LaMonica McIver Condemns Trump Administration For Using Coast Guard Planes For Deportations

During a House Homeland Security Committee hearing last month, Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) spoke about President Trump's deportation agenda.

Transcript

00:00Thank you so much, Chairman. Admiral Shami, in January, Trump and Secretary Noem ordered the

00:10Coast Guard to triple its presence at the U.S. border. However, despite some of our requests,

00:16the Coast Guard has not provided us information on exactly where the service has redirected

00:21assets and personnel from. Would you please commit to providing us with the full accounting of all

00:27assets and personnel that have been redirected since January 20th, including their home port

00:33or station, as well as a description of all deployments and missions that were canceled

00:38or redirected? Yes, Congresswoman, I'd be happy to come brief you on that. Perfect. Thank you so much.

00:46I want to move to Ms. McLeod. GAO has studied the Coast Guard's capabilities to carry out various

00:56missions as well as its capacity to make resource allocation decisions effectively. In your estimation,

01:05does the Coast Guard fully understand the trade-offs it's making when it redeploys assets and personnel?

01:12We've found both data limitations in acknowledging those trade-offs as well as strategic. Everything

01:20cannot be a priority. And the Coast Guard, as I said, has a history of making do. Without accounting for the

01:30various trade-offs among these 11 missions and various national priorities, it's a scattershot approach.

01:41Thank you. What are some of the trade-offs the Coast Guard needs to reconsider?

01:45Well, among its missions, we saw in our recent data analysis, as the Coast Guard has shifted

01:54more resources to the drug interdiction mission, a steep decline in the migrant interdiction mission,

02:01just as an example. And then there's the search and rescue missions and other missions that are also

02:07being affected at the same time. Got it. Thank you so much for that. Last year, GAO reported on the

02:13Coast Guard's aviation fleet and found that the services planes and helicopters were only available

02:2066 to 68 percent of the time on average in recent years. Since then, the Trump administration started

02:27using Coast Guard planes, obviously, to fly deportation, staging flights, and Secretary Noem requested to spend

02:33$50 million on a new executive Gulfstream jet. Given the existing challenges the aging Coast Guard

02:40aircraft fleet faces, how do these additional demands impact Coast Guard readiness?

02:46The Coast Guard's aircraft are not meeting the availability target. Since our report last year,

02:52this has become even more acute with grounding of additional aircraft within the fleet.

02:59Thank you for that. With that, I yield back.

03:02Thank you to the ranking member, MacGyver. I now recognize the chairman of Border Security Enforcement,

03:10the gentleman from Mississippi, Michael Guest.