At a House Appropriations Committee hearing last week, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) questioned acting CBP Commissioner Pete Flores about border security and staffing.
00:00I now recognize the gentleman from the state whose name I guess means friendly in one of the native languages.
00:11And obviously the Lone Star State, Mr. Gonzalez, the floor is yours for five minutes.
00:16Thank you, Chairman. And Pete, great to see you here. You've done a great job as commissioner.
00:21Thank you and the men and women that work underneath you, alongside you, for everything that you're doing.
00:26And I want to start with, you know, my district. I've got four sectors in it.
00:30I've got a small piece of Laredo, Del Rio sector, Big Bend sector and El Paso sector.
00:35And each one is completely different than the next. Let's start with the El Paso sector.
00:40I want to bring your I'm not too sure. I want to bring to your attention that at Fort Hancock, the port of entry at Fort Hancock,
00:47the hours have been reduced due to COVID-19 and they never got returned.
00:53I mean, COVID was five years ago and the hours are still limited because of that.
00:59So my question is, are there are there any plans? And I understand staffing and you're trying to navigate it all.
01:04But it is it is seriously a safety issue for the residents in Hudspeth County that rely on that port of entry to make their way to Mexico back and forth.
01:14Do you have any plans to reevaluate our land port of entries that currently operate operate under reduced hours, specifically pre-COVID hours?
01:25Well, Congress, thank you for the question. Good to see you again.
01:28Absolutely. So we do a continuous evaluation of what our operational tempo is and what our hours are at all other locations that we do every three at the 328 ports of entry that we have.
01:39So we want to make sure from an operation tempo that we are meeting demand of what's happening at our ports of entry.
01:45So we do that evaluation and we consistently reevaluate whether or not the hours meet the demand and needs on what we have.
01:53What we do recognize is that based on limited staffing and resources that we have to put our staffing to where the need is.
02:01And then scale down operations as best as possible in order to ensure that we're taking care of needs across the board,
02:10but ensuring that staff is dedicated to primary locations where we're seeing the need for increased staffing.
02:15But we do reevaluate consistently on what port hours should be.
02:18Sure. I'd ask you to take a look at the Fort Hancock port of entry.
02:24Hudspeth County often gets forgotten for a lot of different reasons.
02:27And and that is that is an important issue for me.
02:30I want to I want to talk about Stone Garden.
02:34Stone Garden, I think, is a program that has been very successful.
02:38You know, for those of us who voted for the CR last year, we were able to get a variety of different amounts in.
02:45I know El Paso County was able to get three point seven million.
02:48But there's a disparity in in some of the grant awardees.
02:53Right. Other parts of my district, Frio County got one hundred sixty five K LaSalle County, got one hundred eighty six K all grateful, all good stuff.
03:01But as you're as you're going through this on the as we're working through the reconciliation process on the homeland authorization side,
03:10we put four hundred and fifty.
03:12Let's hopefully it stays.
03:13But we put four hundred and fifty million in there over a five year period.
03:17And I just ask that you kind of evaluate, make sure that it's going to some of these areas,
03:22because in many cases, it's these smaller counties that are still getting hit.
03:28And and that leads me actually before I go into that part, I'd also like to hear your thoughts on a lot of times that's used for overtime.
03:37But equipment is is one of the basic necessities of communicating.
03:42And in many parts of my district, you just cannot communicate with with others.
03:46What are your thoughts on on trying to expand the the the Stone Garden program to maybe just radios or having some things like that?
03:55Just love to get your thoughts on the communication piece to to just the problem set along the border.
04:01Congress for the question. Agree from a Stone Garden, start with Stone Garden perspective there,
04:06that it's an important aspect of what we do with being able to work law enforcement issues with our state and locals in the county.
04:13As we know, me, like some of you, born and raised in a small border town in Calexico, California.
04:22So understand the need of how small some of the law enforcement is and the support needed and the ability to communicate becomes essential,
04:31like in most situations or regular routine and emergency situations.
04:35So what we can do in regards to the request in regards to Stone Garden, we will look into what that looks like in regards to equipment and communication and what that is.
04:45A lot of those requests that that they come in are based on the agency themselves, right?
04:50The state and local agencies themselves putting in their operational order on the needs and kind of what what what what the cooperation will be on that on how we meet those needs under Stone Garden.
05:00Well, I'd love to continue to work together with you on modernizing the program.
05:04We just can't write blank checks and think it's going to solve itself.
05:07Like what do we how do we make sure that those funds are these are taxpayer dollars are going down to meet the need.
05:14And sometimes it's not personnel. Sometimes it is equipment like communications.
05:18My last question is, is on the Big Ben sector.
05:21I mean, we talk about these other sectors get a lot of attention.
05:24But the Big Ben sector, in my eyes, is an area that hasn't slowed down, that continues to have a lot of foot traffic on a daily basis.
05:33You know, a lot of people are traveling through the desert on that area in that area in particular.
05:38Once again, it's not an easy place to get to. And I understand the population is low.
05:42But from a Big Ben sector, is there anything that we can do to help, you know, some of the local communities?
05:49What I'm hearing from my ranchers is just they have like for everyone else they've gotten relief.
05:54That area continues to be a hotbed just in the Big Ben sector in particular.
06:00Is there anything that we can do to maybe alleviate some of their high foot traffic?
06:06Thank you for the questions, Congressman.
06:08We continue to look at our high traffic areas and reevaluate that with the support that we're getting,
06:15being able to put agents back to do law enforcement work, the ingestion of technology that we have
06:22and refocusing some of that technology with the help of DOD and the technology,
06:27the help of DOD personnel on the border to help close off some of those areas are all areas that we're focusing on.
06:33So we continue to plan for where we see problem spots or hot areas along the border
06:40and we continue to reevaluate how we're deploying our agents,
06:44how we're working with DOD to deploy their personnel,
06:47and then what our coverage is in the air in regards to bring visibility to those problem areas.
06:52We'll continue to work towards 100% situational awareness,
06:56and that's our plan right now to get to that 100% situational awareness
06:59so we can ensure that we know what's coming across the border.
07:02And then ultimately, in ensuring that we know what's coming across the border,
07:06being able to affect an enforcement action on that.
07:09The enforcement and deterrence piece on the consequences seems to have a good deterrence
07:13in alleviating some of those hot spots.
07:15Right. Well, thank you, Commissioner, for your testimony today.
07:17Look forward to continuing to work together.
07:19And Chairman, I'll be back.
07:22The gentlelady from high-altitude Texas,
07:25which we may be the two highest-altitude residents.
