Transcripts For CSPAN2 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20160527 :

CSPAN2 Key Capitol Hill Hearings May 27, 2016

And heroin abuse. And the house agriculture looks at ways to reduce food waste. In addition to the graduating classes all over gods planet, i wish you to graduate into a world of peace, light, and love. But that is not the case. We dont live in a fairy tale. But i guess the 1 does. Watch commencement speeches in their entirety this memorial day. From Business Leaders like ncta president Michael Powell at pepper dine, founder of oracle at the university of southern california, and the administrator of the Small Business administration at whittier college. You can count on yourself. What makes you special . What distinguishes you from others . In business we call it your unique value proposition. Figure out yours is key. Politicians, senator Jeff Sessions at the university of alabama, senator Barbara Boxer at the university of berkly, and governor mike pence at indiana wesley university. To be strong and courageous and learn to stand for who you are and what you believe is a way that you have changed here and will carry in the balance of your life. And white house officials, joe biden at the university of notre dame, attorney general at spellman college, and president barack obama at rutgers university. Is it any wonder i am optimistic . Throughout our history a new generation of americans has reached up and bent the ark of history in the direction of more freedom and more opportunity and more justice. Class of 2016, it is your turn now to shape our nations destiny as well as your own so get to work. Commencement speeches this memorial day at noon eastern on cspan. Next, officials from the Homeland Security department and state department testified about countering isis and other violent extremist groups. They were asked about the Visa Waiver Program and information sharing between International Partners. It is chaired by senator ron johnson of wisconsin. This hearing will come to order. I want to thank the witnesses for being here and submitting their thoughtful testimony. When i took over chairman of this committee working with senator carper it was a bloodless coo. He is looking good forgeting back from vietnam and traveling with the president. He is looking good. On the Homeland Security side of the committee we established four basic priorities Border Security, we have held 18 hearings on some aspect of our unsecure border; cybersecurity passing the cybersecurity enhancement act; protecting our Critical Infrastructure from cyber attack, emp and gmb; and finally what we can do as a nation to protect the homeland against islamic terrorist and other violent extremist. This hearing is about that last priority and addressing islamic terror and trying to secure our homeland and keep it safe. Not an easy task. Every last one of these hearings goal is to primarily lay out a reality as best we can so we can identify, define the problem, and admit we have it so we can work toward Commonsense Solutions recognizing in this realm the solutions are very, very difficult and they will take quite some time to finally in the end defeat islamic terror. I want to lay out a couple facts that have been developed by staff, recognizing again these are estimates. There is nothing hard and fast but it gives some indication of what we are dealing here when we talk about isis. The monthly revenue of isis dropped from 80 million per month, which is a little less than a billion per year, to 56 million a month about 672 million a year. Still significant revenue in the hands of barbarians. There have been 12 cases of confirmed use of mustered agents and three other cases suspected in syria and iraq. That ought to concern everybody. More than 42900 foreign fighters have entered the conflict zone. 7400 westerns. Isis traineded 400 fighters to target europe with its external operation. At least eight of the paris plotters were foreign fighters returning from syria. The same Network Planning the brussels and the paris attacks in total 162 victim. 1. 8 million illegal Border Crossing in the European Union. In 2014, 280,000 was the number. You can see as things degrade in syria and iraq that is putting enormous pressure on the European Union states. Isis has 43 affiliates and supporting groups globally. The fact isis has a territory, established a caliphate, other Islamic Terrorist Groups are pledging their loyalty and isis continues to metastasize. Until we defeat them they will continue to spiral, metastasize and grow and be a threat. We will continue to explore this and looking forward to the testimony from the representatives of homeland and depart of state. I will turn it over to senator carper after i ask consent to enter my written statement in the record. I think that is a great idea. Mr. Chairman, thanks for pulling this together. Justin, thank you for joining us for this important hearing, and a timely one as well. Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the people of belgium and france and the recent tragedy involving the crash of the egyptair flight that departed from paris airport earlier this month. We are still learning the facts around the loss of the egyptair flight this tragedy remines us that securing the homeland is likely to be an ongoing challenge. As the chairman alluded to some of the progress on the battlefield and in other ways with respect to isis. Big coalition, 60 nations and it is beginning to work and provide leadership but it is going slower than we like but Real Progress is being main in terms of regaining land, reducing their capacity to be successful in that part of the world, taking away their money and ability to finance their operations. Securing the border is a key element of keeping us safe and we focused on those topics. Hearings on the security visa waiver and the screening efforts bear witness to our focus. We found the syrian refuge screening process takes two years and dhs enhanced the security of the Visa Waiver Program three times in the last 18 months and this committee focused a lot of time and energy on this. We deploy special teams broad to help detect fraud. Securing the border is only half the battle. We could shutdown all travel and immigration to the country and still not be safe. Every person who has been killed by a jihad terrorist in this country since 9 11 has been killed by an american citizen or reside resident. Every person killed by a jihad terrorist has been killed by an american citizen or resident. The people carrying out the attacks were not foreign students, tourist, or refuges. They were americans. Even in many cases they had spent much of their lives in this country; the United States. For instance, the brothers in boston spent a decade in the united statebefore carrying out the bombs. Nidal hasan was serving in the military when committing the attack. And unfortunately isis knows all too well the best way to attack america is have americans do it for you and that is why isis uses social media and the internet to radicalize americans at home. We have to do our west best to make sure when isis makes their recruitment pitch to americans the message falls on deaf ears. If isis is successful in radicalizing americans we must be vigilant that we can stop every terrorist attack well before an attack can be carried out. Let me be clear, dhs, department of Homeland Security, are not alone in tackling the threat of homegrown terrorism. Congress must help. All americans must help. We can start by taking actions to keep weapons out of the hands of terrorists here. We also need to improve the ability of our Law Enforcement and intelligence agencies to detect homegrown terrorism by helping them work through challenges on encryption. And we need to give federal agencies the tools they need to help prevent our young people from falling prey to isis online propaganda. I opted with legislation to empower Homeland Security to tackle this challenge. This legislation would create an office at the Homeland Security department tasked with working with community groups, families and religious leaders to develop communitybased solutions for stopping the recruitment of Young Americans into isis. Our legislation was reported out of committee and included in the Homeland Security accountability act that we approved yesterday. We need to get this bill enact into law as soon as possible so we can further help communities resist isis recruitments efforts. Do i want to thank you for the work you do to prevent terrorist attacks at home and broad. We welcome your testimony and appreciate your hard work, leadership, and selflish devotion. It is the tradition to swear in witnesses so if you would rise and raise your right hand. Do you swear the testimony you will give before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god . Our first witness is alejandro mayorkas. He served as the director of the United States citizenship and Immigration Services at dhs. A lot of acronyms in this business. He was a partner in the law form and the youngest United States law attorney af e inspired by the message and propaganda of isil. Such inspired attacks are harder for intelligence and Law Enforcement to detect we focus resource and efforts in four areas in order to counter the deversion of devolving threats. Abeation security, Border Security, countering violent extrem extremism and information sharing and support. We continue to strengthen programs and processes and are executing better initiatives to respond to landscape across the world. We have strengthened screening protocols at domestic airports and established policies at foreign airports that are last departure airports. We are extending our zone of security to interdict threats as far out from there homeland as possible. We are leveraging advance passenger data, intelligence, Law Enforcement information, and open source information. We have strengthened the coordination with department of state. All travelers are subjects to rigorous screening before departure of the United States and throughout the travel continuum. The Visa Waiver Program enhances our nations security and Law Enforcement partnerships with participating countries and we continue to work with International Partners to strengthen our information sharing and increasing our joint presence. We have strengthened the effort in the Close Partnership of state, local and tribal Law Enforcement throughout the nation. We have strengthened our relationship with communities across the country and agencies across the government through our office for Community Partnerships and the countering Violent Extremism Task force. We are working in close collaboration to develop guidance, resources, best practices and training to protect communities from violent extremism. I would like to thank the committee for endorsing our priorities. Strengthen and maturing is an ongoing process and we look forward