Transcripts For CSPAN2 TSA Administrator Nominee Testifies At Confirmation Hearing 20220721

Every number of congress including bios and Committee Assignments and Contact Information for state governors and Biden Administration cabinet. Order your copy today that he can shop the or or scan the code with your smart phone. Every purchase helps support nonprofit operations. Confirmation hearing held for tsa administered, david, President Biden nominated to serve fiveyear term. He testified before the Senate Homeland security committee. The medical come to order. Today we are considering thete nomination of david to be the administratives Transportation Security Administration of the Department Opponents security. Welcome back to the committee and congrats on another nomination for o this position d thank you for your willingness to continue to serve an Important Role in the federal government. Twenty years ago Transportation Security Administration wasr established in response to the september 11 terrorist attacks to carry out the Central Mission of ensuring travelers are both safe and secure. 11 since his creation travelers have encountered tsa on a daily basis most notably during the security screening process at our nations airports. Tsa currently screens over 2 million travelers each and every day. This is a significant undertaking and when the possible without our dedicated frontline tsa staff. They work hard every day to ensure Transportation System especially throughout the National Pandemic really continue to serve a great honor. I am thankful for your support of the tsa workforce and look forward to ensure officers receive the compensation and benefits they deserve. As we discussed during last weeks hearing, the threat to Homeland Security proposed by Unmanned Aircraft systems rapidly growing and i know tsa requested exquisite authorities to conduct counter Unmanned Aircraft system activities to maintain transportation security they support these efforts. Im working on Bipartisan Legislation to reauthorize and strengthen Unmanned Aircraft system authorities to better tackle threat which i plan to introduce in the coming weeks. As we work to protect travelers from threats in the sky we must focus on the trial experience on the ground. As chairman of this committee, ive long pressed the permit oft home and security component agencies to address concerns raised by communities including michigans muslim and arab communities about challenges they face during the travel screening process. Security of the Transportation System is critical that we must ensure f tsa uphold civil rights and liberties the privacy of our travelers. Im pleased customs and Border Protection easily announced a new Senior Community Relations Manager to address unique concerns about like to see tsa take a more proactive step to be responsive to the effective communities and address concerns as well. Keconfirmed for a second term, e will play a Critical Role in ensuring travel screening procedures and standards specifically dhs traveler Inquiry Program are fair and equitable, easy to navigate and transparent as possible. I look forward to working with you to ensure tsa can proactively protect travelers and transportation facilities hearing more about your vision continuing tsa critical mission. Ranking member, with got a lot goingre on around capitol hill right now, he will be here shortly andra have an opportuniy for Opening Statement at thatt time. Now is the practice of the committee to swear in witnesses so if you will stand and raise your right hand. Do you swear testimony you will get before the committee will be the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god . Thank you, you may be seated. Our witnesses today, david murkowski, nominated to serve a second term administrator of the Transportation Security Administration of the department of Homeland Security. He oversees 60000 employees and responsible for Security Operations in nearly 440 airports throughout themi United States and security of highways, railroads, mass transit systems and pipelines. While in dhs t administrator served as acting secretary and senior official performing duties of deputy secretary. It is to be he served as the 26th vice, the of the coast guard and executive in the Government Services industry where he led teams to provide counter terrorism, security and Intelligence Support Services to government agencies. The minister,rn welcome back to this committee, thank you once again for your service and willingness to serve once again. You may proceed with opening remarks. Thank you and good morning. Distinguished numbers of the committee. I had the honor of serving leader of the transportation security is Administration Nearly five years and is my privilege to be before you today to be considered for a second fiveyear term as administrator. I think President Biden for nominating for the National Security position and thank secretary mayorkas in the dhs team for their support during this process. As and the entire dhs team for their support during this process. I deeply appreciate the support my family provides me in this position in throughout my career. When President Biden announced my renomination, one equate and said to me, thats a tough job, why would you want to do it again for another five years . The answer to this is simple. I want to continue to support the amazing tsa workforce. The tsa workforce is exceptional and, during my time at tsa, they have performed at a highlevel image challenging in historic circum im immensely proud to be part of an organization laser focused on protecting our nation and its transportationon system. They are a dedicated and committed workforce for for four transportation secured secured offers interact with people everyday and perform a critical National Security function forta nation. Their watch never stops. They came to work without pay for 35 day partial Government Shutdown in 2019. Based checkpointsur with much of the rest of the country remained calm amidst the covid19 pandemic. The transportation security opposite of an important part of the recovery of the travel we are seeing this year especially this summer. Similarly our air marshals protect the nation during shutdowns pandemics and highlevel incidents. They do so with the level of professionalism and integrity that serves asalhe a model for e entire tsa family. Her workforce is an inspiration to me and totally deserving of our full support. That starts with funding the fiscal year 2023 budget request which provides pay at for tsa employees to put someone in equal pay footing with the rest of their counterparts in the federal government critic if confirmed and will continue to do all i cant can to advocate for and hopefully implement pay equity now contains work hard to ensure they tsa workforce as well for ford wellprepared to meet the challenges of the next five years and beyond. Our mission of success is strictly dependent on the cooperation between the agency and its its partners from the addition we continue our Strong Partnerships with our critical