[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2015
_______________________________________________________________________
HEARINGS
BEFORE A
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
________
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas, Chairman
JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina
RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California
TOM LATHAM, Iowa HENRY CUELLAR, Texas
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania WILLIAM L. OWENS, New York
CHARLES J. FLEISCHMANN, Tennessee
JACK KINGSTON, Georgia
NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Rogers, as Chairman of the Full
Committee, and Mrs. Lowey, as Ranking Minority Member of the Full
Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees.
Ben Nicholson, Kris Mallard, Cornell Teague,
Valerie Baldwin, and Anne Wake,
Staff Assistants
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PART 2
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Page
Department of Homeland Security.................................. 1
U.S. Coast Guard................................................. 199
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement......................... 315
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________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
________
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2015
_______________________________________________________________________
HEARINGS
BEFORE A
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
________
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas, Chairman
JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina
RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California
TOM LATHAM, Iowa HENRY CUELLAR, Texas
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania WILLIAM L. OWENS, New York
CHARLES J. FLEISCHMANN, Tennessee
JACK KINGSTON, Georgia
NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Rogers, as Chairman of the Full
Committee, and Mrs. Lowey, as Ranking Minority Member of the Full
Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees.
Ben Nicholson, Kris Mallard, Cornell Teague,
Valerie Baldwin, and Anne Wake,
Staff Assistants
________
PART 2
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Page
Department of Homeland Security.................................. 1
U.S. Coast Guard................................................. 199
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement......................... 315
S
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
89-668 WASHINGTON : 2014
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky, Chairman
FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia NITA M. LOWEY, New York
JACK KINGSTON, Georgia MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana
TOM LATHAM, Iowa JOSE E. SERRANO, New York
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut
KAY GRANGER, Texas JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia
MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho ED PASTOR, Arizona
JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina
ANDER CRENSHAW, Florida LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas SAM FARR, California
KEN CALVERT, California CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
TOM COLE, Oklahoma SANFORD D. BISHOP, Jr., Georgia
MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida BARBARA LEE, California
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania ADAM B. SCHIFF, California
TOM GRAVES, Georgia MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
KEVIN YODER, Kansas BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas TIM RYAN, Ohio
ALAN NUNNELEE, Mississippi DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida
JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska HENRY CUELLAR, Texas
THOMAS J. ROONEY, Florida CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
CHARLES J. FLEISCHMANN, Tennessee MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois
JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington WILLIAM L. OWENS, New York
DAVID P. JOYCE, Ohio
DAVID G. VALADAO, California
ANDY HARRIS, Maryland
MARTHA ROBY, Alabama
MARK E. AMODEI, Nevada
CHRIS STEWART, Utah
William E. Smith, Clerk and Staff Director
(ii)
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2015
Tuesday, March 11, 2014.
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
WITNESS
HON. JEH JOHNSON, SECRETARY
Opening Statement: Mr. Carter
Mr. Carter. Well, good afternoon. I think we are going to
start now. Everybody ready? We are going to have some folks who
are going to have to move out around 5 o'clock for a hearing on
the Ukraine. But we are ready to start.
Today we have and welcome Secretary Johnson for what marks
his very first appearance before this Subcommittee.
Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here. We are looking
forward to your testimony, and we are going to talk about the
President's budget request for Homeland Security for the fiscal
year 2015.
Mr. Secretary, budgets are policy documents, as you well
know--documents which reflect the administration's priorities.
So when we look at your budget proposal for fiscal year 2015,
what jumps off the page is a blatant disregard for critical
security and law enforcement functions and priorities that
truly defy logic.
Either this Administration does not see homeland security
and law enforcement as important or it is trying to game
Congress and hope we will bail out unjustified and truly
harmful cuts to essential frontline operations. Either way, as
Chairman of this Subcommittee, I am obligated to call you on it
and not to tolerate it. We all know a political election-year
budget proposal when we see one, and I am afraid that that is
what we have here today.
Specifically, your budget proposes a 12-percent cut in
CBP's Air and Marine operation, which includes a cut of more
than 30 flight hours. It proposes a cut of 5 percent to ICE,
which includes an arbitrary $30-million cut in investigations
and a decrease of nearly 3,500 detention beds, or a more than
10-percent reduction in the detention-bed space; a cut of more
than 4 percent to the Coast Guard, including a cut of nearly 30
percent to critical acquisitions and a cut of more than 17
percent to fixed-wing flight hours.
So what we have here is a budget proposal that, if ever
enacted, would result in more drugs on our streets, more
illegal border incursions, more mariners in distress, more
transnational crime, including more instances of human
smuggling and trafficking, as well as child exploitation--an
outcome that is simply unacceptable.
Then this budget proposes to actually increase the spending
of the management and headquarters by nearly 3 percent. To make
matters worse, the budget proposes about a billion dollars in
new fees that are not even authorized. So your budget assumes
enormous offsets that simply do not exist.
The budget then proposes the creation of a new and costly
political program that does not adhere to the Ryan-Murray plan
enacted into law just months ago and that has no plan and no
justification. This so-called Opportunity, Growth, and Security
Initiative is little more than a political wishlist that has
been presented to Congress and to this Committee in an
amateurish and wholly inadequate way.
Finally, your budget simply does not comply with the law,
as it is missing some 20 reports and expenditure plans required
to be submitted with the budget. This is an argument that we
have had especially with Homeland for years. This is how we are
able to use facts to understand your budget. But the failure to
provide these 20-some-odd reports is inexcusable. Frankly, it
is offensive. It is late and incomplete and does not comply
with the law nor meet the Subcommittee's standards for budget
submittals.
Mr. Secretary, this Subcommittee deals in matters of
reality, meaning we enforce the law as it is written, not how
we would like it to be, and we only deal with laws and offsets
that are real, not some false or fictitious fee.
Now, that is why the Subcommittee has to adhere to three
core principles. We have done this since Chairman Rogers was in
charge, and it has been carried out for 11 years: one,
unwavering support to our frontline personnel and essential
security operations; two, clear alignment of funding to
results; and, three, true fiscal discipline, meaning we provide
every well-justified dollar needed for homeland security and
not one penny more. This is a commonsense policy.
Mr. Secretary, we know you are new. I know you inherited an
ill-conceived budget, so we will work with you in the coming
months. Lord knows we can only approve the so-called proposal,
and I give you my word that I will work with you to do that.
Mr. Secretary, I think it is clear we have a lot to cover
here today. Before I recognize you for your testimony, let me
turn to my friend and the distinguished Ranking Member and
former chairman, Mr. Price, for his remarks.
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Opening Statement: Mr. Price
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good afternoon, Mr. Secretary, and welcome to you. This is
your first appearance before our subcommittee, your first
opportunity to answer questions on the fiscal year 2015 budget
request from the President.
I hope you will find our hearings to be both constructive
and beneficial to your mission as the Secretary. This
subcommittee is inclined to be candid and probing, but I hope
our questions will be fair and reasonable. You have a difficult
job, so even when there are disagreements, we still appreciate
and respect your service to the country and look forward to
working together.
You have inherited a department that is now more than 10
years old. It has had its share of growing pains, but it has
made significant progress in many areas under the leadership of
each of your predecessors. I know your intent is to build on
and hasten that progress.
One area that is in dire need of progress is the morale of
DHS personnel, which ranks as the lowest among Federal
agencies. I know from our conversations that that is a priority
for you, and I look forward to hearing more about your strategy
not only to address it but to continue to build the Department
into ``one DHS.''
Part of the morale problem, I know, has to do with the
extended vacancies across multiple DHS leadership offices. Some
of these vacancies can be explained by delays in the Senate
confirmation process, although we have seen some progress on
that front, including three important confirmations last week.
But for many, the Department or the administration was slow to
act. So I hope you can give us a feel for when we might see all
of these vacancies filled. Beyond employee morale, you need
long-term leaders in charge of all your departmental components
to help you do your job effectively.
I have been particularly impressed with the strides made
across the Department in using risk-based strategies to
prioritize the use of limited resources. From risk-based
screening by TSA and prioritizing criminal alien deportations
by ICE to improved targeting of passengers and cargo by CBP,
the Department is taking a more strategic approach to
accomplishing its many missions. That approach is especially
needed now, as we continue to live in an era of fiscal
restraint.
The fiscal 2015 net discretionary budget request for the
Department is $38.2 billion, not including an additional $6.4
billion in disaster-relief funding that does not count toward
the discretionary cap. This total is $1.1 billion below the
current-year funding level.
Of course, DHS isn't the only department being asked to do
more with less. In fact, other departments are far worse off.
While I am hopeful that we can move forward in a bipartisan
manner based on the previously agreed-upon top-line fiscal 2015
numbers, this agreement will still leave massive shortfalls
across our Federal budget in funding for health and research
grants, infrastructure investments, veteran benefits, and much
beyond that.
Now, some are going to be quick to criticize the Homeland
Security budget request, but we need to realize it is part of a
bigger picture--a bigger picture that includes in the recent
past government shutdowns, destructive sequestration cuts,
unwise repeated cuts in critical domestic investments. So this
history, unfortunately, has left the administration with
severely limited options.
There is perhaps no greater challenge for the Department
than border and immigration enforcement. This is not only
because of the fact that our immigration system is
fundamentally flawed but also because the politics surrounding
immigration are so contentious, plagued, I am afraid, by
exaggerations of both fact and rhetoric as well as legitimate
policy differences.
My experience on this subcommittee ever since its creation
has convinced me of the futility of approaching immigration as
simply an enforcement issue or simply throwing money at the
border or any other aspect of the problem. We must have
comprehensive reform. In fact, we should have had it long ago.
And if we can accomplish reform this year, Mr. Secretary, that
would go farther than anything else I can think of to make your
job more manageable and your department more successful.
One of the things that the subcommittee would benefit
greatly from and that would help clear the air around the
overall immigration debate would be more comprehensive and
timely data about how the Department is managing its border and
immigration enforcement responsibilities. How many individuals
are being apprehended? Where are they being apprehended? How do
they fit into the Department's enforcement priorities? How many
meet ICE's statutory or policy criteria for detention? How many
are put on alternatives detention or some other nondetention
form of supervision? And which enforcement priority levels do
these individuals fit into?
We need to have more confidence that our detention
resources are used for those who are threats to the community
or are serious flight risks. And we need to know that our ATD
programs, which are less expensive, work effectively as a
detention alternative.
Better information may not be the way to reach consensus on
every question of border and immigration enforcement policy,
but it would help us. It would elevate the discussion to one
based on empirical evidence and agreed-upon data.
With regard to immigration enforcement policy, there has
been a significant debate about ICE's use of prosecutorial
discretion, but the use of law enforcement discretion has a
long and credible history. In fact, as you well know yourself,
Mr. Secretary, from your own experience, every prosecuting
office in the country exercises discretion on which cases to
pursue and to what extent. In fact, any prosecutor not
exercising discretion is derelict in his or her duty to the
taxpayers.
So we should have a discussion about the priorities the
Department has established for immigration enforcement, but I
hope we can all agree that it simply must prioritize. A
convicted felon, by definition, has committed a more serious
crime than a misdemeanor offender or a deferred-action-eligible
individual and therefore poses a bigger risk to the public. We
simply don't have the resources to do it all.
Now, on the specific budget proposal, there are some
recycled proposals that I was hoping we wouldn't see again. I
want to particularly register my concerns with the proposed
cuts to FEMA grants and to the Coast Guard's acquisition
budget. Both of those accounts represent important investments
in the Nation's future homeland security capabilities that we
can't shortchange.
I am also wary of the proposed transfer of the funding and
responsibility for the Emergency Food and Shelter Program from
FEMA to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. That
idea has been proposed and rejected in the past because the
stakeholder community simply didn't support the change.
Mr. Secretary, I look forward to your testimony, our
discussion today, look forward to continuing to work with you
this year in support of your department's important missions.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carter. Thank you, Mr. Price.
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Mr. Carter. Mr. Secretary, your entire written statement
will be entered into the record. You are now recognized for 5
minutes to summarize your testimony.
Secretary Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman----
Mr. Carter. I am sorry, I should have asked my Chairman if
he had an opening statement.
Opening Statement: Mr. Rogers
Please excuse me, Hal.
Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being here on your first
appearance before the committee.
In the past several years, Ranking Member Lowey and I,
along with our counterparts across the Capitol, have worked
hand-in-hand to restore regular order to this committee,
thoughtful oversight, and austerity. The omnibus bill for
fiscal 2014, which we agreed upon in January, is truly
emblematic of that commitment, making responsible choices to
right-size our Federal Government and target precious tax
dollars where they are needed the most. That bill was a true
product of coming together, reflecting our shared desire to
roll up our sleeves, cast partisanship to the wayside, and do
the critical work expected of this storied committee.
All of us are committed to moving forward in a similar
fashion in fiscal year 2015, with honest and fair negotiations.
That is why I am disappointed that we are here today to review
a budget request that, as Chairman Carter has pointed out, is
overtly partisan and political at its core.
The protection of our homeland is a responsibility of
paramount importance. And I fear this budget request undermines
that duty with the same budget gimmicks, unauthorized
legislative proposals, and cuts to frontline security
operations that we have sadly come to expect under this
administration. Mr. Secretary, we have to do better.
Once again, the Department has proposed to significantly
reduce Coast Guard and ICE that supports the men and women who
bravely defend our homeland on the front lines. In particular,
the budget would decrease custody operations by $202 million
and domestic investigations by $27.7 million, in addition to
reducing the mandated detention level by over 10 percent--
another strong signal that this administration is not
interested in enforcing the immigration laws on the books in
this country.
This budget cuts over 500 military and civilian personnel
at the Coast Guard--500. When the Attorney General is
describing the uptick in heroin abuse in our country, he said
it is an urgent public health crisis--and I am using his
words--I simply don't see the wisdom in reducing one of our
first and most important front lines of defense against heroin
drug trafficking.
Once again, the Department is budgeted with imaginary
money, relying on $1 billion in unauthorized increases to
multiple CPB user fees and to TSA's aviation passenger fees to
support critical security measures.
Once again, the Department has proposed a new FEMA grant
program that has not been formally submitted to or vetted by
the relevant authorizing committees of the Congress.
Once again, the Department has failed to submit a number of
plans and reports which are essential to help this committee do
its work and do its work well. These are not merely suggestions
or requests; they are required by law.
I could go on, Mr. Secretary, and I may later. The bottom
line is this: We have to do better. Your testimony today I hope
will allay my concerns as we work together in protecting our
homeland.
And I thank the chairman.
Mr. Carter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am sorry about that.
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Mr. Carter. Ms. Lowey.
Opening Statement: Mrs. Lowey
Mrs. Lowey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And welcome, Mr. Secretary.
I would like to thank Chairman Rogers, Judge Carter,
Ranking Member Price for their leadership.
This subcommittee values our role in protecting our
homeland, as well as the bipartisan working relationship we
foster to meet that goal.
Mr. Secretary, as you appear before the House
Appropriations Committee for the first time, I welcome you.
Last year, there were acts of terror in Boston, growing
cyber attacks on America's businesses, and drug cartel violence
along the U.S.-Mexican border. That has resulted in the murder
of 60,000 people since 2006 and turned some border towns into a
war zone.
These challenges alone certainly make an extremely
difficult job, and yet you oversee 16 different agencies and
offices, which is no small feat. I wish you luck, stand ready
to work with you to provide our first responders, Border Patrol
officers, special agents, and every Federal law enforcement
officer with the resources to keep our country safe.
The President's budget yet again proposes to consolidate
FEMA's State and local grants into a large pot without
authorization from Congress and expressly against the wishes of
this committee. Such a consolidation could dilute crucial
antiterrorism funds from areas most at risk of attacks and
leave transit and port security in the Nation's most densely
populated areas without the ability to prevent and respond to
acts of terror. In addition, the Department's assumption that
the job is complete in New York City is premature, and a
reduction in securing the city's funding could leave New York
City without the radiological and nuclear detection
capabilities it needs.
With that said, I commend the President for his efforts to
put Americans back to work while making investments that will
support our infrastructure. The Opportunity, Growth, and
Security Initiative, if implemented, would provide $400 million
for pre-hazard-mitigation assistance. With natural disasters
becoming more frequent, severe, and costly, these funds would
be a worthy investment in our resiliency and infrastructure.
Lastly, every day the best and brightest come to America to
study and work and then, due to our broken immigration system,
return home to compete against us in a global market. This
makes no sense. Businesses, security professionals, and labor
all agree that every day without comprehensive immigration
reform is a missed opportunity. I hope that the House will take
up H.R. 15, nearly identical to the Senate bill that passed
with bipartisan support, and that when you come before us next
year we will discuss how the President's fiscal year 2016
budget meets the implementation needs of this important
legislation.
Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
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Mr. Carter. Okay. I am sorry for the mix-up.
You are now recognized, Secretary Johnson, for your
statement.
Opening Statement: Secretary Johnson
Secretary Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; thank you, Mr.
Chairman; thank you, Ranking Member Price, Ranking Member
Lowey, who I have known for some years.
I want to begin by thanking the subcommittee--you have my
prepared statement for the record. I will read an abbreviated
version of it.
I would like to thank the subcommittee for the strong
support you have provided to the Department for the past 11
years. I look forward to continuing to work with you in the
coming year to protect the homeland and the American people.
I am pleased to appear before the subcommittee to present
the President's fiscal year 2015 budget request for the
Department. The 2015 budget request builds on our
accomplishments over the past 11 years while providing
essential support to national and economic security.
The basic missions of DHS are and should be: preventing
terrorism and enhancing security, securing and managing our
borders, enforcing and administering our immigration laws,
safeguarding and securing cyberspace, and strengthening
national preparedness and resilience. The President's fiscal
year 2015 budget request provides the resources necessary, in
our judgment, to maintain and strengthen our efforts in each of
these critical mission areas.
In all, the fiscal year 2015 budget requests $60.9 billion
in total budget authority, $49 billion in gross discretionary
funding, and $38.2 billion in net discretionary funding.
Of particular note, the President's budget request funds
production of the National Security Cutter 8 as part of the
recapitalization of the Coast Guard and requests $300 million
to complete the funding necessary to construct the National
Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility, a state-of-the-art bio-
containment facility central to the protection of the Nation's
food supply and security.
The fiscal year 2015 budget will provide $10.2 billion to
support disaster resiliency, primarily through the grants
program, that are administered by FEMA and the Disaster Relief
Fund.
I would like to also mention something about vacancies.
There has been a lot of discussion of vacancies within the
senior levels of the Department. I am pleased that the Senate
last week acted on the confirmations of Suzanne Spaulding, Gil
Kerlikowske to lead CBP, and John Roth to be our new Inspector
General. We have three more who are awaiting Senate
confirmation now.
And I would like to report that with respect to the other
senior leaders, I have in mind at least one individual who we
are recruiting at every one of these levels. This is an active
part of my responsibility as Secretary, to fill these
leadership positions. I spend virtually some part of every day
working on this important mandate.
As Secretary, I am also mindful of the environment in which
we pursue each of our important missions. The days are over
when those of us in national and homeland security can expect
more and more to be added each year to our top-line budgets. I
therefore believe, as I know many members of this committee
believe, I am obligated to identify and eliminate
inefficiencies, waste, and unnecessary duplication of resources
across DHS's large and decentralized bureaucracy while pursuing
important missions such as the recapitalization of the aging
Coast Guard fleet.
We reached a major milestone last year when the Department
achieved its first unqualified or clean audit opinion on its
financial reporting. These are important steps in maturing the
Department's management and oversight functions.
But there is more to do. As part of the agenda, we are
tackling our budget structure and process. DHS currently has 76
appropriations over 120 projects, programs, or activities. And
there are significant structural inconsistencies across
components, making mission-based budget planning and budget
execution analysis difficult.
We are making changes, as I have discussed with members of
this committee, to our budget process to better focus our
efforts on a mission and cross-component view. I, along with
the Deputy Secretary, am personally engaged to provide the
necessary leadership and direction to this process.
As part of a management reform agenda, I am also doing a
top-to-bottom review of our acquisition governance process,
from how we develop our strategies to the development of our
requirements, to how we sustain our platforms, equipment, and
people, and everything in between.
Part of this will include the thoughtful but necessary
consolidation of functions to provide the Department with the
proper oversight management and responsibilities to carry out
this task. This will allow DHS to more fully ensure the
solutions we pursue are responsive to our strategy,
technologically mature, and cost-effective. I look forward to
sharing our ideas and strategies with this subcommittee as we
move forward in this area.
The last thing I would like to comment on is a comment was
made that I am new. The week before last, in my testimony
before the House Homeland Committee, a member remarked, we know
you inherited this, but when you inherit something, you own it.
And so I accept responsibility for the Department and its
budget submission. Someone has to be responsible, and that is
me.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to your
questions.
Mr. Carter. Thank you.
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IMMIGRATION: CATCH-AND-RELEASE POLICY
Mr. Carter. And I appreciate that comment.
You know, in the past 4 months, CBP has apprehended 66,928
illegal entrants into the Rio Grande Valley sector of our
border. Rio Grande Valley is in Texas; we call it ``the
Valley.'' Policies, procedures, and adjudication backlog
resulted in many of these illegal immigrants staying in the
United States for an indeterminant period of time, which is
leading to a de facto catch-and-release policy.
Mr. Secretary, in a yes-or-no answer, first, has the
Administration regressed to the flawed catch-and-release policy
of our past history? What do you think? Do you know if this
Administration has established a catch-and-release policy?
Secretary Johnson. I do not believe so. And I would be
opposed to such a policy. I know from my experience at the
Department of Defense that an armed force, a law enforcement
force has serious objections to a catch-and-release policy. We
ask these people to put their own lives on the line, and if you
do that, you should not catch, capture, or arrest someone only
to be released moments later.
So I do not believe in such a policy, and I don't believe
we have such a policy.
Mr. Carter. Well, let's just look at some things. We have a
combination of government directives, deferred action, rule
interpretation, and proposed budget cuts, leading to a de facto
cut-and-release policy.
Aren't all these directives and memos regarding illegal
activity such a thing by granting the recent border entrants
with temporary status, even if it is a type of legal limbo,
aren't the White House decisions, including the latest proposal
to slash ICE enforcement resources, creating an irrational
posture for illegal entry that is leading to humanitarian
dilemmas and law enforcement nightmares?
Sir, I am from Texas, and you know that; we have talked. So
illegal border crossings are a big deal to me and to my
neighbors. And, you know, we all know what is going on in the
Rio Grande Valley. Your group called that the RGV. We call it
the Valley. And though we worry about the escalating flow of
illegal aliens streaming into our neighborhoods and our
communities, we worry more about the transnational criminal
network that supports these illegal crossings. The word on the
border is, at least across from Texas, that today no one
crosses that river without the cartel being involved.
Consider these statistics from CBP about apprehension in
the Rio Grande Valley for the first quarter of fiscal year
2014. Between October and January--October, November, December,
4 months--as I said, 66,828 people were apprehended. A total of
49,850 were other than Mexicans, and 18,555 were juvenile
apprehensions.
When these folks were apprehended, they met ICE's mandatory
detention criteria because they were recent illegal entrants,
but, needless to say, they weren't all placed in detention
beds. So what happened to them once they were processed by CBP
and turned over to ICE? Of the 66,928, how many were removed,
remained in detention, were placed in alternative detention,
claimed credible fear, are awaiting immigration hearings?
How many other Mexicans are waiting to be deported? We
can't just ship them back to Mexico. Of the 18,555 children,
how many were delivered to family members living legally or
illegally in the United States? And how many children continue
to wait in shelters if they couldn't be reunited to family
members?
There is no doubt, Mr. Secretary--in my opinion, at least,
there is no doubt--the current policies are causing systematic
failures to the United States immigration enforcement process,
creating, I would argue, an invitational posture that is
leading to a humanitarian crisis.
It is a really sad story to hear, and we hear it on the
border all the time, of a small child dropped across the bridge
in Brownsville with a plan that is instigated by the cartel,
says there is nothing to worry about that small child, it will
be delivered by ICE, two agents flying in to accompany him
travelling to a family in Virginia.
Now, this whole policy has created a disaster on our
border. Would you consider that this might be creating
incentives to bad behavior? And what is your solution?
Secretary Johnson. A couple of comments.
First, I have been to the Valley, I have spent time there,
I have done the Rio Grande, and I have talked to our Border
Patrol agents on the front lines about the challenges they face
and what they need, the resources that they need. Because I
know from personal experience, very often, you learn more from
talking to the people on the front lines than you do your
subordinates in Washington. In fact, when I went to the Valley,
I told my subordinates in Washington to stay home; I wanted to
talk directly to the guys on the front line.
I agree that we have some real challenges in south Texas. I
think south Texas, particularly of late, is presenting some
real challenges, and we have some work to do there.
One of the things that I was struck by when I visited the
detention center on January 20th was that there were 995
detainees there, only 18 percent of whom were Mexican. There
was something like 30 nationalities represented in that one
detention center. And it is very clear why: Smuggling
organizations are bringing these individuals through Mexico
into the United States as part of a plan.
So one of my concerns, one of my challenges is I think we
have to be very aggressive when it comes to going after the
organizations, some of whom are beholden to the cartels--many
of whom are beholden to the cartels. Almost no one crosses the
south Texas border who is not being smuggled. There is no
freelancing. It is all part of an organized process put in
place.
I am also sensitive to aspects of our system that may
create magnets for illegal immigration. I am sensitive to that.
And when I was on the front lines, I talked to our Border
Patrol folks about some of the stresses that they face on the
front lines as a result of the system we have in place.
In my judgment, this is one of the reasons why we need
comprehensive immigration reform, both for the added border
security that it would provide and, frankly, for--and I know
some people disagree with this, but I think I am right on
this--as a matter of homeland security, an earned path to
citizenship for the 11 million who are here. I want them to
come out of the shadows so that we know who they are as a
matter of homeland security.
But, Chairman, I am sensitive to the challenges the people
on the front lines face. I think in south Texas and the Valley,
we have some work there to do in particular.
The last thing I would say is there is a difference between
catch-and-release and apprehension, arrest--and you know this
yourself from your time in the judiciary--and someone being
released on parole, on bond because someone has determined that
they are not a flight risk. And that does indeed happen in our
immigration system. And we have asked in this budget submission
for $94 million for an alternatives-to-detention program that
we think is a pretty good one, consistent with public safety.
Mr. Carter. Well, you sort of confirmed, in some ways, what
I just said about an invitational posture, and I thank you for
your comments.
When we had catch-and-release, I interviewed bondsmen, and
the policy that they had was they would make the bond, but they
were before the judge getting off the bond in a month because
they knew the no-shows were going to be 90 percent, and they
were gaming the system. This was way back in 2004 when the
catch-and-release was the policy of the United States.
But I need to go on to Mr. Price, so I will get my time
again.
Mr. Price.
NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS GRANT PROGRAM
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, as you know, on this subcommittee, we have
worked very hard to be full partners with our first responders
and with our State and local governments to fully fund FEMA's
first-responder programs. I am disappointed that this budget
does propose a reduction in these programs, although I note
that the administration has also proposed the Opportunity,
Growth, and Security Initiative. That includes additional
funding, or would include additional funding, for State and
local grants, fully paid for, but it would be beyond the top-
line funding level in the budget agreement.
Now, in addition, the Department is again proposing to
establish a National Preparedness Grant Program, which would
take the place of the currently funded preparedness programs.
That would include the State Homeland Security Grant Program,
the Urban Areas Security Initiative, the Port Security Program,
and the Transportation Security Grant Program--in other words,
the rail program.
Now, the administration, unlike the last 2 years, has
proposed authorization language for this new NPGP, but the
proposal is basically the same as we have seen in recent years.
So I am wondering if you could elaborate for us the rationale
for this proposal and some of the practical effects.
I am especially interested in the practical effects. With
the major urban areas, for example, are they justified in their
concern that they could lose access to significant amounts of
funding under this restructuring? What would the UASI cities
gain or lose under the proposed structure? Would those cities
need to rely solely on their State governments or more on their
State governments to receive funding under the proposed
structure?
Secondly, could you describe for me how changes have been
made, what kind of changes you have made in response to some of
the criticisms leveled by stakeholders to the proposal from
prior years?
Thirdly, were the consolidated program to be authorized and
funded, do you expect that we would see a significantly
different balance of investments than we have seen under the
currently funded preparedness grant programs?
You see what I am getting at. I mean, these are programs
that are important to us; they are important to you, I know. We
want to fund them as generously as we possibly can, and we want
to do this in a way that is effective and as efficient as
possible.
This proposal keeps coming back, though. And we have
resisted it, as you know very well. We have resisted it. We
have reason to believe that the current grant structure is
well-defined and has delivered important assistance.
If you have a different idea or if you believe that the
bottom line in terms of what is delivered and how it is
utilized would be different and would be better under this kind
of consolidation, then I think now is the time to let us know
that rationale. Because, as I said, this proposal, this isn't
the first time we have seen it. So if you are persisting in
this, we obviously need to know the reason why.
Secretary Johnson. First of all, I was pleased that in the
2014 budget agreement, there was more money set aside for
State-level and UASI grants. I believe that assistance grant-
making to State and local governments, from my counterterrorism
point of view, is particularly important as the terrorist
threat becomes more diffused, decentralized, and, in many
instances, localized, with the self-radicalized individuals we
see domestically.
So I think support for State and local governments is
particularly important. And I was pleased that in the 2014
budget we have more money to work with, and we intend to do so.
I am aware of the opposition to the consolidation of the
grants program. I know that this debate has been going on. And
I have asked the very same questions you have just asked me.
My understanding is that, with the consolidation of the
grants programs at the State level, there would be increased
efficiencies in terms of Federal oversight of how the grant
money is spent and increased efficiency on the State/local side
in terms of oversight for how this money, how the grant money
is distributed.
I know that our FEMA leadership--and FEMA administers these
grants--is a big believer in consolidating the grants program.
And I have a tremendous amount of respect for Craig Fugate in
this regard, and he believes that we need to do this. He
administers this program, and I am inclined to defer to his
judgment on this.
I understand the concerns, but, you know, anytime you are
engaged in grant-making, if there is a way to reduce the
overhead so that the grant money is maximized in terms of
getting to its maximum impact, that is a good thing.
So that is why we come back at this. I am pleased that this
year, we offered authorization language to accompany it. But
that is my best understanding of the reason for the proposal.
Mr. Price. Just one detailed question about the
authorization language. You propose authorization to build and
sustain core capabilities identified in the National
Preparedness Goal. Now, I know you are maintaining the fire
grants and the SAFER grants, the personnel grants, as discrete
programs.
Secretary Johnson. Yes.
Mr. Price. Does this definition, though, include
firefighting as one of those core capabilities? It is included
now, as I understand. Is that proposed to be changed?
Secretary Johnson. I have to take that question for the
record, and I can get back to you in writing, sir----
Mr. Price. All right.
Secretary Johnson [continuing]. If you don't mind.
[The information follows:]
Rep. Price: Under the National Preparedness Grant Program, would
firefighting be considered a core capability?
Response: Under the Administration's proposed National Preparedness
Grant Program (NPGP), the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program
(AFG) is maintained as a separate and free standing grant program. The
NPGP consolidation does not contemplate the absorption of the AFG grant
program within its structure. ``Firefighting'' does remain a target
capability under the National Preparedness Goal (pursuant to PPD-8) and
the NPGP will support all of the target capabilities.
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carter. Chairman Rogers.
COAST GUARD BUDGET CUTS' EFFECT ON DRUG INTERDICTION
Mr. Rogers. Mr. Secretary, the country has an opioid
problem, and that is putting it mildly. Until fairly recently,
the abuse of prescription drug medicine was killing more people
than car wrecks--opioids, Oxycontin and the like.
We have made a real dent in that through a concerted action
on the State, Federal, local levels, and we are making some
progress. That was what the Centers for Disease Control called
a national epidemic. And I have been to too many emergency
rooms in my district looking at young kids, with parents
grieving over the body of their son or daughter, 18, 19 years
old. But we have made some progress on prescription drug abuse.
But now they are switching to using heroin, an opioid,
obviously. And the rise in heroin abuse now is what the
Attorney General yesterday called, quote, ``an urgent public
health crisis,'' end of quote.
We all know that heroin is not made here in the U.S. It has
to be imported, has to be brought in, either across our borders
or across our seashores. And yet, to combat this urgent public
health crisis, in your budget you proposed cutting the Coast
Guard drastically--the one agency that can protect our
shorelines against this invasion of a health crisis that we are
undergoing.
You have cut over 800 military positions, over 600
selective reserves. You again gut the Fast Response Cutter by
funding only two, even though the program is on cost and on
schedule, desperately needed. And your budget decimates
operational flying hours by proposing to retire aircraft and,
more concerning, proposing to cut flying hours for the new HC-
144 aircraft by 16 percent.
I could go on on your cuts to the Coast Guard vital to our
seashore defense, particularly on drugs. We could talk about
the land crossings the same way, the reduction in personnel and
cuts to the land-based law enforcement, ICE investigations. You
are proposing to reduce the number of average sustained
detention beds, for example, from 34,000 to 30,000.
