Senate Homeland Security Committee Hearing Part 2 Transcript

And the committee will come to order. We’re now going to start our second round of questions. Members will each have the opportunity to ask five minutes of questions. I will start with a question to Secretary Mayorcas.

(00:27)
While border apprehensions decrease slightly in fiscal year 2023 compared to fiscal year 2022, for the second year in a row there were more than 2 million individuals apprehended crossing the southern border. Apprehensions of family units also dramatically increased in August and September of this year. We have to strengthen border security in ways that not only protect our national security, but are also humane and consistent with American values. That approach needs to include technology, personnel, and physical barriers where it is strategically useful.

(00:59)
I’m glad to see that DHS has reversed course from the beginning of the administration and unfrozen funding to fill certain gaps in physical barriers at the border. These gaps create obvious problems, such as the 20-foot gap in fencing I saw in Texas last year when I observed people running back and forth across the border through that gap.

(01:19)
Secretary Mayorkas, given that apprehensions are up, what additional resources and authorities does DHS need to improve security along the southern border?

Senator, thank you. I believe I have approved approximately 129 gaps in gate completions. We have sought a supplemental funding request for people, technology, facilities, transportation of different varieties. We need a tremendous number of resources within, of course, as I’ve said repeatedly and cannot say too often, a broken system.

Thank you. I’m going to now turn to Director Wray, and again, Mr. Secretary, I’ll ask you to weigh in on this as well. In the past two weeks, Iranian-backed terrorist groups have escalated attacks on US assets in Iraq and Syria. As a result, the US has engaged in several counterstrikes on Iranian-backed assets in Syria to protect our troops in equities in the region. Are seeing an uptick in threats to Americans at home or abroad, and what are your agencies doing to increase security at home in light of these growing tensions? Are you concerned about potential retaliation here in the homeland due to the US counterstrikes in Syria?

A whole number of things packed into that. First, we definitely believe that there is a heightened risk of potential violence here in the US, especially from lone actors inspired by any number of foreign terrorist organizations or by domestic ideologies in some way using the conflict as an excuse or a justification, as horrendous and misguided as that would be, to conduct attacks here against Jewish Americans, Muslim Americans, Arab Americans, et cetera. We’re definitely concerned about that, and we are seeing a heightened an increase in reported threats, whether it’s bomb threats to synagogues, some physical assaults, I mentioned in my opening statement some of the arrests we’ve had. We’re concerned about that.

(03:26)
Second, I am concerned, as I said in my opening statement, that foreign terrorist organizations, traditional, formal terrorist organizations, whether they be Al-Qaeda or ISIS or Hezbollah, have all made statements that would indicate a greater risk of a potential attack here by them. We are not currently tracking an imminent credible threat from a foreign terrorist organization, a structured attack here or something like that, but it is something that we think heightened vigilance is warranted for.

(03:59)
When it comes to Iran and its strategic partner, Hezbollah, I think it’s important for Americans to understand that even before this conflict, we’re dealing with an adversary that just in the past couple years has tried to kill a former US National Security advisor on US soil, tried to kidnap and then kill an American journalist, right smack in the middle of New York City, conducted a cyber attack, attempted cyber attack against a children’s hospital, and tried to interfere in the last presidential election, as Director Ratcliffe and I called out at a press conference in the fall of 2020. That’s all on top of being the leading state sponsor of terrorism. If that’s not enough to convince people that Iran is a threat to the US, I don’t know what would be.

Well, I thank you for that comprehensive answer. Because I’m running low on time, Mr. Secretary, I’ll follow up in a question for the record on that. I also will follow up on the issue of northern border security with you.

(05:05)
As you know, we have seen an uptick on unauthorized and illegal crossings on the northern border. Part of the thing we are dealing with in New Hampshire and all across the northern border is a lack of technological infrastructure, including cell service and broadband, that makes it very hard for some of our personnel to do their work at the border as effectively as they need to. I’d like to confer with you. I’ll ask a question for the record about how we make sure we are getting the resources we need at the northern border to keep our country safe.

(05:37)
Thank you. Senator Paul.

