[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]



                          SECURING OUR BORDER,  
                       SAVING OUR NATIONAL PARKS 

=======================================================================

                           OVERSIGHT HEARING

                               before the

                     SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND  
                            INVESTIGATIONS

                                 of the

                     COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
                     U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                      Wednesday, October 18, 2023

                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-68

                               __________

       Printed for the use of the Committee on Natural Resources 
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
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                                   or
          Committee address: http://naturalresources.house.gov 
          
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                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
                    
53-812 PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2024 













                    
                                
                                
                     COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES

                     BRUCE WESTERMAN, AR, Chairman
                    DOUG LAMBORN, CO, Vice Chairman
                  RAUL M. GRIJALVA, AZ, Ranking Member

Doug Lamborn, CO                     Grace F. Napolitano, CA 
Robert J. Wittman, VA                Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan,   
Tom McClintock, CA                       CNMI   
Paul Gosar, AZ                       Jared Huffman, CA                   
Garret Graves, LA                    Ruben Gallego, AZ
Aumua Amata C. Radewagen, AS         Joe Neguse, CO 
Doug LaMalfa, CA                     Mike Levin, CA
Daniel Webster, FL                   Katie Porter, CA
Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, PR         Teresa Leger Fernandez, NM   
Russ Fulcher, ID                     Melanie A. Stansbury, NM 
Pete Stauber, MN                     Mary Sattler Peltola, AK
John R. Curtis, UT                   Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, NY  
Tom Tiffany, WI                      Kevin Mullin, CA 
Jerry Carl, AL                       Val T. Hoyle, OR
Matt Rosendale, MT                   Sydney Kamlager-Dove, CA
Lauren Boebert, CO                   Seth Magaziner, RI
Cliff Bentz, OR                      Nydia M. Velazquez, NY 
Jen Kiggans, VA                      Ed Case, HI     
Jim Moylan, GU                       Debbie Dingell, MI 
Wesley P. Hunt, TX                   Susie Lee, NV    
Mike Collins, GA                        
Anna Paulina Luna, FL                     
John Duarte, CA                                
Harriet M. Hageman, WY                                                    

                    Vivian Moeglein, Staff Director
                      Tom Connally, Chief Counsel
                 Lora Snyder, Democratic Staff Director
                   http://naturalresources.house.gov 
                   
                                 ------                                

              SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS

                        PAUL GOSAR, AZ, Chairman
                      MIKE COLLINS, GA, Vice Chair
                MELANIE A. STANSBURY, NM, Ranking Member

Matt Rosendale, MT                   Ed Case, HI
Wesley P. Hunt, TX                   Ruben Gallego, AZ
Mike Collins, GA                     Susie Lee, NV
Anna Paulina Luna, FL                Raul M. Grijalva, AZ, ex officio
Bruce Westerman, AR, ex officio 

                                 ------ 
                                 
                                 
                                 
                                 
                                 
                                 
                                 
                                 
                                 
                                 
                                 






                                 
                                CONTENTS

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

Hearing held on Wednesday, October 18, 2023......................     1

Statement of Members:
    Gosar, Hon. Paul, a Representative in Congress from the State 
      of Arizona.................................................     1
    Grijalva, Hon. Raul M., a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of Arizona...........................................     3
    Westerman, Hon. Bruce, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of Arkansas..........................................     5

Statement of Witnesses:
    French, Chris, Deputy Chief, National Forest System, USDA 
      Forest Service, Washington, DC.............................     6
        Prepared statement of....................................     8
        Questions submitted for the record.......................     9
    Reynolds, Michael, Deputy Director, National Park Service, 
      Department of the Interior, Washington, DC.................     9
        Prepared statement of....................................    10
    Axelrod, Julie, Director of Litigation, Center for 
      Immigration Studies, Alexandria, Virginia..................    29
        Prepared statement of....................................    31

    Jose, Hon. Verlon M., Chairman, Tohono O'odham Nation, Sells, 
      Arizona....................................................    32
        Prepared statement of....................................    34
        Questions submitted for the record.......................    38
    Nores, John, Lieutenant (Retired), Special Operations, 
      Marijuana Enforcement Team, California Department of Fish 
      and Wildlife, Morgan Hill, California......................    41
        Prepared statement of....................................    42

Additional Materials Submitted for the Record:

    Government Accountability Office, Statement for the Record...    61

    Submissions for the Record by Representative Gosar

        Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas, Statement for the 
          Record.................................................    66

    Submissions for the Record by Representative Grijalva

        Washington Post article, ``Trump's border wall has been 
          breached more than 3,000 times by smugglers, CBP 
          records show''.........................................    19
        Washington Post article, ``Biden says the border wall is 
          ineffective. Here are key things to know.''............    21
        U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Seizures at Ports of 
          Entry..................................................    23
        Center for American Progress, ``The Extremist Campaign to 
          Blame Immigrants for U.S. Environmental Problems''.....    70
        Southern Poverty Law Center, ``Center for Immigration 
          Studies''..............................................    78
        Sky Island Alliance, ``Pedestrian Traffic Highest Near 
          Roads at the U.S.-Mexico Border in Southeastern 
          Arizona''..............................................    89
        Sky Island Alliance, ``No Trash Detected on Four Federal 
          Land Units along U.S.-Mexico Border in Arizona''.......    90 
          
                                     

 
                    OVERSIGHT HEARING ON SECURING OUR  
                    BORDER, SAVING OUR NATIONAL PARKS

                              ----------                              


                      Wednesday, October 18, 2023

                     U.S. House of Representatives

              Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations

                     Committee on Natural Resources

                             Washington, DC

                              ----------                              

    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 3 p.m. in Room 
1324, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Paul Gosar 
[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Gosar, Rosendale, Collins, 
Westerman; and Grijalva.
    Also present: Representatives Ciscomani and LaMalfa.

    Dr. Gosar. The Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations 
will come to order.
    Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a 
recess of the Subcommittee at any time.
    The Subcommittee is meeting today to hear testimony on 
securing our border and saving our national parks.
    I ask unanimous consent that all Members testifying today 
be allowed to sit with the Subcommittee, give their testimony, 
and participate in the hearing from the dais.
    I ask that the gentleman, Mr. Ciscomani from Arizona; the 
gentleman from California, Mr. LaMalfa; and the gentlewoman, 
Ms. Chavez-DeRemer from Oregon, be allowed to sit with the 
Subcommittee and participate in the hearing.
    Without objection, so ordered.
    There may be others that appear, too, and we will do those 
on an individual basis.
    Under Committee Rule 4(f), any oral opening statements at 
the hearing are limited to the Chairman and the Ranking 
Minority Member. I therefore ask unanimous consent that all 
other Members' opening statements be made part of the hearing 
record if they are submitted in accordance with Committee Rule 
3(o).
    Without objection, so ordered.
    I now recognize myself for my opening statement.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. PAUL GOSAR, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS 
                   FROM THE STATE OF ARIZONA

    Dr. Gosar. Thank you to our witnesses and to the 
Administration officials for testifying before the Subcommittee 
on an issue that is very important for my constituents and, 
increasingly, for all Americans. And thank you to Chairman 
Westerman when he joins us later today for this discussion.
    We also have the Ranking Member for the Full Committee 
here, Representative Grijalva, sitting to my left, as well.
    For those living in border states, this hearing might sound 
all too familiar. Sadly, due to the incompetence of the Biden 
administration, there really is no such thing as a border 
community these days. Illegal immigration and its impacts, from 
drug cartels to human trafficking, to the increases in violent 
crimes and environmental degradation, are impacting communities 
from Arizona to New York these days, thanks to President 
Biden's irresponsible and ineffective border policies.
    President Biden has totally lost operational control of the 
border, allowing thousands of migrants, as well as those who 
wish to traffic human beings and to illicit drugs across our 
public lands. The last thing on the minds of those illegally 
crossing the border is to ``leave no trace'' attitude. There 
are well documented environmental impacts associated with 
illegal immigration, including trash accumulation, human waste, 
degradation of public lands, and destruction of critical 
habitats, and the list goes on and on.
    The environmental problems with illegal immigration have 
persisted for decades on our public lands, costing taxpayers 
millions each year to clean up the tens of thousands of pounds 
of trash and human waste littered across our public lands and 
waterways. The massive amount of trash and waste leads to 
watershed degradation, soil erosion, infrastructure damage, 
loss of local vegetation and wildlife, including endangered 
species, and can even increase the risk of wildfires.
    Meanwhile, Mexican criminal cartels are establishing 
illegal marijuana growing operations on our public lands. Not 
only are these illegal operations extremely harmful to the 
environment, they pose a grave threat to Americans who seek to 
use their public lands for recreation. The cartels are even 
trafficking people into our nation as essentially modern-day 
slaves to work these operations in our national parks, national 
forests, and other protected Federal lands.
    These same cartels are distributing the fentanyl that is 
killing our youth and some of our others, and it is crippling 
our nation, with over 100,000 Americans dying from drug 
overdoses this past year alone. Unsurprisingly, fentanyl and 
other synthetic opioids accounted for nearly 70 percent of the 
deaths. We must put an end to this national tragedy.
    President Biden has brought the nation to a breaking point 
with his reckless immigration policies. My state of Arizona has 
shouldered the burden of illegal immigration for far too long, 
and the damage to our lands and livelihoods has devastated our 
communities. Now, Democratic cities that want us to claim 
sanctuary city status for illegal immigrants are experiencing 
the same problems.
    Unfortunately, with the recent leasing of the Floyd Bennett 
Field and Gateway National Recreation Area, which is a national 
park unit, to house a flood of illegal migrants coming to the 
United States to New York City, the Biden administration has 
demonstrated that they stand ready and willing to give up our 
public lands to cover for their failed immigration policies 
that have let millions of people into our nation just this year 
alone.
    I share the concerns of many of my colleagues here on the 
Committee, that this is not a one-off incident. Instead, it 
sets a blueprint for migrant housing on public lands 
nationwide. Nowhere is safe.
    We must establish responsible immigration policies like 
those found in Republicans' H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act: 
to restrict the flow of illegal immigrants crossing our 
southern border, reduce the abuse of the asylum process, and 
ensure that America's public lands remain intact for the use 
and enjoyment of current and future generations. Otherwise, the 
migrant crisis will continue and just spiral out of control.
    I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about 
the many environmental impacts of illegal immigration on public 
land, and to the Administration officials with us here. I hope 
you came prepared, because the American people deserve answers 
for the failures of this Administration.
    I now recognize the Ranking Member for his statement, Mr. 
Grijalva.

  STATEMENT OF THE HON. RAUL M. GRIJALVA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
               CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ARIZONA

    Mr. Grijalva. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Very brief, this is 
a continuation of the hearing that we had regarding the 
airfield, and that it was going to be used for temporary 
shelter in an emergency.
    The unprecedented number of refugees and asylum seekers 
that are coming to the border is a reality. It is a 
humanitarian crisis, and it needs to be dealt with. But today's 
hearing is not about doing that. Today's hearing is about using 
this platform and this forum to continue to talk about 
immigration as perceived by the Republican Majority as the 
definitive political issue going into 2024. I realize that, and 
I think the vast number of the American people realize that, as 
well.
    What is needed to manage this humanitarian crisis is for 
the House of Representatives, in a bipartisan way, to move 
forward some common-sense pieces of legislation that begin to 
reform and deal with the reality of what we have on the border.
    No. 2, to have a supplemental that begins to deal and 
provide resources for the management of that crisis. It is not 
right, nor is it proper, that local communities bear the 
burden, financially and otherwise, for the processing, shelter, 
and transition of those seeking refuge and asylum in this 
country. And we will have plenty of time going forward to 
debate this issue in its proper place on the Floor and at the 
hearings when legislation comes up.
    But the backdrop to this whole discussion today is the fact 
that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have failed 
again to find a Speaker to lead and to make the House of 
Representatives function and govern and to have the Floor work. 
It is kind of like a Stockholm syndrome has set in. We have 
become part of the prisoners here.
    And I say that because this issue, as important as it is to 
manage this crisis, if you want to talk about security, 
fentanyl and human trafficking, let's do that. We have 
suggestions and recommendations on that. This is about 
organized, well-financed crime on both sides of the border. And 
we need to put the focus and the attention on breaking that up.
    Our history in this country, we are able to do that. It is 
not about, as some Members of this Congress have said on the 
Republican side, sending in the troops and having military 
actions inside the sovereign nation of Mexico. That is not a 
solution. That is a way to try to seek attention, politically.
    And I agree with that, and we should do that, we should 
modernize our ports of entry so that they continue to be 
economic engines for our region, but at the same time build up 
the staffing at Customs so that we can do the inspections and 
the interventions where 70 percent of unauthorized entry, be 
they drugs or people, that is where they are stopped.
    The other issue that I think is of great importance is how 
do we deal with the issue of workforce, and how do we process 
that? We are willing to sit down and talk about that. But to 
just continue to beat the political drum, what are the 
solutions? Continue the wall. It has failed. It didn't do its 
job. As much as it was ballyhooed and talked about, it has 
become political rhetoric and a political symbol. In terms of 
deterrence, it does not work.
    The other issue is, I think the Cato Institute said that 
0.2 percent of those seeking asylum had fentanyl in their 
possession, 0.2 percent, which leads one to the conclusion that 
this is organized, it is real. It is billions and billions of 
dollars, and that is where the focus needs to be.
    I say all that because everything else in terms of 
responding will happen at the hearing when we deal with the 
pieces of legislation. Today, it is about people making their 
proclamation, their political statement. My political 
statement: until this House is functional, these kind of 
hearings are not only redundant, but pointless. Once this House 
gets organized, and once we have hearings that have the 
potential to go to the Floor, then that is when the debate 
happens. And I hope that facts and I hope that science play a 
role in how we go forward.
    Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.

    Dr. Gosar. I thank the gentleman. You have to be kidding 
me. Facts? Facts are a hard thing. You are only applicable to 
the ones you want.
    This immigration process is broken. It is the way this 
Administration has actually taken care of it. They were trusted 
with it, and they allowed everything to break down. The wall 
doesn't work? Yes, walls do work. They actually do work. But 
that is what happens when you don't finish it.
    And I have to tell you----
    Mr. Grijalva. This is not a debate.
    Dr. Gosar. I just have to tell you, I am a little bit upset 
because, when you look at the process, it is out of hand. When 
you look at New York City, I went there, Raul, and so did the 
Chairman. It is out of whack. We are not going to do a NEPA, we 
are not going to do anything on a national park? That is 
outright disgusting.
    I now recognize the gentleman from Arkansas, the Chairman 
of the Full Committee, Mr. Westerman.

  STATEMENT OF THE HON. BRUCE WESTERMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
              CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ARKANSAS

    Mr. Westerman. Thank you, Chairman Gosar, and thank you to 
you gentlemen for coming here today. I love to see the 
uniforms. I have a tremendous amount of respect for you and the 
work that you and your colleagues do across the country.
    I live in Hot Springs National Park. That is what I think 
of when I think of a national park, and I am surrounded by the 
Ouachita National Forest. And I am quick to point out when we 
need to have oversight, but also quick to praise people when 
they do a good job. And the folks back at home and all across 
this country are doing a good job, and I appreciate your 
service to our country. And I think this is something that you 
would be interested in, as well, and that is the title of this 
hearing to secure our border and save our parks, or save our 
Federal lands.
    And when I think about Federal land, when I think about a 
trip we made out to Yosemite, where we did a field hearing this 
year, how beautiful that is, I think about going to the Grand 
Canyon, I think about Hot Springs National Park, but I don't 
think about what is in the photographs behind me. That is Floyd 
Bennett Field. That was last night and this morning, where 
migrant shelters are being built on National Park Service land, 
where NEPA was waived, where it was essentially declared an 
emergency to build migrant shelters on Federal land. That is 
not my vision of the national park, or the purpose of the 
national park, and I don't think it is what many Americans 
consider that to be.
    This is happening, and I think it sets a horrible 
precedent, and it is a travesty that this Administration, and I 
know this comes from much higher levels than where you all 
work, where they have pushed this through.
    But we have five national park units, not to mention other 
types of Federal lands that share space with our southern 
border. It is equally beautiful, and these areas face 
challenges that, unfortunately, are becoming increasingly 
familiar across the United States, from piles of trash to 
concerns about human trafficking. It is just not what America's 
idea was supposed to be.
    Back in September, as Chairman Gosar mentioned, he and I 
traveled to New York City to see firsthand the impacts of the 
migrant crisis on this great city. And park officials told us 
that this was happening. Well, it is happening right now, where 
they are building these shelters. When we got back to DC, the 
Committee held a hearing to investigate this abuse of the 
National Park System. We hosted local officials from both sides 
of the aisle who put politics aside to fight the 
Administration's reckless decision to lease Floyd Bennett Field 
and focus on how the migrant crisis has affected their 
communities.
    Unfortunately, the Administration has now set a terrible 
precedent to use our public lands across the country to house 
migrants. This is a place where a million people recreate a 
year: New York City, where there is limited green space, 
limited opportunities for parents to take their children to run 
and play, and now there are migrant shelters there.
    If there were ever a time for bipartisanship on Capitol 
Hill, it is now. Instead of continuing down this path, the 
Administration must wake up to the illegal immigration crisis 
and come to the table to work with Congress on securing our 
border and addressing the dangers and environmental impacts of 
our public lands.
    I have grown up in and around Federal lands. As a forester, 
I see firsthand why we have the protections in place to keep 
our public lands and waters healthy and accessible for all 
Americans. However, with record numbers of migrants crossing 
into the United States, we are seeing increasingly harmful 
impacts on the environment, including trash accumulation, 
habitat destruction, disturbance of lands and waters, and many 
other issues.
    Approximately 35 percent of the land along our southern 
border is Federal and Indian land, administered by seven 
different agencies, six of which are managed by the Department 
of the Interior and Agriculture. These are some of the most 
treasured lands and waterways in our nation. They are home to 
many unique habitats, endangered species, and host popular 
recreational activities for Americans.
    Unfortunately, the crisis is no longer contained to our 
southern border. Unmitigated illegal immigration has allowed 
for criminal cartel organizations to operate more freely in the 
United States. In addition to bringing humans and drugs across 
the border, cartels have been operating illegal marijuana-
growing operations on public lands, especially up in Northern 
California, in Mr. LaMalfa's district.
    I do again appreciate your presence here, I look forward to 
hearing your testimony, and I look forward to this Committee 
working to protect our Federal lands for all future Americans.
    I yield back.

    Mr. LaMalfa [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I 
appreciate that. Let's go ahead and move to our first panel of 
witnesses.
    We have Mr. Chris French from the National Forest System, 
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service; and we have Mr. 
Michael Reynolds, Deputy Director for Congressional External 
Relations, National Park Service, with the U.S. Department of 
the Interior.
    So, our witnesses, you know the drill. You must limit your 
oral statements to 5 minutes, but your entire statement will be 
available in the hearing record. Press the ``on'' button of 
your microphone. With the timing lights, you will see green. 
Then, at the end of the 5 minutes, it will turn red and you 
will have to complete your statement.
    All witnesses on this panel will testify before Member 
questioning. The Chair now recognizes Mr. French for 5 minutes. 
Thank you.

   STATEMENT OF CHRIS FRENCH, DEPUTY CHIEF, NATIONAL FOREST 
          SYSTEM, USDA FOREST SERVICE, WASHINGTON, DC

    Mr. French. Good afternoon, Chairman and Ranking Member 
Grijalva. My name is Chris French. I am the Deputy Chief for 
the National Forest System at the USDA Forest Service.
    I have been an employee with the Forest Service for nearly 
30 years, including work that I have spent on the Douglas 
District on the Coronado National Forest on our international 
border. I am pleased to be here to discuss the United States 
Department of Agriculture's views on border security on the 
National Forest System lands.
    As a Federal agency in service to the American people, the 
Forest Service cares for the shared natural and cultural 
resources in ways that promote lasting economic, ecological, 
and social vitality. We manage 155 national forests and 20 
national grasslands, comprising 193 million acres in 41 states 
and Puerto Rico. Our partners include land management agencies 
across all levels of government, tribes, non-profit groups, 
for-profit entities, and communities.
    Since the Agency's founding in 1905, partnerships have made 
significant contributions to our nation's natural resource 
management. These partnerships extend to our work with the 
Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, 
and the Border Patrol. The Forest Service fulfills the Agency's 
mission and provides support to Border Patrol on their mission 
to secure the nation's borders.
    Our work with Border Patrol is highly collaborative. We 
rely on each other's strengths to advance our distinct goals. 
The Forest Service has established full-time liaison positions 
with the Border Patrol for both the Tucson Sector based in 
Tucson, Arizona, and for the Spokane Sector based in Kalispell, 
Montana. The liaison positions are important for coordinating 
joint patrol efforts, facility development, environmental 
analysis, and long-term staffing needs.
    Another critical collaborative effort is the Forest Service 
membership in the Department of Homeland Security Alliance to 
Combat Transnational Threats. Forest Service law enforcement 
provides routine patrol support and assistance to Border Patrol 
when requested. Additionally, we have coordinated with Border 
Patrol on special operations that combined the limited 
resources of Forest Service law enforcement with the Border 
Patrol's substantial presence on the Coronado National Forest 
to address border management impacts.
    The national forests in the Lower 48 share a border of 
nearly 400 miles with Canada, and approximately 60 
noncontiguous miles with Mexico. The Forest Service, through 
the United States Department of Agriculture, is statutorily 
charged with managing all the National Forest System lands 
along this international border. The Forest Service shares law 
enforcement responsibility over these lands with Federal, 
state, and local partners. While it is fully recognized that 
the Department of Homeland Security has the primary mandate of 
controlling and guarding the nation's borders, Forest Service 
stewardship and law enforcement responsibilities are vital to 
assisting the Border Patrol with effectively defending national 
security, responding to terrorist threats, safeguarding human 
life, and stopping the degradation of natural and cultural 
resources on National Forest System lands.
    In 2006, the United States Department of Agriculture 
entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Department 
of Homeland Security and the Department of the Interior 
regarding cooperative national security and counter-terrorism 
efforts on Federal lands along the United States borders. Our 
collaborative work has aligned our agency priorities with these 
partners in pursuit of our shared objectives.
    This year the Border Patrol and the Forest Service entered 
into a Memorandum of Agreement to strategically align our 
collective law enforcement resources. The Forest Service will 
continue to provide Border Patrol with additional support and 
resources as appropriate and authorized.
    The Department takes very seriously the need to address 
emergencies involving human health and safety and preventing or 
minimizing environmental damage on public lands. The Department 
is committed to working with the Subcommittee and with Congress 
on all of these issues.
    Chairman and Ranking Member Grijalva, that concludes my 
statement. I would be happy to answer any questions you may 
have. Thank you.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. French follows:]
   Prepared Statement of Chris French, Deputy Chief, National Forest 
         System, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service
    Chairman Gosar, Ranking Member Stansbury, and members of the 
Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today 
to provide the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) views on border 
security on National Forest System Lands.
    As a Federal agency in service to the American people, the Forest 
Service cares for shared natural and cultural resources in ways that 
promote lasting economic, ecological, and social vitality. The agency 
manages 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands, comprising 193 
million acres in 41 states and Puerto Rico. Our partners include land 
management agencies across all levels of government, nonprofit, for-
profit entities, and communities. Since the agency's founding in 1905, 
partnerships have made significant contributions to our nation's 
natural resource management. These partnerships extend to our work with 
the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The U.S. Forest Service 
fulfills the agency's mission to sustain the health, diversity, and 
productivity of the nation's forests and grasslands and provides 
support to CBP on their mission to secure the nation's borders.
Proactive partnership management

    The U.S. Forest Service and CBP rely on each other's strengths to 
advance our very distinct goals. For example, the U.S. Forest Service 
has established full-time liaison positions with the U.S. Border Patrol 
(USBP) for both the Tucson Sector, based in Tucson, Arizona, and for 
the Spokane Sector, based in Kalispell, Montana. The liaison positions 
are important in coordinating joint patrol efforts, facility 
development, environmental analyses, and long-term staffing needs.
    U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement and Investigations (LEI) is a 
member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Alliance to 
Combat Transnational Threats, which is a multi-agency initiative. LEI 
provides routine patrol support and assistance to CBP when requested. 
Additionally, LEI has coordinated with USBP on special operations that 
combined the limited resources of LEI with USBP substantial presence on 
the Coronado National Forest to address the impacts of migration as 
well as narcotics and other drugs smuggling.
    Joint operational activities have included long-term (multiweek) 
missions targeting armed criminal activity or smuggling routes and 
activities on the National Forest. To mitigate safety risks to 
employees working in the forest, the agency takes precautions such as 
providing law enforcement escorts for management and fire suppression 
activities, while also regularly offering border awareness training.
Overview of the US Forest Service footprint and capabilities

    The national forests in the ``lower 48'' share a border of over 400 
miles with Canada and approximately 60 non-contiguous miles with 
Mexico. The U.S. Forest Service, through the USDA, is statutorily 
charged with managing all National Forest System lands along the 
international border. The U.S. Forest Service shares law enforcement 
responsibilities over these lands with federal, state, and local 
partners. While it is fully recognized that CBP has the primary mandate 
of controlling and guarding the nation's borders, U.S. Forest Service 
stewardship and law enforcement responsibilities are vital to assisting 
USBP with effectively defending national security, responding to 
terrorist threats, safeguarding human life, and stopping the 
degradation of the natural and cultural resources on National Forest 
System lands.
    In 2006, the U.S. Forest Service entered into a Memorandum of 
Understanding between DHS, the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), 
and USDA regarding cooperative national security and counterterrorism 
efforts on federal lands along the United States' borders. Our 
collaborative work has aligned our agency priorities with these 
partners in pursuit of our shared objectives.
    This year, CPB and U.S. Forest Service entered into a Memorandum of 
Agreement to strategically align CBP and U.S. Forest Service law 
enforcement resources for the purpose of providing support to CBP. The 
U.S. Forest Service will continue to provide CBP with additional 
support and resources as appropriate and authorized. The USDA takes 
very seriously the need to address emergencies involving human health 
and safety and preventing or minimizing environmental damage on public 
lands. The Department is committed to working with the Subcommittee and 
the Congress on these issues.
    Chairman Gosar and Ranking Member Stansbury, that concludes my 
statement. I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

                                 ______
                                 

   Questions Submitted for the Record to Chris French, Deputy Chief, 
                         National Forest System

Mr. French did not submit responses to the Committee by the appropriate 
deadline for inclusion in the printed record.

             Questions Submitted by Representative Grijalva
    Question 1. House Republicans' FY 2024 Interior funding bill 
proposes a $312 million cut to the U.S. Forest Service budget. How 
would such a cut impact the National Forest System's ability to manage 
illegal marijuana grow sites and other operations related to border 
security?

    Question 2. A recent report by the Government Accountability Office 
on the southern border wall's impacts to natural and cultural resources 
features the construction of a large staging area for a border fence 
near the top of a mountain in the Pajarito Mountains on the Coronado 
National Forest in Arizona. According to the Forest Service, this 
project has created an issue of silt draining down the side of the 
mountain and filling a human-made pond, threatening to eliminate the 
pond as a drinking source for cattle and wildlife. What steps are being 
taken by the Forest Service and other agencies to address this and 
prevent other erosion issues from construction along the southern 
border from occurring in the future?

                                 ______
                                 

    Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you, Mr. French. Let's now recognize Mr. 
Reynolds for 5 minutes.

 STATEMENT OF MICHAEL REYNOLDS, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, NATIONAL PARK 
      SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, WASHINGTON, DC

    Mr. Reynolds. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Grijalva, and 
members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to 
present the Department of the Interior's views about how border 
security might affect national parks.
    The National Park Service, along with the Department's 
other land management bureaus, recognizes the significant 
ecological and cultural values of the lands managed by the 
Department, including those along the United States 
international borders. And we take very seriously our 
responsibility for protecting and conserving these lands on 
behalf of the American people.
    We also work closely with the Department of Homeland 
Security, in particular the U.S. Border Patrol, who have been 
given the responsibility for securing these international 
borders. However, the Department does not have jurisdiction 
over immigration policy, and we therefore defer to Homeland 
Security regarding broader questions about immigration and 
border security policy.
    Regardless of proximity to our national borders, National 
Park Service actions are ultimately based on a commitment to 
protect and conserve resources in accordance with the law. 
Conservation, a core National Park Service mission, occurs 
regardless of the immigration status of individuals who enter 
the lands we manage.
    Our National Park System has been called ``America's best 
idea,'' because it represents the first decision by any nation 
to conserve land in this way, both for the enjoyment of it for 
the public, and also for its own sake. Our goal is to provide 
for the conservation of natural and cultural resources in our 
425 national parks, as provided by law for this and future 
generations.
    Each year, the National Park Service responds to a wide 
array of emerging challenges that include not only the impacts 
of migration, but also extreme weather events, overcrowding, 
and staffing challenges. Examples of these challenges include 
the 2021 Dixie mega-fire that impacted Lassen Volcanic National 
Park, the major flooding at Yellowstone National Park last 
year, and then the recent 1,000-year flood event at Death 
Valley National Park, and the unprecedented post-pandemic 
increase in visitation at many of our parks.
    Although the National Park Service faces many of the same 
resources and funding constraints that other Federal agencies, 
cities, towns, organizations, and businesses face across the 
country, we will continue to rise to meet the challenges, and 
work daily to sustain these remarkable places that the American 
people have entrusted to us.
    When managing lands along our international borders, the 
National Park Service, along with other bureaus, closely 
coordinates with Homeland Security agents on the ground to 
ensure that field operations are conducted in a manner that 
avoids or minimizes environmental impact on Federal lands in 
accordance with law. As part of the Biden administration's all-
of-government response to the influx of migrants and asylum 
seekers, we work with these agencies and with the Forest 
Service on a cohesive, cooperative approach to border security, 
while Congress and others work to comprehensively address 
immigration policies generally.
    We are proud of this strong working relationship, which is 
based on cooperation and mutual commitment to accomplishing our 
important agency missions.
    Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, thank you again for the 
opportunity to appear today, and I would be happy to answer any 
questions that you could have.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Reynolds follows:]
    Prepared Statement of Michael T. Reynolds, Deputy Director for 
      Congressional and External Relations, National Park Service
    Chairman Gosar, Ranking Member Stansbury, and members of the 
Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to present the Department 
of the Interior's (Department) views about how border security might 
affect national parks.
    The National Park Service (NPS), along with the Department's other 
land management bureaus, recognizes the significant ecological and 
cultural values of the lands managed by the Department, including those 
along the United States' international borders, and we take very 
seriously our responsibility for protecting and conserving these lands 
on behalf of the American people. We also work closely with the 
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in particular the U.S. Border 
Patrol, a component of Customs and Border Protection, who have been 
given the responsibility for securing these international borders. 
However, the Department does not have jurisdiction over immigration 
policy and therefore we defer to DHS regarding broader questions about 
immigration and border security policy.
    Regardless of proximity to U.S. national borders, NPS actions are 
ultimately based on a commitment to protect and conserve resources in 
accordance with the law. Conservation--a core NPS mission--occurs 
regardless of the immigration status of individuals who enter the lands 
we manage.
    Our National Park System has been called ``America's best idea'' 
because it represents the first decision by any nation to conserve land 
in this way--both for the enjoyment of the public and for its own sake. 
The goal of the National Park Service is to provide for the 
conservation of natural and cultural resources in 425 national parks as 
provided by law, for this and future generations.
    Each year the National Park Service responds to a wide array of 
emerging challenges that include not only the impacts of migration, but 
also extreme weather events, overcrowding, and staffing challenges. 
Examples of these challenges include the 2021 Dixie megafire that 
impacted Lassen Volcanic Park, the major flooding at Yellowstone 
National Park last year, the recent 1000-year flood event at Death 
Valley National Park, and the unprecedented post-pandemic increase in 
visitation at many of our parks. Although the NPS faces many of the 
same resource and funding constraints that other federal agencies, 
cities, towns, organizations, and businesses face across the country, 
we will continue to rise to meet these challenges and work daily to 
sustain these remarkable places that the American people have entrusted 
to us.
    When managing lands along our international borders, the NPS, along 
with the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 
and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, closely coordinate with DHS agents on 
the ground, to ensure that field operations are conducted in a manner 
that avoids or minimizes the environmental impact on federal lands in 
accordance with the law. As part of the Biden Administration's all-of-
government response to the influx of migrants and asylum seekers, we 
work with these agencies and with the U.S. Forest Service within the 
U.S. Department of Agriculture, on a cohesive, cooperative approach to 
border security, while Congress and others work to comprehensively 
address immigration policies generally. We are proud of the strong 
working relationship based on cooperation and a mutual commitment to 
accomplishing our important agency missions.
    Chairman Gosar, Ranking Member Stansbury, thank you again for the 
opportunity to appear before you today. I would be happy to answer any 
questions that you may have.

