mr. Roy said earlier, we're Congress.
We write the laws. And the idea that we would leave this level of ambiguity in the statute on purpose when trust in the Justice Department is at an all-time low, that's mind-boggling. It's ludicrous and it's just plain old cruel. This Department of Justice tried and failed to indict a man for throwing a subway sandwich at a DHS officer. It indicted an Olympian for touching the water of the reflecting pool after Trump's no-bid contract buddy miserably failed to make the iconic location American flag blue.
And it indicted former FBI Director James Comey for posting a picture of seashells on Instagram. So let's not pretend that federal prosecutors under this administration are not bringing absurd and frivolous unfounded cases. Without this amendment, this bill opens up a whole new avenue of cases federal prosecutors would be able to bring against people who had no intention whatsoever of breaking any laws. Our immigration system so badly needs reform. We have all said that over and over again.
And we're absolutely interested in bold new ideas to fix it, but this isn't one of them. If this amendment is not adopted, this bill would just imprison people for falling to circumstances beyond their control. This is not the kind of policy that I will support, and I vote yes on my amendment. I yield back.
Chip Roy
Gentlelady yields back. The gentleman from Wisconsin withdraws his point of order. The gentleman from Texas is recognized.
Thanks, Chairman. I oppose this amendment. You know, we debated this amendment in the last markup in the last Congress. My friend from Texas, I believe, was the one who offered this particular provision in dealing with visa overstays, Mr. Moran. And, you know, he gave the example of probation, I think was the example that he gave, that we put people on probation and they're given terms or conditions to comply with the probation and, you know, they do or they don't.
And this happens all the time in state and federal courts. You can't go to, if you're on probation, to certain places that serve alcohol or there are other issues where you might violate it. And in many cases, maybe they didn't intend to be in a place, but yet they did. And so then it's a violation. And then that does yield back to the gentlelady referenced, which is something I referenced before, which is prosecutorial discretion in making determinations of whether somebody was breaking the limit on their visa, you know, with some sort of malice or whether it was a good faith effort.
But the point here is to put real teeth when someone is offered the ability to be a guest in the United States. And this is one of those things where I think we've culturally gone amiss and certainly legally, where we've now got a situation where 40% of the people who are illegally here, at least historically, some of these numbers have shifted a bit in the last few years, but 40% are visa overstays. That's just unconscionably wrong. We've created a system where people are rewarded for ignoring the law. And again, it's just hard for me to believe that we have much sympathy here when it was the 19 hijackers were all visa overstays.
And all we're trying to do here is draw a very clear line and say, look, you know when your visa's going to expire and then you've got a 10-day grace period. But, you know, you've got to know when you're a guest, when you're no longer a guest, and to manage that. And again, I go back to prosecutorial discretion. If somebody's here on a tourist visa and working in good faith and they had some period of time and they overstayed the visa and they missed the thing, they thought they had a certain period of time and got it wrong, I think the odds are pretty good that they wouldn't be pursued with the force with respect to the criminal statute. But it's important to have that as a backstop to be able to let the world know that if you come here and abuse our goodwill to allow you to be a guest in our country and you overstay it, that there'll be consequences.
That's the point. And I applauded my friend from Texas at the time for making that case and certainly supported it and certainly disagreed and voted against this same amendment then and will urge that we oppose it now because it is, I think, the right policy to set the policy cleanly and clearly that there'll be consequences and again leave it to prosecutorial discretion to manage. I yield back.
Gentlelady from Vermont's recognized.
Lucy McBath
Thank you so much. I appreciate your yielding. Mr. Roy, I understand what you're saying, but there again, you're making blanket assumptions that everyone, these 40% or what have you, you're making blanket assumptions that everyone is deliberately trying to be here and overstay their welcome. It's just a blanket assumption that you're making, and that's simply not the case. I mean, there are people here for, as I said, for no reasons of their own.
You know, I mean, life happens. As they say, stuff happens. And so to make the blanket assumption that everybody's deliberately trying to stay here and stay past the time of their visa, I think is absolutely cruel and it's just unjust. It's not fair. And so there again, I understand what you're saying, but common sense, I mean, where's the common sense here?
Where's the common sense in trying to be just and fair? And I agree with you, for people that are overstaying their welcome, their visas, and they knowingly are doing so and trying to buck the system, I get it. Yeah, I get that. But there are different circumstances that need to be considered for each and every one of these cases. And you can't, and I have to be honest with you today, you can't honestly say that judges are making fair and just decisions about immigration.
They're just not doing so.
So I think there are mitigating circumstances that we need to consider. You need to take each and every one of these cases individually and stop just putting everybody in a one-size-fits-all category because that's not life and that's not truly what happens in the world.
Speaker 192
Yes, I do. I yield back to... Yes, I yield to the member from California.
Zoe Lofgren
Just very briefly. You know, we have a problem here in the tourism industry already because of the hostility that's been shown to people who come to this country. And if you're telling a tourist that, you know, if you miss your plane or you get sick, you could be charged with a crime, there are other places to go visit. And I do think the economic damage from this is something that needs to be considered. I'm not for people flagrantly violating the law, but the way this is crafted is inelegant and I think the gentlelady's amendment resolves some of that problem and I thank the gentlelady for yielding and yield back to Ms. Balint.
