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


                    THE BIDEN	HARRIS BORDER CRISIS:
                          VICTIM PERSPECTIVES

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

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                     U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION
                               __________

                      TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2024
                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-95
                               __________

         Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
         
         
                  [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]         


               Available via: http://judiciary.house.gov
                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                    
56-704                     WASHINGTON : 2024   


                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                        JIM JORDAN, Ohio, Chair

DARRELL ISSA, California             JERROLD NADLER, New York, Ranking 
MATT GAETZ, Florida                      Member
ANDY BIGGS, Arizona                  ZOE LOFGREN, California
TOM McCLINTOCK, California           STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
TOM TIFFANY, Wisconsin               HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr., 
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky                  Georgia
CHIP ROY, Texas                      ADAM SCHIFF, California
DAN BISHOP, North Carolina           ERIC SWALWELL, California
VICTORIA SPARTZ, Indiana             TED LIEU, California
SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin          PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington
CLIFF BENTZ, Oregon                  J. LUIS CORREA, California
BEN CLINE, Virginia                  MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania
KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota        JOE NEGUSE, Colorado
LANCE GOODEN, Texas                  LUCY McBATH, Georgia
JEFF VAN DREW, New Jersey            MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
TROY NEHLS, Texas                    VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas
BARRY MOORE, Alabama                 DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina
KEVIN KILEY, California              CORI BUSH, Missouri
HARRIET HAGEMAN, Wyoming             GLENN IVEY, Maryland
NATHANIEL MORAN, Texas               BECCA BALINT, Vermont
LAUREL LEE, Florida                  Vacancy
WESLEY HUNT, Texas
RUSSELL FRY, South Carolina
MICHAEL A. RULLI, Ohio

               CHRISTOPHER HIXON, Majority Staff Director
         AARON HILLER, Minority Staff Director & Chief of Staff
                                 ------                                
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                      Tuesday, September 10, 2024

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                   Page
The Honorable Jim Jordan, Chair of the Committee on the Judiciary 
  from the State of Ohio.........................................     1
The Honorable Jerrold Nadler, Ranking Member of the Committee on 
  the Judiciary from the State of New York.......................     3

                               WITNESSES

Sheriff Mike Boudreaux, Tulare County, California
  Oral Testimony.................................................     6
  Prepared Testimony.............................................     8
Tammy Nobles, Mother of Kayla Hamilton, Victim of Criminal 
  Illegal Alien
  Oral Testimony.................................................    14
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    16
Cecilia Farfan-Mendez, Institute on Global Conflict and 
  Cooperation, University of California San Diego
  Oral Testimony.................................................    18
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    20
Melissa M. Lopez, Executive Director, Estrella del Passo
  Oral Testimony.................................................    28
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    30
April Aguirre, Crime Victims' Advocate
  Oral Testimony.................................................    34
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    36
Anne Fundner, Mother of Weston Fundner, Victim of Fentanyl 
  Poisoning
  Oral Testimony.................................................    40
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    43
Patricia Morin, Mother of Rachel Morin, Victim of Criminal 
  Illegal Alien
  Oral Testimony.................................................    47
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    49
Alexis J. Nungaray, Mother of Jocelyn Nungaray, Victim of 
  Criminal Illegal Alien
  Oral Testimony.................................................    52
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    55

          LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC. SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING

All materials submitted for the record by the Committee on the 
  Judiciary are listed below.....................................   100

A report entitled, ``America Invaded: How the Biden-Harris Border 
  Crisis is Fundamentally Transforming the United States,'' Sept. 
  2024, Chip Roy, submitted by the Honorable Chip Roy, a Member 
  of the Committee on the Judiciary from the State of Texas, for 
  the record
A statement from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC), 
  Sept. 10, 2024, submitted by the Honorable Jerrold Nadler, 
  Ranking Member of the Committee on the Judiciary from the State 
  of New York, for the record

 
                    THE BIDEN-HARRIS BORDER CRISIS:
                          VICTIM PERSPECTIVES

                              ----------                              


                      Tuesday, September 10, 2024

                        House of Representatives

                       Committee on the Judiciary

                             Washington, DC

    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:14 a.m., in 
Room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, the Hon. Jim Jordan 
[Chair of the Committee] presiding.
    Members present: Representatives Jordan, Issa, Biggs, 
McClintock, Tiffany, Massie, Roy, Bishop, Spartz, Fitzgerald, 
Bentz, Cline, Armstrong, Van Drew, Nehls, Kiley, Hageman, Hunt, 
Fry, Rulli, Nadler, Swalwell, Correa, Dean, Escobar, Ross, 
Ivey, and Balint.
    Chair Jordan. The Committee will come to order. Without 
objection the Chair is authorized to call for a recess at any 
time. We welcome everyone to today's hearing on victims' 
perspectives on the Biden-Harris border crisis.
    The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Texas to lead 
us all in the Pledge of Allegiance. So, please rise.
    All. I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States 
of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one 
Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for 
all.
    Chair Jordan. The Chair will now recognize himself for an 
opening statement. On day one, the Biden-Harris Administration 
made three changes that led to the unprecedented situation we 
have seen in our country. On day one, they decided no more 
building the wall, no more Remain in Mexico while we evaluate 
your asylum claim, and once you get here, you will not be 
detained. You will be released into the country. As a result of 
that, ten million migrants have come into the country, 99 on 
the terrorist watch list. We have lost track; they have lost 
track of hundreds of thousands of young people who came into 
the country. Because of all those decisions made again, 
deliberately, intentionally, in a premeditated way, on day one 
of this administration all kinds of terrible things have 
happened, all kinds of terrible things. Jocelyn Nungaray, Noah 
Rodriguez, Kayla Hamilton, Weston Fundner, Rachel Morin, Lakin 
Riley, Maria Gonzalez, Sam Fagan, and Gabriel Fagan, each one 
of these individuals were someone's child. Each one had a 
promising life, a promising life ahead of them. Each one had 
people in their lives who loved and cared for them, each one. 
Each one is a victim of the Biden-Harris open border policies.
    Jocelyn and Maria, not yet even teenagers, were brutally 
assaulted and murdered by illegal aliens who were released into 
the country by this administration. Kayla and Lakin, young 
women pursuing their dreams were brutally assaulted and 
murdered by illegal aliens who this administration released 
into this country. Rachel Morin, a mom of five young children, 
was brutally assaulted and murdered by an illegal alien 
welcomed into this country by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. Noah 
Rodriguez, Sam Fagan, Gabriel Fagan, and Weston Fundner, 
teenagers and young men with bright futures were poisoned by 
fentanyl that this administration refused to stop from falling 
across our Southern border. You may have heard these names and 
stories and those of countless other victims of criminal 
illegal aliens, but not from Kamala Harris. Last week, a 
teenager in Manassas, Virginia was allegedly kidnaped by an 
illegal alien, reportedly released into the country, again, by 
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris' Administration.
    In January, two New York City police officers were 
assaulted by a group of illegal aliens who entered the country 
thanks to this administration's open border policy. In May 
2023, a teenage girl in Alabama was viciously assaulted in a 
restaurant bathroom by an illegal alien with a violent arrest 
record in his home country. He was able to enter the country as 
a quote, ``got-away'' because of this administration's policies 
that ensure border patrol agents are too busy processing 
illegal aliens to actually patrol the border and do their job.
    Last February, a Nassau County New York man was the victim 
of a brutal antisemitic attack by the hands of an illegal alien 
that this administration released into the country.
    I can keep listing these stories. This is what happens when 
you have an administration that doesn't care about border 
security that prioritizes aliens over Americans and legal 
immigrants and that refuses to enforce immigration law in the 
interior of the country. I am sure that we will hear a lot of 
excuses from my Democrat colleagues today. We will hear how the 
illegal border crossings have decreased. Of course, we all know 
that the Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are flying illegal aliens 
right now into the U.S. interior. We will hear that tired and 
flawed argument that natives commit more crimes than 
immigrants. Even if that was true, would it matter to Rachel's 
family, Kayla's mom, or Jocelyn's mom, or Weston's family? The 
truth is that in every crime I have discussed, everyone 
committed by an illegal alien was preventable if only we had an 
administration that did their job. Unfortunately, we don't. We 
have a Democrat Presidential Candidate who for years advocated 
for open borders. She was appointed the border czar, yet 
presided over the largest mass, illegal immigration in U.S. 
history. She has called for ICE to be abolished. She has 
laughed off questions about border security. She has promoted 
amnesty. She has said that ``an undocumented immigrant is not a 
criminal.''
    Thanks to Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, we are on track to 
get to 12 million illegal aliens in the United States in the 
four-year administration--12 million. I always tell folks, that 
is the equivalent of the entire population of our State, the 
State of Ohio, seventh largest State in the union. That is not 
even counting the 1.9 million known got-aways who evaded Border 
Patrol or the unknown number of got-aways who have not even 
been detected. American communities are left to suffer the 
consequences. We are going to hear from people who suffered it 
in a direct way today.
    With that, I would yield to the Ranking Member for his 
opening statement.
    Mr. Nadler. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, before I 
start, I would like to take a moment and express my sincerest 
condolences to all our witnesses who have lost loved ones and 
to all their families. I cannot imagine how difficult this has 
been for you, and I appreciate your being here to share their 
stories. May their memories be a blessing.
    Unfortunately, instead of working in a bipartisan fashion 
to find meaningful solutions to our broken immigration system, 
we are sitting in yet one more partisan hearing designed to 
divide us and to score political points before an election. In 
fact, one of our Republican colleagues said the quiet part loud 
last week when he said in this season ``these are messaging 
hearings that we have been doing.''
    We have only eight weeks until election day and our 
Republican colleagues are trying to do everything, they can 
blame Vice President Harris for what they now call the Biden-
Harris border crisis. They label her the border czar and the 
leader of the administration's border policy even though they 
know that is not and never was the case. Let's be clear. Vice 
President Harris was never in charge of immigration police with 
the Biden Administration and was certainly not the border czar. 
That position does not exist, so of course, she could not have 
been appointed to it. Our Republican colleagues know this, of 
course, but have never let the facts get in the way of their 
messaging.
    The truth is that President Biden directed Vice President 
Harris to address the root causes of migration from Mexico and 
the Northern Triangle. In that role, she generated over $5 
billion in public and private investments and created 
opportunities in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. That 
investment has paid major dividends. Between Fiscal Years 2021 
and 2023, Border Patrol apprehensions from migrants from those 
countries dropped by nearly 50 percent. That is because 
immigration is impacted by factors beyond one country's 
policies. People do not leave their lives and homes beyond on a 
whim. The people crossing our border immigrate because life has 
become unsustainable in their home countries, because of 
factors like persecution, or economic, food, or political 
insecurity. By investing in other countries, we help ensure 
that people can build a better life for themselves without 
having to seek security elsewhere. These investments have 
contributed to the lowest levels of unauthorized crossings in 
four years. You would not know any of that from seeing my 
colleagues do their press hits on NewsMax or from what we have 
heard today.
    In today's hearing, we are going to hear from family 
members who have lost a loved one from fentanyl poisoning or as 
a result of a crime committed by someone who entered the 
country over the last four years. There is a verse in the Torah 
that hangs in my office, ``tzedek, tzedek, tirdof,'' ``justice, 
justice shalt thou pursue.'' The families here today want 
justice for their loved ones. They want to ensure that no other 
family has to suffer the pain of what they have gone through. 
These are noble goals. The heinous crimes these families have 
suffered should be universally condemned. The perpetrators 
should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of our laws and then 
they should be removed from the country. This is not a story 
that began four years ago. Tragically, the same story could be 
told of any President, former President Trump's Administration 
released undocumented immigrants who went on to commit crimes.
    Now, do I blame President Trump for those crimes? Of course 
not. He has his own crimes to worry about. As I have said to 
all Congress, no President has ever had the resources to detain 
every individual that crosses the border without authorization. 
Our immigration system is broken, and it will take a 
substantial bipartisan effort to fix it. We need more judges 
and asylum officers so migrants can have their asylum cases 
heard in a matter of weeks, not years, so we can stop so-called 
catch and release.
    We need to expand lawful pathways to migration, as the 
Biden-Harris Administration has been trying to do, so people 
can come to the United States after they are vetted in an 
orderly and safe manner. We need to look at immigration in a 
holistic manner to see the benefits that immigrants bring to 
this country and not focus only on the negatives. Immigrants' 
contributions have helped ensure that we came out of the 
pandemic stronger than any other advanced economy. A 
nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that recent 
immigrants will cut the deficit by $900 billion and add 
revenues of $1.2 trillion over the next decade. Immigrants make 
essential contributions to our society, our economy, and our 
character as a country, and they do so despite an immigration 
system that has been profoundly broken for decades. My 
Republican colleagues have shown they do not have an interest 
in fixing the system so that we may take advantage of the 
remarkable contributions that immigrants make to our country 
while keeping out those who would do us harm. Instead, they 
would rather blame Democrats and push unworkable solutions.
    Republicans spent a year saying that their dream bill, H.R. 
2, is the only way to secure the border, even though they know 
that it can't become law having failed twice to pass the Senate 
receiving just 32 votes earlier this Congress, in a Senate I 
would note with 49 Republicans. Then, they insisted that the 
price of helping protect Ukraine against Russian aggression was 
enacting harsh border enforcement legislation. Senate 
Republicans even managed to find bipartisan support for border 
bill in the Senate, a bill that Minority Leader McConnell 
called the toughest border bill in 30 years, but Republicans 
could not take yes for an answer. Donald Trump said that he did 
not want to do anything that might help with the border in an 
election year because he wants immigration as a campaign issue. 
Other Republicans said it out loud, too, saying that they don't 
want to ``do too damn much to help a Democrat.''
    Republicans showed clearly what Democrats have been saying 
over and over again, that they don't want to do anything that 
would help address the immigration system. They clearly have 
given up. They just want the demagogue. I wish that was not the 
case. Vice President Harris has made it clear we need a 
reformed immigration system with robust lawful pathways to 
citizenship, strong security and controls at our border, and a 
modern approach to a global issue that has been neglected for 
far too long. Democrats stand ready to work on real solutions 
to these problems. I only wish we had a willing partner. I look 
forward to hearing from our witnesses today and I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back. Without objection, 
all other opening statements will be included in the record.
    Today's witnesses, we start with the Hon. Mike Boudreaux. 
Sounds like that he got roots in Louisiana with that last name. 
Sheriff Boudreaux is a life-long resident of Tulare County, 
California, a place I have been. His 38-year career in the 
Sheriff's Department began as a Sheriff Deputy when he was 19 
years old. He has served as Sheriff since 2013. Sheriff 
Boudreaux holds a certificate of criminology and administration 
of justice, an Associates of Science degree in Administration 
of Justice, a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminology and 
Management, and a Master's degree with course study in the 
Administration of Justice and Organizational Development. 
Sheriff, we welcome you today.
    Ms. April Aguirre began her crime victim advocacy in 
Houston, Texas after her nine-year-old niece was shot and 
killed while riding in a car with her parents. She is a veteran 
of the United States Air Force where she trained as a nurse. 
She has an Associate's degree in criminal justice from Houston 
Community College and a Bachelor's degree in Criminal Justice 
from the University of Houston. We appreciate you being with us 
today.
    Ms. Tammy Nobles is a realtor from Norfolk, Virginia. She 
volunteers part-time as President of the Downs Syndrome 
Association of Hampton Roads, and is a mother of Kayla 
Hamilton, a victim of a criminal illegal alien and we 
appreciate you and sympathize with your loss.
    Ms. Patricia Morin, a mother of six, including Rachel who 
was the victim of a criminal illegal alien, stay at home mom 
for 25 years, home schooled her children. She returned to the 
workforce after her oldest child graduated from high school and 
worked in the mortgage banking industry in retail management 
until she retired. She currently works part-time as an Office 
Administrator of her church and resides in Maryland, and we 
appreciate you being with us as well.
    Ms. Anne Fundner is a wife and mother of four whose 15-
year-old son Weston was poisoned by fentanyl. Since then, she 
has spoken publicly about her son's death to promote change and 
educate American families about the consequences of the 
fentanyl crisis. We appreciate you being with us as well.
    Ms. Alex Nungaray is a resident of Houston, Texas, and is 
the mother of Jocelyn, a victim of criminal illegal aliens.
    Dr. Cecilia Farfan-Mendez is a researcher with the 
Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at UC-San Diego 
and the Center for Studies on Security, Intelligence, and 
Governance at the Institute of Technology de Mexico. Her 
research and work focus on organized crime, female 
participation in criminal groups, and U.S.-Mexico security 
cooperation.
    Finally, Ms. Melissa Lopez. We will now yield to the 
gentlelady from Texas to introduce a witness from her district.
    Ms. Escobar. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It is my pleasure to 
introduce a fellow El Pasoan to the Committee this morning. 
Melissa Lopez who is doing vital work as the Executive Director 
of the Estrella del Paso organization. Estella del Paso is the 
largest legal services provider in our region. They assist 
asylum seekers, victims of trafficking, and migrants who have 
faced a host of dangerous and life-threatening situations. Over 
a career spanning 17 years providing legal services for 
immigrants, Melissa has met countless immigrants and 
experienced firsthand just how many people come to the United 
States to pursue a better life for themselves and their 
families.
    Ms. Lopez, thank you for all your work and welcome.
    Chair Jordan. Thank you. The gentlelady yields back. We 
welcome our witnesses and thank them for appearing today. We 
will begin by swearing you in. Would you all please rise and 
raise your right hand?
    Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the 
testimony you are about to give is true, correct, and to the 
test of your knowledge, information, and belief so help you 
God?
    Let the record show that each of the witnesses answered in 
the affirmative. Thank you. You can be seated. Please know that 
your written testimony will be entered into the record in its 
entirety. Accordingly, we ask that you summarize your testimony 
in five minutes. We are going to go right down the line, and we 
will have to break in about 35 minutes. There is an important 
ceremony taking place over in the Capitol for the families of 
folks who were killed in Afghanistan three years ago and the 
Members want to be there. We will take a break, and we will 
have some food for you, but we are going to start with the 
Sheriff and then move right now the line. So, Sheriff 
Boudreaux, you are recognized for five minutes.