Director Wray, as you mentioned earlier, the FBI has concluded with moderate confidence that the virus leaked from the lab in Wuhan. The intriguing thing is that if I were to say that as I did, and others said this for over a year and a half, Facebook actually suppressed that knowledge, suppressed its spread and its ability to be transferred from their users. Whether or not they did that at the behest of the FBI or the DHS is eventually going to come out in the court case, but it is a big deal.

(06:10)
I’ve met with the FBI. One of the things I’m interested in is trying to get people on both sides of the aisle to be interested in the possibility that what happened in Wuhan could happen in the United States. It could happen in 20 different labs around the world. It could happen with nefarious actors. It’s something we should be concerned with, the idea of making and creating viruses that are more dangerous than occur in nature. One thing that would help us would be to reveal more to us of your conclusions. For example, for the longest time, I’m pretty sure it was classified that you had even concluded that. I think your public statements were the first time we heard publicly that the FBI had actually made a conclusion. Even the conclusion was secret for a long time.

(06:51)
Now, you had to have an analysis. You must have a paper description of your thought process. We passed unanimously legislation to declassify this stuff. Most of this stuff doesn’t need to be classified. A lot of those conclusions are just basically we’ve been had them out in the public, we’ve been discussing this, but it would help the debate and maybe help us prevent something like happen again if you’d release your report. Are you going to declassify and release your report that allows you to conclude with moderate confidence that the virus came from the lab?

Well, I know my staff has been engaged with you directly on this, including the head of our WMD Directorate. I expect that to continue. I know you’ve asked for a number of documents that I believe we’re getting ready to provide to you potentially as early as this week. As to what can be shared publicly, as opposed to shared with you in your oversight capacity, that gets a little more complicated because sometimes the information is interwoven with other agencies’ information we don’t entirely control.

We don’t want to know who your sources are. We want to hear your conclusions. We want to have what your scientists have looked at. One of the specific things we asked them, they said they would be forthcoming with, and the meeting seemed to include cooperation, but then they just go dark on us.

(08:04)
For example, one of the most important information, from my point of view, that suggests this came from Wuhan, is that in 2018, the lab in Wuhan, along with a scientist at University of North Carolina, along with Peter Daszak, applied for money from DARPA. They wanted to create a coronavirus that had a cleavage site in it that’s more commonly found in human viruses. They were denied the money, but that led us to thinking, and a lot of people thinking, wow, they were already asking for money to create a virus that has the same structure as COVID had.

(08:36)
There apparently are other grants. I’ve been trying to get the grants from government for three years. The most secretive organization in our government with regard to COVID is HHS and NIH. We pay for all their grants. None of their stuff’s classified. They won’t give us the stuff. But I think in your review, my guess is your people knew where to look. I asked him are there other grants like the DEFUSE grant from DARPA, that was denied, that you can point us to, four or five other grants either given to them in Wuhan, denied to them in Wuhan, maybe given to another country somewhere around the world, but worried us that and were circumstantial evidence leading us to the conclusion?

(09:15)
Those things should be easy. They’re non-classified. We can’t get them from the NIH. If you’ve seen them, we just want you to help us because it needs to be public because our concern is this could happen again. There are scientists, legitimate pedigreed virologists at major universities who believe not only that this came from this lab, but the next one could kill 5% to 50%. What if they’re aerosolizing Ebola virus or Marburg virus or Nipah virus? This is as dangerous as nuclear weapons, but we’ve had only one side interested in this so far. But if more information were revealed, maybe we can get both sides of the aisle interested and eventually do something to try to prevent this from happening again.

(09:54)
If you will help urge them to give us some of the information and really figure out how to declassify stuff. I know most of intelligence is classifying and keeping secrets, but there’s important public policy and decisions that come from making it public. Do it in a smart way where you don’t reveal things that you don’t want to reveal, but I’m guessing 99% of the report probably already includes no classified information.

Well, we look forward to working with you on this. I’m very proud of the work our folks did here. It was rigorous. It was thorough, and for an awful long time, we were the only agency, all by our lonesome, reaching that assessment. We will look forward to working with you as best we can. I will say that we continue to investigate. There may be some issues that get wrapped up in that, but I know that our folks have found the engagement with your office to be productive, and we look forward to continuing that.