Will the gentlelady yield?
I will. I'll yield to the ranking member.
Jamie Raskin
First let me start by thanking you, Ms. Balint, but also I want to salute Ms. Lofgren on making that excellent point. You know, I had a group of business leaders from my district in my office not so long ago talking about the horrific effect that this violent immigration crackdown is having on people's desire to come visit the United States. People are literally afraid to come to the United States of America right now and it is killing the hospitality industry. It is damaging hotels. My district is right on the border of Washington, D.C. and they're seeing dramatic reductions in the numbers of people wanting to come to our country.
Now we want to make it even worse and say if you slip up, as the distinguished gentlelady from Georgia says, through no fault of your own because there's a blizzard or in this shocking climate change weather there's hurricanes or whatever and you don't get out in time and now your visa expires, suddenly you're a criminal in the United States when we're trying to get people to come here, to go to Anaheim, California to see the distinguished gentleman's district or to go to Disney World or come to Washington, D.C., which used to be known as the centerpiece of politics for freedom and justice all over the world. And now we're sending this really cruel, sick message. But the other point I really liked that the gentlelady from Georgia made was that this happens to lots of people, even happens to Republicans, to conservatives, where they're suddenly out of alignment because there's some bureaucratic misstep. It could even be the government's fault. You guys have got to check out the Associated Press's reporting about Melania Trump.
Now she luckily she ended up getting an Einstein visa for people with extraordinary ability. I'm not quite sure what the whole background was to that. That goes to people like Niels Bohr and John Lennon and Yoko Ono and Pelé the soccer legend. But in the meantime, when she was in the country, she worked and did at least ten modeling assignments unlawfully. She didn't have the work visa when it happened between September 10th and October 15th of 1996.
And I hold no grudge against her. That kind of thing has happened to a lot of people. Should she have been thrown in jail? Should she have been made into a criminal because she was suddenly out of bureaucratic alignment? The distinguished gentleman from Texas says 40% of the people are in that situation and for him that seems to be an argument for getting tough and militarizing the whole thing.
I think that demonstrates... Gentleman's time has expired. Thank you very much.
I was going to yield to you. Go ahead.
I recognize the ranking member.
Jamie Raskin
Well, I was just going to say that my friend Mr. Roy from Texas has repeated the statistic that 40% of the horrifying illegal alien population, the undocumented people, are people who were here lawfully under a visa which expired. And for him, that means therefore all of these police state tactics we're seeing across the country are perfectly justified.
To my mind, I think of those people like Melania Trump. You know, I don't know if you're saying she should have been rounded up and thrown into a detention center with her family. I don't know if she had any kids at that point or not. But to me, what it says is, hey, like that is life. People, the visas expire and most people are able to get it through the bureaucratic process in time and some are not.
There's even kind of an implicit concession to that in saying you've got 10 days. But what if it's two weeks? What if it's a month? I don't know exactly what Melania Trump's story was when she was working in the country illegally. But so be it.
I just don't think we should be casting this extremely broad net and just describing everybody as a criminal.
Would the gentleman yield?
Jamie Raskin
Yes, and I will yield to the distinguished gentlelady from Washington and then to the lady from Vermont.
Pramila Jayapal
Because I wanted to make another point that at the same time that this bill tries to criminalize people for things like this, for visa overstays, the administration is also changing the requirements for different visas. And I'll give you one example. I think I might still be the only member of Congress that's ever been on an F-1 visa, that's a student visa. And the administration just issued a final rule saying that they're going to change the current law that says, or current regulation that says that somebody can stay for the duration of their degree. So if you come here to seek a four-year degree, for example, you can stay for the time that it takes you to complete that four-year degree.
They've just changed that to essentially a fixed time period, which means that if for some reason during COVID, for example, or something happens, your university has to delay its schedule, you go on for a little bit longer, it actually limits you and says that you cannot finish your degree on an F-1 visa. And it has created huge outrage across the country. It just happened last week and I was asked about it at a news conference and luckily I'd been following it because our universities, you talked about the hospitality industry and, you know, what this does to people not wanting to come to the United States, this is happening now in the universities too. Because universities actually across the country in red and blue districts, red and blue states, are getting people, foreign students are coming and they're paying full freight. But now because of all of the immigration stuff that's been happening under this administration, people don't want to come here.
They're choosing to go somewhere else. With this F-1 rule, that's going to be even more the case because there's no guarantee that you can actually finish your degree if you come here to stay on your degree. Now they want to criminalize people if you then end up having to stay a day or a week or a month longer on your F-1 visa because of this rule change. I yield back to the gentleman.
Jamie Raskin
Thank you for that great point. It is undermining the universities and the colleges as well as the hotels and motels and everybody else. I would just want to make one more point before I yield to my friend from Vermont. According to the US Customs and Border Protection Service, nearly 99% of the non-immigrant visitors left the United States on time. In other words, this program's not being abused.