              STATEMENT OF SHERIFF MIKE BOUDREAUX

    Sheriff Boudreaux. Chair Jordan and Ranking Member Nadler, 
and distinguished Members of the Committee, my name is Mike 
Boudreaux. I am the Sheriff of Tulare County in California. 
Tulare County sits in the heart of California, right in the 
center. We are a very large agricultural community.
    I have spent 38 years in law enforcement working in the 
Sheriff's Office and working with victims throughout my career. 
I am also an FBI National Academy graduate in Class 251 where I 
have law enforcement leaders from all over the country and, as 
well, all over the world who I have connections with.
    When it comes to the dangerous and sometimes deadly impacts 
of what I feel is a failed Biden-Harris Administration on open 
border policies, the impacts of illegal immigration in 
California, I must say that I have a front-row seat. I also 
serve as the California State Sheriffs' Association President 
where I meet regularly with all other 57 sheriffs, there is 58, 
me being number 5-8, in the State of California hearing their 
stories.
    There are a few examples that I would like to be able to 
provide today. We have a long issue of illegal immigration in 
California, however, over the last three years of the Biden-
Harris Administration, we have a deadly impact of violent 
criminals coming into our communities. We have migrant 
communities of farm workers who are now infiltrated and 
terrorized by those that they have fled other countries from, 
who are now in our communities terrorizing them, threatening 
their children to be involved in drug trafficking, gun running, 
drug dealing, as well as gangs, and sexual activity of 
children. I am very involved with these migrant communities as 
the sheriff, and I can tell you the personal stories and 
impacts are heart wrenching.
    Many of these communities have to do what is called paying 
rent. You must give money to the drug lord or the gang member 
or the violent criminal of those that you fled if you want to 
live peacefully within that migrant community. I am very 
familiar with Kamala Harris as the Senator and Attorney General 
in California and I can tell you that the words that she has 
often spoken when it comes to defunding the police and ICE, 
akin to the KKK, is demoralizing to law enforcement and those 
trying to protect our country and protect victims here in 
California and the United States.
    I have, as the President, walked the border, and over the 
course of the 38 years as Sheriff, I have visited the border 
many times and I have many friends in the Border Patrol, as 
well as Homeland Security, and I can tell you that they are 
frustrated. Thousands of people coming through a day where I 
visited, and I saw people from Yemen and China coming through. 
In our town, we had a friend of mine Jody Jones, his brother 
was shot and killed at an AMPM minimart where an illegal 
immigrant who had been deported three times over found his way 
back into the United States, attempted a robbery, and shot and 
killed a man. My deputies got into a pursuit and got into a 
violent shootout with this man.
    We have a case where that is called the Reign of Terror. I 
can tell you as the Attorney General Kamala Harris often 
lessened the impact of law enforcement with her quotes of 
``defunding the police.'' I have story after story, but most 
recently what we are starting to see is an influx of Mandarin 
or those from China. We are unraveling a human trafficking case 
of over 40 women who are involved in sexual prostitution up and 
down the State of California, who have found their way across 
the border and are here illegally and that case is ongoing.
    We have financial crimes from Mandarin, thieves from China, 
who are stealing millions of dollars online from our elderly in 
the Central Valley and up and down the State of California. We 
had an illegal immigrant, El Mano Negro, he was a hired hand by 
the cartel, where we arrested and finally, he admitted to 
killing and assassinating over 25 people in our county at the 
hands of the cartel. We just unraveled a cartel in our county, 
dismantling that cartel. The people in that cartel that we 
arrested openly admitted that within the last three years it is 
easier now to move human beings, drugs, guns, and fentanyl most 
specifically, across the border and that is it easier now than 
in the history of their cartel. I can tell you because of the 
Biden and Harris Administration law enforcement resources are 
quickly depleted. We have victim after victim that we see as 
you will hear today and that these stories are not unfamiliar 
to law enforcement up and down the State of California.
    So, with that, I will conclude and turn it back over to 
you, Mr. Chair.
    [The prepared statement of Sheriff Boudreaux follows:]

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Chair Jordan. Thank you, Sheriff. Ms. Nobles, you are 
recognized for five minutes.

                   STATEMENT OF TAMMY NOBLES

    Ms. Nobles. Good morning to the Members of the Committee. 
Thank you for allowing me to speak. On July 27, 2022, I 
received the worst news that a parent can ever get that my 
newly 20-year-old daughter, Kayla Hamilton, was found deceased 
with injuries consistent with homicide. There are no words that 
describe the heart-wrenching, soul-crushing pain of losing your 
child so horrifically. Kayla was a happy and loving person. She 
loved life and God. She was extremely ambitious and despite 
having autism, she was determined to make her way in this 
world. She loved animals, especially her cat, Oreo, and cared 
about the homeless.
    At first, we knew very little details of the murder until 
an arrest. At the end of March 2022, Walter Javier Martinez was 
apprehended by Border Patrol crossing illegally into the U.S. 
Martinez stated that he was 16 years old and fear of gang 
activity in his country in El Salvador. As an unoccupied alien 
child, Martinez was granted access into the United States with 
no background checks or vetting. Homeland Security did not 
verify the sponsor and allowed Martinez to go live in 
Frederick, Maryland. There were behavior issues with him living 
with his sponsor and he ended up staying with his half-brother 
who lived in the same neighborhood mobile park as Kayla. There 
were behavior issues with Walter, so the half-brother called 
the property manager owners of the mobile home park which I 
thought was a legit company. We learned that an illegal 
immigrant couple owned the mobile homes, and it took it on 
themselves to allow this 16-year-old to rent a room in the same 
mobile home as Kayla. Martinez was living there less than five 
days before he violently and brutally murdered my daughter. 
Walter Javiar Martinez broke into Kayla's room while she was 
sleeping that morning. Kayla left a voice mail on her 
boyfriend's phone. According to the voice mail a struggle was 
going on and Kayla can be heard crying, groaning, and 
struggling to breathe. Martinez can be heard on the voice mail 
hushing her and near the end telling her I am sorry in Spanish 
while strangling with her phone charging cord. After she was 
deceased, Martinez tied her up and sexually assaulted her. This 
was confirmed by the anal swabs that matched Martinez' DNA. 
Kayla fought for her life that day. She had bruises up and down 
her arms, her fingers, the left side of her face, her back, and 
down her leg, and deep wounds to the neck from the charging 
cord.
    Local police knew right from the beginning he was the main 
suspect just by their initial investigation. It took the 
Aberdeen police to confirm that Martinez was a known gang 
member of MS-13 and that Martinez had a criminal record in El 
Salvador in 2020. If Homeland Security did a background check, 
then they would have known this, and Martinez wouldn't have 
been able to be on U.S. soil. With Martinez being 16 years old, 
Maryland Child Protective Services took custody of Martinez 
until the DNA results came back. The Aberdeen Police Department 
was very transparent to CPS. The Aberdeen Police demanded that 
Martinez be held in a secure location because he was a threat 
to society based on the murder and injuries of Kayla Hamilton. 
It was later learned that Child Protective Services placed 
Martinez in a group home with other children and then placed 
Martinez in a foster home which allowed him to be enrolled in 
high school. This was also confirmed by an investigative 
reporter with Fox 45 Project Baltimore, who got an actual 
confirmation from Edgewood High School.
    While in jail, a letter was intercepted that Martinez wrote 
confessing to four murders and two rapes. Martinez ended up 
pleading guilty and taken a plea deal of 70 years. Since he was 
a juvenile at the time, even though he was tried as an adult, 
Martinez couldn't get life without the possibility of parole. 
This is not a political issue. This is a safety issue for 
everyone here living in the United States. Not only was Kayla's 
life put at risk and taken, so many other children and adults 
were at risk.
    The Biden-Harris Administration is not putting the American 
citizens' safety first. The U.S. Government must secure our 
border. We need to properly vet and background check all border 
crossers. This isn't about immigration. This is about 
protecting everyone here in the United States.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Nobles follows:]

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Chair Jordan. Thank you, Ms. Nobles. Doctor.

               STATEMENT OF CECILIA FARFAN-MENDEZ

    Ms. Farfan-Mendez. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Chair Jordan, 
Ranking Member Nadler, and the Members of the Committee, thank 
you for conducting this hearing and the opportunity to explain 
why characterizing the U.S.-Mexico as a region in crisis is an 
inadequate and unproductive way to addressing North America's 
cross border challenges. I appreciate the invitation to 
participate.
    I am an expert on organized crime and U.S.-Mexico security 
cooperation. As a scholar of U.S.-Mexico relations, and as a 
proud resident of the border region, I am convinced that 
transnational problems require transnational solutions.
    To the families testifying today, I want to acknowledge 
your grief. There are no actions that can reverse the tragedies 
that you have experienced. My testimony today does not seek to 
invalidate yours, on the contrary. It is precisely because I 
have witnessed and corroborated with families on both sides of 
the border that have lost loved ones, that I here to offer what 
I believe is a more constructive and sustainable path forward.
    Chair Jordan. I apologize. We have got someone checking. 
You can continue, Doctor.
    Ms. Farfan-Mendez. The human costs of our shared tragedies 
cannot be overstated. Today, Americans are more likely to die 
from an opioid overdose than a car crash. Equally important, 
homicide is the leading cause of death for men ages 15-44 and 
the second cause of death for women ages 15-24 in Mexico. 
Painfully, while families who have lost loved ones to overdoses 
or homicides may find some degree of solace in visiting their 
graves, this remains a dream for the thousands of family 
members who search for the more than 110,000 Mexicans who have 
disappeared.
    North America is facing simultaneous and connected health 
crises. Perhaps paradoxically, the silver lining is that there 
is no secret solution awaiting to be discovered. Actions 
available to Congress can contribute to stemming the 
devastating effects of these public health challenges and can 
be implemented through U.S.-Mexico cooperation. Even though the 
border is characterized in Washington, DC, and Mexico City as a 
perpetual crisis, for those of us who live and work in the 
region, we know this is where the most creative and innovative 
developments in the bilateral relationship take place. This is 
not an overstatement.
    Consider, for instance, the health challenges the world 
faced with COVID-19. In a time of fear and uncertainty, where 
countries closed borders, the governments of California and 
Baja California, worked in partnership with public health 
experts, academia, and the private sector, to engineer a cross-
border vaccination program, a program, I might add, that 
actually benefited supply chains for the defense sector in the 
U.S. as well. This type of proactive, collaborative ingenuity 
rather than unilateral measures is what is most urgently 
needed.
    Today, I present to you an evidenced-based cultural action 
from the border with these actions to start.
    First, support the Stop Arming Cartels Act. Simply stated, 
by failing to address firearms trafficking into Mexico the U.S. 
is subsidizing the operating costs of criminal groups. It is as 
if cartels receive an annual aid package with state-of-the-art 
technology to carry out the crimes this Congress wants to stop.
    Develop mutually accepted vetting mechanisms for exchanging 
information. Best practices from other parts of the world show 
that weakening the activities of organized crime requires 
trusted partnerships across countries. As long as Mexico and 
the U.S. lack these mutually accepted vetting mechanisms, 
bilateral cooperation will be hindered.
    The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act is an important step 
in addressing straw purchasing and trafficking. However, 
successful implementation requires resources for prosecutors 
and the ATF. The BSCA also provides an opportunity for seeking 
meaningful cooperation with Mexican counterparts.
    Second, provide funding and support research for improved 
metrics of border security. In 2024, it is unacceptable that 
the indicators of border security are detentions and seizures. 
Recording how many people were stopped or how many drugs were 
seized hardly builds a smart border. There is significant room 
for improvement. These metrics should be developed in 
partnership with civil society, the private sector, and 
academia.
    Finally, visit the border and its bi-national communities. 
The border is not only a legal definition or a boundary between 
two countries. Our shared problems, and their solutions do not 
stop and start where the fence meets the ocean. There is no 
substitute for first-hand experience.
    Thank you for your time and I look forward to your 
questions.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Farfan-Mendez follows:]

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    Chair Jordan. Thank you, Doctor.
    Ms. Lopez, you are recognized for five minutes.

                   STATEMENT OF MELISSA LOPEZ

    Ms. Lopez. Thank you. Good morning the Members of the 
Committee. I'm grateful for this opportunity to appear before 
you today.
    My name is Melissa Lopez, and I am the Executive Director 
of Estrella del Paso, formerly known as Diocesan Migrant and 
Refugee Services. I'm an attorney who has spent my 17-year 
career working with and representing immigrants in immigration 
matters. Estrella del Paso is the largest provider of free 
legal services in far West of Texas and New Mexico, serving 
nearly 58,000 people in 2023.
    In my experience, immigrants come to the United States to 
contribute in positive ways. They make our communities more 
vibrant by sharing their culture, language, and traditions.
    I was born and raised in El Paso, the child of immigrants 
from Mexico. Though born in Mexico, my parents are now 
naturalized U.S. citizens and have spent more of their lives in 
the United States than in Mexico.
    I graduated from the University of Texas at El Paso in 
2004, and then, attended the University of Texas School of Law 
in Austin, graduating in 2007.
    As much as I loved living in Austin, I knew that I would be 
returning to El Paso after law school. I was blessed to be 
hired at Estrella del Paso and the rest, as they say, is 
history.
    In my 17-year career, I have been blessed to work with 
thousands of immigrants from all over the world. My experience 
working with immigrants has taught me one special lesson: The 
only difference between me and my clients is where we were 
born. Had I been born just a few miles South of where I was in 
the hospital in El Paso, I would be them. It has been my 
experience that the people I am blessed to serve are simply 
trying to provide for their families and ensure they are safe.
    My mom always says that a parent's goal is to create a life 
that allows their children to do better financially than their 
parents did. I find this to be particularly true in my clients. 
They walk well over 2,000 miles to ensure that their children 
are safe, can thrive, and live a peaceful life where they can 
achieve their dreams.
    In truth, I'm a prime example of what children of 
immigrants can do. I'm the first in my family to graduate 
college. I'm the first in my family to obtain a professional 
degree, and I'm the first in my family to become an attorney. I 
am who I am because I have seen my mom work hard and fight 
through adversity and have a grit that I wish I had just a 
little bit more of.
    I think one of the biggest blessings of my life is being 
born and raised in El Paso. El Paso is a binational, bicultural 
community in far West Texas that sits on the border between the 
United States and Juarez, Chihuahua, and Mexico. El Paso is a 
community rich in love and culture. El Paso is an immigrant 
community. So many people are born in El Paso, but raised in 
Juarez, or vice versa, as was the case for my parents.
    El Paso is consistently ranked among the safest cities in 
the country, surrounded only by Honolulu, Hawaii, a few years 
here and there. El Paso is a safe city because we are an 
immigrant community.
    The worst crime committed against Hispanics in U.S. history 
was a mass shooting that occurred in El Paso on August 3, 2019. 
The perpetrator of that crime was a White supremacist born in 
Dallas, Texas, who drove over 600 miles to massacre 23 people 
and injure hundreds more at a Walmart in El Paso. He 
systematically sought out immigrants due to the dangerous 
rhetoric that all immigrants are bad.
    After the shooting that killed both United States citizens, 
as well as immigrants from Mexico and Germany, El Pasoans 
wrapped our arms around the survivors, because that is who we 
are. El Paso, very simply, is love.
    We recognize, appreciate, and respect the humanity in every 
single person. We treat people with the dignity they deserve, 
because at the end of the day we all are human beings.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Lopez follows:]

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    Chair Jordan. Thank you.
    Ms. Aguirre?

                   STATEMENT OF APRIL AGUIRRE

    Ms. Aguirre. As a daughter of immigrant parents--
    Chair Jordan. Ms. Aguirre, just hit the mic there, if you 
could. Thank you.
    Ms. Aguirre. As a daughter of immigrant parents, I am 
ashamed of what the Biden-Harris Administration has done to our 
country by opening our borders to all, including criminals who 
are wolves in sheep's clothing.
    Doctor, I heard you mention that over 115,000 people are 
missing in Mexico. I know. One of those people is my cousin, 
and all my family lives in Mexico.
    We have to comprehend that the majority of those are women. 
There is a word that is used in Mexico, and it is called 
femicidio, and that is called femicide--the act of being 
murdered just because you are a woman.
    It is unimaginable for us to think that alongside those 
seeking refuge are not the same people that are there to 
victimize them, and alongside victimized citizens as well. I 
have personally worked three cases within the city of Houston 
where little girls were targeted simply because they were 
young, beautiful, vulnerable, and, of course, underage.
    Predators have an appetite for children. In all these 
cases, there was an 11-year-old; a 12-year-old, whose mom is 
here today, and a 16-year-old freshman in high school.
    I am going to be the voice today for Maria Gonzalez, who 
was also a migrant. She arrived here and her father didn't own 
a vehicle. He walked to work. Her father is the essence of the 
type of immigrants we should want in this country, a law-
abiding, hardworking man, working for $7 an hour 14 hours a 
day. He left that weekend, and he told his daughter he was 
going to work. She had a cell phone. She was in the safety of 
her home.
    This migrant that came here as a child, crossed the border, 
was given to a sponsor, and was only here three weeks before he 
decided to leave his sponsor's home; go to Pasadena, Texas, 
from Louisiana, and he saw Maria. At one point or another, he 
decided that was going to be his prey.
    He saw her father leave to work. He knew their schedule. He 
knocked on Maria's door. Maria, recognizing that it wasn't a 
neighbor, told her father on WhatsApp on a voice message, 
``Hey, Dad, somebody is knocking on the door.'' She said it in 
Spanish, ``[Speaking foreign language.]'' ``Dad, is that you 
knocking on the door?''--thinking her father had forgotten 
something. That was the last time he ever heard Maria's voice.
    When Maria went to the door--there is a little chain that 
we have in those apartments, right, when you open the door to 
try to keep us safe?--that chain was not enough to keep this 
animal out of Maria's apartment. He pushed his way in, and 
Maria fought for her life. She was 11 years old.
    To all of you, three little girls passing away may not be 
many, but what if one of those little girls was your daughter, 
your granddaughter, or your niece? Can you imagine them trying 
to fight off a grown man off them--the shock of being 
undressed; the pain of being beaten and smothered; trying to 
fight for your life while a predator's one objective is to use 
them to satisfy their sick and demented appetites?
    Our girls deserve protection. Our girls deserve to live 
their life without fear. Our girls deserve to perish in a 
natural manner of old age.
    We live in a society where we have gained so much medical 
advancements that, if you have cholesterol, diabetes, heart 
disease, they will take care of you. We're losing healthy 
children.
    This case to me resonates because she is also a migrant 
child. This says to me we're letting everything through the 
border because we're not checking them. You're victimizing 
citizens; you're victimizing immigrants alike. We're not 
against immigration. We're against unvetted immigration.
    I want you to know, as a woman who has a majority of their 
family in Mexico that are not privileged enough to be in this 
country, there's no such thing as collecting DNA swabs. There's 
no such thing as embalming. There's no such thing as doing a 
real autopsy, like we do here.
    Mexico and Central America is where predators thrive. You 
think they come here to this country, and it is the first time 
they do this? No, this is just a place where we figure out and 
we care about our daughters, and we are going to find out. 
Finding a little girl in Mexico that has been sexually 
assaulted is just a normal Tuesday. It's nothing unusual.
    So, I want you to know immigration is good. I am the living 
proof of that. My parents don't even have a speeding ticket. 
That is the type of migrants we want.
    Bringing them to this country, it is further victimizing 
what these same immigrants got-away from in their countries. We 
have to have some form of check and balances, a real system to 
identify these criminals that are hiding. They are wolves in 
sheep's clothing, is what they are.
    So, I ask you, I implore you, close your eyes. I know you 
have a little girl in your family. Imagine somebody undressing 
her. Imagine somebody fighting her. Imagine somebody strangling 
her.
    Maria was so covered in bruises. I had to go and shop for a 
funeral dress for her to cover the damage that the man did to 
her. Maria lost fingernails in her fight. She is a migrant 
child.
    Not everybody is the same and we have to identify these 
monsters. Because, like my dad says, ``they are giving all us 
good migrants such a bad name.'' We owe it to the migrants that 
are getting away from these communities, and we owe it to our 
citizens to offer them a safe society.
    People say, well, citizens kill, too. In these cases, all 
these cases are migrants that cause this. It is the failure of 
our policies by not checking them.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Aguirre follows:]

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    Chair Jordan. Amen. Well said.
    Ms. Fundner, you are recognized for five minutes.

