Transcripts For CSPAN2 Senate Homeland Security Committee Hearing On Southern Border Migration 20240714

System and the detention of children and minors. Senator ron johnson chairs the Homeland Security committee. Good morning, we want to call this roundtable to order. I want to thank the participants for taking your time and first of all for just working on the Homeland Security advisory council. And from my perspective, producing a really good report. A really good basis for hopefully legislation we can pass on a bipartisan basis but prior to that, working with us to try and accomplish nothing. To start addressing this tremendous problem. This is, we just keep opening this thing. The top line numbers is down a little bit because june is reducible a little bit from may because i was projecting this set out based on the most recent month. A fun maze numbers, the total number of individuals coming is either over 800,000 projection, now its over 700,000. But one thing ive been pulling out since 2014, these bars represent currently five years, ninemonths , 1,086,000 people. Coming to this country illegally, being apprehended, most of them coming at the family, 822,000 and of that 822,000 we returned a whopping 12,021 individuals. Even though and i know in your report you make the comment you talk about about 15 percent of people having a valid asylum claim this is clearly a broken system, we are trying to grapple with it. We stick to the same. Feel free to interrupt, okay. But i want to stay in the same theme. If you do it in hearing form, 7 minutes, they kind of go through their own questions. I think this is a better way of opening discussion here but we have karen candy, also the former Society Deputy attorney general for the department of justice. Sitting to her right jay ahern, also served as former acting commissioner of u. S. Customs and Border Protection, sitting to her left dr. Shannon cooper, developmental and forensic pediatrician at army medical center, dr. Cooper holds positions at the north korea chapel hill and Health Sciences and then, last but not least, mr. Leon fresco, mr. Fresco served for offices of immigration, litigation, Department Civil decision. Council is a bipartisan group. You have members first of all, policy experts in a variety of areas, but also spans to political spectrum and you come together and produce solid product. To that i will turn it over to ms. Andy. Im sorry, do you have any comments . Lets hear from her. Are you sure . Okay. [laughter] oh, okay. Thank you. Thank you, chairman johnson and Ranking Member peters and senators of the committee, we are grateful for the opportunity to share our interim report and have that discussion, you have before you four members of the ten member Homeland Security Advisory Panel that was was created in october 2018 and at that time the 10 of us were given directions by then secretary nielsen of the department of homeland to make findings and recommendations on cbps care of families and children at the border. Recommendations on best practices, training, policy changes, any legal changes that were needed for the care of families and children at the border. From december until march, through march, this group of of this panel went to multiple places along the southwest border. We spent multiple days on each trip. We went to every state along the southwest border into 6 of the 9 Border Patrol sectors, that included 10 u. S. Border patrol stations, four ports of entry as well as a variety of facilities where children were being cared for. Over the period of our work, from october up to april, we received briefings from 109 subject matter experts, we reviewed an amount of material and data around that and spoke to ngos, medical professionals, government officials and a variety of other experts. Very early on, this panel came to the conclusion that the immigration system is overwhelmed and fractured at every critical point. The children especially children below the age of 12 are at the heart of this crisis. The primary issue that was clear to this panel was the result of shift in immigration, a shift that moved from what was predominantly single males and processing and facilities for predominantly single males and completed shifted, adult males, completely shift today more shifted more than 600 increase family units, that would be one adult typically and typically tendered age child, 12 and under, thats a family unit and shift was for family units and unaccompanied children coming from Central America. That was the critical stage of the if ultimate major stress in the immigration system and crisis at the border. What happened children were endangered, 1200 to 2,000mile journey to our country, endangered during the crossing and children were preyed upon and preyed upon by smuggling organizations, preyed upon by Drug Trafficking organizations and by others who were benefiting and making money off of their attempt to get into the country. The overwhelmed dhs and hhs capacity to care for these children was another result of the fractured system. Customs and Border Protection exercised and continues to exercise valiant efforts to deal with this crisis. It is outside of their training, humanitarian piece of this is outside of their training, but its beyond the capacity of their facilities and until recently beyond their funding, as a result of National Security has been endangered with as many as four out of 10 Border Patrol agents who who are no longer performing Law Enforcement mission, instead doing things that they were not trained to do, providing humanitarian relief to the best of their capacity. At this time, if i could have the graphs presented. I think this depicts more closely than anything the crisis, this is a graph of failing units that were apprehended by Border Patrol. When this panel started in october, there were less than 17,000 family units apprehended at the border and im talking about between the ports of entry, the remote areas of the border, inhabited parts of the border, so that went from october to in april, 17, was 17,000 family units that were apprehended moving up to 58,000 a month that were apprehended. By the next month, it was peaking at 84,000. Why that graph is so important is that it shows you how the crisis escalated and the surge of the family units that requires such special care and attention and you can see currently in june, its actually developed for the june numbers, even at the june numbers, thats at the same time, same level as when this panel filed our report in april and deemed it an emergency then. This is not our final report. We did not plan to file an interim report. We were so alarmed of what we saw at the border, the conditions at the border that we determined an emergency report was required. During the fiscal year, again, these are children between ports of entry and n remote areas, 2,266,657 children have illegally crossed the border in between the ports of entry, thats a Staggering Number and why this is so important that changes are made and made quickly. This panel all 10 of us parked our politics at the door, we are bipartisan as the chairman pointed out, we parked our politics and unanimously arrived at our recommendations in this report, each recommendation is integrated with the others and standing alone to turning this crisis around but we do urge the congress to take action. We are pleased that Congress Took action on supplemental funding at tend of june, it was critical and now we urge donning make the other changes that we recommended in the report. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Ranking member. Thank you, karen, who is going to go next . I may not be quite as soft spoken asthma dam as madam chair. I was appointed by secretary nielsen almost a year ago. I come from perhaps a different perspective on our panel. I actually served in customs and Border Protection for 33 years and predecessor organizations as well. When i look at 33 years that i spent in government before i left 4 years ago at tend of Bush Administration into the first full year of the Obama Administration, i just say that im very stunned and concerned about the transformation thats happened at our border. I think when i take a look at what we use today deal with years ago starting in the mid70s when i first came on board, we were dealing with challenging environments of dealing with people who are trying to escape and evade and avoid apprehension, today people that are rushing to the first person they see in a uniform to surrender themselves and you have to ask why is that, i think the answer is pretty obvious, its because of the broken immigration system that we have to deal with today that needs some changes. When you take a look at some of the family units that we have seen, unaccompanied children, by the way, havent seen recent number, 4 or 5,000 unaccompanied children who have been recycled by smupg lg organizations for the purpose of being able to conveyed across the border and have advantage in the process to be able to go ahead and be put into Quick Release proceedings and be able to set up for a hearing that may happen years later. Thats a concern. When you take a look at the challenge that is many families have, theyre making their way to the border and all the challenges and Horror Stories conveyed. We will talk about some of those things, the push factors that are occurring in some of those country where we will have an opportunity to go to spend a few days in triangle countries. We have dealt with immigration surges over the years, whether itd be some of the cuban migration issues in south florida in 80s, excuse me, right at 1980 or challenges when i was still working over 10 years ago in government with the brazilian crisis, when surging in the amount of brazilians that were trying to gain entry illegally in the United States, shifted from the mexican population to group of brazilians, some removal proceedings and returned mexico proceedings that were allowed in the law at the time were not the same from people other than mexico and dealing with the brazilian population, they needed to be swift action to put them in removal proceedings and guess what, it stopped. It stopped. I think those types of circumstances we need to consider today because the challenges that we focus on today unfortunately are the things you can characterize in the media every night and there are some very, very tragic circumstances, you can see each one of those, but unfortunately the opportunity i had for many years gets judged by the ones that occurred, not the daily circumstances and challenges they have to deal with on a daily basis. Some of those things are very important and thats why i get concerned about the mission of Homeland Security. I had the pleasure and honor to serve with tom ridge and governor hutchins, and we had 4 and a half months to stand up and still maturing years later but it was about to go secure the homeland. What deeply troubles me