00:00Mr. Gonzalez.
00:01Thank you, Chairman.
00:02Thank you, Director, for being here.
00:04Thank you for your willingness to serve our great country, and I look forward to working together.
00:08You know, it's not only how big the check is, it's where the check is going,
00:11and I love hearing some of your ideas of how we reform, how do we make things better.
00:17You know, I represent a district that's nearly half of the southern border,
00:21been ground zero for a lot of the chaos that is happening.
00:24You already know this, but you have some of the best field offices in this area, right?
00:28The FBI office in El Paso doing amazing work.
00:32The FBI office in San Antonio doing amazing work.
00:35FBI office in Houston doing amazing work.
00:38Did I hear you correctly that there's a possibility as you right size,
00:42as you kind of once again put agents back out in the field,
00:46did I hear you write nearly 100 agents maybe coming to Texas?
00:51About 90.
00:52Okay, perfect.
00:53We'll round up.
00:54We're here in the house.
00:56We'll round up.
00:57I love it.
00:58I think that's exactly the right answer, right?
01:00Let's get the bureaucrats out of D.C.,
01:02and let's get the agents back in the field doing the work.
01:07The part I'd say, too, is your task forces are working.
01:11And once again, I look forward to working together, chatting about this more.
01:14Task forces work, right?
01:16And I want to start with the CT task force, counterterrorism task force.
01:20I think that's very important.
01:21The terrorist threat is as real as ever,
01:23and getting ahead of that I think is a big part of that.
01:26Once again, the FBI is the leader in this.
01:30You know, they're the ones that you're the agency that has all the expertise and the ability to do that,
01:37but you need the force multipliers.
01:38You need the local and the state agencies to come alongside, all hands on deck to tackle this.
01:44The other thing I want to highlight for you, and then I'd like to get your response,
01:47is these anti-gang task forces, another task force that I think have just done amazing work,
01:53specifically going after some of these criminal illegal aliens, right?
01:58These TDAs, these MS-13s, these gangs that are in our country,
02:03to the tune of over – yesterday, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Chrissy Noem,
02:09you know, she told me there's over 600,000 known convicted criminal aliens in our country.
02:16Can you talk a little bit about the importance of the anti-gang task force?
02:20Thank you, Congressman.
02:21And you're right.
02:23The best cases I ever made as a terrorism prosecutor was on the task force
02:27because we had embedded state and local authorities with federal authorities,
02:32state and federal prosecutors working every day together,
02:36bringing cases where you could bring cases because sometimes you couldn't bring them in state court
02:40and sometimes you can't bring them in federal court.
02:43And so the gang task force is, you know, right up there with the JTTF model.
02:48It serves the same purpose by allowing – my best example is the Virginia Homeland Security Task Force.
02:57We simply allowed access, placement, and location, and then we got out of the way,
03:01we being leadership.
03:02We are not running the cases in the field.
03:04agents are.
03:05Intel analysts are synthesizing intelligence, not me.
03:09Putting them in simply the same room and giving them some resources.
03:12We don't need to recreate or be super innovative.
03:15And that's the beauty of the gang task force.
03:18The folks in there are experienced career operators at every level that they operate in.
03:23They know what they're doing.
03:24What they're not currently allowed to do is get together enough.
03:28And that's simply what we're trying to do with part of this plus-up.
03:32And again, it's – and you're right, Congressman Ivey, we're not doing it overnight.
03:36It's a process that's going to take about a year if we get it right across the board
03:40because it takes time to transfer expertise.
03:43But at the same time, we're not going to gap expertise in headquarters.
03:47And just to be clear, we're not taking out the headquarters footprint.
03:50We're leaving a large footprint here still.
03:52We are just adjusting to the violent crime, and gangs are one of them.
03:56I did a – spot on.
03:58I did a roundtable in San Antonio.
04:00We had FBI.
04:01We had HSI.
04:02We had ATF.
04:02We had local law enforcement.
04:04We had state law enforcement.
04:06I think that's more – we need more of that.
04:08We need to turn the volume up on that and, once again, move some of the bureaucrats.
04:13The other thing – I represent a district that's larger than 30 states, right?
04:18And there's a part of my district.
04:19One of my counties produces more natural gas than anywhere else in the country.
04:24And I want to highlight something for you that has worked.
04:27And this is the Permian Basin Oil Theft Task Force.
04:30And oil theft in West Texas is a real deal, right, especially with the border crisis that
04:36we had to deal with over the last four years.
04:38And I would ask that you please continue to take a look at that.
04:42That is a program, once again, without the FBI being at the core of providing the intelligence
04:48and the expertise, it's really difficult for some of these share-ups and, you know, some
04:52of these local municipalities to tackle these organized crimes.
04:57So as you're working through the budget process, as you're working through what has to stick
05:02and what has to go, that Permian Basin Oil Theft Task Force is very important.
05:08I'd love to get your thoughts on it the time I have left.
05:10Well, I'm slightly biased, Congressman, because I do some of my hunting out in the Permian Basin
05:14and out in the Glass Mountains.
05:15So I'm familiar with that just by a matter of being there on the ground a lot.
05:19But it's an example of not just your district, but if you go out into Idaho and you go out
05:24into Texas or Arkansas or California even or where have you, the localized problems at
05:29the national level can't understand or comprehend cannot be comprehended or understood by putting
05:34more people in Washington, D.C.
05:35That's what I'm trying to accomplish.
05:37These folks have the expertise and the knowledge.
05:39And if we put them in the field with your experts, then they can relay back to us, hey,
05:43did you know about this big oil problem down in West Texas?
05:46Sadly, most Americans know.
05:48But honestly, most Americans shouldn't.
05:49It's not their responsibility.
05:50It's mine.
05:51And so that's what we're working towards.
05:52I'm looking to codify that.
05:54Love to continue to working with that on that and other things.
05:56Thank you again for your testimony today.
05:58Chairman, I yield back.
05:59Thank you, sir.
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