People get a visa and they're generally here for the right amount of time and then they leave. And then in a tiny percentage of the cases, you've got things like hurricanes, tornadoes, COVID-19, whatever. Life happens. And we want to turn those people into criminals? I mean, that strikes me as outrageous.
Becca Balint
Thank you. And the member for Washington reminded me as she was talking about student visas that, you know, in addition to the example you used of Melania Trump working illegally, we have the case of Elon Musk, who came here on a student visa and never ever enrolled in the program, which was the reason why he got the student visa. And then worked illegally. He literally launched his career in the United States working illegally. So I'm going to go back to what I was saying before, so much of this is about who we see as worthy and suspect and who we look the other way when they are violating the exact same things that you are railing against.
I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Speaker 196
Gentleman yields. Who seeks recognition? Question occurs on the amendment offered by the gentlelady from Georgia. Those in favor say yes.
Those opposed say no.
Speaker 206
Opinion of the chair, the noes have it. The amendment is not agreed to.
Speaker 28
Mr. Roy votes no. Mr. Fitzgerald. Mr. Cline. Mr. Gooden. Mr. Van Drew.
Mr. Nehls. Mr. Moore. Ms. Hageman. Ms. Lee of Florida.
Speaker 28
Mr. Gaetz. Mr. Baumgardner. Mr. Schmidt. Mr. Harris votes no. Mr. Onder.
Mr. Nadler votes aye. Ms. Lofgren.
Ms. Jayapal votes aye. Mr. Correa.
Speaker 28
Ms. Balint votes aye. Mr. Garcia. Ms. Kamlager-Dove. Mr. Moskowitz. Mr. Goldman.
Mr. Moore votes no. Mr. Issa.
Mr. Gaetz votes no.
Clerk will report.
Speaker 203
Yeah, the noes have it and the amendment is not agreed to. Who seeks recognition? Gentleman from California. Clerk will report. Point of order is reserved by the gentleman from Alabama.
Speaker 207
Substitute to the amendment in the nature of a substitute offered by Mr. Correa of California. Strike all after the enacting clause and insert the following.
Speaker 197
Without objection, the amendment will be considered as read. The gentleman from California is recognized.
Lou Correa
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I ask a very simple question: why take away workers, hard workers, law-abiding taxpayers from our workforce? Why take workers away from small businesses, Wisconsin dairies, manufacturers, farmers, senior homes, home builders, hospitals, police officers? Why take away proven workers? The US Chamber of Commerce recently announced that their number one goal for our economy is 3% economic growth.
Their number two goal for the US Chamber: immigration reform. They recognize the need for workers to get to 3% economic growth. Home builders, US home builders, the number one goal is immigration reform. They need workers to build homes in this country. US manufacturers, the number one goal is immigration reform.
Do you all remember that goal, nearshoring from China, manufacturing in the US? I would ask, instead of going after small businesses, workers, let's look at some modest immigration reform. DACA recipients, Dreamers.
These are the immigrants we really need in this country. They know our culture because they've lived here all their lives. They either work or they're going to school. And they follow the law. Believe me, DACA recipients have to pass a very, very detailed background check before they're actually accepted as into the DACA program.
And today, dreamers or DACA recipients, they poll at about 70% with Republicans and about 85% positive with American voters in general. They're part of our workforce and again, they have to pass a very extensive background check. My amendment, the American Dream and Promise Act, would essentially protect and grant eligible dreamers conditional permanent residence for 10 years and cancel removal proceedings. Provide a pathway to citizenship for eligible dreamers by granting full lawful permanent residence or LPR status. Provide individual temporary protective status or deferred enforcement departure with lawful permanent residence.
They would protect our dreamers and individuals with TPS during your application for relief under American Dream and Promise Act. This is the legislation we need, ladies and gentlemen. The most of the day we've talked about criminals. We talked about people that are unwelcome, that are not welcome in this country. Dreamers today have to follow the law, have to be no criminal record and be gainfully employed.
This is what we need today in the United States. Legal workers to relieve our need for workers in this country. Mr. Chairman, I yield.
Chip Roy
Gentleman yields back. Does the gentleman insist on his point of order, Mr. Moore?
I do, Mr. Chairman.
Chip Roy
The gentleman's, excuse me one second. The gentleman's correct. The gentleman's amendment, oh, excuse me, I'm sorry. The gentleman explain his point of order.
Barry Moore
Gentleman's would, his amendment would introduce material beyond the scope and purpose of the bill before us and therefore violates rule 16, clause 7, and I yield back.
Gentlelady from California is recognized.
I have an amendment at the desk.
Clerk will report.
Zoe Lofgren
Amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute to H.R. 9773. Mr. Chairman, this amendment inserts the text of the Real Courts Rule of Law Act at the end of the amendment in the nature of a substitute as title seven of the bill. The Real Courts Rule of Law Act would transition the nation's immigration court system into an independent judiciary. Now currently, immigration judges are appointed by the Attorney General. They are employees of the Department of Justice and immigration judges may be directed to adjudicate court cases based on policies and priorities of the governing administration instead of the facts and the law that are before them in the court in the courtroom.