today its turned into the Immigration Agency into this country and thats a concern and should be a concern for all members of congress, both sides of the house and both parties because what deeply concerns me is what is happening to the rest of the mission . I really applaud a lot of efforts with frontline agents clearing the loamhand as best they can but having to deal with humanitarian crisis is right in their face and they have to deal with, but what else is happening, we saw when we were there right at the shift change where migrant families were coming in surges to go and distract the Border Patrol from the drug interdiction mission and take advantage of that surge and capitalizing on the agents being consumed with having to manage that running drugs to the left and to the right. We cant let that happen as a country. We have to continue folks on all aspects of the mission, there are still bad people trying to get into this country, many of do come across the southwest border, its not all people from the northern triangle country. We need to issue as body, legislative branch, executive branch and those with setting the laws and executing the laws have the best capabilities they have to be successful. Is supplemental was helpful, i would say it came too late, you know, the agencies within dhs and many within doj for having to deal with and hhs had to exhaust budgets to be able to keep up with challenges that they need to procure things for people. There are hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, i hope they can recover so they arent deficient. When you see and hear stories, why is that . The procurement laws and the budget was not there to support what they needed for the mission and the front line people without went with their own capabilities to do the best they could given the circumstances theyve had. The facilities of Border Patrol station for those of you who are here, you know that for those listening and watching in the audience, think of it as a police station. Immediate processing after somebody has been arrested, thats longterm detention but given the entire process, take a look at continuum or supply chain is broken because of every step of that process needs to be reevaluated and reassessed and improved. Yes, a process improvement but legislative change to make it better, its not just what happens at the Border Patrol intake but one moves onto ice detention and then all the other things that have to happen with hhs, housing for family units or the administrative judge that is need to provide hearings, the system just backs you have tremendously and the most obvious point and visible point is that those Border Patrol stations and then at the ice detention facilities. Every step of this process needs to have review, its not about more adding patrol agents or building a wall or things of that nature, taking a look at the process beginning to end and appropriate level of support for administrative judges, the bed space to house people throughout the entire process but also evaluating what is the cause and effect here. Push factors are very important, as i look intelligent reports that have been interviewed on arrival, its not for fear of persecution, im sure many people, weve had Intelligence Briefings of people doing deep study and analysis. The murder rates, the violence rates have not changed that dramatically in the last 5 years. The agricultural situation because of drought, the Economic Situation because of corrupt governments in those northern triangle countries, people have lost pleat confidence in their country and looking to ahead and find benefiter opportunities elsewhere and when you flip to interviews of why here education, medical, the opportunity to be reunited with family thats already here illegally and more confidence in our government. Building the capacity and trust and confidence in those location where is they live and where they likely want to be if it werent for those other circumstances keep part of this Going Forward but at the same time we have to fix some of the pull factors on our end and thats legal system and thats some of the things that require statutory change. Thank you, jay. Okay. I will just thank you, thank you, senator, thank you, everybody. I will be very brief and say i think i associate myself with the comments of my colleagues on bipartisan report and i think one of the key things to move forward and get solutions, i think we need to define the problem. I think people are disagreeing on what the problem is and valid to disagree and depending on how you view this there could be 3 different problems, problem one could be i want to eliminate the total number of crossings period through the border, i dont care what the purpose is of the person who is crossing, i just want it all to go away, thats one thats one way to define the problem, the second way to define the problem would be i want to take the group thats coming into the United States and successfully vet who is coming here as a refugee and if you are legitimate refugee, allow you to come and enter the United States or if youre not a legitimate refugee remove you from the United States and second way of defining it. Doesnt matter why youre coming, i just want that you bad things dont happen to you when you arrive in our custody and thats it, you know, thats a third way of looking at this. And so at least on from my point of view, i was working with my colleagues to try to come up with this second option of how we successfully vet people in a better way, people are coming with legitimate refugee claims can come in a very quick fashion, we know who is coming for the purpose that is the law permits and we know who is coming for the purposes the law doesnt permit and treated compassionately while the vetting process is occurring and i think if you have that as your goal, its easiest to get to a lot bipartisan consensus whereas if your goal are the others, this is where it becomes or new problematic formulation and so that is the that is if people want to ask me questions, where im coming from on this, how do we take the population thats coming, make sure that theyre treated in a compassionate manner while we vet the reasons they are coming or reasons permitted under our law or reasons not permitted under our law. Thank you, leon, doctor, get the microphone as close as you can, there you go. Thank you very much. As pediatrician of now more than 40 years and who worked first as military officer retiring from fort bragg, largest population in the army, honor to serve in the committee and i must say that the challenges for children are severe and significant, at this particular time more than 67,000 minors who have been present at the cbp and have come across the border in that manner and as i report reflects many of the challenges reflect the fact that they are diseases which can be fatal and have been fatal for children that have come across the border, whenever you have children in groups such as this, the risk, primary causes of deaths for many of children who have come across the border has been very difficult. I think its very relevant that in reviewing mortality cases that weve already seen, the overwhelming of the children were seen at facilities and sent back to the border and unfortunately succumbed to diagnoses that were not clear when not seen by medical treatment facilities. Another part of our report has to do with the identification of the children as being biologically related to the parents, the individuals who were cited as parents when they come in as family unit. Discussion of the committee because of some of the existing restrictions with respect to facial photographs and things of that nature, so weve made some recommendations and our report on trying to make sure that the children who are going to be coming across the border and released to the interior are going to in fact, be children who are going to be cared for. The issue of recycling of children brings us to the risk for sex trafficking and labor trafficking of children and trafficking in general. Because im a pediatrician i work quite a bit with trafficking victims and circumstances of that nature and that was one of my greatest concerns which was affirmed when we had our first meetings regarding the risk of children who would be brought into the United States and then sent back to Central America to come back into the United States with different people posing as their parents. That kind of stress and trauma for children and will have without a doubt farreaching psychological impact over the time that they are going to be continuing through childhood, finally i would want to say that the recommendations of academy of pediatrics are excellent, they are prevalent, they are available to any Healthcare Provider free on the internet, on all of the different medical problems and surveillance that should be taken and thats really helpful. What we would like to see is that on site as was recommended on our report that there be onsite Healthcare Providers rather than individuals who are not versed in the care of Young Children and adolescence, because of the nature of the concentration of these children in the settings it is very important that not only they be screened within the first 24 hours by a Healthcare Provider upon arrival but also will require rescreening sometimes daily, signs of potential infectious problems to make sure they can survive the last part of the journey that they have taken, thank you very much. Doctor, just real quick on the pediatricians at the border, senator peters and i talked to dr. Sally who is the incoming head of that organization, and i talked to mark morgan the same day or the day after about facilitating whatever professionals want to get down there willing to serve in that capacity to get that done and the acting cbp commissioner was open to crying to work, you know, within the rules and laws and who knows what bureaucratic hurdles may exist on that, but, again, very receptive to getting those pediatricians and those types of medical experts down there at the border to help alleviate or mitigate some of the problems. Yes, youre quite correct, thank you very much. One thing that i noticed in the recommendations for was initially in the smaller cbp stations there wasnt really a location that was available for the right types of equipment, et cetera, but i think that can be modified very readily and, in fact, when we got to clint station there was a contract provider who had been hired to help facilitate evaluation of patients. All right. So, again, i want the freeflowing but the order was peter, scott, carper, holy, you know, i really do want this freeflowing because i i will turn it over to you and if you want to make any comments questions. Just questioning to go, i want to pick up on doctor, your comments, the question that ive been asking, how long is too long to detain a child and ive never gotten a straightforward answer. What is your