Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. CASE. Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to this measure as it is presented to us. I truly regret that as a member of the subcommittee, I cannot support this bill today, as it does include several bipartisan measures that do deserve our support.

Perhaps the best example of this is the $14.2 billion provided to the Coast Guard, an increase of $1.3 billion over the last fiscal year. This funding does reflect the hard-earned recognition of the Coast Guard's unique role and capability in defending American priorities and advancing our engagement in the face of geopolitical competition, especially in the Indo-Pacific.

The $60 million proposed by the bill will allow the Coast Guard to base another medium endurance cutter in the Pacific. The $1.2 million provided for the Coast Guard's Indo-Pacific workforce project, and other report language and funding provisions for their expanded presence in the Pacific Islands region, are encouraging to see, and they do demonstrate that we can work in a bipartisan manner to get things done.

Despite some sound decisions here and there in other parts of the bill, it remains riddled with misguided avoidance and other priorities that I cannot support. Nowhere is this more evident than in its treatment of the overall subject of immigration in general and securing our border in particular.

The Department of Homeland Security, which has been so vilified by many of my colleagues over the last months and years, needs and is entitled to our support to administer existing laws. Yet, this bill fails to address the wide range of needs that it is mandated to discharge, and to anticipate and set up and advance a realistic discussion of our immigration policy in general and border security in particular.

Here are three examples. First of all, the bill strips $300 million from the asylum program, gutting the Department's ability to address acknowledged and real case backlog and keep pace with new arrivals at the border. We all know that the reality of the border today is largely related to, I believe, required changes in our immigration and asylum policy. This bill does not allow the Department of Homeland Security to do its job under current law.

It also threatens to severely underfund the Operations and Support account of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service and eliminates funding for the Citizenship and Immigration grant program that prepares legal immigrants for civic integration. I am not sure what we are supposed to take from that deletion. Are we supposed to take that we don't support legal immigration and that we don't support civic integration?

It also eliminates the Shelter and Services program, which will withhold the resources needed for American communities around the country working to humanely and safely deal with the challenges of our broken immigration system, the realities of our broken immigration system.

None of this is policy. This is not constructive legislation. This is outright antipathy, in many cases, toward a legal immigration system, it is messaging, and it does nothing to solve anything.

If we think there is a problem--and I believe we all do believe there is a problem with our immigration system in general and border security in particular, then let's talk about it. Let's try to resolve it on a bipartisan basis and then let's fund the policies that we have set. Let's not defund the institutions that are responsible for administering policies that we believe are broken but it is their responsibility to do so right now.

This bill, despite these misguided provisions, does show it is possible to work together in a bipartisan manner, including these very difficult issues on immigration. We should go back to the table and focus on that.

I do look forward to working with our colleagues to amend the bill to remove these harmful partisan policy riders and focus on providing the critical funding needed by the Department.

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