stakeholders Airlines Airport state and local governments other federal agencies warned governments and pilots and flight attendants. Equally important arede the growing partnerships we have with the surface transportation sector. Tsa works closely with the oil and gas pipeline passenger transit rev freight rail trackingng and other industries. Met the challenges of growing cyber thats thats tsa relies heavily on forging partnerships with thed owners and operatorsf her critical transportation and for structure or which tsa serves. I value our Strong Partnership with organized labor and employee Resource Groups an Advisory Panel to provide advocacy for work for us us. The remains from by promoting health and varmint bird tsa family. I want to take a second and eyrecognize his partnerships and thank all those entities for their contributions to securing our Transportation Systems. Confirmed that everything i can to make sure the tsa maintains the strength to form important partnerships to ensure the highest level of transportation security works in tandem with that was facilitation of trade and commerce but i want to thank this committee for the critical work to counter unmanned aerial systems. I also appreciateth the work on Critical Infrastructure security toto include efforts testing the cybersecurity of the transportation sector. If reconfirmed out support and cooperate. After 20 years tsa has grown that arent agreed deal about how brett to protect our nations Transportation Systems. We still have much work to do and i remain committed to tsas future. Distinguished members of this committee i look forward to answering your questions. Thank you administrator. Ranking member you are recognized. Mr. Chair thank you for having this hearing. This is a really critical position and you know it well. Its also one that this committee cares a lot about given our own set of her sponsor though it is. Tsa has played a vital rolel since 9 11 in combating terrorism and ensuring her aviation and Transportation Systems are protected. As i walk through the tsa which i do twice a week i say thank you for protecting us. And we appreciate that and we have talked to try to help ensure thewh tsa personnel are treated appropriately and end in a Law Enforcement contacts and we want to do more in that regard. So we appreciate your work and the diligence of the tsa workforce and if you look at the record although gao and others have helped to make your system more thatusus are laid pointingt flaws we have been blessed with having the kinds of incidents that we after 9 11. I will say 9 11 type threats having been really the greatest challenge when tsa was balked up appropriately it has evolved over time and specifically i want to talk to you about health tsa needs to realign to look at those evolving threats. Colonial pipeline is a big issue of concern with this committee and we had hearings on it and drafted legislation to help deal with that. It exposed probabilities in tsas oversight of her nations surface Transportation System specifically the pipelines. More broadly. The Colonial Pipeline was the largest attack on Oil Infrastructure in the history of the country. It also prompted you to issue the firstever Cyber Security related Security Threat for owners and operators of pipelines that require mandatory mitigation measures. When issuing these directives tsa used Emergency Authority to bypass regulatory notice. I remain concerned that this Emergency Authority to approach industry at experts on Cyber Security standards and this committee is fair to say on a bipartisan basis has concerns about this and other areas his repeated refusal to provide information to this committee about those draft directive to congress. This includes the chairs and Ranking Members of this committee and other congressional Oversight Committees despite having shared confidence of the draft of the directives to the pipeline industry. You provided them to the pipeline industry but not to the Oversight Committee. The explanation we have gotten p is you wont provide the traps because they are. Decisional and therefore g deliberative. That confuses me since you shared them with external companiesgu and officials so toy we want you to explain how these documents can be delivered deliberative with the private sector and thats a contradiction. I think sometimes when things come upp to congress they tend o become to public. All i can say is senator peters and i in particular have a history of treating these kinds of sensitive documents in the appropriate way and we need to know what your draft directives are saying to the private sector to be sure our responsibilities, which are incredibly important right now with regard to whats happening in the pipelines and other potential transit are able to be fulfilled so again thank you for your years of service. Tsa will continue to be an important piece of the Security Framework of the United States sp get back to more travel. I was at the airport on monday and it was packed and i was told we are 85 of where we were precovid this summer. Frankly we are back to where we were in december of 2019 so thats good to85 hear. Business is still off. With inflation and all the concerns about where our economy is headed we have to make suree the tsa continues to provide this Important Service to protect our nation and we appreciate what they do every day. Again thank you mr. Chairman for this timely hearing and i look forward to further talking about this threat directive. Thank you Ranking Member portman. There are three questions that this committee as if everyone who comes before us and there will ask you if administrator David Pekoske if he could respond briefly with a yes or no. First is there anything you are aware of in your background that might present a conflict of interest with the duties of the office in which you have been nominated. Now sir you know anything personal or otherwise that would in any way prevent you from fully and honorably discharging a responsibilities of the office in which you have been nominated . No sir. Do agree without reservations to comply with any request or summons to appear to testify before any duly constituted committee of congress . No sir. Administrator pekoske we have spoken at length about concerns raised from the arabamerican communities about many of the tsa implemented lists and policies and programs that can lead to additional screenings at airports. We can both agree that security for thees airline is of utmost importance and thats something im focused on 100 as i know you are but their multiple documented cases of individuals remaining on these lists for over a decade even though theres no evidencee whatsoever that they pose any sort of a threat. My question to you sir to tell me what stress steps are taken to concern the policies disproportionately Impact Communities come impact certain communities and have done so for at least 20 years. Mr. This is something i want to address completely and fully because i think its important for an agency that has security responsibilities that directly