Member Day

Good morning. We will hear from members about a variety of topics within our jurisdiction. Thank you to each of our colleagues, A, for your patience and and for taking time out to spend some time with us talking about stuff that is important to you, your districts, and your issues. I've got some other opening stuff that the staff did a wonderful job. I look forward to working with the opening member Cuellar, and I'll now turn to Mr. Cuellar for his opening remarks, if any.

My staff did a wonderful job in an opening statement, but I'm ready to listen to our colleagues. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm learning from you.

What leadership on this committee, huh? So our first witness will be the distinguished gentlelady from Florida, Ms. Congresswoman, the floor is yours.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Chairman Amodei, Ranking Member Cuellar, colleagues and fellow appropriators. I know it might be a little awkward for an appropriator or maybe unusual for a fellow appropriator to come before the subcommittee, but I don't serve on this subcommittee and only have an opportunity to, you know, discuss these issues more fully when we're in full committee markup, so I'm really glad to have the opportunity to share my priorities and concerns with you. It goes without saying that finding a path forward for DHS that also meets our security needs without sacrificing our values and ideals is one of the greatest challenges we face. And I know we have many disagreements about how the Trump administration approaches immigration enforcement and the way the department was run over the past year, and I'll continue to fight for a better way by putting badly needed common sense reforms into law to ensure ICE respects our constitutional rights and makes us feel safer and not more afraid. But I want to talk about areas of bipartisan agreement in this bill where I hope we can find a path forward. First, the explosive rise in antisemitism over the last few years poses a grave and growing threat to the promise of religious freedom in America. We saw 55 percent of Jewish Americans in a recent survey say they experienced antisemitism in 2024 and 2025. According to the FBI, Jews were victims of two-thirds of religion-based hate crimes in 2024, and 15 percent of all hate crimes were directed against Jews despite being just 2 percent of the population. We need to fully fund the nonprofit security grant program and quickly deliver funding to congregations in need. Just two weeks ago, a terrorist armed with explosives drove into one of the nation's largest synagogues while more than 100 preschoolers were in the building. Thanks to resources from the nonprofit security grant program, the synagogue's security officers, teachers, and staff were able to save the lives of those children. But we must recognize the disturbing facts. While attacks against the Jewish community rise, the majority of nonprofit security grant applicants come away empty-handed due to limited funding, and Mr. Chairman, you and I have worked together and talked about this before, many grant recipients who were already approved are facing years-long waits for funding. And there's a confusing application process with new politicized rules that have nothing to do with safety. Jewish Americans already spend more than a billion dollars each year for security to gather and pray safely, and the extra funding for nonprofit security from President Biden's supplemental bill is running out. I and many other members have requested a significant increase in funding for nonprofit security grants to meet this moment, as well as report language detailing steps to streamline the application process across states. Another issue I want to see addressed in the bill is temporary protected status. Last year, I was grateful for the chairman's partnership in including bipartisan language directing the Trump administration to reconsider their decision to rip lawful status from TPS recipients. It was wonderful to be able to work with you, Mr. Chairman, on the language that we were able to agree upon. TPS holders pass repeated criminal background checks, pay fees, earn work permits, and receive zero government welfare. It does nobody any good to take law-abiding people out of the workforce, especially for sectors where prices are way too high, like housing, groceries, childcare, and elder care. So I've requested new language to expand on our bipartisan effort from last year. It would direct the secretary to review the termination of TPS for Venezuelans and Haitians and require reporting on the potential economic and fiscal consequences of these decisions. Haiti is in complete collapse. Gangs control 90 percent of the capital. Millions are internally displaced and a majority of the population is in emergency need of food and medicine. The U.S. is actively supporting a UN-backed peacekeeping force in Haiti. It's hard to argue that Haiti is dangerous enough to send in a multinational fighting force, but safe enough to send back your dad's Haitian home care provider or your retail store's Haitian employees. This is especially true for TPS holders, who are already vetted for any criminal history and earned work permits. Many have U.S. citizen children who would be separated from their parents or else sent into a failed state where kidnappings for ransom are a primary source of gang revenue. And all of this would harm our economy and our national debt. Between Venezuelans and Haitians, this would pull nearly one million people out of the workforce. Florida's economy would shrink by nearly nine billion dollars, and payroll tax revenue for Social Security and Medicare would drop by seven billion per year. This would have disastrous fiscal impacts, not to mention the enormous financial and moral cost of deporting all these people back to chaos. And Mr. Chairman, we worked diligently in the midst of that committee markup and were able to reach an agreement on language, and I would love to talk to you about it as we get closer to the markup. And my final bipartisan priority is to protect our rights as members of Congress to conduct oversight at immigrant detention facilities. I proudly fought to get this provision originally enacted into law because no matter who's in charge of the executive branch, and it is important to underscore that, we have a responsibility to uphold human rights and treat people in federal custody with dignity. It's especially crucial now. Mr. Chairman, we were able to work together on that same type of language related to the Postal Service. We've had this language in place, I think, since 2017. The detained population has multiplied, yet more than 70 percent of those jailed have no criminal convictions, and more than 40 people have died in ICE custody over the last year. Medical neglect and abuse are rampant, and people are regularly denied access to their lawyers or family. Facilities like the Everglades Detention Center in Florida clearly fail to meet basic humane standards and attempt to evade oversight by shifting the responsibility and the cost to Floridians. I visited this internment facility and I saw it firsthand. I hope the chairman will conduct oversight there too, maybe we could do it together, and I hope you will continue bipartisan support for no-notice member access to detention sites. I've appreciated the opportunity to present these concerns to you and look forward to working with you all, and I yield back.

