00:00The chair now recognizes Representative Crane for his five minutes of questioning.
00:03Mr. Coutson-Elli, would you like to finish your thoughts?
00:07Your first responsibility leading a law enforcement agency is the protection of your agents.
00:13That's first, because if you can't do it, it's like the first rule of first aid.
00:17You have to take care of yourself before you can take care of the person next to you.
00:20We all get that instruction on the plane flight every day, right?
00:23And that applies at an agency level as well.
00:27I cannot remember a time in my adult lifetime where one specific law enforcement agency was so personally targeted as ICE agents are being targeted today,
00:39including by members of this body, by members of this body who are willing to put at risk law enforcement officers that work for the federal government they are part of.
00:50And so, you know, they have body cams.
00:55The people who go out on each, I'll call it a mission, are identified, meaning you can go back and figure out what agents were on that when they misbehave.
01:05I am not going to sit here and say police officers in any department never misbehave.
01:11They do.
01:12They're human beings and they make mistakes.
01:14And they do things wrong intentionally sometimes.
01:17I'm not going to say ICE agents do that.
01:19That didn't happen while I was a deputy secretary.
01:22And if you're not willing to protect your own agents, whether it's the Capitol Police or whether it's ICE,
01:29then you have no business sending them out on the street.
01:32That's immoral.
01:35I'm going to move on to Dr. Camerota.
01:37On January 16th, 2025, the Center for Immigration Studies posted the Beyond the Border podcast episode 187 titled Why Legal Immigration Numbers Matters.
01:51You and my colleague, Representative Chip Roy, provided a detailed assessment of how U.S. Census Bureau data shows that President Trump handed Joe Biden a border that was under control.
02:01In fact, the data shows that international migrant crossings were at a 20-year low in Trump's final year in office.
02:09Joe Biden changed course in 2022 and increased the number of international immigrants to an all-time high.
02:15My question is this.
02:17Would you agree the Biden admin failed to utilize their authority to detect, repel, detain, and deport illegal immigrants?
02:24And without the use of illegal parole, the U.S. Census data wouldn't have detected an increase?
02:30Right. So in that data, just during the Biden administration, the foreign-born, that's all immigrants, grew by over 8 million.
02:37And more than 5 million, or about two-thirds of that increase in the data, and it misses people, is new illegal immigrants.
02:44And yes, the decision not to detain people, not to use expedited removal, to end the Remain in Mexico policy,
02:51to end the cooperation agreements we had with the Central American countries, and so on, caused a surge in illegal immigration.
02:59Most experts think illegal immigration, at least there was people coming and going in big numbers all the time,
03:04but it was roughly stable in the previous decade.
03:08But under President Biden, it grew 5 or 6 million.
03:12Now, remember, some people went home, some got legalized, and that's a pretty conservative estimate.
03:17Would you agree Democrats benefited from paroling illegal immigrants through increased population counted in the census
03:24and added seats for congressional representation?
03:27Well, I have a very detailed study of that.
03:30Obviously, it didn't matter for 2020.
03:32It is true, that is a general proposition, that the arrival of immigrants in Democratic-leading states tend to help Democrats.
03:41Also, the other big thing it does, it creates districts with relatively few citizens because the district lines are drawn based on total population.
03:51And those districts with relatively few American citizens do vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
03:57But that doesn't mean the illegals are voting or that the non-citizens are voting.
04:00It's just the people who live around them are very much Democratic.
04:02But it does increase Democratic representation, while the districts that are overwhelmingly comprised of American citizens tend to vote overwhelmingly Republican.
04:11So, yes, there is a political dimension here.
04:14I'm not going to comment on the Democrats' motives, but that does happen.
04:18Mr. Cuccinelli, according to the Department of Homeland Security, until Joe Biden parole was rarely used,
04:25between 2014 and 2020, parole was used sparingly to admit between 11,000 and 54,000 immigrants each year.
04:33DHS data shows that Biden admin unlawfully expanded two parole programs that brought over a million illegals into the country under the auspice of legal process.
04:43The Cuban, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, or CHNV parole system ballooned illegal parole numbers in conjunction with the use of the CBP-1 app.
04:54Between the two programs, an estimated 531,000 and 936,000 illegals were paroled into the U.S. just by registering for an asylum hearing.
05:07Additionally, DOJ data states that between 2021 and 2024, the number of absentee removal orders increased from under 50,000 prior to Biden to well over 200,000 under the Biden mass parole program,
05:22meaning that the parolees weren't returning to their hearings, just vanishing into the U.S.
05:27My question, do you believe former DHS Secretary Mayorkas was derelict in the oversight of DHS for agencies' unlawful use of the parole process?
05:38Well, I would use the word derelict if this was unintentional.
05:42And then the answer would be yes.
05:46I yield back.
05:47Gentleman yields.
05:48Mr. Chairman, I'd like to enter into the record.
05:51I'd like to ask unanimous consent to enter into.
05:53Representative Carter, if we may, just be giving, trying to make sure I'm balancing everyone's time.
05:57And I gave you an extra minute.
05:59I'm trying to be careful.
05:59I just want to introduce this to the record.
06:01I have no comment.
06:01Ms. Johnson, would you yield?
06:03I'm about to recognize you.
06:04Would you yield to give him that opportunity to do so?
06:05I don't think I have to yield my time.
06:07Just to enter into the record?
06:08I shouldn't take away from her minutes.
06:10I'll be in a moment.
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