                   STATEMENT OF ANNE FUNDNER

    Ms. Fundner. Thank you. Dear Members of the House 
Judiciary--
    Chair Jordan. Do you just want to hit that microphone, too? 
Hit that button right there, yes.
    Ms. Fundner. Dear Members of the House Judiciary Committee, 
my name is Anne Fundner, and I'm a wife and a mother of four 
beautiful and amazing children.
    I'm here to share the story about the devastating 
consequences of the Biden-Harris Administration's open borders. 
I hope that, by sharing my pain, others may be spared the same 
heartache.
    I want to tell you about my first-born son Weston. He was 
an extraordinary child. He was the best big brother. He was a 
sweet and loving son and a great friend to so many and a joy to 
everyone who knew him. We attended church. He loved football, 
hockey, surfing, and had so many friends. He had a great heart 
of gold and a compassion for others that I have never seen on 
another person. He was always standing up for other people.
    My husband and I were fully involved in our children's 
lives. Weston, like so many teenagers, he wanted to fit in. 
During his second semester of his freshman year in high school, 
at the early age of 15, he succumbed to a moment of peer 
pressure. He made a tragic mistake, and it took his life.
    In February 2022, our lives were shattered. Our first-born 
son, my everything, he was gone. His whole future and 
everything that we prepared him for, all of our hopes and 
dreams were stolen in that instant. Despite our best efforts 
and our conversations about the dangers of drugs, and our 
constant support, and our love for him--he knew he was so 
loved--fentanyl claimed our son.
    Our kids are supposed to learn from their mistakes. Twenty 
years ago, this would not have killed my son. They are dying 
from them. Kids today can't make mistakes. Fentanyl changes 
everything. Illicit fentanyl came over the open borders 
illegally that killed my son. It didn't give him a chance to 
learn from his mistake.
    I hold Joe Biden and Kamala Harris responsible for my son's 
death. Their open border policies have led to this devastating 
crisis. Our tragedy could have been prevented if they had taken 
decisive action to protect Americans from fentanyl flooding 
over the borders.
    Instead, they have exacerbated this issue with their open 
border policies. Vice President Harris, appointed to manage the 
border situation--and I have heard a tweet from March 2021 that 
specifically says that she has been appointed to the border. 
Every Democrat, I hold them all--excuse me--I hold Vice 
President Harris, appointed to manage the border situation, and 
she has failed to act. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and every 
Democrat who supports these open border policies are complicit 
in the deaths of 300,000 innocent Americans, including my son 
Weston. Say his name. Look at his picture.
    Since this administration took office, 300,000 sets of 
parents have had to bury their children. In 2021 up until now, 
300,000, and that doesn't include 2024. It is now the leading 
cause of death for Americans ages 18-45, and it is rapidly 
becoming the No. 1 killer of teens, with 14 and under being the 
fastest-growing demographic. I can show you every day babies 
are dying from this, toddlers, 12-year-olds, 14-year-olds--your 
children and your grandchildren. It can happen to anybody's 
children.
    President Biden, who knows the pain of loss and losing a 
child and has another child who has battled addiction, you 
would think that he would prioritize this issue. Yet, he 
remains absent.
    Vice President Harris' March 23, 2021, her tweet claimed 
that she was appointed to address the border crisis. She 
acknowledged the difficulty of the task, but that it was a 
necessary one. However, for over three years, she has done 
zero--zero--to address this problem.
    The open borders are a matter of national security. When 
this administration opened the borders, they gave operational 
control to the cartels, who are operating a multibillion 
business on American soil--I just want to say that--
unregulated, tax-free. While not addressing the problem, it 
will continue to happen.
    I want to tell you how evil this drug is on our children. 
If your child tries fentanyl one time, it is not a matter of if 
they will die: It's a matter of when. The drug dealers are very 
well-trained, and they are manipulative and predatory. They 
know it's 50 times more addictive than crack. So, if your child 
tries it once, they've got a customer.
    Withdraw symptoms set in after one time of trying it. 
Within
2-3 hours, your child will be battling severe symptoms that we, 
as adults, could barely handle. Drug dealers, like groomers, 
convince your child that they can't tell their parents; they've 
done something wrong. So, they give them more. Now, you have a 
child trying to deal with an addiction that they never wanted 
for the first time in their life. For $7.50, you can deliver it 
to your front door, placed under a mat for your child, or their 
child can deliver it to their front door on social media.
    Parents are finding their children dead in their beds, a 
place that should be their safe space of comfort where they lay 
their heads at night. In the morning, parents are waking up to 
this nightmare.
    It is being supported by drug dealers; supported by the 
cartels coming over our wide-open borders.
    Chair Jordan. Ms. Fundner--
    Ms. Fundner. OK. I'm almost done.
    Chair Jordan. Yes, go ahead.
    Ms. Fundner. OK.
    Chair Jordan. Quickly.
    Ms. Fundner. OK.
    Chair Jordan. Thank you.
    Ms. Fundner. Few in this room can truly understand the 
depth of my pain, and unfortunately, too many families in 
America can. Weston is gone and his death is a direct 
consequence of the decisions made by the Biden-Harris 
Administration. The open borders have been allowed to persist 
and have led to tragedies like the one that I shared and that 
shattered my family.
    I stand before you today to hold them and anyone who 
supports open borders accountable, and I implore you to take 
this to heart.
    Chair Jordan. Thank you.
    Ms. Fundner. Let this be a catalyst for change. Because the 
decisions that we make will prevent further tragedies and save 
lives.
    Thank you for your time and thank you for the extra time.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Fundner follows:]

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    Chair Jordan. You bet. Thank you.
    We are going to go, if we could go really quick, and then, 
we have got to take a recess.
    Ms. Morin, you are recognized for five minutes.

                    STATEMENT OF PATTY MORIN

    Ms. Morin. Thank you.
    I have before me a written statement, but it is hard for me 
to read off a piece of paper. So, I'm just going to share from 
my heart.
    Chair Jordan. Yes.
    Ms. Morin. My daughter, a 37-year-old woman, she has five 
children. On August 5th, she went for a walk on a trail in a 
small town. We live in a small town in Maryland. We've walked 
this trail for over 25 years as a family. So, it was very 
familiar, very safe.
    She went for her daily run. She didn't come home that 
night. The next day, they went out looking for her. They found 
her--and I'm going to tell you what the court records have 
said--they found her badly beaten. She was strangled. She was 
raped. The medical examiner said she had bruises that blanketed 
her body. She had 10-15 head wounds. She was stuffed into a 
drainpipe.
    I went to the funeral home because I had to decide if we 
could do an open casket for her, for our grandchildren, for our 
family. You could tell from looking at my daughter that they 
had filled in all the holes with wax. They tried to straighten 
her broken nose and tried to align her face back the way that 
it--to look normal. She was covered with makeup so thick, it 
didn't even look like it was a human being. I wasn't allowed to 
see from the neck down the rest of her body.
    This person is, we found out after investigation--we had 
DNA that came off my daughter, DNA from a crime that he had 
committed in Los Angeles, where he attacked a nine-year-old 
girl and the little girl's mom. It turns out that this man was 
an illegal immigrant from El Salvador.
    Tammy Nobles and I live in the same town that Tammy Nobles' 
daughter lives in Maryland. My daughter lived 15 minutes South 
of this town.
    An illegal immigrant, he crossed the border three times; 
was sent back. The fourth time, he was a got-away. If they had 
at any time did the cheek swab for the DNA, they would have 
known that this person had an Interpol warrant for his arrest 
for murdering a woman in El Salvador, which is why he was 
fleeing to America.
    After he murdered my daughter, he stayed in the same town 
where he murdered her, continued to work in restaurants, and 
changed his appearance.
    We did a nationwide search. We did flyers. We did 
commercials. We've done everything, interviews, everything we 
could to keep her story alive, to tell the horrible thing that 
happened to my daughter.
    I wish there was a way to show you pictures of her and what 
she looked like, what the crime scene looked like. It is the 
most brutal crime that has happened in Maryland that they can 
even remember.
    Her children are having a hard time. All of us as a family 
are having a hard time. We have nightmares.
    I want to tell you another story. This story happened--I'll 
make it really short--in 1975. There was a 14-year-old girl who 
was abducted from her house by a criminally insane man. She was 
kidnaped. She walked 60 miles toward the Canadian border with 
this man with no food, no water. Walked through the woods. At 
night, she was raped multiple times.
    The parents and the police did not expect to find this 
girl, and if they did, they did not expect to find her alive. 
I'm that teenager and I can tell you that what I suffered as a 
teenager at the hand of a criminally insane man is nothing 
compared to the horrors that my daughter suffered.
    It is because of these open borders. I realize some of you 
are disinterested in this because you just think it's a 
partisan thing. These are American people. These are American 
families. These are our children, and pretty soon, they will be 
our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren.
    We need to close the borders. If I can survive a crime from 
an American citizen, these people that are coming over the 
border, if they are coming over illegally, it is because they 
have something to hide. Those that come here legally, they are 
doing the due process which is necessary to protect them and to 
protect us.
    My grandparents were immigrants. They came into America at 
Ellis Island. They stayed at Ellis Island. They were vetted 
before they were allowed to come into the interior of the 
United States.
    I just left the Southern border, where I spoke to Border 
Patrol. They showed me their gunshot wounds. They told me their 
stories about how they suffered broken necks, broken backs, and 
fractured skulls. It's a war zone there.
    We need to close it. We need to put those policies back 
into place that kept our citizens safe.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Morin follows:]

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    Chair Jordan. Thank you.
    Ms. Nungaray?

                STATEMENT OF ALEXIS J. NUNGARAY

    Ms. Nungaray. Good morning to the Members of the Committee. 
I want to thank you all for having me here to share my 
daughter's story on how the current administration open border 
policies have affected us in Texas.
    I was 14 when I found out I was going to be a mom. I knew I 
was young, and I didn't how I was going to do it, but I know I 
needed to do what was right, which is be the best mom I could 
be to my daughter. I fought for her.
    On December 27, 2011, was the day the rest of my life 
changed for the better. Jocelyn Lisel Nungaray was born. She 
was the happiest, chunkiest, little baby. She grew up to be 
this spunky, quirky, funny, beautiful, little, 12-year-old 
young lady. She had a personality like no other. She was so 
caring, loving, thoughtful, one of the greatest friends you 
could ask for. She was so talented. She had the biggest dreams 
to be an actress, and she swore that she was going to be famous 
one day.
    It has been two months and 25 days today since my daughter 
has passed away. On Monday, June 17, 2024, my daughter Jocelyn 
was murdered and thrown in a bayou of water underneath a creek.
    On that Sunday night before, I went to bed and told Jocelyn 
goodnight, and I loved her. She was there when I closed my eyes 
that night. That Monday morning, when I opened my eyes, she was 
gone. She was a preteen out doing what teenagers do, going to 
the corner store to get a soda.
    She was preyed on by two illegal Venezuelan immigrants. 
They saw an innocent young girl and made her a target for their 
horrendous actions.
    That Monday morning, June 17th, it was terrifying waking up 
to know your child was missing and frantically searching the 
area where her phone was being pinged, just two minutes away 
from our home.
    Driving up to that exact location to see crime scene tape 
and officers by a bridge, my heart sank. I ran out of the car 
to the officers. I explained I woke up to my daughter missing 
and I don't know where she is, but her phone is pinging right 
where we were.
    They said they hadn't seen anything, and they would let me 
know. Within 45 minutes, I receive a phone call from a sergeant 
asking me to come downtown to discuss her whereabouts. I'm 
still hanging on the hope that my 12-year-old daughter is still 
somewhere out there.
    They bring me to the floor labeled ``Homicide Division.'' I 
didn't know what to think. After being taken to a room, 
speaking for about every minute I remember leading up to my 
last moments with her, was when they had finally told me that 
the body where my daughter Jocelyn's phone was being pinged, 
followed by seeing the photo I showed them, confirmed their 
suspicions, and they did believe the Jane Doe body that was 
found matched the picture of my daughter Jocelyn Nungaray. My 
heart shattered. I couldn't believe what was just told to me.
    A day after being told about my daughter, I was told they 
were going to need to release pictures of the illegal 
immigrants and my daughter from footage to the local news 
stations to help find who murdered my daughter Jocelyn.
    They proceeded to tell me how my daughter was murdered. She 
was strangled to death. She had no clothing from the waist 
down. Her hands and her ankles were tied and thrown under the 
bridge of water like she was nothing but garbage.
    The community of Houston was the biggest support. Just 24 
hours for them to be found, arrested, and charged with capital 
murder. Within those same hours, I received a phone call from 
the medical forensics confirming that the body was, in fact, my 
daughter Jocelyn.
    The two illegal immigrants were Johan Jose Martinez Rangel, 
22, and Franklin Pena Ramos, 27 years old. They are both 
Venezuelan natives.
    The Border Patrol apprehended Johan near El Paso on March 
14th, and was released that same day on an order of 
recognizance with a notice to appear.
    The Border Patrol also apprehended Franklin Pena on May 
28th, also near El Paso. On that same day he was apprehended, a 
judge also ordered Franklin to appear in court at a later date.
    Because of the Biden-Harris Administration open border 
policies, catch and release, they were enrolled in the 
alternatives to detention program. This meant that they were 
released into the United States.
    It was not even a full three weeks later that they would 
take my daughter Jocelyn Nungaray's life. They saw a young 
girl, my daughter Jocelyn, and placed a target on her without 
her even knowing.
    They were seen on video at 12:57 a.m. on June 17th walking 
across the street down by the bayou under the bridge. At 3:04, 
only the two illegal immigrants emerged. They were down there 
for two whole hours. I can't even fathom what was going through 
Jocelyn's mind, the amount of fear she was feeling in the last 
moments of her life.
    Franklin Pena confessed that they had did something bad; 
the fact that they knew that their faces were exposed all over 
the news. They were trying to ask their boss for money, so they 
could leave town.
    It was told, one of the illegal immigrants told the other 
one after they were finished to throw Jocelyn down in the bayou 
under the bridge to, quote, ``get rid of any DNA.'' Individuals 
like that do not have a heart. They are nothing but monsters 
who are predators, and those are the kind of individuals that 
we so openly let in this country.
    I believe the Biden-Harris Administration open border 
policies are responsible for the death of my daughter. The 
program where the two illegal immigrants were enrolled failed 
my daughter.
    I'm here to use my voice and raise awareness of how broken 
our country has become with these open border policies. My 
daughter should have been able to safely walk across to the 
store knowing that she was going to make it home.
    In regard to our open border failed policies, I have been 
working closely with Senator Ted Cruz to push the Justice for 
Jocelyn Act of 2024, which would require ICE to fill every 
single open detention center bed before releasing immigrants 
who entered the country illegally and to have GPS monitoring 
tracking for certain immigrants with strict curfew hours 
restricting them from being able to be out all hours of the 
night, and immediately be deported with who violates the terms 
of their release.
    My daughter Jocelyn Nungaray was 12 years old. She was an 
innocent kid doing kid things. She did not deserve to have her 
life ripped away from her and our family. She had her entire 
life ahead of her.
    Because of these open border policies, I'll never get to 
see her start high school, go off to prom, walk down the aisle, 
get married, or have her own kids, or ever reach her full 
dreams. All of it is gone.
    I now and forever will continuously be her voice, and I 
will not stop fighting for Jocelyn. I come to you all as a 
grieving mother to please help make this country make a change 
for the greater good. This country needs to make a change. We 
need to properly secure our borders. We need to be able to have 
that security, knowing we are safe in our own country. Most 
importantly, we need to protect our children. They are supposed 
to be our future.
    Thank you so much for your time and for the extra time. 
Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Nungaray follows:]

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Chair Jordan. Thank you. God bless you.
    We are going to take a recess.
    Back here, we will have something to drink for you and 
lunch will be coming at some point.
    Hopefully, we will be back and resume the Committee as 
quickly as possible.
    The Committee stands in recess.
    [Recess.]
    Chair Jordan. The Committee will come to order. We will now 
proceed under the five-minute rule with questions. The Chair 
recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. McClintock.
    Mr. McClintock. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sheriff Boudreaux, 
one of the obvious and most frightening aspects of this open 
border is the migration of the most violent gangs in the world 
into our community such as MS-13 and Tren de Aragua. You said 
that the cartels are already trying sink roots into your 
community. Could you go a little bit more into the details of 
what you're dealing with now in Tulare County?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. Yes, sir. What's interesting is that the 
cartels have actually infiltrated within California, even 
within agricultural businesses and businesses up and down the 
State of California. They are very smart and very good at what 
they do. They're businessmen.
    They're also very dangerous and violent and they lead by 
intimidation and fear. In our county alone, the cartel that we 
dismantled was a Sinaloa cartel. Of the 50 people we arrested, 
the DEA is still hunting down the primary suspect who actually 
lives in Sinaloa, Mexico. During the course of this 
investigation, we did learn that homicides had taken place up 
and down the State as well as in the Central San Joaquin 
Valley.
    Mr. McClintock. Did you say that one suspect was 
responsible for 25 murders?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. Yes, sir. So, in another case--
    Mr. McClintock. So, what you're seeing in California today 
in real time?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. Real time. We have a man who was an 
assassin working for the cartel. This man admitted to over 25 
different assassinations that took place at the direction of 
the cartel. He was discovered after he had committed a homicide 
and accidentally had left a receipt from a gas station.
    We caught him on video and was able to speak with him. 
During the course of the investigation, admitted to those. What 
he also admitted is that he was responsible for a certain area 
of California and there were many other assassins assigned by 
cartels in California, throughout California that were 
responsible for those areas.
    Mr. McClintock. So, this is going on all over the State, 
presumably all over every State. Are you hearing from other 
sheriffs about these issues?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. I am.
    Mr. McClintock. What are they saying?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. They're saying much of the same thing. 
Sheriff Lamb is a good friend of mine out of Arizona who he and 
I speak pretty regularly. Much of what I speak of in regard to 
California and the violence as well as the human trafficking, 
it's mirrored in other States all throughout the United States.
    Mr. McClintock. Now, illegal migrants often arrive into 
this country deeply indebted to the Mexican cartels that do 
actually control the border. How do the cartels enforce these 
debts on the other migrants?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. Enforce on who?
    Mr. McClintock. On the other migrants.
    Sheriff Boudreaux. What's happening in our communities, 
we're seeing people who have come into the United States on 
work visas and/or victim visas where they're living in these 
small migrant farming towns. The cartel wants to control these 
migrant towns and truly lead the same way that they are in 
other countries, specifically in Mexico.
    Mr. McClintock. So, the violence we're seeing in Mexico is 
already here and is in the process of getting deeply rooted 
into our communities?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. It's already rooted.
    Mr. McClintock. Wow. What impact would you say sanctuary 
policies are having on this phenomenon as well as the Democrats 
no cash bail bonds?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. Well, I can speak to California. As you 
are aware, Senate Bill 54 made California a sanctuary State. 
Here's some of the problems that we're facing.
    Every sheriff in the State of California in times past used 
to be able to ask immigration status of those who are arrested 
and coming through our jails. That no longer is in existence. 
Sheriffs and law enforcement are no longer allowed under Senate 
Bill 54 supported by Kamala Harris at the time, spearheading 
much of the Senate Bill 54 with Sacramento Democrats.
    Mr. McClintock. So, when the Democrats tell us, well, 
there's no real evidence that illegal migrants cause more 
crimes, you're not even allowed to ask if they're illegal 
migrants.
    Sheriff Boudreaux. Well, and that's part of the formula. If 
I'm not able to ask, then there's no data to support. So, we 
are legally bound in California from asking someone their 
immigration status under Senate Bill 54.
    Mr. McClintock. The New York Post recently reported that 
NYPD officers were estimating about 75 percent of the violent 
crimes they're arresting in Manhattan are committed by illegal 
migrants. Can you give us a rough estimate just from your 
experience what you think is going on in California?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. I'd have to give you experience and 
opinion because the data doesn't allow me to collect it through 
the formula.
    Mr. McClintock. Right. What's your estimate?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. What I can tell you is that the crimes 
that we're seeing based on our investigations that we're well 
over 50 percent.
    Mr. McClintock. Wow. I see my time has expired. Thank you.
    Sheriff Boudreaux. Thank you, sir.
    Chair Jordan. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman yields 
back. The gentleman from Maryland is recognized for five 
minutes.
    Mr. Ivey. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My staff prepared a speech 
for me today. I'm going to set that aside and just speak to the 
witnesses today who are survivors.
    I want to say that I certainly offer my condolences. My 
heart goes out to you for the losses that you've suffered. I 
did want to say this too, though, a slight departure from the 
script that these hearings typically take.
    I'm a former prosecutor. I spent four years as a prosecutor 
here in Washington, DC. During the height of the crack wars, we 
averaged about 450-500 murders here per year.
    In a short time after that, I became the State's Attorney 
in Prince George's County, Maryland. Ms. Morin and Ms. Nobles, 
I think you're both from Maryland. I think the people that 
handled your cases were State's Attorneys as well.
    One of the things I found, I got there in office in 2002. I 
didn't realize it when I was running, but there was a gang 
called MS-13 that had come to the District, Maryland, and 
Virginia and was a highly violent gang. They are organized 
criminally, and they were 20-plus years ago at the time.
    They commit extreme violent acts along the lines of what 
you're talking about. I think the first case we had was they 
killed a witness with a golf club. It was a 14-year-old girl. 
They tricked her into going into a cemetery, and they beat her 
to death in the head using a golf club to kill her.
    I guess Bush was the President at the time. We had similar 
kinds of issues as what we're talking about today, people going 
and coming back. They get deported from here, even after being 
prosecuted.
    They made them serve out their jail time, then they would 
deport them back to El Salvador. One of them I talked to 
subsequently. He'd become a witness against other members in 
the gang. So, basically, they just viewed it as a free trip 
home because they knew that they could come back whenever they 
wanted to. That was 2003.
    I think one of the things I'd like to say to you all is I 
deeply respect taking up the mantle that you've taken up today. 
You're able to speak with the moral authority that politicians 
like me really can't. I know you'd rather trade that in a 
heartbeat to get your loved ones back, and I know we can't do 
that today.
    I'll say this as well. I've been involved in public service 
for a long time. In fact, that was my first boss in politics 
right there, John Conyers.
    He was the Chair of the Committee. Last time it passed 
legislation on immigration which was over 35 years ago. I also 
had a chance to--and they did that on a bipartisan basis by the 
way.
    When I was State's Attorney in Prince George's County, we 
did a joint prosecution with a Federal prosecutor in a RICO 
case. We took down 23 gang leaders. The prosecutor in that case 
was Rod Rosenstein.
    Rod and I had known each other because we'd been on the 
opposite sides of the Whitewater Case. I worked for the Senate 
Democrats essentially defending the Clinton Administration. He 
worked for Ken Starr essentially trying to take down the 
Clinton Administration.
    He was obviously Republican. I was obviously a Democrat. We 
were able to come together and work that case together and do 
it in a successful way.
    Now, you'll notice that at this hearing that there's no 
legislation connected to the testimony that's being presented 
today. I think one of you actually referenced Ted Cruz 
legislation, the Senate side. There's nothing pending here in 
the House that would address the problems we're talking about 
today.
    We had a chance to do that, but we chose not to do that. 
The Chair and my Republican colleagues chose not to do that. 
There's a story behind that I don't have time to tell. It does 
really get to the point I want to make to you which is this.
    Beyond the selection cycle because that's an issue that's 
in the way of getting something done right now that'll address 
the kinds of problems that you're talking about, there's going 
to be more opportunities for you to use your voices and your 
platforms to address these kinds of issues. I'm a Democrat. 
You're Republicans or they're Republicans.
    You may be Independents. I don't know. I know that there's 
truth on both sides on this issue. There's a way to get to a 
place where we can resolve it, but we won't do it in a partisan 
way.
    So, I want to thank you for coming today. I urge you to 
continue the struggle, the fight, and the voice. I think, Ms. 
Nungaray, you said you will forever be her voice. I know that's 
true for all of you, and I encourage you to continue in that 
fight and that effort.
    I hope that we can get to a point where we move beyond the 
partisanship, beyond the politics that have nothing to do with 
resolving the problem and can get to a place where we can 
address it. Just for an additional moment, Mr. Chair. If I 
could read Justice Kavanaugh. This is a quote I read every time 
we have a hearing like this. He's a Republican obviously. I 
want to say,