impacts two plus Million People every single day in United States to have the trust of that traveling population of the procedures we have in the processes we use our fair equitable and consider civil rights and Civil Liberties concerns concerns. I commit to i will do everything that i can which is substantial, to address this issue. You mentioned in your Opening Statement a direct report to provide input and i fully endorse that idea. Ed we have been opposite traveler engagement within tsa thats a directre reporter the administrator but i do want to make sure those lines of communication are robust to the point of rather than waiting for someone to come to us that we have a regular scheduled meeting. The other thing i promise to do anis to visit the communities in the state of michigan and minnesota to introduce myself to those communities and to establish a relationship with them at my level in addition to the relationships that exist at other levels within the agency but i want people to feel that they have any questions about how tsa processes their security that we listen carefully to get the facts that are there and make sure h we go back and we arent unfairly causing the additional process to any particular traveler. The other thing we discussed that im already looking at is in our communications with travels travelers to be true program i think we can prove what we communicate back to passengers to clearly explain what the letter says and what it means and what it doesnt mean. Sir you have my full commitment to address this. He came back and had a very good experience in michigan and i look forward to partnering with him and the secretary to present a dhs team that can address this problem. I appreciate your commitment at all look forward to hosting you and michigan in the near term. Thank you for your willingness to do that. As the nation continues to recover from covid19 pandemic tsas frontline staff as youre well aware work tirelessly to ensure that our system remains safe and secure however significant parts of the tsa workforce i think they are underpaid relative to othere similarly situated federal employees and other agencies which is impeded tsas ability to retain qualified workers that are so essential for us so my question to you sir i appreciate your support of the proposal to address this longstanding inequity that were provide frontline tsa staff with an increase in their base pay. Id like you to address what is the impact of his compensation and benefit disparities on our frontline tsa workforce and why do we need this action to rectify the situation . Mr. Chairman is my Number One Party as administrator and if confirmed im going to fix fix this page to print our frontline transportation Security Officers the uniformed officers that traverse the every time they travel to a Security Checkpoint on average they get paid 30 less than their counterparts are thus fundamentally unfair and it is impeded our ability to recruit talent. This isve one of the things we need to address. Ir the first included in the fy23 budget request to improve pay acrosstheboard in tsa not above any federal agency. Equitable to every federal agency and i just think its so important that we do that. We have in our screening workforce at 20 attrition rate and thats way too high. When a watch average checkpoints go from five yearsre to four yes to three thats a security concern as well. I appreciate your continued strong support of pay equity. Its critically important for the success of tsa going forward. Thank you by last weeks Committee Held a hearing to examine the threats to the homeland by Unmanned Aircraft systems as well as the potential expansion authorities to counter these uaf threats. Part of the legislation and working with senator johnson would provide explicit authorization for the tsa to conduct activities to protect transportation facilities and assets. Administrator pekoske can you explain the uaf airports are currently facing to this committee and white tsa needs these authorities to maintain safe and secure air travel . We have uaf challenges every single day and just yesterday we had three reports from a pilot of sightings of uafs either landing or taking off. Two or three days ago we had a helicopter that had a coalition with the uaf and we do test in miami and one in los angeles. Those testbeds show us the reports we get from pilot sewage is mentioned orin just the tip f the iceberg of uaf activity around airports. Where testing our tech track and identify equipment around those airports. We have done a lot of work on this. Theres so much more work to do. As you said our authority expires in october. If our authorities expire without being reviewed are refreshed all of those tested we currently do in the coordination hework we currently do. This is a growing threat to our Aviation System and we need to continue this work at pace. I appreciate your focus and your emphasis on providing direct authority to the agency. This is something weve been able too respond to having those direct authorities would enable that. Thanknk you. Ranking member portman you are recognized. Mr. Pekoske i want to ask you about terrorism and the tsa success which was identified at Columbia National and someone attempting to board a plane. Was this man listed on the nofly list . No sir who is not listed on the nofly list. This occurred in april for days after he was encountered by Border Patrol in yuma arizona and when he showed up at the tsb checkpoint given the aid information be provided to the carrier when he purchased his ticket we knew we needed to do additional Identity Verification work with this traveler net that warranted additional enhanced screening to work with him and swelled as we did. I cant confirm whether any passenger in general we dont confirm if they are the terrorist database. What i can say is the information this passenger provided indicated to us we needed to provide enhanced screening andnd we needed to get further information on his identity. Furthermore we thought it was necessarily provide federal air marshals on the flight that he was on. Do allow some names on the terror screening database to fly . You sir. Why would you allow that . Because we dont think those passengers present such an immediate risk as it be catastrophic to an airplane inyo flight. We have concerns and we feel we can mitigate those concerns there are screening process with federal air marshals on the flight. Also as part of that process would work withen the fbi Screening Center so all agencies that have an interest are advised at that passenger. I like to followup on that or maybe its its better to classified sessions. Rather than having to bring air marshals and that person should not be permitted on a u. S. Carrier or u. S. Flight. Understand and happy to bring any appropriate study. This is a very carefully developed and coordinated management process that we have used for years. Happy to brief you on it. Do you arent going to tell me if mr. Pekoske was on that list that you treated them him as though he was . Guest sir. Ot we