Surveillance reauthorization, 6038 was the vote. The 60th vote was needed to announce that bill. Also on capitol hill, a number of hearings we covered, a rather lengthy one on Homeland Security. A routine oversight hearing with Kiersten Nielsen kirstjen nielsen. Testified before the judiciary subcommittee on this issue. And also talked with a number of senators about the recent changes in daca and immigration. Here is what she had to say with some senator amy klobuchar. Listening to your answers under oath that you did not hear and i will not repeat this word and give it any dignity, we will collect the word shole. You testified under oath you did not hear the president use that word up a meeting. Correct. Is a possible he said the word at the meeting and you do not hear it . Anything is possible. Yes, maam. A possible he also said that wording you do not hear it . It is possible. There was crosstalk. I unfortunately was not the meeting was unscheduled. Lastminute, when i was notified, i had to clear my schedule. I came in late. Anything is possible. I can testify to what i dont know. Number of one of our questions regarding language use with President Trump last week, here is the entire hearing from earlier today. It is nearly four hours. To everybody in this room, welcome, but particularly secretary nielsen, we welcome you. Thank you for taking time from your busy schedule for being here for a very important part of congresss responsibility to the congressional oversight. Your department is a very important part of the executive branch, plays a very central role in overseeing our lawful immigration system besides protecting the country and our people. Oversight is a very important part of what we do here in congress. Events like todays hearing allows the peoples representatives to investigate and question the policies and the actions of the executive branch could there are important issues in your departments jurisdiction that are facing our country. One of those important issues is the continuing fate of at least 690,000 individuals enrolled in the daca program. Every member of this committee, especially this member, has an interest in ensuring that we find a fair and equitable solution for that population. I hope my colleagues also share my concern about the continued integrity of our nations lawful immigration system and the safety of those that call america home. Its imperative that we make sure 20 years from now that we dont wind up right back where we are now at the negotiation table on the same immigration issues. In order to do that, the simple fact and then any daca solution has to answer issues like Border Security, interior enforcement, chain migration. Let me take a minute and explain what i mean by Border Security. Real robust Border Security is a puzzle and has many pieces. One piece of this puzzle is the need for technical and technological infrastructure. That includes a combination of a wall where appropriate, fencing, drones, radar, everything in between, but another piece and i believe you will agree another important piece, is the Legal Authority to apprehend, detain, and remove people who illegally after our country. Enter our country. Unfortunately our current legal authorities are riddled with loopholes and dont allow us to effectively do that. Just ask any cbp officer about how effective our current authorities are. The answer you will hear is pretty clear. They arent very effective. That is why Border Security provisions in any daca deal without changes is useless. Border security isnt enough. We also have to make changes to our interior enforcement to allow us to remove dangerous criminal aliens. Your Department Needs increased authority to remove human traffickers, sex offenders, criminal gang members, drunk drivers, and terrorists. Public safety threats should not be given free reign to roam our country. We owe the American People of real solution to this problem and the only way to provide it is to address these other pieces as well, but daca is not the only issue your department is facing. American workers are increasingly at risk because the United States admits so many foreign workers, some of whom are permitted to stay for years or even decades. Many Companies Use cheap foreign labor, driving down salaries. Worse still, many of these employers commit terrible abuses. That is why i was pleased to see this administration take on the buy america,its hire american executive order. It is unclear whether efforts to date have really moved the needle when it comes to protecting American Workers and i hope that you, madam secretary, could shed light on that. This committee is well aware that the department is facing larger structural problems. Dhs still doesnt operate like a single agency. You may disagree, but thats the way i see it. It operates like a bunch of little agencies that dont always work well together. Time and again i hear reports that the various components within the department do not have adequate mechanisms for Data Collection and information sharing. That means the right hand often doesnt know what the left is doing. In practice, that causes inefficiency. That criticism is particularly concerning with regards to dhss Founding Mission to protect the United States from terrorism. When the agency doesnt adequately share information, its hard to see how the department will be wellequipped to foresee the next new york city attack or the next San Bernardino shooting. The threat from overseas continues to be real, but