view and whats the view of folks here . The american pediatric feels and states that no time is a good time as far as detention is concern. Do you agree with that . My feel asking that you have to make sure once children have crossed border that theres a safe place for them to land. You want to make sure that theyre not going to be at risk to still be under the power and control of smugglers, for example, or people who are falsifying identifications to increase risk of children, for one thats ascertained it would be good not to have them in the circumstance that you have within detention because will foster higher risk for Infectious Disease complication. Dont you have to define detention, though, what the facility is, right . Yes, let me respond to that, i have visited 2 detention settings, in one particular detention setting the setting was with families, family and children and what we found was that at that particular setting which is in texas it was an extraordinary excellent location, these families had their own individual apartments, if you will, there was a facility with very excellent food, education, there was recreational space for them, and there was also medical care, extremely good medical care provided by the United States Public Health service on site, that is a setting that would be the most ideal. Thats not typical of what folks are confronting right now . No, that has not been what we have seen. What i have seen looks different from what you just described. Right, the Inspector General report viewed that that was not typical but that would be the desired type of setting. That to be the goal. You talk about screening of folks which is important to have professionals on site, i know that report talks about telemedicine, but talk to me about that limitations to telemedicine . Yes. We have professionals on site and not doing via telemedicine, concerns about that when i read in the report . Telemedicine is acceptable method of care depending on the condition, if youre looking at a child with potential Infectious Disease problem, the telemedicine has to be very good. Influenza which is our greatest concern is going to only be diagnosed by reaction and and soft symptoms, softer the younger the child. The children by definition need not to remain in a detention setting nor should they remain in cbp setting, they need to be taken to medical Treatment Facility without a doubt. Other types of of telehealth capability will offer itself as long as you have a good Healthcare Provider to describe whats going on or a person such as nurse or a paramedic who can give other information, for example, trauma injuries that may have occurred to a child. Some of the other children who have died, at least one child died from Heart Disease and in that situation telehealth will not be beneficial except to affirm that the need for immediate transfer for a patient like that. Can i ask a question about this, we know that Health Screenings are supposed to go on by cbp officers instead of health professionals. Is a medical professional what we need to provide the screenings as often as they need to be done on a daily basis, i can tell you im suffering from a summer cold two days ago i didnt have it and today im taking all kinds of medication and trying not to spread my germs. If you want to [laughter] so we know how rapidly, so how quickly do you think the American Academy of pediatrics, i have them in my office, we know that we have Healthcare Professionals willing to go down, willing to the border and willing to volunteer their times at the facilities, but what do we need to do to facilitate that for the safeties of our children . Absolutely, senator rosen, i agree with you 100 . To have the pediatrician would be the best recommendation that i could make and youre absolutely right, daily evaluation of children is indicated because theyre in a highrisk setting. [inaudible] but especially for the Young Children you dont want to have them in that setting, as well as possible youd like to get them in those settings and make sure you have Healthcare Providers who can see them on a regular basis. Real quick [inaudible] right. Its a mix depending on what facilities youre talking theres variances. Making distinction with Border Patrol station, before they went to detention facilities theres the difference that needs to be recognized, what particular type of stage or facility, stage in the process youre talking about. I think i would also point to one of the key recommendations of our report which is crossing centers where you have the ability to have the right kind of facility with the right type of caregivers there to be able to have a triage upon entry into it by medical professionals who would be stationed there all the way through court and hearing and also the provisions for providing attorneys for people who need to see immigration judge. Being able to have that in concentrated location and probably 3 or 4 locations along the border is what we recommended as well as concerning guatemala. So how quickly do you think you can ramp up and do this because we have children suffering now, tender age children that they will suffer for the rest of their lives because of this, who came here we within the let children suffer because of whatever we may think how they got here, who brought them here, the fact is that they are here, especially the ender age, not of their own choice and while all of the adults, we want to work together, we can talk about policy and procedure and all those things, but in the meantime how quickly can we do something to protect the children. One of the things i have to get in on this. It takes funding and i will ask you to look at how long it took to take the supplemental funding approved. Those were months that were lost. [inaudible] they didnt. They didnt. Right. But can i just i wanted to take a step back because, first of all, thank you all for being here and for your work and i appreciate that the work the panel has done and i understand as well that the administration wants the ability to indefinitely detain families and that the cbp family and Children Panel prioritize as recommendation and doctor, i understand the concern of vetting families and making sure children are, in fact, related to the adults they come with, but lets just start with a fundamental composition do you believe that the indefinite detention of children is harmful to children . And lets just go right down the line. Yeah, definite detention i dont think it would be any of our goals. Yes or no . Yes. Definite detention is not okay, maam. We do not recommend indefinite detention. What im trying to get is a shared set of values and understanding that we can then have a discussion based on because if you lift the flores limit, youre talking about the possibility of indefinite detention, so is it or is it not and im not just talking about exposure of diseases here, is it or is it not harmful to children . This panel found that a period of detention in the proper setting which is not the current setting in the proper setting was important balance of the initial security, customs and border production processing requirements and the care of these children who arrive often ill and traumatized. I understand that. Being provided with Health Facilities and health care in a center that is could be Detention Center but its not parked in a Detention Center. I would like to submit, mr. Chair, for the record a letter that a group of medical and Child Advocacy organizations led by the American Academy for pediatrics sent to the panel. The letter from the Child Health Experts expresses strong opposition to the panels recommendation to allow for the indefinite detention of children, here is what the letter said, this is just a quote, detention of children for even brief periods causes known and welldocumented developmental, physical and psychological harm. These impacts may be particularly pronounced for Asylum Seekers who are frequently and significant barriers to accessing Legal Counsel to assist families and presenting their families for legal protection. So what is the response to this medical advice and why doesnt your report reflect those findings . Thats a question and i will just also say this is not an either or, we can be secure and not harm children by i definite detention, this is humanitarian one. Let me ask her, incredibly important to make this point again, i dont know what definition of detention that group is, and if they are working at the Border Patrol stations, absolutely, i dont think anybody said that would create harm, if you are talking about facilities senator by the way detention of children, putting them in an institutional facility, period, according to pediatricians and experts causes them harm, doesnt matter obviously better conditions are better, but it doesnt undo the harm, thats why in this country unless we find an adolescent that has committed a crime or harmful to themselves or others we dont detain them because any detention is harmful. So i am concerned about is we keep presenting this as either we have to detain kids or we are not going to have secured borders and that is a a ic the United States government could use can i speak briefly . I just got back from the border on friday and i know that you are looking for practical solutions. Right. But i think what we are missing here is why the children are coming in the first place and under flores which is recommendation, the flores still applied to unaccompany children but not to the families with children, it is definitely an incentive to come to america and so you are frankly, if you are focused on having a solution to longterm detention, you should be focused on keeping the children from coming in the first place. Theres no good solution here. Actually there are let me finish, let me finish because you had a long time to talk. Theres no good solution here unless you deal with the incentives because you are encouraging these children to leave their homes in Central America and to join traffickers, to come to our border, or encouraging children, this report has said 4 to 5,000 children have been recycled already. Theyve had numbers that were higher than that but they know who the kids are because they processed them and processed them again and processed them again, so i couldnt agree with you more, we dont want children to be detained at all. Thats not good for kids, whats really bad for the kids is the United States congress refusing to do the things that we all know that should be done and i know you should be done to discourage them from making this long and dangerous journey in the first place and thats what this report is getting at, is as long as you have the notion that under flores that a 20day limit is in place and as long as you have the situation now where because partly because theyre overwhelmed, no way that you can process the children or families within 20 days, theyre simply permitted to go into