Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2024
Floor Speech
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, I rise to speak in support of my amendment, which prohibits the use of funds to pay the salary and expenses of CISA Director Jen Easterly.
It is no secret at this point that this administration is waging war on conservative voices, and Jen Easterly has been at the tip of the Biden administration's spear to censor American speech.
In the recent case decision of Missouri v. Biden, Judge Doughty specifically pointed out Ms. Easterly's targeting of conservative speech for censorship. In fact, Ms. Easterly's censorship efforts were so explicit and pervasive that Judge Doughty believed that the plaintiffs in the case are likely to succeed in their claims against Ms. Easterly and the other Biden administration officials.
This was affirmed recently by the Fifth Circuit. On September 6, 2023, they wrote, ``CISA, however, did flag content. Beyond holding regular industry meetings with the platforms, CISA officials engaged in `switchboarding' operations, meaning they acted as an intermediary for a third-party group by forwarding flagged content from them to the platforms.''
For her part, Ms. Easterly has both worked with and in some cases coerced social media platforms to take down and suppress posts that don't fit into the administration's idea of what the truth is. We know this because Ms. Easterly herself has said that conservative opinions that question the administration are not truth but are instead alternative facts and are dangerous to national security, implying that terms like truth are for her and the administration to define. She and other members of the administration have ordered the removal of posts about Hunter Biden's laptop, the COVID lab-leak theory, the ineffectiveness of masks and the vaccine, questions about the security of the 2020 election and future elections, and the state of the economy. Most of that has been proven objectively to be true, but she suppressed it as well as suppressing a variety of other posts, which happened to be inconvenient for the Biden administration.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, not only has Ms. Easterly already suppressed many conservative voices, she has stated that she is preparing to do the same thing again for the 2024 election; not somebody else in the administration, not somebody else in CISA, Ms. Easterly has said this. This continuous and purposeful censorship of conservative voices must stop.
Just as we saw in the last amendment with Secretary Mayorkas, using the Holman rule helps us do our job and do our duty.
In July, Federal Judge Doughty of the Western District of Louisiana gave a memo decision in the case of the State of Missouri v. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. As part of his conclusions, Judge Doughty stated multiple times that it was likely the plaintiffs in this case will prevail on their ultimate case of censorship and suppression of conservative voices by the Biden administration.
The primary means of censorship by the defendants in the case was by colluding with and in some cases ordering social media companies to ban conservative individuals on their platforms and to take down posts which dared to question the Biden administration on a number of important issues.
Among the defendants listed by Terry Doughty as having directed this purposeful policy of censorship are CISA Director Jen Easterly. I urge my colleagues to join me in this important endeavor of holding someone accountable. I don't know what more we need to do, but certainly we should hold Ms. Easterly accountable.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I appreciate the two-on-one here. No, that is fine. I am just kidding you guys.
Here is the deal. Not only is this critical that you hold people accountable, but this person, this Director lied in response to a question from Representative Cloud on this particular issue, on these issues that we were talking about in testimony in the approps oversight hearing earlier this year.
It is my opinion that if we fail to hold this person accountable, then we are going to see like things happen in the future. When you provide a specific deterrent, you also provide a general deterrent, and that is the way a justice system works. That is the way you hold people accountable.
Mr. Chair, in closing, I appreciate my colleagues who don't want to see this done. It is not unconstitutional to do this. This is a good way to hold people accountable. That is one of the jobs of the United States Congress, to hold people accountable.
What did the Founders give us? They gave us the purse strings. In this instance, it seems to me that this individual should have her salary eliminated.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, this may seem like Groundhog Day, but I am going anew. I rise to speak in support of my amendment which prohibits the use of funds to pay the salary and expenses of CISA Director of Election Security Initiative Geoffrey Hale.
As outlined in Judge Doughty's memo decision in the Missouri v. Biden case, as Director Hale worked with social media companies to censor conservatives who speak out against the Biden administration, he was singled out by the judge.
Under the guise of protecting national security and election integrity, Mr. Hale and his team purposely suppressed social media posts that went against the Biden administration's view of what they considered the truth to be.
CISA seems to believe itself to be the ultimate arbiter of truth, ordering social media companies to suppress and ban posts and users that dare to question their side of the story, that dare to speak up for what they believe. Listen to what I am saying, please.
That is what was going on in the agency that was supposed to protect cybersecurity and our elections.
The blatant censorship by Mr. Hale and others of constitutionally protected speech has got to end. It is the weaponization of government against the American people. It is up to us to stand up against that.