                                 ______
                                 

    Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you, Mr. Reynolds, for the testimony. I 
will now recognize Members for 5 minutes for questions, and I 
would like to start with our Chairman, Mr. Westerman.
    Mr. Westerman. Thank you, Mr. LaMalfa. Again, thank you to 
the witnesses for being here.
    Mr. Reynolds, I just want to get a clear answer for the 
Committee and for the American people. Do you have any plans or 
discussions ongoing regarding housing migrants at additional 
sites located in the National Park System?
    Mr. Reynolds. There is no other request for use of sites 
beyond the Floyd Bennett Field that you have mentioned, or any 
plans that I can offer or speculate on.
    Mr. Westerman. Can you assure concerned Americans that 
their national parks will not be used to house any additional 
migrants?
    Mr. Reynolds. I can assure you that we will review 
everything for a legal basis and conservation protection as job 
one.
    Mr. Westerman. On August 21, the Daily News reported that 
New York Governor Hochul stated that she had ``been in 
negotiations with the White House for months'' over the lease 
at Floyd Bennett Field, and that ``the Federal Government had 
previously taken the position that shelters cannot be built on 
Interior Department property.''
    For the record, can you please provide the Committee the 
names of the employees at the White House, Office of the 
President, Department of the Interior, and the National Park 
Service that participated in these months-long negotiations, as 
well as an explanation for what made them change their mind 
about the policy?
    Mr. Reynolds. At my level of the organization, what I can 
tell you is that we knew the state of New York approached the 
Administration. After they had done so, the Department of 
Homeland Security had visited Floyd Bennett Field, I think, 
last spring and again maybe in late summer. And when you have 
such a complex set of decisions, as well as how fast the 
humanitarian crisis seemed to be, there have been so many folks 
in the middle of this, Mr. Westerman, I am not sure there is 
one person. But I know that the state of New York approached 
the Administration. We were asked to get the job done.
    Mr. Westerman. Was there some kind of an emergency declared 
so that NEPA could be waived?
    Mr. Reynolds. My understanding is no emergency was 
declared, but there was a humanitarian crisis of some urgency.
    Mr. Westerman. Could this be a pattern in other Park 
Service lands, where there is no emergency but NEPA and ESA and 
other environmental protections could be waived?
    Mr. Reynolds. I can't speculate on what might come, but I 
would imagine that there are very few circumstances that are as 
unique as the Floyd Bennett Field situation, being in downtown 
New York.
    Mr. Westerman. In your opinion, does that follow all laws 
and regulations, to waive NEPA without an emergency 
declaration?
    Mr. Reynolds. I can say that we actually didn't waive NEPA. 
It was done under a special provision called Alternative 
Arrangements, and it is in the CFR. It is unusual. I would be 
happy to also detail that out more. We have attorneys that 
would explain and walk through the CFR steps that were used 
for----
    Mr. Westerman. How long did it take to do that process?
    Mr. Reynolds. I can't recall exactly, but it was very 
quick. I would say a matter of weeks.
    Mr. Westerman. When we were at Floyd Bennett Field we were 
told within a week it was pushed through, record time, as you 
are probably aware, for any kind of environmental analysis to 
take place, which makes it sound like somebody very high in the 
Administration said, ``Get this done.''
    What changed the Park Service's mind? According to Governor 
Hochul, initially the Park Service or Interior Department said 
we don't do things like this, but all of a sudden there was a 
change of mind.
    Mr. Reynolds. I am not privy to those negotiations, but I 
can assure you, sir, and the American people, that there is a 
basis in law for how this went about. And we have posted all of 
those things up on the nps.gov website. If you go there and 
look, there are the Director's decision memos and also the 
environmental analysis.
    Mr. Westerman. So, this could be a precedent if somebody 
wants to do something, say, in my hometown of Hot Springs 
National Park. We could just go through a less-than-a-week 
process to waive all regulations and make that happen.
    Mr. Reynolds. I think that the health and safety 
humanitarian crisis is what drove this. If those conditions 
were to exist, I think there would, obviously, be reviews. But 
again, I think this is a very unique situation that happened 
there.
    Mr. Westerman. Mr. French, at which sites are the Forest 
Service observing the most foot traffic by illegal migrants 
through the National Forest System?
    Mr. French. Generally, the most foot traffic we have is 
through the Coronado National Forest and the Cleveland National 
Forest.
    Mr. Westerman. What environmental impacts are being 
observed as a result of illegal immigration through Forest 
Service lands?
    Mr. French. There is some natural resource degradation, but 
primarily it is dumping trash.
    Mr. Westerman. Yes, I have seen a lot of that myself down 
there, and it is amazing. I think the statistics were 8 or 9 
pounds of trash per migrant. So, multiply that times a couple 
of million. That is a lot of trash to be picked up.
    I am out of time and I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you, Mr. Westerman. I will go ahead and 
recognize our Ranking Member, Mr. Grijalva, for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I was 
remiss in not thanking our witnesses.
    I appreciate you being here.
    And also, if I may, Mr. Chairman, to extend our collective 
condolences to Ranking Member Stansbury, whose mom, Bunny, 
passed away, and extend to her our condolences and our 
heartfelt sympathy.
    Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you for telling us.
    Mr. Grijalva. Mr. Reynolds, let me ask you a question. 
Organ Pipe. What percentage of the border in Organ Pipe has a 
wall on it?
    Mr. Reynolds. Let me put it to you this way, without 
percentage, all of its boundary now, except for about a half-a-
mile stretch.
    Mr. Grijalva. OK, but from what we hear in terms of what we 
know and what we continue to hear is the number of border 
crossings are increasing. It is unprecedented. It continues to 
increase.
    Why hasn't this border wall prevented migrants from 
entering the country? Has it been the deterrent that everybody 
talked about when it was being discussed?
    Mr. Reynolds. Well, sir, I will say that we have seen still 
a continuation of crossings.
    Not to deflect from you, but we are not the border or 
immigration policy or operators the way CBP is. But I can tell 
you that what we are doing is we have a great cooperative 
relationship with Homeland Security, with Mr. French and his 
colleagues in the Forest Service, and we try to mitigate and 
help manage with them the crossings as they occur.
    We have seen an uptick in certain human trafficking things, 
but we have also seen concentration of crossings at different 
areas where the road network is, things like that.
    Mr. Grijalva. Thank you, Mr. Reynolds.
    And more of a comment, I think that one of the centerpieces 
that my Republican colleagues have promoted as a solution is 
H.R. 2, Secure the Borders Act. And effectively, it is to turbo 
charge the waiver of laws in terms of the construction of the 
wall, including NEPA, which is kind of like a love-hate thing 
with NEPA here on this Committee among the Republicans. When it 
is convenient to use it as an issue, NEPA is wonderful. When it 
is in the way of a mine or an extraction or a drill, then it is 
absolutely awful and we have to get rid of it.
    And I mentioned the partnerships that we have in 
communities, I think there is a potential with H.R. 2 of the 
financial burden falling on local communities all across the 
Southwest because what this does is effectively cuts programs 
and it cuts the funding and the resources for those programs.
    It ends asylum entirely as a concept and as a legal 
responsibility in this country and internationally. And it 
doesn't deal with the root cause. It doesn't deal with the 
crisis that we are seeing globally. It doesn't deal with the 
demographic change of those folks coming up here and families 
seeking asylum. It is not the people running from Border Patrol 
and trying to hide to get here. It is people that are turning 
themselves in. And it is a different phenomenon, and from 
talking to Border Patrol agents and the Chief in the Tucson 
sector, it is a phenomenon that is unprecedented.
    So, as these demands increase, and the only alternative out 
there being promoted by the Republican Majority is H.R. 2, 
which shifts the burden to local communities, ends all the 
partnerships, cuts funding to this area, and mandates an end to 
asylum and refugee laws as we know them and we have known them 
historically.
    So, I think that the debate is important, but I think 
central to that are the things that respond to the needs on the 
border. And I said it earlier: (1) providing the resources with 
the supplemental that continues to deal and manage the 
humanitarian crisis; (2) to deal with security and refocus and 
re-energize and resource that effort to break what is 
syndicates and organized crime; and (3) to properly staff our 
Park Service so that they are able to provide not only the 
coordination with Homeland Security that Mr. Reynolds 
mentioned, but also for the safety and security of our 
visitors, and that visitorship has ticked up across the 
country.
    Those are discussion points that I think there is common 
and middle ground on. But to say that H.R. 2 is the panacea and 
fundamentally will not solve the issue, neither will a wall, I 
think we are missing the target. The target is not only the 
security of the border, but managing what is an unprecedented 
humanitarian crisis before us.
    With that, I yield back because I have no more questions.
    Mr. LaMalfa. All right, thank you, Ranking Member Grijalva. 
I will turn now to Mr. Rosendale from Montana for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Rosendale. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. 
Chairman, I will tell you that walls do work. We see them 
around yards, we see them around communities, and we see them 
around countries. And walls do work. When you have an 
incomplete wall, when you have construction that has not been 
concluded, then you certainly have gaps and areas where folks 
can go around those walls. And therein is where we have our 
problem.
    Mr. Reynolds, what measures has the National Park Service 
taken to combat illegal marijuana cultivation within the 
national parks, and what successes have been achieved so far?
    Mr. Reynolds. Yes, hello, Mr. Rosendale. This is a pretty 
active, cooperative venture that we do, again, with our 
colleagues in the Forest Service, in particular in Western 
parks, as well as state and local sheriff, folks like that.
    We are continuously finding, mapping, doing intel, finding 
these places. I can tell you from an experience I had in 
Yosemite, we would helicopter these things out if we could. We 
deal with poisons that are left behind. And others have 
mentioned there are cartels, so there is danger to the hiking 
public and things like that. So, we are very, very serious 
about it. We don't do it alone, and we ask all of our partners, 
state and local, Federal, to----
    Mr. Rosendale. Do you have any kind of numbers as far as 
the amount of area that you have been able to remove these 
cultivated plants from, or the number of plants, or anything 
like that, and how that trajectory has looked over the last 5 
years or so?
    Mr. Reynolds. I know we will have those numbers, and I will 
get those to you very quickly, but I don't have them handy in 
front of me, Mr. Rosendale.
    Mr. Rosendale. Very good, very good. Can you provide 
statistics on the number of illegal marijuana growers 
discovered within the national parks since the start of the 
Biden administration in 2021?
    If you don't have those, if you can include that with the 
balance of information.
    Mr. Reynolds. We will do that. I am sorry I wasn't prepared 
for that, but we will get it to you right away.
    Mr. Rosendale. That is OK, thank you. Could you describe 
the coordination process between the National Park Service and 
the Department of Homeland Security with regard to the border 
crossings in national parks situated near the U.S.-Canada 
border, such as Glacier National Park?
    Mr. Reynolds. Yes, we definitely work with the Border 
Patrol folks, just as we do on the southern border. We are not 
aware, nor are there reports when we looked into this this week 
about problems at Glacier. But there is a vigilance to it, and 
a cooperative venture just like the southern border. It is much 
like Mr. French described. There is the different stationing of 
our law enforcement folks, along with CBT. We let them do the 
immigration work, and we follow up on resource damage or 
humanitarian help and aid as they ask.
    Mr. Rosendale. Have you seen any type of an increase over 
the last 3 years since the Biden administration has taken over?
    Mr. Reynolds. Not in the northern boundary. We haven't seen 
much of an increase at all.
    Mr. Rosendale. That natural barrier called climate seems to 
be helping us a lot up there on the northern border.
    One thing that I am really concerned with, we had a hearing 
here 2 weeks ago about the Floyd Bennett Field, the national 
park up there in New York. And it was very telling to me to 
have City Council members who were sitting here, bipartisan, 
Republicans, Democrats, talking about the problems that 
building that facility would pose on their community, not only 
from a safety aspect, but from a lack of infrastructure aspect, 
and then from what it was going to do to their local economy of 
having this population of young males there with not a lot to 
do, and to be able to just wander around.
    What bothered me is, in addition to that, was the fact that 
we were going to be taking one of our national parks, something 
that, quite frankly, all taxpayers have an investment in, we 
invest in those properties by keeping the infrastructure up, it 
is an investment in the country because it doesn't have a tax 
base, so we are literally subsidizing those areas, and then to 
have people located there for extended periods of time, a year, 
2 years, we don't really have a deadline, a proposed deadline 
on their occupation, if you will, when an American citizen is 
only allowed to stay there for 14 days at a time.
    Do you have any kind of opinion about the impact of long-
term relocation of illegal immigrants on the National Park 
System?
    Mr. Reynolds. I am not an immigration expert at all. We 
leave that to the Department of Homeland Security, as well as, 
in this case the city----
    Mr. Rosendale. Let's leave the immigration end of it out. A 
long-term occupation of a population of individuals in the 
national park.
    Mr. Reynolds. In this case, which is listed publicly, we 
have a lease for this situation. In other words, the property, 
1,300 acres is what makes Floyd Bennett Field. About 20 acres 
have been leased to the city. The lease requires them to 
improve and benefit the park through various projects, so it 
totals somewhere between $12 to $14 million for those projects. 
So, in this case there is a very, very carefully thought-
through plan on the runways where the camp is, and trying to 
maintain and keep open everything that Floyd Bennett Field has.
    We keep an eye on this. We will keep watching it.
    Mr. Rosendale. OK. That is all the data about what is 
actually going to happen. And we know what is going to happen. 
What I am trying to determine is what is the impact on that 
facility, as opposed to the people that had been going there 
before.
    I am sorry, Mr. Chair. I see that I did go over my time. I 
will yield back.
    Dr. Gosar [presiding]. Yes, we will let the witness answer.
    Mr. Reynolds. Yes. The short answer, Congressman Rosendale, 
is it is a very defined area on a tarmac, on a runway, a 
historic runway. And we have tried to avoid all the heavy use 
areas of Floyd Bennett Field.
    Dr. Gosar. I will have follow-ups for you, just in case.
    Mr. LaMalfa from California is recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you, Chairman Gosar, I appreciate it, 
and to our witnesses for being here.
    So, there are a lot of facets to this issue here. I mean, 
we have, so far this year, approximately 2.8 million, they call 
them `encounters of illegal immigration', at our border, and 
only about 230,000 this year have been deported is the stats 
that I have. So, we can see that, when we are using our 
national parks, I suppose, as a temporary landing zone for 
folks like this, maybe that would be a discussion if the border 
was controlled, and you would have a finite number of people 
already in country, but it is ever expanding. We reach a new 
milestone every month of people coming into this country. And 
it looks unstoppable presently.
    So, as we also see it come in another direction with more 
expansions of wilderness areas and monument areas, there is 
going to be less and less park land available to people to 
enjoy the great outdoors if it is coming from both ends with 
illegal immigration on those lands and then less access to the 
other lands. So indeed, it makes me wonder how temporary are 
these thoughts of housing people in these places, and what term 
would that look like, then what do you do at the end of that 
term.
    But what I want to drill down to is something that Chairman 
Westerman touched on as well in my Northern California 
district. In Siskiyou County, for example, which is about 700 
miles from the Mexican border, the illegal marijuana grows are 
just vast. Many, many hundreds of greenhouses are there. And 
the efforts of Sheriff LaRue up there, and many allies there 
have been valiant, but it is overwhelming when we need more 
help from the Federal Government to help take care of their 
lands, as well as be a part of where it is happening on the 
private lands on those areas. It is overwhelming to have these 
cartels. California, of course, being a border state, it is not 
going to slow down very much. Interstate 5 is a pipeline for so 
many things, including that.
    The Forest Service owns about 45 percent of the Federal 
land in the area, BLM 33 percent, National Park Service has 
about 16.
    So, the explosion of these marijuana grows with cartels, 
the illegal chemicals that farmers can't even use in this 
country, not even produced here, are polluting the soil and the 
groundwater. And there are workers there that are being 
effectively employed, so to speak, as indentured servants. 
People trafficking, the whole works.
    So, the caches of illegal weapons that have been found and 
how they are a threat to local residents just trying to live a 
good life and do their farming and ranching, threaten those 
residents, threaten our sheriff's officers and other police 
officers. It is not a good situation, even that far from the 
border. So, me and my team have been following, trying to help 
our locals, Sheriff LaRue and our district attorney, and 
others. But the invasion is so huge, we need much more help 
from the Federal Government to curb this destruction of our 
public lands and our way of life up there.
    So, how are your agencies, in partnership with BLM, working 
to support our local law enforcement who have become the de 
facto frontline responders to drug smuggling, human 
trafficking, and international criminal activity?
    Let me throw that to you, Mr. Reynolds, first.
    Mr. Reynolds. Yes. Again, let me just say, Mr. LaMalfa, we 
appreciate those comments. We want to keep working with you and 
your team on these issues. We are aware of some of the closure 
issues that have also perhaps come up with these fires.
    A big part of what we do is work with other agencies that 
have better intel. A lot of times our local sheriff department, 
our local law enforcement are really big partners in this. And, 
again, especially in the parks that you mentioned, it is Forest 
Service usually around us, almost always, sometimes BLM up in 
that part of the world. And we work as closely as we can so 
that both uniforms, if you will, are out on site whenever they 
find these places and start to remove them, document them.
    Mr. LaMalfa. Getting to maybe more of the core of the 
issue, is there any lack of Federal authority that you need for 
you to work with Homeland Security, the FBI, or other local and 
state agencies to do more, to go farther, to be able to 
enforce? Because these grows are not hidden. They are right out 
in front of everybody. Their greenhouses dot the landscape. And 
whether it is in Siskiyou County or other surrounding counties, 
whether they are illegally on Federal land, or somehow have the 
cover of legality with who owns the land, they are blowing 
through county ordinances. What more could we be doing? What 
other authorities do you need?
    Mr. Reynolds. I think the authorities are there. I can let 
Mr. French comment on any gaps that we may have. It just may be 
a staffing and a continuing prioritizing that we need to focus 
on.
    Mr. LaMalfa. Please, Mr. French. I am a little out of time 
already. It flies by here, but go ahead.
    Mr. French. No worries, thank you.
    Yes, I think it fundamentally comes down to a staffing 
issue. We work incredibly closely with our other Federal 
partners, states, counties. It is a manpower issue. In the last 
5 years, we remediated more than 330 grow sites, took out 370 
miles of pipe. It is a big issue.
    Mr. LaMalfa. We are talking thousands, thousands of grow 
sites right in people's face. So, if you are talking staffing, 
we need to partner with more agencies that already have staff. 
And we will work with you some more.
    Mr. Chairman, I appreciate it and I will yield back.
    Dr. Gosar. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from 
Arizona has a request.
    Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. Just a unanimous consent request 
to enter into the record two articles that detail why the wall 
doesn't work, in part by demonstrating that it has been 
breached so often that there are full-time welding crews down 
there to do the repairs.
    The other one is I ask unanimous consent to enter into the 
record Border Patrol's own data that shows that Fiscal Year 
2023, 90 percent of the almost 26,000 pounds of fentanyl seized 
along the Mexican border have been at the ports of entry.
    I yield back.
    Dr. Gosar. I didn't know I got you so riled up there to get 
all that in there.
    Mr. Grijalva. The facts----
    Dr. Gosar. Without objection, so ordered.

    [The information follows:]
Trump's border wall has been breached more than 3,000 times by 
smugglers, CBP records show

Washington Post, March 2, 2022 by Nick Miroff

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/03/02/trump-
border-wall-breached/

                                 *****

NACO, Arizona--Mexican smuggling gangs have sawed through new segments 
of border wall 3,272 times over the past three years, according to 
unpublished U.S. Customs and Border Protection maintenance records 
obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act.

The government spent $2.6 million to repair the breaches during the 
2019 to 2021 fiscal years, the CBP records show. While the agency has 
acknowledged that smugglers are able to hack through the new barriers 
built by the Trump administration, the maintenance records show damage 
has been more widespread than previously known, pointing to the 
structure's limitations as an impediment to illegal crossings.

Smuggling gangs typically cut the barrier with inexpensive power tools 
widely available at retail hardware stores, including angle grinders 
and demolition saws. Once the 18-to-30-foot-tall bollards are severed 
near the ground, their only remaining point of attachment is at the top 
of the structure, leaving the steel beam dangling in the air. It easily 
swings open with a push, creating a gap wide enough for people and 
narcotics to pass through.

A spokesman for CBP, Luis Miranda, said effective border security 
``requires a variety of resources and efforts, infrastructure, 
technology, and personnel.''

``No structure is impenetrable, so we will continue to work to focus 
resources on modern, effective border management measures to improve 
safety and security,'' Miranda said in a statement.

Along one 25-mile segment of new border wall between Naco and Douglas, 
Ariz., The Post recently counted 71 bollards with visible repairs and 
welds. In most instances, crews repaired the breaches using a sleeve-
like steel coupler, referred to as a ``boot,'' to patch over the hole.

Some of the bollards were marked ``BREACH'' in white lettering, and 
most had the date of their repairs scrawled just above the welded 
segments.

John Kure, a photographer and filmmaker who spent months documenting 
border wall construction, said he has seen extensive repairs along the 
wall in Arizona and California.

``I look for little slivers of light at the base of the wall,'' said 
Kure, who said he has seen sawing crews attack the bollards in broad 
daylight, sending showers of sparks.

President Donald Trump built 458 miles of new barriers, primarily in 
remote areas of New Mexico and Arizona. Trump planned to complete 
roughly 250 additional miles, but President Biden halted construction 
after taking office.

The Biden administration ``continues to call on Congress to cancel 
remaining border wall funding and instead fund smarter border security 
measures that are proven to be more effective at improving safety and 
security at the border,'' said Miranda.

Trump promised Mexico would pay for the structure, but his 
administration spent roughly $11 billion in taxpayer funds, most of 
which he diverted from Defense Department accounts. At rallies, Trump 
likened his wall to a ``Rolls-Royce,'' but he stopped claiming the 
barrier was ``impenetrable'' in 2019 after The Post reported smugglers 
had learned to saw through it with conventional power tools.

``We have a very powerful wall,'' Trump said when asked about the 
breaches. ``But no matter how powerful, you can cut through anything.''

People familiar with the smuggling crews' tactics say they typically 
work at night, covering themselves with blankets to hide the sparks and 
muffle noise. They use radios and lookouts who alert cutting crews when 
Border Patrol vehicles approach.

The wall's square bollards are six inches in diameter, with a layer of 
steel 3/16 of an inch thick. Contractors were required to fill their 
lower portions with concrete, and in some cases steel rebar, to make 
sawing more difficult.

A Post reporter encountered bollards at multiple locations that appear 
to have been left hollow.

After smuggling crews cut through, they often disguise the breaches 
with tinted putty, making it difficult for agents to recognize which 
bollards have been compromised. The smugglers can return again and 
again to the site until the damage is detected, using the breach like a 
secret entrance.

``They cut it with a fair amount of precision,'' said one person with 
detailed knowledge of the sawing tactics who, like others, spoke on the 
condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to 
reporters. ``You have to look really closely to see it.''

The CBP maintenance records show the cutting crews have been most 
active in California. The Border Patrol's El Centro sector has recorded 
the largest number of breaches with 1,867, followed by the San Diego 
sector, with 866. The records provided by CBP are a count of breaches 
along newer bollard fencing, most of which was added under Trump, not 
the older ``mesh'' style fencing that has been even easier for 
smugglers to cut through.

In March 2021 smugglers hacked through an entire segment of bollard 
fencing in the El Centro sector, creating an opening wide enough for 
two SUVs loaded with migrants to drive through. One of the vehicles 
collided soon after with a truck near Holtville, Calif., killing 13.

CBP maintenance records show the frequency of cutting activity 
increased as the Trump administration's pace of construction picked up. 
CBP recorded 891 breaches during fiscal 2019, 906 during fiscal 2020 
and 1,475 during fiscal 2021.

``Every bit of infrastructure that I've ever worked around over the 
past 26 years gets tested,'' said John Modlin, chief of the Border 
Patrol's Tucson sector. ``At some point, people will try to get past 
it.''

CBP officials say the bollard fencing remains a valuable border 
security tool when combined with surveillance technology and sufficient 
personnel. Many of the wall segments where breaching has occurred lack 
the sensors, cameras and other detection tools called for in original 
designs, they say. Once those tools are in place, agents will be able 
to respond faster, they say.

During his presidency, Trump took a personal interest in the 
construction and design elements of the border wall, seeking frequent 
progress updates from CBP officials and the U.S. Army Corps of 
Engineers. He ordered contractors to coat the steel structure in black 
paint, insisting it would make the barrier hotter to the touch and 
scald the hands of would-be climbers and cutters, according to his 
aides.

Advisers warned the paint would drive up maintenance costs and not 
significantly increase the thermal properties of the steel, but Trump 
waved them off. The Post observed several locations west of Sasabe, 
Ariz., where the wall's black paint is already peeling off, less than 
18 months after it was applied.

The Border Patrol's El Paso sector announced a ``Fence Cutter 
Initiative'' last year in partnership with Mexican prosecutors in 
Ciudad Juarez to crack down on sawing activity, primarily along an 
older segment of barrier whose wire mesh design has long made it an 
easy target.

So far the effort has led to two prosecutions in Mexico, resulting in 
modest fines but not jail time, said Gloria Chavez, chief of the El 
Paso sector.

``It's a program that just started,'' said Chavez. ``They go to court, 
and the judge tells them you either go to jail or you pay a fine. So 
they pay a fine. But it's something--compared to nothing,'' she said.

U.S. agents and ranchers who live along the border say climbing, not 
cutting, has become the most common way smugglers and migrants attempt 
to get past the barrier in areas where there are no gaps.

The smugglers build tall ladders using scrap wood or metal rebar thin 
enough to pass between the bollards. They use the ladder to go up the 
structure, then pass it through the gaps and use it again to climb down 
onto the U.S. side. They also frequently employ ropes with knots to 
climb down, and videos on social media show the most athletic climbers 
have learned to squeeze the bollards between their legs and slide down 
it like a fire pole.

Along the span between Naco and Douglas, most of the repair welds 
appear to be dated to last year, with the most recent marked November 
2021. At other locations nearby, there were pieces of rope dangling 
from the top of the barrier, dancing and snapping in the wind.

                                 ______
                                 
Biden says the border wall is ineffective. Here are key things to know.

Washington Post, October 12, 2023 by Nick Miroff

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2023/10/12/border-wall-
biden-trump-policies/

                                 *****

The Biden administration last week placed itself in the position of 
trying to explain how its decision to fast-track new construction of 
barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border--which officials called an urgent 
necessity--did not amount to a policy reversal.

After all, the president pledged during the 2020 campaign that he would 
not build ``another foot'' of the barrier. One of Biden's executive 
orders on his inauguration day brought President Donald Trump's 
signature project to a grinding halt, with the new president calling 
that effort to keep migrants from crossing into the United States a 
waste of money.

The environmental groups and others who cheered that decision were 
dismayed to see Biden officials announce Oct. 5 that they would waive 
environmental and conservation laws for the first time to install 
roughly a dozen segments totaling 17 miles of new barriers in South 
Texas.

When reporters asked Biden whether he thought border barriers were 
effective, the president flatly said ``no.'' His certainty seemed 
squarely at odds with the Department of Homeland Security's notice 
calling new border wall segments urgently needed ``to prevent unlawful 
entries into the United States.''

Does the border wall reduce illegal entry into the U.S.?

The Trump administration installed more than 450 miles of new border 
fencing during Trump's 2017-2021 term. Along most of that span, the 
project consisted of replacing low-rise barriers, designed to stop 
vehicles, with 30-foot-tall steel bars, or bollards, anchored in a 
concrete base.

At a cost of $11 billion, it was one of the most expensive federal 
infrastructure projects in American history. Despite that steel and 
concrete, illegal border crossings have soared from about 500,000 per 
year in 2020 to more than 2 million per year, the highest levels ever.

Biden's critics primarily blame his decision to reverse Trump's 
measures for the surge. In addition to halting wall construction, Biden 
reduced deportations, ended Trump's ``Remain in Mexico'' program and 
canceled agreements that allowed U.S. authorities to send some asylum 
seekers to Central America.

The fact remains that the U.S. government spent a lot of money to build 
new barriers to keep migrants out and did not get the result it wanted.

Trump said the wall would be 'impenetrable.' It's huge. Don't walls 
        work?

Trump used a lot of hyperbole to promote his pet project and was prone 
to describe the barrier as the personification of his presidency. He 
took a keen interest in its aesthetic appearance and design features, 
often urging aides to make it look as imposing as possible. He told 
supporters his wall would be ``impenetrable.'' He also said Mexico 
would pay for it (Mexico did not).

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials didn't make such claims 
and weren't surprised when criminal smuggling organizations in Mexico 
began sawing through the steel bars--using ordinary power tools--almost 
immediately.

The border wall has been hacked through thousands of times since then, 
so often that the government has had to deploy welding crews full-time 
to shore up the structural integrity of the barrier. Smugglers have 
figured out a cheaper and even easier way to defeat it, fashioning 
cheap, disposable ladders out of scrap wood or metal rebar. They send 
migrants and drug couriers up and over the top, then use ropes to lower 
them down the other side. Experienced fence-jumpers have developed a 
technique using the steel bars like fire poles, sliding down onto the 
U.S. side in seconds.

Is the border wall actually along the border?

In New Mexico, Arizona and California, the border wall is located at 
the international boundary with Mexico.

In Texas, the border is defined by the long, looping path of the Rio 
Grande, presenting a major challenge to engineers trying to build a 
steel-and-concrete fence in a straight line.

At some locations in South Texas where the Rio Grande is especially 
sinuous, the government has built the wall more than a mile from the 
international border. That has left hundreds, if not thousands, of 
acres of U.S. territory--mostly farmland--in no man's land that is 
inside the United States but outside the border wall.

The river's topography has made the structure essentially useless for 
addressing one of the most taxing challenges facing the U.S. Border 
Patrol: large groups of migrants, often parents with children, crossing 
illegally to surrender and seek humanitarian protection.

Once migrants cross the river and reach U.S. soil, they have a right to 
seek asylum under U.S. law. The Border Patrol has little choice but to 
take them into custody, even if they're on the opposite side of the 
wall.

The United States has no intention of ceding that territory or allowing 
makeshift migrant camps to form on the U.S. side of the river. So 
border agents open the gates and bring migrants through the wall by the 
busload.

If the border wall is ineffective, why do U.S. agents say they want it?

CBP officials were asking for more physical barriers long before Trump 
promised a ``big, fat, beautiful wall'' when he ran for office in 2016. 
Such projects enjoyed bipartisan support a generation ago; the Secure 
Fence Act of 2006 passed the Senate and House by large margins.

There's a big difference between how Trump and some Republicans talk 
about the wall and the more technical way CBP officials describe 
physical barriers--as a tool but not the only tool. Agents assigned to 
work in difficult conditions along the border would rather have some 
sort of barrier than nothing at all. It gives them a way to channel and 
redirect some illegal activity, control crowds and block vehicles.

Just as important, the barriers create new access roads, increasing 
agents' ability to quickly arrive to locations where smuggling and 
illegal entry are detected.

Ronald Vitiello, the former Border Patrol chief who helped develop 
plans for the wall, said the structure ``in and of itself, is 
nothing.''

``But it's an anchor for all the other things you need to do,'' 
Vitiello said, including technology such as cameras and sensors. ``It 
doesn't stop things, but it slows them down,'' he said.

And at a time of record crossings and a fair amount of border chaos, 
many agents say they are relieved to have some sort of structure in 
place to help them manage a desperate and frustrating situation.

Will this be the first time Biden has built new border wall?

No. Biden's ``pause'' on the border wall in January 2021 left 
unfinished gaps in the structure and construction materials lying 
around in the desert. DHS has been spending barrier funds appropriated 
by Congress to close some of those segments, and officials have spent 
about $1 billion on environmental remediation to reduce erosion and 
restore some of the areas torn up by bulldozers and dynamite.

In June, Biden officials announced plans to build the new segments in 
South Texas, but the controversy flared up last week when they laid out 
plans to waive more than two dozen environmental and conservation laws.

Why is Biden building the wall if he thinks the barrier is ineffective?

Biden officials say they are compelled by law because Congress 
appropriated money for these border wall segments in 2019 as part of 
the deal to end the last government shutdown. The Biden administration 
tried to reprogram those funds, but that attempt was rejected by 
lawmakers. The deadline to spend the money was Sept. 30.

CBP officials said they had no choice but to waive the environmental 
and conservation laws because it is the only way the agency has been 
able to build barriers in the past. And they insist the new segments 
will mitigate environmental impacts by using a design consisting of 18-
foot bollards on a movable base that can be easily repositioned.

The new segments, which will cost about $140 million, will be located 
outside the flood plain of the Rio Grande, nearly a mile from the 
river, and mostly positioned along existing roads, according to a CBP 
official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss 
construction plans that have not been publicly announced.

Luis Miranda, a DHS spokesman, said the administration's description of 
the barrier as an urgent necessity was a legal formality tied to 
Congress's 2019 border wall appropriation.

``It is not a statement of the Administration's policy,'' Miranda said 
in a statement. ``As a matter of policy, the Administration disagrees 
with Congress's 2019 mandate and continues to oppose further border 
wall construction.''

``Nevertheless, DHS must and will comply with the law,'' he said.

Is the wall harmful?

Dozens of migrants have been killed and hospitalized after falling from 
the structure, often with horrific spinal trauma and broken legs. 
Immigrant advocates also say the barriers force migrants toward more 
remote desert areas, contributing to more deaths from heat stroke and 
exposure. CBP reported 568 migrant deaths along the border during the 
2021 fiscal year, the most recent for which data is available--nearly 
twice the amount of the previous year.

