When Noem testified before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, ranking member Senator Chris Murphy gave such powerful, informative, and important opening remarks I have to share:
"I say this with seriousness and respect, but your department is out of control.
"You’re spending like you don’t have a budget. You are running out of money for this fiscal year. You are illegally refusing to spend funds that have been authorized by this Congress and appropriated by this committee. You are ignoring the immigration laws of this nation, implementing a brand new immigration system that you have invented that has little relation to the statutes that you are required to follow as spelled out in your oath of office. You are routinely violating the rights of immigrants who may not be citizens, but whether you like it or not, they have constitutional and statutory rights when they reside in the United States.
"Your agency acts as if laws don’t matter, as if the election gave you some mandate to violate the Constitution and the laws passed by this Congress. It did not give you that mandate. You act as if your disagreement with the law, or even the public’s disagreement with the law, is relevant and gives you the ability to create your own law. It does not give you that ability.
"Let’s start with your spending. You are on track to trigger the Anti-Deficiency act. That means you are on track to spend more money than you have been allocated by Congress. This is a rare occurrence and it is wildly illegal.
"Your agency will be broke by July, over two months before the end of the fiscal year. You may not think that Congress has allotted enough money to ICE, but the Constitution and the federal law does not allow you to spend more money than you have been given or to invent money.
"This obsession with spending at the border has left the country unprotected elsewhere. The security threats to national security are higher, not lower, since Trump came to office. To fund the border you have illegally gutted spending to cybersecurity.
"As we speak, Russian and Chinese hackers are having a field day attacking our nation. You have withdrawn funds for disaster prevention. Storms are going to kill more people because of your illegal withholding of these funds. Your myopia about the border fueled by President Trump’s prejudice against people who speak a different language have shattered most of this country’s most important defenses.
"Now let’s talk about the impoundments. When Congress appropriates funds for a specific purpose the administration has no discretion whether or not to spend that money unless you go through a specific process with this committee.
"Let me give you two of many instances of this illegal impoundment. The first is a shelter and services program. Senator Britt may want to zero that account out, but that account is funded in a bipartisan way. You may not like the program. Your policy is to treat migrants badly. I think that’s abhorrent, but it doesn’t matter that you don’t like the program. You cannot cancel spending in this program, and you cannot use the funds, as you have, to fund other things, like ICE.
"You have also cancelled citizenship and integration grants, which help lawful permanent residents become citizens, helping them take the citizenship test. I know your goal is to try to make life as hard as possible for immigrants, but that goal is not broadly shared by the American public. That’s why Congress, in a bipartisan way, for decades has funded this program to help immigrants become citizens.
"Now let’s talk about why encounters at the southern border are down so much. This is clearly going to be your primary talking point today. You will tell us that it represents as success. But the prime reason why encounters are down is because you are brazenly violating the law every hour of every day.
"You are refusing to allow people showing up at the southern border to apply for asylum. I acknowledge that you don’t believe that people should be allowed to apply for asylum, but the White House doesn’t get to choose that. The law requires you to process people who are showing up at the border to apply for asylum.
"Why? Because our asylum law is a bipartisan commitment, an effort to correct for our nation’s unconscionable decision to deny entry to Jews to this country who were being hunted and killed by the Nazis. Our nation, Republicans and Democrats, decided, wrote it into law, that we would not repeat that horror ever again, and thus we would allow for people who were fleeing terror and torture to come here, arrive at the border, and make a case for asylum.
"Finally let’s talk about these disappearances. In an autocratic society, people who the regime does not like or who are protesting the regime are often picked up off the street, and spirited away, often to open-ended detention. Sometimes they’re never seen again.
"What you are doing, both to individuals who have legal rights to stay here, like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, or students who are just protesting Trump’s policies, is immoral and, to follow the theme, it is illegal. You have no right to deport a student visa holder with no due process simply because they have spoken in a way that offends the President. You can’t remove migrants whom a court has given humanitarian protection from removal.
"Now, reports suggest that you are planning to remove immigrants with no due process and send them to prisons in Libya. Libya is in the middle of a civil war. It is subject to a level 4 travel advisory, meaning we tell American citizens never to travel to Libya. We don’t have an embassy there because it is not safe for our diplomats. Sending migrants with pending asylum claims into a war zone, just because it’s cruel, is so deeply disturbing.
"Listen, I understand that my Republican colleagues on this committee don’t view the policy as I do, don’t share my level of concern for the way the government treats immigrants, but what I don’t understand is why we don’t have consensus in the Senate and on this committee on the decision by this administration to impound the spending that we have decided together to allocate in defense of this nation.
"We as an appropriations committee worked interminable hours to write and pass this budget, and so we make ourselves irrelevant when we allow the administration to ignore what we have decided. And then when we look the other way when the administration rounds up immigrants who are here illegally and have committed no offenses worthy of detainment, we also do potential irreversible damage to the Constitution.
"These should not be partisan concerns—destroying the power of Congress, eroding individuals’ Constitutional rights. This should matter to both parties."
I never knew that our asylum laws arise from when we didn’t take Jews escaping from the Nazis. Both parties said never again. Yet here we are.
Everything this "administration" is doing is impeachable, and this Congress has a responsibility to get these criminals out of office and keep them out.
Contact your representatives and demand that they hold Homeland Security to account if they want to keep holding their offices - if they in fact want those offices to still be a thing in the future.
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