treated him with the rest that we felt he presented and we wanted to mitigate that risk. Does he continue to fly . I dont know whether he is attempted to fly that he would be permitted to fly. Is heis here legally . I dont know the answer that question sir but that would be at customs and Border Protection question. You didnt find that out in the process of the screening . Thank you is admitted to the country byby Border Patrol. A couple hundred thousand people a month are here unlawfully. C. Mchugh is admitted and most likely awaiting immigration procedures. And you explain to this committee why you can share dropped copies of with regard to security for the pipeline industry and can you explain why you would divide the straps copies to the private sector and not to the congressional Oversight Committees . Guest sir. Went to collaborate with their Oversight Committee as greatly as we can with benefit significantly from that process. We have offered and i believe we have briefed as the security directive you referenced in your Opening Statement. Let me be clear on that heres a letter from a sober of last year where we asked the Inspector General to gett involved in this because we were not getting information and they are doing an ig investigation to figure out what is appropriate. An audit of your processes so weve been asking for this for a long time and senior staff nodding their head. We briefed last week and he wouldntng leave the documents r the rest of us to see including members of the committee and he did it last week i sent because you are coming here today which weul appreciate you being here. Again senator peters have a history of treating thesepe documents with a sensitive and in this case may be reasons for us to have these documents provided to us in a classified setting and we understand that but we would like to see them. We dont want to wanto know the Colonial Pipeline and their job is to try to do oversight todi avoid that. We are drafting legislation to deal with it and wed like to know what the directives are you that are telling the pipelines. It makes our job very hard and make sure job harder to so i would ask you today to share those with us. You say they are internal operations and is that the reason you have not shared them . We are about to reissue those. Im going to assign that directive when i get back to my office andbe the reason they werent offered last week is because it was not in final form. That way youll see the net result process of working with the industry and are other federal partners. Why have you share those with us . We will sir. Youll get a copy this afternoon. Thank you appreciate that. They wave any claim of information from disclosure and we have been at this for a long time. Since october of last year. We appreciate you sharing it with us and again i thank you for your willingness to step ups and serve and you have a tough job because its a difficult task for tsa and your pay grades are not that of other federal Law Enforcement officials. I think the tsa morale problem is real and ive had a lot of discussions with tsa individuals through the years and this has spanned administrations and secretary so we are putting the onus on this administration. You have been under the Trump Administration out of Biden Administration. If confirmed what is your role in improving moral row in what plans do you have to do differently in your experience of the past five years . My role part of what i am trying to do and does take some time is to want to be responsive to the feedback we are getting from the workforce in the agency. We do a federal Employee Viewpoint survey per year. We have actively encouraged people to fill out the survey results and i think we demonstratect farewell to our employees that we Pay Attention to the input receive and look at potential location differences so we can go and figure out whats going on to address the source of dissatisfaction. I think its part of it but its not the only part and part of it is to make sure people have an opportunity to do all the great things that we do in the Security Checkpoint and beyond. My time has expired and we look for to the draft directive. Thank you for your service. Thank you sir. 600 portman goododd morning, hw are you . Nice to be back. Its good to see you. You and i have worked together on this committee for a long time. Oo the chair of the subcommittee was good enough to let me be a swingman. How are you today . Great sir thank you. Thank you brought folks from your team and i look i didnt see couple of familiar faces and advise a pleasure to see them. Cowe are as good as the people e have around us and you have some Exceptional People around you. Our staff has a couple questions if i could ask you. Let me start by saying youve had the Opportunity Service role for five years and what are some the things you learned in do you can do in the next five effectively . The agency is incredibly complex and we have talked about the chairmans Opening Statement we are known for aviation security. Just that sentence understates the scope and scale of what we do because aviation meets airlines and airports and cargo facilities etc. So its a very complex job. I endeavor to be too is close to the frontline as i possibly can because i dont want to be in a setting like this speaking to the Agency Process and have cafolks that work the tsa hearig me say that and say he doesnt have that as he wished he would. As i said in my Opening Statement and we talked about this in your office im humbled by the tremendous workforce that the tsa has a knife you might primary responsible responsibility given the tools and technology they need to succeed. Thank you. I recall i think in 2015 the Transportation Security Administration created an Innovation Task force. One was to foster and making sure the agency stays ahead. You have stated the task force is collaborating with industry and airlines and equipment manufactures to try to find the best technology to improve security and improve the Passenger Experience. Could you give us an update and concrete examples on how this task force has responded to be Threat Landscape by bad actors and the gaps in our defenses. Additionally how is tsa working with Industry Partners to enhance our security . The Innovation Task force is embedded in our staff within tsa headquarters but it reaches across the entire agency and their entire partners separate to give a couple examples. The passengers can see when they go through the screening process when you think about that if you put it and can the context of Government Agency delivering quickly improve security and that improves the Passenger Experience at the same time be the first example i give you is our dance Identification Technology in all taken a step further as to where this is going in next couple months. We announced a partnership with apple where passengers can download their passenger information from the apple wallet. When you walk up to the checkpoint rather than handing over your drivers license or inserting a drivers license into machine its a