          As the District Court found, the Executive Branch does not 
        possess the resources necessary to arrest or remove all of the 
        noncitizens covered by the arrest and removal statutes. That 
        reality is not an anomaly. It is a constant.
          For the last 27 years since those laws were enacted in their 
        current form, all five Presidential Administrations have 
        determined constraints necessitated prioritization in making 
        immigration arrests. In light of the inevitable resource 
        constrains and regularly changing public safety and public 
        welfare needs, the Executive Branch must balance many factors 
        when devising arrest and prosecution policies.

    I read that just to say this. Five administrations have 
come and gone. We still haven't gotten things done. We're not 
going to get anything done today from a legislative standpoint, 
but there's a way to get it done if we can come together and 
work in a bipartisan way to do it. So, I thank you for the work 
that you've done and you will continue to do, and I yield back 
the balance.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back. Before yielding to 
the gentleman from Arizona, I would just point out bad things 
may have happened 20 years ago. Obviously, more bad things are 
happening now in light of 10 million people in 3\1/2\ years 
coming into the country.
    That's the different dynamic. That's what our witnesses are 
talking about. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona for five 
minutes.
    Mr. Ivey. If I might, Mr. Chair.
    Chair Jordan. I gave you an extra two minutes.
    Mr. Biggs. Mr. Chair, thank you. What I point out is I 
don't want to get distracted by responding to all of what I 
would call blather I just heard. I will say this.
    The Republican party joined with Democrats to pass H.R. 2, 
15 months ago and that was a border security bill. That 
would've taken care of a lot of issues that we see on the 
border. So, I first want to thank, in particular, all our 
witnesses for coming, but in particular pay homage to Ms. 
Nobles, Ms. Aguirre, Ms. Fundner, Ms. Morin, and Ms. Nungaray.
    Thank you for your courage and your very poignant testimony 
today. We won't forget. I want to read a quote here from one of 
the witnesses that the Democrats invited.

        But cruel and inhumane actions and policies by the United 
        States Border Patrol, Texas Department of Public Safety, and 
        local law enforcement have made it incredibly difficult for 
        individuals fleeing violence and security to live safety.

    Sheriff, an open border that lets people come in by the 
millions unvetted that terrorize Americans, can you describe 
that as anything but cruel and inhumane?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. What we're seeing is very cruel. When I 
look in the eyes of 11-year-old girls who have been brought 
across the border and have been raped, when we have young 
families who have been brought across the border as victims of 
human trafficking landing in the United States, specifically to 
what I can speak to in the Central San Joaquin Valley of 
California, not one or two. These are hundreds.
    Hundreds of people coming across as victims where they're 
brutally raped, beaten, and used in a sexual way and in the sex 
industry is cruel. I feel that if we secure our border, we vet 
the people coming in. We identify the most egregious and 
felonious and those with mental health conditions that are 
impacting the safety of Americans and Californians as to what I 
can speak to. I would identify your statement as being true, 
very cruel.
    Mr. Biggs. So, just for relational or contextual matter, 
the Yuma Sector which is one of the largest on the Southwest 
border in the last year of the previous administration, their 
encounters were about 8,600. That includes unaccompanied 
minors, single men, family units, and others, about 8,500. 
During the height of what we've seen going on under this 
administration, the Biden-Harris plan on the border, Yuma at 
one point was getting that weekly.
    There have been weekends that they've gotten that. It's now 
back a pace where it takes about 3-4 weeks to get that. What 
they experienced in one year, that small community is seeing 
about once a month now.
    It comes with it the flow of individuals that are totally 
nonvetted. Away they go. We don't know where they're going.
    The No. 1 got-away corridor, the Tucson Sector in which I 
live, No. 1 got-away, we don't know who they are or where 
they're going. We know that they are trying like crazy to evade 
capture. They get into their communities and you see what's 
happened by the testimony today.
    I keep on my computer, and I was just looking at it earlier 
today. There are literally hundreds of articles over the last 
three months of violent crimes perpetrated on Americans and 
those who are legally in the country by those who have 
illegally come into the country and been released. It isn't a 
matter necessarily of resources because there are ICE beds and 
ORR beds available.
    It is a matter of policy because they won't like you, 
Sheriff, actually report to ICE and request information. If 
there's an ICE hold, can you turn them over to ICE? You cannot. 
It is policy that has driven the grief that you see here today. 
My time is up.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back. The gentlelady 
from Texas is recognized.
    Ms. Escobar. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I first want to also 
express my profound condolences to each and every one of you 
who've suffered loss. I have two kids. I'm a mom. I would do 
anything for my kids, and I cannot imagine the grief of losing 
a loved one in such a tragic way.
    So, I want you to know how much I respect the courage that 
it took for you to be here today to share your grief and your 
pain. I represent El Paso, Texas, an incredible community on 
the U.S.-Mexico border. I'm the only Member of this Committee 
who actually lives on the border, raised her kids on the 
border.
    I'm a third-generation border resident. There is no one who 
wants to modernize our outdated laws more than those of us who 
live on the border. We are the families that have for decades 
been trying to help the Federal Government treat people with 
dignity and humanity.
    We have long been asking for reform. I think what is most 
frustrating to me as a Member of Congress is what is happening 
today at this Committee hearing where we have colleagues who 
are exploiting people's pain for political purposes. 
Unfortunately, that's what's happening today.
    The finger pointing at the administration by Members of 
Congress is frustrating to me as a Member of Congress because 
we are the ones who write the laws. It is legislatures who are 
responsible to write the laws around immigration, around border 
policy. It is up to legislatures to adequately fund the 
resources necessary.
    I can tell you that I have been pushing a bipartisan 
comprehensive immigration reform bill that addresses outdated 
border policies and that addresses migration and immigration 
together. There are eight Republicans who've had the courage to 
join that bill. None of them are on this Committee.
    That bill cannot move because of the obstacles put in front 
of that. The administration has tried and asked over and over 
again for adequate resources. They've been hamstrung by 
obstacles put in the way preventing those resources from 
getting to where they need to be.
    Mr. Ivey mentioned a Senate bill, a Senate Bill so 
draconian I could not have voted for it. It was enforcement 
only. It was to me not workable because it was so focused again 
only on enforcement.
    It wasn't Democrats who stood in the way of that. It was 
the folks on the other side of the aisle who torpedoed what was 
the most border hardening bill ever written. That's what 
Republicans called it.
    With regard to--Mr. Ivey, you mentioned wanting solutions 
and one of our colleagues mentioned H.R. 2. I know you're aware 
of this. Their bill, H.R. 2, relies almost exclusively on 
Mexico. If Mexico wasn't doing the job that they're determining 
needed to be done in H.R. 2, H.R. 2 was a fantasy. It wouldn't 
do anything.
    My point is this. When there were mass shootings including 
as Ms. Lopez mentioned the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, by 
a white supremacist, 23 people shot and murdered in cold blood 
with an assault style weapon, traumatizing an entire community. 
We held hearings that were linked to solutions.
    We wanted to solve the issue. We wanted to bring 
resolution. We wanted to find a path forward so that people 
wouldn't live with the kind of pain that communities like ours 
that have lived through mass shootings had to live through.
    There really, truly--there is very little interest on the 
other side of working in a bipartisan way to find meaningful 
solutions. You all deserve that. Our country deserves that. 
There are those of us in Congress fighting to get to those 
bipartisan solutions because we don't want to see families 
living in pain.
    We don't want you to endure the loss--we don't want anyone 
else to endure the loss that you all have endured. I and other 
colleagues are going to continue to work on those bipartisan 
solutions because that's what our country deserves. I hope you 
will join us in fighting for those bipartisan solutions because 
it's long past time that we get there. Mr. Chair, I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady yields back. Ms. Nobles, did 
Republicans on this Committee--Ms. Nobles, did Republicans on 
this Committee or any Republican staff exploit you in any way 
to come to today's hearing?
    Ms. Nobles. No, I am not being forced to be here. I am here 
because I want to be here, and I want changes to be made. I'm 
fighting here for my daughter. I can't speak for everyone else, 
but I'm sure the other witnesses weren't even forced to be here 
either. They want to because they love their children.
    Chair Jordan. In fact, my understanding is our Republican 
staff helped you get answers to the murder of your daughter 
that you didn't get from anywhere else. Our staff helped get 
that information by going to DHS.
    Ms. Nobles. Yes, you have. Yes, you have.
    Chair Jordan. How about you, Mr. Morin, do you feel 
exploited in any way? That's what the Democrats have said.
    Ms. Morin. No, I don't feel exploited at all.
    Chair Jordan. You're here to tell your story about what's 
going on out there.
    Ms. Morin. Yes.
    Chair Jordan. Ms. Nungaray?
    Ms. Nungaray. No, I do not feel exploited. I simply want to 
raise awareness that we need change. My daughter's voice and 
her memory should not get lost in that.
    Chair Jordan. Well said. Ms. Fundner?
    Ms. Fundner. No, I don't feel exploited in any way. As a 
matter of fact, I find it very interesting that all five 
minutes for both of your testimoneys on the left have not had 
any questions for us up here but instead give a speech. I will 
tell you I'm getting tired of hearing about the most 
comprehensive border bill which did nothing for immigration--
for American citizens.
    It gave visas to people who need to extend their visas, and 
it gave asylum to people coming over. It did zero for an 
American citizen. I would love somebody to answer to me what it 
actually did for American citizens. It did not do anything for 
American citizens.
    Chair Jordan. Ms. Aguirre?
    Ms. Aguirre. It's insulting that you would say that to 
these families, that you would make an assumption that they're 
being used or exploited in any way. What I will do is, I'll 
give you my number.
    I'd like a phone call from you to see what you can do to 
help these families because every single week I get bombarded 
with calls from victims all over the United States. I'm just a 
small person with a small foundation that helps people here 
locally in Houston and Harris County. Not one time when her 
daughter was murdered, and I was helping her navigate the 
criminal justice system, did one Democrat call me to offer 
their assistance. It was only Republicans. I am an Independent. 
I vote both ways. So, it's insulting.
    Ms. Escobar. I'm happy to call you.
    Ms. Aguirre. No, please don't speak over me because I'm 
still talking. I'm not done. I have the mic. I have the floor. 
I have the floor. If you want to answer me, you ask.
    Chair Jordan. The Chair has the time, and the witness is 
allowed to respond.
    Ms. Aguirre. You said some very broad statements. It's 
insulting. These people lost loved ones. They lost children. We 
want to see a difference.
    We may not understand everything that's going on. I assure 
you that we're not being used in any way. If today somebody 
calls that number that wants to help from any side of the 
aisle, we want solutions.
    Ms. Escobar. That's what I just talked about.
    Ms. Aguirre. I'm still talking.
    Chair Jordan. The time--
    Ms. Aguirre. So, please don't--
    Ms. Escobar. I just talked about solutions, ma'am.
    Chair Jordan. The time belongs--
    Ms. Aguirre. Don't make an assumption--don't make an 
assumption that we're being used. That is insulting.
    Chair Jordan. The time belongs to the Chair. The Chair now 
yields--
    Ms. Aguirre. It's insulting.
    Chair Jordan. The Chair yields the remainder of his time to 
the gentleman from Texas.
    Mr. Roy. I thank the witnesses. I thank the Chair. Ms. 
Nungaray, your daughter was taken from you in June 2024 of this 
year, correct?
    Ms. Nungaray. Yes, that's correct.
    Mr. Roy. She was killed by two Venezuelan men who crossed 
into Texas in March and May of this year, correct?
    Ms. Nungaray. That's correct.
    Mr. Roy. Those two Venezuelan men that crossed into Texas 
were released by this administration into the community after 
crossing, correct?
    Ms. Nungaray. That's correct.
    Mr. Roy. Do you believe that your daughter would be here 
today if they had not been released into the United States?
    Ms. Nungaray. I so heartedly believe that, yes.
    Mr. Roy. Mr. Morin, your daughter was taken from you in 
August 2023, correct?
    Ms. Morin. Yes.
    Mr. Roy. Killed by a man from El Salvador who crossed 
illegally and was a got-away. Is that correct?
    Ms. Morin. Yes.
    Mr. Roy. Do you believe your daughter would be here today 
if the current administration were not overwhelming border 
patrols such that we have two million known got-aways over the 
last three years?
    Ms. Morin. I think that if we had the policies in place 
that we did a few years ago that vetted the immigrants that 
came in that my daughter would still be here.
    Mr. Roy. Ms. Nobles, your daughter was taken from you in 
July 2022. Is that correct?
    Ms. Nobles. Yes.
    Mr. Roy. By a 17-year-old from El Salvador who entered in 
March 2022, just a few months before, correct?
    Ms. Nobles. Correct.
    Mr. Roy. Was released into the country. Is that correct?
    Ms. Nobles. Correct.
    Mr. Roy. Do you believe that your daughter would be here 
today if that individual had not been released into the country 
according to a mass release program that has been underway for 
the last three years?
    Ms. Nobles. Yes, she would be alive today if they would've 
made that one phone call to El Salvador to check because he did 
have a criminal record in 2020 and gang related tattoos.
    Mr. Roy. I yield back.
    Mr. Biggs. [Presiding.] Thank you. Chair recognizes the 
gentleman from New York, Mr. Nadler.
    Mr. Nadler. Thank you. Dr. Farfan-Mendez, we've heard about 
some devastating tragedies in today's hearing. Unfortunately, 
tragedies occur far too often in this country at the hands of 
noncitizens and citizens alike. Parents are afraid that their 
kids won't be safe at school, at parades, at grocery stores, 
and even at houses of worship.
    The United States has long struggled to pass meaningful gun 
violence prevention measures into law. Last Congress, we were 
able to enact some much needed reforms, but far more must be 
done. How does our inability to ensure that guns are well 
regulated as the Second Amendment calls for emboldened cartels 
and incenti-vize more people to migrate to the United States?
    Ms. Farfan-Mendez. Thank you for your question, Congressman 
Nadler. One of the things that when we discuss organized crime 
is often lost in the conversation is that like any 
organization, they also have operating costs. One of these 
operating costs is related to guns and the ability to 
perpetrate violence.
    Because it's so easy to traffic guns from the United States 
into Mexico, essentially what has happened is it has 
significantly lowered the cost of perpetrating violence in 
Mexico and other parts in the Western Hemisphere. What these 
criminal groups are able to do because violence is an essential 
component of their activities is issue very credible threats to 
people, meaning that I can convince you because I have an 
arsenal to prove it that either you comply with what I'm saying 
or there will be consequences. What we have seen is that to the 
extent that criminal groups are better armed and have these 
arsenals again that are very easy to acquire and traffic from 
the U.S. into Mexico and other parts in the hemisphere, this 
creates displacement in communities meaning that it puts 
pressure on migration corridors.
    It creates challenges in terms of addressing the migration 
flows that we're discussing here today. What I'm hearing today 
essentially is I think all of us in this room are interested in 
having the health and safety of our communities. What I will 
say to you is that to the extent that this arms trafficking is 
not addressed, it's going to be a root cause that is basically 
left unattended.
    We will be asking questions where the answer is very clear. 
Again, to the extent that these criminal groups have access to 
firearms that are very easy to acquire from the U.S. and also 
ammunition, this will make it very cheap for them to perpetrate 
violence. It would put a lot of pressure on migration flows.
    Mr. Nadler. Thank you. Ms. Lopez, over the past few years, 
we've seen harmful rhetoric thrown at religious organizations 
that help migrants, including the Catholic Church and the 
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, HIAS. Such rhetoric was echoed by 
the gunman who murdered 11 congregants at the Tree of Life 
synagogue in 2018.
    We've also heard attacks on religious organizations from 
Members of this Committee. Your organization is affiliated with 
the Roman Catholic Church of El Paso. Can you talk about how 
your faith calls you to serve all those in need of help, 
including asylum seekers?
    Ms. Lopez. Yes, thank you, Congressman Nadler. For me at a 
very fundamental level as a Catholic, it's important to me that 
every single person be treated with human dignity and respect. 
At the very core of the work that we do, that's what it comes 
down to is treating people with respect. Even sitting here 
today, having to hear the stories and the losses of the 
witnesses on the panels, I can't even imagine the losses that 
they're dealing with and the pain that they're going through.
    So, we as an organization try really hard to make sure that 
we are treating people with that same dignity and respect. That 
as attorneys, we're bound by the law. We are bound by what we 
are allowed to do within the legal system. We work really hard 
to make sure that those individuals who do qualify for a 
benefit that we treat them with the respect and dignity that 
they deserve.
    Mr. Nadler. Thank you. How do attacks on religious 
organizations impact your work?
    Ms. Lopez. It makes it really scary for us to do the work 
day-in--day-out. I will say that it doesn't hinder our work, 
but it certainly makes us more wary of our surroundings. 
Following the mass shooting in 2018, we did have to increase 
security around our building out of fear that we might be the 
next target.
    Mr. Nadler. Thank you, Dr. Farfan-Mendez and Ms. Lopez, you 
both live and work on the border. Can you please tell us about 
live on the border and how living there has shaped your view of 
immigration in the United States? Dr. Farfan-Mendez, let's 
start with you.
    Ms. Farfan-Mendez. Thank you, Congressman Nadler. I'm an 
immigrant and let me share a story with you. On August 30th, is 
International Day of the Disappeared and August 31st, is 
Overdose Awareness Day. It's by happenstance that these two 
days happen to be together. It seems very pertinent to the 
reality of North America.
    In those two days, we sat empty chairs, one on the San 
Diego side of the U.S. border and one in Tijuana for the 
Mexican side. Those empty chairs symbolize precisely the loved 
ones that are no longer at the table together with their loved 
ones. What it meant to do and what it is, is a call to action, 
to think about how border communities can work together.
    What's interesting and pertinent to this hearing from this 
call to action at the border is that families on both sides 
came together to say these are sure tragedies and these are 
sure pain. We should be thinking about how we can work together 
and have meaningful engagement to stop deaths on both sides of 
the border. So, I will leave you with that story of pragmatism 
and hope again from the border in terms of how we can find a 
path forward.
    Mr. Nadler. Ms. Lopez.
    Ms. Lopez. I would say for me, there's something really 
beautiful about being on the border. We have the opportunity to 
live a life that's quite complex in that we know what it's like 
to be in Mexico. We know what it's like to be in the United 
States.
    We have a sharing of culture, a sharing of language, a 
sharing of so much that it almost feels like one large 
community along the border. There are the complexities of 
immigration and immigration matters along the border that I 
have family members that are unable to cross into the United 
States because they don't have immigration status. So, it's a 
complex life, but it's a very beautiful culturally rich place 
to live.
    Mr. Nadler. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. [Presiding.] The gentleman yields back. The 
gentleman from Texas is recognized.
    Mr. Roy. I thank the Chair. I want to finish the line of 
questioning that I started before. Ms. Aguirre, I'm going to 
come back to you on something more specific. Just on this 
simple question, you told a story of Maria Gonzalez, the 11-
year-old girl who was taken from her father and was killed, was 
killed by a 17-year-old Guatemalan released into the United 
States. Is that correct?
    Ms. Aguirre. That's right.
    Mr. Roy. In the microphone, yes.
    Ms. Aguirre. That's right.
    Mr. Roy. So, that is correct. Then I would say for Ms. 
Fundner, your son, Weston, lost his life to fentanyl poisoning, 
correct?
    Ms. Fundner. Correct.
    Mr. Roy. Now, unlike the specifics of some of these other 
witnesses, you can't say for certain exactly how that fentanyl 
got through and got through to your son. You would agree that 
Weston is one of hundreds of thousands, correct? I think one of 
you testified that 300,000 lost lives.
    So, the many faces of fentanyl, right? The many faces of 
fentanyl. Can we say that we are losing more Americans to 
fentanyl poisoning as a direct consequence of open borders 
allowing fentanyl to pour into our communities? Would you agree 
with that, Ms. Fundner?
    Ms. Fundner. One hundred percent.
    Mr. Roy. We have witnesses here at the table talking about 
the crimes that affected them directly. I would ask Sheriff 
Boudreaux a yes or no or quick response to this question. In 
2021, there are 11,200 pounds of fentanyl seized. You go to 
crime. In 2022, we had 12,000 criminal alien arrests at the 
border.
    In 2023, border agents apprehended 15,000 criminals. With 
two months left in Fiscal Year 2024, we are also at 15,000 
criminal arrests, and the year isn't over yet so it's surging. 
Here's the real problem.
    My colleagues on the other side of the aisle will say, oh, 
look, it's working. They're doing their job. While Border 
Patrol has intercepted those increasing numbers of criminals, 
DHS whistleblowers revealed on August 11, 2024, that as many as 
950,000 violent criminals have gone unidentified. In your 
experience, do you think it is an accurate assessment that 
scores, thousands of criminals are coming into the United 
States and being released or getting away from authorities?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. That is accurate and true.
    Mr. Roy. That in your experience, you see it in real time. 
Is that correct, Sheriff?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. In real time.
    Mr. Roy. So, we've talked about all the impacts on the 
individuals that are testifying here. Ms. Aguirre, I wanted to 
see if this would surprise you. I released a report, my office 
did, entitled, ``Border Invasion'' or ``America Invaded.''
    In it, I detailed 50 examples that we found, 50 examples. 
There were more. We had to cut the list off to make sure we had 
room. I'll read a few of these across the country and see if 
you agree that you think this is a problem and what you're 
experiencing in your life representing people that are victims:

On September 3rd, the consequences of the Biden-Harris 
        Administration's open border policy, the case of the 
        illegal alien brutally assaulting a teenage Louisiana 
        girl.
On August 30th, the case of the illegal alien who brutally 
        assaulted a New York woman.
On August 17th, Brazilian migrant accused of multiple 
        Massachusetts sex crimes arrested.
On August 15th, Haitian illegal immigrant charged with raping 
        pregnant woman at Massachusetts migrant motel.
On August 15th, U.S. officials nab Peruvian gang leader wanted 
        for nearly two dozen killings in home country.
On August 14th, machete wielder at Capitol was an illegal 
        immigrant despite being a priority, quote, ``for 
        detention.''
On August 13th, migrant charged with rape in third NYC sex 
        crime bust of an asylum seeker in two weeks.
On August 12th, NYC migrants, including one charged in sex 
        assault four months ago, raped woman at knife point, 
        beat her boyfriend.
On August 7th, Venezuelan migrant with suspected gang ties 
        released in the United States before terrorizing NYC 
        and is yet to be deported.

    I can go all the way back, date by date, through the year, 
into last year, November 4, 2021. Without objection, I'll 
insert this into the record and the thousands of examples that 
are plaguing Americans across the country. With that 
background, first, Ms. Aguirre, can you confirm that these are 
just a sampling of what you're experiencing as a victim 
advocate out of Houston and people that are contacting you 
across the country that this not hyperbole, that this is not 
political, that these are, in fact, real human beings that 
we're trying to advocate for? Second, can you explain to the 
American people why was Maria targeted?
    Ms. Aguirre. I'm going to start with the fact that the 
reason there's so many sexual assaults committed by illegal 
immigrants is because in their countries, there's very little 
consequences, meaning that when there's a girl found that has 
been raped and murdered, it's not unusual. There isn't DNA 
collection and there's no embalming and there's no autopsy. 
She's buried.
    Along with her is what they did to her. So, these predators 
thrive in these countries. If you're not from those countries, 
you don't know that. Everybody thinks that it's like America 
everywhere else and it's simply not.
    So, when they come to this country to do this because they 
are accustomed to doing that in their countries. There is a 
problem with letting everybody in. The case of Maria Gonzalez 
echoes this, because also Maria was here illegally as well.
    Her father and she were living an honorable, quiet, 
hardworking life while this other individual came into this 
country as a child migrant, came in at 17 years old. He was 18 
years old when he killed her. Three weeks into being in this 
country and he killed her.
    The reason he chose her is because she's a child. The 
second reason, because she's a beautiful little girl. The third 
is because she was vulnerable.
    They don't even have respect for their own communities 
because both of these individuals were from Guatemala. Did that 
stop him from killing her? Absolutely not. Absolutely not.
    It was not necessarily something that we could say, oh, 
well, she passed away peacefully. No, she passed away fighting. 
She passed away hurting. She passed away losing nails, biting 
him, trying to get him off her in her own home.
    These individuals see a little girl and they have an 
appetite for her. They see a woman and they have an appetite 
for her, because they do this in their country and it's not 
unusual. These are the type of people that we're letting in.
    By not checking, we don't know who's coming in. You're not 
only--while you're reading your list, a lot of these people 
they're harming are within their own seeking the people that 
are in their hotels as well that are also migrants that are 
being hurt. So, they're hurting each other.
    As you two are here and the testimony, Ms. Lopez and Dr. 
Mendez, you guys advocate for immigrants. Immigrants are also 
being victims of these bad immigrants. I just don't understand 
how we could let everybody in without checking them.
    Mr. Roy. Thank you, Ms. Aguirre. I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back. The gentleman from 
California is recognized. We'll go down the line. I'll do 
whatever--
    Mr. Swalwell. Mr. Swalwell.
    Chair Jordan. Swalwell. OK.
    Mr. Swalwell. I'm sorry to each of you for the 
circumstances that have brought you there. I'm truly sorry that 
this has happened to your loved ones and the persons 
responsible for the deaths of Weston, Arlene, Rachel, Kayla, 
and Jocelyn should die in jail and then rot in hell. That's 
what they deserve.
    I believe in security. I want barriers on our Southern 
border at every place that makes sense. I don't want anybody to 
come into our country if we don't know who they are.
    I was a prosecutor. I'm probably one of the only persons in 
this room who's actually prosecuted and put away for the rest 
of their life some of the most violent people in our community. 
I'm the son of a cop.
    My brothers are cops. The two of them walked the beat every 
single day. I believe we can have security first and address a 
workforce crisis and find a pathway to earn citizenship in our 
country.
    I want to be real with you. Congress is divided. It's hard 
to get everything you want. On gun violence, I want an assault 
weapons ban and background checks.
    We have a divided Congress. So, we had to settle for 
Republicans and Democrats coming together for the Safer 
Communities Act. It wasn't perfect, but it was something. Fewer 
kids will die in their classrooms today because Congress 
compromised.
    I want to be real with you. They don't want a compromise. 
Donald Trump walked away from the second most conservative 
Republican in the Senate offering a compromise. Don't take my 
word for it. Take theirs.
    [Video shown.]
    Mr. Swalwell. Each of you came here today not easily but 
you expected a serious forum. You are serious. This issue is 
serious. They are not serious.
    The Chair yesterday tweeted, are the aliens--the Chair 
yesterday tweeted, ``When President Trump was in office, the 
border was secure and illegal aliens weren't eating your 
pets.'' He also then tweeted, again, knowing that you're going 
to come here to talk about your loved ones who are lost, you 
would expect some seriousness, some gravitas, and respect for 
the people who came here. What in the hell is this?
    The Chair tweets, ``protect our ducks and kittens in 
Ohio,'' because he goes down some crazy rabbit hole, completely 
debunked that aliens are eating pets. My God. Are you OK, Mr. 
Chair? Because last year for a very long time, you tweeted and 
promoted Kanye West as he was calling for genocide against the 
Jews.
    You kept it up. Now when we have victims coming here, 
you're tweeting this nonsense. I don't know why you would do 
this. I hope you're OK. I don't know if the aliens who are 
eating your ducks are in the room with us right now.
    Mr. Chair, this is a serious issue. These people have loved 
ones who have been lost, and you tweeted this. So, I am sorry 
that you came here expecting seriousness. You are serious. They 
are not. You deserve a hell of a lot more than what you're 
getting from them, and I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back. The gentleman from 
Wisconsin is recognized.
    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you very much. I hope you appreciate the 
drama that just came out here. We passed a bill called H.R. 2. 
It's the best secure the border bill that has ever passed 
through a House in the U.S. Congress.
    If you read it, it secures the border. It accomplishes what 
you would like to see happen. By the way, to secure the border, 
it doesn't even require an act of Congress at this point.
    The President undid it and the Vice President as the border 
czar undid it. They can put it back together anytime that they 
want to. It's as simple as that. Ms. Fundner, last week in my 
home State of Wisconsin, an illegal alien gang member from 
Venezuela was charged with domestic violence, sexual assault, 
child abuse, and strangulation. Are you surprised?
    Ms. Fundner. No, no.
    Mr. Tiffany. Are you surprised that he already had active 
warrants in the neighboring country for similar offenses?
    Ms. Fundner. Absolutely not.
    Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Boudreaux, Sheriff Boudreaux, would you be 
surprised that this illegal alien had two fictitious 
immigration documents on him, including a Social Security card 
when he was arrested?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. Not surprised at all.
    Mr. Tiffany. Would you be surprised that during the 
investigation by the police chief in Prairie du Chien, 
Wisconsin, he uncovered that this illegal alien came to the 
United States about a year ago in El Paso.
    Sheriff Boudreaux. Not shocking.
    Mr. Tiffany. Since he came across in El Paso, he was 
arrested in Minneapolis in November 2023, for receiving stolen 
property. Would that surprise you at all?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. No.
    Mr. Tiffany. Would it surprise you that Minneapolis did not 
issue a detainer to ICE for his deportation?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. Would not shock me.
    Mr. Tiffany. Minneapolis being a sanctuary city. On 
December 1, 2023, in Dane County which Madison is the seat of 
Dane County. He was charged with strangulation, suffocation, 
false imprisonment, battery, and disorderly conduct. Would that 
surprise you at all?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. No.
    Mr. Tiffany. Sheriff Boudreaux, are you from California?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. I am.
    Mr. Tiffany. I did not hear your opening testimony. Isn't 
it correct that the Vice President called for the end of ICE 
detainers as an elected official?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. Correct.
    Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Chair, I think we should have a hearing in 
the State of Wisconsin. Prairie du Chien is a community of 
about 5,000 people, beautiful little community, South of La 
Crosse on the Mississippi River. As a result of the failure, 
certainly in Minneapolis, probably in Dane County also, there 
is a person that has come to that little community now that has 
been charged with violent crimes including against a minor.
    As we're hearing from the people that are here today, 
they're not surprised at all that this would happen. While 
making the joke in regard to ducks and things like that, it 
underlies a more serious issue in Springfield, Ohio, where you 
have upward of 10,000 Haitians that have been pushed into that 
small community? They think--they being the President and the 
Vice President--that they're simply going to assimilate into 
that community.
    It's not happening. It's not happening across America. So, 
Mr. Chair, I'm going to reissue the call once again. I think 
this Committee should come to Wisconsin. If you could come to 
Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, people want answers.
    They want answers of why this is going on in the United 
States of America, how people can commit multiple offenses 
across various jurisdictions, and nothing is done. America is 
being destroyed. The fabric of family, community, it's being 
destroyed, isn't it, Ms. Fundner?
    Ms. Fundner. Yes, it certainly is.
    Mr. Tiffany. So, I hope you'll come to Wisconsin. I know 
it's happening in every State. I hope you'll come to Wisconsin 
because maybe it can make a difference to stop people like the 
current border czar from continuing this carnage of an invasion 
that is happening across America. Mr. Chair, I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back. It looks like we 
may be heading to the Badger State.
    The gentleman from California is recognized.
    Mr. Correa. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to also echo my 
condolences to the parents of the victims. Thank you for being 
here today. Thank you for sharing your stories. They will not 
be forgotten.
    I also believe that those individuals who perpetrated those 
crimes should never see the light of day; they should fry in 
Hell. Murder, rape, some of those most heinous crimes that can 
ever be committed against a human being, it leaves scars to the 
survivors that never go away.
    Back home in Orange County a dozen years ago I came home 
from work and came home to a number of police cars and 
helicopters surrounding an apartment building right across the 
street from where I am living. Went to find out what was going 
on. I soon realized that a rapist had been caught right in the 
middle of his act, raping a woman in the laundry room.
    This young man decided to dash off. Took off through my 
neighborhood. They finally caught him. Found out through DNA 
and other instruments that he had raped at least 20 women, all 
undocumented in the area. These are the women who actually 
stepped up to testify that they had been violated, that they 
had been raped.
    This is an American citizen who was preying on those that 
are undocumented.
    Sheriff Boudreaux., I know you are very--when I was a young 
man picking oranges and plums, I did stuff for a living in your 
area. In your area there is a lot of undocumented farm workers, 
honest, hard-working individuals that support the local 
economy, farm worker economy in that area. Farmers rely on 
them. Your economy relies on them.
    I would imagine you wouldn't be supporting mass deportation 
of undocumented workers in that area. I would imagine you would 
probably be more interested in an ordinary way of vetting 
individuals looking to work here honestly with a Green Card.
    What would you support, sir?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. A lot of that goes outside my purview 
because my focus is public safety. What I can say is this.
    Mr. Correa. Sure.
    Sheriff Boudreaux. Were you going to comment?
    Mr. Correa. No, sir. Please, continue.
    Sheriff Boudreaux. What I would say is this: What we are 
finding is that we are having victims at all levels, those who 
are here illegally and those who are here on work visas. We are 
finding that more and more of the violent, either cartels, gang 
members, are coming into the area intimidating and terrorizing 
those that you speak of, those that are working--
    Mr. Correa. I sit on Homeland Security, so we are working 
on a lot of these issues, trying to coordinate with other 
countries around the world to make sure that these folks that 
commit crimes in other countries don't come here to do the 
same.
    Sheriff Boudreaux. If I could say this?
    Mr. Correa. Go ahead.
    Sheriff Boudreaux. I have said this often, Mexico is not 
our enemy. Mexico is an ally of the United States. Who our 
enemy is the cartels and the human traffickers.
    Mr. Correa. Couldn't agree with you more.
    Sheriff Boudreaux. Drug traffickers.
    Mr. Correa. Couldn't agree with you more.
    Sheriff Boudreaux. I believe that we need to secure the 
border so that we can vet those coming in, so that we can have 
those working on work visas, as you mentioned, in our 
agricultural community. We have lots of people there that are 
here illegally, living peacefully.
    Mr. Correa. Let me in my last minute, we will talk more 
later on. I think everybody in this Committee would probably be 
in favor of a secure border with a system to let those that are 
looking for good, honest work, have the opportunity to find 
opportunities in America, just like our forefathers did.
    I look forward to continuing to work with you, sir, and 
others. I have a very good relationship with Sheriff Barnes in 
Orange County.
    Sheriff Boudreaux. Yes.
    Mr. Correa. A great man. It is a mess. Eighty percent of 
the women by the time they get to our border from Central 
America are raped or sexually assaulted. Horrible statistic. 
These are a lot of young girls as has been described today.
    We have a lot of work to do. In my opinion it is not a 
Democrat or Republican issue. I hope all of us here can figure 
out how to work together because these solutions have been 
proposed, we just can't get them implemented.
    Thank you much, Mr. Chair. I yield.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from California is recognized.
    Mr. Issa. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    My good friend from California is one of the more moderate 
Republic--Democrats. I appreciate his friendship. In this case 
he is just dead wrong.
    We had 10, 12, 14 million illegals in this country before 
this President came in, and we hadn't been able to clear them 
out in years. We hadn't been able to get them vetted into jobs, 
including the two million jobs in agriculture that my farmers 
say they want.
    This President and this Vice President have allowed more 
than 12 million additional illegals to come into this country. 
They come disproportionately, not from Mexico, as you know, 
they come from some of the worst places on earth.
    I have been at the border. I am a border Congressman with 
over 80 miles of border in my district, the busiest land port 
anywhere in the United States. You know what? Every time I go 
there and lead a trip to the border what I see are Venezuelans, 
Afghans, Syrians, Russians, and the list goes on, Chinese.
    Yes, Mexico is our ally but Mexico is an ally that violates 
international law by allowing these people to come in without 
visas. If you are Chinese you cannot go to Turkey without a 
visa, unless you say you are going to America and have no visa. 
From Turkey when you come to Mexico City, you cannot land there 
and not be immediately pushed out without a visa unless you say 
that you are going to the United States and have no visa. Then, 
they sweep you all the way to the border. That has to change.
    For the mothers who lost their children here today, I will 
tell you it would have been avoidable. It would have been 
avoidable if we had the mass deportation of people illegally 
here.
    Dwight David Eisenhower was one of the most moderate 
members that has ever served as a President. He was also the 
Commander-in-Chief, and before that he was a five-star general. 
He understood that laws need to be enforced.
    We are not enforcing the law. We have over 22 million 
illegals and we still have shortages of farm labor, as Mr. 
Correa would say. We have that because nobody has been told if 
you want to come here we will give you a visa to come here to 
be a farmer.
    By the way, that is not a Green Card. A Green Card is a 
pathway to citizenship. My colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle for my 24, this is my 24th year I have served here, for 
24 years they have talked about wanting reform. Every time they 
want a reform it is like that cockamamie thing that was going 
to come out of the Senate where you could do 5,000 people a 
day. If the President objected, if he objected, you could slow 
things down. That is not a solution.
    Now, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are 
calling this a stunt. This isn't as stunt. This is the fourth 
year of an administration that has willfully allowed people to 
come here with no vetting whatsoever again, and again, and 
again. They know it. The border czar, now Presidential 
Candidate, was the first person assigned the job and hasn't yet 
done it, just as she was the last person in the room before the 
withdrawal from Afghanistan.
    So, I will tell you, I am going to ask you a question, 
Sheriff, that is pure law enforcement, and it is something I 
would like to hear your opinion on.
    In my district we had a hearing just a week ago. We had one 
of our mothers explaining how her child came to be confronted 
by illegal adult males trying to force themselves onto a school 
bus. Because they had come illegally, and if you can come 
illegally in the U.S., why can't you also illegally get onto a 
school bus and make them take you where you want to go? In my 
home district they couldn't figure out where a law was broken.
    Can you help me figure out how something so wrong can, in 
fact, not find a crime to charge these people with under State 
law?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. Well, I can't answer to the law 
enforcement in the area. We support law enforcement. I know 
that you do as well.
    Mr. Issa. I love my D.A. She let me down.
    I like my sheriff, but I can't figure out how you could not 
come up with a charge. I know one thing, if I try to push my 
way onto a bus, a school bus, somebody will figure out a way to 
charge me.
    Sheriff Boudreaux. I would figure out a way to charge you. 
In California, in my county, we would figure out a way to 
charge you.
    Mr. Issa. There are laws for a reason, and we have safety 
for those reasons. When you don't enforce the laws, safety is 
no longer in existence.
    To all the brave parents who came here to talk about their 
losses, the only thing you can tell by many of us up here on 
the dais that are not--I tend to be a pretty laid back member 
after so many years, and I don't yell and scream, but I am 
animated today about your losses and the fact that they will 
continue until we change how we do business.
    It won't be with the people across the aisle until we can 
actually bring them to understand we can't have 22 million 
people here. We will need a mass deportation. The priority, of 
course, should be criminal aliens. It should be people 
unvetted. It should be those 1.4 million who have already been 
ordered deported, none of whom have been sent out.
    Mr. Chair, thank you for your indulgence. I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from North Carolina is recognized.
    Mr. Bishop. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    My objective in my five minutes, which is not much, is to 
hear from the moms. Before I do, I just want to take a trip 
down memory lane.
    Kate Steinle, does anybody know her name? Kate Steinle? She 
used to be a stark outlier. She was shot on a pier in San 
Francisco in 2015. It was accidental, I think they said. Sort 
of an occasion, sort of a freak encounter with an illegal 
alien.
    Now, we have a hearing in front of us today in which I 
think I counted five dead. I think I got four brutal sexual 
assaults, a couple of those children. Lincoln Riley's murder 
seems to have announced this phase.
    In my own community a Guatemalan was arrested in rural 
Gaston County on an Interpol warrant for a child rape.
    A Honduran was charged with murder one in Mecklenburg 
County, Charlotte, where I am from, arrested in Houston.
    In July a Honduran illegal 18-year-old with a 16-year-old 
undisclosed identity went on a random shooting spree in 
Charlotte, North Carolina, killing one person, injuring a 
number of people. It was an MS-13 gang initiation, we heard.
    We are hearing about Aurora, Colorado, apartment buildings 
being taken over by a local Venezuelan gang.
    Eric Swalwell can laugh about it if he wants to because he 
thinks it is funny. You hear in the report the guy is standing 
in front of a city council talking about migrant, Haitian 
migrants dumped, like 20,000 of them dumped on one small 
community in Ohio picking up ducks to eat, and killing cats to 
eat them. I don't know if this happened. We will find out. They 
denied the Aurora thing at first, right, too.
    Witnesses have come before Committees I have been on and 
they have talked about hyper violence.
    To the ladies, Ms. Lopez and Dr. Mendez, with all due 
respect, conditions are not the same in the United States as in 
the countries from which people are fleeing. That is why they 
are fleeing. If you replicate the conditions in those 
communities, what will you have solved. Where will people flee?
    Here is the thing. When I was elected in a special election 
in September 2019, in October I went to the border. It was calm 
and quiet. There was one asylum seeker at the port of entry I 
went to. Because in May all hell had broken loose and the Trump 
Administration had responded with the Migrant Protection 
Protocols, Remain in Mexico. It crushed the number of people 
coming in. It stopped the overwhelming flow.