the United States. They go to nonprofit, nonprofit gets them on bus or airplane and theyre in new hampshire, they are in ohio, and, again, 15 at the end of the day according to this report and all the data we have are getting asylum claims granted, on average 2 years but really report indicates 4 to 5 years and the report also indicates that very few people are ever removed, thats what you said in your report, so if youre a trafficker this provides you the perfect opportunity to see to these kids and families, if you pay me 5,000 bucks or 10,000, somewhere in between there, we will take you to the border and frankly dump you at the border and as we know 30 of the women and girls are sexual assaulted during the journey, this is the problem, we can talk about detention and i couldnt agree with you more, the real issue how do you keep the kids from making the dangers journey in the first place. You want to detain them from preventing them from going to stash house or sextrade situation but one situation is teaming back up with human traffickers who they havent paid debt to and controlling families in real Central America and the danger the children are in if we dont try to protect them in some form. There are other solutions, shortterm detention which we processed them through, i dont want to dominate the discussion but i do feel a couple of things that i want to clarify. One is i would not say that it is the children themselves who are being incentivized to make the decisions, they are being exploited by a lot of different people, a lot of different conditions. Lets focus lets focus on the incentives. Lets focus on the incentives to the adults who then bring the children. Secondly, the notion that the only way then to deal with this is to extend the flores limit beyond 20 days or to or to let them go is a false choice. There are other recommendations that other groups have made that indicate that we could in fact, keep track of these families, casemanage the families, we could surge our capacity so that the hearings could be held within 20 days, those are capable of doing if we would provide the resources to do it. Thats my concern. The whole goal of Operation Safe return but id like to turn over it over to leon, youre an immigration lawyer, having youre proposed solution, but we are also being told too, and Operation Safe return is going to evaluate based on credible fear standard because we dont have the time in 20 days to do the full adjudication process, can you talk about and also talk about the basic asylum laws and asylum standard . Whats complicated is two completely different case tracks, expedited removal track and then normal track. Tea. S to solve the the attempts to solve they can immediately remove you, more people express fear of removal and you have to make this adjudication, is that fear credible and if it is you can stay and if its not then you can be removed. The question that our panel had put to ice, this has been tried in Obama Administration and this administration, we asked has any family, you asked the question, any family. Not 20, 30, or a thousand, has any family has been removed thats been placed in expedited removal process and the answer that was given was no. We removed 1221. Yeah. After they after they were im talk about the context of what they used the family Removal Centers that they are using now and so what we start today think about, if youre detaining anybody for any amount of time youre wasting the time because youre not actually accomplishing a removal, the whole point of detention to accomplish removal in that situation and youre not accomplishing the removal, why are you doing the detention and so there are two alternatives, make changes to expedited removal which im not big fan of, others are, or real removal system and its my belief that the biggest delays you have in the in the normal removal system, you have to give people time to find counsel which takes many months and thats why you blow through all of the time limits and you have to give people opportunities to get documents which a lot of times they cant get because they are fleeing their country. In my view if you give people counsel on day one and you expedite the hearing and you establish the courts right there on the site and you say, unless the claim sounds incredible, we will deem it as credible, you dont need to get documents, a lot of the cases dont qualify legally anyway for asylum, then you can actually get the proceedings done in 20, 30 days and so thats why when you say flores extended, we werent saying extended from 20 days to a thousand days, the question is if itll take 14 days, 26 days Something Like that to get the proceeding done and youre Holding Someone in a facility that we can all agree is a facility that will meet whatever standards the policymakers thinks are good standards, then a lot of people will get asylum and would be able to stay and a lot of people this is about adults, who does the screenings for minors . The officer does the family, they do the if theyre not if theyre unaccompanied. If the child is unaccompanied they cannot be put in expedited removal proceedings at all. Just held so what happens is they then go through the normal regular proceeding that i talked about which means cbp can only hold them for 72 hours and after those 72 hours they have a legal obligation to send them into the custody of the department of health and Human Services until that department can find an adult who is capable of being their custodian and removal proceeding that ive just spoken about, the second track will play out and either theyll win and be able to stay or lose and theyll be ordered almost all stay. Talk about because i want to drill on this while we are on it, talk about disparity the vast majority being granted the credible fear versus your report about 15 actually have valid asylum claim and really would be subject to removal although we are removing none, just talk about that disparity and how that plays out in the few cases that are adjudicated not granted asylum . You want me to so the problem is, again, you have different Legal Standards and so the standard for achieving credible fear standard which is where you have you have the establish to get yourself out of expedited removal and into the normal removal process is that theres a significant possibility that you have an asylum claim and asylum is defined although in people that people talk about all of the time and supreme laws about having 10 chance theyll be persecuted, but what you have to show is having significant possibility of having 15 chance. Its a standard because thats the standard that was written. I understand. Thats why they call it credible fears, im afraid to go home, sounds credible, now youre into the process. Thats correct. How long is it and what kind of evidence and what do they have to provide and why then its only 15 would be granted. Having come from the department of justice where we were constantly to recorrect our statistics in court im suspect on all of our statistics. I dont know what the statistics and if anybody claims to know what the statistics are you correct. Having said that, let me just say that it is a fair point that there are a large number of asylum claims that once presented dont meet the standard and the problem is because we dont know what the standard is currently adjudicated in the courts right now. It is unclear, we have no idea, the Supreme Court will eventually decide this. Lay out currently lay out the basic premise. Well, the basic premise is that people are making claims right now that they are going to be persecuted because of Domestic Violence concerns or gang concerns that their country, its a different, its not clear whether those asylum. Race, national origin, social group or political opinion. As social group social group is the one that they are claiming. Correct. One thing quickly, began on friday, i learned something i should have known which is i talked to 5 or 6 families and at wasnt point i worked in the border and i used the spanish i had and people cant get a job in Central America, the drought, they want a better life for their kids, not a Single Family was saying anything about a credible fear and they didnt. But im told and i guess i should realized this that a long the process, so these families will be released within a couple of days of being in the processing center. A thousand families there, this theyll be released, along the process here they can claim asylum at different points, so if they do get counsel 6 months from now they can claim asylum. Well, you would hope in every area where you have an officer of the court bound by law not to produce asylum claims that they wouldnt be produced. A lawyer wouldnt help someone to make fake asylum claims. Is it true that some of them do claim asylum later in the process. What people dont realize about expedited removal process, in order to use expedited removal process you have to have capability to do fear screening, we dont have sufficient of either of those which is what youre describing when people are released without having the credible fear screening, they are released to do track 2, the normal removal hearings and when you have a normal removal hearing at that point the system doesnt know anything about you, it asks you, okay, do you concede to removal or not and if you say no, they ask you what is your defense to removal and so at that point you could introduce a defense. That would be when you get the hearing, 2 months later or 3 months later. [inaudible] for the first hearing. And then depending on when the next trial is can i interject . Seems to me that we have two different issues, immediate issue with all of the children sure. At the border, detained, whether you want to say cages or holding areas, whatever your definition . 