Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2024
Floor Speech
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
First of all, I thank Chairwoman Kay Granger and Ranking Member DeLauro for working together as much as possible. I certainly would thank our chairman, David Joyce. I know we have some disagreements, but at the end of this process, we are going to be working together making sure that the Homeland Security bill passes in a bipartisan way.
Democrats and Republicans had a deal when we passed the debt bill some months ago. Now our colleagues, the House Republicans, are backing away from this deal and yielding to some extreme demands that will not help border security.
Now the House remains in chaos as the Republicans have been infighting and that will all but guarantee a government shutdown at the hands of the far right in just a few days. Instead of working on a bipartisan continuing resolution that will keep the government open, one that will pass both Chambers and be signed into law, we are here talking about bills that are not going to go very far in the Senate.
Again, I want to make sure that people understand that we want to work together. We want to make this a bipartisan bill to get it done.
As the ranking member of Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee and as a Member that actually lives on the border, I am very concerned about ensuring that the border is secure and that the Department has the resources it needs to do that successfully. Instead of that, what are we doing? If we have a shutdown, we are going to have over 226 folks, employees from the Department of Homeland Security, that are going to continue to work for a period of time and not get paid, and, again, that is not the way to create morale for our Border Patrol and other agents that we have down there at the border.
I strongly support the hiring of additional agents, but, if there is a shutdown, what is going to happen is that this will prevent us from onboarding the anticipated 150 additional agents in October. It would also stop the recruitment and vetting efforts that impact CBP ability to onboard additional agents later on. We cannot have a shutdown, and we have got to make sure that we work together to prevent the shutdown itself.
Now, if you look at the bill itself, the proposed bill, let's look at a couple of things. Yes, we did have some bipartisan investments and oversight requirements that we worked together on, but there are certain funding decisions and policy riders that I cannot support at this moment.
We have to understand the border. Some of my colleagues don't understand the border, and they call it a war zone. If my colleagues look at the criminal records or the criminal figures that we have, whether it is murder, rape, assault, the border is actually safer than so many other parts of the country. In fact, Washington, D.C., is about two or three times more dangerous, if you want to look at those figures, than the border community.
Now, when it comes to migration issues, yes, we do have a problem, and we do need to address it, but I think we need to stop playing defense on the 1-yard line, which is the U.S.-Mexico border.
What we need to do is extend the perimeter where we can work with partners like Mexico, Central America, South America to make sure that we provide that perimeter and stop folks before they come over to our border itself. This bill has some very outdated strategies, and one of them I know doesn't work, and I will call that the 14th century solution to a 21st century problem, which is the border wall. We are spending $2.1 billion, or we intend to spend $2.1 billion on a wall that really doesn't stop. If I can show you some of the figures, I will explain why.
If you look at the border wall, you will see that the fence is in many parts of the border itself, but if you see the heat maps where people are coming into the border, it is usually where the border fence is at.
If I can show south Texas as an example, you will see that, in south Texas, you have a fence, and if you see the heat map, we have a fence here, we have a fence here, we have a fence here, we have a fence there, we have a fence there, and so on, but the activity is where the fence is at.
Let me explain why. If you look at the fence, we have a river. The middle of the river is actually the U.S. boundary with Mexico. We don't have a fence there. If you look at the riverbanks, we don't have a fence there also because it is going to get washed away.
What we do is we actually put a fence about a quarter of a mile or sometimes even a half a mile away, and what happens, you see the fence here, the one in the red itself, and then you see the river over here. Instead of having a fence over here, it is actually put a quarter mile or a mile away. Therefore, what happens when you have this situation?
Well, first of all, if you are asking for asylum, like most people are asking, you are going to see people that will touch the riverbank. They walked half a mile or a quarter of a mile to the fence over here and asked for asylum, so does the fence stop them? No, it doesn't.
If you asked all those landowners, they will say, you are ceding away thousands and thousands of acres of good farming land, good ranching land, because you put the fence here and the river is over here.