this country has also seen a rise in home grown violent extremists, collecting and sharing information within dhs and other Law Enforcement partners is critical to combating these threats. In 2017, the department was criticized by its own Inspector General for the lack of unified immigration strategy, for poor information sharing and between sub agencies and a series of i. T. Challenges. Regarding the immigration strategy, last november dhs, the office of Inspector General criticized the agency for failing to unify the approach across Agency Subcomponents like ice, cbp, and uscis. These sub agencies enforce the same laws and they must just common sense, they must be reading from the same page. Otherwise you will continue to suffer from conflicting enforcement priorities. Regarding information sharing, for years ive been raising concerns about this very real and serious problem, which affects all u. S. Government agencies and your department is no exception. In october 2017, special Inspector General for the afghan reconstruction reported a significant problem with Afghan Military officers in the u. S. For training often going awol. These awol Afghan Soldiers are considered high risk because of their military training and low risk for detention. Out of 150 a wall afghan awol afghan trainees come of the country or remain unaccounted for. Apart from the obvious National Security concerns, this also negatively impacts operational readiness and wastes millions of taxpayers dollars. In some of these cases, ice failed to notify other u. S. Government agencies that the afghan officials had gone awol. I hope the department is working to implement the Inspector Generals important recommendations. Another case that also happened under the Obama Administration, ice was investigating a daca recipient accused of child exploitation. Because ice failed to share information with the rest of the department, the man was issued an employment authorization document and was able to get a job at a summer camp where he harmed several children before he was caught. Of course, its obvious that thats a tragedy. This kind of completely avoidable failure should never happen, but all of your departments oig reports, the recent ones at least, suggest that dhs means serious needs serious improvement when it comes to sharing information between components. The same is true of information technology. In 2017, every Single Department oig report that touched on the i. T. Systems had something critical to say. In some cases, like the cbp, your oig said that the i. T. Systems are so old and ineffective that they are risk to Public Safety and National Security. This risk became real for hundreds of thousands of holiday travelers when cbp system went down two weeks ago on january 2, stranding them at u. S. Airports around our country. On top of that, the Department Still has not fulfilled its decadesold promise to create a working exit entry system. Because dhs has never been able to complete the system, we dont know who has departed this country, and that means we also dont know who is still here. Statistics show that almost half of the aliens unlawfully present in the United States came here legally but overstayed when their status expired. If we knew they were still here, we could track them down and penalize the people who overstay, but the department has not been able to build the i. T. System necessary to make this possible. Despite all these concerns, its clear that under the current administration, dhs is making Real Progress to improve Homeland Security. In 2017, we saw a real efforts to curb ilLegal Immigration, close loopholes in Legal Immigration authorities, and protect the American People from International Terrorism. For these and other reasons, im grateful for your service as we ought to be for a lot of cabinet secretaries, but particular your department you have to oversee, so i look forward to hearing more from you today as we explore ways to improve your agency and address our countrys needs. I think you i thank you secretary nielsen for your participation in this important hearing. Now i call on senator feinstein. Sen. Feinstein i agree with you about your strong feelings on oversight and i would like to take this opportunity to welcome you, madam secretary, to the committee. The department of Homeland Security actually more than any other agency, impacts the lives of tens of thousands of the residents of the largest state, california, on a daily basis. Through its policies affecting tourism, immigration, as well as efforts fighting wildfires, and other natural disasters and protecting our nations security, your agency, madam secretary, impacts my state in profound ways. Since the Trump Administration assumed power in january of last year, californians have watched with great concern as the department has implemented a series of concerning policy changes. This administration has systemically announced a series of changes targeted at immigrants and their families. They include the reckless and poorly drafted muslim ban in the first days of the administration. The decision to slash and cripple programs. The rescission of daca before a legislative solution was in place to protect these young people who trusted our government. The systematic destruction of the Legal Immigration system, including the cumbersome expansion of immigration application forms. And the termination of separate protected status for salvadorans and shockingly haitians, meaning individuals will likely be deported to some areas with the highest rate of Violent Crime and poverty next year. These policies have had a Ripple Effect throughout communities and neighborhoods in my state. We have seen children afraid to go to school, parents afraid to go to work, distinguished professors denied visas, husbands and wives separated, and families toward apart. Torn apart. One case that really stood out for me is that of the sanchez family from the oakland area. The parents were deported late last year. They werent criminals. They owned a home. They pay their taxes. They lived in the United States for 22 years. 