200 in Border Patrol stations. Once they finally got once they finally got the funding went from 2,000 to a couple of hundred. I want to ask you do you have average number of of days and they are trying to do it in a couple of days. Its hard to get a correct answer to that. The standard is the standard is 72 hours, tender age children should be 24 hours. The children are moved out of the cages in 24 hours. No. Thats the law 72 hours and their goal is 24 hours. But bear with me in terms to have reality, forget the standards because thats not whats thats not whats happening. Right. Whats happening is they are the surges of these people that are coming across, principally family units and children, the surges of the people have overwhelmed what is meant a facility meant to keep people for hours not days, not weeks, and longer. But whats happened is to move people out of the facilities, the Border Patrol has is difficult for them to do full processing. , people are given notices to appear and they are released. What used to happen is that first of all, every part of the chain had the funding in space requirements to meet their obligations. Right. Rar they did move in 24 and 72 hours, a year ago and what happened now is that it is backed up, hhs does not have the bed space, ice take the people from Border Patrol unless they have some place to put them with hhs, through hhs. Previously there were travel plan that is were actually accomplished by ice, they would determine where the people were going, they would confirm the receiving we have an issue with the immediate issue with children and families, how theyre being held and then we have longterm policy issue of what we do Going Forward either to deter it or to take care of them or to move it. Two different issues, one immediate for house, safety and care particularly of tenderage children and and families and then we have longterm policy issues the health care is all about the overwhelming nature of the floor. Its not going to stop the flow in a day, senator, we have to get through what we are doing now to take care of they have these people, they are human beings. Thats their recommendation. I think thats the point, you cant disassociate, theres no one they would argue they need to do better job for handling in the first 24 hours without question, the capacity is exceeded because of broken immigration that the country continues to happen. Thats the focus people want to look at not looking at whats happens in Central American location. This body would be questioning ice if they were releasing kids to sponsors here in the United States that were using for sex trafficking or Human Trafficking. Its very deliberate exercise that goes onto make sure they are not putting them in hands that are going to create more concern and more exploitation for the kids in the country. So while no one is satisfied with processing time, understand all of the different factors here that are causing we were told the families are in stash houses, being beaten and video tapes. We dont know. Thats why we recommend that these Regional Processing Centers that would have in shortterm, the medical, the legal, everything in there, you could move them out of the cbp facilities, thats why we recommend that we Regional Processing Centers as soon as possible to get people out of cbp and start moving the rest mr. Chairman, can i jump in as well . Yeah. Reading through your recommendations on the flores issue, did yall have any conversation about what to do with 17yearold males because the highest number of people coming in right now as far as percentage are single males that are coming across the border claiming to be 17. I assume that they have been coached if youre 17, you can be treated differently, we dont know if they are 25 or 17. They come across and say they are 17, did yall have a conversation on that . Another followup as well. We had some, the emergency nature of the report focused on fixing the biggest problem which is the family units, not the and companied and 17 year olds would follow in the mix. So we had some, final report will address those types of concerns. Into guatemala americans would demand their child back. We have a child from el salvador comes and we say we are going to eat them. Salvadoran minister was in my Office Yesterday saying, we like our kids back. If they are unaccompanied child from el salvador, why cant the celebratory and government say, send them back to us we will then bring them with their families. We create a barrier on that instead of allowing them to return back to their own country. Did yall have a conversation about that . That subject of one of our recommendations was to amend the tb pra to permit. They had a parent. Yes. A parent in their home country who wants them back to be able to send them back. What about the country itself as far as the embassy . As a National Entity to be able to say, please send the child back. The same thing we would do if a parent was here or wasnt here we would reach out to another country and say, send the american child back to us we will take care of them. What you have to make sure the child is going to be safe . If the child says the reason they are not there in the first place is because they are not safe, certainly we wouldnt want to send them back. If the gang is coercing the parent. We release about 79 percent of unaccompanied children to an undocumented person in america. But i would venture to say that our laws are such that they would be more likely. I completely agree. This is no guarantee in terms of whats happening. [multiple speakers] if the country says we want our child back we tell them know at this point. The question is whether you are doing it systemically or individually. I mean if you are doing it individually you have a child presenting themselves individually saying i cant go back to my familys home because my dad beats me and its an unsafe home. Even if the government is saying i want the child back, okay government, where you going to put this child that was on the back to you . Thats the problem. How do you deal with that individual claim versus how do you deal with a systemic claim. Im not giving recommendation im just going to say with the law says now is you need a proceeding whats in the best interest of the child to remain here with the guardian or be removed back. You will get a different answer from foreign minister versus a parent whos encouraging some of the kids to come northward. They have a brother thats already here. Education, opportunity, better healthcare. And theres an awful lot of kids, thousands are going back sometimes as many as four or five at a time in the hands of a smuggler. And then brought back to the country again. Thats unconscionable and something we cant let continue to happen. Real quick, when you made your Opening Statement you talked about defining the problem. Kind of defining solutions. The way i continue to talk about this is the problem is in the graph in the chart. From my standpoint the initial, this is the first step, the initial goal should be to reduce the illegal flow to disincentivizing families and children during the journey. So tell human smugglers on a bipartisan basis we will not allow you to exploit the laws anymore it will take time but heres initial first stop in the message to Central American families is please dont indent yourself to human smugglers. Dont mortgage your house, dont pay them a years worth of salary. When i talk about indenting we have the same conversation with families on the border i was surprised how many, you dont know what they are being told by human traffickers but i havent paid human traffic or anything which is a little concerning because they will have to pay which is why they end up at stash houses and have to work out their debt. We had the robert kraft massage parlor story New York Times talking about asian women 30 40,000 indebted to human traffickers how are they paying it off . In the sex business. From my standpoint the goal of our policy initially, the first step is we need to reduce that flow and thats where i go to your recommendations in terms of how do we do that . Is that kind of what you are seeing in the first step in why this should be an emergency in your report . Absolutely. Thats integrated in all of our recommendations. Two stem the flow so that these children are not placed in danger to begin with. Part of that is to give them a safe place to assert their claims in Central America. In guatemala with a processing center. And if they continue to flow to the border and move then if they follow their claims we may not see them again for years. If that continues it will just continue to hold these families in so we want them to be able to assert their claims and do it in a humane setting in the best place to do that is in a safe place we established with International Cooperation with guatemala to do it down there so that we save them a terrible journey and terrible crossing into this country. I want to pursue that because obviously we dont want to send folks back children back to an unsafe place. But now you are saying you have to stay in that place you are fleeing while we process your claims which could take a long time. Tell me more about the International Effort to put them someplace. Talking about refugee camp . In guatemala . If they believe they are being persecuted or attacked or threatened by drug cartels we have to keep them safe while we go through the process. One of the Panel Members is a former u. S. Ambassador to mexico in the clinton administration. He was one of the principal proponents of establishing such a center. It does no good for the center to be on unsafe ground in guatemala so it has to be a center where there is an agreement with the government of guatemala where there is security provided that you would have all of the support, medical, security, welfare, the asylum officers who would do the processing, judges additional judges who would take care of the back end of the claim and all of that would have to be a concentrated effort. It doesnt exist but there is a belief that it could with an International Agreement with the government of guatemala would abcan be created and could stop the danger to these kids going to mexico to get up here and all of the ills we talked about that happened to them. Just to add to that i think as we a is the button on . It was. I think one of the things we get so focused on his whats happening at the initial Border Patrol station with the first 72 hours. In the time they spend in i. C. E. Detention centers or before they go off to hss family centers. We lose sight of the fact of the conditions before they started the truck to United States. The horrific stories we have heard and seen from people along the way those things are really a concern. While certainly somebody could be cared for better and i dont agree with any of the current standards they dont need to be improved. But lets not lose sight of the fact of whats happening in transit. The exploitation and things, we cant scoff at that. That something we have to understand. Ive never published on the website that the dead desiccated animal chewed bodies a [multiple speakers] what can we do to go ahead and stop the flow . What can we do to stop the pushback that occurs . Thats gonna take more patients and often times the United States government tends to show. Its an effort of capacity building. I think some of this is discussion about capacity building. Former assistant secretary of Homeland Security juliann kiam wrote a piece yesterday saying you made a search with a surge. It doesnt mean we dont also work on the pole factors and the push factors which are important. It doesnt mean we also dont fix our immigration standards. But i will go back to florence for a second not because i want to beat a dead horse but because i think its important i was governor i ran a number of systems. My own view is that every time you give human beings deadlines and limits you go right up to them a little past them in a little past them. My concern is not im not critical of the personnel trying to do the best at the border given how overwhelmed they are. At the fact that the time limits very hard for us to meet right now given the lack of capacity at the border all our side and the numbers coming. My concern is that rather than change a standard which will then if you change it to 25 days now its going to be 28 days or 35 days before kids get out. Because thats human nature. If you instead change the focus to whats the capacity we need at the border as United States of america to keep children safe within the standards we already have, thats the Surge Capacity that i would like to see us focus on while we are fixing the longterm problems which i think theres a lot of agreement about it. The problem is we dont know what capacity to be from the last three years or this year and is next year going to be worse . Theres a lot of study in guatemala they intend to migrate to the United States that would be 5. 