Again, if you want to stop drugs, I know we added some money for technology, but we have got to have the money at the ports of entry where 90 to 94 percent of the meth, the fentanyl, the cocaine are coming in, instead of through this particular area
Again, this bill also has no funding for USCIS that would help reduce the backlog of the migration, so the people that have been waiting for a while, we are not putting any resources in for the USCIS. We have got to make sure that we help the folks who are trying to come in the legal way.
We do lose a lot of opportunities. We can do a lot more to add money to counter the fentanyl, the opioids. Again, most drugs will come in through the ports of entry, and that is where we need to put the focus.
Finally, also, we should have an updated border security improvement plan.
Again, I certainly want to work with my good friend, Mr. Joyce. We are going to be together later on in the process. I know we have got some disagreements, but we will get there.
With that, I hope that we have a good bipartisan bill at the end of the process.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries), the distinguished Democratic leader.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Trone), a member of the Appropriations Committee.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I yield an additional 15 seconds to the gentleman from Maryland.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Ramirez).
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I said that I would come to the floor and each time I would say that I do not want a government shutdown. I don't want the American people to suffer, and I want the government to be able to function.
As an almost 20-year member of the authorizing committee of Homeland Security, I am stunned at the lack of concern that my friends on the other side of the aisle would have on the government shutdown on Homeland Security.
These are extensive government employees, many of them represented by the American Federation of Government Employees. TSOs, of course, would continue to work in the Transportation Security Administration, but so many would be working without compensation.
If we are concerned about the border, I don't know why the Southwest Border Initiative is out, why money for USCIS is eliminated, why opportunities for shelter services are eliminated, particularly when we realize that throngs of people are coming here that aren't having the ability to apply for asylum.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Texas.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Chair, the answer to this, of course, is to give ourselves more time to address the question of serving the American people.
I rise, as the leader did, to support the bipartisan Senate continuing resolution, which maintains current funding, takes care of communities impacted by natural disasters, and provides funding to Ukraine and contains no poison pills.
If we are serious about doing the job of keeping this government open, supporting the hardworking American workers, then we will support the Senate continuing resolution. We will do it tomorrow or the next day and save this Nation.
Do not shut down.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I am prepared to close, and we have no further speakers.
Mr. Chair and to my good colleague, Mr. Joyce, we are apart right now. I know we are going to get together, but I do want to remind some of our colleagues that we had an opportunity under the current bill that we have right now. We added in the last couple years $2.4 billion. That is a 15 percent increase for border patrol agents, pay increases, add more Border Patrol agents, ICE, CBP, the other folks in.
We had the moneys to do that, but at the end of the day--and I will just take one example--we gave money to Homeland, a 15 percent increase, yet there are only two Members--when we all voted--on the Republican side that actually supported the appropriations bill, Homeland. So if we care so much about Homeland, why did we vote ``no'' on the final appropriations bill?
I know some of us are going to vote ``no,'' and I am voting ``no'' on this one, but on the final one, I will support the final appropriations bill.
The other thing is as the Democratic leader, Mr. Jeffries, said, we have 3 days to work this out, and by passing this bill to the Senate it is not going to get there. I would just like to remind Members that we ought to be working on preventing the shutdown.
If you look at the shutdowns that we have had since the 1990s, in 1995 it was a Republican House that had a 5-day shutdown. That was November 13, 1995. On December 15, 1995, there was another Republican- led House with 21 days of a shutdown. Then on September 30, 2013, again, for 16 days it was a Republican-led House that allowed the shutdown. Then on January 19, 2018, another Republican-led House shutdown lasted for 2 days. Then on December 21, 2018, there was another Republican-led House shutdown for 34 days.