Thank you for your testimony. I look forward to collaborating with you on all of those issues. Does anybody on the committee have any questions for Ms. Wasserman Schultz about her presentation? Thank you, ma'am. Thank you for your patience.

Thank you so much.

Actually, Chairman, can I just one thing? Thank you so much, Madam Ranking Member. I think in terms of congressional oversight, so happy that there's bipartisan support for this. I do think we also have to work to protect congressional staff. One of my staff members has been targeted, and it is important that we be allowed to do casework. And obviously, congressional staff are important in that process. So I hope that this committee can work together to ensure that congressional staff as well can get in to do casework in these facilities.

Forgive me, the language that we have had over the last number of years is inclusive of staff, but I can't recall whether it is that they had to be with the member when they are granted access or if they have the ability in the language to get access by themselves. And they have to have a day's notice.

I think we're going to need to do some refining to protect some of our staff so that they're able to actually conduct their casework even within the bounds of this notice. Thank you.

Thank you.

Congresswoman Stansbury, thank you for your patience. Welcome to the committee, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and distinguished members of the committee. It's an honor to be in front of you today in the Homeland Security Subcommittee. And you know, today marks the 40th day of the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, which I think we can all agree is a shutdown that should not have ever happened. Federal workers across the country, including thousands who serve our communities every day, remain unpaid. We have a Congress and a president that are failing to negotiate in good faith and failing to ensure that the Transportation Security Administration officers, FEMA personnel, and critical public servants who deserve to receive the paychecks they have earned get paid, and we are watching political brinkmanship put our national security, our disaster response, and our communities at risk. We are seeing the consequences unfold in real time. TSA officers are stretched to the brink, unable to afford to report to work. Emergency response systems are strained. The deployment of ICE agents to airports is a failure to govern. And in my home state of New Mexico, the Department of Homeland Security is a lifeline. The programs of DHS, particularly of FEMA, are essential to protecting lives, rebuilding communities, and ensuring that we can recover from disasters that are growing more frequent and severe every day. But at the same time, I want to be clear, especially in front of this committee, that I cannot support another penny of funding for ICE as it currently stands. The ongoing abuse, overreach, and harm inflicted on our communities demands accountability, reform, and a fundamental shift in how we are approaching immigration. I am grateful to see that the former secretary of DHS is under investigation, and I want to be clear that we will pursue accountability, especially for the deaths and illegal activities that have happened under her watch and as a member of the Oversight Committee. And we will be watching the incoming secretary to ensure that this never happens again. The reason I am here today is that my top priority for funding for DHS is for full and robust funding for all emergency and disaster relief programs. In particular, FEMA is vital in helping our communities repair and recover from disasters, especially through the pre-disaster mitigation and disaster relief fund. Last year, New Mexico and communities across the country witnessed record wildfires and floods that destroyed our towns and villages. This includes in Ruidoso and Lincoln County in my district and Mora County in northern New Mexico in my colleague Congresswoman Leger Fernandez's district. These communities have faced devastating fires followed by catastrophic flooding, which has displaced families, destroyed homes, and upended our local economies. This includes several tribal communities, including Mescalero Apache in southern New Mexico and several pueblos across our state which have experienced severe storms and flooding over the last year. Emergency assistance to rebuild our critical infrastructure and protect these communities is vital, and that is why we are asking for robust funding for FEMA. But funding alone is not enough. We need this committee to conduct oversight over FEMA to ensure that those resources move quickly and efficiently to our communities and families who are in need of them. Delays in disaster assistance directly to businesses and families just cause prolonged suffering for those trying to rebuild, and we ask Congress to not only prioritize the scale, but the speed and oversight needed to ensure that disaster recovery funding arrives in our communities in a timely manner. I also appear in front of this committee today to ask for full funding for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Cuts to immigration services have devastating impacts on families and communities across New Mexico, and these programs are essential to ensuring asylum claims, lawful immigration, and our systems function in an orderly and humane way, and that there is fairness in the system. But I'm also here today to call for an end to the cruel, inhumane, and lawless immigration enforcement practices that are terrorizing our cities and families across this country. Violations of the Constitution, due process, and civil liberties must end. And I urge this Appropriations Subcommittee to use its power to include language in the bill to prohibit illegal practices, as well as the cruel and inhumane mass detention policies that have proliferated under this administration. As you know, $45 billion was included in the big ugly bill to expand detention facilities, which essentially is padding the bottom line of for-profit private detention centers. So I urge Congress to include language in this bill that eliminates bed quotas that incentivize mass detention, to include language that requires strict adherence to legal standards, including judicial warrants, protects civil liberties and human rights in enforcement actions, eliminates detention bed quotas, ends for-profit immigration detention, prohibits warehouse-style detention centers, ensures families of detainees are notified when a family member is detained, transferred, or released, and safeguards polling and voting locations from intimidation and interference as we face the midterms. Finally, I'll just say that I believe this is a moral moment for our country. And the question that it begs for us as we sit here today is that we have to decide who we are as a nation. Will we invest in our communities? Will we support the people who keep us safe? Will we rebuild in the face of disaster? Or will we allow division and fear to define our path forward as a country? I believe in an America that cares for its people, that honors its commitments, and leads with humanity. And I urge this committee to choose that path. The cares for its people, the honors its commitments and leads with humanity. And I urge this committee to choose that path.

Questions from committee members for the gentlelady from New Mexico on her testimony? Seeing none, thank you for taking the time to come in and talk to us. We're going to look forward to collaborating with you and following up on those areas as we go through our process, even though it's going to be a little short this year. But they're not treating us any different than anybody else, so we'll look forward to working with you and thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Chairman, Ranking Member.