I urge my colleagues to join me in passing this amendment. At some point we are going to have to recognize that we need to hold people accountable.
Now, I appreciate my colleagues who oppose this, but I will just tell you something. I don't think we can say we can't do this in the appropriations bill. We have already done something else in the appropriations bill. We just passed by voice vote a defunding of the Secretary of Homeland Security. Why cannot we hold these people accountable? I think we can.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, I again appreciate my colleagues and their position. I fundamentally disagree. You have a heavy burden when you are going to enjoin people. When this case came before the court, the CISA Director of Election Security Initiative, Geoffrey Hale, was one of the defendants that was found to be one of the officials of this administration that was engaged in a clear and focused policy of using the Department of Homeland Security to stop conservatives from questioning the Biden administration on social media, even if it meant censoring constitutionally protected speech.
I guess we have a fundamental difference here. I appreciate and understand what my colleagues who oppose this measure are saying, but I am just not certain what we are going to do then. How are we going to stand up to an administration where every institution of this administration has been weaponized: FBI, DOJ, Department of Education, the border security leadership.
We have CISA and the people who are running CISA leading areas that are systematically suppressing speech and censoring speech.
This isn't me saying it. It is a court of law saying it after evidentiary hearings. It is through admissions, through discovery of these individuals. That is why these individuals lost in court, but there is no other way to hold them accountable.
Holding an administration accountable is one thing, but holding an individual accountable for systematically participating in violations of our First Amendment rights, this is the way we do it. This is the way we should do it.
Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to join me, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I rise to speak in support of my amendment, which prohibits the use of funds to pay the salary and expenses of the DHS Under Secretary for the Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans, Robert Silvers.
Much of my argument is the same. In a court hearing, they are found to have violated the free speech rights of Americans systematically. They are going to lose in court, and we have an opportunity to hold them accountable.
I feel the need to try to throw maybe a slider instead of a fastball. I am reminded of George Mason, who said many years ago something to the effect that because individuals can be punished and rewarded in Heaven but nations can't, nations need to be held accountable on Earth. I am now making an appeal that we hold individuals where we can accountable on Earth.
What we have are people who systematically defied the rights of American citizens for no other reason than they didn't like what was being said about the administration. They politicized their position, and we are going to hold them accountable. I thought it was $17 million or something like that that was going to come off their overall budget. Maybe I am off on that--$19 million? I was pretty close.
Let me give you another example. Somebody said recently that they will take responsibility for that, for a problem that this administration was doing. That begs the question: How did you take responsibility for it? You can't just say, ``I take responsibility. I take the full blame.'' No. What did you do? What did you do to take blame? Were you fired? Were you reprimanded? What happened?
If you don't hold people accountable, they will persist. There is a theory of punishment in criminal law--and I practiced criminal law--and it was, why do you have punishment and sentencing at all? You have punishment and sentencing for public safety. That is one reason.
You also have two kinds of deterrents. You have a general deterrent and a specific deterrent. If you have a specific deterrent, you are trying to teach that individual that that conduct is not acceptable and cannot happen again, so you punish them in whatever way you can that is appropriate. A general deterrent is when the entire society--in this instance, it is the Federal bureaucracy that says, if we do that, we are subject to specific deterrents--in other words, maybe even the elimination of our position, elimination of our salary, whatever it may be.
If we don't hold people accountable, this action will persist because there will be no specific or general deterrents.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to the time remaining.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I appreciate my colleague talking about the border. I wasn't going to bring up the border because that is not what my main beef is with this amendment. My beef was about the censorship of U.S. citizens, but if you want to talk border, let's talk border.
I have to clear up one fact that I hear so often from my colleagues across the aisle. When they say something like 90 percent of all the fentanyl that is coming across the border is seized at ports of entry, that is a total sham statement. Ninety percent of interdictions take place at ports of entry, not 90 percent of the drugs coming across.
Why do you stop 90-plus percent at the ports of entry? Because that is where the X-ray machines are, where the dogs are, where the personnel is.
You have all the equipment, but do you know where you don't have equipment? How about the 62-linear miles of the Tohono O'odham Nation Reservation in southern Arizona, which is one of the busiest drug and human trafficking corridors in the world?
This Under Secretary has not secured the border. That is two strikes.
I want to get back to the CISA argument because we have an individual who systematically is okay with censoring United States citizens who are exercising First Amendment rights, but if we want to talk border, I will be here till hell freezes over to talk about why we need to make changes in the Homeland Security folks on the border.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I rise to speak in support of my amendment, which prohibits the use of funds to pay the salary and expenses of the DHS Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention, Samantha Vinograd.