That's exactly what's happened actually over the last year and a half. In 2025, the Trump administration fired almost 100 out of the 700 immigration judges nationwide with an a spokesperson targeting some as quote activist judges.
Now this has caused chaos and dysfunction with the Board of Immigration Appeals backlog reaching an all-time high of nearly 220,000 cases at the end of last year. You know, it's interesting, the Department of Justice advertised positions for immigration judges as deportation judges, which really emphasized that they just want the judge to deport rather than to apply the law to the facts that are presented to them in their courts. I think this is a dark and dangerous path for our court system to continue down. Such influence and pressure from any administration, Republican or Democratic, is not the right way to deal with justice. We need a new immigration court system that's separate from the Department of Justice, that is defined by independence and integrity.
I am glad to have our esteemed ranking member Raskin on this bill, as well as Mr. Johnson and Mr. Goldman. The Federal Bar Association and the American Bar Association have also endorsed this legislation. This proposal I hope can create a more impartial system and reduce the case backlog that we're seeing across the country. I also wanted to say just one more word about the underlying bill, which I think doubles down on some of the most harmful policies we've seen from this administration. They're policies that can be harmful and mean, they can be bad for our economy, and really they're not popular with the American people.
It should be noted that the latest Pew Research poll showed that 58% of Americans do not trust Trump on immigration. That's up 12% when he was elected. Yet my colleagues on the other side of the aisle seem to be saying to the American people, too bad, we're going to codify this bad agenda into law anyway. You know, much has been said about the need for border control, and I agree. We had a situation that was disorderly and needed attention at the border.
I think the American people want an orderly, controlled system at the border, and I agree with them. But that's not the same as breaking families apart, beating people up, killing Americans, and turning away brilliant, highly skilled students and entrepreneurs when we need to attract the best and brightest minds in the world who want to come here and become Americans with us and help us succeed. So I think this bill is a big mistake. It will harm our economy. It is in opposition to the wishes of the American people.
Adopting this amendment will at least go partway to establishing once again the rule of law in this system, which is something that all of us should strive for. And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Speaker 195
Gentlelady yields back. Does the gentleman insist on his point of order?
I do, Mr. Chairman.
The gentleman's recognized.
Speaker 196
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The gentlewoman's amendment would introduce material beyond the scope and purpose of the bill before us and therefore violates House Rule 16, Clause 7. I yield back.
Chip Roy
Gentleman yields back. The gentlelady's amendment does not satisfy the subject matter fundamental purpose test, therefore is not germane and is out of order.
Who seeks recognition? Gentlelady from Washington is recognized. Clerk report.
Amendment to the amendment.
Pramila Jayapal
Point of order reserved by the gentleman from Wisconsin. Amendment to the amendment. Without objection, the amendment will be considered as read. The gentlelady from Washington is recognized to explain the amendment.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My amendment recognizes that family detention is just wrong and family separation is unacceptable. This amendment addresses both issues. It gets rid of the bill's mandatory indefinite family detention section and it replaces it with language to prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement from detaining parents and primary caregivers unless it can show that the individual poses a specific risk to public safety that cannot be mitigated through a supervised release program. This would go a long way to address the harms of this section of the bill and ensure family unity.
Trump campaigned on deporting the quote worst of the worst, but that is absolutely not what he's doing. Instead, he's cruelly ripping apart families and detaining people of all statuses. On day one, President Trump brought back family detention. Let me be clear again, there is no humane way to detain children. The American Academy of Pediatrics has made it clear, no amount of detention for children is safe.
According to a recent analysis, since family detention was restarted last year, at least 500 babies and toddlers have spent time in ICE custody. The analysis also showed that ICE has dramatically increased detentions of children aged three and under. Between January 2025 and March of this year, ICE has been holding 25 children aged three and under in custody on average every single day. When ICE is not detaining families, they are separating them. Since Trump was sworn into office, ICE has detained and deported thousands of parents, leaving many children, including US citizens, separated from their caregivers.
In just the first seven months of President Trump's second term, at least 11,000 US citizen children had a parent detained. Another report based on demographic data estimates that ICE detained the parents of more than 145,000 US citizen children since Donald Trump returned to office. Reporting describes parents being taken from children as young as four months old. And teenagers are increasingly caring for younger siblings, struggling to balance their own futures with working to pay for increasingly costly essentials like rent and healthcare and groceries. In my home state of Washington, ICE arrested a mother in front of her child's preschool.
Similarly, in Oregon, agents arrested a father during morning drop-off at his son's preschool. In Chicago, ICE arrested a single mother selling tamales, forcing her eldest daughter to step in and care for her youngest sibling. A Chicago-born teenager fought for his parents' release while fighting terminal cancer. ICE released his parents one day before his death. In another case, a US citizen with a rare disease died after ICE detained his father and primary caretaker.
ICE also detained a DACA recipient while he was on his way to the NICU to bring breast milk to his infant daughter, who was born nearly six weeks premature. Perhaps the most, one of the most horrific stories was that of Orlen. Orlen's mother, Wendy Hernandez Reyes, came into ICE custody earlier this year through a routine traffic stop. She told authorities that she was a single mother to her three-year-old son, Orlen, and she begged to be released so that she could care for him. ICE ignored her pleas and detained her.