Furthermore, ICE's Homeland Security investigations program
decreased nearly $30 million. I could go on.
Is the Attorney General wrong when he said yesterday this
is an urgent national crisis? Or do you maintain that the Coast
Guard is not an important factor in fighting that curse?
Secretary Johnson. I wholeheartedly agree with the Attorney
General with regard to his comment.
The short answer to your question is that this budget
submission reflects hard choices given our fiscally constrained
environment in which we are operating, pursuant to the
Bipartisan Budget Act and the top-line limit that we face.
With regard to the Coast Guard, I am personally committed
to continuing with our recapitalization effort. My
understanding is that the Coast Guard has the oldest fleet of
vessels of any navy in the world. We need to continue our
recapitalization effort.
And I am pleased that we have in our budget submission
asked for $562 million to fund the National Security Cutter No.
8, which is the last one in that production line. I am pleased
that we are continuing progress toward the selection of a
contractor for the Offshore Patrol Cutter, which is the medium-
size cutter in the fleet. And I am pleased that we have forward
progress with regard to the FRC [Fast Response Cutter], the
smaller cutter. We asked for appropriations for two versus four
or six because we had to make some hard choices.
My observation of Homeland Security investigations is that
they do a marvelous job in terms of narcotics interdiction. I
get daily reports at their efforts at interdiction at the
border of illegal narcotics. I think they are doing a terrific
job, and we need to encourage them to continue to do so. But
without a doubt, this budget submission reflects some very hard
choices.
Mr. Rogers. Hard choices. You are right, you have to make
choices; so do we. That is what we are in business for, you and
us, on budgets, hard choices.
And while you are cutting the Coast Guard and the other
agencies that fight illegal drug trafficking, you are
increasing management, administration. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, 13, almost 14 percent increase in management and
administration, bureaucrats in Washington. You have cut
domestic investigations by almost $30 million, and so on.
So the hard choices--plus, you proposed to increase the
amount of money to complete the DHS headquarters buildings--
D.C., bureaucrats. St. Elizabeth headquarters, $73 million
increase. Hard choices. Take it from drug fighting and put it
into headquarters. To me, that is not a hard choice; that is an
easy choice for me to make.
So I disagree with you on the hard choices, so-called hard
choices, that you say you have made. Your budget would put
Coast Guard at a 5-year low in cocaine interdiction--a 5-year
low. And we all know that cocaine is flooding into our country.
And so, Mr. Secretary, this is not good news for the home
folks.
FEDERAL AIR MARSHALS PROGRAM
Mr. Chairman, before I relinquish my time here, let me ask
the Secretary about the Federal air marshals program.
I know we can't talk about that in open court here too
much, but I would appreciate a report, confidential report, for
the record for me and for whomever wants it about the operation
of the Federal air marshals--the number, the effectiveness, the
preventions, if any, that they may have expedited--and just an
analysis of where we are with the FAM program and whether or
not we need them.
Secretary Johnson. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to provide that
report to you, with the suitable safeguards that--I know we can
trust you and your staff with the appropriate safeguards, so I
am happy to provide that to you. I think that it is something
you should have if you ask for it.
[The information follows:]
Rep. Rogers: I would appreciate a report, confidential report, for
the record for me and for whomever wants it about the operation of the
Federal air marshals--the number, the effectiveness, the preventions,
if any, that they may have expedited--and just an analysis ofwhere we
are with the FAMS and whether or not we need them.
Response: As the material requested contains Sensitive Security
Information, it will be provided to the Committee under separate cover.
Mr. Rogers. Anything that spends money we want to know
about.
Secretary Johnson. I am sorry?
Mr. Rogers. Any program that spends money we want to know
about, we are entitled to know about, and demand to know about.
And so I want a good analysis of the FAMs forthwith, pretty
quick, before we mark this bill up.
Secretary Johnson. I am not disagreeing with you, sir.
Mr. Rogers. Thank you.
Mr. Carter. Ms. Lowey.
URBAN AREAS SECURITY INITIATIVE
Mrs. Lowey. Thank you again, Mr. Secretary.
The explanatory statement accompanying the fiscal year 2014
omnibus included language directing the Department to focus the
Urban Areas Security Initiative, UASI, on urban areas that are
subject to the greatest terrorism risk and allocate resources
in proportion to that risk.
As you know, the purpose of this language was to focus the
resources of the Department and FEMA on those urban areas at
the highest risk of an event, rather than spread this money
around from region to region and State to State, rather than
put it to good use where it matters most.
How does the Department plan to implement this language for
the fiscal year 2014 UASI allocation? And when can we expect
the fiscal year 2014 allocations under the more focused
standard?
Secretary Johnson. I made an initial review of the proposed
allocations last week. I believe we are on track, pursuant to
the timetable that we hope to adhere to, to get that
information out.
I agree with the statement about how the grant money should
be prioritized to the communities most at risk. As someone who
was in Manhattan on 9/11, I appreciate the challenges that we
in the New York area have, and in other communities.
So we expect to have that information for fiscal year 2014
out very soon.
I have heard from enough Members of Congress about the UASI
grants program and how we allocate risk. I think it is
incumbent upon me as Secretary to make sure that we are
allocating this in the proper way and that we occasionally
reevaluate it to make sure we are getting it right. So for
fiscal year 2015 I am committed to do that, as well.
DOMESTIC NUCLEAR DETECTION OFFICES' SECURING THE CITIES PROGRAM
Mrs. Lowey. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.
The budget request would also cut $10 million from the DNDO
Securing the Cities Program. This program has been invaluable
in outfitting law enforcement in areas of critical
infrastructure in New York with radiological and nuclear
detection capabilities to identify, respond to, and altogether
prevent a radiological or nuclear attack in cities.
Could you discuss with me what accounts for the proposed
reduction of $10 million to this program? Has the Department
coordinated with New York City's new chief of police to ensure
that the proposed reduction to the Securing the Cities Program
would not harm the New York Police Department's detection
capabilities?
Secretary Johnson. Well, I have a pretty good working
relationship with the NYPD and its leadership. I knew
Commissioner Bratton before I took this job. I have met with
him, I think, two or three times since. And I have a dialogue
with the New York City Police Department.
You are correct that there is, in our submission, $10
million less. Again, this reflects hard choices. And I asked
specifically about this one in particular. And it is my hope
and expectation that we can leverage this through other means,
through other grant programs, for New York City and for other
communities. That is my hope and expectation. But, again, it
reflects hard choices.
TRANSPORTATION SECURITY OFFICERS, FEMALE
Mrs. Lowey. I thank you very much, because I did work
closely with Commissioner Kelly, and I hope that we will be
able to discuss this with the new commissioner.
Lastly, I would just like to discuss some matter of
importance regarding TSA. I recently met with transportation
security officers who relayed that female TSOs are finding it
more difficult to be promoted because they are held at the
passenger checkpoints for pat-downs rather than gaining
experience at other stations. Approximately 33.8 percent of
TSOs are women, and as only female TSOs are permitted to
conduct pat-downs of female travelers, as well as being the
preferred choice for pat-downs of children and the elderly, the
result is that 33 percent of TSOs are responsible for over 50
percent of all the pat-downs.
Having female TSOs conduct pat-downs of female passengers
is certainly a well-intentioned policy, but I have heard
continuing problems about its implementation. Due to the
increased demand for female TSOs at passenger checkpoints, they
tell me they are not rotating positions, per TSA policy,
because of insufficient number of TSOs on duty at passenger
checkpoints. The result is that female TSOs are not getting the
experience in other stations to be considered for a promotion
and are being denied shift and position bids because they are
disproportionally kept at the checkpoints.
In addition to making an effort to hire more female TSOs,
could you discuss with us what steps should TSA take to ensure
that female TSOs have equal access to training, shift bids,
promotions as their male counterparts?
And the tragic shooting at Los Angeles International
Airport last year, which resulted in the murder of Gerardo
Hernandez, shined a bright light on the need for checkpoint
security. So if you can tell us, what steps is TSA taking to
improve checkpoint security? How will it train its employees to
handle an active shooter event so that events like the attack
at LAX will not happen again?
If you could just address briefly those two issues, I would
be most appreciative.
Secretary Johnson. On the first issue, I had not heard that
before, but I am not surprised, given the basic statistics. If
33 percent of TSOs are women and we want TSOs who are women to
conduct the pat-downs of women passengers, who are probably
about 50 percent of aviation passengers--and if you add kids,
that is in excess of 50 percent. And I wouldn't want to see
male officers doing that with regard to women.
That need, therefore--there is a certain logic to your
question--requires that they be on the front lines of aviation
security. I wouldn't want to see that deprive them of promotion
opportunities. So I will look into that. That is an interesting
comment, which I had not heard from the women in the force who
I have chatted with at LAX and Dulles and elsewhere. It doesn't
mean it doesn't exist; they just didn't raise it to me
directly.
CHECKPOINT SECURITY, IMPROVING
With regard to LAX, I was there. I spoke with the officers
who had worked with Officer Hernandez on that day. I asked them
about their security. I don't think that the answer is to
create a security perimeter around a public airport. I think
that would create all kinds of backlogs, and I know
Administrator Pistole agrees with me.
There is a review that is out that I am due to get soon on
promoting security for our officers. And that is a top priority
for me, the safeguarding of our men and women. And I look
forward to the results of that review.
Mrs. Lowey. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Culberson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
A point I want to quickly follow up on. Ms. Lowey has quite
correctly, identified a real problem with the ability of the
employees at airports to get access to identification
documents, and I hope that she will continue to work on that.
And, Mr. Secretary, I am trained as an attorney as well. I
did civil defense work in Houston defending businesses,
individuals that got sued, engineers, professional people, and
I see that is your background as well, sir, as an attorney.
Secretary Johnson. My last trial was in Houston.
Mr. Culberson. Was it really?
Secretary Johnson. I won't tell you the result.
Mr. Culberson. Well, you were the general counsel, I see,
at the Department of Defense.
Secretary Johnson. Yes.
DETENTION BEDS
Mr. Culberson. And just as a point of curiosity, do you
think that the individuals picked up by our soldiers overseas
on the battlefield that are held at Guantanamo are entitled to
constitutional protection, equal protection, due process, the
protections guaranteed in the Constitution?
Secretary Johnson. That is a very interesting question that
we wrestled with extensively. I will give you the current state
of the case law.
Mr. Culberson. Your opinion.
Secretary Johnson. My opinion, well, as a lawyer and legal
advisor, my opinion is whatever the Supreme Court tells me to
think. And so the current state of the case law is that with
regard to the right to habeas, they have that and certain other
limited rights. There has been no determination by the courts
that detainees at Guantanamo enjoy the full panoply of
constitutional rights. The courts have tended to say, we are
not there yet, or we don't have to rule on that. And so that is
the current state of the case law.
Mr. Culberson. Right.
Secretary Johnson. It could go in that direction depending
upon the particular issue.
Mr. Culberson. Yes, sir. I was particularly interested in
what you as the general counsel of the Department of Defense
that you had been involved in advocating for a different
result.
Secretary Johnson. I agree with the comment made earlier,
which is I am not in the business of enforcing the law as I
wish it existed. I do my best job of enforcing the law as I
believe it currently exists.
Mr. Culberson. There you go. So as a good lawyer, when the
law says ``shall,'' shall means shall.
Secretary Johnson. Generally, that is true, yes, sir.
Mr. Culberson. And since 2002 this committee has had in
statute a provision that Chairman Carter, with the strong
support of Chairman Rogers, and the final bill that the
President just signed, provides--this is in H.R. 3547--that
funding made available under this bill shall maintain a level
of not less than 34,000 detention beds. And you are quite
correct, you are, as the secretary, have sworn an oath to
uphold and defend the Constitution, the laws of the United
States, you can't deal with the law as you wish it would be,
you are dealing with the law as it is.
So therefore, if you could, sir, what possible
justification is there for the Department of Homeland Security
to refuse to obey that law? And why would you request a cut to
detention beds by 10 percent? But first of all, what is your
legal justification for ignoring that law, and not complying
with that ``shall''?
Secretary Johnson. I dealt with similar provisions when I
was the lawyer for the Department of Defense, and the
Department of the Air Force when I was general counsel there. I
believe that in the executive branch, when we have a legal
obligation to make a budget submission to Congress, we owe the
Congress our best effort at what we think the budget priorities
should be.
Mr. Culberson. Recommendation.
Secretary Johnson. As a recommendation. And it is your
prerogative to agree with it or disagree with it. And I am sure
that the Congress will do so in this instance as well.
But with regard to that particular provision, we believe we
owe you our candor and our best effort----
Mr. Culberson. Certainly.
Secretary Johnson [continuing]. At what we believe is the
appropriate level for detention beds given our current demands.
And so that is what you have from the administration.
Mr. Culberson. Right. But you are not filling all those
beds today? That is my concern.
Secretary Johnson. We are not filling all those beds today.
Mr. Culberson. That is my concern.
Secretary Johnson. Well, actually today, I believe, we are
somewhere just shy of that, shy of 34,000, based on our best
judgment about who should be detained and who can be bonded or
paroled.
Mr. Culberson. But the law is mandatory, you agree,
nondiscretionary, mandatory, shall.
Secretary Johnson. The clause reads as it reads. We have
given you our best submission based on our honest assessment of
what we think we need.
Mr. Culberson. Sure. You, I am confident, can detect from
the committee all of us on this committee are committed to
enforcing the law as it is written. And my good friend Henry
Cuellar, who I had the pleasure of serving with in the Texas
House, one of my nearest and dearest friends, his constituents,
who live there right on the river, there is no one more
committed to enforce the law than Henry's constituents, because
those poor folks are on the front line. I mean, they deal with
it every day. And they want safe streets and good schools and a
strong economy.
Laredo is the largest inland port in the United States, I
think, Henry, and a beautiful city. I used to be able as a kid
to go to Nuevo Laredo. You can't go there anymore. It is like a
ghost town.
It is critical, and I hope you detected it from all the
questions that you have seen in this hearing, that you enforce
the law as it is written. It is not, as you said, what you
would like the law to be. You are following the law as the
Supreme Court gave it to you, but you are also following the
law as given to you by the United States Congress.
And this is not optional. It is not discretionary. There is
no prosecutorial discretion on the part of a police officer or
your detention folks as to whether or not you are going to fill
34,000 beds. You shall fill 34,000 beds.
Would you, if you could, please take that message back to
the agency? And I know that the chairman and all the
subcommittee members will be keenly interested in helping you
obey the law as it is written. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Carter. Ms. Roybal-Allard.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. Mr. Secretary, I just want to comment on
that, on the bed mandate. As the law is written and is being
interpreted by my colleagues in saying that you must fill
34,000 beds, what that does is, if I am correct, takes away the
discretion of professional ICE personnel who may determine that
someone who is arrested, could be an elderly person, whoever
that happens to be, that you would not be allowed to use that
discretion and put them in an alternative means of detention
because of health or for other reasons if those 34,000 beds
were not filled. You would be in a position of having to fill
those beds every night whether or not you believed a certain
number of the people that were arrested could be put into an
alternative situation.
Is that how, I mean, the law is being interpreted by my
colleagues, that those 34,000 beds have to be filled regardless
of the merits, of the need, of the conditions of that person,
and that the discretion is taken away from ICE professionals if
that 34,000 number of beds isn't filled? I am just trying to
understand the logic in how this law applies here, because it
is very, very costly to have people in detention, $125 a night
as opposed to, I forget what the figure is, something like 30
cents per day to put them in alternative measures.
So could you explain to me----
Secretary Johnson. Well, I don't have the statute in front
of me. I have no doubt it says the word ``shall'' in it. And I
don't know that the interpretation here--and feel free to
disagree with me--is that we must maintain 34,000 detainees at
any one time. It is that we must maintain the capability for
34,000 detainees. But, Congressman, you will correct me if I am
wrong.
Mr. Culberson. It is just real simple, straightforward.
Secretary Johnson. Okay.
I mean, the other comment----
Ms. Roybal-Allard. So the capability is one thing, but if
it is that you must fill them, that means that there is no
discretion, those beds have to be filled every night regardless
of who it is that you are arresting, whether it is elderly or
otherwise. That is what I am asking for clarification on.
Secretary Johnson. Well, the statute says, the language
says, funding made available under this heading shall maintain
a level of not less than 34,000 detention beds through
September 30, 2014. So reading that, I would interpret that to
mean that we have to maintain 34,000 detention beds. Some of
those beds might be empty at any given time. But we have to
maintain 34,000 detention beds.
We believe that is not the best and highest use of our
resources, given our current estimates of who we need to
detain, who we regard as public safety, national security,
border security threats. Our best estimate is that the number
is something south of 34,000, particularly when we have what we
think is a pretty good alternatives-to-detention program that
we have also asked for funding for. So we have asked for
something around 30.6 thousand to detain whom we believe needs
to be detained.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. Okay. So your interpretation then is
different than previous interpretations. Those beds do not have
to be filled, they have to be available, and the discretion as
to whether or not to detain someone or put them into an
alternative situation remains at the discretion of the ICE
professional?
Secretary Johnson. Well, I am reading the statute, and----
Ms. Roybal-Allard. The reason I am asking is because I
think there is a little bit of a disagreement between us.
Secretary Johnson. The lawmakers here can correct me if I
am wrong in my interpretation of the statute.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. Okay.
Do I have time for another question.
Secretary Johnson. Chairman, may I make a comment, please?
Mr. Carter. Yes, you may.
Secretary Johnson. When I was general counsel of the Air
Force we used to get language every year, not exactly like
this, that said you shall budget for 94 B-52s. And it wasn't
just you shall have 94 B-52s, you shall submit to me a budget
for 94 B-52s. And the chief of staff of the Air Force would
have this conversation with me every year, do I have to really
submit a budget for 94, because I think I only need 76? And I
said to him, well, I think you owe it to Congress the candor to
tell them you think you only need 76. They would disagree with
you every year and you would get 94.
But as part of that process, which we are engaged in right
now, I think we owe it to you our best estimates of what we
need and how we think we should spend the money. It is your
prerogative to disagree.
Mr. Carter. And if the gentlelady would yield, I think she
has about 30 seconds, can I make a comment? Would you yield?
Ms. Roybal-Allard. Yes, I will.
Mr. Carter. I agree that you have to have available 34,000
beds under this law. You don't have to have anybody sleeping in
them every night, but they have to be made available. I think
that is what this says. And we give a dollar amount in there
for how much we will pay to maintain those things. I think that
is a call of the detention folks.
Now, the concern I have about reducing that number is that,
from my experience as having one of the bad jobs I had when I
was a judge, was keeping our jail overflow from killing us. And
when you run out of space, the space you have to hire to meet a
crisis is about five times or more expensive than the space
that you maintain. And I think the numbers track that we have
been closer to 34,000 than any other number most of all the
year, and it is not because we are filling beds with people
that don't need to be there. It is because the need actually is
there.
But we will see. We will find that out as we investigate
this.
I yield back. I believe your time is up.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. Yes.
Mr. Carter. Who is next?
Mr. Frelinghuysen.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Mr. Chairman, I was late, and I think
might be, if I may, yield to those who were here earlier and
more promptly. I was here early, but if that is all right with
you.
Mr. Carter. That is fine.
Mr. Dent.
SCREENING PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM
Mr. Dent. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good afternoon, Mr. Secretary.
Mr. Secretary, as you know, the Screening Partnership
Program, or SPP, allows airports to apply for private screeners
rather than the Federal screeners. Administrator Pistole is on
the record opposing the SPP concept, and to date I believe 14
airports actively participate in the SPP program. Again this
year the TSA budget proposes to cut funding for the Screening
Partnership Program. So I have a few questions I would like to
have you address, if you could.
First, what level of oversight is DHS conducting to ensure
that the cost comparison process being conducted by TSA is
accurate and has DHS validated TSA's cost comparison process?
Secretary Johnson. The level of oversight with regard--I am
sorry, should I go now, or----
Mr. Dent. Yes. Go right ahead.
Secretary Johnson. Okay. The level of oversight that we are
providing to the components with regard to programs like that
one is, I would say, in transition. We are conducting a top-
down efficiencies review, including creating a new budget
process and the like, that I hope will lead to greater
efficiencies and weeding out inefficiencies with regard to that
particular program.
Mr. Dent. Okay. And second, is DHS satisfied with the
amount of time it takes TSA to award an SPP contract and to
transition that airport once an application has been approved?
Secretary Johnson. For what program? I am sorry.
Mr. Dent. The same program, the Screening Partnership, SPP.
Secretary Johnson. I am sure there is room for improvement,
sir.
Mr. Dent. Thank you.
And the third point I want to make on this, TSA bases its
Federal cost estimate on TSA's starting wages rather than the
actual wages being paid by the TSA, preventing bidders from
meeting the parameters of the bid without paying incumbent
employees at TSA starting salary, rather than their current
wages.
Mr. Secretary, Chairman Carter and I agree that in this
budgetary environment cost efficiency is absolutely critical.
But has TSA set the bar unduly high for private screeners to
compete with federalized screening?
Secretary Johnson. That is a good question. I would like to
take that one for the record, if I may, so I can give you a
full answer.
Mr. Dent. Sure, not a problem. Thank you.
[The information follows:]
Rep. Dent: Has TSA set the salary bar too high for private
screeners to compete with federalized screening?
Response: No. The Aviation Transportation Security Act requires
that private contractors provide wages and benefits to contract
screeners at least at the level or wages and benefits of federal
screener personnel. Approximately 90 percent of the estimate is
attributed to salary cost and the Transportation Security
Administration makes public its estimated cost of operations to
prospective bidders when it issues a Request for Proposals. The
Transportation Security Administration has held industry briefs and
congressional staff briefs on the details of its cost estimating
methodology concerning salaries and is confident in its estimates. The
Transportation Security Administration uses actual salary and benefit
data in developing the federal cost estimate for salaries at the
specific airport where the screening operations are conducted by a
federal workforce. For example, if the minimum salary and benefits for
a D Band Transportation Security Officer at a given airport was
$31,000, but the Transportation Security Administration paid the
average D Band officer at that airport $32,000, it would use $32,000 in
developing the Transportation Security Administration's cost estimate.
However, a prospective private sector contractor could pay a contract
screener filling such a position an amount down to the minimum in the
example, $31,000.
PERSONNEL SCREENING PROGRAMS
Mr. Dent. And then I want to quickly move to the Personnel
Surety Program, Mr. Secretary. Given that there are individuals
who are being vetted for security clearance for DHS programs
similar to the Personnel Surety Program, or PSP, under CFATS,
why should people have to go through that same process twice?
Secretary Johnson. I believe that we are looking for ways
to consolidate our screening programs. This is an issue that
has been raised to me, and I believe we are looking for ways to
consolidate our programs.
Mr. Dent. I appreciate your help with us on that, because
at one point in this deliberation over the development of the
PSP consideration was being given to the use of the TWIC card
by individuals for vetting. Is this still on the table, TWIC? I
mean, many people have come to me and said they thought----
Secretary Johnson. Yes, it is. I believe TWIC
(transportation worker identification card) is an important
program. My understanding is that we are on track to be in a
position to mail to people their TWICs and get to the one-stop
system where you only have to go once to get your card and then
you get it mailed to you.
Mr. Dent. Right. Well, my staff and I would love to work
with your folks on that issue.
Secretary Johnson. I would be happy to work with you on
that.
Mr. Dent. Thank you.
Secretary Johnson. I would note that I personally have to
go to the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) to get my new
license plate.
Mr. Dent. And I have to yield back my time. I just want to
say I have a question I will submit for the record at some
point with respect to the motor coach industry and intercity
passenger transportation.
Thank you. And I will yield back.
Mr. Carter. Mr. Cuellar.
COUNTERTERRORISM: PERFORMANCE MEASURES
Mr. Cuellar. Mr. Chairman, thank you so much.
Mr. Secretary, it is good seeing you again.
What I want to do is focus on performance. This last
omnibus appropriation bill we added some language that applies
to all agency heads, including yourself, that says that as you
prepare your funding requests as part of the President's annual
budget and in consultation with the GAO, you should directly
link your performance plan under the GPRA tied into that
performance measures, and in there you have got to show that
those performance measures, that we give you $1, what do we get
for that bang for $1. Then it goes on, and particular
performance measures should examine outcome measures, output,
everything as defined under GPRA.
One of the things that I would ask you to do is, when we
were looking at the Performance.gov and looked at your
performance goals--and there is a handout, Members, if you will
look at the handouts that we handed out--and I think we gave
you a copy also, Mr. Secretary--I would ask you to look at, for
example, your budget last year was, at least the general
purpose discretionary, was $39.2 billion.
Secretary Johnson. Uh-huh.
Mr. Cuellar. How much money do you think out of that is
used to prevent terrorism, which is your number one goal,
preventing terrorism, roughly, just a rough estimate?
Secretary Johnson. There is probably a number that we
attribute out of that 39.2 to counterterrorism someplace. It
depends, obviously, on what aspects of our mission you consider
could be potentially counterterrorism, what aspect of the
Secret Service's budget goes to counterterrorism. But I suspect
there is a number assigned to that and I just don't have it
offhand.
Mr. Cuellar. If you can get that to us later on, just
roughly.
[The information follows:]
Rep. Cuellar: How much of the $39.2B in FY 14 was used for
preventing terrorism?
Response: The Department expects to devote approximately $8.7
billion of the FY 2014 net discretionary appropriation to programs and
activities devoted to preventing terrorism.
Mr. Cuellar. But I would venture to say it is billions and
billions of dollars that we put in terrorism. Is that correct?
Secretary Johnson. That is probably correct, yes, sir.
Mr. Cuellar. Okay. And then your number one goal--you set
different goals, and I am just taking everything you have in
Performance.gov--your number one goal is to prevent terrorism.
And then there are measures tied into that, Mr. Secretary.
Now, would you venture to say--and I am looking at,
Members, I would ask you to take a look at this--if we spend
billions of dollars and your number one goal, your number one
goal, your first performance measure is the percentage of
intelligence report rated satisfactory or higher and customer
feedback that enable customers to understand the threat.
And then you go on, the second one, the percentage of
intelligence report rated satisfactory or higher in customer
feedback that enable customers to anticipate emerging threats.
And I think you retired that performance measures and then you
go into some other ones.
Now, would you say that for members of the Appropriation,
that if we appropriate billions of dollars, that the number one
measure you should have is how satisfied are those people that
get those intelligence reports? Is that what we should be
measuring? Again, I took everything out of Performance.gov, and
I assume all of that is correct.
Secretary Johnson. The way your question is stated, I would
have to say no.
Mr. Cuellar. Okay. And then I would venture to say, I mean,
I would ask you to go back with your folks and look at this
language that we added to the omnibus bill and ask you to look
at what outcomes. Because I think the outcome we ought to be
looking after we put billions of dollars should be numbers of
terrorist acts committed in the United States should be zero. I
mean, I think that is the result or the impact that we are
looking at.
I would ask you to look at that because you all are looking
at activities, and again, I would ask your staff to look at the
definition of what an outcome measure is, which is results or
impact, what output is, and all of that. I would also ask you,
I don't have this, but if you look at one of the things that I
am very familiar with since I breathe the air and drink the
water in the Rio Grande, and I live there, on securing the land
ports, for example, I mean, I think we should have much better
measures than what you have here.
So again, I would ask you to just look at that, work with
us, work with GAO.
And, Members, I would ask you to take a look at that.
Mr. Chairman, you are familiar with what we did in Texas
with the state legislature. We have different measures. And
again, we would love to sit down and look at this, because we
are just measuring activity. After billions and billions of
dollars for your number one goal and the number one measure is,
are you happy with the report we gave you? I think we can do
better than that.
But, Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield back the balance
of my time. Thank you so much.
Mr. Carter. Thank you, Mr. Cuellar.
Mr. Fleischmann.
AIRPORT WAIT TIMES, DECREASING
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Secretary.
Mr. Secretary, as you know, customs processing in our
nation's busiest airports during peak travel times remains a
problem. This deters international tourism to the United
States, costing our economy billions of dollars annually. As
you are aware, the fiscal year 2014 omnibus appropriations bill
included funding for an additional 2,000 CBP officers.
What is your plan for mitigating and eliminating excessive
customs and immigration wait times at our nation's airports?
And specifically, approximately how many of the 2,000
additional CBP officers do you plan to deploy at our airports?
Secretary Johnson. Congressman, I agree with much of the
premise in your question. I agree that one of my missions as
Secretary of Homeland Security is promoting and expediting
lawful travel and trade. So wait times at airports is a big
issue. I will observe that, in a lot of major airports, wait
times can spike up and down depending on time of day, because
very often international flights come in all at once. I have
seen this myself. I am sure you have experienced the same
thing.
Mr. Fleischmann. Yes.
Secretary Johnson. You are correct that in the fiscal year
2014 budget, we have 2,000 additional CBP officers, many of
whom will be devoted to airports and lessening wait times at
airports. We have made some preliminary estimates of where
those officers should go, but it is still a work in progress.
We haven't finalized it yet. We want to make sure we are making
the best allocation of that. But an important goal is reducing
wait times, facilitating lawful travel. And I think we will be
able to accomplish that with the additional resources that you
have given us.
AIR CARGO ADVANCED SCREENING PROGRAM
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you.
An additional question. Mr. Secretary, since the attempted
bomb plot with cargo coming out of Yemen in 2010, CBP and TSA
have worked closely together, and with industry, to create the
Air Cargo Advanced Screening pilot program. It is my
understanding that a draft rule to convert this pilot program
into a mandatory program has been in discussion for over a
year. Can you provide any updates on when we can expect to see
a published notice of proposed rulemaking please, sir.
Secretary Johnson. Not specifically. I am happy to take
that question for the record and get back to you. I agree with
you that port security and port screening of inbound cargo
should be a top priority. It is certainly a top priority of
mine, as the Secretary of Homeland Security, for the very
reasons you have cited. But I will get back to you on the
timing on the report.
[The information follows:]
Rep. Fleischmann: When can we expect to see a published Notice of
Proposed Rulemaking (on the Air Cargo Advanced Screening Pilot
Program)?
Response: A rough estimate for publication of the Air Cargo
Advanced Screening Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is 19 months. We
estimate that it will take about 10 months to get this document out of
CBP (this includes continued analysis of the pilot, drafting the
proposed rulemaking, preparation and review of economic impact
analysis, and CBP review). We estimate that it will then take another 9
months to complete the DHS and OMB review process and rollout. CBP
(OFO) has been coordinating with TSA on this project.
Mr. Fleischmann. Yes, sir. And as a follow-up, assuming
this rule does get published and goes into effect in the near
future, does DHS have sufficient funds to staff the National
Targeting Center that analyzes and targets these international
inbound cargo ships based on risk?
Secretary Johnson. I will have to get back to you on that,
on whether we do.
[The information follows:]
Rep. Fleischmann: Does DHS have sufficient funds to staff the
National Targeting Center, if the draft rule does go into effect?
Response: Cost estimates associated with the implementation of the
rule are being developed. As CBP is defining the scope of the rule we
will be in a better position to develop solid cost estimates.
Mr. Fleischmann. Mr. Chairman, I am going to yield back. I
have some more questions for later.
Mr. Carter. Thank you.
CYBERSECURITY
Mr. Frelinghuysen.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, it is a pleasure to welcome a fellow
northern New Jersey resident before our committee. We share a
common experience having lived the New York/New Jersey region,
remembering quite acutely September 11, 2001. And I know in
your testimony before the authorizers you sort of expressed
some very heartfelt views as to why this new assignment is so
important to you.
Part of your new assignment, I guess this is a presidential
directive, is to focus on the whole issue of cybersecurity. I
note that in your written statement here, in the 2015 budget,
you have $1.27 billion for Department of Homeland cybersecurity
activities. Can you talk a little bit about those, what your
priorities are for the use of these dollars?
Secretary Johnson. Yes. I am determined to advance the ball
on cybersecurity. DHS is the coordinator of the Federal
Government's efforts in this regard. I am very aware of the
cybersecurity threat that this Nation faces on the basis of my
experience in national security, and I think we have got to do
a better job. I think this subject matter in general is,
because of the terms we use, impenetrable for a lot of people.
And so one of my missions is to state the threat more clearly,
in plain terms, so that the average American understands that
this has to be a top priority.
The $1.2 billion is across DHS, so that covers not just
NPPD [National Protection and Programs Directorate], our
national directorate, which has the core mission, but it also
includes the components. So, for example, the Secret Service is
the lead investigator in the Target store issue with the credit
cards at Target. That is also cybersecurity. And so across DHS
in its entirety there are a number of components invested in
cybersecurity, which is how you get to that number.
A large part of that number is the EINSTEIN System, where
we protect the dot-gov world, which is about ready to deploy. I
believe the request includes about $375 million for that, as
well as response in the private sector and diagnostics, rapid
response.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Can you talk a little about the private
sector with all of the things that are happening out there?
Secretary Johnson. Yes.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Issues of privacy. Certain carriers I
think in many ways doing some courageous things. Where do you
sort of stand? You have to penetrate, using your own terms----
Secretary Johnson. Yes, you do.