When she was senior adviser for national security, Ms. Vinograd took her role of surveilling and stopping terrorist threats against our Nation and turned it on the American people.
As outlined by Judge Doughty in his memo ruling in the Missouri v. Biden case, Ms. Vinograd and her colleagues purposefully and systematically targeted American conservatives who dared to exercise their right of freedom of speech.
This is on issues that later proved to be accurate objectively, ranging from COVID-19 origins, lab leak theory, the Hunter Biden laptop. The DHS explicitly sought to suppress statements and posts that made the Biden administration look bad.
Turning the counterterrorism role of the DHS on the American people and engaging in explicit government censorship of constitutionally protected speech constitutes a major breach of trust.
Despite this--or, more likely, because of it--Ms. Vinograd was promoted. She wasn't held accountable.
The court names her as a responsible defendant for this activity. She wasn't held responsible. She was promoted to Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention.
In her new position, Ms. Vinograd is no doubt even more of a threat to conservatives who wish to exercise their constitutional right of freedom of speech.
Unelected bureaucrats like Ms. Vinograd cannot be allowed to continue to censor Americans and to decide for themselves what is worthy of being called the truth.
Mr. Chair, I urge the passage of my amendment.
Now, I want to add something different this time, as well. Elected officials have an accountability measure built in. Leave out impeachment or anything else, our voters elect us. They look at us with scrutiny. We stand before them. We tell them what we intend to do. They look at our record to see how successful we were in doing what we said we would do. You do not have the same ability with a bureaucrat.
The reason that we know about these things, as we began to see these things, is you had an attorney general and several attorneys general come together and file a lawsuit, and a court, in looking at the discovery and taking evidence, said the plaintiffs here, the attorneys general, the States, are going to probably win this. Why? Because people like this bureaucrat, Ms. Vinograd, abused her authority and violated the constitutional rights of American citizens. Seems to me that someone like that should not be in the pay of the American Government.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, I would rebut a couple of things. When you quote statistics saying 94 percent of all drugs coming into the country are stopped at interior checkpoints or ports of entry, that is an inaccurate statement. It is 94 percent of drugs that are interdicted, that we catch, that is where you catch them.
Why do you catch them there? I mean, this is not rocket science. You catch them there because you have personnel there. You have drug- sniffing dogs. You have X-ray machines that are looking at trucks. You have personnel there.
But I will tell you what you don't have. Come with me to San Miguel Gate.
I have been all over southern Texas. I have been all over southern Arizona and Southern California. Come with me to San Miguel Gate. There is nothing near the San Miguel Gate. The nearest town south of the border is Caborca; that is 2 hours away.
You know what happens? You have more got-aways, known and unknown, through that sector than anywhere else in the country.
Good grief. They don't want to be caught because they are the ones that are bringing in drugs and human trafficking. That is just kind of a fallacious argument.
The next thing is when you say, only two people voted to increase Homeland Security funding, it was because it was an omnibus bill. You had every Christmas tree ornament in the world on that puppy, just enough to drive every Republican off but two.
Yeah, if we had done 12 bills like so many of us advocate, you might have seen a different thing. You might have seen a kind of a joinder of stuff. This does not violate the Bill of Attainder provision of the Constitution. It doesn't violate a court decision. What this is is adherence to the Holman Rule?
Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I rise in support of my amendment, which prohibits the use of funds to pay the salary and expenses of DHS Director of the Departmental GAO-OIG liaison office Jim Crumpacker.
Director Crumpacker leads DHS's Department of OIG liaison office, an office tasked with maintaining mutually beneficial and productive relations with GAO and the OIG. That is what Mr. Crumpacker stated in testimony before the Senate several years ago.
Unfortunately, under the Biden administration, that mutually beneficial and productive relationship has broken down completely.
DHS continues to obstruct oversight by its own inspector general in violation of the agency's obligations under the Inspector General Act.
Last year, then-Ranking Member Comer and Oversight Committee Republicans opened an investigation into reports that the Department of Homeland Security was obstructing efforts by their inspector general to conduct oversight over DHS programs and policies consistent with its obligations under the Inspector General Act.
At the time the letter was sent, committee Republicans had uncovered a memo circulated to Customs and Border Protection employees, which essentially encouraged CBP employees to resist OIG's request for access to CBP systems.