When Wendy was ordered deported, she begged ICE once again to take her son with her, to no avail. ICE once again ignored her.
As a result of ICE's cruelty, Orlen was left in the custody of an abusive uncle, who abused him and eventually murdered him. The autopsy showed that Orlen had multiple broken bones, signs of sexual battery, had been stomped on, burned with a lighter, and suffered at least 17 blows to the head. That never should have happened, and it would not have happened if ICE had simply never detained Wendy or separated her from her US citizen child. Last week I introduced a bill, Orlen's Law, to make sure no family ever experiences this cruelty. Consistent with my bill, my amendment would prevent ICE from detaining a parent unless it can show through clear and convincing evidence that detention is necessary to mitigate a public safety risk.
In the event that a parent is detained, it actually requires ICE to restore and expand protections to ensure that parents can make arrangements for their child's care. If a parent is deported, it requires ICE to let the parent decide whether or not they leave with their child. Orlen should be alive today. Supporting this amendment would prevent another tragedy like Orlen's death from happening. And for all the families I just talked about and so many more, it would stop Trump's cruel family separation.
I urge my colleagues to vote yes, and I yield back.
I remove my point of order.
Chip Roy
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will oppose this amendment. This amendment is effectively the Flores extension and protection amendment. It would basically maintain the status quo. It would undo the very purpose of the provisions that we're putting in the legislation to fix what has been so wrong about policies in response or in following the Flores settlement that created such a difficult situation and problem and exploitation of our border with respect to children and families.
You know, it seeks to strike a provision that makes crystal clear that Congress intends this bill to satisfy the requirements of the revised Flores settlement agreement as it applies to accompanied minors, and it would leave the status quo in place. Illegal aliens, including cartel members, buy and rent children to pose as family units. They can be released into the United States. This provision eliminates those perverse incentives that we've got. I would urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment.
And I mean, the fact of the matter is, if we're looking at the data, and you can see precisely what's been happening, that under in 2025 and under the under the current administration, you've seen a just complete falloff, a complete falloff because we've been putting in place the right policies, and we want to codify those policies so we no longer have this perverse incentive in place. So with that, I would yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Question occurs on the amendment offered by the gentlelady from Washington. All those in favor say aye. Those opposed, no. Opinion of the chair, the noes have it. The amendment is not agreed to.
A recorded vote being requested by the Democrat, clerk will call the roll.
Mr. Jordan?
Speaker 28
Mr. Jordan votes no. Mr. Issa? Mr. Biggs? Mr. McClintock? Mr. Tiffany?
Mr. Massie? Mr. Roy?
Speaker 28
Mr. Moore votes no. Ms. Hageman. Mr. Grothman. Mr. Grothman votes no. Mr. Knott.
Mr. Knott votes no. Mr. Harris. Mr. Harris votes no. Mr. Onder. Mr. Schmidt.
Mr. Gill. Mr. Gill votes no. Mr. Baumgardner. Mr. Raskin.
Mr. Raskin votes aye. Mr. Nadler.
Mr. Nadler votes aye. Ms. Lofgren.
Ms. Lofgren votes aye. Mr. Cohen.
Mr. Cohen votes aye. Mr. Johnson.
Speaker 28
Ms. Jayapal votes aye. Mr. Correa. Ms. Scanlon. Mr. Neguse. Ms. McBath.
Ms. Ross. Ms. Balint.
Clerk will report.
Speaker 218
We'll be out of here by 6:30 regardless of, no, I'm kidding. Okay, the clerk will report.
Amendment to the amendment.
Jamie Raskin
Without objection, the amendment will be considered as read, point of order being reserved by the gentleman from Wisconsin. The gentleman is recognized to explain the amendment.
All right, so obviously we've had some profound differences about the body and the substance of this legislation. You guys have defended family detention, you have rejected a mens rea knowing willfulness requirement, which was something that I always admired the gentleman from Texas for supporting before. But we think a lot of constitutional principles have been absolutely discarded and abandoned in the process. I would hope at least when it comes to the question of the title of the legislation, we could all be together in defending the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, which of course holds that no person can be elected more than twice to office. This was added in, I think it was 1951 when it finally got added.
And I don't think that we should send out any kind of confusing signal to the public by adding the words permanent Trump to a federal law. And a lot of the president's hardcore MAGA allies and supporters have been advancing the cause of Trump serving beyond the two-term constitutional limit. We've heard stuff like that from Andy Ogles, I think we've heard it from Miriam Adelson, even Steve Bannon said that there was a plan, a strategic plan in place on this. And President Trump himself of course has repeatedly flirted with the idea in public. And this committee should not feed this dangerous fantasy that we will have any president serve permanently in violation of the 22nd Amendment of the Constitution.
President has already lavished praise on dictators who've declared themselves in office for life, people like Kim Jong-un, President Xi, the president of the CCP, and Vladimir Putin, all of these autocrats who plan to serve for life. That's not how democracy works, and that's not how American democracy works. So please, let's not feed this fantasy. Let's all agree just to remove those two words. It doesn't alter the substance of the bill, and the new title will more accurately describe what you want to do in any event.
