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 SecurityAdvisory 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