Think of that. You have a memo going out to CBP employees saying, Don't cooperate with the OIG. The memo falsely claimed that OIG's access to information was not unlimited, contrary to the statute, incorrectly relying on a statute that limited public disclosure of information.
To be clear, the Inspector General Act contains no such limitation.
DHS/OIG has a statutory mandate to have timely access to all records, reports, audits, reviews, documents, papers, recommendations, or other materials from DHS components, with only a narrow national security exemption that requires Congressional notification. Unfortunately, DHS continues to slow-walk and stonewall oversight efforts.
In June, Inspector General Cuffari came to committee and testified under oath that:
Since the fall of 2021, DHS/OIG has consistently reported DHS delays and denials of DHS/OIG's request for information.
These are requests for information allowed under statute, and a response is mandated. These are requests for information that our more than 700 career professionals need in order to do their jobs in the OIG offices and which DHS is required to provide to DHS/OIG consistent with the statute.
I remain hopeful that DHS will improve its responsiveness to our requests for information so that DHS/OIG can continue to provide Congress and the public robust and timely oversight with the words that Inspector General Cuffari said.
I appreciate his optimism, but after nearly 3 years, Congress may need to start twisting some arms.
This is the place, this is the individual who has put his thumb on the scale to prevent that information from going to the inspector general, information that we need, and we need the results of that OIG report.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, let's litigate the border some more, and let's talk about how these things get funded.
If that is the new deal that you throw an omnibus bill because you don't bother to do your 12 bills and you are going to say, Oh, you voted against something, then we should start talking about all of the bad programs and policies that you all voted for in that omnibus bill that has left us with $2 trillion in deficit this year. That is what you did. You added $2 trillion to the national debt.
Mr. Chair, the bottom line is they have an individual here, Mr. Crumpacker, who has basically said we are not going to provide information to the DHS-OIG.
What are we going to do about it? We are going to say, Oh, that is just too bad. That is too bad.
Mr. Chair, we have a massive border problem. I don't even think my colleague across the aisle would disagree with that.
Last Friday in the Rules Committee, the gentleman from Massachusetts said there was no border crisis. I thought that was intriguing. You got 11,000 people rolling through the Tucson sector. Those are the encounters. They don't get those kinds of groups in Tucson because they are getting the runners. But you know what, the whole border is in disarray, and that is between the ports of entry.
That is your ports of entry that you are so pleased with. You have the CBP One app bringing people in by the tens of thousands. I think we need to hold Mr. Crumpacker responsible.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, I rise to speak in support of my amendment, which prohibits the use of funds to pay the salary and expenses of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
I want to speak about Secretary Mayorkas. I want to speak about what has happened at the border. By the time we are standing here today, you have millions and millions of people who have come through illegally into our country, and what they have done is they have surrendered.
In the meantime, you have at least 2.5 million people who have not surrendered and who have escaped into the country.
I have asked Secretary Mayorkas, I brought him to a Border Security Caucus. I said: Secretary, do you know what the Secure Fence Act of 2006 says?
Can you tell me, do we have operational control of the border?
He says: Oh, yeah, we have operational control of the border.
Okay. Then how come you have set a record every month?
At that point, he had set a record every month, from February 2021; every month a new record. In fact, last month we had another new record: 304,000 encounters.
We brought him into the Committee on the Judiciary. He is under oath at that point.
Do you know what the definition of operational control of the border is?
Oh, yeah.
Do we have it?
Yeah, we have it.
Then, Mr. Secretary, why in the world are we seeing literally tens of thousands of people, 8 to 9,000 most days, some days 10, 12, 13,000 people? That is a violation of that act.
He says, Look, we have control.
The last time we had him in, what, just a month, month-and-a-half ago: Mr. Secretary, hey, do you have operational control?
And he says, Yeah.
We bring out the poster with the statute again and said, Hey, take a look at the statute.
He says, Oh, no, no. We don't have operational control with that. We have defined our own operational control.
That is the kind of person that needs to be held accountable.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise), our distinguished majority leader, who we are so happy to see with us on the floor tonight.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to the time remaining.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, let's talk about which side wants to get something done on the border. I keep hearing about the magnificent omni bill. How many Democrats voted for H.R. 2 in this House? Not one. Don't tell me that you care about the border. You didn't vote to secure the border with H.R. 2.
When you say Americans are importing the drugs, first of all, you got it wrong again. I don't think you are listening. Ninety-two percent of the drugs they catch, that is what they catch. It is what they interdict. That is what they stop. That is who they arrest. That takes place at the ports of entry. That ain't where 92 percent of the drugs are coming through.