The border wall has a devastating toll on animals too, advocates say. 
The steel bars have essentially cut in half the habitat of animal 
species, in some cases cutting off their access to water and grazing 
areas. Trail cameras set up by researchers have shown pumas, bobcats 
and other large mammals blocked and searching fruitlessly for some way 
to get through.

                                 ______
                                 

                   U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 

                                 ***** 

    Dr. Gosar. The gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Ciscomani, is 
recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Thank you, Chairman Gosar, for the 
opportunity, and members of the Subcommittee for allowing me to 
waive on and join you here today. I appreciate that.
    And thank you to our witnesses for your time and testimony.
    It has been brought to my attention, Mr. French, that you 
attended ASU. Representative Grijalva and I won't hold that 
against you in this hearing, being from Tucson and a U of A 
grad.
    Mr. French. Fair enough.
    Mr. Grijalva. Speak for yourself.
    [Laughter.]
    Mr. Ciscomani. Never mind, he talked me into it. We will 
probably give you a little bit of a hard time, but thank you, 
sir, for being here.
    I do want to give you a special thanks, Mr. French, for 
your service here in Arizona's Coronado National Forest. Thank 
you for that.
    I represent Arizona's 6th Congressional District. 
Representative Grijalva and I share the city of Tucson. My 
district sits along the southwest border, and contains a 
significant amount of Federal land. Around 39 percent of the 
state's land is federally owned and operated. Of approximately 
2,000 miles of the border, almost 40 percent is on Federal 
lands.
    I hear constantly from my constituents back home about the 
impact of the Biden administration's failed border policies, 
and I am very concerned about the impact that it is having on 
our local environment, as well.
    I will start with Mr. Reynolds here. Which sites are the 
National Park Service observing the most foot traffic by the 
illegal crossings through the National Park System?
    Mr. Reynolds. Yes, thank you, Congressman. Of the 380-ish 
miles of boundary that I am aware of the parks touch over time, 
or over space, Organ Pipe near you in Tucson and Coronado are 
our big foot-traffic areas. But Organ Pipe probably has the 
highest.
    Mr. Ciscomani. And how is the National Park Service working 
with law enforcement to shut down these pathways and mitigate 
the damage being done in the National Park System lands?
    Mr. Reynolds. We watch carefully with particularly our 
Border Patrol colleagues in those parks that we just mentioned. 
A little bit of Forest Service and BLM is down in there, as 
well. And we just try as best we can to have a seamless 
approach. If there are concerns at all that you have heard, we 
will be happy to follow up on it.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Yes, I would love that. Can you also touch a 
little bit on the cost associated with remediating National 
Park Service lands along the southern border that have been 
utilized by these crossings as they enter our nation?
    Mr. Reynolds. We carefully document the cost. There are 
special project monies for this, and I will be happy to follow 
up tomorrow with you on the budget numbers.
    Mr. Ciscomani. I would like to get that information, as 
well, so thank you.
    Mr. French, how many pounds of trash would you say have 
been picked up in the National Forest System lands located 
along the southern border this year?
    Mr. French. Along the southern border, I am not entirely 
sure. I know we have worked with the Border Patrol and 
apprehended about 40,000 individuals, but I don't have 
estimates on the amount of trash.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Are you able to at least compare the 
previous years to this year? Is that on the rise? Are they the 
same? Where are we on that?
    I mean, the crossing numbers speak for themselves. It is 
tenfold of what it used to be on a daily basis on the worst day 
before of what it is now. So, can you give me the guesstimate 
on that?
    Mr. French. I would say that in my experience in the past 
25 years, we have seen ebbs and flows of border crossings 
across multiple administrations, depending on what is 
happening. And I don't have the data right now to say whether 
or not this year is higher than previous years.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Well, the data is there from Border Patrol. 
The data is there from our border agencies of the numbers. I 
mean, in the last 1\1/2\ to 2 years we have seen about over 6 
million crossings and encounters. So, the data is there, and I 
want to get to the bottom of how this is impacting our natural 
resources, how this is impacting our natural forest land on the 
Federal side.
    And I understand you may not have specific data. I know Mr. 
Reynolds is going to follow up with me on some of these 
questions on your side, as well, which I am looking forward to 
receiving. But I am hoping that, at least anecdotally, you can 
give me some evidence of what you have been able to see.
    Mr. French. I mean, we have asked, and we didn't have any 
specific data on the amount of trash that has occurred that is 
different this year than previous years.
    Again, there were about 40,000 individuals apprehended on 
National Forest System lands this year. That is the best data 
that I can give to you. What I can tell you is that this has 
been a continuous problem for decades of us removing trash and 
other natural resource and visitor effects that occur on our 
international border along the Coronado.
    Mr. Ciscomani. I want to squeeze in one more question. I 
don't want to go over time, because I want to be invited back 
by Mr. Gosar and the Committee.
    The National Forest System, it is home for many threatened 
and endangered species. Can you describe the impacts of what is 
happening right now at the border on them and their critical 
habitat as the last question?
    Mr. French. The Coronado has the highest number of 
endangered species of any national forest across the country. 
There are some species that travel in between Mexico and the 
United States that are impacted at times, as well as water 
sources that are dependent for certain endangered species that 
are impacted in these crossings, as well.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Thank you, sir, and bear down.
    Dr. Gosar. OK, I will recognize myself for 5 minutes.
    Mr. French, how many illegal marijuana growing operations 
have you identified over the last year on Forest Service 
properties?
    Mr. French. In the 5 years previous to this year----
    Dr. Gosar. No, just this last year.
    Mr. French. I don't have the numbers for this year because 
we don't have them all put together yet. But in the last 5 
years, it has been about 330.
    Dr. Gosar. And you can get us those new numbers for the 
last year?
    Mr. French. Yes, when we get them.
    Dr. Gosar. OK. Recently, we came across reports of the 
cartels participating in human trafficking and all types of 
horrific behavior where they employ these illegal grow sites. 
What has the Forest Service found evidence of, and what are you 
currently doing to both monitor and prevent this from happening 
in the future?
    Mr. French. So there is information that has come into us 
that cartels are involved in some of the illegal grow sites 
that are occurring on national forests. The extent and scope of 
that I can't speculate on. What I can tell you is in the 
previous 5 years we have remediated 336 grow sites. About 350 
miles of irrigation pipes have been removed. About 300,000 
pounds of trash have been removed from those sites. And we 
found a lot of toxic, frankly, banned substances that have to 
be removed from those sites, as well.
    Dr. Gosar. Yes, I am just kind of curious, though. I mean, 
most of these sites have cartel bearings to them. So, when you 
find one of these, how do you go about the interdiction? How do 
you employ a law enforcement, and what other assets do you have 
for that law enforcement activity?
    Mr. French. Yes, we work very closely with other Federal 
agencies, state and local agencies, in both the monitoring of 
sites that pop up or occur on National Forest System lands and 
then for essentially addressing those.
    Dr. Gosar. Do you go through a local prosecutor? You are 
looking at warrants, I am sure. How do you work with that, the 
gentleman from California kind of hit on it. How do you work 
those assets together? Because you don't want to be put in 
harm's way, either.
    Mr. French. No, we have MOUs and agreements in place, all 
the way from local law enforcement up through other Federal 
agencies, and they work as task forces.
    Dr. Gosar. Let me ask you something. On these assets that 
we are utilizing up there in New York, I actually went there 
with the Chairman, Mr. Westerman. Tell me how you tend to 
mitigate 2,200 single men in a compound on a runway? And you 
have playing fields for kids all the way around it. How are you 
going to keep them on there?
    I mean, these are 2,200. The only person I can actually 
think of that might be able to do it is Joe Arpaio. Tell me 
more about this, because it doesn't seem right. And it also 
doesn't seem like it fulfills the NEPA process, even in an 
extensive service, if you catch my meaning.
    Mr. Reynolds. Yes, I appreciate that concern, Mr. Chairman, 
and it was a topic of conversation which I will lump, if you 
will allow me, into safety, right? The safety and management.
    We have left the management of the migrant camps to the 
city, to the folks that are leasing the property. The U.S. Park 
Police, who I know came and spoke here, at least the union, 
they are on site to protect the park resources and the normal 
operations. We asked in the lease for 24-hour protection from 
NYPD for the camp itself and all of its operations, as well as, 
to your point, anything that comes from that camp that would 
impact people or park resources.
    So, we have a full protection strategy in the lease is the 
short story.
    Dr. Gosar. Have you ever seen a success rate on any process 
like this at all?
    I mean, it is very extensive, and it is going to be almost 
impossible to keep those people on that limited site.
    Mr. Reynolds. Yes, there is a fence, there are security 
procedures. But I appreciate your concern, and I think we just 
need to keep very focused on this with those partners.
    Dr. Gosar. Now, let me also ask you. The Chairman asked 
this, and I want to reiterate it because it is that important. 
We are doing this as a benefit to the Governor and the Mayor. 
Why wouldn't that stop us from doing this as a precedent? Tell 
me why this is not going to stop right here. Doesn't it set a 
precedent? Because it does.
    Mr. Reynolds. I think the way I would look at it is there 
was a unique ask from the state of New York in this one 
location, a very unique place that had a resource area that a 
lease made sense on. I am not sure that would make sense at a 
lot of other parks. I am not aware of any other asks or any 
other interest anywhere else that we would do this.
    Dr. Gosar. OK. Well, my time is up. I am going to recognize 
the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Collins, for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Reynolds, at the end of Fiscal Year 2022, the National 
Park Service reported a $22.3 billion deferred maintenance 
backlog. How much additional money is going to be needed to 
cover the wear and tear of the housing of these migrants on 
Federal land?
    Mr. Reynolds. In this case, 100 percent of all costs are 
borne by the lease in order to mitigate the site, as well as 
the park improvements that I had a chance to mention earlier. 
So, there will be no additional cost to the Service's operating 
budget from this.
    Mr. Collins. OK. In the NPS' lease with New York City, the 
only agreement this Administration will be making to the 
housing migrants on Federal lands, or will we be seeing tent 
cities?
    I mean, what about along the GW Parkway here in DC?
    Mr. Reynolds. No, I think the GW Parkway is pretty crowded 
already. Right, sir?
    [Laughter.]
    Mr. Collins. Yes.
    Mr. Reynolds. No, again, there is no other interest, no 
other planning efforts underway. And this, again, is a unique 
area with certain criteria that the lease met.
    Mr. Collins. OK. One other thing I wanted to ask you real 
quick. Man, they have us strung out. Even though we are voting 
like crazy, we are also in hearings like crazy.
    For the issuance of the lease for the Floyd Bennett Field, 
the National Park Service refused to conduct a public process 
to listen to the residents of nearby communities in New York. 
Will you commit to providing any sort of public forum, or at 
least to listen to the concerned residents of Brooklyn and 
Queens?
    Mr. Reynolds. Yes, we have an excellent superintendent and 
team there at Gateway. They are working hard to interface with 
all of the various and numerous numbers of partners and 
concerns up there.
    Mr. Collins. Good. I look forward to coordinating with you 
and your staff on this public forum, too.
    Mr. Reynolds. Thank you.
    Mr. Collins. Mr. Chairman, oh, a different Chairman. Mr. 
Chairman, that is all I had. Thank you, and I yield back.
    Mr. Westerman [presiding]. The gentleman yields back.
    I do want to again thank the witnesses for your valuable 
testimony and for the time that you spent here today.
    The witnesses, Mr. French and Mr. Reynolds, are dismissed. 
And as soon as they are seated, I will introduce our second 
panel of witnesses.
    [Pause.]
    Mr. Westerman. I would like to welcome our second panel of 
witnesses, and I am going to yield to Ranking Member Grijalva 
to introduce one of our witnesses who hails from his district.
    Mr. Grijalva. Chairman Verlon Jose, welcome, sir. 
Congratulations to you as the Chairman of the Nation. I think 
it is a great achievement for you, but your work as Vice Chair, 
your work on education and on cultural and traditional issues 
dealing with the Tribe have been remarkable. I am glad to 
welcome you here. Thank you very much, and I look forward to 
working with you going down the road. Welcome, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Westerman. Thank you, Ranking Member Grijalva.
    I also want to introduce Ms. Julie Axelrod, who is Director 
of Litigation for the Center for Immigration Studies, and 
Lieutenant John Nores, Jr., who is a retired California 
Department of Fish and Wildlife Marijuana Enforcement Team, 
Special Operations.
    Let me remind the witnesses that under Committee Rules, you 
must limit your oral statements to 5 minutes, but your entire 
statement will appear in the hearing record.
    To begin your testimony, please press the ``on'' button on 
the microphone.
    We use timing lights. When you begin, the light will turn 
green. At the end of 5 minutes, the light will turn red, and I 
will ask you to please complete your statement.
    I will also allow all the witnesses in this panel to 
testify before Member questioning.
    The Chair now recognizes Ms. Axelrod for 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF JULIE AXELROD, DIRECTOR OF LITIGATION, CENTER FOR 
           IMMIGRATION STUDIES, ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

    Ms. Axelrod. Thank you, Chairman Westerman and members of 
the Subcommittee, for inviting me here today to discuss the 
environmental impacts of the Biden administration's immigration 
actions. I am the Director of Litigation at the Center for 
Immigration Studies, and I have spent the past few years 
litigating against the Department of Homeland Security for its 
failures to comply with NEPA.
    As discussed today and in your last hearing, the Biden 
administration bypassed their obligations under NEPA before 
placing migrant camps on Park Service land. But this failure is 
only the tip of the iceberg of this Administration's violation 
of NEPA. It started in January 2021, when the Administration 
failed to conduct NEPA on the actions that created the migrant 
crisis in the first place.
    NEPA requires Federal agencies to prepare environmental 
impact statements and hold public hearings for all major 
Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the 
human environment. It has no exceptions for immigration.
    Indeed, when one goes back and looks at the reasons NEPA 
became law, it is clear it never contemplated an exception for 
actions that bring millions of people into the country. Such 
actions, by definition, are population growth. And population 
growth was the very first concern addressed in NEPA's 
Congressional Declaration of National Environmental Policy, 
which explained that Congress had decided to pass NEPA because 
it recognized ``the profound impact of man's activity on the 
interrelations of all components of the natural environment, 
particularly the profound influences of population growth.''
    Population growth inevitably has impacts like increased 
traffic congestion, energy consumption, waste management, water 
use, encroachment on wildlife habitats, urban sprawl, carbon 
dioxide emissions, degraded soil and air quality, noise 
pollution, and loss of recreational areas: the bread and butter 
of routine NEPA analysis.
    Upon taking office, the Biden administration carried out a 
number of policies: halting construction of the border wall, 
ending Remain in Mexico, releasing border crossers into the 
interior with parole, policies described by a district judge in 
Florida as ``akin to posting a flashing `Come in, We are Open' 
sign on the southern border.'' Predictably, a flood of 
migration followed. By some estimates, 5 to 6 million foreign 
nationals have entered the country illegally since 2021.
    This Committee has rightly pointed out that the 
Administration failed to hold hearings of the National Park 
Service's lease to house 2,000 of the migrants invited in by 
the Biden administration in the Floyd Bennett Field. But all 5 
or 6 million people who crossed the border need housing and use 
resources when they get to this country, not just 2,000.
    The Administration equally had the duty to hold hearings 
before taking the actions that created the crisis, which it 
could not justify as based on an emergency, since there was no 
emergency existing before it did what it did. The idea that 
NEPA mandates the discussions of the inevitable consequences of 
population growth but not the causes of population growth turns 
the purpose of NEPA on its head, which is to encourage 
environmentally enlightened decision making before irrevocable 
action is taken.
    Even if the Administration believes opening the floodgates 
was desirable policy, NEPA requires that agencies must look 
before they leap. The Biden administration did not. The 
environmental effects of the open border will continue, and 
Americans across the interior will continue to feel the effects 
of overcrowding in their daily lives.
    The Administration's excuse for failing to conduct NEPA 
essentially is that NEPA doesn't apply to actions whose 
environmental impacts are unknown. This is nonsense. NEPA's 
purpose is to stop Federal agencies from taking major actions 
whose environmental effect they don't understand, and it is 
desperately needed. The very shock expressed in the last 
hearing at the idea that the Natural Resources Committee, of 
all places, would seek to talk about the migrant challenge is 
telling.
    A good question is why would anyone claiming to care about 
the environment be surprised open borders have profound 
environmental consequences?
    An even better question is why would an administration that 
insists it values NEPA spark an environmental crisis without 
even a modicum of NEPA compliance?
    At the same time that President Biden signed Executive 
Orders opening the border, he signed orders purporting to 
strengthen environmental protection that called for the 
reduction of greenhouse gas emissions across the country, the 
conservation of land, water, biodiversity, transitioning to a 
clean energy economy, advancing environmental justice, and 
investing in disadvantaged communities.
    Proclaiming we have only a narrow moment to avoid the most 
catastrophic impacts of climate change, President Biden 
instituted a government-wide approach to the climate crisis. 
This government-wide approach apparently excludes the 
Department of Homeland Security. Boosting illegal immigration 
by millions of people, largely economic migrants rather than 
refugees, directly prevents all of these supposedly urgent 
policy goals.
    The Committee on the Judiciary recently found only 6 
percent of those released into the United States by the Biden 
administration were even screened for credible fear. They are 
not coming to claim asylum, but to improve their standard of 
living, which means their carbon emissions decrease when they 
settle into the United States, and they fully intend to use 
resources, including land and water, while here.
    Furthermore, economic migrants generally do start at the 
bottom of the economic ladder, and their social and economic 
effects are felt disproportionately by disadvantaged 
communities. The point is not to blame them for using 
resources, but to recognize that all people do.
    NEPA compliance would end the Administration's delusion 
that foreign nationals cease having an ecological footprint the 
minute they cross the U.S. border.
    No administration that truly cared about natural resources, 
environmental justice, or urgently reducing carbon emissions 
would flagrantly disregard the environmental degradation that 
its actions have unleashed on the United States. Thanks.

    [The prepared statement of Ms. Axelrod follows:]
Prepared Statement of Julie Axelrod, Director of Litigation, Center for 
                          Immigration Studies
    Chairman Westerman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for 
inviting me here today to discuss the environmental impacts of the 
Biden Administration's immigration actions. My name is Julie Axelrod 
and I am the Director of Litigation of the Center for Immigration 
Studies. I've spent the past few years litigating against the 
Department of Homeland Security for its failures to comply with NEPA.
    As discussed in your last hearing, the Biden Administration 
bypassed their obligations under NEPA before placing migrant camps on 
park service land. But this failure is only the tip of the iceberg of 
this Administration's violation of NEPA. It started in January 2021 
when the Administration failed to conduct NEPA on the actions that 
created the migrant crisis in the first place.
    NEPA requires Federal agencies to prepare environmental impact 
statements and hold public hearings for all ``major Federal actions 
significantly affecting the quality of the human environment''. It has 
no exceptions for immigration. Indeed, when one goes back and looks at 
the reasons NEPA became law, it's clear it never contemplated an 
exception for actions that bring millions of people into the country. 
Such actions, by definition, are population growth, and population 
growth was the very first concern addressed in NEPA's ``Congressional 
declaration of national environmental policy,'' which explained that 
Congress had decided to pass NEPA, because it recognized, quote ``the 
profound impact of man's activity on the interrelations of all 
components of the natural environment, particularly the profound 
influences of population growth.'' Population growth inevitably has 
impacts like increased traffic congestion, energy consumption, waste 
management, water use, encroachment on wildlife habitats, urban sprawl, 
carbon dioxide emissions, degraded soil and air quality, noise 
pollution, and loss of recreational areas--the bread and butter of 
routine NEPA analysis.
    Upon taking office the Biden Administration carried out a number of 
policies, halting construction of the border wall, ending Remain in 
Mexico, and releasing border crossers into the interior, policies 
described by a district judge in Florida as ``akin to posting a 
flashing `Come in, We're Open' sign on the southern border.'' 
Predictably, a flood of migration followed--by some estimates 5 to 6 
million foreign nationals have entered the country illegally since 
2021.
    This committee has rightly pointed out that the Administration 
failed to hold hearings over the National Park Service's lease to house 
2000 of the migrants invited in by the Biden Administration in the 
Floyd Bennett Field. But all five or six million people who crossed the 
border need housing and use resources when they get to this country, 
not just 2000. The Administration equally had the duty to hold hearings 
before taking the actions that created the crisis.
    The idea that NEPA mandates discussion of the inevitable 
consequences of population growth but not the causes of population 
growth turns the purpose of NEPA on its head--which is to encourage 
environmentally enlightened decision making before irrevocable action 
is taken. Even if the Administration believes opening the floodgates 
was desirable policy, NEPA requires that agencies must ``look before 
they leap.'' The Biden Administration did not. The environmental 
effects of the open border will continue, and Americans across the 
interior will continue to feel the effects of overcrowding in their 
daily lives.
    The Administration's excuse for failing to conduct NEPA, 
essentially, is that NEPA doesn't apply to actions whose environmental 
impacts are unknown. This is nonsense. NEPA's purpose is to stop 
federal agencies from taking major actions whose environmental effect 
they don't understand, and it's desperately needed. The very shock 
expressed in the last hearing at the idea that the ``Natural Resources 
Committee'' of all places would seek to talk about ``the migrant 
challenge'' is telling. A good question is why would anyone claiming to 
care about the environment be surprised open borders have profound 
environmental consequences? An even better question, is why would an 
Administration that insists it values NEPA spark an environmental 
crisis without even a modicum of NEPA compliance?
    At the same time that President Biden signed executive orders 
opening the border, he signed orders purporting to strengthen 
environmental protection that called for the reduction of greenhouse 
gas emissions across the economy, the conservation of land, water, and 
biodiversity; transitioning to a clean-energy economy; advancing 
environmental justice; and investing in disadvantaged communities. 
Proclaiming we have only a ``narrow moment'' to avoid the ``most 
catastrophic impacts'' of climate change, President Biden instituted 
``a government-wide approach to the climate crisis.''
    This government wide approach, apparently, excludes the Department 
of Homeland Security. Boosting illegal immigration by millions of 
people, largely economic migrants rather than refugees, directly 
prevents all of these supposedly urgent policy goals. The Committee on 
the Judiciary recently found only six percent of those released into 
the United States by the Biden Administration were even screened for 
credible fear--they are not coming to claim asylum but to improve their 
standard of living--which means their carbon emissions increase when 
they settle into the United States and they fully intend to use 
resources, including land and water, while here. Furthermore, economic 
migrants generally do start at the bottom of the economic ladder--and 
their social and economic effects are felt disproportionately by 
disadvantaged communities. The point is not to blame them for using 
resources, but to recognize that all people do. NEPA compliance would 
end the Administration's delusion that foreign nationals cease having 
an ecological footprint the minute they cross the U.S. border.
    No Administration that truly cared about natural resources, 
environmental justice, or urgently reducing carbon emissions would 
flagrantly disregard the environmental degradation that its actions 
have unleased on the United States.

                                 ______
                                 

    Mr. Westerman. Thank you for your testimony, Ms. Axelrod.
    The Chair now recognizes Chairman Jose for 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. VERLON M. JOSE, CHAIRMAN, TOHONO O'ODHAM 
                     NATION, SELLS, ARIZONA

    Mr. Jose. [Speaking Native language.] Good afternoon, 
Committee Chair, distinguished members of the Subcommittee. I 
am Verlon Jose, the Chairman of the Tohono O'odham Nation. 
Thank you for inviting me to testify today.
    I also want to extend a special greeting to the Nation's 
Congressional Representative, Ranking Member Grijalva. We 
really appreciate that you are here with us today.
    The Tohono O'odham have lived in what is now Arizona and 
northern Mexico since time immemorial. Our reservation today 
comprises only a small portion of our ancestral territory. Our 
original homelands include the Organ Pipe Cactus National 
Monument, Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, the San 
Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, and the Coronado National 
Forest.
    In 1854, the international boundary between the United 
States and Mexico was drawn through the middle of our ancestral 
lands, without consideration for our people's sovereign rights 
or the impact it would have on our religious and cultural 
traditions.
    Because we share a 62-mile border with Mexico, we have long 
been at the forefront on border issues. The Nation spends about 
$3 million a year of our own tribal funds to help meet the 
United States' border security responsibilities. We also are 
responsible for taking care of migrants who have perished on 
our reservation. Since 2003, our Nation's law enforcement has 
spent nearly $6 million on over 1,500 migrant deaths, 
investigation, and recoveries. Our police force spent more than 
a third of its time on border issues, including the 
investigation of immigrant deaths, illegal drug seizures, and 
human smuggling.
    Over the years, we have developed a long-standing 
cooperative relationship with the U.S. Customs and Border 
Protection, immigration and customs enforcement, and other 
Federal law enforcement agencies. We have supported CBP efforts 
on our reservation by authorizing their checkpoint forward-
operating bases and integrated fixed towers to facilitate 
electronic surveillance efforts.
    The Nation leads a multi-agency anti-drug smuggling task 
force staffed by our own police, detectives, ICE special 
agents, Border Patrol agents, and the FBI. In addition, the 
Nation has officers that are part of the Shadow Wolves, a 
tactical patrol unit based on our reservation.
    The Shadow Wolves are the only Native American tracking 
unit in the country, and its officers apply traditional 
tracking methods that apprehend countless smugglers and seize 
thousands of pounds of illegal drugs.
    Thanks to the bipartisan legislation championed by 
Representative John Katko in the 117th Congress, the Shadow 
Wolves are now classified as ICE special agents.
    While the Tohono O'odham Nation shares the Federal 
Government's concerns about border security, we have a very 
deep concern about the substantial cost and ineffectiveness of 
using a border wall in rural areas like ours. GAO found that 
more than $10 billion of taxpayers' money was set aside for a 
border wall construction by the end of 2020. Billions more will 
continue to be needed to address the environmental and cultural 
harms caused by the wall. Despite the amount of money spent, 
CBP records reveal that the border wall is ineffective in 
remote geographical areas like the desert southwest, where the 
wall is regularly breached.
    Most disturbing for us is the permanent damage that the 
border wall has inflicted on our sacred areas, culturally 
sensitive sites, and the negative impact on our religious 
rights and cultural practices. Construction of the wall 
destroyed human burial sites at Monument Hill and Oregon Pipe 
National Monument, a desecration that cannot be undone.
    Construction of a wall on Federal lands near our 
reservation also interferes with the flow of scarce, vital 
water resources on which plants and wildlife depend. Our Tribal 
Members rely on these plants for food, medicine, and cultural 
purposes.
    The Nation wholeheartedly agrees with GAO that the Federal 
agencies must do a better job coordinating with each other and 
with the Nation on a strategy to mitigate the harm that the 
wall has caused.
    In conclusion, I want to thank you for giving the Nation 
the opportunity to share our perspective on these difficult and 
pressing issues. I am happy to answer any questions.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Jose follows:]
 Prepared Statement of the Honorable Verlon Jose, Chairman, the Tohono 
                       O'odham Nation of Arizona

INTRODUCTION & HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

    Good afternoon Chairman Gosar, Ranking Member Stansbury and 
distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. I am Verlon Jose, the 
Chairman of the Tohono O'odham Nation of Arizona. It is an honor to 
have the opportunity to testify before you today on behalf of my Nation 
and our more than 36,000 enrolled Tribal citizens.
    The Tohono O'odham Nation shares a 62-mile border with Mexico--the 
second-longest international border of any tribe in the United States, 
and the longest on the southern border. The Nation has long been at the 
forefront on border issues. Over the years we have developed a long-
standing cooperative relationship with U.S. Customs and Border 
Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other 
federal law enforcement agencies. Working in concert with CBP, our own 
Tohono O'odham law enforcement officers are regularly involved in drug 
interdiction and immigrant apprehension actions. Every year, the Tohono 
O'odham Nation spends its own funds to help meet the federal 
government's border security responsibilities. We have supported CBP 
efforts on our Reservation by providing lands for a checkpoint, forward 
operating bases, and integrated fixed towers to facilitate critical 
electronic surveillance efforts.
    That being said, the O'odham have lived in what is now Arizona and 
northern Mexico since time immemorial. In 1854, the international 
boundary between the United States and Mexico was drawn through the 
middle of our ancestral territory without any consideration for our 
people's sovereign and historical rights, or the impact it would have 
on traditional and sacred practices. Today, the international border 
continues to separate our people and our traditional lands. Seventeen 
O'odham communities with approximately 2,000 members are still located 
in our historical homelands in Mexico. O'odham on both sides of the 
border share the same language, culture, religion and history, and we 
continue to cross the border for sacred pilgrimages and ceremonies at 
important religious and cultural sites.

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

             Map of Tohono O'odham Ancestral Territory

    Our Reservation today includes only a small portion of our 
ancestral territory. Our original homelands ranged well beyond these 
boundaries and included what the federal government later made into the 
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife 
Refuge to the west of our Reservation, and the San Bernardino National 
Wildlife Refuge and the Coronado National Forest to the east. The 
Nation's ongoing significant connections to these lands and the 
religious, cultural and natural resources located there are well-
documented.
THE NATION IS ACTIVELY ENGAGED IN BORDER SECURITY EFFORTS

    Over the past decade the Nation has spent an annual average of $3 
million of our own tribal funds on border security and enforcement to 
help meet the United States' border security obligations. Further, the 
Nation is responsible for the recovery and disposition of immigrants 
who have perished on our Reservation. Since 2003, our Nation's law 
enforcement has spent nearly $6 million dollars on over 1,500 migrant 
death investigations and recoveries without any federal financial 
assistance. The Nation's police force typically spends more than a 
third of its time on border issues, including the investigation of 
immigrant deaths, illegal drug seizures, and human smuggling.

    The Nation also has entered into several cooperative agreements 
with CBP and ICE, and pursuant to numerous Tohono O'odham Legislative 
Council resolutions has authorized a number of border security measures 
on its sovereign lands to help CBP. Some examples include:

     High Intensity Drug Trafficking (HIDTA) Task Force: The 
            Nation leads a multi-agency anti-drug smuggling task force 
            staffed by Tohono O'odham Police Department detectives, ICE 
            special agents, Border Patrol agents, and the FBI. This is 
            the only tribally-led High Intensity Drug Trafficking 
            (HIDTA) Task Force in the United States. In 2018, the 
            Nation's Task Force Commander W. Rodney Irby received an 
            award recognizing him as the National Outstanding HIDTA 
            Task Force Commander.

     ICE office and CBP forward operating bases: Since 1974, 
            the Nation has authorized a long-term lease for an on-
            reservation ICE office. The Nation also approved leases for 
            two CBP forward operating bases that operate on the 
            Nation's lands 24 hours, 7 days a week. One of these 
            forward operating bases (at Papago Farms) was recently 
            renovated and upgraded with state-of-the-art improvements 
            and technology, including an expanded perimeter fence, 
            helipad, and new officer living quarters and administrative 
            facilities.

     Shadow Wolves, an ICE tactical patrol unit: The Nation has 
            officers that are part of the Shadow Wolves, a tactical 
            patrol unit based on our Reservation which the Nation 
            played a role in creating. Thanks to recent bipartisan 
            legislation championed by Representative John Katko in the 
            House and enacted in the 117th Congress, the Shadow Wolves 
            are now reclassified as ICE Special Agents. The Shadow 
            Wolves are the only Native American tracking unit in the 
            country, and its officers are known for their ability to 
            track and apprehend immigrants and drug smugglers using 
            traditional tracking methods. The Shadow Wolves have 
            apprehended countless smugglers and seized thousands of 
            pounds of illegal drugs.

     Vehicle barriers on our lands: CBP has constructed 
            extensive vehicle barriers that run the entire length of 
            the Tribal border and a patrol road that parallels it.

     CBP checkpoint on our lands: The Nation has authorized a 
            CBP checkpoint on the major highway that runs through the 
            Nation.

     Integrated Fixed Towers: The Nation approved a lease of 
            its lands to allow CBP to build an Integrated Fixed Tower 
            (IFT) system that includes surveillance and sensor towers 
            with associated access roads on the Nation's southern and 
            eastern boundaries to detect and help interdict illegal 
            entries.

BORDER WALL CONSTRUCTION IN REMOTE AREAS LIKE OURS IS INEFFECTIVE AND 
        WASTES TAXPAYER DOLLARS--AND HAS BEEN DEEPLY HARMFUL TO THE 
        NATION

    The Nation shares the federal government's concerns about border 
security, and we believe that the measures we have taken to assist CBP 
and our own law enforcement efforts are necessary to protect the 
Nation's members specifically and the United States generally. 
Respectfully, however, we have serious concerns about the cost and 
ineffectiveness of a border wall. Most importantly the Nation is deeply 
concerned about the severe impact the border wall has had/will have on 
wildlife corridors, culturally sensitive/sacred areas, and on our 
ability to freely practice our customs and religion.

