Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2019
Floor Speech
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Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Chair, my amendment would simply make clear to the Department of Homeland Security that these funds, which Congress is specifically dedicating to the Coast Guard's environmental remediation efforts as a result of hurricane damage, cannot be reprogrammed to increase DHS's detention capacity.
Madam Chair, this amendment is critical. Just a few months ago, we learned that DHS transferred $169 million from other agencies to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain and remove people.
Madam Chair, $10 million of that money came from FEMA, diverting funds from the disaster relief agency at the start of the hurricane season when Hurricane Florence was heading toward the East Coast; $1.8 million of that diverted money came from the Domestic Nuclear Detention Office; $29 million was taken out from the Coast Guard's budget; and over $34 million came from several TSA programs. That is simply unacceptable.
ICE continues to spend far above its appropriated funding to detain people, but these funds are being transferred from other critical agencies, in clear violation of congressionally mandated funding.
As of January 1, more than 48,000 people were being held in ICE custody, even though they only have funding appropriated by Congress to detain 40,520 people. In the last appropriations act passed by this Chamber, we provided funding to ICE with the understanding that the funding amount would, ``require ICE to reduce the number of detention beds,'' in use before the end of the year.
We clearly stated our intent to ICE, yet ICE has chosen to ignore the mandates of the United States Congress again and again.
Moreover, the Government Accountability Office has found a number of inconsistencies and errors in ICE's own calculations for its congressional budget justifications. While ICE officials stated their budget documents undergo multiple reviews to ensure accuracy, ICE was not able to provide any documentation of such reviews, and the GAO concluded that ``ICE is not positioned to ensure the credibility of its budget requests.''
If the GAO concludes that ICE is not positioned to ensure the credibility of its own requests, then we need to be doing a better job of checking for accuracy and exercising oversight.
And, most of all, we need to make sure that these funds that are being appropriated for disaster relief stay for disaster relief.
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Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Chair, I am going to yield to my colleague in just a second. But this should be easy to vote for because you yourself said there is nothing in here that provides funding for detentions. So I look forward to seeing the gentleman vote for my amendment because, actually, then you are saying there is no problem here, we are going to make sure that these funds actually go where they are supposed to, to disaster relief.
That is all I am saying in this amendment is let's make sure that the funds we appropriate go to disaster relief, which is necessary, and States across the country--certainly in my part of the country-- wildfires, hurricanes--we have lots of issues we have got to deal with here.
So, given that the gentleman just started his remarks with multiple statements saying there is nothing in this bill that would allow for this, I look forward to seeing your yes vote on my amendment.
Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Espaillat).
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Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Chair, let me just say how pleased I am that we are on the same page, that disaster relief funding should go to disaster relief; it should not go to expanding detention beds, which are already oversubscribed.
So I hope that the other side will be happy to vote yes on this amendment. And I would just say we are happy to have a discussion about immigration and all of the things we need to do to reform our immigration system at the right time.
Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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