They are coming through the places wide open where there is no fencing in Arizona. We don't have the river. We have four-strand barbed-wire fence in places. They are coming through there. It is considered the number one drug trafficking corridor in the world.
Don't be telling me that we are stopping 92 percent of the drugs because we are not. Don't show me a heat map of where people are coming through in Texas. That is xenophobic. You need to spread out. Don't be so parochial.
Let's go to Arizona. I will take you to Cocopah. We will stand right there. Literally hundreds of people walk on through. They are not coming from the Northern Triangle states. They are coming from Mauritania. They are coming from Mali and Togo. They are coming from all over the world.
Don't say that you guys care about the border because you are not doing a damn thing to stop it.
What is happening on the border is a crisis. It is the largest mass migration in the history of this entire world. It is time you join us and bring it under control because it is bringing crime.
Laredo is great. Good.
Do you know what they are releasing in Cochise County now? Secretary Mayorkas is calling them freedom runs. We are just going to release people into the community and call them freedom runs.
Mr. Chair, it is time to do something, and I urge my colleagues to vote for my amendment.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I rise to speak in support of my amendment, which prohibits the use of funds in furtherance of the public charge ground of inadmissibility rule.
Section 212 of the Immigration and Nationality Act states that any alien who is likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible for entry or a readjustment of status. Any alien at any time who might become a public charge is inadmissible for entry or even for readjustment of status. Think about that.
Someone is a public charge if they are likely to become primarily dependent on the government for subsistence, as demonstrated by either receipt of public cash assistance for income maintenance or institutionalization for long-term care at government expense.
The primary factor that the DHS is supposed to look at when determining if someone is or will likely be a public charge is the likelihood that the person will be reliant on government benefits and services, such as Medicaid and SNAP.
This past December, the DHS greatly reduced the number of public benefits considered when determining whether an immigrant is or will be a public charge and thus inadmissible for entry or permanent residency.
The Trump administration rightly included programs such as SNAP, housing vouchers, and Medicaid in its determinations on whether an individual would be a public charge. However, President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas have decided that not only should we take in thousands of illegal aliens every day but that they should receive the same benefits that thousands of struggling Americans rely on and that those same Americans should pay for it.
The American ideals of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility have always been the spirit of our immigration law. It is in this spirit that Congress decided that immigrants who are likely to become a public charge are ineligible for admittance or permanent residency. However, under this new rule, individuals who are reliant on a number of government benefits can be considered self-sufficient when applying for renewal or adjustment of status.
The DHS' new rule is not only costly to the American taxpayer but also directly incentivizes hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens to cross the southern border and come into our country.
It seems to me that Secretary Mayorkas is not only negligent and reckless with securing the border, but he is also negligent and reckless with the American taxpayers' hard-earned money.
That is why I am calling to stop any funding for the DHS' new public charge rule until they secure our border and start acting in the best interests of the American people.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I urge the passage of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I rise to speak in support of my amendment.
My amendment prohibits the use of funds to implement a TSA vaccine or mask mandate. For years, the Biden administration subjected millions of Americans to draconian vaccine and mask mandates, even when the science showed these mandates did very little.
I remember at one point having literally meta studies and individual studies showing the inefficacy of masks, but we were nonetheless compelled to wear masks.
Now, we are beginning to hear the same people and institutions suggesting again that we need to start looking at public vaccine and mask mandates due to small rises in COVID. This must be coming up on an election year or something.
Specifically, there is talk about TSA mandating people who wish to fly to wear a mask or be vaccinated. These types of mandates are just another form of overreach by this power-grabbing administration, and the American people are not going to put up with it for a second time.
Americans make calculated decisions about their health risks every day. You just saw the great Steve Scalise come down, with a judgment of his own health risk, so he could participate on the floor in something that is meaningful to him. We all make those types of decisions about our health risks every day.
The last thing they need is for unelected bureaucrats to tell them once again when they can and cannot fly, especially since we now know the actual efficacy, or I should say ineffectiveness, of the vaccine and masks.
These calls to renew vaccine and mask mandates are coming from the same people such as Anthony Fauci, who relished controlling the day-to- day lives of Americans and profited off it.
Americans have had enough. This is why we must ensure that neither President Biden, Anthony Fauci, or any other bureaucrat can force Americans to get a vaccine or wear a mask just to exercise their right to travel.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I think this does belong in this bill. TSA is in this bill, and this is an important policy. I urge the passage of my amendment to stop any funds from being used to implement a TSA vaccine or mask mandate.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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