    Constructing the Border Wall was Wasteful and Ineffective. Border 
wall construction came at great cost to the American taxpayer in this 
era of a skyrocketing federal deficit. Thanks to the no-bid contracts, 
diversion of badly needed drug interdiction and defense resources, and 
the massive environmental mitigation efforts required to address 
construction damage, we may never know the true cost. The Government 
Accountability Office found that by the end of 2020, the Army Corps of 
Engineers had obligated more than $10 billion to border wall 
construction alone.\1\ Billions more have and will continue to be 
needed to mitigate the environmental and cultural harms caused by 
construction. Worse yet, this wall has been an absolute failure in 
terms of deterring illegal immigration and drug trafficking. As 
reported by the Cato Institute, following a lull in illegal entries 
during the early part of the Covid-19 Pandemic, illegal entries 
actually increased as border wall construction increased.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Government Accountability Office, Southwest Border: Award and 
Management of Border Barrier Construction Contracts, GAO-23-106893, at 
6 (July 23, 2023).
    \2\ David J. Bier, ``The Border Wall Didn't Work,'' Cato Institute 
(February 10, 2022), available at https://www.cato.org/blog/border-
wall-didnt-work.

    As the Nation and others have warned for years, the border wall is 
ineffective in remote geographic areas like our homelands (including 
neighboring wildlife refuges) where the wall can easily be circumvented 
by climbing over, tunneling under, or sawing through it. And that is 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
precisely what has taken place. Again, the Cato Institute found:

        The Trump border wall failed for all the predictable reasons. 
        Immigrants used cheap ladders to climb over it, or they free 
        climb it. They used cheap power tools to cut through it. They 
        cut through small pieces and squeezed through, and they cut 
        through big sections and drove through. In one small section in 
        2020, they sawed through at least 18 times that Border Patrol 
        knew about in a month. They also made tunnels. Some tunnels 
        were long, including the longest one ever discovered, but some 
        were short enough just to get past the barrier.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ Id.

    CBP records have revealed that the border wall is breached with 
staggering (but unsurprising) regularity--between more than 2,000 times 
and more than 4,000 times per year between 2017 and 2022.\4\ These 
breaches typically are performed with ``inexpensive power tools widely 
available at retail hardware stores,'' \5\ or with $5 ladders.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\ David J. Bier, ``Border Wall Was Breached 11 Times Per Day in 
2022,'' Cato Institute (December 30, 2022), available at https://
www.cato.org/blog/border-wall-was-breached-11-times-day-2022-2.
    \5\ Nick Miroff, ``Trump's border wall has been breached more than 
3,000 times by smugglers, CBP records show,'' The Washington Post 
(March, 2, 2002), available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-
security/2022/03/02/trump-border-wall-breached/.
    \6\ Jenna Romaine, ``Trump's $15 billion border wall is being 
easily defeated by $5 ladders,'' The Hill, April 22, 2021), available 
at https://thehill.com/changing-america/resilience/refugees/549758-
trumps-15-billion-border-wall-is-being-easily-defeated/.

    Damage Already Done to Our Ancestral Lands by Construction. Of 
paramount importance to the Nation is the damage that wall construction 
has caused to the religious, cultural and environmental resources on 
which our members rely and which make our ancestral land sacred to our 
people. In several amicus briefs filed in litigation in 2019 
challenging construction of the wall,\7\ the Nation detailed the 
negative impacts it knew would be caused by the prior Administration's 
use of diverted federal funds to construct the border wall in Tucson 
Sector Projects 1, 2 and 3 and Yuma Sector 3, extending through Cabeza 
Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument 
(ending less than two miles from the western boundary of the Nation's 
Reservation) and through the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge 
(to the east of the Reservation). These projects have caused 
significant and irreparable harm to religious, cultural, and natural 
resources of great importance to the Nation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \7\ See, e.g., Sierra Club and Southern Border Communities 
Coalition v. Donald J. Trump, No. 4:19-cv-00892-HSG, Amicus Curiae 
Brief of Tohono O'odham Nation in Support of Plaintiff's Motion for 
Supplemental Preliminary Injunction (June 18, 2019, N.D. Ca.) (Dkt. No. 
172); Amicus Curiae Brief of Tohono O'odham Nation in Support of 
Plaintiff's Motion for Partial Summary Judgment (October 18, 2019) 
(Dkt. No. 215).

    The federal government itself repeatedly has acknowledged the 
significance of the Nation's interest in the areas that are being 
impacted by the ongoing and contemplated construction in the Tucson and 
Yuma Sector projects. For example, the National Park Service (NPS) in 
its General Management Plan for the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument 
(a UNESCO biosphere reserve) \8\ acknowledged the importance of 
Quitobaquito Spring, which is located 200 yards from the border:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \8\ Biosphere reserves are areas with unique ecosystems recognized 
by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 
(UNESCO) as special places for testing interdisciplinary approaches to 
managing social and ecological systems. Each reserve promotes solutions 
reconciling the conservation of biodiversity and sustainable use. 
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/environment/ecological-
sciences/biosphere-reserves/.

        There are 11 springs in the monument, eight of which are 
        located at Quitobaquito, by far the largest source of water. 
        The pond and dam at Quitobaquito were constructed in 1860, and 
        the resulting body of water is one of the largest oases in the 
        Sonoran Desert. The site is also sacred to the O'odham, who 
        have used the water from this spring for all of their residence 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        in the area.

        . . .

        There still exist sites within the monument which are sacred to 
        the O'odham, including Quitobaquito Springs . . . Even to the 
        present day, the O'odham continue to visit the monument to 
        collect sacred water from the Springs, to gather medicinal 
        plants, and to harvest the fruit of the organ pipe and saguaro 
        cactus.\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \9\ U.S. National Park Service, Organ Pipe Cactus National 
Monument, Final General Management Plan, Development Concept Plans, 
Environmental Impact Statement (Feb. 1997), at 30, 33, available at 
https://www.nps.gov/orpi/learn/management/upload/fingmp.pdf.

    NPS also has recognized that there are O'odham burial sites within 
Quitobaquito.\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \10\ Id. at 158, citing Anderson, Keith M., Bell, Fillman and 
Stewart, Yvonne G., Quitobaquito: A Sand Papago Cemetery, Kiva, 47, no 
4 (Summer, 1982) at 221-22; see also Bell, Fillman, Anderson, Keith M. 
and Stewart, Yvonne G., The Quitobaquito Cemetery and Its History, U.S. 
National Park Service, Western Archeological Center (Dec. 1980), 
available at http://npshistory.com/series/anthropology/wacc/
quitobaquito/report.pdf.

    In a 2019 study, published shortly before construction was to 
begin, NPS identified five new archeological sites (of pre-contact 
Native American artifacts) and additional archeological resources 
within a 60-foot wide federal easement that runs along the border in 
Organ Pipe, noting that many existing archeological sites would be 
impacted or destroyed by the border wall construction, and that many 
areas along the Organ Pipe border have not yet been surveyed to 
identify archeological and culturally sensitive sites.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \11\ Veech, Andrew S., Archeological Survey of 18.2 Kilometers 
(11.3 Miles) of the U.S.-Mexico International Border, Organ Pipe Cactus 
National Monument, Pima County, Arizona, U.S. National Park Service, 
Intermountain Region Archeology Program (July 2019), available at 
https://games-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/
cbd7ef6a-3b5b-4608-9913-4d488464823b/note/7a429f63-9e46-41fa-afeb-
c8e238fcd8bb.pdf (discovery of five new archeological sites and 55 
isolated finds; recommending additional evaluation of sites, noting 
that 17 identified archeological sites will be destroyed by the border 
wall construction, and that many areas along the border within the 
Monument remain unsurveyed).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Similar expert reports show archeological sites of significance to 
the Nation in the immediate vicinity of Tucson Project 3 in the San 
Bernardino Valley, as well as the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife 
Refuge, although these areas are less well surveyed so the extent of 
cultural and natural resources potentially affected by construction of 
a border wall is even less well known.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \12\ Fish, Paul R.; Fish, Suzanne K.; Madsen, John H., Prehistory 
and early history of the Malpai Borderlands: Archaeological synthesis 
and recommendations, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service 
(2006) at 29-30, available at https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/
rmrs_gtr176.pdf; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Cabeza Prieta National 
Wildlife Refuge: Comprehensive Conservation Plan, Wilderness 
Stewardship Plan and Environmental Impact Statement (Aug. 2006) at 172, 
586, available at https://www.fws.gov/uploadedFiles/CPNWREIS.pdf; U.S. 
Fish and Wildlife Service, Environmental Assessment of the Malpai 
Borderlands Habitat Conservation Plan (July 26, 2008) at 17, available 
at https://www.fws.gov/southwest/es/arizona/Documents/HCPs/Malpai/
MBHCP%20EA%20w%20FONSI.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As border wall construction progressed, construction activities 
resulted in immeasurable damage to areas of significance to the Nation 
within Organ Pipe, including the blading of an area near Quitobaquito 
Springs and blasting in an area called Monument Hill, which has 
disturbed human remains.\13\ In its aftermath, federal officials 
documented significant damage to environmental and water sources in the 
Arizona borderland area. According to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife study, 
``water from an artesian well in the San Bernardino National Wildlife 
Refuge in Arizona no longer naturally flows to the surface, in part, as 
a result of barrier construction.'' \14\ In 2019, the Nation warned 
that border barrier construction would exacerbate flooding in these 
areas, irreparably altering an ecosystem that depends on annual monsoon 
rain flows.\15\ As the GAO found, these concerns proved correct: border 
wall road construction in Organ Pipe National Monument has in effect 
created a ``natural dam by impeding water flow during rain events.'' 
\16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \13\ See Firozi, Paulina, The Washington Post, Sacred Native 
American burial sites are being blown up for Trump's border wall, 
lawmaker says (Feb. 9, 2020) https://www.washingtonpost.com/
immigration/2020/02/09/border-wall-native-american-burial-sites/.
    \14\ GAO, supra n. 1, at 23.
    \15\ Sierra Club, Amicus Curiae Brief of Tohono O'odham Nation at 
7-8.
    \16\ GAO, supra n. 1, at 23-24.

    GAO confirmed also that the damage has been exacerbated by the 
failure of federal agencies to adequately coordinate on border wall 
mitigation efforts. The Nation wholeheartedly agrees with the GAO's 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
conclusion that:

        The Secretary of the Interior should document, jointly with 
        CBP, a strategy to mitigate cultural and natural resource 
        impacts from border barrier construction that defines agency 
        roles and responsibilities for undertaking specific mitigation 
        actions; identifies the costs, associated funding sources, and 
        time frames necessary to implement them; and specifies when 
        agencies are to consult with Tribes.\17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \17\ Id. at 52.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONCLUSION

    Construction of the wall on federal lands to the east and west of 
our Reservation already has disturbed and even destroyed human remains, 
sacred sites, religious and culturally significant sites and cultural 
resources, and tribal archeological resources, and there is no way to 
repair or restore this damage to us. Wall construction also adversely 
impacted our wildlife, including endangered species like the jaguar 
that are sacred to American Indian tribes. Construction of the wall 
near our Reservation is interfering with the flow and use of scarce and 
vital water resources, including seasonal washes, on which plants and 
wildlife depend. The plants adversely impacted are relied on by tribal 
members for food, medicine, and cultural purposes, as well as being 
critical food sources for animals.

    The Nation genuinely appreciates the Subcommittee's interest in the 
impact of border wall construction on federal lands, and appreciates 
the opportunity to share with you our deep concerns about the damage 
that the wall has caused to the Nation's religious and cultural 
heritage, our way of life, and our environment. We welcome a continued 
dialogue with you on these issues.

                                 ______
                                 

 Questions Submitted for the Record to the Hon. Verlon Jose, Chairman, 
                       the Tohono O'odham Nation

             Questions Submitted by Representative Grijalva

    Question 1. How would the Nation's sacred sites be better protected 
if the laws waived by the Department of Homeland Security had been in 
effect? For example, would these sites be better protected if the 
National Environmental Policy Act and the Native American Graves 
Protection and Repatriation Act were not waived?

    Answer. There are a number of federal laws, including but not 
limited to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Native 
American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), that protect 
the environment and cultural and archeological resources and would have 
better protected the Nation's sacred sites had they not been waived by 
DHS.
Archaeological Resources Protection Act

    The Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA) requires federal 
agencies to obtain a permit from the federal land manager \1\ before 
excavating or removing archaeological resources from public or Indian 
lands.\2\ This required permitting process includes notification to 
relevant tribes of anticipated harm to religious or cultural sites,\3\ 
and an opportunity for the federal land manager and tribal officials to 
meet and discuss tribal interests and proposed mitigation measures 
prior to issuance of the permit.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ For purposes of ARPA, the ``federal land manager'' is the 
federal agency with primary management authority over the relevant 
lands. 16 U.S.C. Sec. 470bb(2).
    \2\ 16 U.S.C. Sec. 470cc(a).
    \3\ 16 U.S.C. Sec. 470cc(c).
    \4\ 43 C.F.R. Sec. 7.7
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Had these ARPA protections been in place during construction of the 
border wall through the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, the 
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and the San Bernardino National 
Wildlife Refuge, the widespread desecration of the Nation's religious 
and cultural sites in these areas could have been avoided. The Nation 
could have worked collaboratively on a government-to-government basis 
with the Department of Homeland Security to identify and exclude 
certain sensitive areas, and to propose additional mitigation measures. 
However, because ARPA's protections were waived, there were no 
meaningful procedural checks to protect the Nation's archaeological 
resources, and sites of great religious and cultural importance were 
severely and permanently damaged.
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)

    Together with the ARPA permitting process, the procedural 
requirements of NAGPRA provide significant safeguards for tribal human 
remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural 
patrimony.\5\ Under NAGPRA, federal agencies planning intentional 
excavations are required to: (1) take reasonable steps to determine 
whether the planned activity may result in the excavation of human 
remains or other cultural items; (2) engage in consultation with 
relevant tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations regarding the planned 
activity; and (3) complete and follow a written plan detailing the 
planned treatment, care, and disposition of human remains and other 
cultural resources in connection with the planned activity.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\ 25 U.S.C. Sec. 3001 et seq.; 43 C.F.R. Sec. 10.1(b)(2).
    \6\ 43 C.F.R. Sec. 10.3.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The waiver of these important procedural safeguards during border 
wall construction allowed the Department of Homeland Security to blast 
unfettered through the historic tribal gravesite at Monument Hill with 
no forethought to tribal impacts, no tribal consultation, and no plan 
for mitigation of the irreparable damage to tribal human remains and 
sacred objects.\7\ If NAGPRA had been properly applied, the known 
tribal burials and protected tribal objects at Monument Hill would have 
been identified and actively protected through consultation and careful 
planning, rather than senselessly destroyed. NAGPRA would also have 
protected inadvertently discovered remains and objects by requiring 
notification, halting of work in the impacted area, and reasonable 
efforts to safeguard the resources.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \7\ See Firozi, Paulina, The Washington Post, Sacred Native 
American burial sites are being blown up for Trump's border wall, 
lawmaker says (Feb. 9, 2020) https://www.washingtonpost.com/
immigration/2020/02/09/border-wall-native-american-burial-sites/.
    \8\ 43 C.F.R. Sec. 10.4.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
National Historic Preservation Act

    Certain cultural resources protected by ARPA and NAGPRA are also 
protected by the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), which 
requires federal agencies to consult with tribes when agency 
undertakings affect properties of religious or cultural 
significance.\9\ To comply with NHPA, federal agencies must follow a 
four-step review process prior to expending federal funds or issuing 
licenses.\10\ This review process requires the federal agency--in 
consultation with the relevant tribes--to evaluate the applicability of 
section 106 of the Act,\11\ identify historic properties, and assess 
and resolve potential adverse effects.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \9\ 54 U.S.C. Sec. 300101 et seq.
    \10\ 36 C.F.R. Sec. 800.
    \11\ Section 106 requires federal agencies to account for the 
effects of their undertakings on properties listed or eligible for 
listing in the National Register of Historic Places and provide the 
Advisory Council on Historic Preservation a reasonable opportunity to 
comment on such undertakings. 54 U.S.C. Sec. 306108.
    \12\ 36 C.F.R. Sec. Sec. 800.3-800.6.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Given the religious and cultural significance of the sacred sites 
destroyed during the border wall construction, it is likely that NHPA 
and the Section 106 review process would have applied to the project if 
they had not been waived. Accordingly, the Nation and the Department of 
Homeland Security would likely have engaged in extensive consultation 
pursuant to Section 106, and entered into a Memorandum of Agreement 
outlining the measures the Department would take to avoid, minimize, or 
mitigate the adverse effects of the undertaking. With this Memorandum 
of Agreement in place, the Nation could have dramatically reduced the 
harm caused by the project and preserved more of our cultural resources 
for future generations.
Endangered Species Act

    Other laws like the Endangered Species Act obligate federal 
agencies to, for example, consult and at least consider impacts on 
specific species and habitat, that may be crucial to the Nation's 
historic and cultural existence. The waiver of all these laws allowed 
the Department of Homeland Security to destroy tribal gravesites at 
Monument Hill and bulldoze in the area near Quitobaquito Springs, 
another site of cultural and religious significance to the Nation, 
without any consideration of the impacts to tribal cultural and 
archeological resources and sacred sites, not to mention the serious 
impacts to environmental resources, including wildlife and habitat of 
significance to the Nation.
National Environmental Policy Act

    NEPA requires federal agencies to consider the potential 
environmental impacts and consequences of their proposed actions before 
they make decisions to undertake those actions.\13\ Environmental 
effects or impacts are broadly defined to include aesthetic, historic, 
cultural, economic, social and health effects, whether direct, indirect 
or cumulative (so NEPA sweeps in impacts and consultation under other 
statutes like NAGPRA, NHPA and the ESA).\14\ NEPA and its implementing 
regulations require that federal agencies, before taking action, 
consult with other interested agencies and tribal governments, consider 
the affected environment and environmental consequences, document the 
analysis of potential impacts in environmental assessments or 
environmental impact statements, consider reasonable mitigation 
measures to offset or avoid the environmental impacts, and make this 
information available to the public for comment before the 
implementation of the proposals.\15\ Tribes may participate in the NEPA 
process as cooperating agencies, to ensure that tribal resources are 
protected.\16\ NEPA also requires the Environmental Protection Agency 
to review and comment on environmental impacts described in NEPA 
documents and if the analysis is unsatisfactory, refer the matter to 
the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ); NEPA also allows federal 
agencies involved in the NEPA process to refer matters to CEQ where 
there are disagreements with the lead agency about potential adverse 
environmental impacts.\17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \13\ 42 U.S.C. Sec. 4332; 40 C.F.R. Sec. 1500.1-3.
    \14\ 40 C.F.R. 1508.1.
    \15\ 40 C.F.R. Sec. Sec. 1500-1507.
    \16\ 40 C.F.R. Sec. 1501.8, 1508.1(e).
    \17\ 40 C.F.R. Sec. 1504.2-3.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    NEPA compliance would have required that the Department of Homeland 
Security consider all potential environmental impacts, comments from 
the Nation and the public, and mitigation of those impacts, before 
deciding to construct a border wall. The waiver of those requirements 
allowed the Department of Homeland Security to take action and 
recklessly construct that wall with absolutely no consideration of the 
impacts to the Nation's cultural, archeological, historic, and other 
resources and sacred sites--and no meaningful consultation with the 
Nation beforehand.
    The Nation underscores that in 2017, the Nation met with senior 
Department of Homeland Security officials in Washington, D.C. on two 
separate occasions. In both meetings, the Nation reiterated its 
opposition to a border wall and requested more information on the 
Department's plans to formally consult with the Nation on the 
issue.\18\ DHS did not grant the Nation's request for formal 
consultation, but rather proceeded with construction without it. The 
unnecessary destruction of culturally sensitive and sacred sites was 
the result.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \18\ In these meetings, the Nation provided DHS with a copy of a 
Resolution enacted by the Tohono O'odham Legislative Council, 
Resolution of the Tohono O'odham Legislative Council: Border Security 
and Immigration Enforcement on the Tohono O'odham Nation, No. 17-053 
(Feb. 7, 2017).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Question 2. Are there other sacred sites or resources of 
significance to the Nation that could be negatively impacted by 
additional border wall construction?

    Answer. Aside from the cultural resources previously identified in 
Tucson Sector Projects 1, 2 and 3 and Yuma Sector 3, the Nation 
anticipates several additional sites and resources will be identified 
as future surveys are taken along the Organ Pipe border, and in other 
parts of our ancestral territory. We also anticipate frequent 
inadvertent discoveries of tribal human remains and cultural objects 
throughout the course of the construction project, given the Nation's 
extensive history in the region. In light of these concerns, it is 
imperative that NEPA, ARPA, NAGPRA, NHPA, and other applicable laws 
protecting the Nation's sacred sites and cultural and natural resources 
be applied strictly to any future border wall construction to prevent 
further irreparable harm.

                                 ______
                                 

    Dr. Gosar [presiding]. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    I now recognize Lieutenant Nores for his 5 minutes.

    STATEMENT OF JOHN NORES, LIEUTENANT (RETIRED), SPECIAL 
 OPERATIONS, MARIJUANA ENFORCEMENT TEAM, CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT 
         OF FISH AND WILDLIFE, MORGAN HILL, CALIFORNIA

    Mr. Nores. Good afternoon, Chairman Gosar and esteemed 
Members of Congress. It is an honor to speak with you all today 
in our nation's capital, and I am grateful for the opportunity 
to speak on a subject we are all very passionate about.
    I was a game warden in California for 28 years, part of our 
nationwide thin green line of conservation officers protecting 
our country's wildlife, waterways, and wild lands. I am also 
the author of the book ``Hidden War,'' that goes into greater 
detail on today's topic.
    The cartels from Mexico, along with other worldwide 
transnational criminal organizations, what we call TCOs, have 
become the biggest domestic public safety threat and some of 
the greatest destroyers of our natural resources throughout 
America.
    Our first violent encounter with the cartels was during an 
allied agency raid on an illegal trespass cannabis grow on 
public land in the Silicon Valley foothills, where I was born 
and raised. When ambushed by cartel gunmen, my young warden 
partner was near fatally shot through both legs by an AK-47.
    This was also the first time we would see and learn of the 
highly toxic EPA-banned insecticide and rodenticide poisons, 
nerve agents, and anticoagulants with trade names like 
carbofuran, furadan, and Metaphos being smuggled into the 
United States through our southern border by cartel operatives, 
along with the massive amounts of water stealing and water 
pollution, the anti-personnel traps like Vietnam-era punji pits 
throughout some of these clandestine grow sites, and the 
killing of numerous wildlife and aquatic species.
    These public land grow sites can be as remote as 10 miles 
in the back country of a national forest wilderness area or as 
close as a few hundred yards from a children's outdoor science 
camp and Silicon Valley hillside homes.
    After four more officer-involved shootings and other 
violent encounters during anti-cartel grow operations, I was 
honored to co-develop and lead the Marijuana Enforcement Team, 
the MET, in 2013, a specialized tactical unit of game wardens 
dedicated to fighting this problem statewide. MET's first 6 
years of operations paints a very ominous picture of public 
land wild land illegal grow operations. Through 800 missions, 
our team eradicated 3 million cannabis plants, most all of 
those plants toxically tainted with EPA-banned chemicals; 
destroyed 29 tons of processed cannabis for sale on the black 
market nationwide; and made 973 felony arrests on growers, many 
classified as deportable felons with extensive criminal 
histories.
    On the environmental damage front, our team removed 450 
tons of gross site waste, 455 miles of water-diverting pipe, 
756 gallons of illegal and toxic chemicals, and dismantled and 
restored waterways being diverted by 793 dams accounting for 
millions of gallons of water being stolen from our pristine 
wild lands.
    Fast forward to today, as we are seeing more black market 
cannabis operations on not only public land but on rural 
private land tracks, as well, causing just as much if not more 
egregious water depletion and environmental destruction 
throughout California and other states. These operations are 
being run not only by the Mexican cartels, but now dominated by 
the Chinese and Hmong organized crime groups. These Asian TCOs 
are now smuggling in their own highly toxic grow site poisons. 
And because of these grow operations, rural communities are now 
experiencing human trafficking, animal cruelty, and 
intimidation while being run out of their home towns by cartel 
growers, as we witnessed in California's remote Siskiyou County 
as just one example.
    As poly-criminals, the cartels are involved in more crimes 
than just illegal cannabis. These groups are also running the 
fentanyl and methamphetamine production that is killing 
hundreds of thousands of Americans annually, in addition to 
multibillion-dollar human and child sex trafficking operations 
throughout our great nation.
    Given everything we have seen while combating these 
criminal groups, stopping them from operating within America to 
poison our citizens, prey upon our children, and destroy our 
wild land resources must be a top priority.
    Thank you, and happy to answer any questions you may have.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Nores follows:]
  Prepared Statement of Lieutenant John Nores Jr. (ret.), California 
 Dept. of Fish and Wildlife, Marijuana Enforcement Team (MET), Special 
                               Operations
    My name is John Nores, and I am a retired special operations game 
warden Lieutenant from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife 
(CDFW). It was an honor to be a game warden and serve 28 s protecting 
our nation's wildlife, waterway and wildland resources and stopping 
wildlife and environmental protection law violators was a privilege.
    California game wardens are statewide police officers while also 
being federally deputized to enforce Federal wildlife protection laws. 
I began my journey with the police training academy in 1992 and at that 
time I could never have anticipated that the end of my operational 
career two decades later would be spent leading a specialized unit of 
game wardens dedicated to combating Transnational Criminal 
Organizations (TCO's), aka ``cartel'' infiltration of our nation's 
pristine public and rural private lands to grow toxically tainted 
black-market cannabis for nationwide distribution.
    This proved to be true as drug cartel operations within and outside 
of our nation's border have become some of the most egregious 
environmental and wildlife resource crimes and public safety threats we 
have seen throughout America. These crimes are occurring not only on 
our border, but throughout the rest of America with many of these 
crimes committed by non-citizens here illegally.
    Through their use of US EPA banned chemical insecticides and 
rodenticides (carbofuran, Metaphos, Q-Furan, etc.) and massive amounts 
of water theft (especially alarming during recent peak drought years in 
the country) throughout tens of thousands of clandestine cannabis grow 
sites on both public and private land, cartel cells are poisoning 
waterways, killing numerous wildlife species, destroying wildland 
trees, vegetation and grass lands while posing a severe threat to our 
public's safety.
    The public safety threats posed by these criminal cells are evident 
in cartel grow sites we have encountered with firearms, stabbing 
blades, and various anti-personal traps (i.e., Vietnam war era punji 
pits) as well as toxic poisons and other public safety threats common 
throughout these sites.
    The cartel's propensity for violence, however, was first witnessed 
on a deadly cannabis grow arrest and eradication mission in the Silicon 
Valley foothills we conducted with the Santa Clara County Sheriff's 
Office on August 5th, 2005.
    While entering the grow site, our allied agency enforcement team 
was ambushed by cartel gunmen defending their multi-million dollar 
complex and a gunfight ensued. A near-fatal bullet from a grower's AK47 
struck our young warden teammate, penetrating both of his legs before 
an agonizing three hour wait for his helicopter evacuation to the 
hospital.
    That incident was the first time a law enforcement officer in 
America had been hit and nearly killed by a clandestine marijuana 
grower's bullet, and our first violent encounter with tactically savvy 
cartel operatives from Mexico running their operations in the US, in 
this case within the Silicon Valley.
    We would have four more officer involved shooting incidents and 
numerous other violent encounters with cartel grower groups defending 
their black-market cannabis operations throughout California before I 
was tasked with co-developing and leading a special operations group of 
game wardens within our agency called the Marijuana Enforcement Team 
(MET).

    Comprised of officers with extensive tactical experience, 
wilderness fieldcraft, (stalking, apprehension, and survival skills), 
amazing lifesaving apprehension and detection K9 partners, a sniper 
unit, national guard, and allied agency law enforcement helicopter 
teams, the MET's mission was clear:

     Apprehend and prosecute illegal and dangerous growers to 
            protect our public.

     Eradicate their black market (in many cases poisonous and 
            highly toxic) crop before reaching the national black 
            market.

     Environmentally restore illegal outdoor trespass grow 
            sites by removing water diversions, restoring waterways, 
            removing grow site poisons, encampments, and other waste to 
            reclamate the site back to its natural state on pristine 
            public and private lands.

    I led the MET until operational retirement in December 2018 and 
between July 2013 and December 2018, our documented production levels 
paint an ominous picture during those first five years:

     800 arrest, eradication, environmental reclamation 
            missions.

     Destroyed three million toxically tainted cannabis plants.

     Destroyed 58,677 pounds (29 tons) of toxically tainted 
            processed cannabis for sale and distribution.

     Made 973 felony arrests (approximately 90% of those 
            arrests made on cartel or cartel affiliated Mexican 
            nationals operating in the US illegally).

     Seized and destroyed 601 firearms.

     Removed 899,945 pounds (450 tons) of grow site waste and 
            other pollutants.

     Removed 2.35 million feet (455 miles) of irrigation pipe.

     Removed 91,728 pounds (46 tons) of fertilizers.

     Removed 756 gallons of illegal toxic chemicals.

     Dismantled 793 water stealing dams from these clandestine 
            grow complexes with these dams (and many other illegal 
            cannabis water diversions) depleting billions of gallons of 
            water during California's peak drought period.

    Having seen numerous cartel generated public safety, wildlife, and 
waterway destruction threats in my home state of CA for decades, it was 
not until February 2020 that I would witness these same threats on and 
near our remote southern border. While hosting and producing the pilot 
film for our Thin Green Line documentary series we were big game 
hunting on a remote 50,000-acre ranch near Candelaria, Texas. Our 
outfitters for that project were well aware of the cartel trafficking 
routes through this ranch, having had several violent encounters with 
trafficking groups moving drugs and people into the US through the 
property.
    During filming, we witnessed and documented canyonland caves on the 
property being used for cartel trafficking way-stop camps, all littered 
with trash, human excrement, other waste, and graffiti delineating gang 
and/or cartel group affiliation. When contacted by a border patrol 
helicopter shortly after this find we learned that approximately 20 
cartel affiliated drug and human traffickers were being pursued by 
border agents on another area of the ranch. I was informed by the 
border patrol pilot that these trafficking operations through the ranch 
(and many other ranches along that area of the border) were happening 
weekly, and often more frequently.
    While our MET unit's production figures between 2013-2018 and the 
trafficking activity we witnessed on the Texas/Mexico border are 
alarming, we must be cognizant of the disturbing reality this relates 
to today. These statistics were generated during a period when some 
form of border security measures was in place, and more were in the 
works in an effort to slow down TCO members from entering and 
committing crimes throughout the US. Now five years later and lacking 
any effective border security policy and the recent expiration of Title 
42, our border has never been easier to cross with threats to our 
public's safety and wildland and water resources continuing to 
escalate.
    I witnessed this first-hand in May 2022 when being interviewed for 
and assisting on the production of Daily Caller's Narcofornia 
documentary film in northern California's Siskiyou County. One of the 
most remote and pristine counties on the west coast, Siskiyou County 
contains a handful of small towns comprised of families that have lived 
there for generations. Livestock ranching, agricultural farming, trade 
jobs and a love for community prevail throughout the region.
    Shortly after California's new recreational cannabis regulations 
under Proposition 64 were passed in 2016 that demographic began to 
change. While Prop 64 was hailed as a law to eliminate the black market 
and drive the cartels out of the weed market, the new law has done just 
the opposite. With unregulated outdoor public and private land cannabis 
production now watered down from a felony to a misdemeanor (and bumped 
down from a misdemeanor to an infraction for juvenile offenders) under 
the new law, the cartels have faced little, if any, penalties for mass 
producing illegal cannabis for our nation's black market. This law 
structure is incentivizing illegal cannabis production for a lucrative 
nationwide black market while driving legitimate and environmentally 
regulated cannabis growers out of business.
    This has led to massive increases of unregulated private land grow 
sites throughout California and other states now dominated by the Asian 
(Chinese and Hmong) crime groups. According to my colleagues at the 
Drug Enforcement Administration, and just like Mexican cartel 
operatives, many Chinese nationals are currently entering the US 
through the flooded open border to conduct crimes for their 
organization.
    These illegal Chinese cannabis production operations are not only 
widespread throughout California but other states including Oklahoma, 
Oregon, and Maine, with diverted and stolen water used for their black-
market plants. We are also seeing new Chinese poisons that are being 
smuggled across the border and may be even more toxic than the 
Carbofuran type insecticide poisons traditionally used by the Mexican 
cartels with widespread human trafficking and coerced labor of grow 
site workers (primarily Mexican and Chinese nationals) throughout these 
private land sites being the norm.
    While raiding grow sites throughout Siskiyou County with the 
Sheriff's Department we learned of approximately 10,000 illegal, 
outdoor private land grow complexes that have taken over the rural 
county. These grow sites are depleting millions of gallons of above 
ground and under-ground water table resources daily and stealing city 
water supplies for their grow operations. We saw numerous well drilling 
rigs and illegal wells throughout these grow complexes along with tons 
of trash, waste, and other pollutants in and around pristine streambeds 
adjacent to these sites.
    Very alarming were the thousands of gallons of unknown chemical 
poisons in 55-gallon drums at every grow complex and the Tyvek hazmat 
like suits and respirator mask systems within each site. The growers 
were using these suits when spraying or smudge pot burning these 
insecticide poisons onto their cannabis plants indicating the toxic, 
and potentially deadly, nature of this cannabis reaching our nationwide 
black market.
    Many Siskiyou County farmers, ranchers and other community members 
have been threatened with violence by cartel growers to look the other 
way as their farm and ranch water supplies are now being depleted and 
emptied by these criminal groups. Feeling over run and in danger, many 
long time Siskiyou County community members have moved out of the area. 
Other crimes we saw throughout these grow operations included human 
trafficking, animal cruelty, water pollution and streambed alteration 
to name a few.
    These travesties are not isolated to this specific region. Cartel 
generated crimes are occurring far beyond our northern and southern 
borders in every state and impacting us all. While I have outlined the 
wild land, waterway and wildlife resource crimes engendered by these 
criminal groups and the associated dangers to our public's safety from 
my experiences, we must remember that these TCO's are poly-criminals 
whose organizations engage in other damaging crimes beyond toxically 
tainted black market cannabis production.
    DEA officials point out that the Mexican cartels (Sinaloa and 
Jalisco New Generation) are now partnered with the Chinese cartels to 
the benefit of both organizations. Chinese crime groups supply the pre-
cursor chemicals the Mexican cartels need to produce and distribute 
fentanyl and meth-amphetamine killing hundreds of thousands of 
Americans annually, while the Chinese have virtually taken over the 
black market cannabis trade using America as the middle man to launder 
billions of untraceable cash dollars (https://youtu.be/
xMsLDv4M0VM?si=Bkk8Iq HS5F4DEZsH).
    In all cases our nation's people and our pristine wildland, 
waterway and wildlife resources are poisoned and destroyed in the 
process. Even more disturbing is the multi-billion-dollar human and 
child sex trafficking networks these TCO's are running not only 
throughout America but across the globe and growing rapidly.
    With growing awareness of these embedded cartel crimes, I am 
witnessing more interest and outrage from fellow Americans like never 
before as evident from a 100 times wider distribution rate of the 2022 
second edition release of my latest book, Hidden War compared to 
distribution levels of the first edition published in 2019. High reach 
public figures like Joe Rogan are alarmed and networking these issues 
in an effort to make Americans aware of the criminal activities 
transpiring across our nation and their support and passion is 
inspiring.
    Given everything we have seen while combating these criminal 
groups, stopping TCO's from operating within America to poison our 
citizens and to prey upon our children must be a top policy priority. 
With the doorway for these groups to begin operations throughout our 
nation is our border, that door must be closed and controlled 
carefully.