One really quick point for those who doubt that this came from the lab, the FBI has concluded with moderate confidence, the Department of Energy, which has a lot of scientists, probably more scientists than any other part of our government, has concluded with low confidence and the Lancet Commission

Mission and the minority report from this, Bob Kadlec’s report from this committee. A number of groups that spent a long time have come to the conclusion, not for partisan reasons, because we worry that this is going to happen again or could happen again. So I think we should try to all work together to see what we can do to restrain and restrict this type of dangerous research.

Thank you. Senator Johnson.

Thank you, Madame Chair. Secretary Mayorkas, I just had to put my chart back up here to rebut a point you made repeatedly that it’s our broken asylum system that has created this disaster at the border. The fact of the matter is under the previous administration, we actually had brought illegal immigration down to 17,500 apprehensions encounters per month. Last month we hit over 270,000 and that was done under the previous administration with our same broken asylum system. But the root cause of this disaster literally is President Biden and you.

(11:59)
Now, Director Wray, I’m assuming you’ve seen and read the letter that Senator Grassley wrote to you and Attorney General Garland on October 24th?

I’m generally aware of it.

Oh, you ought to read it. Let me read some segments to you. “The FBI maintained over 40 confidential human sources that provided criminal information related to Joe Biden, James Biden and Hunter Biden. An essential question that must be answered in this, did the FBI investigate the information or shut it down?” Certainly there is a host of reasons to conclude that they attempted to shut it down. It goes on. “It has been alleged that the basis for shutting down the investigative activity, shutting it down was an August 2020 assessment created by FBI’s Supervisory Intelligence Analyst, Brian Auten. That assessment was used by FBI headquarters team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation caused investigative activity to cease.”

(12:58)
It goes on. ” Analyst Brian Auten opened the aforementioned assessment which was used by the Foreign Influence Task force to seek out CHS Holdings at FBI field offices across the country relating to the Biden family and falsely discredit them as foreign disinformation.” My staff calls that catch and kill. And by the way, it was that same task force that gave Senator Grassley and I our unsolicited briefing that was later leaked to the media to smear me and impact my 2022 election.

(13:31)
Senator Grassley concludes, “There appears to be an effort within the Justice Department and FBI to shut down investigative activity relating to the Biden family. Such decisions point to significant political bias infecting the decision-making of not only the Attorney General and FBI Director, but also line agents and prosecutors. Our republic cannot survive such a political infection and you have an obligation to this country to clear the air.”

(13:58)
And by the way, I’d ask that this [inaudible 00:14:00] consent that this letter be entered in the record, and also this column that appeared in the Wall Street Journal published yesterday. Have you read this one, More On The Stifled Hunter Biden Probe?

I have seen that.

Okay, we’ll enter that in the record. Again, this column is written based on the October 23rd Judiciary Committee interview with former US Attorney, Scott Brady, who was tapped by Attorney General Barr to vet information related to Ukrainian corruption and pass our credible material to offices with ongoing investigations. I’ll get some highlights here.

(14:34)
The FBI office in Pittsburgh couldn’t take any steps without the review and approval of FBI court headquarters. Mr. Brady describes a reluctance on the part of the FBI to really do any tasking related to allegations of Ukrainian corruption broadly. And then specifically, anything that intersected with Hunter Biden and his role in Burisma. FBI headquarters had to sign off on every assignment no matter how small or routine and that this sometimes required 17 different people, mostly at the headquarter level. Mr. Brady said he had never in his DOG career seen anything like it.

(15:09)
Mr. Brady says his office was informed by members of the Pittsburgh FBI team that they’d been instructed by headquarters not to affirmatively share information with the Brady team. He said he was surprised to learn that the FBI possessed the Hunter Biden laptop since 2019. He heard that through public reports. Senator Grassley’s letter concludes that he has obtained names from his whistleblower 25 Department of Justice FBI personnel to interview at a future date and he’s also requesting a bunch of information. Will you provide those FBI personnel for interviews with his office in mind and will you provide those documents?

Well, I’ll have to review the specific requests and we’ll see how we can be helpful.