Mr. Frelinghuysen [continuing]. And educate the public, but
in many ways we need working relationships with these entities
here, some of whom have rightly grown suspicious and others of
whom have been participants, perhaps not too willing. How do
you handle yourself and your Department in terms of your work
in this area, and how it is going?
Secretary Johnson. The best we can do, I think the biggest
thing we can achieve on behalf of the American public is
building relationships, raising the trust with the private
sector, with private business, with the average American,
interfacing with best practices and the like. And we are doing
that. I am personally committed to that. I am engaging with
business leaders myself to talk to them about this problem and
lowering some of the barriers.
I agree that, with some of the unauthorized disclosures
last year, there has been a lot of suspicion raised about our
government's national security surveillance practices and a lot
of public confusion about what we are doing and not doing, and
we have got to restore some of that trust. So that is a big
personal priority of mine.
There have been efforts in this Congress at cybersecurity
legislation, which I by and large support. I outlined in a
speech a couple of weeks ago what I think our goals should be.
I am glad to know that our authorizing committees are taking a
renewed interest, because cybersecurity legislation will help
to clarify for the private sector what we can do in support of
its efforts and raise the trust factor.
So I would like to work with the Congress on cybersecurity
legislation to try to get us in a better place. But best
practices, information sharing, rapid response, diagnostics, I
think those are the keys with the private sector.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carter. Mr. Kingston.
CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION OFFICERS
Mr. Kingston. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, could you give me the breakdown of those
2,000 Custom and Border Patrol officers by location.
Secretary Johnson. We are in the process of doing that
right now, sir.
Mr. Kingston. All right. Not to be unfriendly here, but how
could you ask for 2,000 if you don't know where you are going
to put them?
Secretary Johnson. It is an overall assessment of what we
need.
Mr. Kingston. But where did that come from? Why 2,000? Why
not 1,753 or 2,162? How did you come up with 2,000?
Secretary Johnson. Well, first of all, I wasn't----
Mr. Kingston. You inherited it. I understand.
Secretary Johnson. I am responsible for it, obviously. My
sense is that we are able to make an overall estimate based on
where we know we have a need nationwide to get to that number.
PRECLEARANCE OFFICES
Mr. Kingston. Okay. So it would be domestic then. You are
saying nationwide. So they would be not overseas in
preclearance offices, is that correct?
Secretary Johnson. By and large, but some are and should
be, in my judgment, devoted to preclearance overseas. I think
that is very important.
Mr. Kingston. How big do you think that number is?
Secretary Johnson. Offhand, I don't know. We just opened a
preclearance capability, as I am sure you know, in Abu Dhabi,
and I think we need to continue to work in that direction.
Mr. Kingston. So how many preclearance offices would we
have in the Middle East?
Secretary Johnson. We would like to have more. It depends
upon an assessment of the security at each airport. And this is
not something that will occur overnight, but I believe it is
the general direction we should work in.
Mr. Kingston. Where are the non-Middle East preclearance
offices?
Secretary Johnson. You mean airports?
Mr. Kingston. Yes.
Secretary Johnson. Doha comes to mind, for example.
Mr. Kingston. No, non-Middle East.
Secretary Johnson. Oh, non-Middle East. In Europe.
Mr. Kingston. Are we not worried about placing so many in
the Middle East?
Secretary Johnson. The level of security at last-points-of-
departure airports tends to vary. Some are better than others.
So I think we need to focus our preclearance resources in the
airports that need a little more help and where the host
government is willing to support us. So, for example, what we
hope to have is a situation where the host nation, the host
government will support our efforts and help pay for it. But it
depends on the ability to work out an arrangement with the host
government.
AVIATION FEES
Mr. Kingston. And you proposed a fee for this, correct, to
pay for this?
Secretary Johnson. We propose that CBP, our customs efforts
be funded in part--well, this is largely TSA [Transportation
Security Administration]--through the increases. That is
correct.
Mr. Kingston. And the fees would go on an airline ticket,
or where do the fees go?
Secretary Johnson. Well, if you are talking about TSA,
there is a fee that we propose that would be paid by the
airline, and then there is the 9/11 security fee, and I think I
am getting the terminology a little bit wrong, that is paid by
the passenger who flies and who passes through TSA.
Mr. Kingston. I think if I could get from you the breakdown
of the 2,000, where they would go, and why, and the breakdown
of the amount of money generated by the fees, and if that fee
covers it, or if you are talking about fees partially covering
it, and then how much money is already generated through other
fees. I think that would be of interest. And I would also like
to know what kind of congestion decrease there would be because
of this.
Secretary Johnson. Well, the allocation of the additional
officers, my understanding, is still a work in progress, but we
are almost done. The fees that I referred to a moment ago would
go to helping to support TSA, not CBP. So the aviation
infrastructure fee and the security fee would help to sustain
TSA. Preclearance is a CBP function.
Mr. Kingston. Okay. Well, thank you, Mr. Secretary, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Cuellar. Mr. Chairman, could I, just to make sure I
understand the final question? When you said Border Patrol, you
mean CBP, the men and women in blue. The men and women in green
is Border Patrol. The men and women in blue is CBP officers. I
just want to make sure.
Mr. Kingston. I am talking about CBP.
Mr. Cuellar. Okay, the men and women in blue, okay.
Mr. Carter. Mr. Kingston, just for clarification, the Abu
Dhabi preclearance facility is the only one anywhere in the
Middle East. In Europe it is Dublin, Ireland--no, Shannon,
Ireland. Shannon in Ireland, and then Canada, and some of the
islands. But there are no others over on the European side
except Shannon, is that correct? And the fee that they are
talking about, the immigration user fee, on the Abu Dhabi
issue, that is a fee that has been in effect since 1980. Now
they are asking for an increase in that fee.
Mr. Kingston. That is what I mean, the increase in fee.
Mr. Carter. That has been a longtime established fee, just
to clarify it.
Mr. Kingston. Yes, sir, I know about the fee, but as I
understand there is an additional fee that is being proposed.
Mr. Carter. They are asking for an increase in that fee.
Mr. Kingston. And do we know what that additional fee is?
Secretary Johnson. It is to finance TSA.
Mr. Kingston. But do we know what the fee is and how much
it generates?
Secretary Johnson. Well, the aviation security fee----
Mr. Carter. Yeah, we know what they are, and we do know the
increases. We have already explained to them we are not real
excited about fees. These are not authorized. One of them is an
authorized fee, immigration, but they all require
authorization.
Secretary Johnson. Correct.
Mr. Kingston. Thank you.
LATE REPORTS
Mr. Carter. You know, I talked earlier about the reports
that we are supposed to get. There is about 20 of them. One of
them, Mr. Secretary, is for the Coast Guard Capital Investment
Plan or the Department's comprehensive acquisition status
report. We don't have that. I am not trying to gotcha, but I
would like to know when you are going to get that to us,
because I have got a hearing tomorrow.
Secretary Johnson. I have directed my staff to give you
what we owe you and not delay. I think Congress should have
what you need to help me.
Mr. Carter. I ask that question strictly to make the
point----
Secretary Johnson. Yes.
Mr. Carter [continuing]. That it is helpful to have that
kind of information as we go into a hearing. It saves time.
Secretary Johnson. Understood.
Mr. Carter. It makes for more accurate questions.
Secretary Johnson. Understood.
BUDGET PROCESS REFORM
Mr. Carter. Going on to something else which you and I
talked about when we first met. Mr. Secretary, we all note with
interest the section of your testimony stating the need to
reform the Department, namely, budget reform.
Secretary Johnson. Uh-huh.
Mr. Carter. First, I would like your opinion why you
believe DHS' budget process needs reforming. Explain more in
detail where you intend to start. I think that is very
important. I, too, have an interest, as does Mr. Price, in this
subject. We think we can always do better. And so I look
forward to working with you on this. So I would love to have
your information, and what your vision is, maybe for the
benefit of the rest of the committee.
Secretary Johnson. My impression is that the DHS budget
process is too stovepiped. It is developed at the component
level. We get the components' budget request and we react to
that at the DHS level. We give it to OMB, and OMB gives it to
you. And there are certain respects in which DOD cannot be a
model for DHS.
But I think we ought to start with defining what our
overall mission is with regard to counterterrorism, border
security, aviation security, maritime security. Define your
mission at the DHS level, early in the process. And once you
have defined the mission, you figure out the resources you need
to fulfill a mission, and then you expect the components to
meet those resource needs, paying attention to potential
overlaps, gaps, inefficiencies.
So I know from personal experience if you plan at the
Department of Defense to have the capability to fight two major
conflicts at once around the world, that is done at the Joint
Staff level. You don't ask the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine
Corps to develop their own sense of what they need themselves,
and then you react to that. So I think that we need to have a
more centralized, mission-focused budget process that starts
earlier in the budget cycle, that originates at the DHS level,
and we are building that process now.
And I want to work with the committee and get your advice
on this as well, Mr. Chairman, because I do think that we can
identify better efficiencies and inefficiencies if we do this.
Mr. Carter. Well, I look forward to working with you on
that because I have a real interest in that. You know, to be
trite, we are the Congress and we are here to help. But
seriously, we do want to work with you on it. We need to know
what your needs are to help do this. And I think there is an
interest among all of the members of this Committee, we have an
interest in this.
I will yield back my time.
Mr. Price.
IMMIGRATION: REFORM
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, as I said when we started, you have a tough
job, and I would say that one of the toughest challenges is
immigration enforcement. And it is tough because there is a
significant amount of disagreement on this issue among the
American people, and it is really one of the few issues where
the members of this subcommittee don't regularly see eye to
eye. I mean, we do have differences on this. And if you think
it is bad on the subcommittee, wait until we get to the House
floor. That is where we really see some of the differences
emerge.
So this discussion here today, we have focused on the
detention bed mandate. I think that a mandate of this sort is
very unwise. I have made this very clear. It conceivably forces
ICE to detain individuals, at a significant cost to the
taxpayer, who don't otherwise meet the criteria for detention.
And then there is the question about the enforcement of
immigration law, deportation. How do you prioritize, as any
prosecutorial office would have to do, how do you prioritize
your cases, your most dangerous individuals to focus on, and
make the best use of limited resources?
I would like to just invite you to reflect on this. How
much, if at all, these dilemmas might be made more tractable,
more resolvable if we had better data, more comprehensive
information. We are working, as you know, at the staff level on
this right now to get more detailed data on exactly how
detention is working and how deportation is working, how we are
enforcing immigration law. I don't think the best data in the
world will bring us perfect consensus.
On the other hand, we do find ourselves wondering. The
example that Ms. Roybal-Allard brought up, how typical is that?
I mean, is that really what we are dealing with in substantial
numbers in terms of these specific decisions that are made on
detention?
I certainly wonder about deportation. We all hear about the
anecdotes, about people who should have been deported who
weren't, and even more, those who probably shouldn't have been
prioritized who were, families that were broken up
unnecessarily, the situation with these. I mean, some people go
so far as to suggest, I don't think anybody on this
subcommittee, but some of our colleagues go so far as to
suggest there is really no difference, shouldn't be any
difference between a DREAM Act student and a hardened criminal;
that if you give priority to the latter, then that really is
declaring amnesty. I mean, that is absurd, obviously. But there
still are important differences.
And here, too, we are not exactly certain what we are
dealing with. The Department has data that suggests there has
been an increasingly sharp focus on dangerous people for
deportation, but we all know that that case is something less
than airtight, and the reality is somewhat messy, and probably
we would be better served by more precise data and more precise
information about exactly what we are dealing with.
I guess I am just asking you to reflect on that. How much
would better data help you? I certainly think it would help us.
And we might see disagreement narrowed if we knew exactly what
we were dealing with here. So I do want to ask for your help in
getting better information on this area, and particularly in
this area of prosecutorial discretion, or the analogy to
prosecutorial discretion in terms of the enforcement, the
deportation decisions you are making, the decision about whom
to go after, what you think improved data is going to show us
in terms of how far you have come and how far you still need to
go.
Secretary Johnson. Mr. Price, I agree that informed
judgment is always better than uninformed judgment. I would
rather arm you with information so that we can have an informed
discussion about the correct approach to immigration reform. As
the immigration reform debate advances, I have had a number of
Members of Congress, House and Senate, express similar
sentiment to me, and I am committed to giving you the
information you need. I had this discussion of a similar nature
as recently as earlier today with some Members of the Senate.
So if there is a specific request that this committee has
with regard to data, with removals, priorities, I am happy to
consider it, and I have pledged numbers of times to be
transparent with the Congress on issues of this nature.
Sometimes we have certain law enforcement sensitivity, so I
might ask you to accept the information with certain
protections and the like. But in general I agree with the need
to provide the Congress with information of this type so that
we can all make informed judgments.
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carter. Mr. Culberson.
DETENTION BEDS, REMOVALS
Mr. Culberson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
To follow up on the subject we have all been keenly
interested in, of course, is the number of detention beds and
the folks that you have here in the country that are not
legally present. In 2013, Mr. Secretary, ICE deported 368,644
convicted criminals and noncriminal immigration violators, all
of whom met the definition of mandatory detentions. You have
got a tremendous number of people here in the country who
were--I was just looking for that number--folks who have, for
example, that have been accorded due process, people who had
entered the country illegally. They exhausted their appeal,
they received a final order of removal, but they remain in the
country in defiance of that order. At the end of July 2013,
there were 872,000 individuals on ICE's docket in that
category. They have gone through the whole process and they
have been ordered removed, and the vast majority of those have
just simply disappeared.
So in light of that, what are the assumptions that you are
making that would justify the agency recommending that you only
need 30,539 detention beds since you obviously have plenty of
customers?
Secretary Johnson. A couple of comments. Obviously, not
everyone among the 368,000 who were removed in fiscal year 2013
had been held in detention for the entire time they were in the
United States. A large part of that population was at liberty
for some period of time, and then they were subject to our
process and they were removed.
The other point I would make is that a very large fraction,
I don't know the number offhand, but a very large fraction of
that 368,000 are basically border removals where they are
apprehended in or around the border.
Mr. Culberson. And the Border Patrol just takes care of it.
Secretary Johnson. And they are given over to ICE, because
either they can't be sent right back to Mexico or some other
reason, so a lot of these are border removals where they are in
the country for a very short period of time.
We are criticized by some for the very high number of
removals that are taking place right now. And so the end result
of a process where somebody is detained who is not lawfully in
this country who meets our priorities is a removal. And as you
know, we managed to remove 368,000 people last year, and my
understanding is that 98 percent of those fit within our
removal priorities. So that is pretty effective.
Mr. Culberson. But under the Obama administration more than
half of those removals that were attributed to ICE were
actually a result of Border Patrol arrests. They wouldn't have
been counted in prior administrations.
Secretary Johnson. Right.
Mr. Culberson. So you really can't actually use that number
in terms of when you say ICE has removed that number of people.
Half of those, of course, were Border Patrol removals and they
were never counted before. In fact, I think there is even a
quote I saw from President Obama in 2011 that these statistics
on removal are, in fact, I am quoting directly from his
statement, ``These statistics are a little deceptive because
what we have been doing is, with the stronger border
enforcement, we have been apprehending folks at the border and
just sending them back.'' That is counted as a deportation,
even though they may have only been held for a day or 48 hours,
sent back. That is counted as a deportation.
That has never been done before in previous
administrations. I have been on this subcommittee since shortly
after it was created, and I know that the Bush administration
never counted folks that were removed by the Border Patrol as
being deported by ICE. And you have vast numbers of criminal
aliens as well.
So again, I just want to be sure for the record, if I
could, and I appreciate the time, Mr. Chairman, would you
please tell the committee what are the assumptions that DHS
made that you believe justify reducing the number of detention
beds from 34,000 to 30,539.
Secretary Johnson. Two things. First, it is my
understanding that 368,000 is the number removed by ICE. Now,
it is the case that for various reasons, including reasons
involving logistics, a larger number of people who were
apprehended in or around the border then go to ICE custody. But
the number 368,000 reflects those removed by ICE.
The number 30,006 is our best judgment about where
detention bed levels should be given who we believe needs to be
detained in this process. That is our best assessment based on
what our removal priorities should be, based on what we believe
are national security, public safety threats. The number tends
to hover around that number. I think it is a little higher
right now as we speak, but it goes up and down. But that is our
best assessment of who should be detained at any given moment
in time.
Mr. Culberson. You will provide that to the subcommittee
and to the chairman and the staff, those assumptions, those
numbers, to justify your request?
Secretary Johnson. I believe we can do that.
[The information follows:]
Rep. Culberson: What were your assumptions to arrive at the 30,539
detention bed funding level?
Response: ICE began with the assumption that the use of costly
detention beds should be based on operational need rather than an
annual statutory mandate to detain a minimum number of individuals on
average, regardless of need. ICE's operational need is generally based
on two factors: 1) the number of individuals requiring detention
pursuant to mandatory detention provisions (mandatory detainees), and
2) the number of non-mandatory indivuduals who may present a risk to
public safety if not detained. The detention of individuals that would
otherwise not be detained (and who can be placed on alternatives to
detention programs), except to meet the minimum statutory bed
requirement, results in higher average daily costs to the government.
Based on these assumptions, ICE reviewed the historical average
number of aliens apprehended who were either mandatory detainees or
non-mandatory individuals that presented a risk to public safety.
Funding for an average of 30,539 detenition beds would meet ICE's
operational needs, allowing ICE to maintain beds for mandatory and
higher risk aliens, and providing flexibility to detain a level of non-
mandatory individuals that may present a risk to public safety.
Mr. Culberson. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carter. Ms. Roybal-Allard.
BORDER SECURITY
Ms. Roybal-Allard. Mr. Secretary, one of the reasons that
we are given for not passing a comprehensive immigration reform
is that the majority believes that President Obama can't be
trusted to enforce our laws. Yet, in the little over 4 years
President Obama has been in office projections are that around
early April deportations will have reached 2 million. And that
is more deportations than during the entire 8 years of the Bush
administration, and actually that 2 million deportation number
exceeds the sum total of all deportations prior to 1997.
Another excuse for delaying the passage of comprehensive
immigration reform is that our borders must first be secured.
And the fact is that under President Obama's leadership, and,
frankly, the thoughtful work of this subcommittee, remarkable
progress has, in fact, been made in securing our borders. We
now have more than 21,000 Border Patrol agents, 651,000 miles
of fencing, more than 300 remote video surveillance symptoms,
and at least six drones deployed along our southwest border.
In addition, due in part to these investments, the number
of illegal entries into our country is at a 40-year low. And
according to a 2012 report by the Pew Research Center, net
migration from Mexico has fallen to zero.
I have a three-part question. First of all, what does this
record number of deportations tell you about the President's
commitment to obey our laws? And what is your assessment of our
border security? And based on that assessment, do you believe
that we need to spend tens of billions of dollars more on
border security before we can begin fixing our broken
immigration system?
Secretary Johnson. First of all, I agree with everything
you said in the first part of your question. We are enforcing
the law. We are enforcing the law vigorously and effectively,
which results in the removal of more than 300,000 people per
year over the last several years. We are using the resources
Congress gave us to remove those we believe are threats to
national security, public safety, and border security, and they
result in the numbers that you see.
At the same time, you are correct, the apprehension levels
at the border have been going down recently. They have begun to
spike up again slightly for various reasons. I suspect maybe
because the economy in this country is getting a little better,
they are beginning to spike up again.
All of this to say that we are enforcing the law at
unprecedented levels with the resources Congress has given us.
And I believe that when it comes to border security, you have
to be agile, it is an evolving task, in that border threats,
challenges to border security, tend to migrate different
places. If you focus resources one place, you have to be agile
and be able to move your surveillance resources, your manpower,
to another part of the border, the southwest border in
particular.
And so we have got to be vigilant. We have to be
continually vigilant. I don't believe that we should have a
standard of border perfection before every other aspect of
comprehensive immigration reform kicks in because I believe as
a matter of Homeland Security those who are here in this
country undocumented should be encouraged to come out of the
shadows, be accountable, pay taxes, and get on an earned path
to citizenship, which as contemplated by the Senate legislation
would take 13 years. So it is not going to happen tomorrow.
But I believe that we should do that, we should continue to
work on border security, which we are doing at unprecedented
levels right now, as a part of an overall comprehensive
package, and proceed on all of those fronts at the same time.
So I agree with you.
Mr. Carter. Mr. Frelinghuysen.
DISASTER RELIEF FUND
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, in the past, I asked of your predecessor
about the Disaster Relief Fund over the long term. And let me
give a shout-out to Craig Fugate, a really good guy,
nonpolitical person, who has done a really good job working
with FEMA.
The Disaster Relief Fund, pretty important to those of us
in the Northeast and wherever there has been a major disaster.
Your fiscal year 2015 budget includes $7.8 billion in the FEMA
Disaster Relief Fund, including $2.9 billion for the cost of
disasters that have already occurred, such as Hurricane Sandy.
Based on the Disaster Relief Fund Annual Report, which I
have a copy of here, which was submitted Friday, this is what
the Department needs to respond to disasters during the fiscal
year 2014 budget based on current spend plans and what we call,
as you are aware, the 10-year averages.
Your monthly report, which I have, states that you will
carry over $4.6 billion into fiscal year 2014. Is the
requirement of $7 billion for fiscal year 2015, or is it
significantly higher? In other words, there are two reports,
both submitted by your department, which seem to be somewhat in
conflict. Can you provide a little bit of clarity?
Secretary Johnson. Congressman, I would have to study the
reports specifically that you are referring to to answer that
question.
My general understanding is that the request we made with
regard to the Disaster Relief Fund, which is multiyear money,
is sufficient to meet what we believe will be the disaster
relief challenges. But I will take a look at those two reports
to see whether there are any inconsistencies in that regard.
[The information follows:]
Rep. Frelinghuysen: Please review submitted reports (referenced by
Rep. Frelinghuysen) on DRF funding levels and see if there are any
inconsistencies.
Response: The President's FY 2015 DRF request is consistent with
the Budget Control Act requirements and available data. No known
inconsistencies exist between reports that the Department has provided.
While FEMA is currently reflecting a projected end of FY 2014 DRF
balance, this balance is not carried into the FY 2015 budget request,
based on previous, expected Hurricane Sandy projects costs related to
the original Sandy supplemental funding. Thus, this carryover is
expected to be used beyond the amount included in the FY15 Budget for
the DRF ($7.033B).
In the FY 2015 budget request, we included $3.912B for non-
catastrophic disasters (based on 10 year average), $2.871B for expected
costs for previous catastrophic events; $1B for a disaster reserve, and
a $596M appropriation request for the Base (in addition to recoveries).
For the base request, we used the 10-year average for Surge,
Emergencies, and Fire Management Assistance Grants, and our estimate of
Disaster Reserve Spending (DRS) requirements.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. During a debate on the floor on
Hurricane Sandy, and it was my amendment, I took quite a lot of
flak. One of the issues was--and this is understandable--FEMA
is still working on programs and rebuilding from storms that
occurred before Sandy.
In the event of another disaster, considering Sandy and
others that we are still cleaning up from, how would you
prioritize spending between, sort of, immediate needs, Sandy
projects that are under way, and past projects? Because there
was quite a lot of angst and anger that we in the Northeast
were getting this and other parts of the country weren't
getting, shall we say, the remainder of what they needed to do
their cleanups.
How do you view that situation?
Secretary Johnson. I think you have to--it obviously
depends on the circumstances. Living in an area affected by
Hurricane Sandy myself, and in a neighborhood--and there was a
lot of damage done to my own yard--I know that there is a lot
of angst about how slow that money has been in coming. A lot of
that depends beyond a certain point on what the States are
doing with the money, not the Federal Government. And how fast
we are able to push out money like that, you know, it obviously
depends on the circumstances.
Could we do a better job? I suspect the answer is yes.
There is always room for improvement. How you prioritize old
needs versus new needs, I think, depends on the circumstance.
And that is one of the reasons why it is multiyear money.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. But do you still have carryover money
which needs to be----
Secretary Johnson. Yes.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Yeah, put to use. And that is something
which you are committed to expediting its use to meet the needs
of the people?
Secretary Johnson. Yes, that is correct.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carter. Mr. Cuellar.
Mr. Cuellar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Secretary, again, I know you are new. And I have a lot of
high hopes for you; you are smart. And we really appreciate
looking--working with you.
A couple points----
Secretary Johnson. At some point, that excuse won't work
for me any longer.
Mr. Cuellar. At least for this appropriation hearing, it is
going to work for you.
But let me just say this----
Secretary Johnson. I hope the newness hasn't reflected too
much.
CBP OFFICERS, PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS
Mr. Cuellar. First of all, on the CBP officers, the men and
women in blue, you know, for us on the border, we appreciate
all the work that the men and women in green do, but, you know,
having ports of entry, as you know, those men and women in blue
are very important.
And keep in mind, Members, that over 80 percent of all the
goods and people that come into the U.S. come through land
ports. And sometimes we don't tend to put that much attention.
But in Laredo, my hometown, we handle 45 percent of all the
trade between the U.S. and Mexico. That is over 12,000 trailers
a day. So we appreciate the men and women in blue.
Number two--and even though we have them there at the
bridges, we appreciate that professionalism campaign. I think
they were supposed to start that in Laredo and extend it out.
As you know, if there is a bad apple comes in, you all do what
you need to do. But the majority of those people coming over
are coming over to spend money in the U.S.
And I would ask you to--and I have been working with your
office and Thomas Winkowski, a good person. But we have to make
sure that they know if they are here to spend money, they are
here, we have to treat them with a little dignity and respect,
instead of thinking that everybody is a bad apple on that. And
I would ask you to just check up on that.
I would ask you to check up on something that the chairman
and I and the committee worked on, and Senator Mary Landrieu on
the Senate side, is the public-private partnerships on the
infrastructure. I know there are five pilot programs for the
service over time, but I am also asking you to look at the
infrastructure. Because the Federal Government is not putting
the money in. I think we need probably about $5 billion on
infrastructure. I think that is one of the studies. We probably
need 5,000 CBP officers. You know, we start off with 2,000;
that is a pretty good start. But I would ask you to look at the
public-private partnership, because we want to see men and
women in blue, and also the infrastructure.
The last point I would ask you to look at: Canada and the
United States. I know we worked with Candice Miller on this.
You know, on the northern border, the U.S. and Canadians work
together, they do joint operations, and they do a lot of stuff
together. And I am going to be sitting down with the chairman
and the ranking member, Mr. Price here, and the committee to
see if we can look at something similar with Mexico. I know
that you are all doing a lot, and I am very familiar. But I
would ask you to do that, to look at some of the joint
operations. And I am familiar, they are doing some. But I would
ask you to look at that, whether it comes to trade, tourism,
even on the infrastructure, what they do, SENTRI lanes, fast
lanes, what we do over here.
And we have to make sure that we sit down with them on the
other side. The head of customs, the Mexican customs, Alejandro
Chacon, was here last week, and I am sure he met with you all.
And, again, we need to do more coordination.
So what we are doing with the Canadians I think would help
us expedite trade, tourism, but at the same time secure the
southern border also. And I know we have been working with the
chairman and the ranking member, and we appreciate your
support.
Secretary Johnson. Thank you.
Mr. Cuellar. Thank you.
Mr. Carter. Mr. Kingston.
STATE DEPARTMENT DIPLOMATIC SECURITY TRAINING
Mr. Kingston. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, the State Department requested from GSA a
Foreign Affairs Security Training Center at the Army's Fort
Pickett in Blackstone, Virginia. And, as I understand it, the
authorizing committee were the ones who at first waved the flag
on this. But the cost, the original cost, was $935 million.
However, if they used the existing Federal Law Enforcement
Training Center facilities, it would have been $272 million,
you know, over a $600 million savings or difference. And then
the scope of the operation was reduced, but it still is almost
half to do it at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center
that is in existence, up and running and fully capable of doing
this, than it is to create the new facility and training center
at Fort Pickett.
OMB, as you know, is looking at this right now. Do you know
what their timeline is? And do you have any comments on the
difference?
Secretary Johnson. I don't know their timeline.
This exact issue is something that I have talked to the
director of FLETC about. The numbers you have cited are the
numbers I understand to be the case, that we could support the
State Department Diplomatic Security training mission at FLETC
for about--by an expenditure of about $275 million, which is a
lot less than a billion.
Mr. Kingston. Yes.
Secretary Johnson. And, frankly, that is--the purpose of
FLETC is to be a training center for law enforcement protection
services across the Federal Government. So this is, in my
judgment, a perfect example of why you have a training center
like FLETC.
Additionally, if we bring a Diplomatic Security training
capability to FLETC, that will work to the benefit of other
Federal law enforcement agencies and departments.
Mr. Kingston. Uh-huh.
Secretary Johnson. I fully support having the State
Department bring that mission to that center.
Mr. Kingston. Do you know when OMB is going to make their
final decision?
Secretary Johnson. I don't know offhand, but I can find
out.
[The information follows:]
Rep. Kingston: What is OMB's timeline for a final decision on FLETC
conducting the State Department's Diplomatic Security Training?
Response: OMB has been working with the Department of State to
ensure that State's diplomatic security training requirements are met
and to determine the best path forward to expand that training
capacity, including assessing whether training capacity exists at other
federal facilities. We expect a final decision on plans to expand
training later in the spring.
BIGGERT-WATERS
Mr. Kingston. Okay.
Also, I wanted to submit--and I know we are all coming up
on votes, Mr. Chairman--I wanted to submit a few questions on
Biggert-Waters for the record. And some of it is past-tense now
because we have another bill that has taken its place. But
there was a requirement for FEMA to do a feasibility study on
it before they implemented Biggert-Waters, and for some reason
they bypassed that study. And I am not really clear as to why
they would have.
And I don't expect you to know offhand, so I would like to
submit that to you for the record, Mr. Chairman, and a couple
of other little follow-ups.
Secretary Johnson. Just my understanding is that the money
appropriated to do the study was not sufficient, which is why
we couldn't do it.
Mr. Kingston. Okay. Well, I may want to flesh that out a
little bit, but I appreciate your sensitivity of that, because
you know what it did to the coastal areas.
Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.
MORALE, FILLING VACANCIES
Mr. Carter. Mr. Secretary, we are going to conclude this
hearing today. Before we do, I am going to point something out
to you. There are several suggestions about morale, and you and
I had a conversation--you and I and Mr. Price had a
conversation about the vacancies. I want to commend you for the
vacancies--in that you have built a fire under the White House
to get these done. I hope you will keep that fire burning. I
think the leadership of having permanent people in positions--
and I think you agree on this--is very, very important to the
morale of the people.
I commend you also for being a man who says, ``I take
responsibility.'' That is rare before this Committee, in many
instances, and I appreciate that. And that is the kind where we
are going to call on these new people that get these
appointments to be responsible for the leadership position that
they have been awarded. So thank you for that, and I hope you
are going to stick with that because we need it.
Secretary Johnson. Yes, sir.
Mr. Carter. Thank you for this hearing and for being here.
Your candor was much appreciated. And we look forward to
working with you in the future.
Secretary Johnson. Thank you, sir. Thank you.
Mr. Carter. Unless there is anybody who has any other
business, we will adjourn.
Secretary Johnson. Thank you.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Wednesday, March 12, 2014.
UNITED STATES COAST GUARD
WITNESS
ADMIRAL ROBERT J. PAPP, JR., COMMANDANT, UNITED STATES COAST GUARD
Opening Statement: Mr. Carter
Mr. Carter. All right. This subcommittee will come to
order. Today we will have a conversation with the Coast Guard.
Admiral, thanks for testifying before us today. As you
prepare to retire from the United States Coast Guard this May,
no one can doubt your dedication to the service, nor that
Active Duty military civilians that you command honor and
respect you. Thank you for your service, and thank you for
being with us with what could be your last time to appear
before this committee.
Admiral Papp. Yes, sir.
Mr. Carter. We have personally enjoyed very much working
with you. And we wish you, as they say, fair winds and
following seas.
Admiral Papp. Yes, sir.
Mr. Carter. So that your retirement may be a joy to you.
But before we wish you these greetings, it is time for us
to talk about this budget request.
The budget request for this fiscal year is a proposal that,
one, cuts almost 750 Active Duty full-time positions;
decommissions 2 high-endurance cutters, 8 patrol boats and
numerous air assets; reduces operational flight hours and
cutter hours; and squanders $30 million in savings per year by
dragging out the acquisition of the Fast Response Cutters.
Instead of supporting frontline operations or maintaining and
supporting mission requirements, this budget submission
severely diminishes current and near-term as well as future
capabilities.
Admiral, this budget is one that we cannot accept. We fully
understand the challenge you face in balancing a shrinking
budget while also trying to take care of Coast Guard families,
sustaining operations with aging assets, and recapitalizing for
the future. This is no small task in today's fiscal
environment, but the Congress and this Subcommittee in
particular has never supported a plan that so bluntly guts
operational capabilities and that so clearly increases our
Nation's vulnerability to maritime risk, including more illegal
drugs.
Admiral, we know you have a tough job. That is precisely
why we are relying on you to explain how this budget meets our
Nation's needs for both fiscal discipline and robust security,
and, perhaps more importantly, how it doesn't.
Before I turn to the Admiral for his statement, let me
recognize my distinguished Ranking Member for any remarks that
he may have. Mr. Price.