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

           Cartel gunman in national forest grow complex

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 

            Carbofuran grow site poisoned Mountain Lion

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              Cartel grower with poisoned golden eagle

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            Mexican cartel EPA banned grow site poisons

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       Vietnam era anti-personnel punji pit in National Park

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               Outdoor cartel grow site in state park

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          Mexican cartel grow--public river water stealing

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         Northern CA National Forest cartel grow site waste

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 Tyvek poison protection suit in Chinese private land outdoor grow 
                                  site

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         Mexican cartel gunmen in outdoor grow complex--CA 
         
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           Cartel grow--EPA banned poison killed grey fox

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   One of several new and highly toxic Chinese grow site poisons

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  Massive cartel illegal private land cannabis complex--LA County

  Note: Each red circle is a water truck pumping in stolen water with 
                          trucks running 24/7 
                          
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Poisoned water and illegal well drilling operation on private land 
                            cartel grow site

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     Hidden War Edition 1--Forward by Congressman Jared Huffman

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        Hidden War--Updated Edition 2--Forward by Jack Carr

                                 ______
                                 
    Dr. Gosar. I thank the gentleman. I am now going to go to 
questions from the dais. We are going to start with the 
gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Collins, for his 5 minutes.
    Mr. Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Ms. Axelrod, the Biden administration hasn't conducted 
public notice and comment periods under the Administrative 
Procedure Act before taking many actions that have opened the 
southern border and damaged our environment. Why does a rancher 
who wants to graze 100 cattle on public land need to go through 
some sort of NEPA process, but the Administration can decide to 
let millions of people cross through our public lands on the 
border without any NEPA process at all?
    Ms. Axelrod. Thank you. That is a very good question. I 
mean the answer is really that nobody has made them.
    When NEPA was first passed in 1970, it contemplated 
thinking about the environmental impacts of people coming into 
the country, the population growing. And very early on, people, 
a lot of cases said, yes, population growths are what we have 
to think about. Obviously, immigration is part of this.
    But no one sued. So, when NEPA first started being enforced 
it was because people started suing. And a lot of environmental 
groups sued over atomic energy. And the initial response from 
an agency is, like, well, we don't really need to do it. And 
the court said, ``No, you need to do it. If there is a big 
environmental impact, you need to do something.''
    But what happened was INS said, and before Homeland 
Security, the Department of Homeland Security was INS. So, INS 
promulgated NEPA procedures, which every agency has to do, as 
mandated by law. And INS said, ``I think all of our NEPA 
process is if we build a detention center, because then we are 
building a building. So, we have to think about the 
environmental effects of the building.''
    Well, NEPA doesn't say you do NEPA if you build a building 
or you lease a building. It says you do NEPA if you affect the 
environment. And in 2003, the Department of Homeland Security 
replaced INS and it later developed NEPA procedures. And its 
NEPA procedures don't say anything about immigration at all. 
They don't even think about it, even though it is a large part 
of their mandate and it is one of the most environmentally 
impactful mandates. So, basically, they just don't do it and 
they should.
    Mr. Collins. What did the Administration say in response to 
the comment that it needed to do NEPA analysis in the few times 
it did conduct one for immigration policies, maybe such as the 
new rule on asylum?
    Ms. Axelrod. Yes. They used to just ignore it altogether. 
When people started to comment, they started to actually reply 
in the administrative process. And what they would do was they 
would cite a categorical exclusion, which is in the NEPA 
process, where you say this category of actions doesn't need 
NEPA.
    So, they would say, ``Well, we don't really think you need 
to do NEPA on immigration because it is impossible to predict 
the effects of it. It would require a lot of speculation.'' 
Well, OK, that is what NEPA is for.
    Mr. Collins. Yes.
    Ms. Axelrod. NEPA is for doing the analysis when you don't 
know what the effects are going to be.
    Mr. Collins. Right.
    Ms. Axelrod. Of course, it is extremely predictable in this 
case. With these, if you open the border, it is extremely 
predictable that you will have environmental effects. I don't 
think anyone can really listen to what we hear today in a 
hearing and say there are no environmental effects to this, 
this is nothing. But they say, ``Well, you know, we don't know. 
We are not really sure.''
    Mr. Collins. Yes, I think you can even see that. Everybody 
can see the environmental effects. Thank you.
    Lieutenant Nores, you mentioned the cartels in black market 
cannabis production are shifting significantly from public land 
operations to rural private lands on the West Coast. Why the 
recent shift?
    Mr. Nores. Yes, thank you, Congressman. The shifts largely 
come from our regulation structure in California under 
Proposition 64. That regulation structure for regulated 
cannabis recreational use has been in place since 2016, and we 
are on our 7th or 8th year of it. And because under Prop 64 we 
lowered the penalty for outdoor trespass growing or even 
private land growing illegally by these cartels, we lowered it 
from a felony to a misdemeanor and for a juvenile offender an 
infraction, which basically put very little deterrent bite in 
growing illegal cannabis anywhere in our private or public 
lands.
    So, now the cartels are basically going to private lands, 
where they don't have to go as far into the woods, if you will, 
in the backcountry, and just putting thousands and thousands of 
grows, like in Siskiyou County that we referenced that 
Congressman LaMalfa also mentioned in his question previously.
    And at this point now we have a lot of enforcement action 
out that my previous agency is working hard through their 
cannabis enforcement program to stop, as well as other 
agencies. But it is a matter of numbers and playing whack a 
mole. We are just outnumbered and really outresourced from the 
standpoint of these private land grows because of an 
incentivized black market through the new law.
    Mr. Collins. Right. OK. I know I am over.
    Dr. Gosar. I thank the gentleman.
    Mr. Collins. Thank you.
    Dr. Gosar. The gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Grijalva, the 
Ranking Member of the Full Committee, is recognized for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. Grijalva. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Ms. Axelrod, I agree with you on the sanctity of NEPA, I 
really do. I think that is fundamental to many things, to 
transparency and to the public. And the fact that Biden in this 
latest fence wall construction waived 18 laws, including NEPA, 
I opposed that, and I feel that a process with NEPA would have 
been appropriate and necessary regarding the airfield, because 
that is the sanctity of that law.
    Do you specify it just to the issue of population and 
immigration, or is NEPA the broader concept that I am talking 
about right now?
    Ms. Axelrod. NEPA is not just population growth. NEPA 
applies to any action that is likely to have a major 
environmental impact. So, the fentanyl coming across the 
border, I mean, when it comes to the border, the people coming 
across the border have immediate physical impacts, but they 
also have impacts when they----
    Mr. Grijalva. So, we shouldn't waive or affect NEPA with 
regard to that important legal process and public process when 
it comes to the siting of a mine, the permitting of particular 
drilling and extraction, the building of a wall.
    Ms. Axelrod. Well, I am a lawyer, so I am talking about 
what is legal and what is not legal. In the law we have been 
given, all administrations have been given the right to waive 
NEPA if they build a wall because of the immediacy of the 
problems, including environmental problems of the southern 
border being open. So, the Illegal Immigration and Nationality 
Act said yes, you can waive it, but it would apply if not 
waived, of course.
    Mr. Grijalva. Ms. Axelrod, I have 5 minutes, and I 
apologize if I am being curt, but Ms. Axelrod, you are with the 
Center for Immigration Studies. You are aware that they are 
labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group?
    Ms. Axelrod. A lot of places are labeled as a hate group by 
the Southern Poverty Law Center because it seems to be that it 
labels places that disagree with them politically as hate 
groups. That is their opinion. I mean, they have been sued over 
it, and they have lost, actually, in court, for some of the 
people they have named hate groups.
    Mr. Grijalva. Well, the label was because of repeated 
circulation of White nationalists and anti-Semitic writers in 
its weekly newsletter and the commission of a policy analyst 
who had previously been pushed out of the Conservative Heritage 
Foundation for the embrace of racist pseudoscience. The 
development, its historical association, and the record of 
publishing reports that hype the criminality of migrants were 
one of the reasons they were labeled. I am sure you are aware 
of that.
    Ms. Axelrod. I am aware that a lot of people who can't deal 
with the fact that it is very clear that there are 
environmental impacts of immigration----
    Mr. Grijalva. Mr. Chairman?
    Ms. Axelrod [continuing]. Instead of dealing with that and 
dealing with the fact that the Biden administration----
    Mr. Grijalva. Mr. Chairman?
    Ms. Axelrod [continuing]. Has been breaking the law, 
instead of dealing with that want to call names. I am aware of 
that.
    Dr. Gosar. The gentleman is trying to reclaim his time.
    Mr. Grijalva. I am not a lawyer, but I think consistency 
would be important for your presentations before Congress.
    Ms. Axelrod. I think consistency would be important----
    Mr. Grijalva. Mr. Chairman----
    Ms. Axelrod [continuing]. For people who say that they care 
about the environment, but don't want to do NEPA.
    Dr. Gosar. It is the gentleman's time.
    Mr. Grijalva. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for being 
here again.
    The O'odham Nation and its relationship to the two sites 
that you mentioned and the cultural resources and the 
protection of those sites going forward as a sovereign nation, 
how would you best recommend to Congress about that relation of 
consultation, about that relation of the trust responsibility, 
and where the Nation fits in in any discussion, given a wall, 
so that we don't have the same situation, unfortunately, that 
cannot be remedied that happened on tribal land and adjacent to 
tribal land on Federal land?
    Mr. Jose. Committee Chair and honorable Committee members, 
Ranking Member Grijalva, thank you for the question.
    Where I see going forward in this whole issue here, the 
border wall and the immigration, there needs to be true 
consultation so that we can avoid and we can address some of 
the issues that not only I and other members that have come 
before you have talked about, because I believe that that is 
what is absent: true consultation to address some of these 
issues. You have been hearing about NEPA, so it applies here 
but it doesn't apply there. It applies here but it doesn't 
apply there. We need to look at that collectively. And the 
Tohono O'odham Nation requests a seat at the table.
    So, to your question, how do I see it going forward, that 
the Nation be included at the table, as stated in the 
testimony, that we have a vested interest in this, as well, and 
to protect the lands, to protect the people, to protect the 
environment, to protect the homeland. If we do that, I believe, 
the Nation believes that we can address the issues that become 
confrontations.
    Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much.
    I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Dr. Gosar. I thank the gentleman. Just to add kind of 
advice, we need to treat our panelists with respect. I know 
that we got a little terse there. So, I would like to make sure 
that that is----
    Mr. Grijalva. If I in any way insulted, I just tried to get 
my time back so that I could ask the Chairman a question, but I 
don't think I was rude.
    Dr. Gosar. OK. Well, Ms. Axelrod, I want to give you the 
permission to talk to me about the Southern Poverty Law Center. 
I am like you, I disagree with them. And they hold it against 
us for our policy, our beliefs, instead of what we actually 
truly are.
    Now, I have been labeled every name in the book. I am not 
one of those anti-Semites. I am not one of any of those. So, 
from that standpoint it is very prejudicial. And I think they 
are a very prejudicial group.
    Ms. Axelrod. I mean, I am Jewish, so I am really not an 
anti-Semite.
    Dr. Gosar. Well, thank you very, very much. Would you like 
to say anything in short fashion in regards to the Southern 
Poverty Law Center?
    Ms. Axelrod. I mean, again, I think when people don't want 
to deal with the fact that you have a valid point about 
immigration, they call you names instead. And I think it is 
really unfortunate that instead of actually talking about the 
environmental effects of immigration on our country, and the 
effects of the border, and instead of doing NEPA, we call 
people names who want to bring up important issues.
    Dr. Gosar. I agree with you. I absolutely agree with you.
    Lieutenant Nores, in talking with you and seeing some of 
your pictures and stuff like that, can you elaborate on the 
environmental consequences of illegal immigration from the 
marijuana operations on the public lands?
    Mr. Nores. Yes. I am happy to, Chairman.
    The environmental impacts are exponential. Obviously, when 
we have these illegal growers in the forest to set up, say, a 
public land grow, trees are going to be removed, grasses, 
habitat. Creeks are going to be impacted by putting water 
diversions in and blocking water that feeds not only wildlife, 
but leads to city water supplies at the bottom of canyons.
    Also, when we talked about the EPA-banned poisons that I 
mentioned in my intro, these are so toxic that a couple 
tablespoons of carbofuran poured into a small creek could 
destroy that creek for miles, no exaggeration, and kill every 
living aquatic within it for that span of distance.
    So, what is the aftermath of that? Animals are going to 
die. There are potential water pollution sources for small 
towns and even large cities. On the private land front, even 
though we are not in the remote wilderness anymore in those 
pristine areas, we are still in a rural tract where we have 
creeks. We also have the underground water supply, the water 
table being impacted underground.
    A lot of these illegal growers now throughout Northern 
California are bringing in illegal well-drilling operators, 
equipment, and they are going underground and taking millions 
and millions of gallons of water for, say, 10,000 grows as an 
approximation in Siskiyou County, and depleting the water 
supply so severely that ranchers that have lived in Siskiyou 
County for 100 years, farmers and community members in a small, 
rural ``American town'' that was safe are losing their water 
and having to leave town and move out of the area because of 
this infiltration.
    So, it is an exponential compilation of environmental 
crimes that just continue, besides just dead animals inside a 
grow site.
    Dr. Gosar. And over the last 3 years have you seen an 
increase in that degradation and the wantonness? I mean, we 
have cashless bail, we have all sorts of different things. And 
particularly with the cartels, they are becoming very 
emboldened. Do you see a difference in the application toward 
public lands and to the environment?
    Mr. Nores. We see a decrease in public lands, from what I 
am told by the agencies I worked for previously, over the last 
couple of years. But they still are on public lands. Obviously, 
national forests, national parks, as our Forest Service and 
national park representatives testified to earlier.
    But the influx on private land, with as much if not more 
environmental damage, is definitely increasing exponentially, 
and not only in California. The Asian TCO cartel groups that I 
mentioned are in Maine, they are in Oklahoma, they are in 
Oregon, as well as California and possibly some other states.
    The type of chemicals we are seeing right now that are 
coming in that are not from the Mexican cartels coming across 
our border, the carbofuran, but these new Chinese chemicals 
with labels on them going back to that country in these grow 
sites throughout all of California, not just Northern 
California, and other states where they are run by Chinese 
organized crime groups, primarily, and not necessarily the 
Sinaloa Cartel, like historically in Mexico.
    So, now we have two different cartels working environmental 
crimes throughout the nation because they can get here and they 
can operate with impunity the way our current structures are 
from cannabis regulation, and also what is happening on the 
border and the ease of entry.
    Dr. Gosar. It is almost like they are in sync, right?
    Mr. Nores. I am sorry.
    Dr. Gosar. Like they are in sync, they are coordinating.
    Mr. Nores. They very much are. And you brought up a good 
point with that coordination. My DEA colleagues have just 
exposed the fact that the Sinaloa Cartel and the Asian 
transnational criminal organizations are now working together 
in certain crimes. China is providing all the precursor 
chemicals for fentanyl production and methamphetamine that the 
cartels out of Mexico primarily run, and now we are seeing the 
private land, especially illegal grow sites going on in private 
land, with these new chemicals being run predominantly by the 
Chinese and Asian cartels.
    Dr. Gosar. Got you.
    Mr. Nores. In a switch.
    Dr. Gosar. I just have a few seconds. Chairman Jose, tell 
me, you have infrastructure aspects of a road close to the 
border. How does that infrastructure differ from a fence? And 
what kind of degradation do we get from car traffic on those? 
Can you give me an idea of what the difference is?
    Mr. Nores. I am sorry, are you talking to----
    Dr. Gosar. No, I am talking to Chairman Jose.
    Mr. Jose. Chairman, thank you for the question.
    The Tohono O'odham Nation has an agreement with the 
Department of Homeland Security to maintain that road on the 
border. And it is fairly maintained.
    The other roads on the Tohono O'Odham Nation that are 
traveled by the Border Patrol and others are not maintained. 
So, the areas that are being patrolled are not on the border. 
They are off the border. I drive the border. I was just on the 
border Sunday. There is not a human wall on the Tohono O'odham 
Nation. There is a vehicle barrier. There are migrants coming 
up, there is illegal activity coming up. But the majority of 
that stuff is coming through the ports of entry or the places 
where there is a wall, not on the Tohono O'odham Nation.
    Is there some coming across? Yes. The road is somewhat 
maintained along the border, but the Border Patrol is not 
patrolling the border.
    Dr. Gosar. Well, so you say that the fentanyl and these 
chemicals are coming through the ports of entry, but we don't 
know what we don't know. I mean, we have 155 this year alone, 
terrorists on the terrorist watch list. We have 155. And those 
are the ports of entry. We know all these gotaways, do you 
think most of these people on the terrorist watch list want to 
be caught? They do not.
    That is why we extrapolate. And even what we found, even in 
the ports of entry, this fentanyl can kill the population of 
Arizona time and time again, all of us, so I just want to make 
sure that everything is in proper perspective.
    My time is up. I now acknowledge the Chairman for the Full 
Committee, Mr. Westerman, for his 5 minutes.
    Mr. Westerman. Thank you, Chairman Gosar. And, again, thank 
you to the witnesses.
    Lieutenant Nores, I am fascinated by the work that you have 
done. I have been to tribal land. I have heard talk about these 
grow sites. I have read about it in other places. I am quite 
surprised that it is not more publicly known, that the press 
hasn't done more to get the word out on this, and it would make 
an interesting documentary, I think, to see how these cartels 
are operating on U.S. soil.
    I have flown in helicopters over the border and miles off 
the border. I have seen the sites where cartels are operating 
and the smuggling operations. And it is really eye opening to 
me, even knowing what is happening, that these cartels are 
operating like this on our side of the border.
    How do you respond to Americans who are not living near 
unregulated private or public land grow operations and do not 
see the direct cartel threats?
    Why should this be a priority issue?
    Mr. Nores. Thank you, Congressman, especially for your 
interest in it. And I agree, we aptly named the new book 
``Hidden War'' because so many people don't know the depth 
throughout America of what these cartels are doing.
    And what we have seen at this point is not everybody is a 
cannabis user in America. Not everybody lives next to an 
illegal grow site, even a rural private land grow site or maybe 
deep into the national forest. What we need to remember is this 
cannabis that is coming from these transnational criminal 
organizations, these cartels, has these EPA-banned poisons on 
it, and they are not washing that stuff off. They are not 
worried about health and human safety.
    So, these criminal groups, that marijuana is going out to 
the masses on a black market in almost every state in the 
Union, even though those people may not live next to that grow 
site. They could possibly be affected by consuming an 
inorganic, unregulated cannabis product.
    The other thing we need to remember is, with the human 
trafficking, the fentanyl crisis, and methamphetamine, like we 
have talked about throughout the day with various witnesses, 
that affects everybody. That is in all 50 states. And while 
illegal cannabis may not be grown in all 50 states by the 
cartels, that other stuff is happening.
    So, this is a domestic problem that I think we need to 
handle as a complete priority, and look at the cartels as poly-
criminals, as they are defined, and not just cannabis, or human 
trafficking, or fentanyl, or gun-running, but really the 
biggest domestic threat I believe we have in America that needs 
to be handled like anything we would consider a national 
security issue harming our people.
    Mr. Westerman. I appreciate your work on that. I want to 
ask one other just quick question about it before I move on.
    From what I understand, some of these chemicals, pesticides 
or insecticides, herbicides, the things that they are using, if 
the farmers back in my district wanted to get them to grow a 
legal crop, they would have no access to it, nor should they 
have access to it. That is the kind of chemicals that we are 
talking about.
    Mr. Nores. We indeed are, Congressman. These are chemicals 
that were made in the 1940s and 1950s. There are nerve agents 
in them, there are anticoagulants. They are very effective at 
keeping rodents, insects, pretty much anything off of a 
marijuana plant that a cartel crime group would not want to 
have their plant infringed for the profit loss.
    What we need to remember, though, is when EPA got their 
technology up to study these chemicals that were legal in 
America at one time, they realized that, when properly used, 
they were still too toxic for human use and consumption on our 
fruit crops, on our agricultural products.
    And keep in mind one bottle or one 12-ounce crystalline 
powder container of carbofuran was made to be diluted into 
5,000 to 6,000 gallons of water before it was put on our 
American agricultural crops, and EPA determined that that was 
too toxic. The growers we see using this stuff literally have 
5-gallon backpack sprayers, and they pour bottles of this stuff 
into that backpack sprayer and put it on the cannabis, they put 
it in the groundwater below, they put some of it in tuna cans 
and other little traps to have animals suck in and poison them 
so they don't infringe upon their cash crop.
    And these new Chinese chemicals are mind blowing. We are 
just finding out in the last couple of months that they are not 
just spraying them and diluting them with a liquid. They are 
actually pouring them into paint cans, mixing them up and 
burning them in smudge pots. And these smudge pots give off a 
smoke aroma inside an enclosed grow house, like a hoop house, 
which is obviously much more contained than being in the 
outdoor, pristine woods of, say, a grow in a national forest. 
And this stuff is just nasty.
    We are seeing Tyvek suits that the growers are using with 
the fitted masks and full rebreather, ventilated filters 
similar to or actually a hazmat suit----
    Mr. Westerman. I can see you are passionate about that. I 
hope you will keep telling your story, and I hope we can help 
tell that story from this Committee and here in Congress.
    I am almost out of time. I had more questions. But Chairman 
Jose, I just have to ask you. If I have problems with Ranking 
Member Grijalva, can you help me out with that?
    [Laughter.]
    Mr. Westerman. That was a yes.
    I yield back.
    Dr. Gosar. I thank the Chairman.
    You came a long way. One of my questions that I have, one 
last question, what was the question you wanted to have been 
asked, and what is the answer?
    I will start with you, Ms. Axelrod.
    Ms. Axelrod. Well, I guess I wanted to have people ask me 
what could be done to force the Administration to start 
following NEPA instead of ignoring it so much.
    And I think one thing that could be done is it could be 
clarified that Americans really are harmed by immigration in 
terms of standing, and that they are harmed by the illegal 
immigration, and that the DHS, their procedures really are 
inadequate because they have NEPA procedures that just don't 
describe immigration whatsoever at all. And they just say, 
``Well, those aren't really our procedures, they are not 
binding.'' They just escape by saying, ``Well, you can't prove 
that any one thing we did caused this problem because we did so 
many things. So, you can't prove it was this or that, and you 
can't sue on all of them together.''
    Dr. Gosar. Thank you, Ms. Axelrod.
    Chairman Jose, what was the question you wanted to be asked 
and what is the answer?
    Mr. Jose. Honorable Chairman, distinguished members of the 
Committee, the question I was hoping to get was, ``Chairman 
Jose, what would you do to address the border issues?''
    And my response would be if I could have a magic wand, and 
I could wave it across the United States and have the United 
States kick its drug habit, that would be partially to satisfy 
some of the border issues.
    The second thing I would do with that magic wand, I would 
wave that magic wand across and create true immigration reform.
    I think if we addressed those two things, which are 
attainable, which are doable, we can address the majority of 
the border issues. Thank you for the question.
    Dr. Gosar. Thank you, Chairman.
    Lieutenant, what was the question you wanted asked that 
wasn't asked, and what was the answer?
    Mr. Nores. I guess the question really is, for me, it is 
first a statement of appreciation for taking the time to 
address this issue, for bringing it to the light, taking the 
hidden war and exposing it into the light that we are facing 
throughout America.
    And I would just ask each and every one of you to take what 
we have discussed today, and I know everybody is, and make it a 
national priority. Let's educate and make this not a hidden 
war. Let's make this common knowledge to the American public. 
Let's look at it as a national security issue. Let's look at 
drug abuse, and basically the demand for some of these drugs 
and some of the commodities that the cartels are making not 
millions, but billions of dollars off of us Americans, while 
using our country basically as a stomping ground to run their 
criminal enterprises at the demise of the American public.
    And I just thank everybody listening today that we can do 
something with that moving forward, and hope we can.
    Dr. Gosar. Thank you. I thank the witnesses for their 
testimony, and the Members for their questions.
    The members of the Committee may still have some additional 
questions for the witnesses, and we ask that you respond to 
these in writing. Under Committee Rule 3, members of the 
Committee must submit questions to the Subcommittee Clerk by 5 
p.m. on October 23. The hearing record will be held open for 10 
business days for their responses.
    If there is no further----
    Mr. Grijalva. I have a question for my two colleagues.
    Dr. Gosar. Go ahead.
    Mr. Grijalva. Are we going to vote again on the Floor or 
should we make other plans, Westerman?
    Mr. Westerman. We will vote on the Floor some time. I don't 
have any----
    Mr. Grijalva. Maybe today? Maybe tomorrow?
    Dr. Gosar. Definitely probably tomorrow, but maybe tonight.
    Mr. Westerman. Say tomorrow.
    Mr. Grijalva. Yes, we should all take a deep breath for a 
little while.
    [Laughter.]
    Dr. Gosar. With that in mind, this meeting is adjourned.

    [Whereupon, at 4:49 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

            [ADDITIONAL MATERIALS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD]

                        Statement for the Record
                    Government Accountability Office

    Chairman Gosar, Ranking Member Stansbury, and Members of the 
Subcommittee: Thank you for the opportunity to submit this statement 
regarding our work on cultural and natural resource impacts from border 
barrier construction along the U.S. southwest border. To help address 
illegal cross-border activity, the federal government has constructed 
hundreds of miles of physical barriers along the southwest border in 
recent decades, including on federal lands managed by the Department of 
the Interior where important cultural and natural resources are 
located. These resources include sacred sites for tribal communities, 
as well as the habitats of dozens of threatened and endangered species 
of animals and plants. Federal and tribal lands make up a total of 760 
miles, or approximately 40 percent, of the nearly 2,000-mile border.
    In January 2017, an executive order directed the Secretary of 
Homeland Security to immediately plan, design, and construct a 
contiguous wall or other impassable physical barrier at the southwest 
border.\1\ In response, the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) 
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) initiated the Border Wall 
System Program to replace and construct new barriers along the 
southwest border. In 2019, the President declared a national emergency 
that directed the Department of Defense (DOD) to provide additional 
support to CBP efforts.\2\
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    \1\ Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements, Exec. 
Order No. 13767, Sec. 4, 82 Fed. Reg. 8793, 8794 (Jan. 30, 2017) 
(issued Jan. 25).
    \2\ Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border 
of the United States, Pres. Proclamation No. 9844, 84 Fed. Reg. 4949 
(Feb. 20, 2019) (issued Feb. 15).
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    DHS and DOD used legal authorities to waive various cultural and 
natural resource-related laws in constructing border barriers from 
January 2017 through January 2021.\3\ Within DOD, the U.S. Army Corps 
of Engineers (USACE) was tasked to help expedite the construction of 
border barriers using billions of dollars in DOD funding made available 
following the National Emergency Declaration. A presidential 
proclamation paused construction in January 2021.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ The laws DHS waived included, but were not limited to, the 
National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), Endangered Species 
Act, Federal Water Pollution Control Act (Clean Water Act), Clean Air 
Act, National Historic Preservation Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, 
Archeological Resources Protection Act, Paleontological Resources 
Preservation Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Solid Waste Disposal Act, 
and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. See 
e.g., 84 Fed. Reg. 52118 (Oct. 1, 2019). The laws DOD waived included: 
NEPA, National Historic Preservation Act, Endangered Species Act, 
Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Migratory Bird Conservation Act, Eagle 
Protection Act, Clean Water Act, Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act, 
and the Clean Air Act.
    \4\ Termination of Emergency With Respect to the Southern Border of 
the United States and Redirection of Funds Diverted to Border Wall 
Construction, Pres. Proclamation No. 10142, 86 Fed. Reg. 7225 (Jan. 27, 
2021) (issued Jan. 20). This proclamation also revoked Executive Order 
13767, which called for construction of a border wall.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    My statement is based on our September 2023 report entitled 
Southwest Border: Additional Actions Needed to Address Cultural and 
Natural Resource Impacts from Barrier Construction.\5\ It discusses 
border barrier installed from January 2017 through January 2021 and its 
impacts to natural and cultural resources, and CBP and DOD assessments 
of potential impacts of border barrier construction during that 
time.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\ GAO, Southwest Border: Additional Actions Needed to Address 
Cultural and Natural Resource Impacts from Barrier Construction, GAO-
23-105443 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 5, 2023).
    \6\ In our report, we also assessed actions taken to address 
impacts to cultural and natural resources since January 2021.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    For that report, we reviewed laws, regulations, and guidance 
applicable to the construction of border barriers. We described border 
barrier installed by analyzing CBP's geospatial data and overlaying 
data from the U.S. Geological Survey. To identify impacts from the 
construction and to evaluate CBP's and DOD's pre-construction 
assessments, we reviewed agency documents, including assessments, and 
interviewed officials from CBP, USACE, Interior and its component 
agencies, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service. We 
also interviewed a nongeneralizable sample of two tribal governments 
and five nongovernmental stakeholders regarding their perspectives and 
visited project sites along the border in Arizona and Texas. The report 
contains a more detailed description of the scope and methodology of 
our review. Our work was performed in accordance with generally 
accepted government auditing standards.
Barrier Construction from January 2017 through January 2021 Had Various 
        Impacts on Cultural and Natural Resources

    In our September 2023 report, we found that CBP and DOD, via USACE, 
installed approximately 458 miles of border barrier panels across the 
southwest border between January 2017 and January 2021.\7\ About 284 of 
these miles (62 percent) were on federal lands, including those managed 
by the National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and the 
Forest Service, according to CBP data. For example, the agencies 
constructed 187 miles of barrier panels across federal lands in 
Arizona, more than in any other state, including through Organ Pipe 
Cactus National Monument, San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, 
Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, and Coronado National Forest. 
Most of the barrier miles that the agencies planned to construct with 
DOD funding were on federal lands because selecting those locations 
expedited the contracting and construction process (see fig 1).\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \7\ Border barrier panels refer to the vertical pedestrian barrier 
component of CBP's border barrier system. CBP's full barrier system 
included pedestrian barrier panels--consisting of 18- to 30-foot-tall 
concrete-filled steel bollards--and other attributes such as lights and 
sensors. In some cases, the barrier system also included features such 
as roads or levees. In the report, we referred to border barrier panels 
because most of these miles represented the installation of barrier 
panels rather than the completion of the entire CBP barrier system.
    \8\ See GAO, Southwest Border: Schedule Considerations Drove Army 
Corps of Engineers' Approaches to Awarding Construction Contracts 
through 2020, GAO-21-372 (Washington, D.C.: June 17, 2021). We have 
previously reported that barrier construction on federal lands allowed 
CBP and DOD to proceed without the government first having to acquire 
real estate from private landowners--a process that could take years, 
according to CBP officials. GAO, Southwest Border: Information on 
Federal Agencies' Process for Acquiring Private Land for Barriers, GAO-
21-114 (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 17, 2020).

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 


    .epsNotes: This figure shows locations of miles of border barrier 
panels installed from 2017 through January 2021. It does not include 
locations of miles of barriers installed prior to 2017. Tribal lands 
are American Indian Reservations-Federal and American Indian Trust 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Land, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau.