Okay. Well, I’ll hand you this letter. Find a point I want to make. I was briefed a couple of weeks ago by members of the FBI on what Senator Blumenthal are doing to try and unredact a lot of the information on the 9/11 event. Okay? Now, the briefers seem to be people of integrity, like I think the vast majority of the men and women that work in the FBI, the 38,000 field agents. So again, they were people with integrity. The problem is that they gave me three different examples of redacted and then unredacted to explain it. And the redactions made sense of those three examples, but I had to make the point, the problem I have is I simply cannot trust what the FBI is providing me. And I don’t say that with any joy in my heart. I think that’s a travesty. The American people want to believe and have trust in the FBI. We want credibility and integrity restored to your institution, but Director Wray, you have not done that since assuming office.

(16:51)
And I could go through a long laundry list of the reasons why that trust has been violated. I don’t have it right now. I’m happy to sit down and meet with you and go over these things in detail, but I would say… Because they asked me, “What can we do to restore trust?” Start being transparent.

(17:08)
My final point is, and this is actually a question, why is it… This makes no sense. I’m an elected US Senator, I have the highest security clearance. Why is it that unelected members of the FBI can see the documents unredacted, but I can’t even in a secure briefing room? That makes no sense whatsoever, but that’s exactly how federal law enforcement, Department of Justice, the FBI, who are the law remain above the law, remain above scrutiny and completely scorn our constitutional responsibility and authority to provide oversight. We just can’t do it. As the Chairman was talking about earlier about how you’ve basically ignored his requests for the record.

Mr. Chairman, may I respond?

You may.

So needless to say, I disagree with your characterization, not only of my own performance, but of our workforce. I will tell you when it comes to trust and confidence, the number of people applying to be Special Agents of the FBI has gone up dramatically since I’ve been FBI Director. And in fact, in your home state of Wisconsin, it’s gone up about 160 something percent, which is one of the highest in the country.

(18:24)
So I see an FBI every day that conducts themselves with integrity and professionalism and selflessness and rigor. And I do not accept the characterization of our performance in this particular case.

That os not how I characterized it. I’m talking about partisanship at the top-

May I finish, Mr. Chairman?

With some specific partisan actors. I said the vast majority of the 38,000 are people of integrity.

And the idea that I as a Republican appointee and a lifelong Republican am biased in the way that you are describing makes absolutely no sense.

I’m happy to read you chapter and verse of all the reasons why that credibility has been destroyed.

We need to move on. Last year we spoke about the threats that drones operated by nefarious actors could pose to our nation’s mass gatherings, airports, critical infrastructure. And it was made clear that we must ensure the DHS and DOJ are properly resourced to meet this growing threat. So Director Wray, officials had to briefly suspend a college football game just a few weeks ago because a concerning drone was spotted over the stadium at a time when these incidents are unfortunately becoming more common. How can we better resource our nation’s law enforcement agencies to effectively deal with this growing threat from these drones?

Well, certainly this is authority that’s incredibly important. And the most important thing that I would want the American public to understand and your colleagues who are not on this committee to understand is that that authority needs to be reauthorized because if it isn’t reauthorized, there is no public safety agency in this country that can provide counter UAS security at these public events. And pretty much every time we’ve deployed, we have uncovered any number of unauthorized UASs in the vicinity of these events.

(20:19)
In fact, if anything, in addition to being reauthorized, we need to have a situation where we can start to incorporate state and local law enforcement into this. And as you and I have discussed, there’s a plan in place that would have the FBI train state and local counter counter UAS operators to ensure that there’s a consistent standard across the country, much the same way we do with civilian bomb techs. And that would allow greater protection because there are way too many of these events and way too much growth in the use of drones for FBI and DHS alone to be able to protect against it.

(20:58)
But most importantly, most importantly, the authority that’s about to expire needs to be reauthorized. Otherwise, we’re as a country, effectively defenseless.

So I just want to throw one pushback that I’ve received on this, is that, “Private entities can protect themselves, stadiums could protect themselves. This is not necessary.” Is that allowed? Seems to me we need these authorities, yet this colleague of mine believes that stadiums can protect themselves, we don’t need these authorities. How would you respond to that?