    So, the question I have for the moms, and I am going to ask 
you one by one, do you think it is getting worse? Do you think 
it can get even worse than it is now?
    Ms. Nobles?
    Ms. Nobles. Yes, most definitely. We are seeing more and 
more cases every day, a lot, way too many.
    Mr. Bishop. Ms. Fundner?
    Ms. Fundner. Yes, absolutely. I acknowledge that every year 
it gets larger and larger, the deaths. This is on American 
soil. We have 300,000 people dead since 2021 under the Biden-
Harris Administration. It is just growing. We expect it to be 
much bigger this year.
    We have reports that they are underreporting right now. I 
am not surprised, because it is embarrassing.
    Yes, absolutely it is getting worse. It is 100 percent 
getting worse.
    Mr. Bishop. Ms. Morin?
    Ms. Morin. Yes. I think that if things continue, we are 
going to have a war on our soil. I think that this is a 
security risk for our country.
    The reason why I think that is because people are turning a 
blind eye to what is actually going on. That allows these 
unvetted criminals to come into our country, set up camp in all 
different States.
    I was just telling one of the gentlemen here that I was at 
the border. I met some folks at the border. I saw who lives at 
the border.
    I was also up in New England a week ago and I was surprised 
at the amount of immigrants from the Congo, and from Sudan, and 
from South America in Northern New England. That is unheard of.
    In Massachusetts they have spent over $1.5 billion to--
    Mr. Bishop. I want to save about 30 seconds for Ms. 
Nungaray. So, give me 30 seconds.
    Ms. Morin. Oh, OK. All right, but yes.
    Mr. Bishop. I didn't mean to cut you off, Ms. Morin. Quite 
to the contrary.
    Ms. Nungaray, how about you, is it getting worse and do you 
think it can get worse than it is?
    Ms. Nungaray. I do believe, yes, it is getting worse. It 
will continue to get worse if we do not use every detention 
center facility bed to detain them until their Immigration 
Court hearings to confirm and make sure for us U.S. citizens 
that we will be safe with letting new individuals in this 
country.
    Because they are taking our future, our children. They are 
taking people who are supposed to be making a difference in 
this world. It will get worse if we don't make a difference.
    Mr. Bishop. I am going to fire off one more question.
    They told us that there are about 2,500 children who were 
separated from their parents when we heard all the uproar about 
that. Now, I understand that there are 300,000 children who are 
disconnected, gone missing. What about that?
    Ms. Aguirre. To me it clearly says that there is more worry 
about immigrants' well-being than Americans' well-being. That 
is troubling because they would rather comfort migrants by not 
putting them through the process of getting them vetting, and 
that means staying in a detention center while that vetting 
process is taking place in an asylum hearing; right?
    So, they are willing to jeopardize American lives in the 
process. So, it almost, they have these back-room arrangements 
where they are, OK, well, we might lose some American lives, 
some of them might be criminals, and we are willing to gamble 
with the Americans' public safety.
    That is where we are at right now. Because people need to 
understand that.
    I, personally, am not against migration. I am against 
unvetted migration. Because, as you said, these migrants are 
fleeing from something, and here we are creating the same 
environments here in the United States soil that they are 
fleeing from.
    It is astonishing to me how many of these victims are 
actually also asylum seekers that are victims of their own 
migrants that are there with them in these groups that are 
being housed together. It is very troubling to me because it is 
not good for anybody.
    Mr. Bishop. I join you. I think it is getting worse and it 
can get worse.
    Mr. Chair, I yield.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back.
    I apologize. We are going to have to take another recess. 
There are two votes on the floor. I will try to get back ASAP. 
You can take a break, and we will be back as quick as we can.
    The Committee stands in recess.
    [Recess.]
    Chair Jordan. The Committee will come to order.
    The gentlelady from North Carolina is recognized for five 
minutes.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    First, I want to thank all the witnesses for speaking with 
us today. I know several of you had to travel here. Thank you 
for taking the effort to share your stories with us. They are 
truly heartbreaking.
    I want to extend my condolences to the witnesses who have 
lost family members to criminal activity. I am an attorney--I 
have been a champion for against violence, against women, and 
have tried to work to do everything that I can in all 
communities, but also in immigrant communities, to make sure 
that we stop the scourge of violence against women.
    I stand with my colleagues for any way that we can do 
bipartisan work in this area.
    I also want to point out I am from North Carolina, so we 
are not a border State. We have had incidences of illegal 
immigrants who have killed not just innocent victims, but also 
members of law enforcement. We are celebrating the anniversary 
of that tragedy in my district right now.
    Immigration doesn't happen in a vacuum. It is a result of a 
lot of forces that push people from their native countries and 
pull them to ours. Perhaps one of the greatest forces is our 
American labor market. I appreciate the comments of Mr. 
Boudreaux, understanding that there are labor issues in this 
country that bring people here, and that opportunity.
    Our economy relies on foreign workers and to fill some 
jobs, particularly in times of low unemployment. That is one of 
the times that we are having right now.
    Migrants, the ones who don't perpetrate these horrible 
crimes, take a lot of risks traveling to the United States to 
seek a better life because they know their labor is needed. 
Employers in my own district are begging for legal pathways 
that have the kinds of background checks and review that I know 
you are asking for.
    This is particularly in the agricultural area, as we have 
discussed, and also in construction.
    I am 100 percent for checking everybody out when they come 
to the border.
    However, excessive criminalization of immigration inhibits 
labor flow. To only focus on that side keeps us from being able 
to do the kinds of background checks that we need to do. What 
has happened that we have seen, particularly in the 
agricultural community, is that seasonal workers in decades 
past who could come temporarily, now feel like they have to 
stay the entire time to do the work that they want to do 
because they don't have that free flow back and forth.
    The criminalization of immigration and the increasingly 
limited legal channels to come to the United States, 
particularly for seasonal jobs, has led to a growth in criminal 
enterprises. We have discussed that. We absolutely must crack 
down on those criminal enterprises.
    Those criminal enterprises result in human trafficking, 
drug trafficking, and trafficking in firearms. They hurt the 
immigrants. They hurt our citizens. They hurt the fabric of our 
communities.
    So, I agree with my colleagues who have said that 
comprehensive immigration reform would address all these 
issues--the issues at the border, the issues with trafficking, 
and then the issues in our labor force--if we could create more 
legal pathways and ways to create an incentive to check 
people's backgrounds before they come to the United States.
    Legal pathways would also ensure that migrants coming to 
work in the U.S. are completely vetted before they are able to 
integrate into our communities and would allow their skills and 
labor to fill the needs that we have and, hopefully, reduce 
crime in the future.
    My first question is for Ms. Lopez. I only have 15 seconds.
    To the extent that you are able, can you comment on the 
typical employment prospects of many migrants?
    Would you describe the contributions that they make to the 
local communities they settle?
    Ms. Lopez. Sure. I can tell you that the biggest impediment 
for them is obtaining work authorization. Currently, there are 
significant backlogs in the processing of those applications.
    However, the majority of them when they do find, are able 
to obtain work authorization, they do tend to work in lower 
income fields. Typically, agriculture is a very common example.
    We have a lot of people, not very many of the immigrants 
actually stay in El Paso, the vast majority leave El Paso. They 
tend to, we see them settle in North Carolina, South Carolina, 
other places where there is agricultural work.
    Then we also see a lot of people who have advanced degrees 
and then are able to get those recognized in the United States 
and continue on with their being a doctor, or a nurse, or any 
of that type of work as well.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chair, for allowing me the extra time.
    Mr. Bishop. [Presiding.] My home State colleague yields 
back.
    I recognize the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Fitzgerald.
    Mr. Fitzgerald. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Thank you all for being here today. I was able to hear each 
one of your presentations. I know it is a long and gut-
wrenching day to be here, but so thank you very much for that.
    Mr. Biggs, Mr. Issa, and I was just in the San Diego Sector 
Thursday. I had been there before. One of the facilities that 
they want Members of Congress to be able to see is where the 
9th Circuit keeps all the evidence from the cases that are 
pending before that court. They call it The Vault.
    It is just mind boggling when you are in there because 
there is so much fentanyl that is being smuggled across the 
border. Specifically in the San Diego sector, 60 percent they 
are estimating--not my numbers, this is what DOJ is saying--60 
percent of all the fentanyl is coming through that San Diego 
sector.
    So, I wanted to kind of focus on that and kind of respond 
to some stuff that was said earlier about there is no real 
legislation kind of that brings us here today.
    Ms. Fundner, your son Weston, and unfortunately, I know it 
is difficult for law enforcement to kind of track down, I just 
want to ask you was there any success in finding out where your 
son ended up getting the fentanyl that ultimately took his 
life?
    Ms. Fundner. Yes, they know where he got it. They know who 
gave it to him. It is on camera, and it is on text. The case 
was dismissed.
    Mr. Fitzgerald. So, in the other cases in my State in 
Wisconsin where there are parents that find themselves in the 
same situation that you do. That has been part of it. So, the 
trafficking and how it makes its way across the States.
    So, let me just bring that back together again because 66 
percent of those deaths involving synthetic opioids, the 
fentanyl stuff, is not permanently designated as a Schedule I 
narcotic. This is something that is just still unbelievable to 
me, that we passed in the House last year a bill that would 
permanently designate that. I think this could make all the 
difference in the world.
    Ms. Fundner. Absolutely.
    Mr. Fitzgerald. Unfortunately, it has become a partisan 
vote as well, which makes no sense.
    So, if I could turn to the Sheriff. Sheriff, can you just 
give me an overview of how Schedule I is viewed?
    Do you think that would make a significant difference in 
the way law enforcement is able to handle fentanyl as it 
continues to pour across the border?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. Well, the drugs listed under Schedule I, 
obviously, are the most egregious and dangerous to the human 
body without strict regulation from physicians and/or those who 
would be able to oversee Schedule I type drugs, for one.
    When you talk about how, if I can touch into the fentanyl 
coming into our country, obviously, China is working with the 
cartels. That is how it is coming in, stamped in Mexico and 
then freely coming across the Biden-Harris open and unsecure 
border into our country.
    In my county alone, and up and down California, we had over 
150,000 fentanyl pills in a traffic stop where two illegal 
immigrants were released under California law, where they were 
off into the wind and never to be seen again.
    I tell that story because it is not uncommon to law 
enforcement all up and down California and across the country. 
That is how this fentanyl, this dangerous fentanyl is getting 
into the United States.
    Having said that, under a Schedule I, it would get far more 
Federal regulation and/or a sting and the bite into prosecution 
and those being held accountable for jail time. It would send a 
very strong message to hold people accountable for the 
dangerous, deadly fentanyl that is impacting American citizens.
    Mr. Fitzgerald. Thank you very much.
    Chair, I would just like to reiterate again what we are 
hearing at the border when we talk to the Border Patrol. 
Oftentimes, they are saying that it is the trafficking, it is 
the smuggling of the narcotics across the border that 
absolutely is linked to every other aspect of those that are 
coming across illegally.
    So, it is the basis of a lot of the organized crime that is 
actually being utilized right now to make all this happen.
    So, I think we bring the bill back. We focus on this. We 
pass it through the Committee. We get it back on the floor of 
the House.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Bishop. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from Indiana, Ms. 
Spartz.
    Ms. Spartz. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    I would like to know, Sheriff, I was looking at a little 
bit at your bio. You are a native of California and spent 
almost 40 years as a sheriff. So, you have a very long history 
perspective and how changed California and what has really 
happened at the border.
    What do you believe from your perspective, if you look at 
this historically, and where we are right now, what things have 
worked?
    Obviously, we have no border security. We have completely 
broken immigration system where if you are here illegally you 
get a lot of benefits. You are just approved in a lot of 
welfare; it really becomes problematic to really support our 
own citizens.
    If you want to try to something legal it is almost 
impossible becoming to immigrate to our country. There is a 
long line and really very unreasonable and I would say very 
stupid immigration policy.
    From the border security perspective, what have you seen 
work, what hasn't worked?
    You have worked under a variety of administrations, 
Republicans and Democrats. What could you share with us that 
you think is important and where we are right now, and what you 
think are the urgent needs that Congress needs to address?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. Yes. Quite frankly, I don't feel that it 
is all that complicated. I feel that it is pretty reasonable:
    We have a strong and secure border that we are able to vet 
those who are coming and going; that we provide the opportunity 
for people to come into this country through the legal system 
which we have had for years.
    There are laws in place that just need to be adhered to and 
obeyed. We find that the drug activity, and transportation and 
trafficking of drugs, guns, and human beings across the border 
is less.
    Will it completely eliminate it? No. That is just part of 
crime and criminal activity.
    We will have a controllable handle on it if we enforce the 
laws that are currently in place, and that we get rid of the 
most egregious and felonious people causing harm to American 
citizens, holding them accountable.
    If you are bringing fentanyl into this country and people 
die, you need to be held accountable.
    If you are bringing human beings into this country and you 
are using them for a sex trade or gaining criminal--making 
money through criminal means by trafficking humans, you must be 
held accountable. I believe there should be Federal laws that 
if you are trafficking young children for the purposes of sex 
trafficking or any other means, or any other human being for 
that matter, that there should be a Federal law that you are 
held in Federal prison for whatever determinate amount of time 
that is so that a message is sent very clearly to those who are 
doing that.
    If you hold people accountable, if you enforce the laws 
that are in place you will see a drastic reduction in the 
amount of people killed by fentanyl, the amount of cartels that 
are involved in coming across the border into our country. You 
will actually have immigrants that are here living peacefully, 
working in this country with the idea of chasing the American 
dream.
    I do not think it is complicated.
    Ms. Spartz. Thank you. I agree with you. Unfortunately, we 
haven't seen it, and especially in the recent years.
    If you would look at some things, what Congress is doing, 
because they are really the most important power, we have this 
power of the purse; right? We set out policies and we give 
direction. The Executive Branch should follow these directions. 
Funding is the way for us to actually hold the other branch 
accountable. We haven't been doing our job very well--not just 
very well, it is terrible.
    I always say the only good thing that makes me optimistic 
that Congress has, what, about 12 percent approval rating. So, 
American people can see there is some hope.
    From some of the things, what do you think are the most 
important things if we look at the funding, and maybe someday 
Congress will have a funding discussion. We haven't had it for 
a while. We just do CRs and presentations.
    What do you think are the most important things?
    Because we heard some very tragic stories, with real 
consequences, real lives affected because of negligence and 
disregard of duty by Executive Branch. What do you think things 
that Congress should maybe take a look, looking at the funding, 
and other things, that we try to force the other branch 
actually enforcing the laws?
    Sheriff Boudreaux. I believe that law enforcement across 
the country should be supported. The idea of defunding the 
police is one of the most ridiculous things that I have ever 
heard in my 38 years of law enforcement. We must support law 
enforcement at every level.
    What that means is, on the border we need to spend money to 
make sure that we have a strong and secure border.
    If you are asking me my opinion, and I am only law 
enforcement, but common sense is something that I pride myself 
in, I would argue that if infrastructure was put in place that 
you had enough people along the border in regard to the 
judicial process, providing as many judges as you can, as well 
as possibly an incarceration facility to hold people in custody 
if they are coming across the border outside the means of the 
legal system, that you have enough resources at the border that 
you can actually keep it from becoming this funnel that 
everyone is so worried about in not being able to get into this 
country.
    If you use the purse strings to help support resources 
along the border with infrastructure as well as people, that we 
would eliminate some of the issues that we, quite frankly, are 
facing in this country right now.
    Ms. Spartz. Thank you.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Bishop. The gentlelady yields back.
    Sheriff Boudreaux., I want to say Tulare County must be 
very proud of you. You have in two quick two-minute speeches 
you have about distilled this area more effectively than maybe 
anybody I have ever heard.
    I understand that you have a flight to catch and need to 
leave the Committee by in about within five minutes. So, you 
are dismissed to leave at your discretion.
    Thank you, sir, for being here.
    With that, I recognize the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. 
Cline, for five minutes.
    Mr. Cline. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    I want to thank the witnesses for being here today.
    To the Sheriff, Ms. Fundner, Ms. Morin, Ms. Nungaray, and 
Ms. Nobles, I listened to your testimony and our hearts are 
with you. It is a difficult task to discuss the loss of your 
children. This Committee appreciates your presence and 
recognizes how difficult it truly is.
    As to Ms. Nungaray, as the father of twin 12-year-old 
daughters my heart was especially touched by your testimony. 
Thank you.
    This Biden-Harris Administration's failed immigration 
policy, the border crisis created by this administration 
continues to harm communities across not just the Southern 
border but across the country. Having traveled to the border 
three different times, twice to Texas, once to Yuma, Arizona, 
we not only got to see the impact that it had on those 
communities but how every community is impacted.
    We talked to farmers whose crops were invaded by illegals 
who were camping in the fields in Yuma. If anybody has been to 
a convenience store in the middle of winter and turned over a 
ready-made salad and looked at the bottom, it says ``Made in 
Yuma.'' So, not only are you dealing with food supply issues, 
food price issues, but also farmer costs.
    Then we went to a hospital and NICU. The NICU directors 
talked about how many of their NICU beds are filled with 
migrants because it is a dangerous journey. Women are assaulted 
on the trip up. They are often pregnant by the time they arrive 
at the border. They don't have prenatal care. They are often 
delivering prematurely and have to take up those NICU beds.
    If you are a citizen of the United States and you are in 
Yuma, Arizona, and you need a NICU bed, you are traveling to 
Phoenix, a couple hours away.
    Talking about the education system and the need for ESL 
teachers, and the impact on the tax rates, and the 
transportation, and the housing costs. This is a humanitarian 
crisis but also a crisis at the border. It is also a crisis 
across the country in communities like mine, which is thousands 
of miles away in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
    Having been a prosecutor, I worked with a county that had 
an ICE agreement so that when illegals were arrested for 
committing crimes, they were tried, they were jailed, but the 
day they got out of jail they didn't go walk the streets of 
Harrisonburg, they were taken by ICE to the airport and they 
were sent back.
    To any of you who would like to answer, why should everyday 
Americans care about the border crisis even if they are 
thousands of miles away from the Southwest border in places 
like Virginia?
    Ms. Aguirre?
    Ms. Aguirre. I can tell you that all the people sitting 
here today didn't choose this path. Tragedy struck them without 
choice.
    Alexis had no idea that was going to be the last day she 
was going to have her daughter, alongside these other mothers. 
So, whether or not you want to take notice of what is going on 
at the border, it might come knocking at your front door.
    Mr. Gonzalez when he left to work that day had no idea that 
was going to be the last moment that he saw his daughter alive. 
The next time he was going to see her was at the medical 
examiner's office identifying her body.
    So, whether you are Republican or whether you are a 
Democrat, the criminal element of the immigration population do 
not care.
    Mr. Cline. Yes.
    Ms. Aguirre. They are going to inflict their criminal ways 
on our communities regardless.
    Not even mentioning any of the financial things that you 
just mentioned, which are important, my primary focus is the 
preservation of life.
    Mr. Cline. Right.
    Ms. Aguirre. Right? Quality of life.
    I am just besides myself that we prioritize giving a 
complete stranger who has never contributed to our society a 
chance at the likelihood that they may or may not harm a U.S. 
citizen.
    Mr. Cline. Yes.
    Ms. Aguirre. Or, in my case, a little girl who was also a 
migrant.
    Mr. Cline. All you have to do if you are in any part of the 
country and have a relationship with your law enforcement 
officers, go talk to them. Because, as Sheriff Boudreaux said,