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Opening Statement: Mr. Price
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral, let me add my word of welcome. We are glad to have
you before the subcommittee today to discuss the Coast Guard
budget request for fiscal 2015. And we know this may well be
your last appearance, at least in this format, before this
subcommittee, so I want to add my thanks for your service. You
have rendered first-rate service, and you have certainly been a
pleasure to work with as we have gone through numerous funding
and policy issues over these recent years, so your service is
exemplary to the Coast Guard, to our Department of Homeland
Security and to the Nation.
Your budget request is for $8.1 billion in discretionary
funding. That is a cut of $364 million, as you know, or 4.5
percent from your current year appropriation. The proposed
funding level does improve on last year's request, but it is
still far below what is needed, and I suspect you may feel the
same way.
In addition, we have still not received the 5-year Capital
Investment Plan, which is supposed to be submitted along with
the budget request. This late submission of the CIP has become
a perennial problem, and it appears to reflect a continuing
mismatch of expectations between the Coast Guard and the
administration regarding the Coast Guard's future.
Admiral, I suspect you have done your due diligence on the
CIP, but to those who are here representing the White House and
OMB, we cannot continue this game of underresourced budget
requests that requires to divert funding from other parts of
the bill to make the Coast Guard acquisition budget reasonable.
And I say that as someone who is sympathetic with the
administration's larger dilemma in terms of the occasions
that--the things we have been through in budgeting in recent
years with sequestration, with shutdowns, with these
unreasonable appropriations cuts again and again. This has left
the administration with a lot fewer options than it should
have. At the same time, for the Coast Guard to bear the brunt
of this, or to bear such a disproportionate share of this, I
think, can't go on. We have really got to do better, and so our
subcommittee is going to be tasked with doing better both on
the acquisitions side and on the personnel side.
The acquisition budgets are long-term propositions; they
require long-term budgeting. We can't have a reasonable
discussion this morning about recapitalizing the Coast Guard
fleet without the CIP. There is no excuse for withholding, the
administration withholding, the 5-year budget for Coast Guard
acquisition until after the Coast Guard hearing.
Now, we have withheld $75 million from the Coast Guard
Headquarters budget until the CIP is submitted, but that is
apparently not applying leverage in the right place. The
underlying problem is that the Coast Guard's mission needs as
they are currently defined are not supported by the acquisition
budgets the Coast Guard is allowed to put forward. Either the
budget requests need to increase, or the missions needs to be
rescoped. We need to resolve that disconnect sooner rather than
later.
The fiscal 2015 request for acquisition, construction and
improvements is $291.4 million, or 21 percent below the fiscal
2014 level. Compared to fiscal 2010, the proposed fiscal 2015
funding level would represent a nearly 30 percent reduction in
ACI funding.
Admiral, you said before that in order to properly
recapitalize the Coast Guard fleet, you would require at least
$1.5 billion a year, yet here we sit again with a request that
obviously does not address the known needs of the Coast Guard.
In addition to recycling a flawed acquisitions budget, this
budget request repeats another proposal from last year to
significantly reduce the Coast Guard workforce. Under the
fiscal 2015 budget request, you would be down to 49,093
positions by the end of the fiscal year. That is a reduction of
nearly 1,200 positions below fiscal 2013, more than 800
positions below the current year. Perhaps the proposed
attrition is justified by the more efficient use of personnel
and assets, but we want to know that. We want to know how these
personnel losses would affect your operational capacity.
Admiral, we know the Coast Guard is committed to doing its
part to find savings in these lean budget times. We also know
you are committed to ensuring that the Coast Guard is able to
do more with less. But the Coast Guard has a critical set of
missions that require a certain level of resources. We need to
know if fiscal pressures have up-ended the balance between
them.
As you can see, we have a number of topics that need to be
explored in depth this morning. I look forward to our
discussion.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carter. Thank you, David.
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Mr. Carter. And, Admiral, we have your written statement,
and we are going to have that entered into the record, and we
ask you in the next 5 minutes to give us a summation of your
position on this budget.
Opening Statement: Admiral Papp
Admiral Papp. All right. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I
do have just a few comments and thoughts to expand upon some of
the details in the written statement. And first of all, let me
thank you for the very kind remarks, and to Mr. Price as well
for your kind remarks, and outlining all the challenges that we
face. And to the other distinguished members of the
subcommittee, thank you for having me up here this morning.
It has been an honor for me and a privilege to represent
the men and women of the Coast Guard for the last 4 years, and
in particular before this subcommittee, because you have done
something that is near and dear to my heart. You have provided
support for my Coast Guard people, and I will be eternally
indebted to all of you for the hard work that you have done
behind the scenes to make sure that our Coast Guard people are
taken care of.
I want to thank you also for the support that you provided
in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014. That act helped
to relieve the erosive effects that we were suffering under
sequestration. It restores frontline operations, it gives us
badly needed training hours, and it eases some of the personnel
management restrictions that we had to place on our people over
the last year.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank
Secretary Johnson publicly. Even in the short time he has been
our Secretary, he has gone in feet first, hit the deck running,
and I think, as you probably saw yesterday, he has fought for
the Coast Guard to make sure that our people get the right
tools and that we continue with our recapitalization, and that
battle will continue. And it has to, because America is a
maritime Nation. We rely on the safe and secure and free flow
of goods across the seas and into our ports and waterways. And
I have always firmly believed that a measure of a nation's
greatness is its ability to provide safe and secure approaches
to its ports. And we need this system of uninterrupted trade,
because it is the lifeblood of our economy.
And you can see it in the great work that our Coast Guard
is doing today on the Great Lakes, where our cutters have been
working in some of the heaviest ice in 30 years on the lakes.
The icebreaker Mackinaw recently completed almost 2 straight
months of continuous icebreaking in the passages of the Great
Lakes, providing escorts and direct assistance to commercial
traffic, and validating a decision made by Congress 15 years
ago to build that icebreaker.
You can also see it in the work that we do to secure our
maritime borders. During 2013, the Coast Guard interdicted over
2,000 migrants attempting to illegally enter our country, and
we deterred countless others. Our new Fast Response Cutters,
the FRCs, which you had so generously supported, are becoming
the workhorses of our interdiction operations in the approaches
to Florida and Puerto Rico, and they continue to be delivered
on time and on budget.
Every day our Coast Guard acts to both prevent and respond
to an array of threats that, if left unchecked, would impede
trade, weaken our economy, and create instability. And these
threats disrupt regional and global security, the economies of
our partner nations, and access to both resources and
international trade. All these are vital elements of our
national prosperity and in turn, then, our national security.
In previous testimony I used the term ``layered security''
to describe the way the Coast Guard and DHS counters maritime
threats facing the United States. This layered security first
begins in foreign ports and then spans the high seas, because
the best place to counter a threat is before it reaches our
borders. It then encompasses our exclusive economic zone, the
largest exclusive economic zone at 4.5 million square miles,
and it continues into our territorial seas, our ports and our
inland waters.
Our Nation faces a range of risks and vulnerabilities that
continue to grow and evolve. We continue to see persistent
efforts by terrorists and transnational criminal networks to
exploit the maritime environment. The global economy is
spurring investment in even larger vessels to ship goods across
the seas, and the Arctic is seeing exponential increases in
traffic and human activity.
The work to address these challenges is done by a committed
Coast Guard, which faces these risks every day. Earlier this
year I was reminded once again of the dangerous work that my
people do as Deputy Secretary Mayorkas and I attended a
memorial service for Boatswain's Mate Third Class Travis
Obendorf of the cutter Waesche. Petty Officer Obendorf was
mortally wounded during a rescue operation in the Bering Sea,
and his death, as if I didn't need it, provided a fresh
reminder that downstream of every decision we make down here in
Washington, there are young men and women out there serving,
who are often cold, wet and tired, who take the risks to make
sure our country is secure.
It is the Coast Guard's responsibility to detect and
interdict contraband and illegal drug traffic, enforce U.S.
immigration laws, protect valuable national resources, and
counter threats to U.S. maritime and economic security
worldwide, and it is often the most effective to do this as far
as from our shores as possible. So a capable offshore fleet of
cutters is critical to the layered security approach, and it is
the area that gives me the most concern.
Our fleet of major cutters has reached obsolescence and is
becoming increasingly expensive to maintain. The average
Reliance-class medium endurance cutter is 46 years old, and the
oldest of them turns 50 this year. In fact, I sailed onboard
one of these cutters, the Valiant, then home-ported out of
Galveston, Texas, as a cadet at the Coast Guard Academy. By the
time I received my commission, the ship was nearly a decade
old, and due solely to the determination of our cuttermen,
naval engineers, and a modernized mission support system,
Valiant will still be sailing when I leave the service after
nearly 40 years of service.
So as good as our people and support systems are, this is
no longer supportable. And I am fully aware of the fiscal
constraints we face as a Nation, but we must continue to
support recapitalization of our offshore fleet of cutters.
Two weeks ago we awarded the preliminary contract design
contracts for our offshore patrol cutter, and I am committed to
working with the Department, the administration and you in the
Congress to ensure we continue to provide safe and secure
approaches to our ports in an affordable and sustainable
manner.
Over the past 10 years, we have rebuilt our acquisition
force. It has become a model for other similar-sized agencies
across government. In fact, it has been an award-winning
acquisition for us, winning four of five awards from the
Department of Homeland Security. This last year we are the only
military, the first military service, to achieve a clean
financial audit, which required at least a decade of hard work
from my people.
So we now sit at a critical point where we have the vital
necessity to recapitalize the fleet, we have our financial act
in order, and we have reformed all our acquisition procedures
to be the best in government. All we need now to continue on is
stable and predictable funding. Any acquisition expert will
tell you you have to have this stable and predictable funding.
So as the Nation's maritime governance force, the Coast
Guard possesses unique authorities, capabilities and
partnerships, coupled with capable cutters, aircraft and boats
operated by highly proficient and dedicated personnel. We
maximize those authorities and capabilities to execute a
layered security throughout the entire maritime domain. We are
a ready force on continuous watch with the proven ability to
surge assets and our people to crisis events wherever they
occur.
So I want to thank you once again for this opportunity to
testify today, and I look forward to all your questions.
Mr. Carter. Thank you, Admiral.
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Mr. Carter. I am going to start off with the first
question, and it shows how great minds work alike. David's
comments in his opening statement basically consumed the vast
majority of the first question I was going to ask you about.
This issue of the CIP is very important to us, and we have
raised this issue with the Coast Guard. When the full committee
chairman was the chairman of this committee, Mr. Rogers went to
war with the Coast Guard over this issue. We don't want to go
to war with the Coast Guard over this issue, but we need to
know why the Coast Guard has failed again to comply with the
law and give us the CIP as is written in the law. Have you got
any explanation for why? And then following on that, I want to
know when we are going to have it.
Admiral Papp. Sir, it is my fault, and you rightly hold us
accountable for that. And if there is any delay, it is because
I have been obstinate in making sure that the administration
knows the needs of the United States Coast Guard. It is not my
job at first to fit the Coast Guard within a budget; it is my
job to look at what we need now and what we are going to need
10, 20, and 30 and 40 years from now. There is only one person
who has that responsibility, and that is me.
So there is, I would say, a robust discussion that goes
forth, first of all with the Department, and the Department has
been very supportive, and then we work with the Office of
Management and Budget, and at some point we come to an
agreement. But what I would say is we have been fighting for
everything that we need to try and get it in that 5-year plan,
and there are disagreements. That is, I think, the most polite
way I can put it. And at the end of the day, we will finally
get to a point where we come to agreement, I am told this is
what you are going to get, you have to fit your acquisition
plan within it, and I think we are at that stage now.
The Secretary has committed to making sure we get reports
on time. We have forwarded it to the Department, it has been
forwarded on to OMB, and we will work as hard as we can to make
sure you get it as soon as possible.
Mr. Carter. Well, we need a date. Can you give me a date?
Admiral Papp. I cannot give you a date, no, sir. But we
will find out.
Mr. Carter. Try within the next couple of days to come back
to me with a date.
Admiral Papp. Aye, sir.
Mr. Carter. Notify somebody and give me a date so we can
have that. And if we have to go talk to others who are throwing
up roadblocks, I think it is time for us to start considering
that. Cutting your budget is a way we could do things, but we
may be able to influence the budgets of others if they are not
willing to comply, because, quite honestly, we are trying to
run a very professional subcommittee here where we have all the
information available as we start to consider each budget, and
we are having very poor success with all the departments, not
just the Coast Guard, in meeting this obligation.
This is not a policy I established. This policy has been
established for quite some time in this committee. When David
was chairing this subcommittee, he was fighting this battle,
and it is getting a little tiresome to start off every year
with anybody that we meet asking the same question: Where is
it?
This is the policy. I am not just picking on you. This is a
speech for every department head that fails in this mission.
This is one of the missions we expect in order for us to be
good appropriators. And I thank my colleague Mr. Price for
raising this issue. And I want within the next couple days,
let's say--what is today, Wednesday? The 12th? By the 14th.
Admiral Papp. Aye, aye, sir.
Mr. Carter. 15th at the latest. Okay? That way we have
something to shoot towards. Then I want to know if there is
something that has come up because this is something that we
are trying to impress upon everybody. Everybody in the room
that is involved in this, this is important to this
subcommittee. It has been since I have been on it, and I have
been on it a pretty good while. That is the first thing I
wanted to talk about.
Let's start talking about our gaps that may be in this
bill. I don't have to tell you that the Coast Guard's efforts
to interdict drugs being smuggled from the source in transit
zones are vital to our security, however, this fiscal year 2015
budget will actually diminish your current drug interdiction
capabilities by cutting operational flying and patrol boat
hours on our new assets, decreasing personnel, and
decommissioning aircraft and cutters.
Admiral, can you discuss how these cuts will reduce our
current drug interdiction capabilities and how the Coast Guard
will mitigate the impacts of the cuts?
Admiral Papp. Well, yes, sir. You can see an example of it
what happened this past year in fiscal year 2013. With the
effects of sequestration, we placed a 25 percent operation
reduction across the service. We kept up our search and rescue
activities and our port security activities, but the bulk of it
had to come out of the accounts that are the most expensive,
fueling the ships and putting them out to sea, so that the bulk
of the reduction was in the transit zone, drug interdiction
operations and the migrant operations.
And you can see when you look at the metrics, we did
approximately 30 percent worse in terms of cocaine
interdictions this past year because of the effects of cutbacks
of sequestration, we did about 30 percent worse in marijuana
interdiction, and our interdictions of migrants, even though
the flow was up, we had fewer interdictions this year. So there
is a direct correlation between the reductions in operations
and more drugs and more migrants getting through.
We will see an improvement in that, because we won't have
sequestration, so we are able to restore most of our flight
hours and our ship and boat hours, but still there is
approximately a 3 to 5 percent reduction across all program
areas this year because of what we call efficiencies across our
operating accounts.
Mr. Carter. Well, I am sure that you know this because you
have experienced it, but as we have these ongoing national
discussions on our southern border, as an example, but on all
of our land borders, as in the State of California, we secured
the border with double fencing, speed corridors and all the
things we have requested in the San Diego sector. We secured it
down to the waterline, and now they are in the water. These are
determined people that are determined to smuggle drugs and
people into the United States, and now they are out in their--I
forget the name of those boats. What do they call them?
Admiral Papp. Pangas.
Mr. Carter. Yeah, pangas. They are out in their pangas, and
they are running up and down the coastline and going way out
and coming in in the State of California, because they refuse
to be denied this market of people and drugs. And I don't know
if the American people realize that the enemy in the drug wars
never stops. They will find alternate sources, when we plug one
hole, they find another one. And we can't lose our sea
operations.
And, yesterday Chairman Rogers pointed out to Secretary
Johnson that we have a 5-year low in cocaine interdiction last
year.
Admiral Papp. Yes, sir. That is true.
Mr. Carter. And that is what you just were talking about.
You know, and we are a frontline-troops-oriented subcommittee.
Mr. Price just made that statement. We want operations to work.
And I agree wholeheartedly, and so does everyone on both sides
of the aisle in this subcommittee. We are about making the
Coast Guard have the capability of doing its job, and we will--
but we struggle with that, and that is one of the reasons we
need this long-term look at the Coast Guard every time we have
this hearing. And part of doing the work of making that report
is to have others start to look into the future, as I know you
do as part of your job, Admiral.
Admiral Papp. Yes, sir.
Mr. Carter. All right. I will yield back and yield to Mr.
Price.
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral, I appreciate your account just now given in
response to the chairman about the reductions in operations
that you were forced to absorb as a result of sequestration,
and of course you gave this by way of reference to some of the
constraints, reductions that are contained in your present
budget. All this is part of a bigger picture, and as you say,
this budget this year is an improvement on sequestration, but
you didn't say, I will say, it is not enough of an improvement.
We are still constrained in ways that are really going to make
it very hard for the Coast Guard to do its job.
Now, as I said, in my opening statement, all of this traces
back to this dysfunctional approach to budgeting that has
become the norm in the House especially, going to
appropriations again and again and again while we leave the
main drivers of the deficit, namely tax expenditures and
entitlement spending, leave those things largely unaddressed.
And although we are happy to have a bipartisan agreement that
for at least 18 months gets us back to something like the
regular order of appropriating, you are locking in levels here
that still are inadequate, and that are very, very
disproportionate in terms of the comprehensive approach to
budgeting that we should be taking in this country.
Now, having said that, the question remains, what is the
Coast Guard's relative position within this larger budget
picture? And while the larger budget picture gives us some
understanding of the constraints and difficulties the
administration is facing, it by no means absolves the
administration of the kind of responsibility we have talked
about here this morning for getting this long-term plan in
place and also sending a budget up here that is commensurate
with your responsibilities and your needs. And so let me just
ask you to focus in a little further on the personnel side of
this.
The budget request proposes 49,000 positions by the end of
the fiscal year. That is a net reduction of nearly 1,200. It is
800 below the current year; 1,200 below 2013, 800 below the
current year. Now, most of those are military positions, as I
understand. There is some mitigation with nearly 500 new
positions, but you can tell us how all that nets out. The
budget justifications identifies 451 of the lost positions.
More than a third is associated with efficiencies. I wonder if
you could tell us what that means. They are spread among the
vessel-boarding and search teams, fixed-wing aircraft, H-2
navigation, and the decommissioning of certain assets.
What do those efficiencies look like? What will that mean
in terms of your ability to carry out key missions, key
activities; what are we going to be doing less of, in other
words? What about those other lost positions? Some of this is
attributable to the more efficient crewing of newer assets, for
example. So let me stop there and ask you to elaborate on these
personnel numbers.
Admiral Papp. Yes, sir. You used a great term when you had
your opening statement. You suggested that perhaps missions
will need to be rescoped. And what I would suggest is we are
rescoping missions all the time. Many times when I have come up
before this committee, we talk about a patrol boat gap. Well,
we have a gap because what we do is across all our mission
areas for all our assets, we do something which--I got this
theme from Vince Lombardi. Vince Lombardi when he talked to his
teams said, we will pursue perfection knowing full well we will
not catch it, but in the process we will catch excellence.
So what we do is we go across all our mission sets, look at
our assets, and we determine how many hours we need for
aircraft, boats and ships; but at the end of the day, we can
only provide so much, so that creates a gap across all
missions. And throughout the year the operational commanders
take those scarce resources; they may have to switch them
between missions. For instance, you can take the same ships and
use them for drug interdiction, the ones that we are using for
migrant interdiction, but you are always going to have a gap
out there, because we set our goals based upon an unconstrained
environment, and then we have to deal with the realities.
The realities are as we have progressively--I think our
high-water mark was fiscal year 2012. As we have been squeezing
down over the last three budget cycles, we take what we call
efficiencies. What it means is we have fewer people out there
to do the jobs, and we either have to cut back jobs, or we make
the remaining people work harder.
In the case of the vessel-boarding search-and-seizure
teams, the VBSS teams that are distributed, those are something
that we created because of needs after 9/11 to go out and
inspect vessels at sea before they come into our ports. We can
train them to become highly proficient, because that is what
they do.
As we squeeze down and we lose budget authority, we look
for places where perhaps other people can do that job. So we
will take some of our conventional organic forces from our
stations, and we will put together teams that will go out and
do that, but it means taking them off other duties or perhaps a
team that is not quite as qualified and not quite as
proficient. We might be able to take our deployable specialized
forces teams, which are used for security in the ports, and put
together teams and send them out.
It is just going to make it a little more difficult for us
to provide the service that we think--and we fall further below
those program goals that we set for ourselves. It is the same
with our ships and our aircraft as well. As the budget squeezes
down, as we decommission units, it means that across our
mission set, we fall a little further behind. Where Lombardi
talked about perfection and achieving excellence, we shoot for
perfection, but we might be just achieving very good instead of
excellent across those mission sets.
So that is what this gradual squeeze-down is doing to us.
It doesn't become readily apparent early, but we will have
lagging indicators of squeezing down, because in the future,
and one of the things I am very concerned about is my highest
priority has been a focus on proficiency and making sure our
people are prepared to do their jobs in dangerous conditions.
We lost a number of people before I came in as Commandant, and
my goal was to turn that around. We have done that, but now we
are going back in the other direction where we perhaps won't be
able to focus on that proficiency.
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carter. Mr. Fleischmann.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral, it is a great privilege and honor to have you
before us today. As you and I spoke earlier, Chattanooga has a
great history of celebrating our Armed Forces Day and Armed
Forces parade, many years going on unbroken. And last year I
had the privilege to be there when we honored your great
branch, the United States Coast Guard, and it was just an
outstanding day, sir. So I thank you for your service, and
thank you for the Coast Guard and for your great presence in
our district, particularly in the inland waterways, which are
so important. So I thank you for that, sir.
I have some questions. My understanding is that the High
Endurance Cutter fleet is over 25 years old, sir, and it is in
dire need of replacement. I understand the President's budget
includes funding for the eighth and final National Security
Cutter. Is that correct, sir? And what is the status of the
cutters that are under contract, and when will they deliver,
sir?
Admiral Papp. Just a slight technical correction. They are
not 25 years old. The High Endurance Cutters are 45 or older.
They are approaching 50 years of age. And just as a means of
comparison, the Navy generally decommissions ships after about
25 years. They figure 25-year service life. We tend to get
double that out of our Coast Guard cutters, not because we want
to, but because we have to.
And you are correct. This budget would provide the
construction for the final National Security Cutter, the
eighth. Those eight ships replace 12 that we have had in
service since the late 1960s, early 1970s. And the budget also
calls for decommissioning two of those older ships this year.
The eight cutters, we are just about to take delivery on
the fourth, and that will be commissioned in December. The
fifth is going to be christened this summer and then will be
brought into commission in fiscal year 2015. And then six and
seven, they are all construction activities going on. I don't
have the exact date, but we can provide that for the record for
six, seven and eight.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, sir.
[The information follows:]
General Question Asked: Provide the status of the Coast Guard's
National Security Cutters currently under contract, as well as their
projected delivery dates.
Coast Guard/Admiral Papp response: The U.S. Coast Guard's National
Security Cutters (NSCs) 4, 5, and 6 are currently under construction.
NSC 4 is scheduled for delivery in the fourth quarter of FY 2014. NSC 5
is scheduled for delivery in the third quarter of FY 2015 and NSC 6 is
scheduled for delivery in FY 2017. The U.S. Coast Guard awarded the
production contract for NSC 7 on March 31, 2014.
Mr. Fleischmann. I understand that NSCs number one and
number two are operational on the west coast. What do the
capabilities of these cutters bring to the Coast Guard, and how
do you see these being used in the future?
Admiral Papp. Actually, one, two and three are fully
operational, Bertholf, Waesche and Stratton. They are our high-
end cutter. They are the ones that are capable of operating in
the Bering Sea, in the far reaches of the Pacific.
A lot of our people from our country don't realize that
that 4.5 million-square-mile exclusive economic zone surrounds
the Hawaiian Islands, it surrounds our trust territories
throughout the Pacific. We have the United States' sovereign
responsibilities throughout the entire Pacific. We need ships
that have long range, good seakeeping capabilities, can launch
and recover helicopters and boats, and provide safety and
comfort for the crews that operate them. And they have to range
from the South Pacific all the way up to the Arctic Ocean,
which is another topic which we could expand upon.
Our mission space is not getting smaller, it is getting
bigger. As the arctic ice recedes, we have to be up there every
summer now because of the increase in human activity. National
Security Cutters are the ones that will carry out that mission
in those most harshest of environments. And they are also
equipped and prepared to be interoperable with the United
States Navy. They serve as an auxiliary force that can
complement the Navy. The Navy provides weapons and sensors
through their budget process, and we maintain them onboard.
Mr. Fleischmann. Chairman, do I have time for another
question, sir?
Mr. Carter. No. Time is out.
Mr. Fleischmann. I yield back. Thank you, Admiral.
Mr. Carter. Ms. Roybal-Allard.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. Commander Papp, I want to join my
colleagues in thanking you for your outstanding service to our
country.
Admiral Papp. Thank you.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. And I would like to commend you for your
groundbreaking efforts to combat sexual assault in the Coast
Guard. Under your leadership, the Coast Guard created the
Special Victims Counsel and Advocacy Office staffed with
trained attorneys dedicated to supporting and representing
victims of this horrific crime throughout the entire process of
holding the perpetrator accountable. In fact, it is my
understanding that the Department of Defense is following the
Coast Guard's lead and establishing similar victim advocacy
programs across the military services.
Can you please elaborate on the impact that this program
has had on the Coast Guard and its shipmates, and what is being
done to institutionalize these efforts as a top priority so
that the Coast Guard will continue to be a safe and supportive
workplace for women not only now, but in the future?
Admiral Papp. Yes, ma'am. This has been probably my highest
priority, particularly over the last 2 years, but I was
actually starting to see indications of it 4 years ago when I
became Commandant. Whether it is discrimination, sexual
assault, hazing or other activities, I have had emphasis on
making sure we take care of our shipmates.
We put together a special group of flag officers, admirals,
to lead this. We came up with a Sexual Assault Prevention
Response Strategic Plan, and we created actually a military
campaign office with a captain in charge that is overseeing the
implementation of all the things in our strategic plan.
More importantly, however, I believe I have spoken to
almost the entire Coast Guard face to face, almost 35-, 40,000
people, during all-hands meetings over the last 18 months or
so. My sole theme has been talking about sexual response,
making sure that we take a preventative approach to it rather
than having to react to it. But we are also setting up to react
to it with our victims' advocates, with our special victim
counsels, and we are devoting not just people, but money to
make sure that we take care of our folks.
I think anecdotally I am seeing improvement and trust in
the system, starting with myself. I have been contacted by a
captain, a woman captain, who was assaulted 26 years ago and
finally felt that she could come forward. She came to me and
trusted me with her story. I brought her in and talked to her,
and then we had it investigated. Even though it was 26 years
old, it was investigated fully by Coast Guard Investigative
Service, and we came to a satisfactory resolution with her. And
I have had a seaman apprentice stand up in an all-hands meeting
and say that she was a victim of sexual assault, and we took
care of that. And there are other stories I can tell you, but I
am also now getting stories from people in the field who tell
me about how well the Coast Guard treated them when something
was revealed.
So even though we are seeing some numbers of reports go up,
I feel that is because they are trusting the system now, they
are coming forward, and it allows us to take the action, and we
are vigorously prosecuting those that perpetrate this and
making sure that they don't remain in our Coast Guard.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. Well, thank you for that. And also I
think it is important in terms of even trying to recruit the
young people to go not only to the Coast Guard, but into the
other services, because one of the concerns that is often
raised by my constituents is they have concerns about their
daughters going into the service because of this, and I think
this will be very, very helpful in being able to tell them that
something is being done about this.
Admiral Papp. Absolutely, yes, ma'am.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. I would like to talk just a little bit
about an issue that seems to be a problem. And I don't know if
you are familiar with the report that was published last month
by the Vietnam Veterans of America that alleges that the Coast
Guard routinely violates its own procedures and regulations
when discharging guardsmen with certain mental health
disorders. And the report states that in 90 percent of the
cases reviewed, this was over a 12-year period, the Coast Guard
did not provide guardsmen with documentation advising them as
to why they were being discharged or their rights and remedies,
including their right to consult a military attorney and submit
a written statement. And I am wondering if you are looking into
this, what changes you are considering making so that--you
know, to address these issues?
Admiral Papp. Yes, ma'am. That was equally troubling to me
to hear something like that, because we should be taking care
of our veterans and assisting them in any way possible,
obviously.
We are looking into it. I have not got any results from the
inquiries we have been making. It has been very difficult to
track down information, but we are on it. And I can't give you
any means that we are using to correct the situation right now,
because we have not determined the extent and the depth of the
problem.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. Okay. Thank you.
Is my time up, Mr. Chair. My time is up?
Mr. Carter. You have about 30 seconds.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. A few seconds. Okay. I will wait until
the next round then. Thank you.
Mr. Carter. Mr. Frelinghuysen.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral, thank you for nearly 40 years of dedicated public
service. And let me also salute your close working relationship
with our other services, joint operations. I think sometimes
people don't recognize that the Coast Guard has been doing some
remarkable things around the world side by side with our other
sailors and soldiers and marines. So I just want to acknowledge
on behalf of our defense appropriations committee, even though
you are not under our jurisdiction, now that Judge Carter is a
member of our committee, I can say on all of our behalf, we are
so proud of the work that often goes unrecognized that Coast
Guard men and women do on behalf of our country. You have an
international presence, and you are working with other navies
and doing things that sometimes don't get the public eye, but
on all of our behalf, thank you.
Admiral Papp. Yes, sir.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. We are back to regular order. Goodness
knows that the numbers are pretty low, but at least give us, as
I am sure you did, some credit for getting back on track, and
hopefully there will be some stability and predictability.
I would like to follow up on Mr. Fleischmann's area that he
initially started on on these Fast Response Cutters. I just
want to get a little more meat on the bones. Your budget
request funds only two; is that right?
Admiral Papp. Yes, sir.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. That is a decrease of four from last
year; is that right?
Admiral Papp. Yes, sir.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. And seven have been commissioned. Are
nine in production in Louisiana?
Admiral Papp. Actually we just commissioned the eighth.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Yeah.
Admiral Papp. We will take delivery of the ninth here very
shortly. There are 18 or 22 under production, but we have
received funding. Through the 2014 budget we have received
funding for a total of 30 so far, so that is over half the
production run.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. So your goal is still to add 58 of those
vessels to your fleet?
Admiral Papp. Yes, sir, that is our ultimate goal.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. And by dropping from six to two cutters,
how much will the budget request add to the per cost vessel?
Admiral Papp. That is a little difficult to determine right
now. Actually the contract, the initial contract, has run out,
and we have been working on a new request for proposal. We
always planned to recompete this after the first 30 boats. We
just bought the rights, and we are in the process of rewriting
a request for proposal. It has actually taken us a little bit
longer than I had anticipated, because what we are trying to do
is do a real good scrub on it to see if there are potential
other savings we can get on the final run of the ships. And
then why the two? The two is because that is all I could fit
within the----
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Budget.
Admiral Papp [continuing]. The ultimate----
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Number.
Admiral Papp [continuing]. Top line that I got. That is all
we could fit in and keep all our other construction projects.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. So the timeline is----
Admiral Papp. It will be pushed to the right.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Pushed to the right. And will you be
able to sustain the current fleet while awaiting for the final
ability to reach 58?
Admiral Papp. Well, we could sustain the current fleet of
Island class patrol boats, but this budget calls for
decommissioning eight of those. I feel like that is the right
way to go, because we do have eight of the new ships in. They
provide us with more operational hours than the older boats
that they are replacing. It is time now as we try to fit into
that top line, it is time to start decommissioning the older
patrol boats, which allows us to get a little bit more
headspace under the top line that we are given.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. And lastly, all of us across all of our
services were concerned about the industrial base, the
shipbuilding base. As you exit the stage, and we thank you for,
you know, many years of dedication, do you have any comments on
shipbuilding, industrial base and--maybe this is a softball--
the need to make sure that we sustain it?
Admiral Papp. Yeah. I may be a little biased, but as I
said, this country depends, our economy, our prosperity depends
upon free and safe and secure access to our ports. That is
nothing new. Hamilton wrote about it back at the beginning of
our country. We are a maritime Nation; we are going to depend
upon maritime trade. Ninety percent of the goods that come in
and out of this country come in ships. You want to have the
ability to protect those waterways and also prevent against
threats. You can't do that by sitting on a beach. You have got
to have ships that can go out there to sea and----
Mr. Frelinghuysen. And we need an industrial base, too.
Admiral Papp. Absolutely.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. To put a point on the----
Admiral Papp. When you go down to places like Huntington
Ingalls or Bollinger where we are constructing our ships, and I
have visited many of the other shipyards around the country,
these are dedicated, highly skilled craftsmen. The more that
they can be put to work, it has got to be good for our economy.
They have tremendous skills, and we will lose that over time as
we build fewer and fewer ships in this country. And the end
result is the ships that we do build are more expensive,
because you have less competition, you have got a higher
overhead at the yards because they are building fewer ships. I
am deathly afraid that the Navy is going to build fewer ships,
because then the yards----
Mr. Frelinghuysen. So are we.
