Hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee - the Nomination of Julie L. Myers

Statement

HEARING OF THE SENATE HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
SUBJECT: THE NOMINATION OF JULIE L. MYERS TO CONTINUE AS ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT (ICE), DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
CHAIRED BY: SENATOR JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (I-CT)
WITNESS: JULIE MYERS, NOMINEE

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SEN. SUSAN M. COLLINS (R-ME): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Yesterday's observance of the 9/11 anniversary reminds us that one vital feature of homeland security is having borders that are closed to our enemies yet open to our friends. The United States has some 6,000 miles of international borders; nearly 10 percent of those miles mark the frontier of my home state of Maine. As a border state senator, I understand the vulnerability of those long borders but also of the importance of striking the right balance.

As we saw in the Senate's recent debate on immigration reform, the American people emphatically consider border security and interior enforcement as critical issues. The vital work of coordinating interior enforcement with border security and forging effective partnerships with state and local law enforcement falls to the agency of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Besides these important missions, ICE also combats drug trafficking, human smuggling, immigration benefit fraud and international trade in child pornography, among other threats to our society. No wonder it is the largest investigative arm of DHS.

A few days from now will mark the second anniversary of the committee's first nomination hearing for Assistant Secretary Myers. As the chairman has noted, the failure of the full Senate to consider her confirmation was largely based on concerns about whether or not she had adequate managerial experience.

Now, however, her work for more than a year and a half as a recess appointee gives this committee an on-the-job performance record to examine that was not available to us last time. Based on the interviews that the committee staff has conducted, I concluded that concerns about Ms. Myers' managerial experience have largely evaporated.

Nevertheless, ICE faces huge challenges in conducting complex investigations of drug and alien smuggling networks which can provide sources of revenue for terrorist organizations and avenues for terrorists to enter our country. Many smuggling organizations rely on fraudulent documents and attempts to fraudulently obtain immigration benefits. Last year, the Portland Press Herald in my state uncovered examples of companies supplying for H-1B visas for employees when these companies appeared to have no legitimate business operations in my state. Therefore, I'm particularly interested in hearing how ICE has targeted its investigative efforts on unscrupulous employers who have sought to commit immigration fraud. ICE has also been tasked with ensuring the detention and removal of an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants within our borders. Making this task even more daunting is doing so in a way that not only respects the law, but also is reasonable and fair.

Another issue worthy of our attention is the release from state and local correctional facilities of immigration aliens charged or convicted of crime, even violent crime, after they entered this country. The DHS inspector general has called this, quote, "an unofficial mini-amnesty program for criminals and other high-risk aliens," end quote. I call it an outrageous failure of Homeland Security.

I applaud the department's accomplishment in ending the flawed catch-and-release policy whereby illegal aliens were detained near the border only to be released with a summons to appear in court at a later date, where, of course, they almost never appeared. But the failure to remove these criminals after they have been caught by law enforcement and have actually been imprisoned must not continue.

I look forward to hearing the secretary -- the assistant secretary's views on how we can correct this situation.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.

Ms. Myers, I mentioned in my opening statement the removal of aliens who have committed crimes. This is an issue that the DHS IG has been quite critical of ICE for not doing more, for not focusing on state and local prisons as well as federal prisons.

Could you explain what steps ICE is taking under your leadership to ensure that criminal aliens in state ad local facilities are identified and removed?

MS. MYERS: I thank you, Senator Collins, and I share your concern about identifying criminal aliens while they are in our jails and prisons before they get out into the streets on our communities. And under my leadership, a real transformation of the Criminal Alien Program has been a very high priority for me and it's been a high priority as we've sought funding in the president's budget to expand the program.

What we've done since I've been at ICE are several things. First, on the federal side -- and we're looking at risks -- we looked at federal institutions first -- and I discovered when I got to ICE we only covered 30 of the 119 Bureau of Prisons institutions in the country. And I thought that needed to be changed right away. We set up a center called the deport center which uses -- leverages technology to screen aliens in all 119 bureau of prisons to make sure that no federal prisoner leaves a federal institution without having encountered ICE, without having gone through the screening process going through the removal process as well.

Now, with respect to states, local and county facilities, what I found when I arrived at the agency is that we did not have kind of a full and complete understanding of where every single institution was in the country and frankly what the risk was at each of these institutions.

What we have done is we've identified all the institutions in the country and then we've ranked them based on risk. And the risk ranking looks at the number of aliens in the facilities we know, otherwise it's the total population, whether or not the facility is a state release site, whether or not it's close to another large city and the like. And based on that we've raked all facilities into four risk categories and now we're systematically going through and looking at where's our gaps? You know, how can we get to full screening at all institutions in the United States?

I'm pleased to say that this year we've issued over 135,000 charging documents to individuals in federal, state and local institutions. That's up from over 65,000 documents the year before -- we've more than doubled.

I think we need to think about this in terms of leveraging technology, leveraging our resources and making sure we're at high- risk facilities. But frankly, modernizing the cap program and getting that to a place where we have full screening is one of the reasons I want to stay at ICE. I believe it's a very high priority for the agency and I think we can make considerable and measurable steps.

SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.

During the debate on the immigration bill, many of us learned the figure that there are nearly 12 million people in this country who are here illegally whether they overstayed their visas or entered illegally in the first place. Now, there are those who have advocated that we should somehow try to locate, detain and deport all 12 million people. There are others who have said that that is simply not practical and it would be enormously expensive. Could you give us some idea of what the cost of trying to locate, detain and deport all of the 12 million people who are here illegally would be?

MS. MYERS: Senator Collins, it's certainly difficult to give what I think would be kind of a precise number with respect to the cost of locating, removing and detaining individuals. In terms of very rough calculations, you know, our agency has estimated that it would cost at least $94 billion to engage in locating, detaining and removing all these individuals.

Now, this model is quite rough. It doesn't take into account for example, if ICE were given, you know, really substantial resources so that the illegal alien population thought in fact ICE, you know, ICE was actually going to enforce against every single person here -- whether or not there'd be some deterrence kind of created in that, and whether or not then in fact there would be incentives for individuals to kind of leave the country on their own or to once they left the country not come back in.

The model also does not take into account, you know, all these things that the border patrol had done and the secretary's Secure Border Initiative. So it's simply a very rough model, kind of looking at, you know, our average cost of detention and our average cost based on length of stay.

SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.

Thank you.

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