Well, what I would say is two things. One, it’s not unusual for me to meet with security from major stadiums around the country because I’ve been to all 56 FBI field offices at least twice, some of them three times, to hear from them that they need this authority. And so they’re certainly not saying, “Don’t worry, we got it.”

(21:51)
But the second thing I would say is that the authority that I’ve just described ensures a level of quality control. So to me, it’s the best of both worlds. We provide the security

… the American people in need with the quality control that would otherwise be lacking if people started engaging in potentially not lawful self-help.

Secretary Mayorkas, airports are uniquely vulnerable to these drone threats, and one of my greatest concerns is a drone interfering with a commercial aircraft near the airport. So talk to me and have the committee know how important these authorities are, particularly in protecting aircraft and whether or not folks can do it themselves, or we need to do this and this is why we need these authorities.

Mr. Chairman, I thank you. I echo everything Director Ray expressed with respect to the criticality of renewing our authorities under the Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems law, it expires November 18th.

(22:54)
The same holds true for airports. Owners and operators of aircraft have communicated to us loudly and clearly that the federal authority needs to be maintained, they cannot protect the aerospace by themselves. I think that is a misimpression of the reality that we confront.

(23:14)
And it’s not only these large public facilities, these airports and the like, it’s also, importantly, the border. We take down the drones of the cartels that are seeking to move contraband across the border. It is a very, very important authority that we have.

Great. Thank you Senator Scott, you’re recognized for your questions.

Thank you, chairman. Again, thank you all for being here. I’ll tell you, I wasn’t involved in politics until I ran for governor in 2010, but the one thing that has surprised me up here is the lack of information.

(23:52)
I don’t know the specifics that Senator Johnson was asking for, but it has surprised me how difficult it is just to get basic information. And what I learned as my time as governor is if you weren’t transparent then people assume the worst. And I’ve never had y’all’s jobs, so I know your jobs are hard, but the more information you can get out there, your lives will be easier, I assume, but I haven’t had your job, so take it with a grain of salt.

(24:20)
So Secretary Mayorkas, as you heard during my discussion with Director Ray, I’m concerned about our country is once again missing the clear and present dangers that a risk of a terror attack on American soil coordinated or orchestrated by a foreign terror organization is probably the highest in my lifetime.

(24:38)
Like Director Ray, you have warned since October 7th attack by Iran-back Hamas terrorists on just there are increased threats to Americans and of attacks on US soil.

(24:49)
And a lot of people can talk about how we got here. I’d like to focus on how we’re going to fix this.

(24:54)
In the past three years, CBP has got 264 individuals on the Terror Watch List attempting to illegally enter the US through the southwest border, which is my understanding, a record high. More terrifying, since January, 2021, more than 1.7 million got-aways have evaded border patrol and escaped into the interior. We don’t have any idea who these people are. They could be harmless, they could be terrorists, but what I’ve seen when talking to CBP agents, if they’re harmless, they tend to want to be caught by CBP because they’re given care and a place to stay. The ones that run away from agents likely probably have something to hide. And also when you go to the border, people have thrown their IDs away so people won’t know who they are.

(25:35)
All told, during the Biden administration, CBP has encountered, my understanding, 6.4 million illegal aliens along this southwest border. Tens of thousands of illegal aliens have been caught between ports of entry trying to sneak into our country, undetected from countries that harbor terrorism.

(25:52)
Talking about places like Iran and Syria, both on the state sponsored terrorism list, and countries that pose a potential national security risk to the US like communist China who funds Iran. This February, the State Department issued its country report on terrorism 2021, which says Lebanon-based and Iran-backed terrorism group Hezbollah continued its long history of activity in the Western Hemisphere and we know that Iran-backed terrorists are harbored by failed states like Venezuela.

(26:19)
On October 20 CBP issued a memo warning that foreigner fighters from the Middle East might be trying to enter the US from Mexico.

(26:26)
In the past two years, CBP agents have encountered 659 people from Iran. So think about that, 659 people from Iran, which hates… they chant, “Death to America,” and they want to kill all the Jews in Israel. So this is concerning, especially considering the recent Iran-backed attack on our brave US Service men and women in Iraq and Syria.

