Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2018
Floor Speech
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Mr. Chairman, my amendment will eliminate $535 million in new funding for ICE officers and provide $30 million to the DHS Office of Inspector General and $10 million to the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Simply put, my amendment makes it clear that we must increase oversight and accountability over the Department of Homeland Security.
Reports of unlawful turnbacks of asylum seekers have only increased. The May 2017 Human Rights First report, ``Crossing the Line,'' flagged 125 incidents where asylum seekers were denied full access to the process. Just last month, the American Immigration Council and others filed a class action lawsuit challenging CBP's continued practice of turning back asylum seekers requesting protection at ports of entry.
The Trump administration's anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy appear to have emboldened the CBP practice. CBP personnel also reportedly stated: ``Donald Trump just signed new laws saying there is no asylum
for anyone . . . `'
We have also heard reports of CBP turning away asylum seeks through threats, coercion, and intimidation. CBP reportedly threatened to take away asylum seekers' children unless they left the port of entry and let loose dogs unless they exited the port of entry.
We have also heard CBP turning away asylum seekers through verbal and physical abuse. CBP reportedly threw an asylum seeker's 6-year-old daughter to the ground and knocked a transgender asylum seeker to the floor and then stepped on her neck.
These are not only unconscionable, Mr. Chairman, they may violate U.S. and international law. They violate the Immigration and Nationality Act, which guarantees the right of an individual present within the United States or arriving at a U.S. port of entry to apply for asylum.
Also, they may violate the principle of non-refoulement, articulated in the 1951 Refugee Convention and enshrined in U.S. law in the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. This prohibits the return
of asylum seekers to a country where their lives or freedom would be threatened on account of protected ground.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Roybal-Allard), ranking member of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee.
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Mr. Chairman, I would like to just remind my colleagues again that ICE has plenty of money to carry out their activities. What we are asking for through this amendment is to have some oversight and accountability to make sure that we are not seeing the kind of abuse and turn backs that we have been seeing.
Let me just remind my colleagues of the grave and critical need on one level to address sexual assault and abuse in detention.
Between May 2014 and July 2016, the Office of the Inspector General received, at minimum, 1,016 reports of sexual abuse and detention. In other words, they received more than one complaint of sexual abuse each
day over the course of 26 months. According to CIVIC, a detention watchdog, only 2.4 percent of those complaints were investigated.
So I could go on, Mr. Chairman, but I think what this amendment is trying to say is we desperately need to ensure that we use the funds that we are appropriating here, the funds that we are taking away, in order to make sure that we have accountability for the Department of Homeland Security, and to make sure, for example, that when we have Prison Rape Elimination Act regulations to prevent sexual assault in
immigration detention, that we have adequate funding to the Department of Homeland Security's Civil Rights and Civil Liberties department so that they can carry out the audits to ensure that immigration detention
facilities are in compliance with those regulations.
Mr. Chairman, I hope that my colleagues will accept that we still are going to have plenty of money for ICE to do its job, but we want to make sure we have accountability.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
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