And with that, I submit it to the wisdom and the conscience of the entire committee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chip Roy
The gentleman yields back. We will now turn to the wisdom and conscience of the gentleman from Texas.
I thank the chairman. I will only say this, that what this reflects, obviously HR 2, which we passed in the last Congress, predated the current administration. But what the bill reflects and the reason for the title is the implementation of the policies that HR 2 set to carry out, we've seen in action. In other words, we now have proof. We have evidence about the success, despite my colleagues on the other side of the aisle suggesting at the time that we were passing HR 2 that, you know, the sky would fall and so forth and so forth, and then saying that, you know, well, Congress had to act.
Remember we were dealing with the Lankford bill out of the Senate? Remember it was like, Congress had to act. Well, we did need to act because we need to codify it, make it permanent. But what we've seen now is that these policies, when they're enforced, they actually work, because we've seen the results. We've seen the reductions at the flow at the border.
We've seen the impact of the, you know, getting new immigration judges through the policies that we've adopted. We've seen the complete reduction of the increase of the number of the unaccompanied alien children that were being abused. We've been able to go track down children. All of it is moving in the right direction. Fentanyl, all of the things have been reduced and improved because of the policies that the current administration has deployed.
And I think credit where credit is due, the administration, Tom Homan, the much-maligned Stephen Miller, the people that are making decisions about what we should do with respect to the border, they have resulted in a much better situation for migrants, for Texans, for Americans, for the people that were being negatively impacted. So with that, I would urge opposition to the amendment and I would yield back.
Speaker 224
Will the gentleman yield? Will the gentleman yield? I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.
Speaker 223
Mr. Roy, did I hear the ranking member say that he would support the bill if we agree to this amendment?
I think I heard something to that effect.
I would oppose it a little less vigorously.
Speaker 227
Is that like strenuously object from A Few Good Men? No. I yield back to the gentleman from, or, yeah, I yield back to the chairman.
Gentleman yields back.
I yield to the ranking member.
Jamie Raskin
Thank you, Ms. Balint. Let me respond to my friend from Texas. Okay, first of all, this is legislation, as we've demonstrated repeatedly throughout the day, that departs from Trump's policies in significant ways, and it's gone way to the right even of Donald Trump. So I don't know how fair that is. But in any event, assuming that you stuck 100% to cement into place what he wanted to do, you can't make it permanent because no Congress can bind another Congress.
So that's just misleading the young people of America to say that we could have a permanent legislative fix that doesn't move. I mean, take even our most successful legislation, we've never named it like that after a permanent president. We don't walk around talking about the Permanent Franklin D. Roosevelt Social Security Act or the Permanent Roosevelt Medicare Act or Permanent Roosevelt Medicaid Act, or I'm not even sure that wasn't during Roosevelt, somebody will correct me when that was adopted.
But in any event, we don't have the Permanent LBJ Voting Rights Act. And you know, it's misleading to say that because the Voting Rights Act has been ravaged by a combination of right-wing MAGA attacks and the Roberts Court. Nothing's permanent. We gotta go out and fight for democracy and freedom every day, every week, every month, every year. And the legislation that we pass must stand the test of time.
And so we're just feeding someone's ego, I'm afraid, when we say that we're going to call for the first time in American history a piece of legislation the Permanent Blank President Act. I mean, that just strikes me as bizarre and monarchical and totally antithetical to the spirit of our own, of our own country. And I would not indulge anybody that fantasy, although I did mention this to one Republican who said that if you keep Permanent Trump in there, then it will guarantee that Speaker Johnson won't bring it to the floor because he's not going to want to submit the GOP caucus to the kind of criticism and humiliation that might follow from putting something like that on the floor. But really, I think we can all do without it. We could do it by voice vote if everybody agrees, but if not, I'm going to insist on people voting either for Permanent Trump or not for Permanent Trump.
And Medicaid, by the way, was under President Lyndon B. Johnson. So I suppose we could move to amend it to say the President Lyndon B. Johnson, President Permanent Lyndon B. Johnson Medicaid Act. But I'm going to yield to the gentlelady from Vermont.
Becca Balint
I really appreciate the comments from the ranking member. And one of the themes that we've struggled with now for the last year and a half plus is that we have constant examples of the Republicans in Congress willingly giving up their Article I powers to the president, continuing to bow to the executive instead of protecting the rights that we hold dear in Congress because we are the ones closest to the people. I think this is yet another example of my colleagues on the other side being willing to defer, to bow down, to give up their authority and their power to the executive. And it makes me very uncomfortable. And I yield back.
Tom McClintock
I just wanted to assure the ranking member that Donald Trump can, of course, serve a third term. It only requires a constitutional amendment passed by two-thirds of both houses and ratification by three-fourths of the states. Absent that, it's not going to happen. And I am concerned about the ranking member's paranoia over a Trump third term. I think it's clearly overwhelmed his sense of reality.