(26:47)
So Secretary Mayorkas, you recently spoke to some Jewish leaders, you said, “We remain very concerned about the lone wolf, the individual-incited violence by ideology of hate.”

(26:59)
So this is the same question I asked Director Ray, is it fair for the American people to interpret this as you are not concerned at all with a coordinated attack by foreign terrorists on Americans here on US soil?

Senator Scott I would answer that exactly as Director Ray did. We are concerned about all threats, all hazards across the entire spectrum as I captured in my opening statement, and the safety and security of the American people is our highest priority.

Okay, can you say that Hamas, Hezbollah, or other Iran-backed terrorists are not in the US currently after possibly illegally crossing our southern border?

Senator, let me assure you that anyone who poses a threat to our national security or public safety is an enforcement priority of ours, and we use our detention capabilities to the fullest extent.

So you’ve acknowledged that with the number of people that have come across the border we have the risk of Hezbollah, Hamas, people like that?

We meet that risk with extraordinary capabilities of our personnel.

Okay, So I just have a final question for each of you and we’ll start with Director Ray. So do you believe… Is the United States safer from foreign terror threats today, are we safer than when Joe Biden took office, from the day he took office?

What I would say to you is that the terror threats have elevated, but I also think there are a lot of things the country has done throughout law enforcement to be better prepared to deal with them.

(28:41)
The threats are very different today than they were a number of years ago. They are very different today than they were three weeks ago, and our capabilities are far more advanced given the investments in our people, technology and other resources.

Thank you all of you.

Thank you Senator Scott. Senator Marshall, I recognize for your questions.

Can I yield to Senator Hawley? He’s ready.

Absolutely. Senator Hawley, you’re ready?

I am. Thank you Mr. Chairman.

(29:08)
Mr. Secretary, when you were last before this committee, we talked about the tens of thousands, it’s actually 420,000 unaccompanied migrant children who have come across the border under your watch. We talked about the reports of the number of these children who have been lost, who have been sold into labor trafficking, into sex trafficking.

(29:27)
Since your last appearance the numbers have grown worse, it now approaches 100,000 children, according to public reports, 100,000 children lost by your department and the Biden administration, migrant children, sold into labor trafficking and sex trafficking. Now your Department of Homeland Security investigations has the authority to do child exploitation investigations; how many of these kids have you gotten back?

Senator we actually have prioritized the rescue of children who have been human trafficked. Our role in the immigration process is to, with respect to unaccompanied children specifically, is to turn them over under the law within 72 hours to the Department of Health and Human Services. And that is indeed what we do.

But how many of the children, nearly 100,000 children in the… You’ve read the New York Times reports, I assume Mr. Secretary.

I have read many reports Senator Hawley.

But do you know what I’m talking about with the number of children who have been sent to operate heavy machinery who are not being paid, who are not going to school, who are being denied food, migrant children unaccompanied, who are now in the clutches of labor traffickers, you’re familiar with this, right?

That is precisely why I revised our work site enforcement [inaudible 00:30:43]-

Good. How many of the kids have you gotten back then? 85,000 or more now lost, lost contact with, it’s been months since you were last here, how many of those children have you rescued? Can you give me a number?

Senator, you are conflating issues.

So you can’t give me a number? You haven’t rescued any of these children, you haven’t gotten any of them back?

You are conflating issues and what is within our remit and what is outside of it.

Okay, well, it doesn’t sound to me like this is a priority, and I have to tell you that’s what your own agents tell me as well.

(31:13)
A whistleblower from your agency of Homeland Security Investigations has come to me and has said that special agents who are working on child trafficking cases and fentanyl interdiction cases have been pulled off of their investigations and sent to the southern border, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these agents at a time taken out of the field, taken off child exploitation cases and sent to the southern border.

(31:43)
Here’s some of what she said. She said, “We’re being told to shut down investigations to go hand out sandwiches and escort migrants to the shower and sit with them while they’re in the hospital and those types of tasks.” Mr. Secretary, you’re taking special agents away from investigating child traffickers and child exploitation when you’ve lost tens of thousands of kids to traffickers, and you’re sending them to make sandwiches at the border. What is going on?

You are incorrect senator.

Are there special agents from HSI at the border?