    The agencies installed pedestrian barrier panels (rather than 
vehicle barriers) for any project initiated as part of the border 
barrier system after 2017.\9\ According to CBP data, more than 80 
percent of the miles of pedestrian barrier panels installed replaced 
previously existing pedestrian or vehicle barriers. Our 2023 report 
includes additional details about the barrier panels installed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \9\ Vehicle barriers are typically about 3 feet tall with wide 
enough openings to allow for wildlife passage.

    We also found in our September 2023 report that a variety of 
impacts to cultural and natural resources occurred from border barrier 
construction, according to federal officials and representatives from 
Tribes and stakeholders we interviewed and our observations. 
Construction activities, the installed barrier system components, and 
incomplete project activities due to the cancellation of construction 
contracts after the January 2021 pause contributed to these impacts. 
For example, pausing construction and canceling contracts exacerbated 
some of the negative impacts because contractors left project sites in 
an incomplete or unrestored state as of the January 2021 pause, 
according to agency officials. We identified impacts in five broad 
categories: cultural resources; water sources and flooding; wildlife 
migration and habitats; vegetation and invasive species; and erosion. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Examples of these impacts include:

     Cultural resources. Some projects caused significant 
            damage and destruction to cultural resources, including 
            historic sites and sites sacred to Tribes, according to 
            tribal and agency officials and four of the five 
            stakeholders we interviewed. For example, according to 
            Tohono O'odham Nation officials, a culturally important 
            site in Arizona was irreparably damaged when contractors 
            used explosives to clear the way for expanding an existing 
            patrol road. The blasting damaged portions of Monument 
            Hill, a site that the Hia-C'ed O'odham, ancestors of the 
            Tohono O'odham, and other Tribes historically used for 
            religious ceremonies and that remains important to several 
            Indigenous communities. According to Tohono O'odham Nation 
            officials, Monument Hill was the site of intertribal 
            battles and contains the remains of Apache and O'odham 
            ancestors who fought in those battles.

     Water sources and flooding. The barrier system itself can 
            disrupt the natural flow of water in heavy rain events. 
            These rain events can occur regularly along rivers and 
            drainages near the border, and barrier-related obstructions 
            can exacerbate flooding, according to National Park Service 
            and Bureau of Land Management officials. For example, 
            during construction, the contractor built the patrol road 
            several feet above the desert floor in Organ Pipe Cactus 
            National Monument, in some places by as much as 8 feet. As 
            a result, the raised road acts as a natural dam by impeding 
            water flow during rain events. During heavy rains, water 
            typically flows south across the desert into Mexico but now 
            hits the side of the raised road, according to a National 
            Park Service official. We observed that, as of May 2022, 
            more than a year after the pause in construction, the 
            contractor had not yet regraded the road to allow for 
            proper drainage.

     Wildlife migration and habitats. Installation of 
            pedestrian barrier has affected wildlife by impeding their 
            movement across the landscape, including in habitat for 
            threatened and endangered species, according to tribal and 
            agency officials and all five stakeholders. For example, 
            installing the full border barrier system in parts of the 
            Rio Grande Valley in Texas has fragmented the endangered 
            ocelot's habitat, according to a joint FWS and CBP 
            documented agreement. The barrier system has also severed 
            the animal's travel corridors across the border. These 
            cumulative impacts have substantially elevated the risks of 
            the ocelot's extinction in the U.S., according to the 
            agreement.

     Vegetation and invasive species. Clearing lands for border 
            barrier construction damaged native vegetation. FWS 
            officials told us that invasive plant species took root at 
            project sites in Texas, where contractors cleared native 
            vegetation to create staging areas to store construction 
            equipment and materials. Although construction contracts 
            usually included reseeding native vegetation, in many cases 
            the reseeding did not occur because of the January 2021 
            pause in construction, according to FWS officials.

     Erosion. Barrier construction on steep hillsides--and 
            erosion control measures that were unfinished when 
            construction was paused--have led to significant erosion in 
            many locations, especially because the agencies were unable 
            to address the erosion for more than a year in many cases, 
            according to CBP officials. For some projects, contractors 
            disturbed large tracts of mountainside to install barrier, 
            build access roads, and clear construction staging areas, 
            leaving steep slopes unstable. In addition, according to 
            CBP officials, incomplete erosion control measures along 
            the barrier and patrol roads threatened the integrity of 
            the barrier system itself. For example, according to agency 
            officials, contractors built a large construction staging 
            area near the top of a mountain in the Pajarito Mountains 
            on the Coronado National Forest in Arizona, clearing the 
            mountainside of vegetation that kept the soil in place. 
            According to a Forest Service official, the entire 
            mountainside is in danger of collapse (see fig. 2).

            [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
            

    .epsSome officials also reported positive impacts of barrier 
construction on natural resources. For example, one Coronado National 
Forest official noted that there was less trash and trampling of native 
vegetation after the barrier was built. CBP officials also noted that 
the addition of barrier in some areas reduced the amount of drug 
trafficking across some federal lands, making it safer for patrol 
agents to travel along the border.

CBP and DOD Considered Potential Impacts, but Agencies, Tribes, and 
        Stakeholders Identified Concerns

    In our September 2023 report, we found that CBP and USACE, within 
DOD, each took steps to assess potential cultural and natural resource 
impacts of border barrier construction and actions to help minimize 
these impacts for the projects they managed. Because the agencies 
waived legal requirements, including cultural and natural resource-
related laws, before constructing border barriers between 2017 and 
January 2021, they did not have to conduct any activities required by 
those laws, such as environmental assessments required by the National 
Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), as amended.
    Despite the waived legal requirements, CBP and USACE officials told 
us they reviewed studies, conducted some assessments and surveys, and 
solicited input from federal agencies and others. Officials from both 
agencies said that their approaches differed from what they would have 
done if they had been required to comply with NEPA. However, CBP 
officials said they tried to meet, as closely as possible, NEPA's 
substantive requirements, when time permitted. USACE officials also 
said that they took the steps they could, while operating in the best 
and fastest way possible.

    Land management agency officials, tribal officials, and 
stakeholders told us they have concerns regarding how CBP and USACE 
assessed potential cultural and natural resource impacts. In some 
cases, they noted that they shared these concerns with CBP and USACE. 
CBP and USACE officials also noted some concerns regarding the 
assessments. These concerns included:

     Soliciting and incorporating input. Land management agency 
            officials, a tribal official, and all five of the 
            stakeholders we interviewed suggested that CBP and USACE 
            could improve their approach to soliciting and 
            incorporating input regarding their assessments, such as by 
            consulting with Tribes and providing more detailed 
            information when soliciting input. For example, officials 
            from FWS and the National Park Service both described 
            instances when CBP solicited input on maps or project 
            descriptions but did not include important details that 
            would allow them to offer anything but general feedback. 
            According to USACE officials, the short time frames limited 
            their ability to solicit and incorporate additional input. 
            CBP officials said that they did not always respond to the 
            input they received and noted that they could do a better 
            job of that in the future.

     Sufficiency of analysis. One stakeholder and a tribal 
            official emphasized the importance of studying related 
            issues before taking action to construct barriers, such as 
            studying the impact on wildlife from installing lights on 
            border infrastructure. In addition, some of the CBP and 
            USACE assessment reports we reviewed identified limitations 
            of the agencies' own analyses. For example, CBP's 
            assessment of potential impacts for a project in Arizona 
            stated that the agency did not survey the project location 
            at the right time of year to identify many of the 
            potentially affected species or their potential habitats. 
            CBP officials explained that they did not undertake some 
            studies because they would not have completed them in time 
            to meet construction deadlines.

     Flexibility in barrier decision-making. Land management 
            agency officials and three of the five stakeholders we 
            interviewed also noted concerns about the agencies' limited 
            flexibility in decision-making about barrier system 
            installation, including barrier type (pedestrian or 
            vehicle) and location. One Interior official said that 
            having such flexibility could provide more opportunities to 
            satisfy both CBP's border security mission and the land 
            management agencies' missions, especially on federal lands 
            that have been specifically protected for their natural 
            resource value. CBP officials told us that the 2017 
            executive order and appropriations acts limited their 
            flexibility in varying the barrier system components, such 
            as their ability to install vehicle barrier.\10\ According 
            to USACE officials, they also did not have flexibility in 
            choosing barrier system components to install, and the 
            military construction projects were to comply with CBP's 
            standard for the border barrier system.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \10\ The 2017 executive order directed the planning, design, and 
construction of a contiguous and impassable physical barrier, and CBP's 
fiscal years 2018 through 2021 appropriations acts directed the agency 
to use operationally effective barrier designs that were already 
deployed as of May 2017. CBP's fiscal years 2020 and 2021 
appropriations also permitted certain operationally effective 
adaptations of those earlier designs.

    We found that CBP, which has committed to implementing mitigation 
actions and maintains its authority to construct border barriers, has 
not fully evaluated these concerns to inform future actions or 
efforts.\11\ According to key practices that we and others have 
identified for both program and project management, it is important to 
identify and apply lessons learned from programs, projects, and 
missions to limit the chance of recurrence of previous failures or 
difficulties.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \11\ As of June 2021, DOD had canceled all military construction- 
and counterdrug-funded border barrier projects.
    \12\ GAO, Project Management: DOE and NNSA Should Improve Their 
Lessons-Learned Process for Capital Asset Projects, GAO-19-25 
(Washington, D.C.: Dec. 21, 2018). Project Management Institute, Inc., 
A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK' 
Guide), Sixth Edition (2017); and Implementing Organizational Project 
Management: A Practice Guide, First Edition (2014). PMBOK is a 
trademark of Project Management Institute, Inc.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    CBP officials said they have not evaluated lessons learned 
regarding their assessments because they have not completed the barrier 
construction projects. They said that they would typically wait to 
consider such lessons once that occurs. However, CBP conducted its 
efforts to assess the potential impacts of those projects prior to 
January 2021, which would allow it to consider any lessons from those 
efforts now, even if it is conducting additional work at the project 
sites. Moreover, CBP's statutory authority to build border barrier, as 
well as to waive laws when doing so, remains in effect, so it is 
important to improve its process.\13\ By evaluating lessons learned, 
CBP could gain insights for imminent, ongoing, or future barrier 
construction efforts conducted using its waiver authority.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \13\ In October 2023, DHS waived various cultural and natural 
resource-related laws again to facilitate installing additional 
physical barriers and roads along the border in Texas. Determination 
Pursuant to Section 102 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant 
Responsibility Act of 1996, as Amended, 88 Fed. Reg. 69,214 (Oct. 5, 
2023).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In our September 2023 report, we recommended that CBP, with input 
from Interior, DOD, Tribes, and stakeholders, evaluate lessons learned 
from its prior assessments of potential impacts. CBP agreed with this 
recommendation and stated it would collect information and compile a 
lessons learned report by June 2024.
    Chairman Gosar, Ranking Member Stansbury, and Members of the 
Subcommittee, this concludes my statement for the record.

Anna Maria Ortiz,
Director, Natural Resources and Environment

                                 ______
                                 

Submissions for the Record by Rep. Gosar

                        Statement for the Record
                  Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas
                  Orlando Escareno, Director of Police

Introduction
    Thank you for holding this hearing on important issues pertaining 
to environmental damage to federal lands and National Parks caused by 
the surge in immigrant and asylum-seeker (collectively, immigrant) 
crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border in southern Texas (Southern 
Border), particularly including how such crossings affect our tribe, 
the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas (Tribe), just outside of Eagle 
Pass, Texas.
    The Tribe is one of three federally recognized tribes in the State 
of Texas (State). Our Tribe is located parallel to the Southern Border, 
with a membership of approximately 1,100 tribal citizens, most of whom 
reside on our Reservation near Eagle Pass in Maverick County. Our Tribe 
also has certain trust and adjoining fee lands that run directly 
parallel to the Southern Border, and some of these lands are located 
along the Rio Grande river system, and the Tribe also owns fee land for 
traditional hunting purposes in Maverick and Kinney Counties. As I 
discuss in greater detail below, our Tribal land has been the subject 
of a significant number of illegal border crossings by immigrants, many 
of whom are leaving behind waste on our lands and whose crossings are 
exacerbating the challenges our Tribal law enforcement officers 
experience with ensuring public safety.
I. The Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas Police Department

    Background. The Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas Police 
Department (Tribal Police Department) is certified by the Texas 
Commission of Law Enforcement (TCOLE) and works in tandem with the law 
enforcement departments of Maverick County, the State of Texas, and the 
United States through various partnerships, including cross-
deputization agreements. Our Tribal Police Department also coordinates 
with the United States Border Patrol (Border Patrol) to ensure the 
safety of our Tribal members and non-Indian communities along the 
Southern Border.
    The mission of the Tribal Police Department is to protect the lives 
and property of the people we serve, to reduce criminal activity, to 
preserve the peace and to maintain a safe environment in partnership 
with the Indian and non-Indian communities both within and surrounding 
the Tribe's reservation. Our Tribal Police Department personnel 
includes 30 full time patrol officers, who proudly serve this mission. 
However, with only 30 patrol officers and limited resources at our 
disposal, our ability to carry out this mission is already severely 
strained. In addition to protecting and serving our Tribal members, our 
officers are also responsible for serving and protecting the patrons of 
our Tribe's Lucky Eagle Casino Hotel, located on our Reservation. This 
operation generates necessary tribal government revenue, which our 
Tribe puts towards the general welfare of Tribal members per the Indian 
Gaming Regulatory Act. Through this operation and other ventures of the 
Tribe, the Tribe is the second largest employer in Maverick County, one 
of the poorest counties in the State. Unfortunately, the surge of 
illegal entries at the Southern Border only further hampers our ability 
to protect our Tribal members, visitors, and surrounding non-Indian 
communities.
II. Illegal Entries on Our Tribe's Lands

    Strain on our Tribal Police Department. Over the past six months 
alone, our Tribal Police Department officers have responded to 72 
reported cases of suspected illegal border crossings and turned over 
approximately 356 subjects to Border Patrol. While this may seem like a 
small number of crossings relative to the number of crossings in other 
border towns and cities, I reiterate that we have only 30 patrol 
officers at our disposal to respond to these incidents 24 hours each 
day, not to mention all other calls for assistance from our Tribe's 
community and the patrons of our Tribal gaming facility. Furthermore, 
this is just a six-month snapshot of the situation.
    To make matters worse, our Tribal Police Department officers have 
access to only squad vehicles with the capacity to carry two 
individuals in addition to our officers. Under these circumstances 
(i.e. without larger transportation vehicles), to transfer large groups 
of illegally-crossing and/or undocumented immigrants to federal holding 
facilities, our officers have had to make as many as three trips to 
such facilities, with each roundtrip taking approximately 45 minutes of 
our officer's valuable time. Time for such trips expand if the 
immigrants need medical attention. This all leaves us with fewer 
officers on the Reservation to carry out standard police duties.
    Moreover, our Tribal Police Department lacks a temporary holding 
facility to detain immigrants our officers find crossing through our 
Tribal lands. Normally, our Tribal Police Department's procedure when 
coming across individuals who illegally enter through the border is to 
detain such immigrants until Border Patrol agents can travel to our 
Reservation to pick up said immigrants. Typically, Border Patrol agents 
will not arrive to our Reservation until approximately three-to-four 
hours after one of our officers is able to establish communications 
with Border Patrol. In other words, under ordinary circumstances where 
one of our 30 Tribal patrol officers detain immigrants, our officers 
lose approximately three-to-four hours staying with detained 
immigrants, which they could be spending on protecting and serving our 
Tribal members and surrounding non-Indian community members. The Tribe 
does not have a tribal jail, so we have nowhere to hold individuals 
while we await Border Patrol (we are hoping to secure grant funds to 
assist the Tribe in building one).
    Illegal crossings also put our Tribal members and other community 
members at risk when immigrants attempt to or actually flee detention 
by our Tribal Police Department officers. While many turn themselves in 
(especially families), this is not always the case. There are times 
when individual immigrants flee when being approached by our Tribal 
officers, resulting in on-foot pursuits of these individuals. This can 
expend even more of our officers' invaluable time. In addition, we have 
serious concerns about illicit activities some of these individuals, 
who have criminal intent, may be committing on our Tribal lands aside 
from illegally crossing the border (e.g., human trafficking; drug-
trafficking). We, for example, have concerns that there may be some bad 
actors among those crossing, who are using our hotel as a stash house.
    Our principal and overarching concern is the protection of our 
Reservation, including the safety of our Tribal members and visitors, 
and our ability to assist our non-Indian neighbor communities in their 
efforts for safety. We are concerned that our Tribal Police Department 
will lack the manpower to adequately respond to security risks on our 
Reservation when engaging in pursuits of illegally-crossing immigrants, 
transporting immigrants to Border Patrol, and having to expend 
additional police resources to address increased criminal activity by 
certain bad actors among those crossing.

    Environmental Damage and Associated Costs. The strain on the 
capacity of our Tribal Police Department is but one of the many 
negative consequences from the surge in illegal crossings by immigrants 
has had on our Tribe. The spike in these illegal entries has also given 
rise to environmental and property damage caused by waste left behind 
by immigrants as they travel through our Tribe's lands.
    It is not atypical for our Tribal members and law enforcement 
officers to come across waste discarded by immigrants, including 
clothing scraps, used diapers and scattered pieces of plastic, in 
various parts of our Reservation. Examples of this can be seen in the 
photographs below (titled ``Exhibit A'' and ``Exhibit B''), which one 
of our Tribal employees informed me was taken at the Tribe's Pecan Farm 
on October 13, 2023:

  Exhibit A. Photograph of clothing and plastic waste on the Tribe's 
                  Pecan Farm, taken October 13, 2023. 
                  
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 

 Exhibit B. Photograph of discarded clothing scraps on the Tribe's 
                  Pecan Farm, taken October 13, 2023. 
                  
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 


    .epsThe Tribe's Pecan Farm Director notified me that in the Tribal 
Pecan Farm area, it is not uncommon for employees to come across 
clothing waste in grassy areas of the farm, like the trash shown in the 
photographs above, which frequently damages farming equipment (e.g., 
clothing scraps lodged in lawn mowers). Similarly, Ricardo Barcena, 
Jr., Director, Road & Bridge Department of the Kickapoo Traditional 
Tribe of Texas (Road & Bridge Department), has described the increase 
in immigrant crossings as leading to what he referred to as a 
``crisis,'' in part, because his employees expend significant time 
taking measures to avoid machinery damage caused by clothing waste left 
by immigrants in grassy areas, which, in turn, delays Road & Bridge 
Department projects. He explained that his employees are constantly 
picking up clothes in grassy areas to avoid damage to Tribal 
equipment--particularly, lawn mowers.

    Moreover, because the Tribe does not have an on-reservation 
landfill, to properly dispose of the waste, the Tribe must not only 
expend funds on Tribal employee labor to collect the waste strewn 
across our Tribal lands but also on transporting the waste from Tribal 
lands to landfills in off-Reservation locations and paying the fees 
associated with discarding such waste.

    While we are unaware of any incidents of immigrants directly 
dumping their waste into on-Reservation bodies of water or nearby 
bodies of water, members of our Tribe have reported finding waste left 
by immigrants either on or near on-Reservation river banks of the Rio 
Grande, including wet clothing scraps and used diapers. This could pose 
health risks to our Tribal members were such waste to contaminate our 
local water supply, which we draw from the Rio Grande.\1\ We note that 
we have not gathered data on whether waste disposed by immigrants near 
the Rio Grande is contaminating our water supply to the extent such 
disposal would actually pose a public health risk, however.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ See Annual Consumer Confidence Report (CCR) for the period of 
January 1 to December 31, 2022, Kickapoo Env'tl Protect. Agency (June 
2023) (``Source of Drinking Water . . . The water for the Kickapoo 
Traditional Tribe of Texas Reservation is supplied by the City of Eagle 
Pass Water Works . . . drinking water plant. This water is surface 
water that comes originally from the Rio Grande River.'') (CCR 
accessible here); Drinking Water Fact Sheet, World Health Org. (Sept. 
13, 2023) (``Microbial contamination of drinking-water as a result of 
contamination with feces poses the greatest risk to drinking-water 
safety'') (Drinking Water Fact Sheet accessible here).

    We also have concerns about environmental damage due to waste 
disposal and wear-and-tear from foot-traffic in areas on our 
Reservation that have increased cultural significance for the Tribe, 
such as our cemetery and our Traditional Home, near an area that 
immigrants have been using as a safe haven.
III. Requests for Assistance

    To help the Tribe address environmental damage and other related 
harms caused by the surge in illegal crossings on our Reservation, we 
are asking Congress for funds to assist the Tribe with: (1) procuring 
and/or constructing a temporary holding facility to detain immigrants; 
(2) procuring a large passenger transportation vehicle (e.g., a van) 
and other transit equipment for transporting large groups of immigrants 
to Border Patrol facilities, including car seats for transporting 
minors; (3) expanding the number of law enforcement officer positions 
available in our Tribal Police Department; (4) procuring and installing 
surveillance devices along the Southern Border and other parts of our 
Reservation that are frequented by illegally-crossing immigrants; and 
(5) expenditures on services arising from properly disposing waste left 
behind by immigrants.
Conclusion
    We greatly appreciate your attention and commitment to addressing 
environmental harms caused by illegal crossings through our Tribe's 
land and other federal lands. Our view is that the individuals who are 
fleeing their countries to come to the United States must be treated 
humanely while at the same time the rule of law must be followed. We 
are happy to assist Border Patrol in the proper processing of these 
individuals and to ensure their humane treatment and we look to 
Congress to facilitate our efforts. We also look to Congress to help us 
acquire the resources we need to continue our stalwart efforts to keep 
our Reservation, our Tribal members, and our visitors safe.
    Thank you, again, for your consideration of the requests of the 
Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas. Congress has a duty to fulfill the 
federal trust responsibility owed to Tribal Nations in the United 
States, which, in this case, coincides with our efforts to keep our 
Reservation safe, particularly in light of increased immigrant 
crossings of the Southern Border through our Tribe's lands.

                                 ______
                                 

Submissions for the Record by Rep. Grijalva

The Extremist Campaign to Blame Immigrants for U.S. Environmental 
Problems

Center for American Progress, February 1, 2021 by Jenny Rowland-Shea 
and Sahir Doshi

                                 *****

    With growing frequency over the past four years, right-wing 
pundits, policymakers, and political operatives have fiercely and 
furiously blamed immigrants for the degradation and decline of nature 
in the United States. William Perry Pendley, who temporarily ran the 
U.S. Bureau of Land Management under former President Donald Trump, saw 
``immigration as one of the biggest threats to public lands,'' 
according to an agency spokesperson.1 A handful of right-
wing anti-immigration zealots, including Joe Guzzardi, have repeatedly 
misused data published by the Center for American Progress on nature 
loss to make xenophobic arguments for anti-immigration 
policies.2 This so-called ``greening of hate''--a term 
explored by Guardian reporter Susie Cagle--is a common refrain in a 
wide range of conservative and white supremacist arguments, including 
those of Ann Coulter, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, neo-Nazi Richard 
Spencer, and the manifestoes of more than one mass shooter.3
    The claim that immigration is to blame for America's environmental 
problems is so absurd, racist, and out of the mainstream that it is 
easily debunked and tempting to ignore. The scientific community, and 
the little research that has been conducted in this area, resoundingly 
refutes the premise. Consider, for example, the environmental damage 
caused by weak and inadequate regulation of polluting industries; the 
destruction of wildlife habitat to accommodate wealthy exurbs and 
second homes; the design and propagation of policies that concentrate 
toxic poisons and environmental destruction near communities of color 
and low-income communities; the continued subsidization of fossil fuel 
extraction and trampling of Indigenous rights to accommodate drilling 
and mining projects; and the propagation of a throw-away culture by 
industrial powerhouses. All of these factors and others cause 
exponentially more severe environmental harm than a family that is 
fleeing violence, poverty, or suffering to seek a new life in the 
United States.
    The extremist effort to blame immigrants for the nation's 
environmental problems deserves scrutiny--and not merely for the 
purpose of disproving its xenophobic and outlandish claims. The 
contours, origins, funding sources, and goals of this right-wing effort 
must be understood in order to effectively combat it and ensure that 
the extremists pushing it have no place in the conservation movement. 
The individuals and organizations that are most fervently propagating 
this argument come largely from well-funded hate groups that are 
abusing discredited ideologies that were prevalent in the 19th-century 
American conservation movement in an attempt to make their racist 
rhetoric more palatable to a public concerned about the health of their 
environment.
    While leaders of the contemporary, mainstream environmental 
movement in the United States have disavowed this strain of thought and 
are working to confront the legacies of colonialism and racism in 
environmental organizations and policies, a small set of right-wing 
political operatives are trying to magnify overtly xenophobic and false 
environmental arguments to achieve specific political objectives. In 
particular, these right-wing political operatives and their deep-
pocketed funders are seeking to broaden the appeal of their anti-
immigration zealotry by greenwashing their movement and supplying their 
right-wing base with alternative explanations for environmental decline 
that sidestep the culpability of the conservative anti-regulatory 
agenda. In their refusal to confront the true reasons for environmental 
decline, they are hurting the people--immigrants, Indigenous peoples, 
and people of color--who bear a disproportionate burden of 
environmental consequences and are increasingly the base of the climate 
justice and conservation movements.
Contextualizing anti-immigrant thought in environmentalism

    Today's right-wing activists who are blaming immigrants for the 
destruction of nature are, unfortunately, drawing from and building on 
a long and troubling history of racism, colonialism, and xenophobia in 
the U.S. environmental movement that harks back to the violent 
dispossession of lands from Indigenous tribal nations. To understand 
the power and dangers of this extremist movement--and where it diverges 
from the current mainstream environmental movement--it is important to 
trace the origin of population control, eugenics, and anti-immigration 
ideologies within the U.S. environmental movement.
The discredited roots of environmental racism
    Some of the earliest and most active proponents of land 
conservation in the United States also espoused anti-immigration, white 
supremacist, and racist views. For example, Madison Grant--a close 
friend of President Theodore Roosevelt and influential voice in species 
conservation, including playing a role in protecting the American bison 
and California redwood--served as director of the American Eugenics 
Society and vice president of the Immigration Restriction 
League.4
    Grant played a key role in the passage of a 1924 law restricting 
immigration by Asians and Arabs.5 John Muir, known as the 
father of national parks, expressed racism toward Black and Native 
Americans and promoted ideas of restricting immigration by 
nonwhites.6
    The notion that immigration was to blame for environmental 
destruction resurged in the 1970s, just as Europe's population was 
plateauing and that of the Global South began to grow. During this 
period, many deemed overpopulation-driven resource depletion one of the 
largest challenges facing the planet. Paul Ehrlich's 1968 book, The 
Population Bomb, which argued that overpopulation would fuel famine and 
global upheaval, proved very influential in the environmental movement 
at the time.7 This idea--which ignored the enormous 
difference in consumption patterns between countries--reinforced the 
idea already floating among U.S. nativists, which falsely associated 
global population growth and immigration growth.
    Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, these xenophobic ideas existed 
within some environmental nonprofits, including Earth First! and the 
Rewilding Institute, both of which were started by extremist activist 
Dave Foreman.8 The environmental argument for anti-immigrant 
policies also tracks closely with the Sierra Club's history, and its 
association with one person--John Tanton--has had perhaps the most 
lasting impact.9 Tanton, whom the Southern Poverty Law 
Center (SPLC) calls ``the racist architect of the modern anti-immigrant 
movement'' and who died in 2019, was a Sierra Club official in the 
1980s and went on to form many prominent anti-immigration groups, 
including many that dabble in environmental messaging.10
    Up until the 1990s, population control was part of the Sierra 
Club's core platform. For decades, a faction within the organization--
including Tanton--worked to use the Sierra Club's influence to promote 
policies to block immigration and undermine immigrant rights. In 1998, 
Tanton and others pushed a vote about whether or not the Sierra Club 
would take a strong public stance against immigration. The proposal was 
narrowly defeated by the Sierra Club's members, leading to a full 
separation from this ideology in the early 2000s.11 But 
Tanton's groups continue to try to influence environmental 
progressives.12
    Unfortunately these views still exist within some environmental 
groups as well. For example, the Rewilding Institute advocates for 
restrictions on immigration into the United States as part of its 
stance on global population growth.3 The group also 
maintains a relationship with their founder, Dave Foreman, whose views 
on immigration, published in op-eds and books, are far outside the 
main-stream, and who is an advisory board member of the SPLC-designated 
hate group, Californians for Population Stabilization.14
    Today, as major environmental groups grapple with their own systems 
of exclusion and injustice and reevaluate heroes and founders such as 
Muir and Roosevelt, the mainstream conservation movement no longer 
considers anti-immigrant arguments legitimate or accurate.15
The `greening of hate'

    While the history of this anti-immigrant argument has roots in 
environmentalism, today, this line of thinking is primarily propagated 
by extremists who are cloaking themselves as conservationists to make 
their arguments more palatable. Researchers refer to this phenomena as 
the ``greening of hate.'' 16 The individuals making these 
arguments are backed by many of the most prominent anti-immigration 
groups and funders, several of which the SPLC have flagged as white 
supremacist hate groups.
Greenwashed anti-immigrant groups and their funders
Groups

    Most formal arguments claiming immigrants as the source of 
environmental degradation can be traced back to a handful of anti-
immigration groups that are far outside of the mainstream environmental 
movement.
    Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Founded by John 
Tanton, FAIR was deemed a hate group by the SPLC because of its ties to 
white supremacist groups and eugenicists.17

    Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). Also founded by Tanton, CIS 
was deemed a hate group by the SPLC because it repeatedly publishes and 
promotes white supremacist and anti-Semitic writers and makes false 
claims about the criminality of immigrants.18

    Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR). PFIR, also tied to 
Tanton, is perhaps the most central organization in the anti-immigrant 
greenwashing universe.19 The group has been flagged by the 
SPLC for hosting a ``cynical greenwashing campaign to recruit 
environmentalists to the anti-immigrant cause by blaming them for urban 
sprawl, overconsumption and a host of other environmental problems.'' 
20

    Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS). CAPS was founded 
by Garrett Hardin, a University of California, Santa Barbara professor 
and FAIR board member, who famously wrote the essay, ``The Tragedy of 
the Commons,'' which he used to support his ideology of preventing the 
``wrong'' people--specifically nonwhite people--from 
reproducing.21 Like many others on this list, the group has 
ties to Tanton and was found to have hired white 
supremacists.22

    NumbersUSA. Also founded by Tanton, the group is considered a 
nativist organization along the lines of FAIR and CIS.23 Don 
Weeden, of the Weeden Foundation, formerly served as the group's 
treasurer and on the board of directors and until recently was one of 
the group's independent directors.24
Funders

    Colcom Foundation. Based in Pittsburgh, Colcom was founded by 
Mellon Bank heiress Cordelia Scaife May, who believed that her life's 
purpose was curbing the threat of overpopulation by limiting 
immigration to the United States.25 According to public tax 
filings, Colcom is the single-largest funder of anti-immigrant groups 
in the United States, giving around $150 million since 
2005.26 The foundation provides the bulk of funding to 
Tanton's anti-immigration groups, including PFIR, NumbersUSA, FAIR, and 
CIS, along with nominal money for environmental causes. In February 
2020, activists protested Colcom, describing it as ``not an 
environmental organization that dabbles in white supremacy, [but] a 
white supremacist group that dabbles in environmentalism.'' Several 
environmental organizations have subsequently severed ties to the 
foundation.27 Colcom Vice President John Rohe, who decades 
ago published a book about Tanton, denied activists' claims about the 
organization, saying, ``To be concerned about the level of immigrants 
due to overpopulation is not anti-immigrant.'' 28

    Weeden Foundation. Led by Don Weeden, the foundation has provided 
funding to CAPS, NumbersUSA, PFIR, FAIR, and CIS, along with 
biodiversity and wilderness conservation organizations and projects, 
including the Rewilding Institute.29 Several of its officers 
have also been very active in leadership and boards within the anti-
immigration groups that they fund.30

    Foundation for the Carolinas. Despite generally being well liked 
for their work to improve economic opportunity in Charlotte and around 
North Carolina, the group manages a donor-advised fund that has 
funneled money to FAIR, CIS, and NumbersUSA. Between 2006 and 2018, the 
foundation gave nearly $21 million in donor-advised gifts to at least 
nine anti-immigrant organizations, 85 percent of which went to Tanton-
linked organizations.31

    Anti-immigrant groups cloaking themselves in environmentalism to 
push a xenophobic agenda is not new.32 While their 
scientifically meritless arguments are no longer welcome within the 
mainstream environmental movement, they continue to fuel the vitriol--
and bad policy decisions, including draconian cuts to immigration 
levels, the evisceration of the U.S. refugee asylum systems, and the 
separation of families at the border--that hurt legitimate, effective 
solutions to the conservation and climate crisis.33
Racist rhetoric undermines the conservation movement