Admiral Papp. And the yards charge their overhead against
my ships and make my ships more expensive, so----
Mr. Frelinghuysen. We need more ships rather than less.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Admiral.
Mr. Carter. Mr. Owens.
Mr. Owens. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Admiral.
I come from the northern part of our country, and I am
curious as to what impact the current budget will have, if any,
on your operations along the entire northern border stretching
from Maine to Washington.
Admiral Papp. Well, from Maine to Washington, the major
part that I am concerned about from a Coast Guard point of view
is, of course, the St. Lawrence Seaway coming in from the gulf
and in through the Great lakes, and then--most people don't
realize, but then the boundary waters of northern Minnesota,
which we have responsibilities for as well.
The operational efficiencies that we gain by reducing
things 3 to 5 percent means there will be boats out there fewer
hours patrolling the border. There will be fewer people out
there. We know there is an awful lot of smuggling and other
things that go across that international border out there, and
we will just have fewer Coast Guard people out there trying to
interdict it.
Mr. Owens. As you evaluate and analyze the threats, if you
will, whether they be smuggling or terrorist activity that
originates in the cells that exist in Canada, how much does
your reduced operations increase the likelihood that a threat
will become an activity or an action in the United States?
Admiral Papp. My concern is not having the operating forces
out there to be able to interdict it when we know there is a
threat. And sometimes you just interdict a threat or you
disrupt a threat because you are out there and you have
presence.
I served in that district. I was the District Commander for
our Ninth Coast Guard District that goes from New York all the
way out to Minnesota. The Coast Guard is actually a great tool
for our country in terms of maintaining relationships with
Canada. For the Coast Guard we deal not only with the Canadian
Coast Guard, but the Canadian Navy, the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police, Transport Canada. We deal with about 9 nine or 10
agencies up there that are all associated with border security.
We have great relationships, working relationships, with them.
We share information. We put people in the command centers on
the Canadian side, their Maritime Command Center for the
Atlantic and also one in Niagara.
So I think a lot of it is taken care of by making sure that
we are communicating with our Canadian partners as well, but
when there is a threat, or there are things that we don't know
about, you always have to have presence out there. And that is
part of what people need to understand is that we need to have
a sovereign presence out on the water on a regular basis to
enforce the laws and to also deter other people from trying to
act. And if we have fewer hours, we are just not going to be
out there as much.
Mr. Owens. Thank you very much.
Mr. Carter. Mr. Culberson.
Mr. Culberson. Admiral, I, too, want to thank you on behalf
of the people of Texas and the country for your service to the
Nation. It is a real privilege to have you, sir, here with us
today. The committee supports what the Coast Guard does,
supports you with everything we can to enhance what you can
present to the committee in the budget that the President and
the White House has put forward, but we are here to help you,
sir. We admire what you do, and we want to do all we can to
support you.
I think it is very important what you just said a moment
ago quoting Alexander Hamilton for the committee as we move
forward, as Judge Carter--how many years were you on the bench
there in Williamson County?
Mr. Carter. Twenty-one.
Mr. Culberson. Twenty-one years. Judge Carter was one of
our great district judges in Texas, enforcing the law, keeping
the streets of Williamson County safe, and that is really our
responsibility on this committee is to ensure that the laws are
enforced and the country is safe.
And I particularly enjoyed your quote of Alexander Hamilton
that the economy of a maritime nation depends on safe and
secure access to our ports, and that means enforcing the law
and ensuring that free trade can take place, that people can
move freely back and forth. And that is true not only of our
maritime ports, but also of our inland ports.
Our friend Henry Cuellar, who is not here today, represents
the city of Laredo, and that is the largest inland port in the
United States. There are more goods that travel through Laredo
than any other inland port. So a fundamental part of our
responsibility on this committee is to ensure that the law as
it is written is enforced for the safety and security of the
Nation and those communities that live and work along the
border, and to, therefore, ensure the free flow of goods. As
you just said, as it is true for the maritime ports, it is true
for the inland ports as well. I really appreciate that.
And I wanted to ask, if I could, sir, about the new program
you are putting forward on these Offshore Patrol Cutters. I
wanted to ask you, if you could, to walk the committee through
how the Coast Guard would move forward with the acquisition,
construction of these tremendously expensive--this hugely
expensive new shipbuilding program with the limited requests
that you have in this year's budget. Talk us through what your
strategy is for acquisition of the Offshore Patrol Cutters, if
you would, please, sir.
Admiral Papp. Yes, sir. Well, we are trying to run the
Offshore Patrol Cutter as wisely as possible. As I indicated
earlier, we have gone through about a decade of acquisition
reform, and I will stack my acquisition people up against
anybody in Washington, D.C. We have true professionals, and
that expertise is now matched with a need. We have nearly 50-
year old ships that need to be replaced.
We have gone through a process now that has brought us to
the point where we have great competition. We had a number of
shipyards. We just down-selected to three to do the preliminary
and contract design of three candidate ships. I have had a
chance to look at all three ships. All three of them are great
ships, but the thing that I have been stressing is
affordability, because we are hopeful that we will be able to
build these ships two a year at a certain point after we get
through the initial construction, and we are hopeful that for
about the price of one National Security Cutter, you can build
two of these ships. That is what we have been shooting for.
Mr. Culberson. Do you believe the budget recommendation you
have made to the committee will enable you to build two of
these Offshore Patrol Cutters a year?
Admiral Papp. Well, that is what we have been struggling
with; as we deal with the 5-year plan, the Capital Investment
Plan is showing how we are able to do that. And it will be a
challenge, particularly if it sticks at around $1 billion.
As I have said publicly, and actually I have stated
publicly before that we could probably construct comfortably at
about $1.5 billion a year, but if we were to take care of all
the Coast Guard's projects that are out there, including shore
infrastructure--that fleet that takes care of the inland waters
is approaching 50 years of age as well, but I have no
replacement plan in sight for them, because we simply can't
afford it. Plus we need at some point to build a polar
icebreaker. Darn tough to do all that stuff when you are
pushing down closer to $1 billion instead of $2 billion. As I
said, we could fit most of that in at about the $1.5 billion
level, but the projections don't call for that. So we are
scrubbing the numbers as best we can----
Mr. Culberson. Yes, sir.
Admiral Papp [continuing]. Just to make sure we have got
good competition so we can get the best price on the ship.
Mr. Culberson. Based on the budget recommendation you have
submitted to the committee, when would you expect to have,
under the numbers you project in the President's budget, the
first Offshore Patrol Cutter in the water?
Admiral Papp. Fiscal year 2021 would have that first ship
delivered as we project ahead, getting through--we have got
about a year and a half now to go through the preliminary
contract design, which then takes us up to about fiscal year
2017 before we award the contract to the company that is going
to get the construction. We build the first one, which will
take about--by the time they get the yard set up and they get
the first one in the water and we commission it, it is going to
be about fiscal year 2021.
Mr. Culberson. Well, you know the committee strongly
supports what you do, and we are going to do everything we can
to help you in your mission. We understand the importance of
the need for the replacement cutters.
And one other quick question, if I could, Mr. Chairman,
about the icebreaker. During the Bush administration, they
attempted to shift that responsibility onto the National
Science Foundation, and it is not really something they are
equipped to do and didn't have the money for. And I think Frank
LoBiondo added language to an authorization bill that restored
that responsibility to the Coast Guard. And the Coast Guard has
responsibility for opening up channels in the ice for both
Antarctica and in the Arctic?
Admiral Papp. Yes, sir. That was one of our goals as I
started as Commandant to get--it is actually the operations
funding was transferred to NSF. We----
Mr. Culberson. You got it back, though.
Admiral Papp. We kept the icebreakers, and we depended upon
them to feed us the money to operate them. And they chose to
contract foreign icebreakers, which then we atrophied and had
to lay up our icebreaker fleet. We have got Healy, which is our
medium icebreaker. Healy's a little over a dozen years old and
is in good shape. We restored Polar Star. Polar Star is on its
way back to Seattle now.
Mr. Culberson. How old are those ships?
Admiral Papp. Polar Star is 35 years old. We have just
restored her to active service, and she broke out McMurdo and
is on her way across the Pacific now going back to Seattle.
Mr. Culberson. But the NSF is contracting that service out?
Admiral Papp. No, sir. We have the operating funds.
Mr. Culberson. You do it now for the NSF?
Admiral Papp. They are our customer now.
Mr. Culberson. Okay. Good. That is the way it ought to be.
You all ought to have the responsibility, and we will do
everything we can to support you. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Carter. Well, let's continue on the polar icebreaker--
--
Admiral Papp. Sure.
Mr. Carter [continuing]. Just for a minute. When I was in
Alaska, I had some conversations when I was up at the Kodiak
about the law of the seas and the claiming that the Russians
are very active, as I understand, in the Arctic Ocean, and we
are limited in our activity because of our icebreaker weakness,
and that under the law of the seas, we could actually lose a
claim to what would now be considered American waters if we
don't show a presence, a continuing presence, over a period of
time. And the icebreaker is a key to being able to show our
presence, and the Coast Guard is basically our presence in the
Arctic Ocean.
Now, what does that mean, and who cares? Well, those of us
who are in the petroleum-producing business should care a lot,
because there are projections now worldwide that there is a
large deposit of petroleum sitting under the North Pole. And as
the ice recedes, and there are opportunities to go out and
explore in that area, a lot of people see that as a real plus.
And the Russians recognize it, and, of course, they are in the
petroleum business now, too. That is one of the reasons they
are showing such a presence in American waters. Is that
correct?
Admiral Papp. I have got no reports of them being in our
waters, what we consider to be our waters. And actually within
Alaska, we have got a great working relationship with the
Russians, one of the few good working relationships with the
Russians. We work with their border guards; we have frequent
meetings with them, bilateral meetings; and we have multi-
lateral meetings with them in the North Pacific and North
Atlantic Coast Guard Forum.
So we get along with them pretty well, and we have pretty
well-defined boundaries, at least where we both think they are.
There are some shared waters, though. The Bering Strait is of a
concern, because the amount of traffic going through the Bering
Strait has quadrupled now. And while a lot of people worry
about the potential for an oil spill due to drilling, I am more
concerned about an oil spill or a disaster because of a ship
losing power and running aground up there than I am anything
else. And there is a huge increase of traffic in a very barren
and not supported area right now.
We need the icebreakers, because I can send our
conventional Coast Guard cutters up there during the summertime
when there is plenty of open water and when there is all the
human activity, but there will be a time, date and time to be
determined, where we have to have assured access during winter
months, during ice months. We had a case like that 3 years ago
when the city of Nome got iced in early. In spite of global
warming, they got iced in early, and the oil tankers couldn't
get in, and they would have run out of fuel supplies if we had
not turned around our icebreaker and broke a path in there to
resupply Nome.
You can envision other reasons for having to get assured
access into the Arctic during the wintertime, during ice
conditions as well, and we need to have those icebreakers
available so that we can do that, or there will be sometime
when we won't be able to meet the country's needs.
Mr. Carter. I was at the White House Christmas party, the
year before last, and my daughter was accompanied by a Coastie
as her date, and he was in his uniform. And the Senator from
Alaska came all the way across the room to shake his hand and
thank him for breaking the ice for Nome. And she just was full
of praise for what the Coast Guard had done for the State of
Alaska. So I am well aware of its importance.
Admiral Papp. Yes, sir.
Mr. Carter. But ultimately we have got to be able to have
access up there. And I also heard stories that now cruise ships
are making the Northwest Passage, and that our Coast Guard is
the only potential rescue for a cruise ship that might get in
trouble trying to make that Northwest Passage. And it is a long
way away from the nearest----
Admiral Papp. Everything there.
Mr. Carter [continuing]. Anything when they get out there
up in the northern part of Canada.
Admiral Papp. Yes, sir.
Mr. Carter. So you have got a lot of heavy responsibilities
up there in the Arctic Circle. And I, for one, am a champion of
trying to get us another icebreaker, but they are really
expensive. But we have got to get to work on that, because we
have to realize that we are talking about a vast amount of
ocean that we are responsible for.
That brings me to another issue that has to do directly
with the aviation program. Admiral, this year's defense
authorization provides the transfer of 14 medium-range aircraft
to the Coast Guard, and the fiscal year 2014 Appropriations Act
funded an initial stand-up for this program within the Coast
Guard. What is the status of these transfers, and when will we
have the aircraft operational? How will this aircraft increase
our maritime capabilities?
Admiral Papp. Well, I first have to start off by thanking
the Congress and anyone who participated in the NDAA that
transferred those aircraft to us. This was a windfall for us. I
estimate we avoid about a half a billion dollars in future
costs that we would have to spend on medium-range fixed-wing
aircraft by obtaining these brand-new aircraft from the Air
Force. It is a good deal for us.
We will, in all likelihood, complete our purchase of the
HC-144 aircraft, fixed-wing, which will give us a total of 18.
We will take these 14. We now have 11 C-130Js that have been
appropriated that will come into the service. So we are doing
good in fixed-wing aircraft. Our challenge now is evaluating
how we lay these aircraft down in an optimal arrangement.
The C-27J gives us the added benefit as it uses the same
engines as the C-130J. The cockpit is basically the same. So we
gain some efficiencies in training and logistics by gaining
these new aircraft also.
We have set up a project office, an acquisition project
office, which we were given the money in the fiscal year 2014
budget, and there are some continuing funds in this budget. The
amount escapes me, but there are some continuing funds to work
bringing the aircraft in. We have had people out to look at the
aircraft. And we are also making preparations for transferring
some of our HC-130H models to the Air Force for renovation, and
they will go to the Forest Service.
Mr. Carter. Admiral, are you concerned about there is no
recapitalization plans for the H-65 and H-60 helicopter funding
for the sustainment of the current inventory? And how do you
plan to solve this problem?
Admiral Papp. Sir, I think we are in good shape in our
helicopter fleet. We have done continuous upgrades on those. We
have now converted the H60 to the H-60 Tango model. The reality
is with our facility we have in Elizabeth City, you could
bring--and we have, we have taken airframes from the Navy that
they have cast away, and we have turned them into new
helicopters. We can do that. And there is plenty of H-60s out
there, and we are going to continuously upgrade the avionics
and do improvements to the H-60s, and I am estimating we are
probably good for 15 years before we have to recapitalize that
fleet.
The H-65 we have done the same thing. We have continuously
upgraded them to the Delta model. Now we have the MH-65 Delta.
We have continually upgraded those. My only concern about the
H-65 is that we have lost three of them in crashes without
replacement. We can't get them anymore. We take that out of our
product line overhaul line to keep the frontline forces. So we
have got enough to get by with right now, and I think we have
got probably a good 10 to 15 years out of that aircraft as
well.
But at some point beyond the 5-year Capital Investment
Plan, if we start looking at perhaps a 20-year Capital
Investment Plan, we have to start figuring aircraft. The Air
Force has gone to a new combat search and rescue helicopter
that they are purchasing. Just like we did with the H-60, we
are probably well advised to follow one of our sister services
along so we get the economic order quantity for replacement
after they have gone through the testing and evaluation and
everything else.
Mr. Carter. Thank you.
Mr. Price.
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral, most of the questions today have focused on your
acquisition, construction and improvements budget, and
understandably so. This is a 1.1 billion budget item, and that
number is 21 percent below what has been provided in the
current fiscal year. So this budget is of great concern to us.
It is going to occupy this subcommittee extensively, I think,
over the weeks to come.
Fortunately, the budget does provide for the construction
of National Security Cutter number 8 to the tune of $638
million. Unfortunately, though, that represents 59 percent of
the ACI budget. And so these other assets that we have been
talking about today are possibly at risk, or at least the
schedule for delivering these assets could be at risk, and
therefore you have gotten lots of questions about that, about
the schedule for the Offshore Patrol Cutter, for example, the
schedule we are anticipating there; the implications of
constructing only two Fast Response Cutters; the timetable for
this Polar Ice Breaker, which, of course, is in this year's
budget--or in the proposed budget only to the tune of $8
million in planning and design funds. What are the implications
for all of these programs of this budget?
As you have just testified in response to the chairman, the
C-27 aircraft transfer appears to be a somewhat brighter spot.
Remind me, what was your estimate of the cost savings
associated with that?
Admiral Papp. We estimate about $500 million.
Mr. Price. All right. So that amounts to reduced pressure
on the ACI budget.
Admiral Papp. Yes, sir. We would have had to buy more of
the HC-144 aircraft in future years. That relieves us of having
to do that now.
Mr. Price. Well, as you described this, you seem to have
come out pretty well. The Coast Guard came out pretty well in
this deal.
Admiral Papp. In that particular deal, yes, sir.
Mr. Price. In this particular deal, which, you know, we
look for bright spots as well as problems in this budget
picture.
So let me shift. Having given the ACI budget a lot of
attention, let me ask you to talk about another item of great
concern: housing, the way you house your personnel.
We received last year the Coast Guard's national housing
assessment, and the assessment recommended a 4-year strategy to
right-size the Coast Guard's housing inventory and invest only
in needed housing. So we have had some follow-up on that.
According to the most recent information we have, you are still
in the process of developing a plan to address the
recommendation of the housing assessment. The first step is
going to be to reduce your inventory from 4,000 units to about
2,700 units, more fully utilizing local home rental, which is
what the assessment recommended.
When is this response plan going to be finalized? Will it
happen in time to affect our deliberations? And what about your
deliberations in terms of reducing the housing inventory in the
current year? When do you think the Coast Guard will reach a
new steady state for its housing inventory?
Let me ask you that first, and then I have a follow-up.
Admiral Papp. We are getting very close right now. We had
over 4,000 Coast Guard-owned homes. They all weren't filled,
and I toyed with the thought of making mandatory housing, but
then I had a chance to get out there and see some of the
housing, and I wouldn't put my Coast Guard families in them. So
we came up with this plan for an assessment.
First of all, look and see what the economy in the
localities demands. For instance, is there available housing
that we can pay people a housing allowance? Are there places
where we have too much inventory, and in trying to maintain it
all, we are losing money?
And we did a good assessment. I am very pleased with it. We
narrowed it down to about 2,700 homes that we need at various
locations. What that has allowed us to do--and we are in the
process now of divesting those. We have been through the final
reviews with all of our operational commanders to validate
this, and we are in the process of divesting the homes. In
fact, we just had a meeting about 2 weeks ago on the final
homes, making some decisions in certain locations, and what I
told them is if you get rid of the homes that we don't need in
our inventory, we can keep the same maintenance money and
spread it out across the ones that we need.
So we have actually gone from annually we invest $3,000 per
Coast Guard home; now we are able to devote $5,300 to each
Coast Guard home that we are going to retain, which gives us a
lot more opportunity to do improvements.
And while we don't have any money for new housing in our
AC&I funds this year, although the Congress has been very
generous the last 2 years, giving us 10 million 2 years ago and
18 million last year, we couldn't fit that in this year, but
what we do is we are devoting probably close to $50 million,
$40 million to improvements of the housing that we have,
renovating our homes in Puerto Rico and in other locations so
that when we do mandatory housing, they have good, decent
housing to move into.
So it is a multipronged attack: improving the Coast Guard-
owned housing that we have; finding other alternatives like
Department of Defense leased housing, public-private venture
housing, that we were able to take advantage of in numerous
locations; and then when we have it available within our AC&I
funds, building new homes at places where we can't find homes
in the community for our people.
Mr. Price. So although that is not in the budget for this
year, you are following through on this 5-year plan for
significant investments in new housing.
When do you reach steady state on that? What are we talking
about here likely in terms of a timeframe and the size of
investments that you are going to need?
Admiral Papp. Specific to housing, we are pretty much there
in terms of the owned housing that we have. We know the number
we are going to have, and we have projects in the works to
continue the renovations. And we continue to take that out of
our operating expenses, our maintenance money.
In terms of new homes, that is a constant process. We have
got a backlog. I will get you the exact backlog, but we have
probably, in terms of ready projects, we have got about $25
million of ready projects that could be executed where we have
identified needs for new Coast Guard housing.
Mr. Price. New housing. That is right.
All right. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carter. Mr. Fleischmann.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral, the 2004 Mission Needs Statement created specific
requirements for patrol boats, major cutters, and fixed-wings
operational hours. However, that was over a decade ago, sir,
and subsequent budgets have never supported these requirements.
Admiral, at what point does the decade-old mission
statement need to become irrelevant since the budgets over the
last few years do not support the requirement, sir?
Admiral Papp. I think if I go back to one of the other
questions I answered, the Mission Needs Statement is where we
start. That is sort of where we look with an eye towards an
unconstrained environment, what are those things that the
statutes require us to do? And then what assets would we need
to do all of those at 100 percent? And people have suggested it
is a 10-year old Mission Needs Statement. We are going to redo
the Mission Needs Statement this year. We have already embarked
upon that to update it.
Now, every study that we have done has always validated the
need for at least the program of record that we are embarked
upon. We will do the Mission Needs Statement, but given the
fact that the Arctic has expanded, we have got increased
mission space that we need to take care of, and increased
missions that we have been given, I can't imagine any way that
a new Mission Needs Statement would not come out saying we need
more than the program record. But I have been satisfied as to
the program record, because we are having a hard enough time
just getting there.
So the Mission Needs Statement, I would say the one in 2004
is probably still valid, but we are going to revalidate that
and update it now a decade later. And then it is my job to
present that to the administration and say, this is what I
need, this is what I would like to fit in there, and at some
point they are going to give me a top line, and then I am
forced to make those tough decisions within the limits of the
budget.
Mr. Fleischmann. Okay. So the good news is a new mission
statement is in progress, and we can expect to receive that.
Admiral Papp. Yes, sir.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you. I think that is very important.
A follow-up to my colleague's question. And I certainly
appreciate all that you and the Coast Guard are doing with your
flag officers to address sexual assault. I want to thank you
for the State of the Coast Guard Address. I think you addressed
that there, as well as alcohol abuse issues.
What can we do as legislators to help you implement that? I
understand you have got these great laudatory goals which are
out there, but what can we do?
Admiral Papp. Well, I think what you can do is you use the
bully pulpit. First of all, you hold our feet to the fire,
people like me, and insist that we live up to those things that
we talk about. And you have got a fully committed person in me
in that respect.
But we serve the people of the United States. You represent
the people of the United States. If we are not serving the
people of the United States and their sons and daughters that
have volunteered to come and work within our services, then we
need to have our feet held to the fire. And I appreciate it.
Even though I disagree with some of the policies that were
proposed, I respect the right and appreciate the fact that the
Congress--and most notably over in the Senate--have come
forward with proposals to assist us or make more stringent
requirements.
But at the end of the day, we have got to execute it, and I
really appreciate the fact that we are going to allow our
commanders to hold that responsibility. And I hold my
commanders responsible and make sure that they are taking these
on. And as you mentioned, it is not just sexual assault. I
mentioned this in the State of the Coast Guard speech that we
are putting out a revised alcohol abuse policy. I just got the
final package on my desk last night and read it late, came in
with a few alterations, but we will be putting out that policy
over the next couple of days.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Admiral.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carter. Mr. Culberson.
Mr. Culberson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral, I wanted to ask, if I could, a little bit more
about the icebreaker program, which we all support and want to
see you have that capability, because it is so vital, as the
chairman has pointed out.
As a Texan--and I know Judge Carter has heard this as well
as a fellow Texan--Texas, I suppose, and Houston in particular,
is to the oil and gas industry what Silicon Valley is to the
computer industry. And companies that the judge represents and
that I represent in the oil and gas industry have told us that
they have discovered or gained access to more oil and gas in
the last 10 years than has ever been discovered in the history
of the United States. It is the largest mineral discovery in
the history of the country. It dwarfs the Gold Rush of 1849,
Spindletop, east Texas--you roll them all together--west Texas,
all of it together. And what we have been able to gain access
to with this new technology in fracking, in shale, and in the
ways that we are able to open up these old wells that were not
producing, it is extraordinary. They are producing oil out of
shale formations that weren't even possible.
So Judge Carter is exactly right. Particularly I wanted to
ask you about two areas, about the icebreaker and also the Law
of the Sea Treaty, because Bob Ballard, the discoverer of the
Titanic, tells me that there are vast amounts of rare Earth
elements that we as a country already have economic
jurisdiction over and own on the flanks of the volcanoes that
we took in the Pacific from the Japanese in World War II; that
there is, under the Law of the Sea Treaty, if you can show that
a geologic formation off the coast of your country is a part of
the Continental Shelf, then you have the right under
international law to develop all of those resources.
So Judge Carter is exactly right. There is vast amounts of
oil and gas out there underneath the Arctic Ocean, probably
even more than we can imagine.
By the way, they have also told me that they can make--the
oil and gas companies--if we will just get out of the way, they
can make America energy independent in less than 5 years if the
government would just get out of the way and let them do what
they do best, which is produce oil and gas safely, cleanly and
in an environmentally friendly way. They can make us completely
energy independent.
So those icebreakers are critical, and I wanted to ask what
in the $6 million in this budget that you are recommending to
this committee, what is your acquisition strategy for the
program? And when would we actually have a new icebreaker
breaking ice? It is a concern. You are talking about a billion-
dollar-plus vessel, and how do you really make any headway
building it with just a $6 million down payment? What is the
acquisition strategy, and when will we have an icebreaker in
the water under your projected numbers?
Admiral Papp. A heavy polar icebreaker has not been built
in this country for nearly 40 years now, so you want to be
fairly circumspect about the way you approach that and make
sure--particularly if you are only building one, and it costs a
billion dollars, you better have the requirements right. So
that is what we are doing right now.
We could on our own decide how we want to build an
icebreaker, but it would be big and tough, and it would be
rough to live on. And it might break great ice, but it might
not be compatible with all the scientists that our customers,
or the Department of Defense, or the Department of Interior,
NSF.
So we are consulting across the interagency to make sure
that we are coming up with the design that will meet the needs
of the country since this is such a valuable asset, and that
takes time. And you don't need a large amount of money in the
beginning because you are working through that process of
coming up with the requirements.
What concerns me, however, is particularly as I am being
constrained closer to the billion-dollar range in my
acquisition projects, I don't know how you fit in a billion-
dollar ice breaker, because at some point you are going to have
to take--even if you do it with a multiyear strategy, you are
going to have to go 300- or $400 billion in a couple of years,
which would displace other very important things.
So we are having to take a hard look at this. One way of
doing it is to say, okay, this icebreaker serves the
interagency. The Department of Defense could call upon us, NSF
certainly does, and other agencies. Why should that not be a
shared expense? And, oh, by the way, if all of these companies
are going to be making that much money off of oil exploration
in the Arctic, maybe they could share in the cost of this
icebreaker.
Mr. Culberson. Free enterprise is a wonderful thing.
Admiral Papp. Yes, sir.
I don't see any way right now, and I know that the
President has committed us to designing an icebreaker. We
haven't committed to building an icebreaker yet. And if I am
constrained at a billion dollars, I just don't know how you do
it, because I have higher priorities to build within that AC&I
money.
Mr. Culberson. Well, GSA charges rent to Federal agencies,
you know, in buildings that the GSA builds. No reason you
shouldn't charge for the use of your icebreaker.
Admiral Papp. Well, that is a creative solution that I
would look forward to somebody proposing for us. But in the
absence of that, I can only look at the conventional way that
we do things.
Mr. Culberson. I guarantee you that the oil and gas
companies would help you pay for it, the scientific community,
Particularly the oil and gas community, Because it is just
unbelievable. In Houston, Texas, it is raining money in
Houston, Texas, because they have actually figured out how to
access--they are producing oil from pool table slate.
Unbelievable.
Admiral Papp. It would take some persuasion, sir, because I
have been up to Alaska each of the last 4 years. I have talked
to Shell and the other companies, and they are of the opinion
that they already pay a lot of money in taxes right now, and
that to put that extra burden on them, they believe, would be
unfair.
Mr. Culberson. I mean just in terms of renting the ship and
getting access to the ship, in order for them to get access out
there, because the judge is right.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carter. Admiral, as we discussed with the Secretary
yesterday and other times, we need to look for efficiencies.
Have you considered working with CBP and the Air and Marine
Division about leveraging the capabilities at Elizabeth City?
Also, could you commit to working with CBP to further utilize
their Air and Marine Operations Center?
Admiral Papp. First of all, yes. I believe there are
efficiencies to be gained. They fly H-60 helicopters; we have a
product line down there that does very good work. We have the
capability for doing that. I don't know if we have got the full
capacity to be able to do all of that work, but certainly we
could adjust that. And I think we have done an aviation
commonality study with CBP under the direction of the former
Deputy Secretary, and we are continuing to work towards that. I
think since we already have a world-class facility down there,
I don't know why CBP would be sending their aircraft somewhere
else to be maintained.
Mr. Carter. Well, that is kind of the thinking we had.
There is no reason to have duplication. We ought to be able to
work together to maintain these various airframes.
Admiral Papp. Right.
Mr. Carter. And in operations, as our mission requires
teamwork, we want to encourage that teamwork.
Admiral Papp. Yes, sir. And there is plenty going on out
there, sir. I have seen numerous ways. In my recent travels I
was out in San Diego just a couple of weeks ago, and we have a
command center out there that brings together Customs and
Border Protection, the Border Patrol, and Air and Marine, in
addition to State law enforcement agencies and the municipal
law enforcement agencies. And we are leveraging all of those
assets to take on this challenge that you talked about earlier
with the Mexican pangas coming across the border.
Mr. Carter. Okay. I have one more question. We all know
this budget does not fund the Coast Guard this Nation needs. If
we can find additional funds, where do we start? What are your
unfunded priorities?
Admiral Papp. Well, probably in a less constrained
environment, I certainly would have put more of the Fast
Response Cutters in the budget. You are absolutely right, we
gain efficiencies by keeping the production line running full
down there. I think with building two, because it would be an
extension of the current contract, we can could probably come
up with a pretty good price, but we come up with the best price
if we are doing the full loading of six per year, which is what
the shipyard can handle. That plays towards the
recapitalization that is so important to us.
If I had the wherewithal, I would restore our operational
efficiencies, our operational reductions. We need to have our
people out there doing their mission. We have to have the
presence. The biggest driver for dissatisfaction for Coast
Guard people is not being able to do their job. And if they
know they are getting fewer boat hours, fewer aircraft and ship
hours, not only does it reduce our mission effectiveness, but
it doesn't allow them to do the things that they have been
trained to do. And it also hurts our ability to keep them in
their highest playing form, their best state of proficiency, so
that they are safe when they go out there and do this dangerous
work that we send them out to do. So restoration of operations
is always important.
Maintenance funds. We are forced to squeeze down
maintenance funds, and any time we get extra maintenance funds,
it helps us to take care of those housing units that we talked
about. It helps us on some of the renovation projects on some
of our older cutters that we are doing. It helps to keep moving
them along.
So operations and maintenance are, sir, the holy grail for
us. And then, as I said, it is tough to live within the
constraints of that AC&I budget, so I would turn towards
increasing that, but it has got to be balanced across the
board. And that is really what I tried to do for 4 years is
maintain balance, not cutting back on mission support fully or
dumping it all on operations. Whatever we have done has been a
balanced approach. But we are down to the point now where we
just can't squeeze anything more out of this rock without
losing significant numbers of people.
And I would say that is probably the thing, if I have any
regret at all at this 4-year point, when I look and I see that
from a high-water mark in fiscal year 2012 in the middle of my
term as Commandant, we have lost a thousand Coast Guard people
due to efficiencies and squeezing down. We face the prospect of
losing other 800.
I have always known from the start that people are the most
important thing, because the fewer people we have, the less
Coast Guard you have, the less operations we have. And, sir, I
want to give you one little anecdote, the little prices we pay
along the way as we squeeze down.
My Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard has been
pushing a physical fitness program. We are finally to the point
where we have tested it, and we are almost ready to implement
it, and they come in to give me the briefing, and at the end of
the briefing they said, but of course in the fiscal year 2015
budget, we have had to cut all of our health-promotion
specialists across the Coast Guard because we have noplace to
go to gain efficiencies. So, I mean, it is only 13 people, but
they are 13 people that were located at each one of our bases
to supervise health-promotion programs that services my people.
Special pay. I am having to cut back on special pay for
those people who go out and do those hazardous assignments.
And that is what hurts me. I want to provide the best for
my people. I want to retrain my people, because I know we need
them. And this gradual squeezing down, it is nibbling away, and
at some point we just won't be able to do it anymore, and we
will just have to do some sort of major cut.
I lived through it in the 1990s where we had to lose about
6,000 people in the Coast Guard, and it took us a long time to
recover from that. I was talking to Admiral Kramek the other
night, he was the Commandant at the time, and it was terrible.
And I know it was terrible because I was a more junior officer
at the time.
If there is anything I can leave you with it is taking care
of the people and making sure we got enough people to do the
job, because even though I say we will cut back on the work,
coasties just, if they lose the person next to them, they will
just work twice as hard. Even though we tell them not to, they
will work twice as hard to get the job done. So it breaks my
heart to have to let people go.