So, again, I hope that on Saturday or on Sunday at 12:01 there is not another Republican-led shutdown. We are asking you please give us input. Let's sit down. Let's talk about it. I have a lot of respect for Mr. Joyce and his staff. I know we can do this together. We will be voting ``no'' on this, but I know at the end of this process we will be voting together on this on a ``yes'' bill.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I support this en bloc amendment. It contains a series of bipartisan amendments in support of the Members' priorities on both sides. This is the way we ought to do it--bipartisan.
Mr. Chair, I support this en bloc, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished ranking member of the Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee.
(Mr. HOYER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Maryland.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Maryland.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Lois Frankel).
Ms. LOIS FRANKEL of Florida. Mr. Chair, I rise today in support of my bipartisan amendment supporting the Department of Homeland Security implementation of the Women, Peace, and Security Act, which was passed in 2017.
Relevant to our debate today, that bill recognizes that women bear the brunt of harm during disasters, and importantly, they can play an essential role in responding and preventing them.
Whether it is a hurricane, a flood, a fire, a refugee seeking asylum, evidence shows that women are more often vulnerable during disasters and crises that the Department responds to, and sadly, there is more gender-based violence and often more responsibility for care put on women to provide for their families.
Our amendment ensures that gender perspectives are included in DHS' responses to crises to ensure that the needs of women and their families are met, they have the resources they need to recover, and ensure that DHS is taking steps to prevent these outcomes in the first place.
It also recognizes the impact of women's participation. The amendment supports efforts to increase the number of women in law enforcement, senior DHS leadership, including staffing, programming, research, and department-wide training.
When women are at the table where decisions are made and on the ground to prevent and respond to disasters, outcomes are better for women and for their communities.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez).
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz), the distinguished ranking member of the Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
I rise to express grave concern that the majority has included in the Homeland Security appropriations bill a cut to the Nonprofit Security Grant Program. In the face of the grave and significant threats against nonprofit organizations across this country, rising threats toward religious and other nonprofit institutions, these cuts will likely have a profound impact on the safety of our community across the country and in Florida and our community in particular.
We strive to foster an open and safe environment in our communities and our houses of worship, in line with the core value of welcoming the stranger.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the CTC, faith-based institutions are more susceptible to attacks by violent extremists due to their symbolism, perceived lack of security, and accessible locations.
We are going in the wrong direction in this bill, and the amendment to increase the amount of funding provided for nonprofit security grants is critical. At a time of increased vulnerability to threats of hate-motivated violence by domestic extremists, the House should be significantly increasing funding for religious institutions and at-risk nonprofit organizations, not cutting them and putting more people at risk. Shame on us if we don't increase the bottom-line number for nonprofit security grants.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, this is a bipartisan amendment. I support it, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I oppose this amendment.
There are already avenues for victims of crime to engage with both the Department of Homeland Security's Victims Engagement and Services Line or the Department of Justice's Office of Victims of Crime. The Department of Homeland Security has protection for victims, and the Department of Justice also has the Office of Victims of Crime.
This office would be duplicative of those efforts and would be a waste of taxpayer dollars. We are doing that already. Frankly, when you say this, you are basically taking the position that crime only occurs when you have a migrant.
The stats do not support this conclusion. In fact, the Department of Justice released a study in 2020 and found that undocumented immigrants had substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants across the range of felony offenses.
I don't care where the attack came from. I want to support the victims. I want to support the victims, and that is what the Department of Justice's Office of Victims of Crime does. Let's support that office and provide it more funding.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I oppose this amendment. Again, the Department of Justice Office of Victims of Crime supports everybody. They don't ask you where the crime came in. They will support you. This office would be duplicative of those efforts and would be a waste of taxpayer dollars. Let the Victims Engagement and Services Line office and the Office of Victims of Crime do their job. Let's make sure that they get the support.
Mr. Chair, I oppose this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to this amendment.
I understand what my colleague is talking about. We do want to make sure that we address border issues, but we have to make sure that we address it in the right way.
I will talk about the report. In fact, I will be happy to tell you that I also get frustrated sometimes when we don't get the reports, and I will be happy to work with you and with the chairman to get you that report.