nap on your your phone and it transmits information so it totally touchless. What happens not infrequently as people forget their drivers licenses sometimes but they always have their phone. The passengers have better security. The next technology is a c. A. T. Scan Xray Technology gives us a much better picture to the point where we can resolve any concern we have generally of the screen. Passengers that use the technology when they go through the screening process dont have to take out liquid aerosols or laptops because we have the machine look in the bag to determine if theres anything in there that would cause concern. We pride ourselves and working closely with our partners and we have been working with one of the major carriers on biometrics and what this means is. Check passengers can show up and use their facial image to validate anden we have developed this technology significantly to the point where they can check their bags with their face. Theres a bag tag that we put on them put on the Conveyor Belt watch a walk up too the checkpoint and begin the screening process. When they board the aircraft its their face to get someone to the aircraft so they are a lot less pieces of paper that they need to carry and for us very much and improve security posture. I am concerned aboutut moral. When i fly i usually take transit but when i go through security i talked to tsa agents and thank them for what they do and tell them who i am. I let them know we appreciate very much what they do. I a lot of years of my life as a naval flight officer and i learned a whole lot about leadership and learn to blog about morale and how to foster good morale in the military. You could grate leadership opportunities in the coast guard and what are some lessons he learned in those years that you were able to put to work and ill ask you to be so think. I would sum it up in the presence. You need to be present with the workforce and they need to see yoyou there and that you were engaged in the work that they do and second is communication. Im sure youve experienced this when youre in the navy everyone says communications could be there. So lets get ahead of as much as we canan and continue strong communication one thing thats so critically important for a functioning organization is that everybody feels included. Nobodyio feels excluded and everybody feels like they have the opportunities that their counterparts happen i want to continue that. Mr. Chairman i relinquish reluctantly the gavel. Thank you for your great service. Senator hawley you are recognized. Mr. Pekoske thank you for being here. To be frank i have some currents about your allowing immigrants he responded no a process while they were will accept acceptable forms of i. D. At checkpoints and then he went on to list the forms at tsa would accept that include a warrant arrest of an alien awarded for middle deportation in order for Lisa Mccubbin for Lisa Mccubbin since an order supervision and notice to appear and arrival and a porch or forms including a. To electronic record or an alien booking record but a routine on january 31 of this year asking you about this and you responded responded heavy responded . No sir we have not responded and i will respond tomorrow. I sar response earlier. Youll have it tomorrow. Read at tuesdays hearing. Maybe we should have more of these hearings. This is is july and i set it to you in january. Thats a very long time to respond to a letter that is 2. 5 pages long. Lets assume we get some answers now how many individuals were permitted to travel in this calendar year . Under 1000. How does that policy comport which these individuals that have these arrest warrants those arrest warrants were issued by the Border Patrol or customs officer. They serve as the beginning to art identity process cant wait wait that form and go through. You have to go through process to verify that you are the person you claim to be and you are receiving the level of screening which includes enhanced screening where people have a record. If someone presents with arrest warrant is subject to an interview with the airport director . Have an interview at the officers seated at the checkpoint. Those officers are talking to. Way, what are we talking about . For transportation officers at the checkpoint. But not the federal Security Director . They will bring in the federal security officer. We are looking at whether a person is legal or illegal. Their function is to make sure. Why not . Arose to make sure the people that might pose a risk to transportation iss significant enough to require screening for to not allow them to fly. Someone who is known to violate a law in the United States does not verify up personal screening fed . There are people everyday that violate the laws the United States. You dont think someone whoe is by definition someone who present a warrant for an arrest you dont think that facilitates enhanced screening . You just told me it doesnt necessarily involve being interviewed by the federalal Security Director. Yvonne weber leasedn 1000 peop. A screening and getting on an airplane are two different things. I just dont understand, for every person watching this hearing is experienced by tsa screening process it can often be very onerous and its very long and under your tenure ship if the screening screens have done up, up, up at airports across the country including my state. So long as process in the country at our airport there. People who have been absolute nothing wrong in every respect are subject to the most invasive screenings that you are allowing Illegal Immigrants with warrants for arrest and waving them onto the airplane. You just let me told me about 1000 people travel on airlines with warrants for arrest. Papers and that warrants in the warrant is the agony of the Identity Verification process. Why said at the end of the process . Why do you say sorry you have a warrant for your arrest andat we are owing to let you on. Weou ensure those individuals get the right level of screening for folks who do not have the on of i. D. Theys receive enhanced screening separate Single Person represents with a warrant receives an enhanced screening before they are allowed to get on anat airplane. Ifif theyll pass a screening ty are allowed to get on the airplane. I think you have a hard time explaining for folks to wait for all this timeno in these lines s subject in cells voluntarily to all the restrictions that you impose who are patted down and frist and asked to step aside and had their luggage rifled through andim have it confiscatd them in randomly selected oras sometimes not so randomly for enhanced screening senor allowing illegal aliens withav warrants for an arrest to get on airplanes and youve allowed at least 1000 of them. I just find that totally extraordinary. Let me ask you about something you did when you weree acting security from january 20 to february 2 at 2021. He published a memo that echo the 100 day moratorium on almost all it illegal immigrant removal as well as a 100 day review of immigration Law Enforcement policy. Thankfully