        Even my sheriffs in rural Virginia can tell you when they pull 
        over an unmarked van on the interstate highway and find sex 
        trafficking, human trafficking, and minors being abused.

That is happening right in our backyard.
    So, we have a responsibility to protect the citizens of our 
districts just as we do to ensure that you can be protected in 
your homes as well.
    So, with that, Mr. Chair, I thank you. I thank the 
witnesses again.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Bishop. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from Wyoming, Ms. 
Hageman.
    Ms. Hageman. Thank you.
    There are a couple of statements that I would like to make. 
Then, I would like to give you an opportunity to make a 
statement about why you are here and give voice to the victims 
that you are representing here so beautifully.
    First, the Senate bill is not a border hardening bill, as 
you have pointed out. In fact, it would allow a minimum of 
5,000 illegals to cross the border every single day without any 
enforcement whatsoever.
    I come from the State of Wyoming. Under the bill that has 
been proposed by the Senate, every two weeks we would have a 
minimum of 70,000 people crossing the border. That is more than 
the entire population of the largest city in the State of 
Wyoming.
    So, I agree with you, that is not a border security bill.
    There has also been a comment made that we are not here 
talking any particular bill. That is not actually true. In 
fact, this week I am leading a bipartisan coalition of House 
Members to introduce what is called the Fight Illicit Pill 
Presses Act, a bill which requires serial numbers for pill 
presses, that prescribes penalties for tampering with pill 
processes.
    These pill presses are one of the methods by which 
traffickers are disguising lethal doses of fentanyl to look 
like other pills. This bill will help law enforcement better 
track and punish those responsible for distributing these pills 
into the country. So, we are working at trying to find a 
solution.
    I have listened to your stories today. I have watched your 
body language. I have watched as you have engaged with various 
Members of this Committee. I think what I would really like to 
do is give you the opportunity, each one of you who has been, 
who has suffered these terrible tragedies because of the crimes 
of illegal aliens, I would like to give you just a few minutes 
to describe your family member. What is the message that you 
would give to the Biden-Harris and Mayorkas Administration?
    Ms. Nungaray, I am going to start with you.
    Ms. Nungaray. Well, my daughter was definitely her own 
personality. She wasn't like any other child. She was spunky, 
quirky, was an amazing friend, an amazing friend. I have had 
the pleasure of hugging so many of them because they just miss 
her so much.
    She had a love for animals. Her dream was to save every 
stray animal and take care of them. She didn't want any animals 
to be left out in the world, left out in the streets without a 
home.
    She was a kid, a preteen, a few months shy of being a 
teenager, doing what teenagers do. We have all been there.
    I wasn't expecting to wake up and not find my daughter. I 
really wasn't expecting to not find her and realize she was 
never going to come home again.
    Ms. Hageman. She won't be forgotten.
    Ms. Nungaray. Thank you.
    Mr. Hageman. She won't be forgotten.
    Ms. Nungaray. We need better security. We need to make sure 
we are looking into who we are letting in.
    They were both reprehended and released the same exact days 
for both of them. The last one was not even three weeks. It 
took my daughter's life; they took my daughter's life. Because 
of these policies we have in place it is the pain and the 
trauma is irreversible.
    So, now I am here to advocate for her. As much as I am not 
a public speaker, I am standing strong and facing my fears for 
Jocelyn.
    Thank you.
    Ms. Hageman. Thank you.
    Ms. Morin.
    Ms. Morin. Thank you.
    Rachel was a tiny little girl. She was probably five feet. 
She always said 5,2", but we knew she was five feet.
    She was feisty. She was like a little spitfire. She was 
actually born with orange hair, very red. She didn't like her 
red hair too much, so she always bleached it blond.
    She was very active. She loved her children. She had a very 
bad stammering problem, and as a child she was bullied a lot 
because of her speech.
    So, I told her a story when she was a little girl. I said, 
``You know that there was another person that was very famous, 
and he had a stutter, a stammering problem?'' I told her the 
story of Moses.
    Mr. Hageman. Uh-huh.
    Ms. Morin. I told her that God gives special people special 
gifts because it makes them stronger. So, she looked at it not 
as an impediment, impediment, as a handicap. She looked it as 
that was her strength.
    So, she went out of her way to be outgoing and to choose 
jobs like a hostess at a restaurant where she put herself in 
the public way to speak. She ended up making so many friends. I 
think when we had the walk there was over 2,000 people that 
came out for her walk the first time.
    She also was very compassionate and kind toward others 
because she knew what it was like to be bullied. So, she 
accepted people for the way they were.
    I am here today to speak about her, but also to speak about 
all the women that are attacked that aren't killed. Because I 
have done some speaking, I have a lot of ladies that come up to 
me in the areas that I have traveled, and they will tell me 
that where they have been attacked. Someone will come up from 
behind them and try to put them in a, what is it, choke hold. 
They will fight to get away.
    One person, in particular, said that she was able to get 
away from this particular man. Went to the police to report it, 
and it turned out that the man had attacked seven other women.
    Ms. Hageman. Oh my.
    Ms. Morin. Nobody hears these stories because there is not 
a dead person, or maybe the crime hasn't been fully committed.
    So, there are still crimes that are going on far larger 
than we expect that are being unreported.
    So, I really want Rachel's life to make a difference. I 
really want and hope that you take into consideration what we 
are saying because we want to save lives.
    It is not about politics. It is not about if you are a 
Republican or if you are a Democrat, it is about being 
American, protecting our families. The only way we are going to 
do that and have this really be a land of opportunity for both 
the American citizen and for the immigrant that wants to come 
in, is to do it legally and to have people vetted before they 
come into our country. We should be protecting ourselves.
    Chair Jordan. [Presiding.] The time of the gentlelady has 
expired.
    We will let Ms. Fundner and Ms. Nobles give a quick 
response, if you could, to the gentlelady's question. Then, we 
have two more Members to question.
    Ms. Fundner. The Biden-Harris Administration is doing 
nothing. The fentanyl problem is such an issue. It is pouring 
over our borders. It is killing more people in America, more 
young people in America than any other ailment in the country. 
It is killing children.
    It is nothing that is being done about it. There is no 
excuse or no reason why we are not doing something. Three 
hundred thousand Americans have died. I have said it so many 
times. It is a war on our soil, and nothing is being done.
    Why aren't we securing the borders? Why aren't we going 
after the cartels? Why aren't we telling China shut down your 
factories, this is not OK? Why isn't fentanyl, aside from 
Schedule I, it is a weapon of mass destruction. There are 
things that can be done with this. It is just this fentanyl it 
is insanity that they will not shut the borders down.
    It is killing our children. It is killing more children and 
more people in this country than anything else right now. It is 
an epidemic. It needs to be dealt with. There is no excuse why 
they haven't done anything.
    Chair Jordan. Ms. Nobles, if you would like to give a brief 
response.
    Ms. Nobles. I believe that the Biden-Harris Administration 
is responsible. He, Kayla's murderer, came over as a UAC, 
unaccompanied alien child, saying that he was scared of gang 
activity in his country, knowing that he was an MS-13 gang 
member.
    Chair Jordan. Uh-huh.
    Ms. Nobles. Kayla was a very loving, happy girl. She loved 
to help. She wanted to help the homeless. She loved animals.
    She worked so hard to become independent with having 
autism. She could live on her own. I made sure she could live 
on her own. I would never have let her live on her own if I 
knew she couldn't do it. She worked so hard to overcome all the 
obstacles in her life. This monster just ripped her life out. 
After all that hard work, her life was just snuffed out just 
like that.
    Ms. Hageman. I am sorry. Your voices are being heard.
    Thank you. With that, I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady yields back.
    I believe we just have four more. I'll go with Mr. Van 
Drew, Mr. Nehls, Mr. Hunt, and Mr. Rulli, and then, again, I 
apologize for the long day and the breakup, but we'll go as 
quickly as we can here.
    The gentleman from New Jersey?
    Mr. Van Drew. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    To our witnesses here today I am sorry for your pain. I 
can't say that I know what it feels like as a father and now a 
grandfather. I don't.
    Nobody will ever know. People shouldn't even say that, in 
my mind. I am sorry, though, and there's no words I can say.
    The worst of all this is it didn't have to be this way. I 
hear crocodile tears. I hear people they should rot in hell. 
They should this and that.
    We can fix this, and it should have been fixed and it 
wasn't this way, names like Lakin, Weston, Rachel, and Kayla. 
Human souls, human beings that were raped, that were murdered, 
that were disfigured, that were tortured and thrown away like 
garbage.
    This is because, and I'm going to say it, of the Harris-
Biden failure. Everybody can say what they want to over there 
and I'm going to talk about that in a minute, and I'm sad to 
say this because I don't want to be mean. I do not want to be 
partisan.
    I'm simply telling you the truth. The truth is tens of 
thousands of Americans are being killed by fentanyl and you 
know it--I don't have to repeat all the testimony that you all 
gave--and the drug flows freely through our borders.
    The truth is in Aurora, Colorado, gangs of Venezuelans are 
taking over apartment buildings and extorting rent from people. 
Think how scared those people are. They're having to pay them 
money so they can live safely in their own home.
    The truth is in Ohio Haitian migrants are beheading the 
ducks in public parks and yes, it's weird. It is weird, but we 
didn't bring that weirdness here. We didn't bring that 
distorted behavior here, but it's forced on a small town in 
Ohio when 30,000 illegals have been pushed on them by the 
Federal Government.
    The truth is that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden let these 
people in. You all remember when the administration changed, 
and they had t-shirts on at the other side of the border--
Kamala Harris t-shirts and Joe Biden t-shirts.
    There was a reason for that. It is telling the truth time 
for a change. Who rescinded the Executive Orders, the Executive 
Orders that Donald Trump had put in that were there to protect 
us?
    Who wouldn't finish the wall? Who wouldn't keep the Remain 
in Mexico policy? Who instituted catch and release into our 
country? Who let Title 42 lapse with no replacement at all?
    Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. When you do wrong you have to 
own up to it and be blamed, and when our party--and I hope you 
look at old videos from the past because this is not the only 
hearing we have had. We have had these hearings all across the 
country.
    When we brought these concerns up the left laughed at us 
and they said that we're fabricating stories and that we were 
being political. This is the end result of what they did.
    I pray to God, and I mean this--I pray every single day, 
and I'm not giving you a political speech. I pray to God that 
Americans see and know this truth. They trusted our government. 
They trusted them to protect us from foreign threats.
    Their trust was shattered and was destroyed by that 
administration. Our witnesses today, your stories, that's the 
truth. It's the ugly, horrible, sinful truth.
    The truth is this administration knowingly, purposefully, 
methodically destroyed our protection at the Southern border. 
That is the truth.
    They may not like it now. It's an election year so now we 
care about the border. It's a lot of bull. I'm telling you the 
truth.
    Month after month we watched, year after year, as millions 
of illegal immigrants poured into this country. We watched as 
tens of thousands of pounds of fentanyl poured into this 
country killing our youth, killing our most vulnerable, good 
kids that made sometimes just one mistake, and we watched as 
terrorists come into our country.
    We have got hundreds of terrorists in our country. We don't 
know where the hell they are, what they're doing and what 
they're going to do. You know what we watched? Kamala Harris 
and Joe Biden do absolutely nothing and welcome it.
    Worse than all they encouraged it. They've created this 
evil, and it is evil in our country. Not all undocumented are 
evil but the process is evil and wrong, and it allows evil to 
come in.
    You know what? When they asked her--and we all remember. 
It's on video. It's not hard to find. They asked her about it. 
What did she do? Do you remember?
    She laughed. She laughed. She said she hadn't been in 
Europe--she hadn't been at the border. She didn't give a damn. 
It was a joke. It was funny.
    It isn't funny. Your lives will never be the same. That's 
not funny. Over here we hear that we're really better and safer 
in the country because of illegals and we're even told that 
they are better and safer than our own Americans--that our own 
Americans commit more crimes, and they've even said it today in 
this hearing room. You heard it.
    So, I'm going to bring you real quick questions. Ms. 
Fundner, if that fentanyl-laced pill hadn't been smuggled 
across our border would your son still be here today? Yes or 
no?
    Ms. Fundner. Yes.
    Mr. Van Drew. Ms. Morin, if the man who murdered your 
daughter had been stopped at the border would your daughter 
still be here today? Yes or no.
    Ms. Morin. Yes.
    Mr. Van Drew. Ms. Nobles, would your daughter be here today 
if an MS-13 gang member with a history of murder was stopped at 
our border and sent back to where he came from? Yes or no.
    Ms. Nobles. Yes.
    Mr. Van Drew. God help us. We must be strong. We can't save 
these shattered lives. If we want to do something in their name 
that next bill that we finally get through and pass when we 
have a new president should be named for all of you and their 
lives will still have meaning and your lives have meaning.
    Chair, I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from Texas is recognized.
    Mr. Nehls. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Well said by my friend here, Mr. Van Drew.
    I'd like to thank our witnesses for being here, taking the 
time. To the witnesses that have lost a child at the hands of 
this crisis, as a father of three I can't fathom what you're 
going through and I'm truly sorry for your loss.
    Ms. Nungaray, I introduced the House version of the Justice 
for Jocelyn Act, which I thank your family. You helped write 
it. You helped write it--I want to thank you for that--to honor 
the memory of your daughter and make sure preventable deaths of 
American citizens at the hands of illegal aliens never happens 
again.
    It doesn't have to happen and thank you again for your 
family's help on that and, again, my apologies. Spend a minute 
and share with the Committee how important it is that this 
bill, this Justice for Jocelyn Act, that it gets passed.
    Ms. Nungaray. I believe it's super important for it to get 
passed because we don't know who we're allowing in this 
country, and the fact there were hundreds of beds they could 
have had them in there was no reason to do the catch and 
release.
    What we have going on there is no reason for it. They 
should have stayed apprehended until their immigration court 
hearing.
    Mr. Nehls. That's right.
    Ms. Nungaray. It's not right. It's not fair. It took an 
innocent child from a future. She was supposed to be part of 
the future for the next generation and--
    Mr. Nehls. Well, I can assure this. You have my commitment. 
I think you have the commitment of the Chair and this entire 
Judiciary Committee that we're going to move on this. I think 
it's the right thing to do. It's very, very important.
    Unfortunately, there are countless other victims out there 
in the Kamala border crisis that didn't get an opportunity. 
They didn't get an opportunity to tell us their story in this 
Committee today and our witnesses are far from alone in their 
suffering.
    Ms. Fundner is not alone in the loss of her son from the 
fentanyl. We have talked about the fentanyl and how it's 
poisoning our people, the No. 1 cause of death for Americans 
18-45.
    In 2021, more than 1,500 children died from fentanyl 
poisoning. In 2023, fentanyl deaths over a 100,000 and it could 
all be prevented. It could all be prevented, and fentanyl is 
just one part of the story.
    There are many other victims, the countless businesses been 
victimized by mass retail theft committed by gangs, rural areas 
near the border who fear for their families as illegals 
trespass on their property. The New York police officers being 
beaten by these mobs of illegal aliens. People who themselves 
or other family members assaulted, been robbed, killed by an 
illegal alien including those by drunk driving happened when I 
was the sheriff of Fort Bend County before I came up here.
    I had illegal--and the knucklehead, after we caught him, we 
find out he was deported six previous times. How the hell do 
you get deported six previous times?
    Because you just go back and forth. Easy peasy for. Hard to 
look at a guy. Look at the family of Ms. Boo who was killed by 
this illegal and say I'm sorry, but this guy shouldn't be here.
    Unacceptable. Reports of the armed Venezuelan gangs of 
illegals taking over entire communities--I think you touched on 
it, Colorado, that Tren de Aragua--and what's frustrating about 
that is the Border Patrol back in September 2022, they knew. 
They were alert. Hey, look out for these bad hombres coming out 
of Venezuela.
    Because what do we know? Back in 2015, Trump was right. I 
can remember when he said it. They're not going to send us 
their best or their brightest, right? Then Trump is all of a 
sudden labeled as this racist because he says it. He goes, 
``they're going to send murderers and rapists.'' He's right. 
He's right. He's right all the time, quite honestly. He's 
certainly right here.
    So, I sent a letter to Mayorkas in September 2022, 
expressing my concerns about what we're hearing from the Border 
Patrol. What kind of response do you think I got from him? 
Nothing. I hear nothing.
    Now, we go into February 2024, with Lakin Riley, that 
wonderful, beautiful nursing student murdered by, again, 
another Venezuelan, right. Sent a letter to Mayorkas and what 
do you think I get? What do I get back? Nothing. He just 
doesn't want to talk about it. He avoids it.
    Then, we go to June 2024, Jocelyn Nungaray. Again, two 
Venezuelans. Nicolas Maduro is not a dummy. He's not. He sends 
all the worst people up here because he knows it's going to 
cause chaos for our country, so he embeds them. He sends them 
into our country, and this is what we get.
    Venezuela--their inflation is over 222 percent. Their 
poverty rate is at 50 percent. Why would he want them back? We 
can't find out what kind of people these are when they enter 
our Southern border. We don't have a relationship with 
Venezuela to find out what kind of people these are.
    I'll guarantee it, Kamala Harris, you're responsible for 
this. Do you know what her position was in the border, really 
quick? I'm going to--and then I'm going to finish.
    Her campaign positions--pledge to end immigrant detention. 
I'm going to taxpayer fund gender care. I'm going to decrease 
the funding of ICE and I'm going to end ICE detainers.
    The American people are smarter than this, and if we're 
going to save our country let's bring Donald Trump back. The 
American people are smart enough and we're going to save our 
country and secure our border on November 5th. Donald Trump 
will do it for all of us because he puts America first. He puts 
you first and your families.