Senator, we have a number of priorities. We prioritize trafficking in children. We prioritize the fight against Fentanyl. We prioritize [inaudible 00:32:29]-

Mr. Secretary, you’re not answering my question, you’re not answering my question. Are there HSI special agents who are currently at the border, having been pulled away from other cases, yes or no?

Combating the fight against fentanyl? Yes.

How many agents are currently at the border having been pulled off of their other cases?

To fight the scourge of fentanyl? I’d be very pleased to provide you with that data.

That’s not what the special agent is alleging. That’s not what she said. She said that they’re being taken off of fentanyl interdiction, off of child exploitation

… in cases off their other investigations into criminals to make sandwiches. That’s her quote. You’re saying that this is a lie? That she’s wrong?

Senator, we have a number of law enforcement priorities with the resources we have-

Is making sandwiches one of them?

Of course not, Senator. We accomplish a tremendous amount-

Is she wrong?

Because of the tremendous talent and dedication of our personnel, including a Homeland Security investigations-

Making sandwiches for illegal immigrants. Is she wrong? This is one of your agents. Is she wrong? She says that there are 600 at least, special agents pulled off other cases, sent down to the border to babysit illegal immigrants. Is she wrong?

Senator, we use our personnel to achieve the maximum law enforcement objective possible. That is what we do-

So you’re not going to deny it?

And I’m incredibly proud of what our people do every single day.

Well, this is news. Well, I want to thank this brave whistleblower for coming forward and let the record reflect that the secretary will not deny what she has said, that hundreds of special agents are pulled off their law enforcement duties all around the country, by the way. Her testimony to me is this happens all around the country, and sent down to the border to make sandwiches for illegal immigrants. This is your administration in action. It’s a total failure, Mr. Secretary.

That is incorrect.

Senator Marshall, you’re recognized for your questions.

Thank you, Chairman. Mr. Secretary, do DHS employees have your personal contact information, and how widespread do you believe the distribution of your personal contact information is to DHS personnel?

When you speak of personal information, do you mean outside of the work context?

Your personal contact information, your personal emails?

Senator, I do not distribute that to DHS personnel.

Aside from email and text messaging, do you use any other form of personal electronic communications such as encrypted message applications that may have errantly received or transmitted communications relating to official DHS business?

Senator, I follow the rules scrupulously.

Is that a yes or a no?

Senator, I follow the rules scrupulously.

Okay. In April in sworn testimony for this committee, you insisted, and I’ll quote you, “If somebody errantly sends me an email in my personal email that should have been sent to my work email, I forward it to my work email. That’s what I do. I fulfill my responsibilities scrupulously and I have a 100% confidence in the integrity of the actions.” Despite that, a FOIA lawsuit by Americans for Prosperity has uncovered hundreds of pages of records reflecting your personal use of personal email account and cellphone for official DHS business since you assumed the office of secretary. We sent you a letter on July 13 asking for additional questions on your and your subordinates’ adherence to this DHS policy on the use of non DHS emails, but thus far you’ve failed to respond to me. Will you commit to getting the answers to our letter?

I’ll be happy to look at your inquiry and respond accordingly. What you’ve just articulated is perfect evidence of the fact that I have followed the rules.

And that explains why there’s hundreds of pages of records reflecting your personal email account and cellphone for official DHS business?

Senator, you misstate the facts.

I’ve repeatedly said, don’t watch what this White House does. I’ve repeatedly said, don’t watch what this White House says, watch what they do. In May, the Biden administration said When Title 42 ended, that migrants would face “tougher consequences” if they were caught crossing the border illegally. But just in the last border crossing numbers from this past week, the Biden administration’s actions showed that border patrol released with no consequences, 156,000 migrants into the U.S. in September alone. Mr. Secretary, what are the consequences your administration threaten? From where I stand, the only consequences I see of border crossings, there’s a historic number of crossing and the consequences that the American people are less safe today than they were three years ago.

Senator, that is incorrect. Removal and return of individuals under Title 8 of the United States Code is one example of a consequence that we deliver. In fact, in fiscal year 2023, we removed or returned more than 620,000 individuals. Just recently, we announced that we negotiated an agreement with Venezuela for the first time, to be able to-

So you sent back 10, maybe 200 people, but there’s tens of thousands of them are still here. How do you explain the 156,000 migrants in September alone that were released without any consequences?