this was blocked by a federal judge. I dont understand why you were tryingen to reduce the border capabilities at a time when we are experiencing record levels of illegal immigration . We dont have enough resources to handle the number of people coming acrosswe the border and we are trying to look as the resources that we have no agency in this government has all the resources they need to do the task that theyve been asked to do. Im sorry city ranter is you want to do less enforcement and ignore a everyone who was here before november 1, 2020 . Heres what you are attempting to do. Ju try to narrow the enforcement ability toto include only three types of ill legal aliens, those convicted of aggravated felonies and were released from incarceration on or after the date of your memo. Thats a significant amount. You issued this in january of 2021. Its all for. Those are enforcement parties. All i not all the enforcement ad since it occurred and it allows for discussion by the officer. Those priorities are for resource allocations instances where the resources would be placed to most effectively. I think those three parties are three the Top Priorities week out to focus are enforcementve on. I have to say in terms if your priorities and what you have done allowing those with arrest warrants to fly and lawabiding services and your record of experience you are putting lawabiding citizens through i cant say i agree with your priorities. Thank you mr. Chairman. Thank you senator holly and senator senator scott you are recognized. That i didnt hear all of senator hawley costa questions but can you describe what authority of thein law you allo . Illegal immigrants are permitted to use ice warns as form of identification for tsa . Explain why you would do that. Thanks for the opportunity. That i. C. E. Arrest warrant is not a criminal warrant of a common termm and common term. This individual has encountered i. C. E. And i. C. E. Has released them and given them a document is a form of Identity Verification like for four tsa so when i. C. E. Issues these forms in the person chooses to travel they make a reservation withti the carriers they normaly would and they come to the screening checkpoint in show up at that form. That begins the entire process where we work to verify their identity. What we are looking to do is to ensure this is the person who claims to be in front of us and we have enhanced this quite a bit over the past year, year and a half and now we are working with customs and Border Protection to use their biometric identification. Were these individuals of approach aa check in with the reservation we can go biometric facial scam. It willch return as a result tht yes this person was encountered by Border Patrol or field officer and they were enrolled in the country and we verify it. Theyve been checked against the secure databases. My trips to the border many through their i. D. Before they cross the border. At that experience of people who come over with their i. D. So what you said doesnt seem it would work. How can anybody verify who they are . They use biometrics so either a facial image or. From mexico or venezuela . The individual provides their biometric and weeds that either metric to ensure the biometric is representative with the correct information. So what youre saying is someone throws their i. D. When they come across the border and they say im rick scott. Im rick scott and heres my information. Cuba is not going to give it or venezuela or neck or agua and they use that to get on the plane. That person might notgi have identification. The Border Patrol captures the image and uses fingerprints to ensure that they are not watchlisted in this country when that person approaches the tsa checkpoint we go back and verify that this is the person the Border Patrol admitted into the country and this person did not have information on them so irregardlessss of the outcome oe we got the right entity verification process a person with a non a wrestler with which our noncriminal arrest warrant gets into an aircraft with that enhanced screening process therewh situations where we eventually deny entry but that is rare. As an american citizen you have to have photo i. D. If i came across the border today and Border Patrol stops me and they take my i. D. How fast can they file its . We have processes where we have american citizens every day that losee their identity or forget their identity when they come to the checkpoint. We have some passengers that approached the checkpoint with no identity whatsoever. We used the same Identity Verification process is in our operation center. They can fly the same day. Provided we can validate their identity. We have a whole series of processes. If they are cuban citizen, if they have lived in cuba all of their life and came across the border you have no information. We have no information so and we cant validate their identity then they dont fly. They have come across may have no idea and no background and they give their name and dotheir fingerprint and they wil fly. Unless we capture a on their Border Crossing and check them against the watchlist information that we all hold. You have no permission. We would have their. All you have is they say their name and their. And they can fly . Think about that first second that you know you have no information and you get nothing out of iran in nothing about north korea nothing out of a lot of african nothing about nicaragua and people can get on and airline and fly immediately. As an american citizen that doesnt make sense. They go through a full patdown in addition to the regular screening process. We have mitigated risk substantially from that process and we know we take their. When they cross the border and we know if their. Is not matching with anybody. I just think as an american citizen you know people are coming across our border and we didnt stop the 9 11 attackers into me i think this is an unbelievable risk. Throw your i. D. Away and you are a terrorist and im not on the list yet. Youre here to do harm and those people can fly. Its different now than 9 11 we have a very sophisticated system that would detect people that would present harm to guide states and we abuse the system successfully for years now. This identification process has been in place since 2019. Let me ask a question. Ive gone through some time today to see how many people get through. How many people get through and how many times does the gun get through . We do covid tests on a regular basis. Those results arisew classified. We use those to show his wearable or abilities might exist. I think you would acknowledge knives get through and guns get through . Knives and guns never get through. They dont get their screening . We are doing a full patdowne of the person. We would detect explosives knives or guns. Very thorough. And it needs to be. Thank you. Thank you senator scott. Mr. Murkowski while senator scott and senator hawley have been asking about the policy to an arrest except an arrest warrant my question is to you when did the tsa make the policy change . The policy change was in 2019. This is a trump demonstration policy . Yes sir currently made us stronger. 