And Mr. Chairman, I'd ask unanimous consent to submit an article entitled "Is Trump Derangement Syndrome Real?" No therapist would render such a derogatory and partisan diagnosis, but I've seen it in my practice, by Jonathan Albert, Wall Street Journal, November 12th, 2025.
Chip Roy
Without objection. Gentleman yields back. The gentleman from New York, who I think introduced legislation on the first day of Congress to address the third-term issue, if I remember correctly.
Daniel Goldman
That's right. Actually, it was two days after he floated it to the Republican conference, saying of course it was a joke, only until your colleagues actually introduced a resolution to do it.
I'm glad though we at least all agree that it requires a constitutional amendment. It's funny, Mr. McClintock, that you mentioned Trump Derangement Syndrome, because I hear that a lot sent our way. But imagine a scenario where let's say someone has a very successful career in outside of this body, that perhaps they were, let's see, federal prosecutor, successful lawyer, a judge. I'm going to don't know all of the backgrounds of of my colleagues, but really proven themselves. And they run for office and they win a seat into Congress.
And then they come to Congress and somehow, some way, they are convinced to bow down, to worship the President of the United States. Let's just say forget about the President, just another person. And that when the President says he wants to create something called Trump accounts, you all think that's a great idea. Or the Trump gold card. Fantastic.
You know what, let's support the Arc de Trump. That is Trump Derangement Syndrome. This narcissist who insists on naming absolutely everything after himself, he's now even signing currency. And none of you will stand up and say the obvious, which is it's absurd. It's absurd that someone is so insecure that he needs to have his name put on everything.
But what's even more deranged is that you all go along with it. Why do you need Trump's name on this bill? Mr. Roy, you're the sponsor of it, you're not even going to be here. You and I, we're going to go out and we're going to start a law practice together or something. But you don't need to kiss his ass anymore.
What is the point of putting Permanent Trump on this bill?
Daniel Goldman
In any event, let's stop talking about Trump Derangement Syndrome and throwing it our way, because it's pathetic and humiliating and embarrassing that such accomplished people need to swallow all of their integrity and bow down to another individual, whoever that individual may be. I yield back.
Jamie Raskin
I I want to thank the very distinguished gentleman from New York for his characteristically eloquent and cogent remarks. And we're another person in this committee we're going to be missing a lot next year, Mr. Goldman. And I thank you for having the foresight to introduce legislation about this on the second day of Congress. I had forgotten that you had done that. But of course everybody knows it's not Trump Derangement Syndrome that's a real thing, it's Deranged Trump Syndrome, which is a real thing, which is a president who wants Dulles Airport named after him and one of our Republican colleagues advanced that.
Another, oh am I over?
Oh, okay.
Speaker 231
We just want you to be nicer to the President. Okay, I don't think he's watching right now. All right. The gentleman knows he's the President of our great country and there's a there's ways that the President should not be spoken about and you guys know that but never stop.
Jamie Raskin
Look, some people want him on the twenty dollar bill, some people want him on the hundred dollar bill. I want him on the eleven trillion dollar bill because that's how much he's added to the national debt and I think we should we should make him his own deal. We've got legislation today to add him to Mount Rushmore, rename Palm Beach Airport, give him the Nobel Prize, Congressional Gold Medal, make his birthday a federal holiday, two hundred and fifty dollar bill, and so on.
Look, let's not play into that. We're the House Judiciary Committee. Come on, we don't have to name him or legislate after President Trump. If it stands on its own two feet, it stands on its own two feet. And I agree with the gentlelady from Vermont who says that it's an insult, an affront.
It's almost a demonstration of a lack of self-respect to say that we've got to hinge this to Donald Trump. If you believe in the stuff that's in there, then stand by the stuff that's in there. But we are the lawmaking branch. The president's job is only to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, and that's what the president should be spending his time on. And if he's watching, nothing personal, Mr. President.
Daniel Goldman
And I would just add before we end this and vote on it, that the president could have enough confidence to actually allow other people to call this bill or other bills something named after him, just like Barack Obama did with Obamacare, which was not the official name, but that's the kind of leadership we're looking for.
Speaker 237
Gentleman yields back. The question occurs on the gentleman from California's recognized for a UC request.
Lou Correa
Gentleman from California for a UC request.
Yes, Mr. Chairman. Yes, unanimous consent to enter the following into the record. First article, Republican farmer relies on immigrant work, sees his party erasing it, New York Times, March 27th, 2026.
Without objection.
Lou Correa
Second, in red states, anti-immigrant bills are failing as businesses push back, Washington Post, April 19th of this year.
Without objection.
Third article, Trump immigration officials seek to mend frayed ties with businesses as arrests spike, Washington Post, July 19th of this year.
Without objection.
Lou Correa
Immigration reform is key to building a skilled workforce, National Association of Home Builders, November of 2025.
Without objection.
Lou Correa
And then business groups quietly push back on Trump's immigration raids, Axios, March 2nd, 2025.
Without objection.
Thank you.
Lou Correa
The question occurs on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Maryland. All those in favor say aye.
Those opposed no.
Recorded vote please, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Jordan.