8 million people. We wont have anywhere near enough facilities. [multiple speakers] if we can work on legislation that will stop the push or the pole if you do them simultaneously. Weve got a long Term Solution we have a problem here and now. If i could address senator hacked into your points. This panel only recommended a change in floors of four children accompanied by a parent. We did not recommend changing any of the time limits that flores applied originally in 1997. The extension of those time limits in a few years ago by the flores courts to push that into the family units is where this crisis really took off. But i think and i understand that and i got your footnote with the recommendation in front of me because i wanted to reread it before we had this discussion. The issue is this, no separating children from families is not only wrong but unacceptable to americans everywhere on all sides of the aisle. And we know that the detention of children is harmful. What ive been trying to focus on is just our capacity as a country, the greatest country on earth with more resources than any country on earth to do the right thing by kids. Which i believe we have the ability to do while working on the other issues. I understand why the recommendation is there, i just think we are seeing it as a false choice and i think we can do better. I would look forward to continuing to have the conversation with all of you. I know you are trying to do your best by kids too if you could have the building capacity at the border or wherever hes either unaccompanied children or children families will be from a medical perspective. There needs to be a fixed location at every border station separate from the border detention environment so that Healthcare Providers can humanely evaluate and treat children and nurture them even keep them overnight if necessary in a safe and appropriate manner. That would be very achievable and not extraordinarily expensive intervention that i think should be present at every one of those. Part and we will get back to your point lynn, the middle the choice the number two choice where you try to process. Part of the aspects of your report is the rocket docket at the Regional Center where you bring folks together. I guess my question is, how realistic it is to get the due process necessary to do it in 20 to 30 days . I know the acting secretary said 20 days is not enough. What are the practical aspects associated with it . How do you assess the difficulties of getting documents getting full . Under the Current System it couldnt work because under the Current System if you are not providing people with counsel you have to give them time and if you are not providing people with an opportunity to get document shipped they get time. So you recommend counsel be provided. I recommend you get counsel on day one so youre not spending a lot of time with people saying i need time to find counsel because you already have it. To get it on day one provided to them . Exactly. The issue of the documents was something that was just added in the real id act in 2004 before if you had a claim that sounded credible than what the court would do is they would decide does the claim sound credible . If you say i flew on a Magic Unicorn here thats not a credible sounding claim but if you give a claim that sounds credible used to not make you corroborate that with documents because it wasted a lot of time. This is what happens now. What you do is you can just plug in the legal factor, is this still a cognizable asylum claim . Theres a lot of people who are making the assertion that this is not a valid social group that other people say it is a valid social group. Lets get to those claims without wasting all the time the entire waste of the asylum here is forcing people to get documents they dont have already because they lead the country. Luckily able to get the documents. If you take those two things out of it and moved to the nuts and bolts of the adjudication you can do it very quickly. In 20 days . In 20 days if you have significant number of judges you added to the courts and gay people tools. What are they need . Did they do an analysis. Depends on the flow. Per person . In april we recommended doubling the current number of judges so that would be at that time an additional 300 who in a away the last in, first out, so the judges would have no other docket except for the border surge and they would address that first instead of the entire backlog of these asylum claims. Which actually is the right way to do it because with the correct number number being accurate somewhere around 800,000 cases currently back long before eo ir. If you put the most recent one at the end of the list the individuals coming here their objective is economic interest they can achieve that over the several years it will take before the actual get their appearance notice to come before a hearing. The last in first out is a critical component. [inaudible] many times the lawyer will advise the person, in my view. Sir or maam you are not articulating an asylum claim. If they are genuine refugee then they will say, okay you can move forward in the situation. Am still trying to twist these two senators arms to help sign the letter of support for Operation Safe return. As in portrait as it abas imperfect as it is i still believe, your talking about not changing the law. We might be able to pass something in the senate but i think we have a pretty high hurdle in the house. My assumption is we will not be changing any law anytime soon so within existing authorities the letter of support providing safe return would use authorities in use as of june 30. Take a look at what the authorities laws regulation placed there. Is that something you could continue to work on with us on to try to hone in a really good idea by senator peters to try to go through this was real time evaluation and po in terms of getting individuals in evaluating why they are coming in and how many are waiting be a credible claim. Realtime information to inform future public policy. Its not the solution but its a step. It could maybe make improvement if we could return people that dont achieve that initial credible fear claim start returning those people in a credible fashion to send the signal, dont take this risk. You will go home you might be able to see the pole reduced as you said prospects by removal. Just getting your a First Response to that is, any movement that will go ahead and add consequences to the current flow that would then result in it being reduced is a positive step without question. The question becomes how much of Material Impact will it have on the overall body in the numbers. You have to start. Please understand that doesnt take the congress off the hook for some of the legislation. Is something. And the funding needed as well but those type of things its all about the messaging as well because there is a tremendous amount of narrative that goes down in the northern triangle country. A lot is controlled by traffickers and even by quasitravel agencies. These a. [multiple speakers] if beyond just say 200 a week or day i believe they can be a multiplication factor for the numbers that would actually decide not to go if they start to realize the consequence is not just a free pathway to being able to stay in the United States for a number of years while they wait for hearing. The number is small i wish it would be bigger but small but its a start. You publicize it. The consequences would be more significant if the magic messaging factor went out to the northern triangle of the country. The issues we work through this is having not just access to counsel but actually having counsel. If there was a program that said you have access to counsel how realistic is it to really get counsel . For these folks . Whats the timeline versus what you are proposing, leon, actually providing government attorney. Is that the standard we should be looking at . Heres the issue that makes it complicated for me is if you are trying to do a pure expedited removal basis solution i actually feel like that was for better or worse that was what the daily currents facilities were created to do. The problem is, the expedited removal solution did not engender a lot of removal. I dont know what the number is. I will quote anymore numbers. I think thats why and the reason it doesnt is because its a Legal Standard you have to apply. That alone in terms of operating safe return would be good information to have. We have the numbers stop thats why this isnt working. Thats what i think the complication is twofold. Heres what my concern would be. I think you are on the right track i just think concern would be if you end up detaining people for the entire time necessary to try to accomplish this and you cant because you keep hitting the 20 days of florez and if you havent and have it accomplish the removal then the whole thing fell apart. Its a Pilot Program and we would learn from that. In our conversation i originally set it as the asylum claim and realized that would not be possible weve got to do it based on credible fear but you do what you can do. Right now this is the only thing we really can do with an existing law existing authority but will inform the process. I realize its not the solution but if we can do something in a bipartisan fashion that communicates human traffickers on a bipartisan fashion will not allow you to exploit laws anymore. Moving that direction on a bipartisan basis recognizing this is not acceptable. This is causing harm to people and you wanted to sway it and deter it. Thats what we are trying to accomplish is a first baby step toward bringing solution. I will make the appeal publicly sign on the letter of support and work with us and engage us to do it. If i could just add, senator, the Operation Safe return is a baby step. If the laws are not going to be changed as this panel has recommended, theres nothing else. Theres nothing thats going to stop these children from getting harmed. There is nothing