19 senator off of senators sossoff. So they have for me begin by addressing concerns and delays that are affecting hartsville Jackson International airport in atlanta. As the public to air travel after the series of the covid19 pandemic Airline Passengers have been frustrated by long lines at ports in georgia and across the country. Many airports have faced delays in stepping capacity issues that tsa Security Checkpoints. How is tsa practically addressing workforce shortages the expanded employee recruitment efforts click thank you for the question thank you for the support of the team at atl. We very much appreciated. We are seeing rapid recovery of travel to 90 of where we were. Our staff is not where it needs to be but in general across the system every single day we are meeting our wait times and the standards are for non. Check passenger to be screened within 30 minutes in a precheck passenger within 10. We consistently, with raremi exception considering 2400 screening lines i will have maybe three or four reports a day. Having said that we need more step in what we had today and we expect the recovery to continue into the fall and the december holidays. We done great work in providing incentives. First you have to keep the great employees who currently have so we provide to keep employees at tsa. We had six or seven are people that showed up at recruiting that would help in atlanta. We do our rcra murk process all at one time. You do your testing in your medical process and all the security forms. The streamlined their ability to bring people on. The other thing that is critically important cirque on a per share supported this as we do have a proposal on the budget for the president s budget for 2020. To provide for tsa and as you may know are frontline screening reports to reporters received 30 less pay than if they worked in a federal agency. We are about 30 off. Does that impact our ability to recruit people . Its a won it my most important things at the agency to provide responses to questions of members of Congress Might have and if its approved approved thank you administered and we commit to working with my office and atf leadership including the general manager at hartsville ensure that airport has sufficient staff to wait times . I was met with him and i will ask them to do that. Going to ask you about airport firearms safety. Georgia has twice the nationalye rate of firearm retention by tsa and this number is increasing its estimated 80 of firearms are loaded. Box i reported a firearm made it through security at hartsfieldjackson a notice. The armed individual was not founded me of order to fly. Tsa is confirmed that its implementing training and policy changes to prevent incidents like this from recurring and it goes without saying undetected firearmsms present a serious danger to Airline Passengers and aviation safety. This potential incident is extremely concerning pay what steps are you taking in response to the increasing number of firearms into the airport particular and georgian major hubs like hartsville Jackson National airport . Thank you for the question. Its a significant issue for all of this presumptive bar this calendar year we have had for your ford weapons detective the chip point. Compared to last year to about the same number when you prorated for this calendar year. The rate is starting to go down but its still way too high. We are making sure we as people go through the line we remind everybody you cannot bring a weapon into an airport beach you can carry weapon in your checked baggage and their procedures for doing that and everything weucae doing and we. Share supported this is where putting new technology at our Security Check once an a lot of that technology is at the atlantic airport. Part of that technology is to detect some of these which currently we dont have the ability to do. As you can imagine when you are looking at hundreds of images and they do a shift rotation having those technologies whicht are available would further drive down reasons like the oneg you cited. We you provide to my office this committee and explanation of this specific incident and the steps he took in response to it and updated us as soon as the policy changes in officer training changes and the response is complete . The federal flight deck officer Program Provides training allows tsa did to defend aircraft against violence and terrorism. The program was created in the wake of 9 11 and thousands of flight crewmembers anywhere to train to georgia or the program has not received sufficient funding. With the air travel increasing this progress more vital thanro ever as thats waiting to strengthen the Security Program in the appropriations bill. Mr. Where you champion continued funding for the federal flight deck officer program should he be confirmed to another firm to tsa . Its a fantastic programfo we appreciate all the captains and first officer volunteered to go through the training. We in tend to provide it permanent Training Facility and i would appreciate your support of that appropriation. I appreciate your response in your time in service and i yield back mr. Chairman. Thank you senator ossoff but in january i had the opportunity to her checkpoint at the federal airport and i had the ability to see cuttingedge technologies being deployed right now and asp well as across the country and not just in the tray. My question for you administrator one of the technologies ive said it observed was the tsa is credentialed technology scanning machines can you discuss how the tsas machine can provide additional security editor airports . The technology is at his advancement. It valid validate the authenticity of a credentialed credentialed person. If it memories the markings on 56 types of drivers licenses that exist in the country for passports from round the world thats a difficult job to do. This technology doesnt automatically. The first thing it does is verify the authenticity of the document in the second thing is very important for us. For the first time in tsas history were able to do a risk evaluation by passenger as they are standing in front of the officer so that technology is connected to our database and that will tell us what flight the passengerser on what the passenger status is whether a pit. Check passenger passenger who may require enhanced screening and its in real time rather than 24 hours out. We can address it right there. Additionally in a pandemic not having to hand your credentials overe. Somebody else was appreciated by her officers and certainly appreciated by officers. It will include a camera of very high fidelity camera that will allow us to do by her metric matching soquel take a picture the person sending friend and compare the image on the drivers license or passport which is highly accurate. It basically speeds things up and its better for security and better for passengers. Understand tsa is working on a new generation of these machines, to which sounds like