    This small but organized and well-funded fringe of anti-immigration 
activists has produced arguments that range from openly bigoted and 
racist stereotypes to the more insidious and purportedly science-based 
claims about population that resonate with Eurocentric environmentalism 
of the 20th century. It bears repeating: These claims do not have the 
support of the scientific community, and the little research that has 
been conducted in this area resoundingly refutes them.34 In 
fact, the vast majority of behavioral studies demonstrate that 
immigrants live more environmentally sustainable lifestyles than 
native-born Americans, so much so that immigrant density is associated 
with lower carbon emissions.35

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 


    Population-based arguments against immigration, meanwhile, are 
built on a series of flawed assumptions. The first is that the 
environmental health of the United States exists in isolation from the 
rest of the world, which has never been more untrue than in 2020, as 
the country grapples with climate change, the collapse of transnational 
migratory species, and a coronavirus pandemic born out of nature 
destruction and overexploitation of wildlife in another 
continent.36 The second is that it allows the interests 
driving the real problem--overconsumption and unregulated development--
off the hook.37 For example, corporate interests such as the 
oil and gas industry have undue influence on U.S. policy.38 
Per capita, the United States has a greater rate of climate emissions, 
air pollution, and nature destruction than most other countries and is 
an outlier even among countries with similar standards of 
living.39 Policies aimed at limiting corporate capture and 
protecting public health--not curtailing immigration--are the solutions 
to these problems.
    Polls show that communities of color--to which most immigrants and 
second-generation Americans belong--are the most concerned about this 
destruction and the likeliest to support policies that would protect 
the environment.40 For example, polls show high Latino 
support for conserving water, reducing air pollution, and protecting 
wildlife.41 This comes as no surprise given that communities 
of color--especially those that are also low-income--are more likely to 
suffer the consequences of unplanned urban sprawl, oil and gas 
drilling, deforestation, and pollution.42 Studies show that 
white people contribute disproportionately to the problem of air 
pollution, while Black and Latino people are the likeliest to bear the 
burden of air pollution where they live.43 Immigrants, who 
contribute less to pollution on average than native-born Americans, are 
still disproportionately likely to suffer the consequences of toxic 
pollution from industrial polluters.44 In this context, 
genuine environmentalism cannot exclude or antagonize immigrants and 
second-generation Americans, who form a core constituency of the 
conservation movement.
    Instead, this vitriol could actively harm the conservation movement 
by alienating and erasing both potential and existing allies, members, 
and leaders who are from immigrant backgrounds.45 For 
example, immigrant leaders were central to the labor-driven movement to 
ban the use of toxic DDT pesticides in the 20th century.46 
More recently, Asian immigrants in the fishing industry faced the worst 
consequences of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill and participated 
heavily in cleanup efforts.47 At the local level, immigrants 
are at the forefront of a range of environmental justice and 
conservation efforts, even as they remain under-represented at the 
tables of national organizations and government agencies.48 
Moreover, the racist rhetoric that runs throughout the anti-immigration 
fringe could undermine the United States' ability to cooperate across 
borders with countries that will be key allies in fighting climate 
change, conserving biodiversity, and, ultimately, fighting the 
ecological degradation and disasters that often force people to flee 
their home countries to begin with.49
    One of the most dramatic examples of how greenwashed nativism can 
harm the planet is the Trump administration's U.S.-Mexico border wall. 
Its construction was not only regarded as ineffective and wasteful but 
has also caused immense damage to the environment, including by 
blasting mountains, destroying ancient cactus, desecrating sacred sites 
of the Tohono O'odham Nation, and disrupting the migration routes and 
survival of nearly 100 already imperiled species ranging from jaguars 
to monarch butterflies.50 Notably, the Trump 
administration's extensive use of waivers to circumvent environmental 
standards and regulations allowed the federal government to destroy 
these lands with impunity in the name of immigration 
control.51
    Focusing, instead, on the root causes of human displacement and 
migration--including those rooted in nature destruction and climate 
change--and increasing well-designed legal channels for people to seek 
entry to the United States would help U.S. immigration policy become 
more humane, more effective, and more environmentally 
sustainable.52 Moreover, the Biden administration has an 
opportunity to focus on repairing the cruel and counterproductive 
mistakes of the Trump era to establish a working legal immigration 
system, asylum process, and pathway to citizenship--all of which will 
benefit the U.S. environmental movement.53
Conclusion

    Anti-immigrant sentiments were a staple of mainstream Eurocentric 
conservation in the 19th and 20th centuries--but so were eugenics, 
unscientific species exterminations, and the purposeful usurpation of 
land from Indigenous tribes who often stewarded natural resources more 
effectively than the managers who followed. As an examination of 
funding sources and policy positions have found, the extremist groups 
now hawking misleading and easily debunked green-hate arguments are not 
acting in good faith.
    Twenty-first century environmentalism is, by necessity, a 
multiracial, multi-generational, international, and anti-elitist 
movement whose diversity only makes it stronger. It is built of, by, 
and for all people--and immigrant-dense communities are its 
base.54 If the evidence of bad actors funding green hate, 
the mounting scientific data, and 650 miles of border wall devastation 
are not evidence enough, this fact alone should make clear that these 
arguments do not belong in the modern environmental movement.
Endnotes

1. Democracy Forward, @DemocracyFwd, October 16, 2020, 10:41 a.m. ET, 
Twitter, available at https://twitter.com/DemocracyFwd/status/
1317113444668243968.

2. Joe Guzzardi, ``More Americans = less wilderness,'' Havasu News, 
September 22, 2020, available at https://www.havasunews.com/opinion/
joe-guzzardi-more-americans-less-wilderness/article_b4f885d0-fd67-11ea-
8a69-27f96d6e0982.html; Joe Guzzardi, ``Joe Guzzardi: The West is 
losing natural area at an alarming pace,'' The Associated Press, March 
8, 2018, available at https://apnews.com/article/
c62553be8cd14d9eb665be6a6bd1c4d6; Glen Colton, ``Prevent urban sprawl 
with immigration reform,'' November 16, 2020, The Pueblo Chieftain, 
available at https://www.chieftain.com/story/opinion/2020/11/16/
columnist-talks-how-immigration-reform-prevent-urban-sprawl/
6314669002/.

3. Susie Cagle, `` `Bees, not refugees': the environmentalist roots of 
anti-immigrant bigotry,'' The Guardian, August 16, 2019, available at 
https://www.theguardian.com/environ-ment/2019/aug/15/anti.

4. Jedediah Purdy, ``Environmentalism's Racist History,'' The New 
Yorker, August 13, 2015, available at https://www.newyorker.com/news/
news-desk/environmentalisms-racist-history.

5. Richard Conniff, ``How a Notorious Racist Inspired America's 
National Parks,'' Mother Jones, July/August 2016, available at https://
www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/07/anniversary-national-parks-
racist-history-madison-grant/.

6. Cagle, `` `Bees, not refugees.' ''

7. Charles C. Mann, ``The Book That Incited a Worldwide Fear of 
Overpopulation,'' Smithsonian Magazine, January/February 2018, 
available at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/book-incited-
worldwide-fear-overpopulation-180967499/.

8. Cagle, `` `Bees, not refugees.' ''
9 Hop Hopkins, ``How the Sierra Club's History With Immigrant Rights Is 
Shaping Our Future,'' Sierra Club, November 2, 2018, available at 
https://www.sierraclub.org/articles/2018/11/how-sierra-club-s-history-
immigrant-rights-shaping-our-future.

10. Southern Poverty Law Center, ``John Tanton,'' available at https://
www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/john-tanton 
(last accessed January 2021).

11. Michelle Nijhuis, ``Immigration controversy engulfs Sierra Club 
board election,'' Grist, March 2, 2004, available at https://grist.org/
article/nijhuis-sierra/.

12. Cagle, `` `Bees, not refugees' ''; Colton, ``Prevent urban sprawl 
with immigration reform''.

13. Rewilding Earth, ``Human Population Growth,'' available at https://
rewilding.org/our-programs/population-growth/ (last accessed April 
2021).

14. Dave Foreman, ``More Immigration = More Americans = Less 
Wilderness,'' Earth Island Journal, Autumn 2013, available at https://
www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/magazine/entry/foreman/; 
Rewilding Earth, ``Dave Foreman,'' available at https://rewilding.org/
dave-foreman/ (last accessed January 2021); Rewilding Earth, ``CAPS 
Talks About the New Edition of Man Swarm,'' February 26, 2015, 
available at https://rewilding.org/caps-talks-about-the-new-edition-of-
man-swarm/; Californians for Population Stabilization, ``Staff and 
Board of Directors,'' available at https://capsweb.org/staff/ (last 
accessed April, 2021).

15. Michael Brune, ``Pulling Down Our Monuments,'' Sierra Club, July 
22, 2020, available at https://www.sierraclub.org/michael-brune/2020/
07/john-muir-early-history-sierra-club.

16. Betsy Hartmann, ``Conserving Racism: The Greening of Hate at Home 
and Abroad,'' January 2003, available at https://www.researchgate.net/
publication/
265045644_Conserving_Racism_The_Greening_of_Hate_at_Home_and_Abroad.

17. Southern Poverty Law Center, ``Extremist Files: Groups,'' available 
at https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/groups (last 
accessed January 2021).

18. Southern Poverty Law Center, ``Extremist Files: Groups.''

19. Amy Mehta, ``How Anti-Immigration Groups Are Hijacking the 
Environmental Movement,'' AlterNet, January 13, 2010, available at 
https://www.alternet.org/2010/01/how_anti-
immigration_groups_are_hijacking_the_environmental_movement/.

20. Alexander Zaitchik, ``Anti-Immigrant Groups Continue Greenwashing 
Campaign,'' Southern Poverty Law Center, October 8, 2010, available at 
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2010/10/08/anti-immigrant-groups-
continue-greenwashing-campaign.

21. Southern Poverty Law Center, ``Garrett Hardin,'' available at 
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/
garrett-hardin (last accessed January 2021).

22. Mehta, ``How Anti-Immigration Groups Are Hijacking the 
Environmental Movement.''

23. Heidi Beirich, ``The Nativist Lobby: Three Faces of Intolerance,'' 
Southern Poverty Law Center, February 1, 2009, available at https://
www.splcenter.org/20090131/nativist-lobby-three-faces-intolerance.

24. NumbersUSA, ``Independent Directors (as of January, 2020),'' 
available at https://www.numbersusa.org/about/directors (last accessed 
December 2020); The Center for Popular Democracy, ``Report Spotlights 
the New York Elites Who Fund Nativist Groups,'' available at https://
www.populardemocracy.org/news-and-publications/report-spotlights-new-
york-elites-who-fund-nativist-groups (last accessed January 2021).

25. Nicholas Kulish and Mike McIntire, ``Why an Heiress Spent Her 
Fortune Trying to Keep Immigrants Out,'' The New York Times, August 14, 
2019, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/us/anti-
immigration-cordelia-scaife-may.html.

26. Anti-Defamation League, ``Funders of the Anti-immigrant Movement,'' 
January 27, 2014, available at https://www.adl.org/news/article/
funders-of-the-anti-immigrant-movement.

27. Ryan Deto, ``How Pittsburgh's Colcom Foundation is `greenwashing' 
its anti-immigrant message,'' Pittsburgh City Paper, March 11, 2020, 
available at https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/how-pittsburghs-
colcom-foundation-is-greenwashing-its-anti-immigrant-message/
Content?oid=16919993.
28. Lacretia Wimbley, ``Activists launch campaign against Colcom 
Foundation,'' Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 5, 2020, available at 
https://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2020/03/05/immigrant-rights-
activists-protest-Colcom-Foundation/stories/202003050139; John F. Rohe, 
Mary Lou and John Tanton: A Journey into American Conservation 
(Washington: FAIR Horizon Press, 2002).

29. Anti-Defamation League, ``Funders of the Anti-immigrant Movement''; 
Earth First! Newswire, ``Dave Foreman still aligning with bigots,'' 
September 30, 2011, available at https://earthfirstjournal.org/
newswire/2011/09/30/dave-foreman-still-aligning-with-bigots/.

30. The Plot Against Immigrants, ``The Weeden Foundation,'' available 
at https://plotagainstimmigrants.com/network/the-weeden-foundation/ 
(last accessed January 2021).

31. Teo Armus and Ames Alexander, ``Foundation for the Carolinas under 
scrutiny over grants to anti-immigration groups,'' The Charlotte 
Observer, November 20, 2019, available at https://
www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/
article237574649.html.

32. Laurie Mazur and Priscilla Huang, ``Leadership, Not Scapegoats,'' 
Center for American Progress, July 15, 2008, available at https://
www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/news/2008/07/15/4616/
leadership-not-scapegoats/.

33. Kevin Lynn, ``Jobs, Wages and Immigration,'' April 2, 2013, 
Progressives for Immigration Reform, available at https://
progressivesforimmigrationreform.org/labor-economics/.

34. Jorge Madrid, ``From a `Green Farce' to a Green Future: Refuting 
False Claims About Immigrants and the Environment'' (Washington: Center 
for American Progress, 2010), available at https://
www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/reports/2010/10/13/8552/
from-a-green-farce-to-a-green-future/.

35. Ibid.

36. Alejandra Borunda, ``The science connecting wildfires to climate 
change,'' National Geographic, September 17, 2020, available at https:/
/www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/09/climate-change-increases-
risk-fires-western-us; Jim Daley, ``Silent Skies: Billions of North 
American Birds Have Vanished,'' Scientific American, September 19, 
2019, available at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/silent-
skies-billions-of-north-american-birds-have-vanished; Sahir Doshi and 
Nicole Gentile, ``When Confronting a Pandemic, We Must Save Nature to 
Save Ourselves'' (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2020), 
available at https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/reports/
2020/04/20/483455/confronting-pandemic-must-save-nature-save/.

37. Fred Pearce, ``It's not overpopulation that causes climate change, 
it's overconsumption,'' The Guardian, September 19, 2014, available at 
https://www.theguardian.com/com-mentisfree/2014/sep/19/not-
overpopulation-that-causes-climate-change-but-overconsumption.

38. Eimly Dao, ``Oil And Gas Lobbying: How Our Political System Has 
Empowered The Fossil Fuel Industry,'' The Rising, February 28, 2020, 
available at https://therising.co/2020/02/28/oil-and-gas-lobbying-
impacts/.

39. U.N. Environment Programme, ``Emissions Gap Report 2019'' (Nairobi, 
Kenya: 2019), available at https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/
20.500.11822/30797/EGR2019.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y; Dalia 
Streimikiene and Neringa Barakauskaite-Jakubauskiene, ``Sustainable 
Development and Quality of Life in Lithuania Compared to Other 
Countries,'' Technological and Economic Development of Economy 18 
(4)(2012): 588-607, available at https://journals.vgtu.lt/index.php/
TEDE/article/view/4723.

40. Matthew Ballew and others, ``Which racial/ethnic groups care most 
about climate change?'', Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 
April 16, 2020, available at https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/
publications/race-and-climate-change/.

41. Earthjustice, ``Latinos And The Environment,'' available at https:/
/earthjustice.org/features/poll-latino-opinion (last accessed January 
2021); Hispanic Enjoying Camping, Hunding and the Outdoors, ``3-year 
Polling Analysis: Latinos Clearly Value Conservation,'' August 20, 
2014, available at https://www.hechoonline.org/blog/3-year-polling-
analysis-latinos-clearly-value-conservation.

42. Jenny Rowland-Shea and others, ``The Nature Gap: Confronting Racial 
and Economic Disparities in the Destruction and Protection of Nature in 
America'' (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2020), available 
at https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/reports/2020/07/21/
487787/the-nature-gap/.

43. Jonathan Lambert, ``Study Finds Racial Gap Between Who Causes Air 
Pollution And Who Breathes It,'' NPR, March 11, 2019, available at 
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/03/11/702348935/study-
finds-racial-gap-between-who-causes-air-pollution-and-who-breathes-it.

44. Guizhen Ma, ``The Environmental Impact of Immigration in the United 
States'' (Logan, UT: Utah State University, 2020), available at https:/
/digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/7782/
?utm_source=digitalcommons.usu.edu%2Fetd%2F7 
782&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages; Michael Gochfeld and 
Joanna Burger, ``Disproportionate Exposures in Environmental Justice 
and Other Populations: The Importance of Outliers,'' American Journal 
of Public Health 101 (1)(2011): S53-S63, available at https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222496/.

45. Sudha Nandagopal, ``Why environmentalists should get involved in 
immigration reform,'' Grist, March 19, 2010, available at https://
grist.org/article/2010-03-19-why-environmentalists-should-get-involved-
in-immigration-reform/.

46. La Madre Tierra, ``Historia,'' available at https://www.lama-
dretierra.org/historia/ (last accessed January 2021).

47. Erik Ortiz, ``Five Years After BP Gulf Oil Spill, Vietnamese 
Fishermen Still Struggling,'' NBC News, April 20, 2015, available at 
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/five-years-after-bp-oil-
spill-vietnamese-fisherman-make-slow-n343411.

48. Lea Ceasrine and Rose Aguilar, ``Indigenous, Immigrant, and Local 
Activists At The Forefront of Environmental Justice,'' KALW Radio, 
September 18, 2019, available at https://www.kalw.org/post/Indigenous-
immigrant-and-local-activists-forefront-environmental-justice#stream/0.

49. Lauren Markham, ``How climate change is pushing Central American 
migrants to the US,'' The Guardian, April 6, 2019, available at https:/
/www.theguardian.com/commentis-free/2019/apr/06/us-mexico-immigration-
climate-change-migration.

50. Center for Biological Diversity, ``No Border Wall,'' available at 
https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/border_wall/ (last 
accessed January 2021).

51. Center for Biological Diversity, ``Trump administration Waives 
Environmental Laws to Build Border Walls in New Mexico, Arizona,'' 
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www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2019/border-wall-
environmental-laws-04-23-2019.php.

52. Jayla Lundstrom, ``Climate Change Is Altering Migration Patterns 
Regionally and Globally,'' Center for American Progress, December 3, 
2019, available at https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/
news/2019/12/03/478014/climate-change-altering-migration-patterns-
regionally-globally/; Tom Jawetz, ``Restoring the Rule of Law Through a 
Fair, Humane, and Workable Immigration System'' (Washington: Center for 
American Progress, 2019), available at https://
www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/reports/2019/07/22/472378/
restoring-rule-law-fair-humane-workable-immigration-system/; Dan 
Restrepo, Trevor Sutton, and Joel Martinez, ``Getting Migration in the 
Americas Right: A National Interest-Driven Agenda'' (Washington: Center 
for American Progress, 2019), available at https://www.american-
progress.org/issues/security/reports/2019/06/24/471322/getting-
migration-americas-right/.

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and Workable Immigration System: The First 100 Days and Beyond,'' 
Center for American Progress, January 11, 2021, available at https://
www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/news/2021/01/11/494390/
executive-action-can-build-fair-humane-workable-immigration-system/.

54. Intersectional Environmentalist, ``The Future is Intersectional,'' 
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(last accessed January 2021); NAACP, ``Environmental and Climate 
Justice,'' available at https://naacp.org/issues/environmental-justice/ 
(last accessed January 2021).

                                 ______
                                 
CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION STUDIES

Southern Poverty Law Center

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/center-
immigration-studies

                                 *****

    Founded in 1985 by John Tanton, the Center for Immigration Studies 
(CIS) has gone on to become the go-to think tank for the anti-immigrant 
movement with its reports and staffers often cited by media and anti-
immigrant politicians. CIS's much-touted tagline is ``low immigration, 
pro-immigrant,'' but the organization has a decades-long history of 
circulating racist writers, while also associating with white 
nationalists.

    While CIS and its position within the Tanton network have been on 
the Southern Poverty Law Center's (SPLC) radar for years, what 
precipitated listing CIS as an anti-immigrant hate group for 2016 was 
its repeated circulation of white nationalist and antisemitic writers 
in its weekly newsletter and the commissioning of a policy analyst who 
had previously been pushed out of the conservative Heritage Foundation 
for his embrace of racist pseudoscience. These developments, its 
historical associations and its record of publishing reports that hype 
the criminality of immigrants are why CIS is labeled an anti-immigrant 
hate group.
    CIS reports have been widely criticized and debunked by groups such 
as the Immigration Policy Center and the CATO Institute. Alex 
Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at CATO, said in early 2017: 
``Oh, I'm convinced that [CIS executive director Mark Krikorian is] 
wrong about all the facts and issues. They're wrong about the impact of 
immigrants on the U.S. economy and on U.S. society.'' Speaking about 
CIS to Univision in August 2017, Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez stated: 
``Their research is always questionable because they torture the data 
to make it arrive at the conclusion they desire, which is that 
immigrants are criminals and a burden on the U.S. and our economy. It 
is the worst kind of deception, but politicians, the conservative media 
and some Americans eat it up because it always looks somewhat 
legitimate at first glance.'' CIS has also defended the usage of 
``anchor babies'' and released a report on ``terror babies,''popular 
concepts among the nativist movement.
    While capable of appearing as a sober-minded policy analyst in some 
settings, longtime CIS executive director Mark Krikorian's 
contributions to the immigration policy debate rarely rise above 
petulant commentary dashed with extremist statements. Often, these 
statements are highly revealing.
    At his perch at National Review and on Twitter, Krikorian has 
asked, ``How many rapists & drug-dealers are the anti-deportation 
radicals protecting?'' and argued that Mexico's ``weakness and 
backwardness has been deeply harmful to the United States.'' Krikorian 
has called Mexican American journalist Jorge Ramos a ``white-Hispanic 
ethnic hustler'' and riffed that if the U.S. were a police state, as 
Chelsea Manning claimed, then ``this mentally ill traitor would have 
been dumped in a shallow grave years ago.'' In one exchange on Twitter, 
Krikorian tried to whitewash the role eugenicists played in the 1924 
Immigration Act, only to stop responding when Harry H. Laughlin's role 
in advancing the legislation was mentioned. Laughlin was the most 
prominent eugenics advocate prior to WWII and went on to co-found the 
racist pseudoscience-promoting Pioneer Fund, which Tanton had close 
ties to through the 1990s.
    More recently, CIS has been in the headlines for its connections to 
former Trump Administration adviser Stephen Miller, a man who in 
college collaborated with white nationalist Richard Spencer to bring 
another white nationalist, Peter Brimelow, onto campus for a debate on 
immigration. Miller was instrumental in pushing for anti-immigrant 
policies in the Trump White House, regularly drawing from CIS. In early 
2017, Miller made the rounds on national media defending the Trump 
administration's Muslim ban by citing the CIS. ``First of all, 72 
individuals, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, have been 
implicated in terroristic activity in the United States who hail from 
those seven nations, point one,'' Miller said on NBC's ``Meet the 
Press.'' Fact-checkers at The Washington Post debunked the talking 
point, which collapsed several categories of crimes related to 
terrorism to reach a higher number, and awarded it ``Three 
Pinocchios.''
In Their Own Words

    ``We send out a weekly roundup of immigration commentary from all 
sides, including people we don't agree with. I include The New York 
Times, and their editorials on immigration are usually things we 
completely disagree with, and we include a pretty broad range, 
including some sites that publish other material that frankly I find 
kind of objectionable. But if they are important sites of immigration 
news, we include them because the whole point is, see the broad 
spectrums of views and judge for yourself.''--CIS executive director 
Mark Krikorian on C-SPAN defending the inclusion of white nationalist 
group VDARE in CIS's weekly newsletter, 2019.
    ``Am I a bad person for thinking it was already a holiday?''--CIS 
executive director Mark Krikorian commenting on a story about the major 
Islamic holiday Eid al-Adha falling on Sept. 11, 2016.
    ``Obama's Justice Dept has been doing everything in its power for 
7.5 yrs to foment race war. Happy now?''--CIS executive director Mark 
Krikorian on Twitter, 2016.
    ``It's ironic--it's illegal for them to work, but they're working 
for the immigration service in a sense. . . . I don't have any problem 
with it in principle. The question is: Is it run well?''--CIS executive 
director Mark Krikorian on private detention centers with ``volunteer'' 
work programs that pay undocumented immigrants $1 to $3 a day for 
cleaning, cooking and other jobs, 2015.
    ``The diminution of sovereignty engineered by the EU is bad enough 
for some share of the population, but many more will object to 
extinguishing their national existence a la Camp of the Saints.''--CIS 
executive director Mark Krikorian referencing the racist novel 
published by John Tanton's white nationalist publishing house The 
Social Contract Press, 2015.
    ``We can expect a disaster. In sum, we'll witness the unmaking of 
America.''--CIS senior policy analyst Stephen Steinlight commenting on 
the prospect of 2014 immigration reform passing, 2014.
    ``Send him back to Liberia so it's on their dime.''--CIS executive 
director Mark Krikorian on a Liberian immigrant who was diagnosed with 
Ebola in Texas, 2014.
    ``We have to have security against both the dishwasher and the 
terrorist because you can't distinguish between the two with regards to 
immigration control.''--CIS executive director Mark Krikorian on anti-
Muslim conspiracist Frank Gaffney's radio show, 2014.
    ``There's no court that will stop Obama from doing anything. And we 
all know, if there ever was a president that deserved to be impeached, 
it's this guy. Alright? And I wouldn't stop. I would think being hung, 
drawn, and quartered is probably too good for him.''--CIS senior policy 
analyst Stephen Steinlight at a Tea Party meeting, 2014.
    ``You don't know how long it will be here before the political 
activists get engaged in [the Mexican] community and foment something 
that will look like the civil rights movement for African Americans, 
but I can promise you it will be a lot bloodier.''--CIS senior policy 
analyst Stephen Steinlight on the prospect of Mexican immigrants 
attaining U.S. citizenship, 2013.
    ``Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. . . . It's a season of repentance, 
prayer, and self-denial, to prepare the believer for the commemoration 
of Christ's suffering and death and for the celebration of his 
resurrection. And a group of Evangelical grandees has decided to mark 
the holy season by prostituting scripture for political ends.''--CIS 
executive director Mark Krikorian in response to a group of evangelical 
leaders calling for immigration reform, 2013.
    ``My guess is that Haiti's so screwed up because it wasn't 
colonized long enough.''--CIS executive director Mark Krikorian after 
the 2010 Haitian earthquake that killed 160,000 people, 2010.
    ``That means the children and grandchildren of immigrants are 
committing a lot of crime, making this a long-term problem. That's much 
worse news.''--CIS research director Steven Camarota arguing that the 
children of immigrants are prone to criminality in response to research 
showing that immigrants commit less crime than the native U.S. 
population, 2008.
    ``Perhaps the simplest way to approach [skills-based immigration] 
would be to admit anyone who scores above 140 on an IQ test.''--CIS 
executive director Mark Krikorian advocating for an IQ test component 
in a draconian immigration policy regime, The New Case Against 
Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal, 2008.
    ``There are real differences between groups, not just trivial ones 
that we happen to notice more than we should. Race is different in all 
sorts of ways, and probably the most important way is in IQ. Decades of 
psychometric testing has indicated that at least in America you have 
Jews with the highest average IQ, usually followed by East Asians, and 
then you have non-Jewish whites, Hispanics and then Blacks. These are 
real differences. They're not going to go away tomorrow, and for that 
reason we have to address them in our immigration discussions.''--CIS 
contributing writer Jason Richwine, during a panel about Krikorian's 
book, 2008.
History

    The Center for Immigration Studies, like the rest of the organized 
anti-immigrant movement we see in America today, was founded by the 
late John Tanton, a Michigan ophthalmologist turned population-control 
alarmist whose racist beliefs stirred him to create a network of 
organizations with a simple agenda: heavily restricting the immigration 
levels to the United States in order to maintain a white majority. As 
Tanton wrote in 1993, ``I've come to the point of view that for 
European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-
American majority, and a clear one at that.''
    Tanton founded his flagship organization the Federation for 
American Immigration Reform (FAIR) in 1979, an organization that was 
for years supported by the eugenics promoting Pioneer Fund. Soon after 
founding FAIR, he was eager to enhance the legitimacy of the anti-
immigrant policies FAIR was proposing. To do that, Tanton needed an 
independent think tank, which came to fruition in 1985, called the 
Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
    Tanton donated his correspondences to the University of Michigan 
and among the conversations with Klan lawyers and white nationalists, 
his role in establishing CIS is made clear. In a letter dated Sept. 16, 
1985, Tanton spelled out the need for creating CIS and explicitly 
confirmed that it would start as a project of FAIR. ``After a careful 
and prolonged study, the FAIR board has concluded that a `Think Tank' 
on the scale of the Worldwatch Institute is needed. For credibility, 
this will need to be independent of FAIR, though the Center for 
Immigration Studies, as we're calling it, is starting off as a project 
of FAIR.'' The next day, Tanton wrote to Gregory D. Curtis in 
Pennsylvania where he again described CIS as a ``project,'' writing, 
``We're in the process of setting up independent projects both the 
Center for Immigration Studies, and the Litigation Program.''
    Scholar Steven Gardiner describes in his 2005 paper, ``White 
Nationalism Revisited,'' ``There are also organizations, the Federation 
for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) for example, that in their push 
for mainstream acceptance vehemently denying racist motivations, even 
while playing to radicalized fears and allying themselves with doctrine 
white nationalists.'' The same can be said of CIS despite the best 
efforts of Tanton and others to play up its independence from FAIR and 
Tanton himself.
    CIS became independent in 1986, but the relationship with Tanton 
and FAIR was far from over. In another memo also written in 1986, 
Tanton talked about the need to get CIS fully funded and properly 
functioning, ``To expand our fund-raising market, we created the Center 
for Immigration Studies last year. We need to get CIS fully funded and 
entrenched as a major Washington think-tank, one that can venture into 
issues, which FAIR is not yet ready to raise.''
    In another 1986 memo to a file kept for the purpose of eventually 
writing an autobiography, Tanton described CIS as an organization over 
which he had direct control, as opposed to others that he said were 
``one level removed from our control.'' Eight years later, in 1994, 
Tanton wrote that he was still setting what he called ``the proper 
roles for FAIR and CIS.''
    In 1989, Tanton recorded his oral biography, where he discussed how 
FAIR donated board members to CIS and also discussed hiring the man who 
served as the think tank's first executive director. Tanton stated: 
``We actually donated several of our board members and donors to the 
Center for Immigration Studies as it was called--Gene Katz became one 
of their important donors. Liz Paddok left the main FAIR board and went 
over to the Center for Immigration Studies board. We subsequently hired 
a retired foreign service officer, David Simcox, to run CIS.'' Tanton 
also remarked, ``Forming [Immigration Reform Law Institute] and CIS 
were part of an effort to develop a balanced program--a neatly rolled 
rug!''
Otis Graham--Tanton's friend and confidant at CIS

    A look at the FAIR and CIS boards today shows that not much has 
changed. CIS and FAIR share one board member, Frank Morris, and two 
people who have served on FAIR's advisory board currently sit on the 
CIS board: Peter Nunez and William Chip.
    The man Tanton recorded his oral biography with was a close friend, 
Otis Graham, who helped grow CIS during its early years before the 
arrival of its current executive director, Mark Krikorian, in 1995. 
When Tanton started CIS as a FAIR project in 1985, Graham was a member 
of the FAIR board. But Tanton's correspondence makes clear that he was 
able to get Graham to leave the FAIR board in order to run CIS, a job 
he did until Krikorian took over. Graham did hold the role of executive 
director and others that were not specified.
    Tanton frequently wrote Graham revealing letters. In 1991, he told 
him about former Klan leader David Duke's campaign for governor of 
Louisiana that year, which he described as based on ``the excesses of 
affirmative action and illegitimate pregnancy.'' Tanton told Graham 
that ``there is a lot going on out there on the cultural and ethnic 
(racial) difference'' front and added, in a hopeful tone, that it was 
``all tied to immigration policy. At some point, this is going to break 
the dam.''
    A 1994 Tanton letter also shows that he was critical to raising 
funds for CIS. Although Tanton said he played a ``behind-the-scenes 
role'' at CIS, he revealed that key backers of his other organizations 
had ponied up millions for CIS. Those large donations were key because 
CIS does not do direct-mail fundraising.
Krikorian hired and Tanton revisionism