Mr. Carter. Well, Admiral, this subcommittee thanks you for
your service. Coming to the conclusion, I will tell you that I
have got a lot of old Marine friends who will tell you that the
Marine Corps likes to brag they fight their wars with other
people's leftovers. I think the coasties can use the same
argument, that they fight their part of this war with other
people's leftovers and do a good job. And we will continue to
do our best to make sure that the Coast Guard has its needs
filled. Thank you for your service.
Admiral Papp. I am deeply indebted to all of you. Thank
you. It has been an honor.
Mr. Carter. No further questions?
Mr. Price. No further questions. Thank you.
Mr. Carter. At this time we will stand adjourned. Thank
you.
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Thursday, March 13, 2013.
UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT
WITNESSES
DANIEL RAGSDALE, DEPUTY DIRECTOR
PETER EDGE, DEPUTY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, HOMELAND SECURITY INVESTIGATIONS
THOMAS HOMAN, EXECUTIVE ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, ENFORCEMENT AND REMOVAL
OPERATIONS
Opening Statement: Mr. Carter
Mr. Carter. I am going to call this hearing to order.
Let me just open up by saying there are multiple hearings
today and people will be coming and going a lot, as they move
from one subcommittee hearing to the other.
We are pleased to get started. Our panel this morning is
made up of three exceptional professionals who have almost 75
years of law enforcement experience between them, Dan Ragsdale,
ICE acting director; Tom Homan, executive associate director,
Enforcement and Removal Operations; and Pete Edge, deputy
executive associate director, Homeland Security Investigations,
HSI.
Before we begin, I want to thank all of you for what you do
and for all the agents and officers that work with you and the
investigative teams in the service. You do exceptional work. We
are aware of your work and we are very proud of you. The
subcommittee knows your efforts are essential to keep this
Nation safe and we are very grateful for the effort that all in
your department do.
Our job today is to learn whether the President's budget
request enables you to do your jobs taking down transnational
criminal organizations, combating illegal border crossing
activity, and enforcing immigration laws.
Gentlemen, I am going to be blunt. As chairman of the
subcommittee, I must be convinced the budget supports your
operations. Unfortunately from what I have reviewed so far,
cuts to operational accounts are not justified by the facts,
analysis, or data.
For example, I am not convinced the detention bed request
is sufficient to detain level one, two, and three criminals,
fugitives, and criminal aliens being released from prison.
I am worried the cut in HSI salaries means fewer
investigative hours and continued imbalance between the need
for special agents and a team of wire tap specialists, intel
analysts, and assistants.
It upsets me that politically motivated policies and
directives are creating an invitational posture at the border,
and that this open invitation causes human suffering and law
enforcement nightmares.
I get even more agitated or irritated when these policies
and directives undermine legitimate budgetary needs. Bottom
line, ICE is not an organization that should be politicized.
Its law enforcement mission is just too important to this
Nation.
Here are some cold, hard facts. From October through
December, the Border Patrol apprehended 66,928 people in the
Rio Grande Valley of Texas. This is a place we in Texas call
the Valley. A total of 49,815 were ``other than Mexicans'' and
18,555 were juveniles. And the juvenile issue is quite honestly
a human suffering issue as far as I am concerned.
When these folks were apprehended, they met ICE's mandatory
detention criteria because they were all recent illegal
entrants. But needless to say, they were not all placed in
detention beds.
What I would like for you to provide for the record is what
happened to them once they were processed by CBP and turned
over to ICE. Of the 66,928 people, how many were actually
placed in detention? What happened to the people ICE did not
detain? How many were removed, remain in detention, were placed
on alternative initiatives to detention or claimed credible
fear and are waiting for immigration hearings? Of the 18,555
children, how many were delivered to their families?
We would like to have the statistics to understand what is
going on.
Gentlemen, all too often this debate ends up focusing on
stories of good, hard-working people who make this dangerous
journey to care for their families.
Well, what do we know about the criminal organizations that
brought these migrants to the United States? From the stories
that I hear on the Rio Grande border, no one now crosses the
border in Texas that does not have the permission of the
cartels that operate across the border. I would like to know
what your thoughts are on that, but we will get to all that
when we go to the questioning.
How are they networked inside of our borders? Is the human
trafficking business providing the capital they need to develop
cyber pornography, sell drugs, or sell the kids they are
transporting? These are the criminals ICE goes after. This is
the evil ICE confronts and you deserve a robust budget to do
this effectively.
In closing, I know you mean well, but I would be
irresponsible if I did not ask whether these very policies and
directives creating this massive migration of people are
contributing to an environment that supports criminal activity.
This is my biggest frustration and constant worry.
We have a common goal to keep the homeland as safe as
possible. We are counting on you to give us the facts and the
benefit of your professional judgment.
Before we get to your testimony, however, I will turn the
floor over to my distinguished colleague from North Carolina,
the subcommittee ranking member, Mr. Price.
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Opening Statement: Mr. Price
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, good morning. Glad to have you here. We
appreciate your appearing before the subcommittee. We
appreciate your service to the country, particularly during
this time of transition for U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement.
I hope, of course, that an individual will soon be
nominated to be the director of ICE. That is all the more
important in light of the national debate we continue to have
about reforming our immigration system.
But for this morning, I am very happy to have the benefit
of your expertise and experience, and the three of you bring a
great deal to the table.
Much of the discussion this morning will likely focus on
ICE's role in detaining and removing aliens from the country,
but I hope we can also pay attention to the other important ICE
activities, many of which are as critical to homeland security
as civil immigration enforcement and should be resourced
accordingly.
These activities include investigations to combat illegal
cross-border trafficking and weapons, illicit drugs and other
contraband, money laundering and other financial crimes,
fraudulent trade practices, identity and benefit fraud, and
human trafficking and child exploitation.
ICE's efforts in these areas are not controversial in the
way that immigration enforcement has become, but they are
extremely important. Too few people understand this aspect of
ICE's mission or give ICE enough credit for the good work it is
doing.
Having said that, the debate surrounding immigration
enforcement is important, and I will have several questions in
that area as well.
As I said at the secretary's hearing on Tuesday afternoon,
this is not only because of the fact that our immigration
system is fundamentally flawed, but also because the politics
surrounding immigration are so contentious, plagued, I am
afraid, by exaggerations of both fact and rhetoric, as well as
legitimate policy differences.
I have to say the politics of this issue has been on full
display this week on the House floor even as we are having this
hearing. The republican majority has the House considering two
bills as deeply misguided as they are unprecedented.
Heaven forbid the House consider unemployment insurance or
raising the minimum wage. Instead we are once again playing
politics on immigration.
My experience on this subcommittee ever since its creation
has convinced me of the futility of approaching immigration as
simply an enforcement issue or simply throwing money at the
border or any other aspect of the problem. We must have
comprehensive reform.
One of the things the subcommittee would greatly benefit
from and might help clear the air somewhat around the overall
immigration debate would be more comprehensive and timely data
about how the department is managing its border and immigration
enforcement responsibilities.
We do hear disturbing stories, as you know, about families
being broken up when ICE deports a family member who, as far as
we know, is not a criminal, poses no threat to the community.
These are families in many cases who have been in the country
for decades, working, paying taxes, attending church,
contributing to their communities.
So we need more information about who you are apprehending,
detaining and removing, and how they fit into your enforcement
priorities.
We need to have more confidence that our detention
resources are used for those who really are threats to the
community or serious flight risks, and that alternative to
detention programs, which are much less expensive, are being
fully utilized as a detention alternative.
Now, better information may not be the way to reach
consensus on vexing questions of border and immigration
enforcement policy, but surely it would help. It would help
elevate the discussion to one based more on empirical evidence.
The agency's budget request is for $5.36 billion. That is a
reduction of $255 million or 4.8 percent below the current
year. We want to hear from you regarding the rationale behind
all the agency's funding proposals and how they fit into your
overall strategy for prioritizing activities.
I know some of my colleagues are very quick to attack the
proposed reductions in ICE's overall budget, particularly the
proposed reduction in the detention bed requirement and
elimination of the detention bed mandate.
But ICE's budget request simply has to be considered in the
proper budget context. In an era of limited resources, we
simply cannot do it all. If we want to fix holes we identify in
the President's budget, we are going to have to find savings
elsewhere in the bill and we are going to be hard pressed to do
that.
Of course, many of the other appropriations subcommittees
have even bigger challenges than this one does under this
constrained budget. And let me be clear. It is a good thing
that we have an agreed upon top-line funding level for the
coming fiscal year. It should help us get our work done. It
should help us do what appropriations is supposed to do.
But there are consequences to arbitrarily limiting
investments in enforcement priorities, and we are experiencing
those consequences right now. It is very easy to complain about
individual items or individual functions, but they are part of
this larger picture which we need to take responsibility for
and ultimately to fix in this institution.
Before I end, I want to reiterate what I and many others
have said for years now. We are setting the department and
ourselves up for failure by not enacting legislation to reform
and rationalize our immigration system.
According to a variety of recent polls, a clear majority of
Americans want Congress to enact immigration reform and support
a pathway to legal status and eventual citizenship for most
unauthorized immigrants. We need to get on with that task.
Gentlemen, thank you for joining us this morning. I look
forward to our discussion.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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Mr. Carter. Thank you, Mr. Price.
Before I start, we have received your written testimony. It
will be entered into the record. And we want to ask you for
your testimony.
We are ready to go.
Opening Statement: Mr. Ragsdale
Mr. Ragsdale. Well, good morning again, Chairman Carter,
Ranking Member Price, and distinguished Members of the
committee.
I am honored to appear here today with two of my
colleagues, Tom Homan, executive associate director of
Enforcement and Removal Operations, and Peter Edge, deputy
associate director of Homeland Security Investigations. Both of
these men are long-time career enforcement officers and
employees and they are a significant credit to our agency.
Before I begin, I would like to start by expressing my
appreciation for your support of the men and women of ICE.
Carrying out our mission and achieving the law enforcement
results our folks realize every day would not be possible
without your strong support.
ICE is the principal investigative arm of the Department of
Homeland Security and is responsible for one of the broadest
investigative portfolios among any federal law enforcement
agency.
Our primary law enforcement operations are carried out by
the two offices these gentlemen represent, the Office of
Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement and Removal
Operations. Their work is bolstered by the men and women of the
Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, the Office of
Professional Responsibility, and the key mission support
personnel in management and administration.
The President's fiscal year 2015 budget supports ICE's law
enforcement programs and ensures ICE operates with maximum
efficiency. The fiscal year 2015 request totals $5.359 billion.
This is approximately a five percent reduction of our fiscal
year 2014 level.
As the principal investigative arm of DHS, ICE enhances
national and border security by dismantling transnational
criminal organizations that seek to exploit our border.
In fiscal year 2013, HSI's special agents made 32,401
criminal arrests and initiated 100,026 new investigations. We
seized $1.3 billion in currency and 1.6 million pounds of
narcotics and other dangerous drugs.
ICE conducts national security investigations through
interconnected investigative programs that prevent criminals
and terrorists from exploiting our Nation's border control
system.
This includes investigating criminal and terrorist
organizations, preventing the acquisition and trafficking in
weapons and other sensitive or licensable technology,
identifying and removing war criminals and human rights abusers
from the United States.
This budget request supports ICE's investigative efforts in
the coming fiscal year by continuing our efforts against
illicit finance by supporting our bulk cash smuggling center's
efforts to add additional law enforcement partners.
We will expand our commercial fraud efforts by expanding
investigative support and leveraging enforcement operations
with our state and local partners. We will continue to develop
our illicit pathways attack strategy to focus on cross-border
threats and global illicit pathways including contraband
smuggling, arms trafficking, money laundering, bulk cash
smuggling, and human smuggling and trafficking.
In fiscal year 2013, ERO's officers and agents identified,
arrested, and removed 368,644 aliens. One hundred and thirty-
three thousand of those removed were apprehended in the United
States. Eighty-two percent of that number were criminal aliens.
We conducted 235,000 removals of individuals apprehended
along our borders for a total of 368,000. Fifty-nine percent of
all ICE removals were aliens who had previously been convicted
of a crime.
To support these operations, ICE will also leverage IT
solutions to increase our efficiency in screening, vetting, and
recording Visa applications through our patriot system. This
modernization effort will allow all ICE attache offices to
perform Visa security operations.
Further, to support our immigration enforcement efforts,
our budget request, as the chairman said, 30,539 detention beds
at a rate of $119 a day. This detention level will allow us to
detain all aliens subject to mandatory detention provisions as
well as other high-risk non-mandatory detainees.
ICE will ensure the most cost-effective use of our funding
by focusing detention capabilities on priority and mandatory
detainees while placing lower-risk, non-mandatory detainees on
lower-cost alternatives.
The budget also proposes that a portion of our custody
operations funding be available for five years. This will allow
us to pilot and try to seek more favorable pricing for
detention beds and using multi-year contracts.
If approved, this change would empower ICE to negotiate
more advantageous contract terms and realize efficiencies not
available with current one-year funding.
This budget also supports the alternatives to detention
program as a cost-effective alternative from traditional
detention that makes bed space available for those aliens
posing the greatest risk to public safety or national security.
ICE will continue to focus on identifying, arresting, and
removing criminal aliens, recent border entrants, and other
priority aliens to support DHS's national security, border
security, and public safety mission.
Finally, the budget supports some key investments. It
continues an important automation project to replace our
investigative case management system known as TECS at $21
million to ensure we can deploy core case management in late
2015.
The budget also proposes $20 million in achievable
reductions for IT contractor conversions, contract staff
reductions, and our detainee to guard ratio at certain SBC
facilities to bring our staff detainee ratio in line with our
national detention standards.
Let me thank you again for your support and we look forward
to answering your questions. Thank you.
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Mr. Carter. Once again, the President's budget calls for a
cut in funds for detention beds of about ten percent, taking
the beds down from 34,000 to 30,539. Explain how this number
was developed.
Mr. Ragsdale. So we looked at our historical averages of
the number of aliens we apprehend who are subject to the
Immigration Nationality Act's mandatory detention provisions.
And that number is roughly around 26 to 28 thousand over the
last couple of years.
So we can detain everyone who is subject to mandatory
detention. This number also gives us some flexibility for other
aliens not subject to mandatory detention but are nonetheless
presenting a risk to public safety.
The point that I would like to make sort of most
strenuously the detention piece is only, I will say, a step in
the process. The real key is getting folks through the
immigration court system to get a determination about whether
or not we can remove them or whether they can stay.
So we are focusing on not the detention beds as a outcome
but rather working with EOIR to make sure there are immigration
judges to hear cases whether detained or not detained.
In fact, from fiscal year 2014 into 2015, EOIR is going to
add 65 immigration judges, so we are hoping to see our average
length of stay in those beds fall so we can essentially remove
increasing number of people with less beds.
Mr. Carter. And I think that is good. Let's just talk about
the 30,539 will you be able to detain all level one criminals?
Mr. Ragsdale. I believe we will be able to detain all level
one criminals assuming again----
Mr. Carter. That is violent crimes. These are important
crimes. These are felony crimes we are talking about.
Mr. Ragsdale. They are.
Mr. Carter. All right. How about all level two criminals?
Mr. Ragsdale. I believe it will cover all level ones and
level twos.
Mr. Carter. How about all level three criminals?
Mr. Ragsdale. I do not think it will cover all level
threes. And, of course, as the chairman knows, you know,
custody determinations are made on a case-by-case basis,
balancing dangerousness and flight risk.
You know, we use the levels for, you know, statistical
record-keeping purposes. However, we would certainly say that
every case is not created equally and we would have to use our
resources appropriately to make essentially those individual
case determinations.
Mr. Carter. I have recently visited the ICE detention and
work provided by ICE down in the Rio Grande Valley where I just
gave you some statistics about what has happened the last four
months, 60,000 people. Many of these people are being released
on some form of some program, whether you put a monitor on
them, whether you put extensive supervision of some sort,
whether you have telephone call-in supervision, but you turn
them loose.
Mr. Ragsdale. So a couple things here. You know, we
actually work obviously very closely with Customs and Border
Protection on the front end in terms of the apprehension and
Citizenship and Immigration Services on what is sort of the
middle piece of the credible fear process.
It is important, sir, to put this in context, that one of
the sort of advantages after the 1996 bill with the expansion
of expedited removal, that CBP without putting people in
removal proceedings that need to go in front of immigration
judges can order the vast majority of folks removed.
So we receive the vast majority of apprehended aliens, OTMs
and Mexicans from CBP with final orders of removal. There is a
subset of that category who are placed in expedited removal
that express credible fear.
Those folks go to Citizenship and Immigration Services
while they are being detained by ICE because they are subject
to mandatory detention and then Citizenship and Immigration
Services makes a finding whether or not that alien possesses a
credible fear.
ICE does not look behind that decision. Once a credible
fear is found, the ER order, the expedited removal order is
vacated and a notice to appear is issued. Once that notice to
appear is issued, that person becomes eligible for bond. They
can be eligible for bond from DHS as well as an immigration
judge.
All of those folks remain in immigration proceedings. But
as I mentioned earlier, the challenge, of course, is again
court hearing capacity. For folks that, you know, stay----
Mr. Carter. Well, there is more than that. Do you know what
the statistics are for no shows on hearings?
Mr. Ragsdale. So we certainly had many discussions about
this. The struggle with giving those numbers, first of all,
they are maintained by the Department of Justice, but it is
also a blended data set. There is not a year-to-year capture of
folks that are put into proceedings in the same fiscal year and
whether a case would be heard that same year.
So you end up with someone who may have entered years ago,
gets that final hearing several years later, and then is
counted as a no show. So what I cannot do, at least from ICE's
data, is tell you sort of one to one apprehensions versus no
shows because the immigration court docket is sort of
backlogged.
Mr. Carter. The reality is if the court cannot get to them
for two years, it just gives them an additional excuse for not
showing up for court, but they could be in Bangor, Maine. I
mean, they are not sitting down in the Rio Grande Valley
waiting to go to court like good little citizens. They are off
to anywhere in the 50 states.
Mr. Ragsdale. That is exactly correct. What we really again
sort of need to do is obviously work with our partners at----
Mr. Carter. And 66,000 in four months is a shocking number
in any criminal court in the land. Okay.
Mr. Ragsdale. It is a considerable volume.
Mr. Carter. Having been there, I can tell you I do not want
any 66,000 criminals in my court in four months.
Mr. Ragsdale. It is a challenge.
Mr. Carter. So take that and average it over a two-year
period of time. If we kept that kind of consistency of
crossings, it is an overwhelming flood.
And my real question is that if we do not have available
detention beds that we can fill and we have a shortfall, aren't
we, in effect, back to catch and release?
Mr. Ragsdale. So, again, I think we are certainly sort of
back to catch and release because, again, the folks do remain
in proceedings. And from the ICE perspective, we cannot what I
will say is re-arrest or remove anybody until an immigration
judge makes a decision.
Mr. Carter. Well, let's just take one of our best ankle
monitors. Okay? There is a point in time, roughly 60 days would
be my guess, when the cost to the government of that ankle
monitor equals or exceeds the cost of incarceration.
Mr. Ragsdale. That is exactly right. I mean, again, it goes
back to the speed of the immigration docket.
Mr. Carter. And the immigration docket is slow as a snail
in the wintertime right now.
Mr. Ragsdale. I am sure it did not operate with the speed
of your court. That I am sure of.
Mr. Carter. Yeah. Well, of course not, but we had a
different world. And I do not mean any criticism. I was felony
only, so I did not have to mess with misdemeanors and, yeah, we
could move. But even then, a thousand felony docket a year was
a hard job. You are talking about tens of thousands of people
on people's dockets.
And the whole question, and one of the things that we have
to deal with as a reality, is that there is a vast number of
people who know if you overwhelm the border--I mean, they know
how many people can be processed in the Rio Grande Valley. The
network of rumors on the border has been around for longer than
I have been alive and I have been alive a while.
And I have been down there. I live in this world and I know
they know which sector is open, which sector is closed. They
know what courts are overwhelmed, what are not. They know they
have overwhelmed the Valley right now.
That means your chances of going across and surrendering to
the Border Patrol, your chances are pretty darn good, probably
one in three that you are going to be released. And you are on
your way.
And the court date, if you are given a court date, the
court date you are given is probably 18 months away, maybe
longer. In 18 months, you could have held four jobs in five
states, you know. I mean, we do not know where you are. And if
you have to pick every one of those people up, the United
States Army could not pick those people up. They got right now
until they cut us again, they got 450,000 troops.
So, I mean, at some point, the reality is the system is
being intentionally overwhelmed and if we give up the one thing
we know that can at least make them worry is that if you go
across, you might end up in detention. If they know the odds
have gotten so good that they are not going to end up in
detention, then it is going to enhance the number of people
coming across the border.
So this is my whole issue. Whether we like it or not,
criminal justice is about deterrence as well as punishment. And
would you agree or disagree that the chance of being detained
and put in some kind of lockup is a deterrent to people coming
across the border?
Mr. Ragsdale. Our custody authority does not equate to the
criminal justice. There is no punitive function in our
detention authority. Our detention authority is solely for the
purpose of removal, so we are sort of again similar----
Mr. Carter. I know that is your theory. If I go interview
the people that are in detention, you think they are going to
tell me it is not punitive?
Mr. Ragsdale. Well, I would not want to speculate as to
what they think.
Mr. Carter. Right.
Mr. Ragsdale. I will say that again as a consumer of the
immigration court docket, I think as you correctly pointed out,
speed of that docket is really the key.
Mr. Carter. By the way, I forgot to ask you. Is this number
sufficient to detain all criminal aliens identified in prisons
and jails throughout the criminal alien program assuming all
jurisdictions honored ICE detainers before they are released
from incarceration?
I happen to be from the world of crowded county jails in
Texas. And is the number that you are telling me that you all
came up with, the 30,000 plus number, is that sufficient to
take care of level one, level two, no level three? Can you
still pick up everybody that is needed to be picked up at every
jail in the United States?
Mr. Ragsdale. So I believe the level one and level two
number covers all our enforcement programs in terms of our
flows. I can defer to Mr. Homan if he----
Mr. Carter. Mr. Homan, you got any comment on that?
Mr. Homan. I think with 30,500 beds will, as Mr. Ragsdale
said, we will be able to detain the mandatory cases and the
high-risk community threat aliens. The rest will be going to
the ATD docket. That is based on current population.
But to your point, more and more jurisdictions do not honor
our detainers.
Mr. Carter. I know. I know.
Mr. Homan. I think criminal population is down. So if that
was to turn around, that would be a population that we are not
dealing with now. So I do not know the answer to your question,
but it would add to the criminal alien population that we would
have to detain.
Mr. Carter. Well, I cannot speak for every jail in the
United States. I can only speak for the Williamson County Jail,
especially before we built our new expanded jail. We had the
Texas Jail Commission on our backs about our daily numbers in
our jail. And we had to move people out of our jail.
And the first people we called, and this was back under the
old system, we called the immigration folks and said come pick
your people up because we need them out of our jail. They came
on Tuesday. If they did not show up on Tuesday, we would turn
them loose on Wednesday because they were overpowering,
overwhelming our jail population and causing us to be fined a
daily fine for being over our numbers.
Now, that is just Williamson County, one county out of 254
counties in Texas. Do the numbers.
Mr. Homan. Well, sir, almost every week another county is
choosing not to honor detainers. I mean, the fact is for
California alone after the passing of the Trust Act, our
criminal alien arrests in California has dropped over 25
percent. You are talking about tens of thousands of aliens.
I mean, it has gotten to the point it is a community safety
issue now because level ones and twos are walking out of jails
without attention from ICE. So it is a concern of ours. It
something we need to--we need some changes.
Mr. Carter. Well, it should be a concern of the citizens of
the United States that--and, once again, I am making the
argument that the people we are trying to have a policy to
prevent coming into our country illegally know that when you
overwhelm--it is just like back in the old days when they get
there and 500 people would run across the border at the Border
Patrol. The border patrol could not catch 500 people and so
they would have--400 would get in and 100 get caught. That was
good odds.
It is the same concept knowing what you can process and
they know they overwhelm the process. Knowing what you can
detain, and they know they overwhelm the detention. And at that
point in time, the effectiveness of the overall criminal
justice plan, and I use that term because that is a term I am
used to, if you want to call it noncriminal, I do not know what
to call it, justice plan, law enforcement, it is enforcement,
the overall law enforcement plan is to set up a way where we
are dealing with people who are coming into our country
illegally.
Whether they come in and they are the nicest people in the
world or they are the baddest people in the world is irrelevant
to the plan to do it. And I think there is a conscientious
effort to overwhelm. And I worry if we reduce the number of
available beds, because where I came from, if we had to keep
somebody in jail and we did not have a bed, we had to go out
and contract for that bed. I do not know whether you have to do
that or not.
Mr. Ragsdale. We do have contract vehicles in place that
allows us to bring our detention up and down. And, again, we
certainly are mindful of obviously the instruction of our
appropriation language and we will obviously meet that goal.
Mr. Carter. And the contracts cost more, doesn't it?
Mr. Ragsdale. It varies by location. Sometimes they are
less expensive, some they are more expensive. But, you know,
again, having what I will say is the multi-year funds would
hopefully help us sort of----
Mr. Carter. And I have gone way too far. Mr. Price.
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to continue this discussion just to gain some
further clarity, if we might, and turn to some other questions
later in the hearing.
If the circumstance Mr. Homan detailed developed, that
really would affect the projections for the ability to take
care of level one and two offenders and it might indeed call
for more detention beds. In the meantime, it seems to me you
have made a reasonable estimate based on your best projections.
And while this is a real dilemma, I understand that, the
system is overwhelmed with these people coming over and with
the kind of claims they are making, the credible fear
processing that has to go on. It just is not clear to me that
the answer to this is more detention beds or for there to be a
congressional requirement that a certain minimum number of
detention beds be maintained.
By the way, the cost comparisons I have seen with
alternatives to detention are something like $119 a day to keep
people in detention versus $5.00 a day for alternatives to
detention. Does that sound right?
Mr. Ragsdale. So it is a blended rate on alternatives to
detention. While the unit cost of alternative detention is
lower on its face, it is sort of the cycle time or the time
spent in----
Mr. Price. No, no. That is what I am getting to. I
understand. The per day rate, though, is as I just stated it,
right?
So obviously if the docket is much more crowded and the
time in ATD is much, much greater than the average time in
detention, then obviously that differential is going to be
less. I thought it was a good deal more than 60 days or
whatever was said earlier. I am not sure at what point we cross
that line in terms of the time in ATD.
Mr. Homan. Our estimates on ATD when you hit the right over
300 day mark, that is when it is less cost effective.
Mr. Price. Three hundred days, not 60 days? All right.
Maybe I misunderstood earlier. All right. So that is a big
difference.
Mr. Homan. And it varies on the level of ATD. It can be
technology only or it can be the more expensive full service
which is more expensive, up to $11.00 a day. But if you do the
blended option, you average it out, it is a little over 300
days where it becomes less effective, less cost effective.
Mr. Price. All right. Well, let's say we have these
additional detention beds and let's say we are putting more and
more people in detention. Then you are going to clog the
detention docket even more, right? I mean, is there a tradeoff
there?
Mr. Homan. Well, sir, as far as the 34,000 mandate, you
know, it all depends on operational effectiveness. It depends
on seasonally. There are times we are going to be above 34,000.
Mr. Price. Yes.
Mr. Homan. There are times where we are below 30,000. Like
today I think we are at 31,000. It depends on what is going on
on the border. There are a lot of issues surrounding this. So
at the end of this year, I suspect to be fully near the 34,000
average daily population.
So I can tell you the detain docket, those that are in
detention, the docket moves quicker than those that are
released and put on the non-detained docket.
Mr. Price. Right.
Mr. Homan. They get hearings quicker. So as far as, you
know, what----
Mr. Price. Excuse me. But my point is if you are altering
that balance and putting more and more people in detention,
then you are going to have a commensurate slowdown in the
detained docket, right?
Mr. Homan. Yes, sir.
Mr. Price. Yes. So there is a tradeoff there?
Mr. Homan. Yes, sir.
Mr. Price. And as I understand it, there is more discretion
being exercised with respect to the bond that is required for
people with this making these credible fear claims. Surely that
is an important part of this, too, because there is some
discretion here. And that would have the potential to make
absconding less likely.
There are plenty of things we need to work on here, but it
does not seem clear to me that the major solution to this is
simply to mandate more detention beds.
I just do not get it. It seems to me that this is a work in
progress. You are going to have to make estimates about your
needs as we go along. But nothing that has been said here this
morning makes me believe that the estimates you have given as
to the need for detention beds--and, therefore, the
recommendation that we not come in with a larger mandate--is
not justified.
Would you like to comment on that?
Mr. Homan. Well, who sits in a detention bed and who gets
released on some form of alternative detention or out on bond,
it is a case-by-case analysis. I can tell you we cannot
possibly detain everybody that is arrested. We will need
100,000 beds.
So on a case-by-case basis, we need to decide who sits in
that bed. So the ones that are mandatory detention by statute,
the ones that are a danger to community, they need to sit in
those beds first. So the decisions have to be made. Some people
have to be released on bond or, as I said, I would need 100,000
beds. So that decision is made every day.
As far as bonds, there is a lot of discretion. It is based
on do they have a criminal history, do they have ties to--do
they have any U.S. citizen relatives, do they have an address
they can go to. So a lot of things are done in order to set
that bond.
But that is just a first step. We can set a bond for
$10,000. Then they get a redetermination bond hearing from a
judge who can lower that bond or hold the bond. So it has got
to be a mix of both to make the system work.
Mr. Price. Right. All right. Well, to be continued. The
system is being overwhelmed right now. We all know that. We
know we have got to do something about it. But we will no doubt
continue to debate whether a detention bed mandate at X level
is the solution or is even a major component of the solution.
Let me in the time I have here this first round ask you
about enforcement priorities. And I know that there is a
difficulty here in dealing with anecdotes, dealing with
individual cases. I understand that very, very well.
But you understand, I am sure, that it does not take too
many problematic anecdotes, based on real cases, to send waves
of apprehension through the immigrant community and to raise
real questions about the kind of priorities that we are setting
and exactly what it means to be targeting in the way we
supposedly are targeting dangerous people in our enforcement
activities.
Just the quick details of a case. We have a fellow named
Jose Alfredo Ramos Gallegos who entered the country at age
eight. At 16, he was deported--15 years ago--then illegally
reentered to join his U.S. citizen wife and first child. He has
been a resident of Ohio for 24 years, and is the father of two
U.S. citizens. He was pulled over by a police officer in Ohio,
apparently, who questioned him about his immigration status. He
was a passenger in a car where there was an infraction. Now he
has been indicted by a grand jury for illegally reentering the
country 15 years ago.
And I know that it is not your role to seek an indictment,
but it does seem to me to be a good example. And I must say we
hear a good bit of this. I assume ICE has been involved in the
case so far. I am not asking you to comment on this individual
case.
But does someone like Mr. Alfredo fit ICE's enforcement
priorities? How do they go from being a passenger in a car
pulled over by law enforcement in Ohio to being prosecuted by a
U.S. Attorney and put in ICE removal proceedings? And what is
ICE's role in determining whether someone like this will face
federal charges?
Mr. Ragsdale. A couple things. First of all, as you noted,
the charging decision is obviously made by the Department of
Justice. What I think you see sort of at play here is if you
look at the strict letter of what the Immigration Nationality
Act requires, someone who has a prior order of removal and the
government, you know, has obviously gone to some level of
expense and effort to effectuate that removal, the provision in
this case, a reinstatement or an illegal reentry, the act, the
statute says it shall be reinstated.
So from sort of a law enforcement perspective as the act is
currently written, it is fairly black and white. Obviously the
charging decision is going to be made based on the volume in
that judicial district. And, again, as I said, the U.S.
Attorney's Office will ultimately make that decision.
But just in terms of the men and women at ICE that have to
make that decision, that is sort of the case that puts us sort
of in the most sort of difficult place in that public debate
because it is a place where the law is fairly clear.
Mr. Price. Well, that is really what I am trying to get at
and we will not resolve it at this moment. But obviously this
man would never be targeted by ICE or anybody else had he not
been a passenger in that car pulled over for a traffic
infraction.
So once the man is in your sights, you are saying I suppose
you have no alternatives or have very limited alternatives?
Mr. Ragsdale. We would certainly, you know, take a look at,
you know, the charging decision. Obviously we would do that in
a circumstance like this obviously with the Department of
Justice. But somebody in that factual scenario that had never
been encountered by ICE would certainly not be one of our first
priorities except, like I say, he does have a prior order of
removal. That is the facts in this case that sort of makes it
an aggravating factor.
Mr. Price. All right. My time has expired. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Dent [presiding]. Thank you. I think I will recognize
myself for five minutes and thank you for being here. I am
going to focus on the issue of secure communities. Last year
this committee applauded ICE for finally achieving full
deployment of Secure Communities providing ICE with awareness
of illegal aliens booked in custody by state and local law
enforcement across the country. However, increased visibility
provides limited advantages if law enforcement is unable to act
on this information. Several jurisdictions continue to ignore
ICE detainers, releasing potentially dangerous criminal aliens
into local communities. The administration has maintained a
posture of inaction allowing these jurisdictions to continue
this practice unchecked. As a result of this inaction the
number of jurisdictions choosing to ignore ICE detainers has
increased, further exacerbating the threat to public safety.
