Members Have Found Out About Ice Immigration Actions in Their Districts After the Fact. The Least We Can Do as Members of Congress Is to Provide Oversight and Keep Track of How Much DHS Is...
Floor Speech
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Mr. Chair, over half of the ICE detention population is housed in privately owned and operated detention facilities. Neither ICE nor State and local detention facilities can provide the number of beds required to house the detained population that we have today. Without the capacity provided by contracts with private detention facilities, ICE will be forced to dramatically scale back interior enforcement and, more seriously, release thousands of dangerous criminal aliens from custody.
Eliminating private facilities will require a significant expansion to ICE's capacity that, according to estimates, will exceed $1.3 billion and could be as much as $5 billion to $6 billion.
I also note that my colleague in the minority considers detention standards to be of vital importance, yet the majority of the facilities that meet the highest and most stringent detention standards are the very same contract facilities this language would eliminate.
For these reasons, I oppose this amendment and ask for a ``no'' vote. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. Chairman, it seems that the minority has a very good tag team match going here. The previous amendment would eliminate, if it passes, all of the privately owned facilities, leaving us with, by the gentlewoman's own statement, 3,500 beds for detainees; whereas, our total population today ranges from 35,000 to 40,000 people that are detained, which would mean all those people would have to be released or placed in some kind of alternative of which the no-show for that alternative is horrendous.
This kind of restriction makes no sense. Even though there is nobody planning to build ICE facilities right now, to restrict the government from a possible need, should that need arise--I remind you that in 2014, in the month of August, 78,000 children came across the border, and an equal number or more of a child with a parent came across the border in the Laredo sector alone.
So we have real needs that need to be met, and quite honestly, this amendment ties the hands and everybody gets turned loose. I very much oppose this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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