    In 1995, another CIS transfer from FAIR occurred, this time in the 
person of Krikorian. Krikorian worked at FAIR as a newsletter writer 
and then working at a few newspapers before joining CIS. His stint at 
FAIR is not mentioned on his bio page at the CIS website. Within a few 
weeks of his appointment, Tanton sent Krikorian a letter of 
congratulations, telling him, ``If there is anything I can do to help 
out at any point, please let me know.''
    It was around this time, too, that the historical revisionism 
around the founding of CIS began. Though there is no explicit evidence 
of collusion between Tanton, Krikorian and Dan Stein, FAIR's president, 
all three have attempted to change the narrative, attempting to put 
some distance between FAIR, Tanton, and the think tank. The crux of the 
tale is that Tanton simply raised money for CIS and nothing more. In 
his letter congratulating Krikorian in February 1995, Tanton wrote, ``I 
have tried in particular to help with fundraising through the years, 
and have been able to steer some small amounts of money toward CIS.'' 
Less than a year before Krikorian joined CIS, Dan Stein was recording 
his own oral biography with Tanton. When CIS came up, Stein admitted 
that both organizations shared office space but also stated, ``Yes, CIS 
was never a project of FAIR, but it was a bit of a spin-off.'' This is 
a bit of a whitewash of the facts contained in Tanton's memo almost 10 
years earlier where he specifically states that CIS was starting off 
``as a project of FAIR.''
    In a correspondence sent to the SPLC as well as testimony before 
Congress, Krikorian has also pushed this narrative. ``We've never had 
any institutional relationship,'' Krikorian told the SPLC in an email 
in 2009. ``He's never been on our board or served as an employee, he's 
never even been in our offices.'' He said Tanton ``had some role back 
in the mid-80s in helping rustle up money for CIS,'' but added that he 
and Tanton had no ``personal relationship.'' Krikorian sounded a 
similar note in 2004, when he testified before an immigration 
subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. ``He wrote us a check, I 
think it was a year ago,'' he said of Tanton. ``It was the first check 
I have seen from him in nine or 10 years. . . . We have no 
institutional relationship.''
    The narrative about CIS's independence, especially from a white 
nationalist like Tanton, is key to the organization being seen as 
credible in the Beltway. As Stein put it in his oral bio: ``Well, yes, 
there has always been an important role for CIS with its research-
oriented profile and greater appearance of objectivity. Its reports 
have been accepted by the media and some members of Congress as 
authentic research; it's certainly as authentic as anything that the 
Urban Institute or any of the Ford Foundation groups have put out. So 
it plays a very valuable role, and has continued to develop as an 
independent organization and perform much of the mission it was 
originally designed to carry out.''
    Despite Krikorian's having no ``institutional relationship'' with 
Tanton, it is clear through Tanton's correspondences that the two men 
stayed in touch over the years. Tanton would send Krikorian suggestions 
and also included him in letters penned to white nationalists. In 1997, 
Tanton invited Krikorian and others to participate in the annual 
``Writers Workshop'' event put on by his racist publishing house, the 
Social Contract Press (TSCP). TSCP has published a number of racist 
texts, including an English language translation of the French novel 
Camp of the Saints, a book penned by Frenchman Jean Raspail. The novel 
depicts an invasion of France by immigrants from India who are painted 
as sexually voracious savages who destroy the country and rape white 
women. The book gained more notoriety during the 2016 election campaign 
after reports that Trump's senior adviser and then-Breitbart executive 
Stephen Bannon was a major fan of the novel.
    TSCP also publishes a quarterly journal, The Social Contract 
(TSC),which has routinely published nativist screeds authored by 
influential white nationalists including the late Sam Francis, Patrick 
Buchanan and Peter Brimelow. TSC's longtime editor is white nationalist 
Wayne Lutton, a man described by Gardiner in his 2005 paper as one of 
the ``intellectual theorists of white nationalism.'' While Tanton 
hobnobbed with white nationalists and shared their beliefs, Lutton has 
a long track record of directly working for white nationalist groups. 
For a number of years, Lutton was on the editorial advisory board of 
the Citizens Informer, the publication of the white nationalist group 
Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), which Charleston shooter Dylann 
Roof credited with being his gateway into white nationalism. Before 
working for Tanton, Lutton wrote for and sat on the advisory board of 
the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), one of America's longest-
running Holocaust denial organizations. In 2002, Lutton joined the 
editorial advisory board of the antisemitic Occidental Quarterly 
publication.
    Both Krikorian and his staff are regular attendees at the TSC 
Writers Workshop, which also attracts white nationalists, and their 
writings regularly appear in TSC. In 2016, CIS fellow John Miano spoke 
at the gathering, while Krikorian did the year before, and Jessica 
Vaughan, CIS's director of policy studies, spoke in 2012. Krikorian has 
four pieces published in TSC, and Steve Camarota, the CIS director of 
research, is published there three times. CIS fellow Don Barnett and 
CIS board members Frank Morris, and William Chip as well as former 
member Vernon Briggs are also published in TSC.
Racism in CIS Reports and Speeches

    In an interview with NPR in early 2017, in response to the SPLC 
listing CIS as a hate group Krikorian stated: ``Our work is out there. 
We have published and spoken, myself and my staff, millions of words 
and there is nothing in there that you're gonna be able to say that is 
based on a sort of using a religious or racial or ethnic criteria in 
running our immigration policy. It's just not there.'' Despite its 
efforts to ``vehemently deny racist motivations'' as Gardiner points 
out in the case of FAIR, the group is capable of ``playing to 
racialized fears.'' Among the millions of words both written and 
uttered by CIS staffers, including Krikorian, are a litany of examples 
of attacks on Latinos, Muslims and immigrants in general.
    Hired in 2005 by Krikorian, CIS's senior policy analyst Stephen 
Steinlight perhaps best epitomizes the organization's general distaste 
of modern, that is to say largely nonwhite, immigrants. In ``The Jewish 
Stake in America's Changing Demography,'' a report Steinlight wrote for 
CIS four years before he joined the organization, he painted American 
Muslims as Jew haters, writing: ``For reasons that appear 
simultaneously self-evident and self-serving, spokespersons from the 
organized Muslim community regularly cite the figure of six million 
Muslims. The number is chosen because it constitutes both a form of 
demographic riposte to the hated figure of the six million Jewish 
victims of Nazism that Muslims believe confers vast moral and political 
advantages on Jews and, secondly, it allows Muslims to claim they have 
already achieved numerical parity with American Jews.'' Krikorian, for 
his part, called Muslims a ``vicious people,'' writing in National 
Review in 2011, ``Well, I'm afraid that in the Islamic world democracy 
faces the problem of a vicious people, one where the desire for freedom 
is indeed written in every human heart, but the freedom to do evil.'' 
In July 2017, as tensions mounted in Jerusalem, Krikorian tweeted that 
Palestinians want to ``exterminate the Jews.''
    At a Tea Party event in 2014, Steinlight was filmed calling for the 
hanging of then-President Obama. Speaking at the Highlands Tea Party in 
Florida, Steinlight stated, ``We all know, if there ever was a 
president that deserved to be impeached, it's this guy. Alright? And I 
wouldn't stop. I would think being hung, drawn and quartered is 
probably too good for him.'' Krikorian's response to the incident, 
which was widely covered in mainstream press was to tell HuffPost, 
``Steve sometimes has used impolitic language and I admonished him to 
choose his words more carefully in the future,'' and put a reprimand in 
Steinlight's personnel file.
    No such reprimand occurred when Steinlight, speaking at a Tea Party 
gathering in Texas in 2013, said the following about Mexican 
immigrants: ``Within a few years, I promise you, and I love it when 
they say, `Oh, those people don't care about political rights, they 
just care about jobs.' Do you know how long they will be here before 
the political activists get engaged in that community, and foment 
something that will look like the civil rights movement for African 
Americans, but I can promise you it will be a lot bloodier.'' At 
another Tea Party event in 2014 in Texas, Steinlight anticipated 
President Trump's Muslim ban by calling for the return of something 
similar to the McCarran Internal Security Act, which excluded 
communists and fascists from immigrating to the United States, but 
applied to Muslims. He stated, ``If I had my druthers, we would bring 
back something like the McCarran Act, in the `50s which barred 
communists and fascists on the grounds that they believe in things that 
are subversive to the Constitution. Muslims believe in things that are 
subversive to the Constitution.'' Steinlight conducted an interview in 
2013 with the conservative Washington Times, stating, ``Hispanics don't 
exemplify `strong family values.' '' He also warned in 2004 that 
immigration threatens ``the American people as a whole and the future 
of Western civilization.''
    Krikorian also has a long track record of racist remarks. Perhaps 
his most vile came in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in 
Haiti in 2010, that killed an estimated 160,000 people. Writing in his 
regular column on the conservative National Review website nine days 
after the natural disaster, Krikorian remarked, ``My guess is that 
Haiti's so screwed up because it wasn't colonized long enough.'' (His 
emphasis).
    He has also routinely attacked influential Americans of color. In 
2017, he described civil rights leader John Lewis as ``Like a grown man 
who won the big game in high school and never stops talking about it.'' 
After Justice Susan Sotomayor was appointed in 2009, Krikorian took to 
National Review to say that Americans should not be ``giving in to'' 
the ``unnatural'' pronunciation of her last name.
The new case against immigration: Both legal and illegal

    In 2008, Krikorian wrote a book on immigration restriction, The New 
Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal. Krikorian says 
today's immigrants ``look'' a lot different than immigrants from 100 
years ago. Explaining that Europeans previously accounted for the 
majority of immigration, he laments most immigrants today come from the 
``third world.'' He believes this is the main issue with immigration 
today. These immigrants, he claims, have intense difficulties with 
assimilation such as learning English, transnationalism, and 
``affirmative action for immigrants.''
    A hallmark of Krikorian's argument is to exploit the plight of 
black Americans. ``Today's `systematically different' immigrants are 
simply continuing the traditional pattern (common among the Irish and 
Italians and others in the past) of trying to climb over the backs of 
black Americans to achieve assimilation'' he says. He adds, ``Hispanics 
and Asians are simply the latest immigrant groups trying to use their 
location on the nonblack side of the divide as an assimilation tool.'' 
And despite otherwise never advocating on behalf of black Americans, he 
takes advantage of their position in society to serve his argument. 
``Bridging this basic divide in American society between black and 
nonblack--bringing our black countrymen into full membership in the 
American nation in every respect--is our most urgent long-term domestic 
concern,'' he claims.
    Krikorian believes many of these immigrant communities make America 
vulnerable and the threat ``isn't confined to radical Islam.'' In fact, 
he says America is also susceptible to threats from North Korea, 
``Communist China,'' and Colombia. He adds that Colombian communities 
in the United States would ``serve as a base of operations for FARC 
attacks in the United States in the event of war.''
    On Mexicans he says, ``It could well be that there are cultural or 
other reasons that Mexican immigrants are especially deficient in 
institution building, but they nonetheless reflect a broader trend in 
modern society.'' Krikorian adds, ``But Mexico, already the eight-
hundred pound gorilla of immigration policy, is the eight-thousand-
pound gorilla with regard to sovereignty, due to its domination of the 
immigration flow, its proximity, and the historical resentments that 
many of its people harbor toward our country.''
    Krikorian's book cites his own organization, CIS, and Krikorian 
himself over 50 times, while also citing white nationalists Peter 
Brimelow, Steve Sailer and Patrick Buchanan.
Failing studies and bad stats

    CIS reports and blog pieces have also been widely discredited and 
debunked by such groups as the Immigration Policy Center and CATO 
Institute, which criticized CIS in 2015 for exaggerating immigrant 
welfare use. But a number of publications also contain bigoted language 
demonizing immigrants from all walks of life and making a mockery of 
CIS's ``pro-immigrant'' tagline.
    In a 2008 blog, Jessica Vaughan decried the Temporary Protected 
Status (TPS) program, which provides relief for thousands of 
individuals who have fled war-torn nations and countries dealing with 
natural disasters. Vaughan wrote, ``One legacy of TPS has been its 
contribution to the burgeoning street gang problem in the United 
States.'' A 2008 report authored by CIS fellow David Seminara referred 
to immigrants as ``Third-World gold-diggers.'' In the same report, he 
wrote, ``The use of fraudulent marriage petitions is prevalent among 
international terrorists.''
    In 2010, another CIS fellow David North attempted to blame teenage 
obesity on immigrants in a piece titled, ``Farfetched? Does Illegal 
Immigration Facilitate Teenage Obesity?'' Also in 2010, following the 
BP oil spill, then CIS writer Phil Cafaro attempted to blame immigrants 
for the spill, writing, ``Population makes a difference--and 
immigration levels make a difference to our overall population,'' 
before concluding, ``In the long-term, regarding efforts to create a 
sustainable society, these demographic trends loom a lot larger than 
whether or not BP or Halliburton made some greedy, foolish decisions to 
cut corners in the Gulf.''
    CIS reports are a big hit with white nationalists, for which 
immigration is their ``most important'' issue, as Gardiner accurately 
points out. One white nationalist who has routinely cited CIS figures 
is Jared Taylor, one of the most prominent white nationalists of the 
past quarter century. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Taylor wrote, 
``Blacks and whites are different. When blacks are left entirely to 
their own devices, Western civilization--any kind of civilization--
disappears''--a comment indistinguishable from Krikorian's following 
the Haitian earthquake in 2010. Taylor's columns in his now-defunct 
American Renaissance journal and AMREN website cites CIS at length. 
Krikorian, in a recent Reddit AMA, attempted to distance himself from 
Taylor, writing, ``Sorry, I never `promoted' him. He came to a public 
event once and asked a question. You could've done the same--would I be 
promoting you?'' But again, Krikorian's swift dismissal doesn't tell 
the whole truth. Taylor has actually asked questions at multiple CIS 
events, and both men have attended Tanton's Writers Workshop events in 
the past. Tanton was a big fan of Taylor's and helped fund the American 
Renaissance journal when Taylor launched it in 1990.
CIS staffers cozying up with racists

    The Taylor-Krikorian connections don't stop there. CIS circulates a 
weekly email to its supporters that contains articles on immigration 
written by people from across the political spectrum. A study conducted 
by the SPLC and the Center for New Community (CNC) found that CIS 
circulated over 2,000 pieces of material from racist websites or penned 
by white nationalists, including three pieces published on the AMREN 
website.
    Over 1,700 articles circulated by CIS in its weekly email came from 
VDARE, a racist website that serves as a hub for white nationalists, 
antisemites and nativists. VDARE stands for Virginia Dare, the supposed 
first white child born in the Americas. VDARE was founded by English 
white nationalist Peter Brimelow, a former National Review contributor 
who now is seen as a key player in the racist ``alt-right'' movement. 
Brimelow's relationship with CIS dates back decades, when Tanton would 
write to him and Krikorian. Krikorian wrote a review of Brimelow's 
infamous anti-immigrant book Alien Nation, calling it a ``flawed 
jewel.'' CIS also published Brimelow in a 1998 colloquy titled ``What, 
Then, Is the American, This New Man?''
    Brimelow wrote 51 pieces circulated by CIS. Other VDARE authors CIS 
circulated include antisemite Kevin MacDonald, a former psychology 
professor at California State University, Long Beach, who published a 
trilogy that supposedly ``proves'' that Jews are genetically driven to 
destroy Western societies. CIS staffers have also written articles for 
VDARE throughout the years. CIS fellow John Miano has written dozens of 
pieces for VDARE, dating back to 2001, and in 2016 attended VDARE's 
Christmas party.
    Kevin MacDonald was far from the only antisemite circulated by CIS 
to its supporters. One article CIS circulated was authored by Holocaust 
denier John Friend, who has described the Holocaust as a ``manufactured 
narrative, chock full of a wide variety of ridiculous claims and 
impossible events, all to advance the Jewish agenda of world domination 
and subjugation.''
    Another piece CIS circulated is from Rense.com, a site full of 
Holocaust-denial material which published a birthday ode to Adolf 
Hitler in 2015 including lines like, ``You NEVER built Jewish gas 
chambers,'' and ``You removed Jews and their Zionist agenda from 
positions of power in banking, media and politics, but only after World 
Zionism declared World War on Germany in 1933 and proved their hatred 
for the German people.'' The piece refers to Jews as ``predators'' and 
includes lines including: ``How come that the Jews are so rich? Only 
Jews are offended by the question because they are too arrogant and 
insecure to recognize [sic] that every stranger, not necessarily a Jew, 
is being asked from time to time who is he and what makes him tick.''
    Six articles written by the notorious Norwegian anti-Muslim blogger 
Peder Are Nostvold Jensen who writes under the name ``Fjordman,'' were 
also circulated by CIS in its weekly emails. Fjordman was cited over 
100 times in the manifesto of racist mass murderer Anders Behring 
Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011.
    In 2008, CIS circulated a Taki's Magazine article by white 
nationalist Richard Spencer--the face of the alt-right movement--and 
two pieces from Spencer's old white nationalist website 
AlternativeRight.com. CIS also distributed one piece by William 
Regnery, the founder of the National Policy Institute (NPI) the white 
nationalist think tank Spencer now runs. Regnery also founded the 
Charles Martel Society, the publisher of the racist and antisemitic 
journal Occidental Quarterly.
    In 2007, Krikorian accepted an invitation to speak at Michigan 
State University from its chapter of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), 
a conservative college organization. This chapter of YAF, however, was 
not like many of its sister chapters across the country. The chapter 
was led by one of Richard Spencer's friends, white nationalist Kyle 
Bristow. The MSU-YAF had been widely covered in the media for a series 
of nasty stunts--staging a ``Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day,'' holding 
a ``Koran Desecration'' competition, and posting ``Gays Spread AIDS'' 
flyers across campus. Krikorian was part of the same speaker series 
that included Nick Griffin, a Holocaust denier who heads the extremist 
British National Party, and Jared Taylor (whose speech was later 
cancelled). Bristow is now the white nationalist movement's go-to 
lawyer.
    A number of CIS reports have also appeared reprinted in the Journal 
of Social, Political and Economic Studies, published by Roger Pearson, 
a white nationalist who has been active on the far right since the 
1950s. In 1958, Pearson founded the Northern League, a ``Pan-Nordic 
cultural organization'' dedicated to convincing Northern Europeans to 
recognize ``their common problems and their common destiny,'' and to 
come to ``an appreciation . . . of the threat of biological extinction 
with which we [i.e. Nordics] are threatened.'' The members of this new 
group included Nazis. In 1957, Pearson wrote, ``If a nation with a more 
advanced, more specialized, or in any way superior set of genes mingles 
with, instead of exterminating, an inferior tribe, then it commits 
racial suicide, and destroys the work of thousands of years of 
biological isolation and natural selection.'' In total, three reports 
published by CIS were reprinted in Pearson's journal, two back in 2002, 
and one in 2009. The civil rights group Center for New Community 
contacted Pearson about the 2009 reprint, and his response was, ``If I 
remember correctly, it was reprinted with the permission of Center for 
Immigration Studies.''
    On multiple occasions CIS staffers have granted interviews with 
another antisemitic outlet, American Free Press (AFP). AFP was founded 
by now-deceased antisemite Willis Carto, who like Pearson was active on 
the radical right for over half a century. AFP carries stories on 
Zionism, secret ``New World Order'' conspiracies, and thinly veiled 
vilification of American Jews and Israel, something that could be 
learned by conducting a simple Google search.
Mainstream credibility

    Tanton described in his oral biography that CIS ``has gone on to be 
quite successful'' and that most certainly is the case in part due to 
the group working hard to distance itself from its founder, while at 
the same time fostering relationships with elected officials and 
government agencies. This was a key goal of Tanton's, first described 
in a memo he wrote back in 1986. Under the subheading ``Infiltrate the 
Judiciary Committees,'' Tanton wrote: ``This is a long-range project. 
We should make every effort to get legislators sympathetic to our point 
of view appointed to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and 
their Immigration Sub-Committees. Think how much different our 
prospects would be if someone espousing our ideas had the chairmanship! 
If we secure the appointment of our people as freshmen members of the 
committee, we will eventually secure the chairmanship. Remember: we're 
in this for the long haul.''
    Later in the memo, Tanton wrote about the need to ``develop strong 
relationships with the [U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service], 
and with the Bureau of Consular Affairs in the State Department (which 
supervises the issuance of visas). Here I'm speaking of not just the 
people in Washington, but the workers in the field. We should recruit 
field people to membership, and get their ideas on how to change 
things, drawn from their perspective of daily work with the problem. 
The Departments of Labor and Education also have a piece of this pie, 
and we should get to know them as well.''
    Steinlight and other CIS staffers have not been shy about promoting 
their strong ties with agencies now under the Department of Homeland 
Security (DHS), a department formed long after Tanton wrote his 
strategic memos.
    The CNC detailed the relationships between CIS and these agencies 
at length in a 2015 report titled ``Blurring Borders: Collusion Between 
Anti-Immigrant Groups and Immigration Enforcement Agencies.'' Speaking 
specifically about CIS, it reads, ``In a July 2014 appearance on the 
internet radio show Cotto & Company, CIS Senior Policy Analyst Stephen 
Steinlight admitted that a recent CIS publication that inspired 
multiple Congressional inquiries could not have been done ``without our 
ongoing good connections with whistleblowers in agencies like 
Immigration and Customs Enforcement.'' As recently as March 31, 2015, 
CIS's Jessica Vaughan published analysis based on, as she opaquely 
phrased it, ``DHS statistics, which have not been released to the 
public, but were obtained by the Center.''
    CIS has also worked with Border Patrol in the past, most notably 
during border tours that the group organizes on both the U.S./Mexico 
and U.S./Canada borders.
    While members of Congress are comfortable working with FAIR, CIS 
currently has the monopoly when it comes to testifying before Congress. 
In total, CIS staffers have testified over 100 times, and 11 times 
since the beginning of 2016. FAIR has not testified before Congress 
since 2012, according to its website.
    While CIS routinely hosts panel discussions featuring nativist 
members of Congress, including Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama and Rep. Lou 
Barletta of Pennsylvania, a more blatant example of CIS's deep 
relationships with elected officials occurred during the last major 
push for comprehensive immigration reform in 2013. CIS director of 
national security policy Janice Kephart left the organization to take 
up of special counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee. During the 
heated debates over the bill in the Senate, then-Sen. Jeff Sessions of 
Alabama, a longtime ally of the anti-immigrant movement, was the key 
spokesperson on the Senate floor in opposite to the bill. During 
Sessions' rebuttals Kephart could be seen sitting behind the senator.
    In early 2014, as the prospect of comprehensive immigration 
measures diminished, CIS again relied on leaks from its friends in DHS 
to publish two reports. The first claimed that ICE ``released 68,000 
aliens with criminal convictions'' in 2013 and the second cited 
internal DHS metrics claiming that 36,000 immigrants awaiting the 
outcome of their deportation proceedings were released by DHS under 
President Obama's watch that same year. The 36,000 number promoted Rep. 
Lou Barletta, a close ally of the anti-immigrant groups, to write an 
op-ed citing the first CIS report where he claimed its release was 
``the day immigration reform died.''
    Following the tragic shooting death of Kate Steinle in San 
Francisco in July 2015 by an undocumented immigrant, CIS and other 
anti-immigrants used it as an opportunity to attack so-called 
``sanctuary cities.'' CIS published a map of sanctuary jurisdictions on 
its website that prompted a backlash. In July 2017, Mark Krikorian 
published a piece on the two-year anniversary of Steinle's death, using 
it to push for anti-sanctuary policies. A week earlier, Steinle's 
father, who was with her on the night she died, provided quotes in a 
piece in the San Francisco Chronicle titled, ``Leave Kate Steinle Out 
of the Immigration Debate.'' ``I don't know who coined `Kate's Law,' '' 
Jim Steinle stated, ``It certainly wasn't us.'' In 2015, Steinle said 
in an interview that his family is not opposed to sanctuary policies.
History of attrition through enforcement

    Since its inception, CIS has been advocating for some form of 
``attrition through enforcement.'' Various CIS writers have advocated 
for this policy, from David North to Jessica Vaughn.
    What began as a reflection of IRCA in 1987 has evolved into CIS's 
core policy. David North explains in his 1987 article that immigrants 
need to be treated as poorly as possible so that they themselves choose 
to leave, alleviating the work of immigration enforcement. ``Being 
arrested as one heads illegally over-the border, and then being sent 
back to the nearest port of entry, is a nuisance, and little more. 
Being arrested in illegal status in New York, and being sent home to 
Lima or Sydney is a major disincentive, and the individual either will 
not try again, or will not try again quickly,'' he says.
    Attrition through enforcement was formalized in the anti-immigrant 
movement in 2005. The United States needs to ``shrink the illegal 
population through consistent, across-the-board enforcement of 
immigration law,'' Krikorian proclaimed. Krikorian says in denying 
immigrants access to jobs, identification, housing and ``in general 
making it as difficult as possible for an illegal immigrant to live a 
normal life here,'' undocumented individuals would ``self-deport.''
    Kris Kobach, former Kansas secretary of state and counsel for the 
Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), a legal department of FAIR, an 
SPLC-designated hate group, is responsible for some of the most anti-
immigrant legislation, particularly attrition through enforcement. 
Kobach has also attended a TSC Writers Workshop.
    Kobach first began experimenting with this policy on a smaller 
scale, helping to draft and then defend legislation like Ordinance 5165 
in Fremont, Nebraska, which barred undocumented individuals from 
renting property. These ordinances were then rolled into bigger omnibus 
packages which were introduced in Arizona as SB 1070 and then in 
Alabama as HB 56. Both bills allow law enforcement to racially profile 
individuals when there is ``reasonable suspicion'' they are 
undocumented.
    In 2008, Kobach authored Attrition Through Enforcement: A Rational 
Approach to Illegal Immigration, in which he touts the Legal Arizona 
Workers Act (LAWA), which requires all employers in Arizona to use E-
Verify, as a successful example of attrition through enforcement.
E-Verify

    E-Verify is an integral component of attrition through enforcement 
according to Krikorian. In 2015, Pew published a report, ``More 
Mexicans are Leaving Than Coming to the U.S.,'' which found a net 
decline in immigration from Mexico from 2009 to 2014. Working off the 
results of this report, Krikorian accounted this decline to attrition 
through enforcement. He says the Pew report suggests that if the U.S. 
implements nationwide E-Verify, tracks and punishes individuals who 
overstay their visas, prosecutes ``border infiltrators'' and deports 
every ``illegal arrested by local police,'' then the ``illegal 
population will shrink considerably.'' However, no analysis or evidence 
is provided to substantiate this claim. The Pew report Krikorian cites 
actually says family reunification is the top reason for leaving.
    Advertised as a free system for employers to verify if employees 
are documented, E-Verify is estimated to cost almost $1 billion to 
implement nationwide. An audit published by U.S. Citizenship and 
Immigration Services (USCIS) in 2009 estimates it would cost the 
federal government $635 million, an additional $10 million in 
compliance costs, and at least $200 million to the private sector 
alone.
    In addition to the cost of implementation and maintenance of this 
program, E-Verify often wrongly presumes workers guilty and forces 
individuals to defend their documented status. This affects all 
people--not just the undocumented. E-Verify has an almost 1% inaccuracy 
rate for wrongly identifying legal workers as unauthorized.
    The ACLU estimates there are 154 million workers in the United 
States, and if the E-Verify system fails just 1% of the time, it will 
keep 154,000 people from working. These 154,000 people can be denied by 
the system for a number of reasons, but the cause is rarely obvious. 
The E-Verify system compiles data from 20 different databases, and the 
effort to clear the system error can be not only rigorous, but costly 
as well.
Across two administrations: Trump to early Biden years

    Donald Trump's rise to power brought CIS and the rest of the 
nativist movement closer to the White House and closer to shaping 
immigration policy than ever before.
    Krikorian bragged to Reuters in October 2016 that the Trump team 
had received requests for research and studies during the campaign. In 
August, Trump released a campaign ad that specifically cited CIS. Also 
in August, Krikorian met with Trump officials in New York, where he was 
asked to be a campaign surrogate, a position that he turned down.
    Trump's major national security speech, also delivered in August 
2016, contained a call for an ``ideological screening test,'' similar 
to the one used in the Cold War and touted by Krikorian in December 
2015. In his National Review column he wrote, ``The narrowest solution 
would be to restore the principle of `ideological exclusion' to U.S. 
immigration law. With the end of the Cold War--which too many imagined 
to be the End of History--we eliminated the legal bar to enemies of 
America who were not actual members of terrorist organizations or card-
carrying members of totalitarian political parties.''
    Trump's victory resulted in nativists obtaining top jobs in the 
administration and DHS and Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions was appointed 
Attorney General. Aside from working hand in hand with Kephart in 2013, 
Sessions has endorsed the work of CIS and participated in a panel 
discussion event the group organized in 2006 and spoke on a CIS 
teleconference in 2013. During the 2016 campaign, Sessions spoke at a 
reception for guests invited to a CIS conference. Stephen Miller, a 
Sessions staffer-turned Trump adviser and speechwriter, served as the 
keynote speaker at a CIS awards ceremony in 2015. In 2017, CIS staffer 
Jon Feere left the organization and took up a position at the DHS. 
Former FAIR executive director Julie Kirchner also was hired for a 
position at USCIS.
    In 2016 CIS began commissioning Jason Richwine, a disgraced former 
Heritage Foundation analyst, to write reports and blogs for the 
organization. Richwine's racist views were exposed in 2013 after he co-
authored a major Heritage Foundation report on the ``costs'' of the 
most recent comprehensive immigration reform bill. Journalists, as well 
as civil rights groups such as the SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League, 
reported on a the racist nature of Richwine's Harvard dissertation in 
which he claimed, ``No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ 
parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants 
will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue 
against.'' Richwine's beliefs in IQ differences between the races are 
prevalent not only in anti-immigrant circles, but also white 
nationalist ones. He authored pieces for the white nationalist website 
Alternative Right, founded by Richard Spencer.
    But five years prior to this, Krikorian was exposed to Richwine's 
views on race and IQ in a panel discussion organized by the American 
Enterprise Institute to discuss Krikorian's book, The New Case Against 
Immigration. With Krikorian sitting on the same panel, Richwine stated: 
``There are real differences between groups, not just trivial ones that 
we have to notice more than we should. Race is different in all sorts 
of ways, and probably the most important way is in IQ. Decades of 
psychometric testing has indicated that at least in America you have 
Jews with the highest average IQ, usually followed by East Asians, and 
then you have non-Jewish whites, Hispanics and then blacks. These are 
real differences. They're not going to go away tomorrow, and for that 
reason we have to address them in our immigration discussions.''
Present

    With the election of Joe Biden, the anti-immigrant movement, 
including CIS, found itself at an inflection point. The previous four 
years represented a recent high-water mark of the nativist movement's 
ability to influence federal immigration policy. However, with the 
Biden administration's promise to reverse former President Trump's 
draconian immigration agenda, CIS and other anti-immigrant hate groups 
shifted from a proactive strategy to one centered on preserving the 
anti-immigrant status quo they helped usher in.
    As part of the effort to defend its policy victories over the last 
four years, CIS has welcomed several former Trump administration 
officials to its staff, some of whom had worked at CIS in years past.
    One former Trump administration official who joined CIS is Robert 
Law. From 2017 to 2021, Law worked at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration 
Services (USCIS), first as senior policy adviser and subsequently as 
chief of the Office of Policy and Strategy. Law, who prior to joining 
the Trump administration had held multiple positions at FAIR, 
reportedly helped draft President Trump's executive order that 
temporarily blocked the issuance of new green cards in April 2020. 
Currently, Law serves as CIS's Director of Regulatory Affairs and 
Policy.
    Jon Feere is another former Trump administration official presently 
working at CIS. Since 2002, Feere has worked at CIS on and off, in a 
variety of positions. During his time in the Trump administration, 
Feere served in ICE as the senior adviser to the director and as ICE's 
chief of staff from January 2017 to January 2021. Feere was a political 
appointee of the Trump administration, meaning his nomination did not 
require Congressional approval. At CIS, Feere is the director of 
investigations.
    CIS is currently focused on using a state-centric strategy to 
protect the anti-immigrant policy remnants of the Trump administration. 
In a Dec. 6, 2021, report, CIS Director of Policy Studies Jessica 
Vaughan noted the importance of a state and local government-led 
blueprint that reiterates CIS's commitment to an extreme slate of 
``self-deportation'' policies, which are long proven failures for the 
states and communities that have adopted them over recent decades.

                                 ______
                                 
                        Statement for the Record
                          Sky Island Alliance

Pedestrian Traffic Highest Near Roads at the U.S.-Mexico Border in 
        Southeastern Arizona

October 12, 2023

Sky Island Alliance operates a network of 110 motion and heat-activated 
wildlife cameras along the U.S.-Mexico border on federal lands of 
southeast Arizona. Camera detections of pedestrians within 1.5 miles of 
the border from March 2020 to present were analyzed from Coronado 
National Forest, San Rafael State Natural Area, Coronado National 
Memorial, San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, and San 
Bernardino National Refuge Area. During this period, the cameras 
detected a total of 13,978 vehicles and 634 people on foot including 
recreationists, biologists, ranchers, and refugees. Refugees 
constitutes no more than 17% of total observed pedestrians. Vehicles 
outnumber pedestrians 22:1.

Daily rates of pedestrian detections are plotted against distance from 
the camera to the closest road for cameras north of border with bollard 
barriers (Coronado National Memorial, San Pedro Riparian National 
Conservation Area, and San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge) and 
vehicle barriers (Coronado National Forest and San Rafael State Natural 
Area):

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 


Key takeaways:

     There are significantly higher daily detection rates of 
            pedestrians on federal lands near roads.

     The highest daily rates of pedestrians occur on federal 
            lands with bollard barrier at the border.

                                 ______
                                 
                        Statement for the Record
                          Sky Island Alliance

No Trash Detected on Four Federal Land Units along U.S.-Mexico Border 
        in Arizona

October 12, 2023

Sky Island Alliance operates a transect of motion and heat-activated 
wildlife cameras along the U.S.-Mexico border on federal lands of 
southeast Arizona. Cameras facing the international boundary on 
Coronado National Forest, Coronado National Memorial, San Pedro 
Riparian National Conservation Area, and San Bernardino National Refuge 
Area detected no instances of trash between June 6 and September 19, 
2023: 

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 

Example photos

International border road at San Pedro Riparian National Conservation 
        Area: 
        
        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
        

International border road at San Bernardino National Wildlife 
        Refuge: 
        
        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] [GRAPHIC] 
        

                               [all]