that is going to stop the dangers that we are seeing right now. It will just continue and it will increase. The baby step is better than nothing. But having said that, this Operation Safe return is not an act of congress. It is within current authorities and funding so there is no reason that the department of justice the department of Homeland Security and hhs cant just do it and do it yesterday. Heres the problem, anything in the administration does is to ride in court. Im trying to provide bipartisan support saying we actually want the administration to do this. You will give beleaguered agencies the cover that they need to do this. I dont know thats enough to keep courts from intervening but nonetheless we do applaud doing something. The real credible factor thats going to change these numbers is growing back flores to what it originally was forced we can get funding with judges, with the rocket docket and get this stopped without that. This is what will happen. a can i finish my point senator . This is what will happen. You know these criminal elements on the other side of the border and what will happen is the Operation Safe return will be the point of no return for these criminal traffickers. They will move elsewhere on the border and push people elsewhere on the border. Some of the worst places on the border for these Sick Children is in new mexico where Border Patrol stations arent even open 24 hours. They are so remote. Thats a risk here that it will diverge the flow. You can go from all over the border and the accumulated. Ideally, senator, this toe in the water is not just in dili it starts and it starts all over the border to prevent that. That would be like regional processing center. It would be. Any part of the border could be go there and have this process. I wanted to have a quick talk to leanne because you are on the abi totally lost my train of thought. I will come back to you. Sorry about that. I would also like to encourage that we increase the funding to dhhs. The children and families coming into the interior are all going to going to book school settings. They will have to go through the home care settings. In Child Welfare settings. Having spoken to several directors of various community where large groups of children have been brought it is obviously very overwhelming for them so i think that would be the other thing we should do to try to accommodate those children who are already in the interior. I remembered. You are a democrat, right . Yes. Do you agree with secretary johnson who vehemently disagreed with the florez reinterpretation. That flores a the pacific problem with asking me that question as i was the attorney that was arguing that flores wouldnt apply. [multiple speakers] i would argue that in court that the flores agreement didnt apply to families. We did not win the argument. I wish you were a better witness. [laughter] thats the first thing i would take a look at what we do with florez and go back to the florez agreement. There is a clip you can watch me making the argument. [inaudible speaking] most of the people as youve heard me articulate there are a lot of us who believe flores was the reinterpretation was correct given what happens to kids. If that is where the house is going to be, the question becomes whether you all have looked at the alternatives that have been suggested, they have not been piloted in any meaningful way. And whether there are other things we can do because if we go back to the fact that none of us go back to what happens here unnecessarily at the trauma that children experience what other things can we do in terms of access immediately to attorney. Penalizing smugglers who are faking their relationship to the child or exploiting that. In case managing families so that they show up and have enough judges so that they are not here for years waiting for the process . There are a lot of suggestions that have been made that require resources but i think in a bipartisan way targeted resources to some of that could begin to impact numbers too. I think thats where the practical piece is. We could try to litigate this flores interpretation. Some of us agree with it, some of us dont but it is what it is. Heres what i can say about resources that at the current level the resources we have to employ here is im not sure we have enough. You can maybe resources if we are down a couple thousand people a year but were starting to approach a million. One question i had because we havent talked about this im starting to read the counts on how schools are having to deal with the dispersion. And you have children coming in from the mountains of guatemala completely different dialect. You dont have people that speak the language. Plus, as james was talking about the large number of 17yearolds, unaccompanied children, 70 are male, 70 are over 15. The perfect population if the not already coming out of el salvador, guatemala, you dont speak the language you are going to gravitate toward people that do. Youve got a pretty good chance of joining again. Wearily not focusing enough from my standpoint on Human Trafficking element but also the societal challenges whether in our School Systems or whether in our inner cities where the gangs might operate that something that the council took a look at in any meaningful way . Probably not to the extent you are suggesting that one of things i mentioned in the beginning statement i need to look at this as a continuum. We need to look at this as a complete supply chain. Whats happening down south in the northern triangle companies. What is mexico doing to control his border . The history has not been good at being able to sustain efforts. What happens at our border unfortunately buckets on the nightly news is the horrific situation being dealt with at the border. Thats a piece of it. People lose sight of the fact that what happens when it goes off to attention to hhs k9. A very short piece you talk about literally talking days. When you have the amount of time it takes to come in transit and make it to the border beyond the time they spend at the border. There is more at the other end. Looking at the consequences. To that point we are now receiving information and briefings an intervening set scheduled on the consequences. Its the interior consequences as you suggest schools, communities, and the impact of not stooping this flow and what its doing on the interior and will continue to do. That will be part of our final report which we expect to have at the end of september. Doctor cooper i know that you are very focused on the treatment and the National Expert on the treatment of children. Yes. What is going to say is that 17 is a magic number but we do have medical capability with xrays to have a better determination about what an individual is fully grown or completely mature adult versus an adolescent. We have that capability it hasnt been noticed because we dont have xray machines available but its usually radiographic evaluation. What are the things that could be beneficial . You got dna test you talk about the fraud aspect of this wishes. We are talking about the age. The age fraud but also fraudulent parents too. Yes. You mentioned mexico and the issues there we have the report recommends the Safe Third Country Agreement with mexico how realistic do you think that is . I think if you can actually take the current president of mexico and his Campaign Promises is pretty strongly against it. If hes gonna stay true to that it can be a real challenge. I think something that perhaps has all the elements of a safe third country perhaps remain mexico absome of the mpp things being considered achieving some of the same objectives without having a label of the sector because she decided to stay for. In the poll of mexicans in terms of what came out today is pretty negative against the immigrants. People coming into mexico are taking mexican jobs potentially they will stay. They have very little publicly or. That was one of the impacting factors about slowing the flow to the United States it was no need to come for emma economic reasons. Thats putting a new dimension within mexico. In an ideal world what you would have in my view is one or two staging facilities where you make these claims and then you have the entire western hemisphere Refugee Resettlement program. We did take some brazil would take some camacho leg would take some, argentina would take people and we take refugees from all over and do burden sharing. In my view thats a much better longerterm. In an ideal world america wouldnt have an insatiable demand for drug so you would have drug cartels that destroyed Public Institutions in the breakdown of many aspects. I think american ais a responsibility that thats a very longterm project because as i tried to explore how you get the drug cartel they control a large percentage of communities in Central America even in mexico those communities supported by the drug cartels not only can go in their Surgical Strike to get rid of drug cartel. This is a pervasive problem. He missed all the solutions. Weve got it all figured out. Ordered Winston Churchill say, success is never final, failure is never fatal. We have a simultaneous publix Work Committee focused on Climate Change sea level rise, and the role that electric vehicles are playing in that how we need to recycle electric vehicle batteries abits pretty good stuff. Im sorry i had to slip out and part of what you are saying i understand from myself abfrom my staff the discussion around Operation Safe return for my benefit, would you please a some of the risks and some of the benefits of that pilot and what are three things that we need to do to replace, to make it better . Three things we need to do to make it better . I did not either indoors or not endorse Operation Safe return. I personally dont view the expedited removal process the ideal way to go to this because i think the Legal Standard is the Legal Standard that if you are doing it correctly will lead to high credible fear determination if you are doing it incorrectly will lead to litigation which will not also create the returns you want. Im not saying its ideal either. Fair enough we have all options im totally with you. My only point is, this is just me im not speaking for the Homeland Security Advisory Committee but i would want to say, you have resources now congress doesnt have to change the law. But people do the normal process not the expedited removal process. See if we can have removal hearings done as quickly as possible. The expedited removal hearing will and you seen this 80 to 90 of the time with a credible fear determination saying yes and now what . We are back and we wasted all of those 20 days. If we dont do anything. I agree. If and happy to have Operation Safe return morphed into something that works better and better. Manufactured continuous improvements. Look at that as the first step and i want to move in the same direction just not sure whether we