00:00Welcome, everybody. Bienvenido. Thank you for coming and being a part of this very important initiative.
00:05It's a critical initiative. Obviously, we start with a strong focus on security,
00:09but there's so much more here, and as you've seen from, so much more we can work together on.
00:14And as you've seen from the Cabinet members that are here today, again, on behalf of the President,
00:19he is currently on his way to Dover Air Force and Air Force Base to receive, sadly,
00:25the remains of the six Americans who lost their lives in the operation against Iranian terrorism.
00:34And so he apologizes for not being able to join us for this lunch, but he knew you would understand.
00:39But he's very excited about this initiative, and I'm personally very excited to be part of this with each of
00:44you today.
00:44It's a top priority for us. And while there are clearly a focus on the security of the hemisphere,
00:50as you can see from the representation in our Cabinet, from trade to commerce to energy to Treasury,
00:59and there is also a focus very strongly on the opportunities we have to work together economically.
01:05But you can't have economic progress without security.
01:08And as evidence of the President's strong commitment to this initiative,
01:12so that this is not just going to be something that we meet one time and have conversations,
01:16and we meet once a year and put out a paper, we want it to be an issue of action.
01:21He has a point to Secretary Noem as the special envoy dedicated to this relationship.
01:27And you will see a lot of her. She'll be very involved with each of you at a personal level
01:30and on a daily and weekly and monthly level to ensure that earlier today.
01:36So I do want to thank the President for creating this and for giving me the honor and the opportunity
01:41to serve as a special envoy to this region, to the Western Hemisphere.
01:46This Shield of Americas will be a powerful example to the rest of the world about what's possible.
01:52There's nothing like this happening today anywhere else in the world.
01:55And the way that we cooperate on our shared ideals of freedom and of democracy and safety and security
02:03will be a shining light to all of those who wish to be more like all of us.
02:08And that, if that's some of the challenges that you may have spent some time in Argentina.
02:12In the last year as Secretary of Homeland Security, we have focused on securing our border.
02:17We have transformed our country from one that was being invaded by enemies,
02:22millions of them that were coming in unvetted, that we didn't know who was there and who wished to harm
02:28us.
02:28We've secured that border. We've focused on removing public safety threats.
02:32And over three million people have been deported or removed from our country in the last year.
02:39Secure borders has changed everything for our country.
02:41It's allowed us an opportunity to focus on business and investment, relationships with other countries,
02:47and has ended the crisis that our country was going through in the years previous to President Trump's leadership.
02:53Other countries working with your presidents and leaders and hope to continue to build on that
02:58so that we could have candid conversations about what to do in the future.
03:01Our objectives are going to be to destroy the cartels,
03:05to go after these narco-terrorists that are destroying our people,
03:08killing our children and our grandchildren.
03:10We're also going to keep our adversaries at bay.
03:14Those adversaries that wish to change our way of life and our values that are outside of our hemisphere,
03:19we want to ensure that we're continuing to keep them out of our hemisphere
03:23and focus on building alliances amongst ourselves and our strengths.
03:27We have worked and are proud of the Department of War
03:29with the conference that many of you just attended the last few days,
03:33and we'll continue to do that.
03:34We want our hemisphere to be safer, to be more sovereign, and to be more prosperous.
03:39And looking forward to working with you on all of that.
03:42The first objective will be not just on sovereignty, but also migration control,
03:47that we will work on economic prosperity will have and reverse these harmful foreign influences
03:53that have come into many of our businesses, our technologies,
03:56and we've seen infiltrate different areas of our way of life.
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