to working with the subcommittee in help. The office that leads our countering of violent extreme efforts is critical. I want to thank you, mr. Chairman, and committee for your support of the department. I am proud to work alongside the men and women who work each day. Our next witness is Justin Siberell who is the acting coordinator of bureau of counterterrorism at the u. S. Department of state. He joined the state department in march of 1993 and the ct bureau in july of 2012. He is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of minister council. He was principle officer india. Chairman johnson, Ranking Member carper, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. The department of state is working closely with the department of Homeland Security and other agencies to counter isil and keep america safe. We have a threat that is disperse and adaptive. We have to strengthen partnerships globally and i would like to describe some steps we are taking to do that. I submitted a longer statement for the record. Partnership is a Broad Coalition of countries across the glow we made progress of degrading the capabilities of transnational terrorist groups. The u. S. Life rled Global Coalition to counter isil has made important progress in reducing isils control of territory in iraq and syria as well as constricting the funds and foreign terrorist fighters available. But syria time they terrorist groups exploit instability with weak or nonexisting governments, secretarian conflict and borders are extending their reach and terrorizing civilians and attract and mobilize recruits. Isil and alqaeda have pursued attacks on targets and public spaces like in brussels, paris, san bernardino, and elsewhere demonstrate these groups are resilient and continue to target innocent civilians. The department of state is working to address and mitigate the threat posed by foreign terrorist and radical individuals around the world particularly in europe. We are working with increasing information sharing, augment Border Security and strengthen regimes to Counter Terrorism more effectively. This has yielded positive results. 45 countries have passed new laws or updated existing laws to address the threat caused by foreign terrorist fighters. We have agreementwise 55 International Partners to strengthen efforts to enough, detract and deter travel of suspects terrorist. We have provided support to interpool to enhance sharing critical foreign terrorist data with countries around the world. 58 countries and the United Nations contribute to interpool. Member states are identified in resolution 2178 developed by the United States and agreed unanimously in 2014. We continue to work with dhs to strengthen our Counter Terrorism policy including the terrorist travel pruvention act of 2015. The Visa Waiver Programs gives us unprecedented level to hold partners to the highest security of issuing passports and screening travelers and vital to the security of the homeland and our closest allieallies. We have increased security after the terrorist attacks in paris and brussels. We deployeded teams composed of experts across the counterterrorism agencies to several countries including belgium and greece. They are working on areas to identify and arrest suspects terrorist fighters. The department of state is strengthening the borders through the terrorist interdiction program. And working with the deparliament of homeland to deploy ski technology to assist governments and target suspect travelers. These programs provide the ability to strengthen borders through training. Effective Border Security is one of the most essential tools governments poses to deny terrorist the space to plot and carry out attacks. We are making sure our International Partners adopt these policies. We are working on stopping radicalization and mobilization to engage in terrorist attacks. The department of state released the first every joint strategy on countering extremism. There is no greater priority than keeping america safe from the threat of terrorism. The department of state works with colleagues at dhs and other Government Agencies to counter the threat posed to the United States by groups like isil. We appreciate Congress Interest in helping us. I look forward to your questions. Mr. Mayorkas, the headlines n nowadays are about the long lines at t. S. A. We had a briefing by the admiral and i want your assessment of what is causing that . What is the root cause of lines as long as three hours getting through chicago ohare . If i can, mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the opportunity. Let me celerate chicago ohare and the threehour lines that were experienced about a week ago because quite frankly was thought error on our part. That was a failure to address with appropriate staffing a very predictable surge at a peak time of travel. So that was an aberration, if you will, with respect to the agencys failure to address what it was ready for. We can separate ohare but problems at the other airports. Lets talk about the problem in totality. We would identify three general factors, if i may. They have risen over the course of time. Number one, and very importantly, we have enhanced security measures at our airports in response to an Inspector Generals report that was published last year. That Inspector General report identified certain deficiencies in the agencys protocols and we have sense executed a 10point plan directed by the secretar

© 2025 Vimarsana