a good name for the next generation allows for verificationes up passenger identity using camera facial matching is part of the. Rss. When can we expect these cat to machines become to become more widely used. The cat to Technology Enhances the camera in the system so it brings the biometric capability in. In addition it has the ability to read individual identities so if youre using a drivers license on apple devices and Android Devices you can use that facial identity in the screening process. The cat the cat ii system is in that stage and we expect to reach full operating capability in the future. We just rebate fund this program so we are slightly behind. The cat ii program would be used at the largest airports in the country. At theul current funding levels that wont be completed for good long time and thats why my focus isis on getting the accout at tsa at a level more lscommensurate with where we see the need to close security gaps which is cat does. So i thank you circuit by senator rosen you are recognized for a question. Thank you chairman peters i appreciate you waiting for me and thank you for your willingness toce serve. Eclets talk about transportatin cybersecurity. Tsa you have an enormous and complex responsibility in securing the nations Transportation System from physical and cyber threats. Tax on american frustration andti infrastructure. Senator wicker and i wrote with secretary meyer kherson transportation secretary would a judge requesting information about the respective agencies security related processes there measures to strengthen cybersecurity cross the transportation sector. You mention when we met in my office last month the tsa wants to robustly regulate cybersecurity specially at airports or airlines and the freight rail systems. Mr. Missed rent or would you talk about what the future of tsa cybersecurity efforts will look like if you are confirmed for another term and you have the resources and does tsa have the resources it needs to properly address the cybersecurity risk for critical Transportation System and what do you need from us . Thank you senator and i pursued the question and you are right. There has been a lot of effort over the past year with cybersecurity across Critical Infrastructure in the country. We begin with the oil and natural gas pipeline systems. One of them is consistent with what this committee has long championed that is cyber report its over require cyber instance to be reported to cisada who distributes them throughout the ad agencies and in julyy of last year we put a series of measures in place that required companies 97 companies at a 3000 to put these mission plays over the course of the year could we are about toth issue today and i wil send a copy of what we issued today that Second Security directive that changes the approach and allows what has been done to continue when owners and operators want to tailor the cyber approach. To give them the flexibility to do that so we are going from a prescriptive measure to a performancebased. You know all be well received by the industries and this will be a template for our perch to rail in the future. Thats great because i know you have other security pilot programs in the works. The department of commerceot recently published its 2022 travel and tourism strategy which focuses federal government efforts to support the tourism and ambitious goal of attracting 90 to the u. S. Each year. That is particularng important d porting to my state of nevada. To recycle the National Strategy strategy and specifically that onestop security pilot program. The tour bus includes onestop Security Program that would allow passengers and baggage arriving from certain airports not have to go through additional screening and they bypass the second round at the departure and his comments are within u. S. We on the Commerce Committee have talked about how accretion of the onestop program with support emission for tsa and what do you think about that considering the new technologies that were merged in the travel space in qr codes and all of those things were to think about making the travel experience more efficient . Senator rosen we want to make the travel experience from my perspectivet more secure and moe safe and better experience for travelers going to her system could onestop security appreciate your effort on that program. Flights from airports where we have a onestop agreement are more commensurate with u. S. Standards than they would otherwise be in additionally provides great facilitation for those travelers once they write in a state so they would not have to go through screening again in the United States because it would establish limits orid security levels at e departure airports. Adding the technology piece to it as well for me and we synchronize our technology and our standards of performance internationally even more so than we do today. Id also like to highlight senator rosen who touched on it las vegas International Airport is the home of her tsa academy and they provide us an entire checkpoint to be going to the airport and you have seen this youve seen our latest technology. We can bringng passengers throuh her most recent technology and get a gauge for how they are interacting so we can calibrate along the way so i appreciate your support on that. I appreciate that in any thought about using the w qr cos or some of these newer technologies, biometrics . Yes maam. We are working biometrics because itss better for secury and its touchless for passengers. We are working closely with American Airlines on Digital Identity that is showing great promise. Soic coupling that with a drives license work we do its better for passengers and quicker. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you mr. Chairman. Thank you senator rosen. I would certainly like to thank you once again for joining uspe here today to discuss your nomination to serve a second term as tsa administrator. Confirmed i look forward to getting to work with you on all the issues we have discussed here today and we will always welcome me back to the committee to discuss these issues in public as well. The nominee is filed responses to biographical and financial questionnaires on without objection this information will be made part of the hearing record with the exception of the Financial Data which is on file and available for public inspection. This hearing record will remain open until 12 00 p. M. Tomorrow july 22 at the submission of statements and questions for the record. This hearing is now adjourned. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] the morning and thank you for joining us. Im the Vice President of the Bipartisan Policy Center in todays the second in our series reviewing the republican congress. Not surprisingly divided government is cpcs spot in if all the predictions are correct its expected the republicans will take the house of representatives after the november election if unclear about the senate that regard is we will have that to by the governments of the question washington is what does that mean for policy