can. Operation safe return would allow us to have a program that could morph into something more effective. Let me go back to you. Supported or not supported by want to keep talking to your process. I hate saying anything could not be supported. Anything that you do that can have a consequence on the flow is a positive. I think this body needs to take a strong look at beginning that as a pilot. Its a very small step. The legislative fix is still required but anything will start to go and send a different message than currently being sent by this country the country down to the northern triangle countries is an important step. Its very small for the numbers but beyond the numbers it would actually be physically put into removal proceedings the impact that could have on the messaging down in the origin countries could be more significant. It starts at the beginning of a process its not hugely ford and the other thing very interesting to see what the final rule that came from dhs and doj in the last 24 hours on asylum is going to have impact on the flow as well. Staying close to those factors are important but really impacting those pull factors the country has put out there is going to be important to manage the flow. As we talk about children for a large part of the hearing, a lot of those things go away and become a lot easier to manage if we manage the flow and reduce it substantially to more normalized number. These are steps that need to be taken Going Forward. I would add that if congress is unable to change the law and puts flores back to where it was. If he be pra is not going to be amended, Operation Safe return to the extent within existing authorities and within existing resources is something that absolutely should be pursued. It is a step and to the extent it is described as a research and opportunity as an experiment to see if it will work i think it could provide very valuable data. There is a facility in texas where it is underutilized right now. It has all of the capability of implementing Operation Safe return. Our colleagues doctor cooper and ja hearn where they are just a couple weeks ago. Where is it . Texas. 65 miles south of san antonio. It has four or five courtrooms already established. Video capabilities to get administrative judges to video in if they are not physically there. Its currently a 24 person capacity and i think what was it how many people there at the time . Yes. It has excellent medical facilities. Xray, everything you could need to handle any healthcare. Healthcare issues that would arise. Jane karen convinced me. [laughter] its not a p panacea. But its an important step of the other things are not going to happen that we recommended its a very important step. We would give you some data to know when you held the factor in the laws the legal changes that should be made and what the Legal Framework should be. To that extent and because its something that could be done right now and could be done right now i do think its an important first step. The Data Collection that was senator peterson putting in the process. Excellent. One final point. Your prints are all over that thing so you might as well sign on. How you operationalize always becomes a question and dealing with the Operational Agency likely aand i. C. E. In the operational impact. As karen mentioned you dont want to necessarily forecast the organizations what court you will be running during that particular day or week it can all go to dili thats fine but where you actually are operating and what population of people you are using, we did this in our drug days together. You want to have job capability to move around so you can play a more unpredictable game with a very adaptable adversary the cartels. The same people you deal with today. To be able to go ahead and have good Operational Program that attached on a that something we have to implement from day one. Any other . I lead a congressional delegation down to the guatemalan and el salvador at the beginning of this year and we were looking at numbers through the beginning of november in terms of legal immigration. The numbers are pretty flat. As you look at that chart pretty flat up until the beginning of november when it exploded. Among the things that we focus a lot and its important we focus on symptoms of the problem of what we see at the border. Its also critically important to my colleagues now that we try to figure out whats going on in guatemala and el salvador. It turns out el salvador this surge has been a lot less dramatic. One of the reasons why is they had an election there. They elected a new president his name is boo kelly. People have hope. Meanwhile in honduras last year the president of the country got the Supreme Court to declare the constitution was unconstitutional and he could run again. He one won with razor thin margin. Over in guatemala moralis the president very high hopes for turned out to be bitter disappointment. When they had the president ial election the best person that couldve been on the ballot was not even allowed to come into the country and campaign. People are just really fed up. Plus you got the situation with climate problems in an area where situation people can grow coffee and is a really surge people there. Its important we focus on the stuff we are talking about today but also be mindful of some of the things i just mentioned. One of my favorite songs is a song called hope in a hopeless world. This is not an easy problem to solve. There is hope and the work the four of you and the president here and chairman and Ranking Member hosting the roundtable today gives me hope and what is a hopeless world. I wont sing. [laughter] thank you. That would probably keep people here. Senator, we are looking at those push factors in traveling to the northern triangle to guatemala and honduras as a panel thats coming up next month in the meantime now we are receiving a number of briefings from the state department ngos and others regarding the very matters you just talked about with regard to corruption, extortion, and other issues in the northern triangle thats affecting these flows. Our report was an emergence report focusing on pull factors and try to stop stem the flow quickly on the family unit side we are yet to address push factors which will be in our final report in september. As a body the Congress House and Senate Bipartisan way have been supporting three major causes for people that want to get out of those countries, lack of economic hope and opportunity, crime and violence, number three, corruption. What we are doing with the alliance for prosperity, ab senator peters. Anybody else want to make further comments . On behalf of the panel we sincerely appreciate the opportunity to talk about the issues as we saw them our interim report and great soul for the focus and we have high hopes as well senator and and look forward to the outcome. Let me just say i want to echo what senator karp was talking about how much we appreciate what youve done. Often Times Congress will set up commission this was done by the department of Homeland Security but really welldesigned consul from my standpoint i think really well staffed talking about the members. And the fact that you do have a broad spectrum. You are coming together and you are accommodating each others views and doing a thoughtful job for problem solving. Talking about that all the time gathering information defining the problem root cause analysis and then establishing achievable goals. And then start designing solutions. Everything im reading everything all of our discussions you are going to that very thoughtful process. I appreciate the fact you recognize this was an emergency and you had to issue an emergency interim report and im looking forward to september final report but also continuing to work with you because i think this counsel can really have an impact because of the bipartisan, actually prefer using the term nonpartisan nature. But the committee has got a pretty good track record under toms chairmanship and susan and joe lieberman. Its a tradition here. I think working together we really can move the needle on this. I will take the incremental. I will keep twisting leons arm to get support it might be the first step but its a step otherwise we sit back and do nothing and keep yakking about this. I think we are all pretty well moved by that picture of the father and his daughter. I call it derry that morning and said are you sick of this . Lets start doing something different. Lets start having these and i thought this is a very good discussion. Kind of wide ranging maybe not as focused as i would have it but thats the nature of the beast. We will continue to have these discussions with a very sincere desire of starting to develop solutions improve the situation on a continuous basis and i cant send counsels praises enough and all your involvement thank you for doing it. Thank you. With that the hearing will remain open for 15 days until august 1 5 00 p. M. For submission of statements this hearing roundtable is adjourned. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] tonight on cspan2 books about world war ii, Tuskegee Airmen Harry Stewart recalls his life and experiences in combat in his book soaring to glory. Later a conversation about the book four hours of theory the untold story of world war ii largest airborne invasion and the final push into nazi germany. That all starts at 8 00 p. M. Eastern here on cspan2. Two of the democratic president ial candidates former Vice President joe biden and montana governor bullock spoke at the iowa state fair earlier today you can watch that tonight on cspan at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. You can also follow our coverage online at cspan. Org or use the free cspan radio app. Saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on elections in history. Female activists in the 1960s civil rights movement. While women were as judgmental and helping to organize and put the march together, the event was purely dominated by men. Sunday at 4 30 p. M. Eastern the global significance of the declaration of independence during and after the. Multiple translations of our declaration also made their way to columbia, venezuela, ecuador over the course of the 50 year period after 1776. Halfcentury two scholars of the age of the nations. And at 6 00 p. M. Eyewitness accounts from inside the white house during the apollo 11 landing. We really staked ourselves into the cabinet room wrote the day you can see the windows were dark so into nighttime the module landed at 4 15 pm and the astronauts did not walk until later. Its for our nations past unamerican history tv every weekend on cspan3. Next, a discussion about iran and congressional war powers. A panel looked at the authorized use of military force in 2001 and 2002 and how they can be used by the Trump Administration to justify military action today. The Charles Koch Institute hosted this event. Good