    God bless you all.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlemen yields back.
    The gentlemen from Texas is recognized.
    I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I've been joined by the lady from 
Vermont. You're recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Balint. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    I come here as a new Member of Congress. I was a teacher 
prior to that. I have two teenagers myself and I know that 
there is nothing that matters more to us as moms as our kids. 
Nothing.
    So, I want to start there because I know there is 
absolutely nothing that any of us can say to alleviate the 
suffering that you have been through and continue to endure, 
the loss of a child.
    Prior to coming into the Committee today I was in a hearing 
on the online dangers that girls and teenagers face. I have 
committed my life to work on the mental health crisis, the 
crisis of loneliness in this country, especially among teens 
and young people.
    I'm concerned about gun violence prevention. I'm concerned 
about solving real problems, and what's been so hard for me 
being on this Committee is I come from a State legislature 
where people do sit down across the aisle.
    They sit down and they solve problems together, and it's 
been very frustrating for me when I know coming in here that 
this problem, this terrible problem of broken immigration, of 
dangers at the border, predates this Congress--predates this 
president.
    We can go back decades. This is a can that has been kicked 
over and over again. Now, again, there's no comfort in that for 
any of you. I think what Americans need to be demanding of us--
I don't care what party you are--what they should be demanding 
of all of us are real answers to these problems because nobody 
should have to bury their child because they've experienced 
violence. Nobody should.
    So, I guess I want to make a plea honestly. We don't know 
who's going to be president come January. We don't know who is 
going to be in charge of this chamber, whether it's going to 
continue to be the Republicans or be the Democrats. We don't 
know.
    What we do know is that we as Members of Congress should be 
working every single moment of every single day in our 
Committees to actually get work done together.
    The American people deserve better from all of us, and I 
think what pains me the most as a parent who just sent my kids 
off to school again in the last two weeks is spending so much 
time worrying about the gun violence that they experience in 
schools, and I hear from parents all over my district that 
they're worried about the safety of their kids.
    Again, whether it is the violence at the border, whether it 
is a broken immigration system, whether it's gun violence 
prevention, I wish that we could stop the grandstanding and 
actually sit and do work together.
    That's why we're sent here. We are not sent here to serve 
any person running for president. I don't care what side of the 
aisle you're on. That is not what we're here for, to talk about 
your guy or your gal that you want to see in that office.
    The American people deserve better from all of us. My 
family deserves better from all of us and, again, there is 
nothing that I can say to you who have lost your children other 
than to say we need to do better, and I make my commitment to 
you to do my part to work across the aisle to stop demonizing 
each other, to stop demonizing Americans.
    I also come to this hearing as the child of an immigrant 
who came here for a better life, and I never imagined that I 
would be in the halls of Congress as the child of an immigrant.
    So, I am holding many stories here as I sit here and I'm 
just very deeply, deeply sorry for your loss and I will do 
everything that I can in my job to make sure it doesn't happen 
again.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Bishop. [Presiding.] The gentlelady yields back.
    The Chair recognizes Mr. Hunt of Texas.
    Mr. Hunt. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Today we have family members of victims who were murdered 
by illegal aliens who should not have been in this country in 
the first place.
    I want to start by saying to the victims' mothers--Ms. 
Nungaray, Ms. Morin, Ms. Nobles, and Ms. Fundner--how sad I am 
for your loss, and I genuinely mean that from the bottom of my 
heart.
    It takes so much courage for you to stand before us today--
sit before us today, it's been a very long day--and for us to 
hear your testimony and for us to hear your stories. It really 
warms my heart, and I know that there's bravery left in this 
country, and you represent that. You embody that.
    Ms. Nungaray, I am a fellow Houstonian, and I want to 
especially thank you for being here. Your tragedy hit very 
close home to me. Your testimony is heartbreaking.
    Two illegal aliens walked across the border, thanks to the 
Biden-Harris Administration's open border policies. Within 
months of being in this country they took the life of your 
young daughter, Jocelyn, which is ridiculous, and I'm a 
cosponsor and I'm also a strong supportive of the swift passage 
of the Justice for Jocelyn Act, so that no child or parent will 
ever have to experience this tragedy again and sit before us in 
this hearing room again. Thank you for being here.
    A question for you as well, ma'am, if you're open to it. I 
would like to give you the opportunity to tell us anything that 
you have not mentioned in your testimony about your beautiful 
daughter Jocelyn.
    Ms. Nungaray. I didn't want to press what she was. She was 
a child. I believe all of us as adolescents have done things 
our parents wouldn't recommend doing.
    We didn't always all listen to our parents and a lot of 
kids just want to have fun and a lot of these children really 
do believe that they're invincible and they don't know the 
harms that they have and that are right in front of them in 
this world, and a lot of them are being preyed on.
    My daughter really should have felt safe, even if it was 
late at night, which she should--she had no business doing--we 
know--but she should have been able to walk a couple minutes 
from our home and be able to safely get home without having to 
be lured somewhere by being the helpful little girl she was. 
Was just trying to help them get to wherever it was they were 
going, and they took advantage of her.
    Mr. Hunt. Thank you.
    Again, this touches home to me because I have two 
daughters, Olivia and Victoria. If some of this happened to 
them, I actually don't know what I would do.
    Actually, I have an idea, and I probably wouldn't be in 
Congress anymore. So, I understand your frustration, and you're 
right, our children should be able to walk these streets safely 
no matter what hour, no matter what decisions that they make.
    The left keeps saying that statistically Americans commit 
more crimes than non-Americans in this country. Well, I'd like 
my colleagues on the left to know that these mothers that are 
dealing with this understand that's actually not true and, in 
fact, police sources told the New York Post that around 75 
percent of people arrested in midtown Manhattan, which is not 
necessarily a direct border State, in recent months they've 
been illegal aliens.
    The Federal Government must do everything it can to protect 
American citizens. That's actually our sole purpose. That's our 
No. 1 job, and we can do that. It's simple. We need to 
reestablish the immigration and border policies that worked 
under President Trump.
    This is not difficult. My colleagues on the left want to 
say this is not political and it doesn't matter who your guy or 
gal is. Yes, it does. It really does, actually, because if 
President Trump were in office right now, we wouldn't be 
sitting here.
    I don't care what political affiliation that you have. 
Those are facts. Kamala Harris wants you to confuse her border 
policies, because now she's claiming that she supports Trump's 
border policies, and she wants you to believe that she's tough 
on the border.
    We know that's not true, and as we know that the best 
predictor of future performance is past performance.
    There's been a lot of talk today about policies. House 
Republicans in May of last year passed H.R. 2, the Secure the 
Border Act. House Republicans have done our part to attempt to 
prevent these tragedies from recurring and happening again, but 
the Democrat-led Senate didn't even take up the bill.
    If you think things are bad right now, if Kamala Harris, 
our border czar, is back in office after November 5th, we will 
continue to have these hearings.
    We are doing this to elucidate the American people, to let 
them know that we have got to stop this from happening in this 
country and we have the ability to do just that.
    I'll end with this. I have 18 seconds left, and I want to 
tell you I can see your faces right now. Ma'am, this picture in 
front of me has really touched my heart. I took a picture of 
it, and I will show it to my children, and I will show it to 
those people in Houston, Texas, to prevent this from ever 
happening again.
    I can see the pain on your face. As a father I understand 
exactly how you feel. As a combat veteran--and tomorrow is 9/
11--as a combat veteran that went to war after 9/11, I fought 
for this country to keep these animals from killing our young 
children.
    I will continue to fight tirelessly to do just that. Thank 
you so much. Thank you for your bravery. God bless you all, and 
we are trying our best to prevent these tragedies from ever 
happening again. Thank you so much for being here.
    Mr. Bishop. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair recognizes the gentleman from South Carolina Mr. 
Fry.
    Mr. Fry. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Thank you for this hearing today, and thank you, ladies, 
for being here. When I was in the South Carolina legislature I 
chaired an opioid task force that was our State's response to 
the opioid epidemic and at the beginning of every hearing we 
did you get into the policy, right. You get into the weeds of 
where you are and how do you get out of this.
    We always started and ended every hearing with the faces 
and voices of those who are going through this themselves, and 
so it's incredibly brave for you to be here. I really 
appreciate you sharing these stories. I know it's not easy to 
do so but thank you.
    Ms. Nungaray, your daughter Jocelyn was murdered by 
Venezuelan nationals who entered the country illegally and they 
were released in the country with notices to appear in front of 
an immigration court. Is that correct?
    Ms. Nungaray. Yes, that's correct.
    Mr. Fry. One of them had an ankle--an ICE ankle monitor 
when he murdered your daughter. This, to me, is just like 
incredibly unfathomable that we're allowing these individuals 
into this country.
    What does it say about the policies of the Biden-Harris 
Administration? Are their border policies, or lack thereof, 
working for the American people?
    Ms. Nungaray. There's a huge lack for public safety for us 
U.S. citizens. We should be able to feel safe throughout all 
cities of the United States and it is a very, very broken 
failed system and I'm very appalled to be in this country 
because of how failed it is, especially after losing my 
daughter.
    We should be safe and that shouldn't be a question. That 
shouldn't be a privilege. That should be a requirement. As a 
U.S. citizen we should be safe at all times.
    Mr. Fry. No, I completely agree with you and, 
unfortunately, there are so many that are similarly situated to 
you and all of you that are going through this.
    Ms. Nobles, I want to turn to you. The illegal alien who 
murdered your daughter was an unaccompanied minor when he 
entered the United States. Once he committed murder local 
police were able to determine that he was actually in a gang, 
MS-13. Had a criminal record in El Salvador.
    Can you tell us what happened when Martinez became custody 
of Child Protective Services after he murdered your daughter?
    Ms. Nobles. The Aberdeen Police Department asked CPS to put 
him in a secure location because of the crimes that he was 
being--what he did and they agreed to put him in a secure 
location.
    When they went to go arrest him, they found out that it was 
a group home and he was in a group home with other children and 
the local police said, oh, this is secure.
    They did not know--CPS did not let the Aberdeen Police 
Department know that they moved him from the group home to a 
foster home and enrolled him in high school.
    Mr. Fry. What types of freedoms did he have after he did 
this? You said he was enrolled in high school, which is--
    Ms. Nobles. He was in--yes, he was put in high school with 
1,400 other students knowing that he was in a premeditated 
first-degree murder case--rape and assault.
    Mr. Fry. Exposed to all these other individuals?
    Ms. Nobles. All these other individuals, and it makes me so 
angry that they put other children at risk.
    Mr. Fry. If Kamala Harris were here right in this Committee 
hearing today, if she was sitting here on the House side, what 
questions would you have of her?
    Ms. Nobles. Well, actually, I would say, well, you can have 
Walter come live with you because Kayla was murdered in her own 
bed. She was sleeping and she had to wake up to this monster 
breaking into her room and strangling her with her own phone 
cord. She can have him.
    Mr. Fry. She won't.
    Ms. Nobles. Of course. Of course, she doesn't want him in 
her house but she's all for them, and it's not a joke. I would 
tell her this is not a joke. You're laughing. These are real 
people, real children, who had lives and was taken from them in 
the worst way.
    Mr. Fry. Thank you for that.
    Ms. Morin, I want to turn to you. In your testimony you 
talked about how the Border Patrol let a man with an open 
Interpol warrant for murder in our country. Do you feel safe 
under the broader policies of the Biden-Harris Administration?
    Mr. Bishop. Mr. Fry, Ms. Morin stepped away.
    Mr. Fry. Stepped away. Well, any of you, do you feel safe 
under the Biden-Harris policies?
    Ms. Aguirre. No. They chose to give people that have never 
contributed to our country the possibility of a better life 
while making the lives of the citizens worse while risking 
public safety.
    They gambled because it's not their lives to gamble with. 
They have their private security. They have bulletproof car 
vehicles. They live in gated communities. What about everybody 
else that has to live with these individuals in their 
communities?
    Going back to the case of Maria Gonzalez, her neighbor was 
one of those individuals that was brought here. He was an 
unaccompanied minor, and ironically since he left his town in 
Guatemala the murders of little girls stopped.
    Mr. Fry. You know what is remarkable to me? I was hearing--
listening in my office or listening to the commentary on the 
other side. I'm happy to work on securing the border.
    Every time that we have come forward with a bill or a 
policy initiative to do that, that you actually secure the 
border, that you stop the flow of people who don't know why 
they're in the country, that we stop the criminals from coming 
into the country, they don't engage.
    They shut down debate. They say we're engaged in conspiracy 
theories. In fact, you know what's so strange? The first 
hearing--one of the first hearings that I was ever in, in this 
room, the Ranking Member said that we were imagining a border 
crisis.
    That is insanity. You all are living this every single day 
and there are millions of people who are in your shoes. Thank 
you for your bravery today. Thank you for being here, and we 
will be praying for you and with you and continuing to push 
this and make sure that we can secure our borders. Thank you.
    Mr. Bishop. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. 
Rulli.
    Mr. Rulli. So, I spent six years in the Ohio Senate and I'm 
only in my third month in Congress, so I've seen a lot of 
testimony over the last 6\1/2\ years.
    This is the first time I was nervous, being in front of all 
the mothers, and my days are long. I have a lot of different 
things--hats I wear in my life. I came home a couple months 
ago, and I watch a lot of news, and I saw Jocelyn's picture. I 
just completely broke down.
    Anyone that has a daughter there's no way you could get 
around that, and I started thinking about what kind of 
questions I could ask the moms and, like, I'm drawing a blank 
and so, my cousin died young. My best friend got killed.
    So, I got a lot of their moms together so they could help 
each other and have a coffee group and they get together and 
then they talk.
    Then, I was thinking about the ultimate mom Mary and how 
her son was sacrificed and she had to watch that and she had to 
carry on, and you guys are going to carry on.
    You're here and you are empowering yourself. You have to 
say this story over and over and over again, and I can't 
imagine how you wake up in the morning and you don't have her 
or your kids, you don't have them with you, and how you go on.
    All my grandparents were born overseas and then we 
celebrated going through Ellis Island. My one grandma Gina, she 
was stuck in Ellis Island for a year because there was medical 
things. We vetted everybody and then we assimilated. We're a 
country of immigrants. We're not anti-immigrant.
    We don't know who's here, and you guys are the biggest 
stories of them all. In Ohio I know handfuls of people that 
have been killed in drunk driving that are from illegal aliens 
that are driving these vehicles and shouldn't be there.
    I really encourage all of you to continue this venture and 
don't stop. It's easy for me to say but I don't--no matter how 
bad it hurts you have to keep telling the story because people 
in everyday life it's just a little blurb of your stories and 
it's coming to a theater near them.
    In Springfield, right now--you've heard in Ohio there's 
tens of thousands of Haitians that are there. There was a 
little boy, 11 years old, killed by one of them.
    I'm not going into all this--stories about all the other 
different cultural things. I'm just talking about bare bones 
here and this is Ohio.
    So, I just want to take a second, and I know a couple of 
the moms are from Maryland and so when I heard that Maryland 
and being in Ohio, and living our lives when you hear the 
border crisis you think it's Texas or you think it's Arizona.
    You don't think Maryland. You don't think Ohio. You don't 
think Vermont. You don't think Massachusetts. You don't think 
Minnesota. You think Texas.
    Maryland is as far away from the border as you can get. So, 
just with the moment for the moms that are from Maryland 
there's no way you could have ever thought that in your neck of 
the woods that your kids wouldn't have been safe, and here we 
are.
    We have to vet these people. So, if the moms from Maryland 
could just say a word or two.
    Ms. Nobles. I didn't think I would be living the journey 
that I am. I thought Kayla would be safe in her own home and 
it's just--it could happen to anyone. It could happen to anyone 
anywhere and you don't have to be close to the border to have 
this affect you.
    We picked out a pretty white dress for Kayla for her 
viewing. She couldn't even wear it. She had to wear a granny 
dress to be covered from her chin down because of the bruise, 
because of all--because she was covered in bruises and her neck 
and all that was messed up from the cord.
    So, this could happen to anyone.
    Mr. Rulli. Well, I can't thank you enough, and if you can 
continue the journey the public needs to know. This isn't 
Democrat or Republican. This is just America, and we could do 
better, and your kids didn't die in vain.
    With that, I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back.
    Once again, I want to thank you all for being here and 
telling your story. I apologize once again for the breaks and 
then they just--in some ways a typical day on Capitol Hill.
    We do appreciate your valuable testimony that I think a lot 
of Americans--a lot of Americans are going to take to heart.
    So, with that, our Committee is--the Committee stands--
wait, I need to one other thing.
    This concludes today's hearing. We thank our witnesses for 
appearing. Without objection all Members will have five 
legislative days to submit additional written questions for the 
witnesses or additional materials for the record.
    Without objection the hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 3:24 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

    All materials submitted for the record by Members of the 
Committee on the Judiciary can be found at: https://
docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=117608.

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