Mr. McClintock votes no. Mr. Tiffany.
Mr. Knott votes no. Mr. Harris.
Mr. Raskin votes aye. Mr. Nadler.
Ms. Lofgren votes yes. Mr. Cohen.
Steve Cohen
I can't believe they'd name such an insignificant bill for Trump. It should be a big bill for Trump. Not just an insignificant bill, this is an embarrassment.
Yes or no?
Speaker 235
Mr. Cohen votes yes. Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson votes yes. Mr. Lieu. Ms. Jayapal.
Ms. Jayapal votes aye. Mr. Correa. Mr. Correa votes aye. Ms. Scanlon. Ms. Scanlon votes aye.
Mr. Neguse. Ms. McBath. Ms. McBath votes aye. Ms. Ross. Ms. Balint.
Mr. Goldman votes aye. Ms. Crockett. Ms. Lee of Pennsylvania. Ms. Lee of Pennsylvania votes aye. Mr. Gill, you're not recorded.
Mr. Gill votes no. Mr. Gooden votes no. Mr. Fitzgerald. Mr. Fitzgerald votes no.
Clerk will report.
Chip Roy
The amendment is not agreed to. The question now occurs on the adoption of the amendment in the nature of a substitute. No, no, we've got to go here. Question is on the adoption of the amendment in the nature of a substitute. This will be followed immediately by a vote on favorably reporting the bill.
All those in favor say aye. Those opposed, no. In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it. And the amendment in the nature of a substitute is adopted. Question is on favorably reporting the bill.
All those in favor say aye. Those opposed, no. In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it.
Roll call being requested, the clerk will call the roll.
Speaker 28
Mr. Jordan. Mr. Jordan votes yes. Mr. Issa. Mr. Biggs. Mr. McClintock.
Mr. McClintock votes aye. Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Tiffany votes aye.
Mr. Massie. Mr. Roy. Aye. Mr. Roy votes aye. Mr. Fitzgerald.
Aye. Mr. Fitzgerald votes aye. Mr. Cline. Aye. Mr. Cline votes aye.
Mr. Gooden. Aye. Mr. Gooden votes aye. Mr. Van Drew. Yes.
Mr. Van Drew votes yes. Mr. Nehls. Mr. Moore. Aye. Mr. Moore votes aye.
Ms. Hageman. Ms. Lee of Florida. Aye. Ms. Lee of Florida votes aye. Mr. Hunt.
Mr. Fry. Mr. Kiley. Aye. Mr. Kiley votes aye. Mr. Grothman.
Aye. Mr. Grothman votes aye. Mr. Knott. Aye. Mr. Knott votes aye.
Mr. Harris. Aye. Mr. Harris votes aye. Mr. Onder. Mr. Schmidt.
Aye. Mr. Schmidt votes aye. Mr. Gill. Yes. Mr. Gill votes yes.
Mr. Baumgardner. Mr. Raskin. No. Mr. Raskin votes no. Mr. Nadler.
No. Mr. Nadler votes no. Ms. Lofgren. No. Ms. Lofgren votes no.
Mr. Cohen. No. Mr. Cohen votes no. Mr. Johnson. No.
Mr. Johnson votes no. Mr. Lieu. Ms. Jayapal. No. Ms. Jayapal votes no.
Mr. Correa. No. Mr. Correa votes no. Ms. Scanlon. No.
Ms. Scanlon votes no. Mr. Neguse. Ms. McBath. No. Ms. McBath votes no.
Mr. Ross. Ms. Balint. No. Ms. Balint votes no. Mr. Garcia.
No. Mr. Garcia votes no. Ms. Kamlager-Dove. Mr. Moskowitz. Mr. Goldman.
No. Mr. Goldman votes no. Ms. Crockett. No. Ms. Crockett votes no.
Ms. Lee of Pennsylvania. No. Ms. Lee of Pennsylvania votes no.
Clerk report.
Chip Roy
The ayes have it and the bill's ordered to be reported favorably to the House. Members will have two days to submit views. Without objection, the bill will be reported as a single amendment in the nature of a substitute incorporating all adopted amendments and staff is authorized to make technical and conforming changes. The gentleman from California wish to be recognized?
Kevin Kiley
Yes, Mr. Chair. I was happy to support this measure today to advance it to the floor. I think it's a return to common sense border security policies that have had broad bipartisan support for a very long time. This last administration was really an anomaly in this respect, and this is a bill that will assure that such an anomaly does not happen again. That being said, I am very concerned about the impact it might have on a particular community, and that is Ukrainian Americans, many of whom live in the Sacramento area, which I represent.
And so, before this bill comes to the floor, I'm going to want to make sure that that issue is addressed, that we assure that this legislation will not negatively impact their status, their ability to work. And that these are folks who are contributing to our communities, to our economy in countless ways, who came here legally, whether you agree or disagree with how that was done in the past. And so I want to see that we do everything we can to end the legal state of limbo that they're in right now and that we certainly don't make it worse with this legislation. So with that, I yield back.
Chip Roy
Gentleman yields back. This concludes committee's business for the today's meeting. The meeting is adjourned.