23 years. The mother was an oncology nurse at highland hospital. The father, a truck driver. Their deportation meant that their children, one of the United States citizen and one a daca recipient, ages 23, 21 respectively, have to be the caretakers for the two younger siblings, ages 16 and 12. I personally plan with your pled with your predecessor to spare this family from deportation. However, my requests were rebuffed. Let me just share a few other examples through california. A teacher from los angeles writes, i woke up this morning to the Trump Administrations decision to rescind their immigration status for salvadorans. Tomorrow i have to face my High School Students and try to reassure them that they will be ok, even though they will be facing tremendous uncertainty and possible deportation in the coming months. Thats a quote. A Young Dreamer from riverside wrote, and i quote, i came to the United States in 2005 when i was only six years old. Ending daca would mean that my dreams and opportunities to be successful would be destroyed. I would not have been able to reach and afford a Higher Education if it were not for daca. So my office has been inundated with hundreds of these stories, madam secretary. Since this administration assumed office, my office and i have met with Muslim Americans afraid that their families will be denied the visitor visas because of their faith. We met with Daca Recipients that have told me personally that they have contemplated suicide for the potential exposure to ice that may be inflicted on the rest of their undocumented families. Whats worse is that this is just the tip of the iceberg. I understand the administration is considering even more drastic policy changes. For instance, the press has reported that the administration is once again considering a generalized policy of separating small children from their parents at the southwest border. Candidly, woman to woman, i cant believe that, and i hope you will clarify the departments position in your remarks, because not only would such a systemic policy encroach upon the Constitutional Rights of parents, it is callous and quite frankly stunningly unamerican. The American Academy of pediatrics called such a proposal inhumane and counterproductive. Citing the potential for trauma and stress to cause permanent harm on the developing brains of children. The america i know does not rip small children from their parents and i can imagine the cant imagine the fear that a small child must fear if this were to happen. And for what . Because the child had no choice in any of this, so please, i hope you will set that straight today. When i heard for the first time that this policy was being considered, i wrote to your predecessor, mr. Kelly, and asked him to soundly reject this cruel proposal. And i now hope that today you hear will reject it as well immediately and forcefully. Lastly, in light of the reports about the president s recent comments, i hope youre ready to specifically address one issue in particular. And that is the termination of temporary protected status, known as tps, for haitians. In light of the president s comments, im forced to question whether the decision to terminate protected status for haitian nationals was in fact racially motivated. I hope not. I thank you, madam secretary, for appearing here today. I know that some of the decisions made by the department came before your tenure in office. However, given your proximity to general kelly during many of them, i hope you are prepared to answer the questions that my colleagues and i have. And i thank you, mr. Chairman. Sen. Grassley thank you, senator feinstein. Before you give your opening statement, i would like to have you be sworn. Would you please stand . Do you affirm that the testimony you are about to give before the committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god . Please be seated. Youre welcome now to give your opening statement. When we go to questions, we will have 10 rounds of questions. Let me Say Something mostly for the benefit of senator harris and senator booker. My practice on questioning is that if there is one second left and you start your question before the time runs out, you can complete your question and we will complete an answer. At that point, i hope we dont have give and take, back and forth. Since we have 10 rounds, this is going to be a long meeting so i hope you will understand if i ask people to stay within the 10 minutes. 10 minutes . [laughter] sen. Grassley sorry, i misspoke secretary nielsen, please proceed. Sec. Nielsen thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. I have submitted my full written statement for the record and would like to take this opportunity to share a few thoughts with you. The men and women of the department of Homeland Security are working tirelessly everyday to make our Community Safer and our nation more secure. Im honored