I will tell you that in the bill already, there is a $25 million hold for this report. If you add another $10 million, does that make the pain more painful?
Keep in mind that this account doesn't just fund bureaucracy. It also funds suicide prevention efforts and other health security measures. It funds child welfare professionals for tender-age kids in DHS custody. It funds the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties also.
I also get frustrated when we don't get the report. If you add another $30 million, another $40 million, will that get you there?
You mentioned the border. Keep in mind that we are concerned, and I want to make sure that we control our border. If you want to stop drugs, as one of our colleagues said, most drugs will come in through ports of entry, but we are not putting the emphasis on ports of entry.
We need to do a lot more, more canines, more technology. If you want to look at the people who are illegally here, I remind everybody that the number one violator for visa overstays, which have been millions over the years, has been Canada. I don't hear any of you talking about putting a wall between the U.S. and Canada. I say that because, again, we have to be smart on how we address it.
I invite you down to the border. I love when people come in and spend a few hours. I live there, and I will tell you, I will take the biggest cities in your State--I would say if you take Atlanta and, on the border, I take Laredo, murder, rape, and assault, we have lower crime rates than the city, per 100,000. If you look at the national crime rate for murders, the border crime rate is lower.
We have to look at crime as one issue and then look at migration. I am with you. I hate open borders. I want to make sure that we work together, but we have to do this in a bipartisan way.
I feel their frustration. There are some reports I wish we could get faster. I will work with them and the chairman to get this report to them.
Mr. Chair, for those reasons, I oppose this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.
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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Chair, I rise respectfully in opposition to this amendment.
The U.S. Constitution grants the Federal Government the sole authority to control immigration and secure the national borders.
I would say that if we would do this in partnership, working with the State and local government, like we do with the program that we started called Stonegarden where we provide funding, that would be the way to do it. Unfortunately, there are some States that want to go solo on doing certain things.
Let me give you an explanation. When the Governor from the State of Texas put out the buoys, those buoys were less than a quarter of a mile for a river that is 1,200 miles. Less than a quarter of a mile for a river that is 1,200 miles long is like putting a postage stamp in the middle of a football field to stop a running back from crossing the 1-yard line.
The second thing is, when the Governor has talked about stopping every truck like he is doing, what he is doing is--he said he is inspecting every truck. I used to do the budget for the DPS. The only thing they can do is check license plates, driver's licenses, or the brakes and windshield wipers. They can't even open the trucks.
What they are doing is, in Eagle Pass, in El Paso, and other places, they are stopping millions and hundreds of millions of dollars of trade itself. Again, we want to work with the States, but you just can't go solo on this.
Again, when you say lawlessness at the border, I would say in the State of Texas, if you look at the most dangerous cities that we have, none of them are on the border. I am not going to name any of my Texas cities, but they are the big urban areas, per 100,000, where murder, rape, and assault are a lot higher than at the border. Again, the border is safe when we talk about crime.
On the issue of migration, I am with you. We need to have repercussions, but we need to put money outside the 1-yard line and put it on the 20-yard line and work with other countries.
In fact, when you look at 2015, when President Obama had the numbers go down, it was because Mexico was stopping people. In 2019, when President Trump was taking credit for stopping the numbers and having the lowest crossings, do you know why? Because we got Mexico to do its job on the southern border.
Again, we can either play defense on the 1-yard line or we can play defense on the 20-yard line, and we have to look at this and how we address it.
If you want to talk about crime, look at the big urban cities. Do we want to make sure we secure the border? I am with you. We have to have repercussions. We have to make sure that we play defense outside the 1- yard line, but we can't have a State go solo.
They want to work with us? My brother was a DPS officer for 27 years. I want to make sure that they work with us hand in hand, and Stonegarden does that where we provide money to the cities, counties, and States.
We are on the same page. We are just looking at this in a very different way.
My good friend from my State of Texas, I am with him. I just oppose this particular amendment.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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