If you could answer some of these questions. How many
jurisdictions are failing to honor ICE detainers in your
estimation?
Mr. Homan. The last count was 22.
Mr. Dent. Twenty-two?
Mr. Homan. They do not honor them fully or have limited how
they honor them.
Mr. Dent. Do you have a list of those communities? I would
appreciate it if you would share that with the subcommittee, if
you would. How does this number 22 compare to last year?
Mr. Homan. It continually grows. I mean, on average once a
month another jurisdiction joins the list so it is increasing.
Mr. Dent. Do you think that the administration's refusal to
take action against these jurisdictions is causing this number
to bump up, to increase?
Mr. Homan. I do not know the specific reason why these
counties choose not to honor detainers. But I do agree that it
is becoming a public safety issue when criminal aliens are
walking out of a jail and the jurisdiction does not honor our
detainer when we have identified them as an alien and they have
been convicted of a crime and we cannot get our hands on them.
This also causes an officer safety issue. I have got 6,000 law
enforcement officers that now have to go out and look for this
person rather than pick them up in the safe environment of a
jail. So it is impacting our morale, it is impacting officer
safety, and I think it is impacting public safety.
Mr. Dent. Thank you for that answer. How many individuals
have been released before ICE can take them into custody, do
you know?
Mr. Homan. No, we are working on that number now. We just
recently started tracking electronically. My instructions to
the field offices that are dealing with these jurisdictions,
that they continue to send the detainer to the facility. Even
though they do not honor them we are going to track what
detainers we send to the facility and what detainers are not
acted upon. So in the very near future we are going to be able
to determine how many criminal aliens hit the streets without
our attention.
Mr. Dent. Can you tell me how many of these individuals ICE
has been able to track down and how many are at large?
Mr. Homan. I do not have those numbers available. What I
can tell you though is we are dedicated to seeking to those
individuals that fall under our priorities. So the fugitive
operation teams and the criminal alien teams are out looking
for them. So I can tell you we expend a lot more resources, we
expend more money looking for somebody out in the public when
they could have been apprehended in a jail.
Mr. Dent. And then finally, and then I will end, obviously
this is clearly a major threat to public safety, as you have
indicated. And it is alarming that the administration continues
to stand by idly while criminal aliens are being set free in
our communities. Does the administration plan to take any
action against these jurisdictions, the 22 or so?
Mr. Ragsdale. We would obviously, that is much greater than
a DHS decision. We would obviously have to work with the
Department of Justice. There is a whole range of issues, Tenth
Amendment issues, some federalism issues that they are
attending here. I think as Mr. Homan points out from our
purpose, you know, we would like to have folks partner with us.
We do think we support public safety and border security
through our enforcement programs. And you know, we would have
to sort of defer to the Department of Justice on the litigating
position.
Mr. Dent. Thank you. At this time I am going to recognize
Mr. Cuellar for five minutes.
Mr. Cuellar. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And again,
to all of you, I appreciate what your men and women do. And I
appreciate all of the good work. And if you see my good friend
John Morton, please say hello to Mr. Morton.
Let me just follow up on what the chairman just mentioned.
Can you provide us a list of, well let me ask you, do you have
any counties in the State of Texas that are not honoring the
detainers? And if you have a list in Texas, I would like to see
that list. And I assume the state, because you mentioned some,
I believe there are some states that do not honor it. But I
assume the State of Texas does honor it, number one?
Mr. Ragsdale. I think we have great partners in Texas.
Mr. Cuellar. Okay. Any----
Mr. Homan. I am not aware of any jurisdiction in Texas
that----
Mr. Cuellar. No jurisdiction? Okay, good. The second thing
is let us talk about the AUOs, the administrative
uncontrollable overtime. What is the impact of this AUO
decertification on your men and women, morale, etcetera,
etcetera, etcetera?
Mr. Ragsdale. Well I am going to start and then I am going
to let Mr. Homan finish. So at ICE as well as some other places
in the Department of Justice there are several statutory
schemes that compensate our folks for overtime work. And we
certainly operate at a tempo that, law enforcement is not an
eight-hour-day. It is just that simple. What we have seen is
sort of the advent of technology, the way we sort of staff
headquarters, and just sort of as the work has evolved over the
last the last several decades that the statute that provides us
with the administrative uncontrollable overtime has not really
kept pace with operations. So we have had some concerns about
sort of the implementation of the practices around AUO. For Mr.
Edge's program there is a different program called law
enforcement availability pay. So we are in a situation that we
have a blended workforce with two different schemes, and one of
whom, particularly whether it is full time training officers,
folks at headquarters, are not, at least as we understand our
current understanding of the way AUO must be administered, were
not properly on that scheme.
It does present a challenge for us. Mr. Homan cannot run
his program at headquarters without officers in the field
holding their hand up and volunteering to come in. So we are
looking to make sure that there is a scheme that compensates
work that must get done but in a lawful and a way that follows
the law and regulation.
Mr. Homan. I can tell you the AUO pay system that was set
up over 50 years ago does not make sense anymore, not in
today's law enforcement. We are law enforcement organizations
and other law enforcement organizations have a better pay
system. This issue, as Mr. Ragsdale stated, is causing a
retention issue now. A lot of these people have been
decertified at the Academy headquarters, they want out. Either
out of the agency or out of those divisions. We cannot operate
without an academy training new officers and we cannot operate
without staff and headquarters. We need some sort of pay reform
fix. I mean, there is a lot of things floating around. I know
there is the border patrol pay reform option out there. I also
know there is thought about, you know, LEAP, and should we be
on LEAP. And our national labor union has a pay reform package
they are pushing on the Hill. So I know there is a lot of
options out there.
What I ask for, I think it is important to everybody in
this room that we get some sort of pay reform that protects the
pay for my law enforcement officers. These people that, you
know, get up everyday and strap a gun and badge to themselves
and try to uphold these laws. And this is affecting them
personally. It is affecting their families. There are officers
that this is a huge impact. And whatever morale is left is
diminishing with an issue like this being held above their
heads.
Mr. Cuellar. I hope we can work in a bipartisan way to find
a solution to the men and women. Talk to me about the influx of
unaccompanied alien children on the southwest border. I know
that at one time you had a place in Nixon, Texas that I went to
go visit. And it is sad, members, because you are talking
about, here I have got two young girls. And I could never
imagine myself to be in a situation that would send my young
kids unaccompanied, put them in the hands of [speaking foreign
language]. And we heard stories of what happened to those young
kids. But young kids, young boys and girls are sent. It is a
tragedy. But what are you all doing to address the issue? And
how are you all handling that particular situation basically
to, I guess in many ways to relieve your law enforcement from
doing that work? I mean, it has got to be addressed. But what
are your thoughts on that?
Mr. Homan. Well the unaccompanied alien children, we call
them UACs, issue is continuing to grow and it is at an all time
high. And it is causing an effect on my operations. What have
we done with the issue?
First of all, you know, I know there has been a lot of
questions. Should we legally be doing this? Are we committing
some sort of criminal conspiracy? And the answer is no. One has
got to review the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and the
Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2008, and that does
several things. Number one, it took the care and custody
responsibility for these UACs, they took it from legacy INS and
gave it to Health and Human Services Office of Refugee
Resettlement. Also it made it clear that ICE is required within
72 hours to turn these UACs over to ORR. Also if you read the
appropriations language, we are appropriated transport aliens
and it specifically delineates funds to be used for the
transportation of the UACs. So we are doing what we have to do
within the statute, within the law. And it is tying up law
enforcement officers to do those escorts. And do I think there
is a better, there is more mission critical work that my law
enforcement officers can do? Absolutely. Do my officers not
like this type of work? Many of them do not. Because it, but
right now according to statute, according to policy, according
to the appropriations, this is work we must do.
What we have done to decrease this, our involvement in
this, is we work with Health and Human Services and they have
opened up almost 2,000 more beds in Texas. That saves us money
from transporting these juveniles across the country. We have
also, HSI is, my counterpart on the other side of the table,
they have initiated investigations into these organizations
that smuggle UACs. You know, it is an unfortunate, and I was
down in the Rio Grande Valley myself, it's a sad situation and
we are out there dealing with it.
Most recently what we are doing, because I think that my
law enforcement officers need to be assigned to more mission
critical law enforcement duties, is we just sent a request for
information out try to contract some of this work out so it
does not tie up my law enforcement officers.
Mr. Cuellar. Well thank you so much. I have more questions
but we will wait until the second round. Thank you so much, Mr.
Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Dent. The chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas,
Mr. Culberson.
Mr. Culberson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. One of
the most critical things the committee has to do is have good
data in order for us to make the decisions we have to make on
allocation of these very precious resources, our taxpayers'
hard earned tax dollars. And I wanted to ask if I could, could
you tell us how many people are on the non-detained docket?
Mr. Ragsdale. So again, we would sort of defer to the
Executive Office for Immigration Review for the precise
numbers. I think it is somewhere around 360,000-some. But EOIR
in their statistical yearbook is the, sort of the repository of
that data, the official number.
Mr. Culberson. I am sorry, how many?
Mr. Ragsdale. It is a little over 360,000.
Mr. Culberson. And that is on the non-detained docket?
Mr. Ragsdale. And I am doing this from memory----
Mr. Culberson. Yes, sure. Just ball park.
Mr. Ragsdale [continuing]. So what I will say is let us, I
think it is somewhere around that number. Or that, actually
that could be the number they completed last year. So I think
it is probably better to get that number from EOIR and we will
provide that to you.
Mr. Culberson. The best number my staff was able to find on
the non-detained docket was estimated to be about 1.8 million
folks that have been given essentially a notice to appear. If
you have been, if you are encountered within 25 miles of the
border of course you are the responsibility of the Border
Patrol. And if you are encountered inside the country you are
the responsibility of ICE. And those folks that have been
picked up inside the country or have been detained by some
other law enforcement agency and brought to your attention,
those that have been given a notice to appear, the best numbers
my staff was able to find are about 1.8 million who are on the
non-detained docket, those that have been given a notice to
appear at some point in the future. You would not disagree with
that?
Mr. Ragsdale [continuing]. I will give you that number. I
do not think that our, Mr. Homan, do you know that number off
the top of your head?
Mr. Homan. I think that is a close estimate.
Mr. Culberson. But 1.8?
Mr. Homan. Yes, sir.
Mr. Culberson. Yes, the 1.8----
Mr. Homan. I have seen 1.6 and 1.8. But again we would have
to----
Mr. Culberson. Yes, ball park. Because the point is, those
who are in alternatives to detention the number is about 25,000
according to the best numbers that we can find.
Mr. Ragsdale. Right. And that does ebb and flow----
Mr. Culberson. They ebb and flow.
Mr. Ragsdale [continuing]. Yes.
Mr. Culberson. But again, if you are looking at a
population of approximately 1.8 million people who have a
notice to appear, but only 25,000 are in an alternative to
detention, that represents about 1.4 percent are on the
alternative to detention. So that is basically somebody who has
been given a notice to appear and they actually showed up.
I remember going with, truly Henry is one of my best
friends in the world, Henry Cuellar. Remember, Henry, we were
down in Laredo and the officers were telling us that the
smugglers would come across the border and actually look for an
officer and, do you remember that? They called them a permisso
slip. And they, I want you to find the officer and say, you
know, I need my permisso slip for all my guys here. And they
would hand out the notice to appear. And I guess as far as I
could tell, a lot of those folks just make up a name. I would,
too. And hand him the permisso and those boys, they were gone,
never to be seen again.
Mr. Ragsdale. Well I think we----
Mr. Culberson. That is basically right, remember that,
Henry?
Mr. Ragsdale. Well there is some progress that has been
made here. The expansion of expedited removal does allow
Customer and Border Protection Officers and Border Patrol
Agents to order folks removed on their own, never seeing an
immigration judge. So in once sense, I mean from 2007 on, that
number has decreased.
Mr. Culberson. But to this, if we are looking at still
about only 1.4 percent, 25,000 are in alternatives to
detention. I always wondered what was wrong with those 25,000
that actually show up, you know? Can you imagine the guys that,
I mean----
Mr. Ragsdale. Well----
Mr. Culberson [continuing]. Would show up voluntarily to be
deported, or to be given an alternative to detention.
Mr. Ragsdale. If I----
Mr. Culberson. The system is just, like Judge Carter said,
badly overwhelmed. And we are all on this committee committed,
we understand there is an absolute catastrophe, humanitarian
catastrophe on the border. And again, my good friend Henry
Cuellar and I, who served, we served together in the Texas
House since '86, and Henry and I spent a lot of time together,
I spent a lot of time in his district. And it will just break
your heart to see these families. I mean, Nuevo Laredo had to
be evacuated. I mean it is still like a ghost town, isn't it,
Henry? Who wants to live down there? You cannot survive. And
your heart goes out to these folks and their families. Any of
us would do anything you can to help your kids get out of a
situation like that.
But I think Judge Carter really nailed it on the head. You
know, what we have really got to focus on, and I know, I know
that you, each of you are law enforcement officers and you are
committed to, you know, take an oath to, preserve and protect
the Constitution, and enforce the laws of the United States. I
noticed Mr. Homan that you started out as a police officer in
New York. And it is of deep concern to all of us. Because no
matter where you live in the country you expect the law
enforcement officers and the criminal, and again the law
enforcement system to protect lives and property. And the folks
that Henry represents on the border have tremendous, they
support overwhelmingly to enforce the law. It is just a matter
of public safety, safe streets, good schools, a good economy,
Laredo being the largest inland port in the United States.
And the reason I keep looking at Henry is really we are
dear, good friends. But I mean, this is an area where we really
have strong agreement. That if you just enforce the law as it
is written you are protecting the community, you are
strengthening the economy, you are making sure kids can play in
your front yard, and to us, the Homeland Security Committee, it
is our responsibility as appropriators to be sure that the law
as it is written is being enforced. And this is a big worry. If
you have got that many people on the non-detention docket, 1.6
to 1.8 million, the law is not being enforced. Whether there is
improvement or not, you have still got essentially only, what
is that? 98.6 percent of the people that are picked up are
given a notice to appear and they just vanish.
Mr. Ragsdale. Right. The only thing I would just, just to
make clear is the responsibility for managing the non-detained
docket is the Department of Justice. That is beyond our
control. We are a customer of that process.
Mr. Culberson. I know. That is my other subcommittee,
Commerce, Justice, Science. So I am helping to get ammunition
for that hearing which I look forward to with Attorney General
Holder.
Mr. Ragsdale. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Culberson. I recognize that. You guys are the ones in
the street doing the best you can to enforce the law. I
understand. And we also did give the committee, if I--wow, five
minutes goes fast. I will be back. I will be back. Thank you.
Mr. Dent. At this time I would like to recognize Ms.
Roybal-Allard for five minutes.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
apologize for being late but I have another hearing happening
at the same time.
First of all, just going back to the questioning that we
just heard, is it true also that the success rate of
alternatives to detention is over 90 percent?
Mr. Ragsdale. So it is again a blended number in the sense
that folks do not always stay. It is not an intact number in
the sense that someone could be detained, they could be placed
on alternative detention, they could come off the alternative
detention, and back on it. So it is also not, it is a blended
number year to year. So what we really need to do is make sure
that the folks that present a risk of flight are either
detained or in an alternative to detention. And folks where we
can actually get it, when there is a decision from an
immigration judge and they need to surrender to be removed,
those folks are either detained or in an alternative detention.
But as we sort of had the conversation to the extent that folks
that are still waiting for an immigration to make a decision
that may take several years, having them on even a very
inexpensive form of alternative detention is not cost
effective.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. From 2007 to 2011, nearly 200 women
reported suffering sexual abuse while in ICE custody. And
Secretary Johnson, as you know, has finalized new regulations
to reduce sexual abuse against immigrant detainees. This is a
very welcome thing and is a very critical first step towards
protecting immigrant women in detention. But the key to the
success will actually be its implementation. And this will be
especially challenging since approximately 50 percent of
detained immigrants are kept in jails and prisons that contract
with DHS. So my question is that given the fact that so much is
contracted out, I would like to know what plans are being made
to ensure that not only in the DHS facilities but also in the
contracted facilities that hold immigration detainees are, what
are the efforts that are being made to inform and to implement
and to train folks on these new regulations and procedures?
Mr. Ragsdale. So we have obviously a cross sort of office
team at ICE to implement the Prison Rape Elimination Act
regulations. Our Office of Detention Policy and Planning, and
Office of Detention Oversight will obviously work with our
enforcement and removal operations. Our detention service
managers, our contracting officers are all on notice to make
sure that folks we do business with adhere to our standards.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. But is some kind of a training, I mean,
what, actually how are you making sure that this is being
implemented and actually happening so that both with DHS and
the contract facilities they know exactly what they are
supposed to do? Is there some kind of a training? Or is it
right now just kind of oversight and hoping that everybody does
what they are supposed to do?
Mr. Ragsdale. So the regulation is effective 60 days from
the release, and obviously we will work with our folks through
a blended approach, including some training, to make sure they
meet our standards. But in most circumstances, you know, it is
a requirement for them to meet our standards.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. Okay. And----
Mr. Ragsdale. I am sure Mr. Homan agrees.
Mr. Homan. Yes, our Office of Detention Planning and
Policy, which is run by Kevin Landy, this is one of his biggest
priorities right now, to roll out that training, and to, right
now our first priorities are SPCs, our large dedicated contract
facility which holds most of our detainees. But that training
and implementation is beginning.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. Okay, great. ICE issued new detention
standards in 2011 in order to improve safety and security
conditions of confinement for detainees. However, three years
later these standards have yet to be implemented at many of the
approximately 250 facilities where ICE holds immigrants. This
raises concerns about still inadequate medical care,
insufficient hygiene supplies, limited contact visits with
family, limited outdoor recreation, and verbal abuse by jail
personnel in many facilities. What are your plans to fully
implement the 2011 standards in all of the facilities used by
ICE and the contract facilities, and what is the timeline to do
that?
Mr. Ragsdale. So we have obviously, what we have done is
sort of covered our largest detention centers first. Our SPCs,
our dedicated contract facilities, and we have sort of gone in
descending order. Sort of the next traunch, as we have sort of
done it on sort of an average daily population, I think that
number is around 200? I am looking at Mr. Homan because I am
not sure of the precise number but I think that it is around
200. So we are focusing the next sort of traunch of
implementation on folks that have, you know, they are actually
regularly doing business with us. There are some of that number
you just described that may have one or two folks over some,
you know, intermittent period of time.
As we go into negotiations with our providers there are
some folks that can meet our standards rather easily. In fact,
at almost little to no cost. There are other folks just for
brick and mortar reasons will have to make some changes that
are going to cost some money. So what I have actually asked our
Chief Financial Officer working with our ERO folks is to give
me sort of an execution plan so we know sort of, you know, what
our costs are now, what our costs would be if we need per diem
rates to meet this increased cost, and then we will see as we
attack down that list to make sure those standards get
implemented.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. Is my time up? Okay.
Mr. Dent. At this time I would like to recognize the member
from Tennessee, Mr. Fleischmann, for five minutes.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning,
gentlemen. I apologize for my late arrival. I was at another
subcommittee hearing down the hall. I am sure there has been
some discussion about the issues of detention beds so I will
not go into too much detail about the statutorily mandated
level of 34,000 beds. I would like to follow up on a discussion
we had when your agency testified before this subcommittee last
year regarding cost comparisons between detention and
alternatives to detention.
The proposed budget makes a noticeable shift toward the
latter of these in the name of cost effectiveness. Last year we
were told that the average cost per day of alien detention was
roughly $120, whereas alternatives to detention, ATDs,
purportedly cost much less per day. However, the average length
of stay for individuals in detention is much shorter than the
average time individuals spend on the non-detained docket, a
matter of days or weeks compared to a matter of years. The
extreme difference in processing times translates to much
higher total cost per individual for the use of ATDs compared
to the cost of detention by the numbers provided last year.
Mr. Homan, we had a three-part question, sir. Can you
provide with, first, the current average processing times for
individuals in detention and for individuals on the non-
detained docket? Second, the average per day cost for ATDs,
which you plan to expand the use of? And third, your estimate
of the cost of reapprehending individuals who have disappeared
while on the non-detained docket? Thank you, sir.
Mr. Homan. All of these answers are, they are hard. I mean,
the average processing time for somebody, whether in detention
or ATD, it depends on the specific case. It depends on if they,
how quick they get in front of a judge. It depends on if they
appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals, the second layer of
immigration proceedings, or if they even appeal the case to the
appellate court, I mean to the district courts. So it depends
on the specific case and how complicated those cases are. So
some of them can be in detention for a long time. It depends
how quick we can get a travel document to return that person to
their homeland.
An ATD docket, the same thing. It depends on how quick they
get in front of a judge. In some areas of the country they may
see a judge within 18 months. In some areas of the country it
could be three, four, five years. So it is really a hard
question to answer.
What I can say is the average cost of a detention bed right
now is $119.86. ATD, a blended cost is around $11 a day. So at
some point, which we figure is a little over 300 days, that ATD
becomes less effective. Because once you get over that 300, get
to 400 days, then that cost of ATD does not equate to the same
as they would have got if they would have been in detention. So
that is a hard question to answer because there are so many
variables, so many factors involved in this. I think the
overarching, what we are trying to do is put the right people
in those beds. And it is a community safety issue, as Mr.
Ragsdale says, a flight issue. And we have got a limited number
of beds, put the right people in those beds. People who are not
a danger to the community, do not have the criminal history,
and have, you know, maybe have U.S. citizen children, maybe
they have been long time residents here. They would be served
better on the non-detained docket on some form of ATD.
Mr. Fleischmann. Okay. How about the third part of that, of
reapprehending individuals, the cost?
Mr. Homan. Again, there are so many factors involved. I can
tell you it costs a lot more to seek, identify an alien in the
public than it does to have that alien in detention. I mean,
the same as I testified earlier, if we can get an alien in the
jail, that is a lot cheaper than having the fugitive operations
team spend weeks, maybe months looking for the individual in
the general public.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Carter [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. Fleischmann. Mr.
Edge, Agent Edge, we have been giving you a rest here. But let
me start first by saying I understand ICE played a considerable
role in assisting the Mexican police in bringing down the
world's most notorious drug lord, Joaquin ``El Chapo'' Guzman.
Before I ask you some questions I want to congratulate you on
your participation in that effective law enforcement activity.
We are grateful for the men and women in your force that
assisted in that. This is a very, very bad guy. I hope we can
hold on to him. He escaped once before. I would like to see him
in an American prison. But I am hoping that our Mexican allies
will do a good job of sitting on this guy. Give us a brief
sketch of what your participation was in that operation.
Mr. Edge. Well, given the nature of the investigation and
ongoing prosecution, I would prefer, sir, if we could do that
under another----
Mr. Carter. A secure situation? Okay, that is fair. But I
know we are all aware that you were actively involved in that.
And we commend you and the Mexican authorities for that take
down. It is very good.
Mr. Edge. Thank you very much. We are very proud of our
agents who participated in that investigation.
Mr. Carter. Now let us talk about the matter at hand, the
budget request. The funds included in the fiscal year 2015
request, can you maintain the same level of effort as you did
last year? Can you maintain an effective and healthy rotation
for your existing investigative teams? What are your plans for
hiring staff with the additional funds provided by Congress in
2014? How many agents and support staff will ICE be able to
bring on board with the additional funding from Congress in
2014? And can we expect to see an increase in investigative
staffing or will funds be used only to backfill attrition? I'll
stop there.
Mr. Edge. Certainly. Thank you very much for the
opportunity to answer that question. We had a record year as
far as investigative hours, well over a couple of hundred
thousand hours that we have been able to affect our border
security responsibility. And we also will find ourselves with
this year's budget being able to hire at least 24 special
agents. We also hope to be able to backfill some positions due
to attrition.
Now the challenge for us will be to sustain those positions
in the out years. But working with the Department of Homeland
Security as well as your subcommittee we look forward to making
sure that we will be able to continue some growth down the
road. Over the past couple of years we have had to watch our
pennies, so to speak, and have done a good job of that in
preparing for, you know, leaner years. As the ranking member
indicated, this is an era of limited resources. And we
certainly recognize that at HSI and have done our due diligence
to make sure that we are going to be in a good place moving
forward.
Mr. Carter. So we can get a picture of what your needs are,
describe for us the template you followed for manning an
investigative team? What are some of the support functions
critical to an investigator who has to develop a water tight
case? Compare HSI's template to the FBI, the DEA. And do you
believe investigative hours are lost because agents are
conducting administrative functions?
Mr. Edge. Well certainly with our more than 6,000 special
agents we would want all of those agents to conduct long term
transnational border related investigative work. Unfortunately
we do have a cadre of agents that do conduct administrative
tasks but those tasks are necessary for us to move forward as
an organization. We have numerous positions, for example,
intelligence analysts. Right now our ratio is 15 to one. The
ideal ratio would be nine to one for us. We require technical
enforcement officers to assist us in our investigative work.
And right now we have, we would like to get to a ratio of 50 to
one. So we are definitely, we recognize that it is great to
have special agents but it is also important for us to be able
to hire those with other expertise.
Mr. Carter. Well and your whole goal is to make your case
solid and strong. And these investigative people, these
associates that help you with these various templates are
important to this overall picture of making your case to go to
trial. We all watch the television and see what these support
personnel do to help make the case.
Mr. Edge. Absolutely. I mean, as you are well aware there
is more to an investigative effort than just one case agent
working the case.
Mr. Carter. And your goal and my goal and our goal is to
make sure that every special agent has all the tools he needs
to be the most effective special agent he or she can be.
Mr. Edge. Absolutely. And analyzing that information is
also important, too. That is why the----
Mr. Carter. Well that 50 to one ratio, and those ratios are
important for us to know so that as we look at support
personnel and so forth and make funding decisions we can try to
come up with solutions to make sure that every special
investigator is able to have the support necessary to make a
very effective case. And that is why I ask these questions.
How many more investigative hours would be possible if you
had more adequate support staff?
Mr. Edge. Well certainly if we had more adequate support
staff we could increase our hours. We had a record number of
hours this year and we certainly could better able, be in a
better place to increase our hours in the future.
Mr. Carter. And as I have told you when we have met before
in my office, I think ICE does a heck of a job. They do a heck
of a job with what they have got. And we want to reinforce it.
Both David and I want to reinforce this effort so knowing what
support staff you need, that kind of information is important
to us. And I thank you for that.
Mr. Ragsdale. Sir, if I may just add, one of the other
things they have done sort of very well, it is not simply just
about the volume of investigative hours, it is really driven by
outcomes as we look at dismantling transnational criminal
organizations as opposed to simply lower level cases. HSI has
done a very good job in terms of prioritizing that work, and we
would also like to share that with the committee in terms of,
you know, bigger cases have bigger outcomes with bigger impacts
on law enforcement.
Mr. Carter. Certainly. And we appreciate that.
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Ragsdale, I just
want to take another minute with this case we were talking
about and then turn to other matters. But I do bring up Mr.
Alfredo, not because we want to revisit that case in detail but
because of the light it might shine on some of these priorities
that you are setting, some of the discretion that you have,
some of the allegations that we hear about how enforcement
authority is being exercised. I really think it is important
for us and the American public to have a better understanding.
Mr. Alfredo, I believe, fell under your priority three,
according to the information I have, a very low priority
normally. And you said that. You said this is not a guy you
would go after in the normal course of things. It is low within
priority three. This is a previously removed alien. He was
removed 15 years ago, and has not been convicted of any crime.
Now I wonder if you could walk us through how this would
have happened, or how this seems to have happened? I would
wonder why as a passenger in a car when the driver was pulled
over for an infraction, why Mr. Alfredo would have been booked
in the first place. But he was. And supposedly information was
obtained on him that would have revealed this removal 15 years
ago. At that point, what discretion does ICE have? Would ICE at
that point have made the decision to detain or not to detain?
How is that decision related to the decision to prosecute or
not prosecute by the judicial officials? To repeat the question
I posed a while ago, how would it happen that a passenger in a
vehicle would have ended up where he has ended up?
Mr. Ragsdale. So a couple of things. First of all, you
know, every state and local law officer who stops a car by the
side of the road, we want that officer to have as much
information about who is in the vehicle, you never know who you
are going to run up against. So that is obviously, you know, a
question of identification documents. And then also by statute
ICE is required to respond to inquiries from state and local
officers, we use the LASC in Vermont to respond, and that can
be done by phone, by radio, as well as there is an automated
way to make those queries. So by statute we are required to
respond to those inquiries.
So, you know, once that gentleman's immigration history was
made apparent either ICE or Customs and Border Protection, it
would be a Border Patrol Agent, it could be someone from field
operations, could also sort of bring, you know, get an
Assistant United States Attorney on the phone to present that
case for prosecution. Under the facts as you have described
them, and again I do not know the precise facts of that case,
but someone who has been ordered removed and has reentered the
United States subsequent to being removed without the
permission of the Attorney General or the Secretary is amenable
for prosecution for a federal felony. Now----
Mr. Price. Well he could be prosecuted.
Mr. Ragsdale. As I said----
Mr. Price. You established that. Obviously that is true.
But it begs the question, doesn't it, of what kind of
discretion you have. Whether you were compelled in this case to
move forward?
Mr. Ragsdale. Right. And again, since I am not familiar
with the facts of the case----
Mr. Price. Well----
Mr. Ragsdale [continuing]. Don't know if it was an ICE case
or a CBP case. But I will just tell you that, you know, I think
that is one of the things that we, as we enter the, sort of the
immigration debate is, you know, when we find folks that have,
you know, been removed, been warned, you know, by an
immigration judge not to reenter the United States, and then we
find them again, for I think folks both from ERO, HSI, and I
will say at CBP, that is not always the most easy thing to walk
away from.
Mr. Price. I am aware that it is not. And we will leave it
at that. We may want to make sure we understand the details of
this particular case for the light that it might shed on these
broader issues. But surely something is amiss when a man,
assuming that facts that we have are correct, is separated from
his family, and shipped out of the country. That certainly is
not what the kind of guidelines that you have been working with
envisioned. Yes, sir.
Mr. Homan. Sir, if I can address our prioritization. First
of all, I did start my law enforcement career as a police
officer. And there are times when depending on the
circumstances you want to know everybody in that vehicle. It is
an officer safety issue. But talking about prioritization, what
ICE does, I have been in this game for over 30 years. You know,
I have seen the entire life cycle of illegal immigration. I
started out in the Border Patrol on the front line. I became a
special agent investigating alien smuggling organizations, and
traffic vendors. Now I am on the end of the game, I am on the
detention and removal game. So I understand immigration
enforcement. And I also understand the need for prosecutorial
discretion and clear priorities.
You know, we must operate, ICE must operate and execute a
mission within a framework provided to me, whether that is
policies, resources, money, whatever. Prioritization is
important in what we do. And my officers out in the field, my
agents out in the field who enforce these laws are doing almost
a perfect job in executing the mission that was given to them.
Last year, if you look at our removal numbers as Mr. Ragsdale
testified earlier, 98 percent of the people we removed fell
into one of the priority buckets. That is almost perfect
execution within the framework provided for us. So there is a
need for prosecutorial discretion.
I have been a law enforcement officer for 30 years and we
cannot arrest everybody, we cannot prosecute everybody, we
cannot remove everybody. It only makes sense. And two years ago
we had a record year, 409,000 removals. If you put that in
contrast with 11 million or 12 million illegal aliens in this
country, we have shown hitting on all cylinders, working within
the framework provided for us, given the resources we have
gotten, we are touching less than four percent of those people.
It is my opinion those four percent need to count. Should it be
the first 400,000 in the door, first 400,000 we encounter? I
think it would be the first 400,000 that affects community
safety. So prioritization when it comes to criminal aliens,
fugitive reentries, and recent border incidents with Border
Patrol, that is where we need to focus our prioritization. So
me, I know that is not popular amongst many people. And my old
boss had a favorite saying that 50 percent of the population do
not like what we do 100 percent of the time. But I think the
prioritization we do makes sense. I think it is the way we have
got to do business. And I think we are very successful working
within the framework that we are working within.
Mr. Price. Well I appreciate that statement. And believe
me, that has been a theme of this subcommittee for years. That
there need to be priorities set in immigration enforcement.
That we need to focus on the dangerous people, the people who
are a threat to the community who need to be out of this
country. And you know, we have had sometimes trouble on the
House floor convincing our colleagues of the legitimacy of
this. But as a matter of fact it is basic. And any prosecutor
in the country is going to exercise their discretion, and
certainly ICE needs to exercise discretion. So to the extent we
are focusing more and more sharply and more and more
effectively on the people who really pose that kind of threat
and who need to be targeted, then that is exactly the job I
think you are called on to do.
The question I am raising today I suppose is a subset of
that: how tight, how effective is this targeting? And are there
ways in which some of these anomalous cases are being pursued
that really should not be? But my intent here is to underscore
the importance of discretion and of targeting, certainly not
the contrary.
