Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2025

Floor Speech

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Mrs. RAMIREZ. Madam Chair, I rise in the most strong opposition to H.R. 8752.

As a member of the Homeland Security Committee, my level of frustration with the Republicans' Homeland Security budget is really hard to actually overstate.

We can all agree that the Homeland Security appropriations bill should protect our communities. It should also extend our national security, and it should do so while fulfilling our commitment to the international community.

Yet the Republican majority's bill doubles down on bad policies and proven failures.

There are too many destructive, cruel, and draconian policies in this bill to outline in a very limited time, but let me highlight a few of them.

There is $600 million for the construction of a border wall to embolden cartels and endanger our communities, environment, and sacred lands; $4.1 billion for ICE to detain and traumatize families seeking safety and stability; defunding USCIS to increase immigration processing backlogs, making it harder to identify possible threats to our communities, which seems hypocritical considering we say this is about the homeland and protecting our communities; defunding the critical Shelter and Services program to create chaos in cities fulfilling our Nation's promise, like Chicago; and endangering the lives of asylum seekers across our Nation; defunding community-based alternatives to detention that are actually creating more of a cost burden to taxpayers.

If your goal is to sow chaos, if your goal is to weaken intergovernmental collaboration, to deconstruct effective policies, to undermine collaboration, to decrease efficiencies, and to destroy families, well then this is, in fact, your bill.

Madam Chair, don't let overt anti-asylum, anti-immigrant racism masqueraded as fiscal responsibility and protection of the homeland fool you. The legislation does not fund the core responsibilities of the Department that protects the homeland, and it doesn't fulfill our commitment to our neighbors, reflecting the best part of who we say proudly we are as a Nation.

Madam Chair, I urge a ``no'' vote.

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