That is incorrect.

So you didn’t release 156,000 migrants into the United States?

Senator, those individuals, when they are processed, they are placed in immigration enforcement proceedings. If they do not qualify for relief, they are subject to removal. If they qualify for relief under the laws that Congress has passed, then they have established a basis to stay in the United States.

What percentage are removed? What percentage have been through the process that are then removed? What percentage of these folks actually have had a hearing? How long is the wait for this hearing? How would you describe these to the American people that would make them feel safer today, how you handle that process?

The wait for the hearing is a perfect example of how broken our immigration system is. And in fact, when I first entered federal government here in Washington DC after 12 years serving in California as a federal prosecutor, I learned that the time in between encounter and the final adjudication of an immigration case in 2009 was more than six years. So this problem of a broken immigration system has lasted for more than two decades. I believe the system was last reformed in 1996, and we are long overdue for a fix.

Would a first safe country asylum policy make us more safe or less safe?

Senator, the issue of a safe third country agreement is a matter of negotiation with third countries.

That’s not my question. Would it make us more safe or less safe if there was indeed one?

It is a complex question that cannot be distilled with a simple question and and answer as you have posed.

Two thirds, maybe 70% of the people that are encountered at our borders go through an asylum process. What percentage would you estimate if there was a third country policy in effect or a first safe country in effect, what percentage would that eliminate from ever even getting to our border?

I think that’s a very difficult statistic to-

Not a guess. You’re the Secretary of Homeland Security, you don’t have a guess how much of an impact that would make?

Well, I’m not in the guessing business, but I will say this, that when you ask about a consequence in the absence of one, I think it would be important to ask the more than 1.2 million people in fiscal year 2023 who’ve been returned, removed, or expelled under the law.

Thank you, I yield back.

Great. Thank you, Senator Marshall. Well, I want to thank our witnesses, but I have one more question and I’m going to ask Director Abizaid this question. The biological threat landscape is clearly growing in complexity. For example, the convergence of biological sciences with emerging technologies such as AI is offering all sorts of opportunities to create bioweapons. So my question for you, director is, due in part to the pandemic, we’re seeing biolabs spring up all over the world right now, and I as well as many other experts are worried that they’re not being built to or operated according to appropriate safety standards. So I’d like you to address the committee as to what threats do these weak lab safety and security practices overseas pose to our homeland security? What should we be thinking about? What should we be doing?

Yeah, thank you for the question, Senator. This is something that we work closely with our colleagues at NCBC on, to one, try and understand the threat environment and then two, what kind of protections would best protect against it. Most of what we see today would be at a level of sophistication that the terrorist actors that we follow would not be able to immediately leverage for their own purposes. You mentioned technologies like AI significantly increasing that threat, that capability over time, and I think especially as next generation models of AI come into play, that’s going to be something that we’ll need to be concerned about. And so regulatory frameworks or different kinds of protections on some of those models that protect against bad actors, getting access to the most dangerous kinds of information to assist their capabilities is going to be important.

(42:09)
As we look at lab security, one of the things that NCBC is working with its partners on is trying to expand the scope of its monitoring program beyond the high sophistication labs to some of these lower sophistication labs that you mentioned that are of concern.

Great. Well, thank you. I want to thank our witnesses for appearing before the committee here today to share your perspective on the threats facing our country and the work that the federal government is doing to mitigate these national security threats and to keep all Americans safe. I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in the months ahead to ensure that Congress is doing its part to stay innovative and vigilant in the face of constantly evolving threats. On behalf of this committee, I’d also want to take this opportunity to thank the incredibly dedicated men and women at your respective agencies for the work that they perform on a daily basis every single day to keep our nation safe and to keep us safe from a constantly evolving threat environment, we can’t thank them enough. Please convey to each and every one of them how much we appreciate that.

(43:23)
The hearing for this or the record rather for this hearing, we’ll remain open for 15 days until November 15th at 5:00 PM for the submission of statements and questions for the record. This hearing is now adjourned.