Mr. Homan. Well I would say that 98 percent falling into
priority buckets is almost perfect execution. I would say for
those cases that come up where they may be a priority
apprehension, we take a case by case consideration. The field
officers have that authority. If you have U.S. citizen kids,
you have health issues, if you have a U.S. citizen child
serving in the U.S. military, these are all factors that come
into consideration on prosecutory discretion.
Mr. Price. And they most certainly should come into
consideration. Mr. Chairman, do I have any more time to shift
to another topic? Or should I wait until the next round? I'm
out, all right. I will hang around. Thank you.
Mr. Carter. Mr. Culberson.
Mr. Culberson. Director Homan, if I could follow up on your
point? I thought I heard you say, and I want to make sure I
understood, that you only touch about four percent of the
entire population of folks that are here----
Mr. Homan. If you believe the estimate there is 11 or 12
million illegal aliens in this country and we on our best year
removed 409,000. We are removing a little less than four
percent of the reported illegal alien population.
Mr. Culberson. Okay. When you say removal, essentially
these are folks that are deported, taken out of the country?
Mr. Homan. Yes, sir.
Mr. Culberson. And do you include in those numbers of
deportations, the 400,000 that you are referring to, you are
counting, as we learned, as I learned yesterday from the
Secretary of Homeland Security, you are counting among those
folks border patrol turn backs and turn arounds?
Mr. Homan. Well----
Mr. Culberson. That is part of the 400,000 that you are
counting? President Obama said so publicly, and then yesterday
the Secretary of Homeland Security confirmed that within that
400,000 are included individuals who have been stopped by the
Border Patrol and then they are immediately put back across the
border?
Mr. Homan. There is not a yes or no to that question. Let
me explain something.
Back in 1984, I became a Border Patrol agent. I told the
president, we have always claimed removal for somebody that was
arrested by the Border Patrol, that if we transported, detail,
provided medical services, put them in front of the immigration
judge and removed.
What you are speaking about, sir, is what they call the
alien--it is called ATEP program, that we worked with the
Border Patrol on and I think it was good border enforcement
strategy. What we were doing with the Border Patrol under the
ATEP, Alien Transfer Exit Program, was that aliens that were
arrested in Texas, we would take custody of those aliens, we
would detain them and remove them to another state----
Mr. Culberson. Sure.
Mr. Homan [continuing]. Separating that alien from the
smuggling organization.
Mr. Culberson. Yeah. They are turned around, sent back
across the border.
But I mean you are--that 400,000----
Mr. Homan. We detained them----
Mr. Culberson. Yes, sir.
Mr. Homan [continuing]. And we remove them. So we have
always claimed those arrests.
Mr. Culberson. Those that are removed and put back across
the border in a completely different sector?
Mr. Homan. Yes, sir.
Mr. Culberson. But I understand from the secretary,
yesterday in the numbers that we have seen, that you are
counting among that 400,000, folks that are the put back across
the--they are basically picked up by a Border Patrol agent at
the border and returned to the other side of the border within
that sector as well.
Does that 400,000 include any of those?
Mr. Homan. No, sir. As a matter of fact----
Mr. Culberson. They have to be--the 400,000----
Mr. Homan. Yeah, we suspended the ATEP program, flying
these aliens to other states and separating them from their
organizations, because we needed to use those airframes to
increase Central American removals in Rio Grande Valley.
We are still assisting the Border Patrol in moving the
aliens from one sector to another. We do not claim those
removals because we haven't detained them. We haven't
transported them by airframe. So as that program remains,
removing them from one sector to another--we do not claim those
removals because we are not expending a mass amount of
resources to do that work.
Mr. Culberson. Okay. So the 400,000 then, those folks are
actually being----
Mr. Homan. The 409,000, approximately 54,000 of those were
in the ATEP program where we took custody by somebody arrested
by the Border Patrol. We detained them in one of our beds. We
used our transportation assets either a day or two later to
remove them to another state. My resources--my money, yes,
those removals----
Mr. Culberson. So they, then, could be put back across the
border?
Mr. Homan. Yes, sir.
Mr. Culberson. Okay. If I could also, very quickly, ask
about--because, obviously, you want to make sure that you are
focusing on the right four percent, doing your best to handle
the ones that are the most dangerous, I want to turn to
something that you said in response to Chairman Carter's
question on levels one and two, dealing with individuals who
are convicted of a State criminal offense, they are here in the
country illegally, and they serve their sentence.
How many, if you could, again, just ballpark--and we will
submit these for the record, as well, so you can give us a more
precise number--I understood you to say that essentially those
who are in level one or two category, what happens to those? I
thought I understood you to say that levels one--these are
jurisdictions honoring ICE detainers. In those jurisdictions
which honor ICE detainers--that are not honoring ICE detainers,
excuse me, what happens to those level one or two, how many are
there and what happens to them?
Mr. Homan. I don't have those numbers available. We just
started tracking, electronically tracking that. What we do for
those counties that don't honor detainers, for those
jurisdictions, we still send a detainer. Once we realize they
have an alien in custody that is removable that has been
convicted of a crime, we will still send a detainer. They may
not honor them, but we are going to continue sending detainers
so we can track what they are responding to and what they are
not responding to. Once they hit the streets--we find out they
hit the streets because they did not honor the detainer, they
released them without us there--I have to assign a fugitive
operations team or a criminal alien program team to go look for
them, which I testified earlier, presents an increase in
officer safety threat----
Mr. Culberson. Sure.
Mr. Homan [continuing]. Because once they leave the
facility, I am looking for them on the streets.
Mr. Culberson. Yeah, for all of us as the public.
And you said, I think it was 22 jurisdictions,
approximately?
Mr. Homan. Last count I believe it was 22 jurisdictions. We
are actually tracking that. We can get back to you with what we
know. Some jurisdictions don't honor detainers at all, others
limit what they do honor.
Mr. Culberson. But in those jurisdictions that don't honor
them, levels one and two are just essentially walking?
Mr. Homan. They are walking until we go out and look for
them and try to find them.
Mr. Culberson. And, of course, that is what the Secure
Communities initiative was designed to stop because it is a
real concern to all of us that these are folks who have
committed a violent crime of some sort or another. They have
obviously been deemed by the State, and a judge like Judge
Carter and a jury, dangerous enough to lock them up and they
are just gone.
What, in your opinion, sir, do we need to do to help you in
that effort?
Mr. Homan. Secure Communities was a great tool because it
gives us a virtual presence in over 4,000 jails where I don't
have the resources to have people there. But I can tell you in
more and more counties that choose to not honor our detainers
takes that efficiency away from us, takes that leverage away
from us.
I would like to see our detainers honored, of course. I
mean if we have technology, we have a virtual presence, we can
identify who these people are, I would much rather my law
enforcement officers arrest these people in a safe setting than
be out in the streets looking for them, especially for the ones
that have a significant public safety threat conviction.
Mr. Culberson. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carter. Mr. Cuellar.
Mr. Cuellar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
One statement and two questions: The first statement is I
would ask you all to ask at this last omnibus bill that we
passed, appropriation bill. There is a provision that we added
that says that every agency now for the first time, as they
make their budget requests, the funding request to Congress, in
consultation with the GAO, that they have to tie in for the
first time the request to the performance measures, so that way
we know that if we give you one dollar, that we are getting a
bang for that one dollar that we give you.
I saw your performance measures, the ones that you have up
there in performance.gov--it is part of the overall Homeland--
and some of them are good, but some of them need to be worked
out, because, as you know, we should look at what is your
mission? What are your goals and objectives? And what are the
measures that we should look at to see if we are measuring
results?
So I would ask you all to go back and anytime you want to
send anybody, we will send out with you.
Mr. Ragsdale. Sure, sir.
And we--the Department gets to submit the second
quadrennial Homeland Security review, we have done quite a bit
of work, particularly in HSI, to redo our performance measures
more on outcomes, and as well with ERO, focusing on sort of not
just the process and measures of process, but actual outcomes.
Mr. Cuellar. You are the first one to set that and I
appreciate that because we ought to be measuring outcomes and
not activity, but the results, so thank you for doing that.
My first question is: How much money does ICE get for the
ATD, the Alternative to Detention program, and have you used
all of the money from this last appropriations?
Mr. Ragsdale. It was approximately--so I don't have to
guess----
Mr. Cuellar. Because I think you all are asking for an
additional $2.6 million.
Mr. Ragsdale. It was $94 million. I think the increase for
2015 is a little over $2 million.
Mr. Cuellar. Okay. Have you all used all of it?
Mr. Ragsdale. It ebbs and flows, just like our detention
spending. You know, one of the things that we are doing in the
Alternative to Detention program----
Mr. Cuellar. But how can it be ebb and flow if you can't
detain--I think you said you need probably a hundred thousand
beds--we are at 34--so there is a big difference between that.
I mean you can use the monitors and a whole bunch of people
with that up and down.
Mr. Ragsdale. Sir, the important thing to note in there is
until we can make--in other words, an immigration judge makes a
decision--in other words, once a person is in removal
proceedings, ICE cannot make a decision to remove them, right;
we have to wait for the judge. So if someone gets a court
hearing on one day and the date is far, far away, you know,
even something as an Alternative to Detention that has a unit
cost that is very long, if you keep them on that too long, it
also sort of--well, should I say it doesn't help our execution.
We are just sort of not using our resources efficiently.
So what we try and do is as people go through that process,
take them in and out of the ATD program depending on sort of a
recalculation of flight risk. Someone may be more likely to
appear when they get an interim decision, as opposed to a final
decision. So Tom's folks, you know, take a look at that as the
case is processed.
Mr. Cuellar. I understand, and the detention beds that we
have, we have to put the more that would cause more risk to the
public, I understand that, but I would ask you to try to use
the alternatives as much as possible.
The third question is more of a curiosity. I support
comprehensive immigration reform. I support the right to
protest. I support all of those concepts and ideas, but I have
curiosity--something happened last year in my district. You
have folks who are here and they purposely--I don't think all
of them were DREAMers--but purposely, they went across the
river and by coincidence--and I said ``by coincidence'' because
they told me it was by coincidence--they came in across--they
went to the Laredo Bridge. Even one of them took a snapshot of
Gene Garza, he used to be there, and they all claim credible
fear, okay? It was a--and by the way, they were there with
their attorneys and they were being led ironically by--the
organizer was an Iranian under an asylum thing, I believe.
They went from the bridge, the ones that were able to get
out, they went straight to my congressional office to protest
and they did a sit-in. I talked to them on a videoconference,
and no matter what I said, they were there on a purpose. They
were on a mission and they kept asking, are you going to arrest
us? Arrest us. Arrest us. Arrest us. I, they wanted to be
arrested on that.
And I know that was a planned organization, a planned
protest, but I just find it odd that somebody can purposely
cross--cross the bridge; have attorneys waiting for them; claim
the credible fear--some were sent up to El Paso, but the ones
came straight to a congressional office to protest and disrupt.
They were there for a couple of days and they went up to San
Antonio and they barged in. They hide in bathrooms and they
snuck in through security and they got into my office again.
I just find it interesting that somebody who is not here
with the riot board--and I support all of this, I understand
what they were trying to do--but I just find it curious that
they can go straight--claim credible fear--and end up in a
congressional office and--I just--any thoughts on that? I guess
it is more of a question--it is more of a thoughts. I just
thought it was--and they did that to a republican member in
Arizona--I am trying to remember who it was. And I am sure they
are going to do more of it again. I know yesterday there were
several of them in McCarthy's office who were different.
You know, I am talking about crossing the bridge and all
that, but any thoughts on that?
Mr. Ragsdale. So, generally speaking, obviously someone who
has no status in the United States is making an application for
admission has no valid Visa, is not permitted to enter the
United States, then CBP would detain that person. If they find
a credible fear, that person is subject to management or
detention until Citizenship and Immigration Services makes a
decision.
For the other gentleman you described, somebody who was
already found to be an asylee, that person----
Mr. Cuellar. No, I am talking about the ones that--the
people from Mexico that claimed to be DREAMers that actually--
they went through the paperwork--one of them snapped a picture
of them there getting with their attorneys and Gene Garza and
they ended up in my office, not only in Laredo, but in San
Antonio, and one of them is a Federal building; they were able
to sneak in there.
I just find it--and I support full immigration; I support
DREAMers--but I just find it curious that how can somebody that
does all that end up in a congressional office and disrupt and
for two days they were, literally, disrupting.
Mr. Ragsdale. Well, I don't know of the precise facts. I
would agree, though, they shouldn't.
Mr. Cuellar. Well, anyway, just a thought.
Members, if you ever get one of those, call me up, I will
tell you what to do. (Laughter)
Mr. Carter. That is real--Mr. Cuellar, arrest them and put
them in jail.
Mr. Cuellar. Well, they--I won't say what they put on
blogs-- but they are a very sophisticated group of folks, the
organizers.
Mr. Carter. They are also disrupting Federal offices and
insubordination shouldn't be tolerated.
Mr. Cuellar. And I am sorry, and I asked--and I support
their right to protest, but I asked them, well, if they get
arrested, will they be sent back? You know, it was a thought,
but they said it was--it would not be considered. You all would
not consider it a--such a violation that they would be sent
off, they would just basically--in talking to some of your ICE
folks that I talked to, they said that even if they got
arrested--because they wanted to be arrested to do immediate
publicity, but ICE told me, folks that I talked to, you know,
even if we arrest them, nothing is going to happen to them.
They will just stay here in the U.S.
Mr. Ragsdale. There is challenge on that. It takes more
people to make those decisions.
Mr. Cuellar. I appreciate your thoughts.
Mr. Carter. First off, a comment, Mr. Homan, a lot of these
people who are not taking your detainers, they got jail
problems and quite honestly, we don't reimburse them as
adequately as we should from the federal level for the people
that they all--on behalf of the Federal Government--and they
get--having been there, they get upset about it. I don't think
they dishonor your detainer for any purpose against you or
agency.
I understand the Visa Security Program is a valuable
counterterrorism tool in ICE's frontline operations. Please
describe, briefly, how the program operates; tell us how many
countries the program operates in; what percentage of visas is
ICE able to screen at this time; and how many visas have been
refused because of the program to date.
Mr. Edge. Well, currently, sir, there are 20 Visa Security
Programs around the world and at each Visa Security Program
that is set up, we have special agents who are actually
assigned. They are working with their counterparts at the
Department of State and conducting the interviews of those visa
applicants. Once the applicants are interviewed, their
applications and all the information that is inherent in the
applications is vetted through the new IT solution called
Patriot, and that resides here in the United States. The
applications are fully vetted and a determination is made
whether or not a visa should be granted to the applicant who is
still in that foreign country. Currently, like I said, we have
20 posts and we ideally, down the road, would like to expand
the program and it is going pretty well.
The IT solution has made it very, very efficient for us to
get all this work done before anyone even boards a plane on
their way to the United States.
Mr. Carter. Any idea what the cost would be to expand the
program to the areas where you think you need to expand it to?
Mr. Edge. Well, based on our estimates--I will give you
some exact numbers--we would hope to expand it to----currently
we have 20 posts. We would like to expand it to at least a
total of 56 and that number, if you'll excuse me----
Mr. Ragsdale. Sir, at 1.3 per post.
Mr. Edge [continuing]. 1.3 per post.
And to open an additional 36 posts totaling 56 would be
$72.2 million.
Mr. Carter. And this whole concept is to stop the bad guys
before they get here?
Mr. Edge. That's correct, sir.
Mr. Carter. Yeah, which makes a lot of sense.
Mr. Edge. It is a valuable process, and again, the IT
solution, Patriot, has made it even more efficient because
people are denied visas before they even leave their country.
Mr. Ragsdale. Sir, just one thing to note, that is a
separate PPA, the Visa Security Program, but the automated
solution that we are working with CBP and the National
Targeting Center, as well as the Department of State, will
allow that information to be pushed to all our attache posts.
So there is obviously a blended set of an automated solution
and personnel. Because of the interviews, I mean there is some
work you can automate and there is some work that, obviously,
has to be done by an agent in person.
Mr. Carter. Yeah, but the information is shared across the
board, so if they try to go from one door to the next----
Mr. Ragsdale. We have a very useful solution; that's
correct.
Mr. Carter [continuing). You have a way to flag them. Very
good.
Mr. Price. Let me just follow up quickly on that. I'm not
sure I understood your answer in terms of the current budget
proposal. How far along toward your goal is that likely to get
you? What would it take to get there and what is the time
frame?
Mr. Edge. Currently, we have 20 visa security posts and the
current budget calls for the expansion of $37 million to expand
Patriot to all 67 HSI posts.
Mr. Price. All right. So that is in the 2015 budget
submission, that the money sufficient to do that is part of
your proposal?
Mr. Edge. If I am not mistaken, yes, sir.
Mr. Price. All right. And does that include the personnel.
Mr. Ragsdale. No, that is just the automated solution.
Mr. Edge. That is just the automated solution for Patriot.
Mr. Price. Okay. Well, that does raise the question of
whether this will be operative, even given the full funding.
Mr. Edge. Excuse me, if we are going to be able to deploy
it to the current posts that we have, we already have personnel
there, so we would be able to allocate personnel to those
posts.
Mr. Price. But you would eventually need additional
personnel to execute this?
Mr. Edge. Well, if we are going to go to the posts where we
already have special agents, we would have agents already at
those posts, so it would be kind of collateral duty for them.
Mr. Price. Uh-huh.
Mr. Ragsdale. We have a high risk list, an inventory--I
think it is 57 posts.
Mr. Edge. Correct.
Mr. Ragsdale. Of those 57 posts, we are not at all of them;
we are at approximately 20. So if we had simply gone for the
full, sort of, personnel lay down, that would obviously be a
gap of 37 places. That would be the $1.3 million.
What we have been able to automate is some of the back-end
process. So when someone goes to a Department of State
consulate officer, submits a non-immigrant visa application,
that visa application is automatically vetted, you know, by a
targeting solution. That information, under the current IT
solution, will be at least shared to the 20 visa security
posts, as well as the other posts that HSI is already at.
Mr. Price. All right. That is getting clearer. I think I am
going to ask you, though----
Mr. Ragsdale. Certainly.
Mr. Price [continuing]. To clarify for the record what you
are saying here about the equipment, the personnel, the money
that is in the budget proposal, and how far that would get you
toward being fully deployed at the posts that you are talking
about. If there is a shortfall, let us know what that is.
Okay. Let me ask you about investigations. You, of course,
do lots of investigations. As I said in my opening statement,
this is very, very important work that is often
underappreciated. You investigate across-the-border trafficking
of weapons, illicit drugs, other contraband, money laundering,
fraudulent trade practices, identity and benefit fraud, human
trafficking, and child exploitation. But despite the importance
of Homeland Security investigations, your budget doesn't
necessarily reflect that, or it appears to me that it does not.
The fiscal 2015 budget proposes a reduction of 336 on-board
FTEs, compared to the current FTE level. Funding for domestic
investigations will be cut by $27.7 million, and if you back
out all the annual adjustments for things like pay inflation
and rent, then it is really a cut of greater than that,
something like $72 million from HSI activities or 4.3 percent
off the fiscal 2014 appropriation. That $72 million, as it
turns out, is precisely the amount of the increase Congress
appropriated for HSI above the 2014 request to hire additional
personnel to investigate things like money laundering and
illegal firearms and drug trafficking and child exploitation.
So that raises the obvious question, Mr. Edge or Mr.
Ragsdale, am I correct in understanding that under the 2015
request, having hired these additional HSI agents in the
current year, we would really run the risk of turning right
around and cutting all of those net personnel gains in the next
Congress? If that is true or even approximately true, I wonder
if you could comment on the impacts this would have on HSI
investigations. I am asking about the impact of your budget
submission on your investigation capacity and how much funding
would be required in fiscal 2015 to annualize the costs for all
the new hires planned for the current year.
Mr. Edge. Well, we certainly would have our challenges in
meeting the requirements of our investigative efforts and the
budget certainly is less than our levels that we have enjoyed
in the past few years, so we would have to make some
adjustments. We would have to work smarter. We would have to
assess and prioritize extensively to determine our
capabilities.
And we have worked, as you are well aware, we are a border
security agency; we respond to the border. Drug smuggling is a
significant priority for us and it is 25 percent of our
workload. It is 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So we would
certainly find ourselves with fewer FTE, stretching ourselves a
little bit.
Mr. Price. Yes, that is what I am assuming in asking the
question, but after all, this is your budget. I mean you are
proposing this and I would think would have a little more
precise notion, at this point, of the consequences of the
request, the likely impact of the request. I think we are going
to need that.
Mr. Ragsdale. So, we sure didn't get that to you. I would
say--to use the sort of term as before--this is, I mean, making
difficult choices. You know, what the budget allows us to do is
preserve our most important resource, is our people. So we
would hope to--you know, with this budget proposal--maintain a
new class and hire some attrition.
The struggle, of course, is, and I think what we see is,
complex cases that take, you know, years to complete are
expensive. That is certainly one of the challenges. As we also
talked about, having the adequate support structure for agents.
If you look at the cost of getting a special agent on board
through an academy and equipped, they are more expensive than
some of the other positions that we have talked about.
So, you know, we certainly have those models that we talked
in terms of having adequate support personnel, but we also
recognize, that, you know, this is a challenge and we are
trying to, I want to say harmonize, you know, automated
solutions, our most important resource, our personnel, and then
general expense funding that let's us run cases and that is
sort of the balance that has been struck, which is not to say
it is a difficult or an ideal one.
Mr. Price. Well, I do think we are going to need more
information. You clearly have, from our side, a good deal of
support for these functions, for these investigations. That has
been mirrored in plus ups we have done in past years in terms
of personnel and we don't want to see that undone. But to
evaluate this, we obviously need a more precise estimate of the
impact on specific investigative areas, so we will expect that
from you before we write our bill. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Culberson [presiding]. Thank you very much, Mr. Price.
There are frequent stories of individuals who are not
eligible to attain some legal status at the time of their
arrest--at some point afterwards they either marry a U.S.
citizen or healthcare issues, U.S. citizen children after, you
know, years on the non-detained docket; thereby, they are
basically exempt from being removed. How many people do you
believe, how many cases are there like that out there that you
are aware of this? How many cases, potentially, are there out
there like that?
Mr. Ragsdale. I don't think I fully understand the
question.
Mr. Culberson. Well, that you have got folks--for example,
they are not eligible at the time they are arrested. They
later, however, either get married or have children; you know,
once a child is born in the United States, they are a citizen.
Or there is some healthcare humanitarian issue involved, so
they are no longer--they are essentially exempt from being
removed.
Have you ever encountered that? Are you familiar with folks
that fall into that category and how many are we talked about?
Mr. Homan. I wouldn't say they are exempt from being
removed. What I can say is the longer they are in the country,
the more equities they are obviously----
Mr. Culberson. On the non-detained docket.
Mr. Homan. On the non-detained docket, I can say is over a
million. You know, I don't know how many have built up
equities, but I think it makes sense that the longer they are
in the United States, the more equities they will have, whether
it is USC children, homes, jobs----
Mr. Culberson. Sure.
Mr. Homan [continuing]. And so forth, but I don't have a
number.
Mr. Culberson. Yeah, we will submit it for the record so
you can have your folks look at it. Let me also ask if you have
a shortfall, for example, you know how the committee has
estimated in order to fund the bed space that the law requires
you to maintain of 34,000, we are calculating about $119 a day.
If you run short of funds in order to detain the criminal
aliens and other mandatory detainees, do you plan to submit a
reprogramming request to the subcommittee if that is necessary?
Mr. Ragsdale. Is this for fiscal year 2014?
Mr. Culberson. Yes, sir.
Mr. Ragsdale. Yeah, at this point, what we are looking at
is some efficiencies to bring our execution in line with our
funding. We hope to be able to end the year like we did last
year at meeting that mandate.
Mr. Culberson. So you are going to try to achieve the
mandate simply through efficiencies? You would not ask the
committee in 2014 for a reprogramming request?
Mr. Ragsdale. Again, I am hopeful that we live within the
means that you have already provided to us. You know, we are
slightly over our target execution, but we will obviously--
there are a couple of efficiencies that we think we can find
and we certainly don't want to sit here, given, you know, the
dollar amount, and say we are operating perfectly.
Mr. Culberson. Okay.
Mr. Ragsdale. We are going to look at some lower-cost beds,
some of our detainee-to-staff ratio in terms of contract
guards, some of our transportation contracts. One of the big
examples of having that five-year funding, recognizing as we go
to contract partners who have to sort of rely on us year to
year on contracts, opposed to who can contract for a longer
period of time, to the extent that we lower their risks in
terms of us doing business with them, we might see better
pricing.
Mr. Culberson. Sure.
What about in 2015?
Mr. Ragsdale. 2015?
Mr. Culberson. In fiscal year 2015, would you anticipate
submitting reprogramming requests to allow you to utilize more
beds?
Mr. Ragsdale. I guess I would be reluctant to speculate
about what will happen that far ahead.
Mr. Culberson. I understand. And as long as you are looking
at efficiencies, you are going to have the president's request
that he's given us for asking the Congress to allow you to
reduce the number of beds to 30,359, which I don't think the
committee is likely to do, but I am just interested because we
would certainly be open to a reprogramming request.
Mr. Homan. If I could add to what Mr. Ragsdale said about
efficiencies, we have already done a lot of work in
efficiencies such as the Rio Grande Valley. The apprehension
rate has not dropped, but we are down to like 31,000 in the
tents right now because the efficiencies we have identified in
the Rio Grande Valley.
We are working with the Governments of Guatemala and
Honduras to get travel documents within ten days, so the ALOS,
the average length of stay, we dropped from like 30 days down
to like ten, so we are moving the beds over faster. When we are
talking about efficiencies is doing more work like that to move
the beds quicker and to get people removed quicker. As I said
earlier, we got away from the air flights, ATEP program, to add
more flights for those Central American countries that we got
travel documents for quicker. So we turn those beds over
quicker.
So that is the efficiencies Mr. Ragsdale is talking about,
is to continue to look at ways as to the taxpayers' money that
we can identify the efficiencies.
Mr. Culberson. In the Rio Grande Valley sector, though, I
see from looking at the number of folks that are prosecuted by
sector, you have only got--the most recent numbers I have seen
is there is only an 8.2 percent prosecution rate in the Rio
Grande Valley. So I would want to visit more with you about
that because I don't think you are seeing an accurate, complete
picture of how many people are actually potential customers for
you there. Because you have got 91.8 percent of the folks that
are actually apprehended suffer for consequence at all. Let me
ask, if you could, specifically-- and, Mr. Price, if you got
any follow-up, we are delighted to do it. David Price is a
dear, good friend and someone I admire immensely. I do want to
ask about Title 8, Section 1227 that talks about deportable
aliens and your obligation, the obligation of the Agency to
deport and to remove individuals who fall within these
categories.
For those jurisdictions in the country that do honor your
detainers, these folks that fall within Title 8, Section 1227,
you know, the criminal violations, aggravated felony, failure
to register as a sex offender--I mean you have got some really
dangerous, bad characters in here that you know that you all
are concerned about as law enforcement officers. In those
jurisdictions that do honor the detainers, what percentage of
the individuals that fall within this category in 1227, what
percentage of those individuals in those jurisdictions that do
honor the detainers are actually removed and deported in
compliance with the law?
Mr. Ragsdale. So 1227 is the entire universe of the class
of deportable aliens and those are aliens who were admitted
into the United States and have become deportable thereafter.
Mr. Culberson. Right. Right.
Mr. Ragsdale. So it, obviously, is going to be sort of a--
what I will say is a difficult number to calculate because you
could actually fall into several of those classes and not
necessarily be charged with every one of them.
Mr. Culberson. Oh, I understand and there are waivers and
humanitarian cases and public interest and whatnot, but that is
the Attorney General who does that.
Mr. Ragsdale. That's right.
Mr. Culberson. But the law, from your perspective, as
officers sworn to uphold the law, is nondiscretionary. The law
is mandatory from your perspective. On your part the law is
mandatory.
Mr. Ragsdale. I think that is where you end up seeing the
image where you described before of having some one point some
odd million folks in the non-detained docket.
From the DHS enforcement perspective, we are putting many,
many more people into proceedings than what you heard the
Department of Justice is able to prosecute--excuse me,
adjudicate quickly. So what we are trying to do is balance the
class of deportable aliens you see in that Chapter 1227 with
resources. Because in our appropriations line, which I think
was in there last year and it is again in the 2014 bill, that
as we execute our enforce removal mission, we are to prioritize
based on, essentially, level of criminality. So that is why,
even though every class in that book is sort of amenable to
removal, we are trying to prioritize in a way that not only
your committee has told us, but in a way that makes sense of
public safety.
Mr. Culberson. Well, of those, for example, that are
convicted of an aggravated felony----
Mr. Ragsdale. They would be level ones; they are our top
priority.
Mr. Culberson. Of those that are in these categories, the
particularly dangerous ones, in those jurisdictions that do
honor detainers, what percentage of those individuals that meet
these criteria are actually picked up, removed and deported?
Mr. Ragsdale. Sir, I think I will have to sort of give you
a little time to submit that to the record. In other words,
that is a massive number----
Mr. Culberson. Sure. I understand.
Mr. Ragsdale [continuing]. because it includes close to
4,000 jails, so I wouldn't want to sort of haphazardly----
Mr. Culberson. Yes, of course. I understand. That is why I
just want to put it in your mind. So we will submit it in
writing.
Mr. Homan. I can tell you, as Mr. Ragsdale said, that is
our top priority. So we would most certainly put them in
proceedings, and again, from then it is an immigration court
proceeding, but we will try to come up with that data for you.
Mr. Culberson. But based on what you have seen and heard,
is it 100 percent?
Mr. Ragsdale. There are certainly in some places. I mean we
have great coverage in the Bureau of Prisons systems. You know,
again, places that share with us. Certainly, the State of Texas
is another great partner.
So it sort of varies, and I think that most folks in the
law enforcement business would say, you know, anybody that
falls into the category you have identified there as an alien
felon is reasonable to be seen as a top priority.
Mr. Culberson. Accurate to say, though, that in these
categories of aggravated felons, you are not achieving 100
percent?
Mr. Ragsdale. I can't really speculate. One hundred percent
is a lofty goal, but, certainly, we want to do the best we can.
Mr. Homan. The majority of those people that come in our
custody, though, if they are a serious criminal to public
safety, that would be--especially the aggravated felons--would
be--most of them would remain in detention until--you know, we
would be detaining those people.
Mr. Culberson. Sure.
Mr. Homan. We would have to wait until the DOJ, you know,
EOIR to give us a removal order. But they certainly are our
priorities, certainly the first thing we look at, certainly we
are concentrating most of our resources on those that are a
public safety threat.
Mr. Culberson. But you rely on the Department of Justice to
actually----
Mr. Homan. In many circumstances, we have to have a removal
order from----
Mr. Culberson. Okay.
One other thing, very quickly, are you utilizing the
language, the authority the committee has encouraged you to use
in committee report to use private detention beds to contract
out to find the least expensive alternative? I know in the
state of Texas, for example, private beds typically cost about
half of what you are--you know, this $119--I know, for example,
that you can contract beds for about $63 a day in the state of
Texas.
Mr. Ragsdale. That is exactly right.
The thing is what you are seeing in that $119 number is a
fully loaded number. It includes medical care, food service,
transportation; it is a whole range of value in that $119
number. We certainly can go into the marketplace and buy beds
for less than that, but then there is a question of whether we
provide medical care, whether we contract for medical care.
Mr. Culberson. Sure.
Mr. Ragsdale. So we just need to make sure that we are
comparing apples to apples.
Mr. Culberson. Thank you very much. I genuinely appreciate
it.
These questions will be submitted into the record so you
can have an opportunity to answer them more precisely. But
above all, we want to thank you for your service to the country
and defending us and enforcing the laws of the United States.
We will do our part to make sure you have the resources you
need to do your job in a way that you know that you all want to
do.
Thank you very much, and the committee is adjourned. Thank
you.
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I N D E X
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DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY (DHS)............................ 1
Air Cargo Advanced Screening Program......................... 41
Airport Wait Times, Decreasing............................... 40
Aviation Fees................................................ 44
Biggert-Waters............................................... 55
Border Security.............................................. 50
Budget Process Reform........................................ 45
Checkpoint Security, Improving............................... 32
Coast Guard Budget Cuts' Effect on Drug Interdiction......... 28
Counterterrorism: Performance Measures....................... 38
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Officers................. 43
CBP Officers, Public-Private Partnerships.................... 53
Cybersecurity................................................ 41
Detention Beds............................................... 33
Detention Beds, Removals..................................... 48
Disaster Relief Fund......................................... 51
Domestic Nuclear Detection Office's Securing the Cities
Program.................................................... 31
Federal Air Marshals Program................................. 30
Immigration:
Catch-and-Release Policy................................. 24
Reform................................................... 46
Late Reports................................................. 45
Morale, Filling Vacancies.................................... 55
National Preparedness Grant Program.......................... 26
Opening Statement: Secretary Johnson......................... 17
Personnel Screening Programs................................. 38
Preclearance Offices......................................... 43
Screening Partnership Program................................ 37
State Department Diplomatic Security Training................ 54
Transportation Security Officers, Female..................... 31
Urban Areas Security Initiative.............................. 30
[all]