During Thursday’s Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) spoke about DHS Secretary. Kristi Noem's record in her role.
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00:00Madam Chair, Madam Secretary, thank you for being here. I'm sorry that I missed
00:04your call yesterday. I look forward to working closely with you. I say this with
00:08seriousness and respect, but your department is out of control. You are
00:13spending like you don't have a budget. You're on the verge of running out of
00:17money for the fiscal year. You are illegally refusing to spend funds that
00:21have been authorized by this Congress and appropriated by this committee. You
00:24are ignoring the immigration laws of this nation, implementing a brand new
00:27immigration system that you have invented that has little relation to the
00:31statutes that you require, that you are commanded to follow, as spelled out in
00:35your oath of office. You are routinely violating the rights of immigrants who
00:38may not be citizens, but whether you like it or not, they have constitutional and
00:41statutory rights when they reside in the United States. Your agency acts as if
00:46laws don't matter, as if the election gave you some mandate to violate the
00:50Constitution and the laws passed by this Congress. It did not give you that mandate.
00:54You act as if your disagreement with the law or even the public's disagreement with
00:58the law is relevant and gives you the ability to create your own law. It does
01:02not give you that ability. Let's start with your spending. You are on track to
01:07trigger the Anti-Deficiency Act. That means you are going to spend more money
01:10than you have been allocated by Congress. This is a rare occurrence and it is wildly
01:15illegal. Your agency will be broke by July, over two months before the end of the
01:21fiscal year. You may not think that Congress has provided enough money to ICE,
01:25but the Constitution and the federal law does not allow you to spend more money
01:29than you have been given or to invent money. And this obsession with spending
01:34at the border, as the chairwoman mentioned, has left the country
01:39unprotected elsewhere. The security threats to the United States are higher, not
01:44lower, before than when before Trump came to office. To fund the border, you have
01:48illegally gutted spending for cyber security. As we speak, Russian and Chinese hackers are
01:53having a field day attacking our nation. You have withdrawn funds for disaster prevention.
01:59Storms are going to kill more people in this country because of your illegal withholding
02:02of these funds. Your myopia about the border, fueled by President Trump's prejudice against
02:07people who speak a different language, has shattered many of this country's most important
02:12defenses. Now let's talk about the impoundments. When Congress appropriates funds for a specific
02:18purpose, the administration has no discretion as to whether to spend or not spend that money,
02:23unless you go through a very specific process with this committee. Let me give you two of many
02:29instances of this illegal impoundment. The first is a shelter and services program. Senator Britt may
02:34want to zero that account out, but that account is funded and it was funded in a bipartisan way. You
02:39don't like the program. Your policy is to treat migrants badly. I think that's abhorrent, but it doesn't matter
02:46that you don't like the program. You cannot cancel spending in this program and you cannot use the
02:51funds as you have to fund other things like ICE. You have also canceled citizenship and integration
02:58grants, which help lawful permanent residents become citizens, helping them take the citizenship test.
03:05I know your goal is to try to make life as hard as possible for immigrants, but that goal is not
03:10broadly shared by the American public. That's why Congress in a bipartisan way for decades has funded
03:16this program to help immigrants in this country become citizens. Now let's talk about why encounters
03:23at the southern border are down so much. This is clearly going to be your primary talking point today.
03:29You will tell us that it represents a success, but the primary reason why encounters are down is because
03:34you are brazenly violating the law every hour of every day. You are refusing to allow people showing
03:42up at the southern border to apply for asylum. I acknowledge that you don't believe that people
03:48should be able to apply for asylum, but you don't get to choose that. The White House doesn't get to
03:52choose that. The law requires you to process people who are showing up at the border and who claim asylum.
03:58Why? Because our asylum law is a bipartisan commitment, an effort to correct for our nation's
04:05unconscionable decision to deny entry to Jews to this country who are being hunted and killed by the
04:10Nazis. Our nation, Republicans and Democrats, decided, wrote it into law, that we would not repeat that
04:18horror ever again, and thus we would allow for people who were fleeing terror and torture to come here,
04:24arrive at the border and make a case for asylum. Finally, let's talk about these disappearances.
04:31In an autocratic society, people who the regime does not like are people who are protesting the regime.
04:36They are just often picked up off the street, spirited away, sometimes to open-ended detention,
04:40sometimes they're never seen again. What you are doing, both the individuals who have legal rights to
04:45stay here, like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, or students who are just protesting Trump's policies, is immoral.
04:53And to follow the theme, it is illegal. You have no right to deport a student visa holder with no due
04:59process, simply because they have spoken in a way that offends the president. You can't remove migrants
05:05who a court has given humanitarian protection from removal. Now, reports suggest that you are planning
05:12to remove immigrants with no due process and send them to prisons in Libya. Libya is in the middle of a
05:19civil war. It is subject to a level four travel advisory, meaning we tell American citizens never
05:27to travel to Libya. We don't have an embassy there because it is not safe for our diplomats. Sending
05:33migrants with pending asylum claims into a war zone just because it's cruel is so deeply disturbing.
05:41Listen, I understand that my Republican colleagues on this committee don't view the policy the way
05:48that I do. My Republican colleagues don't share my level of concern for the way that this administration
05:55treats immigrants. That's fine. But what I don't understand is why we don't have consensus in the
06:01Senate and on this committee on the decision by this administration to impound the spending that
06:10we have decided together to allocate in defense of this nation. We as an appropriations committee,
06:15we work interminable hours to write and pass a budget. This budget is really hard to write and pass.
06:23And so we make ourselves irrelevant when we allow the administration to ignore what we have decided.
06:28And then when we look the other way, when the administration rounds up immigrants who are
06:31here illegally and have committed no offenses worthy of detainment, we also do potential
06:37irreversible damage to the Constitution. These should not be partisan concerns, destroying the power
06:43of Congress, eroding individuals constitutional rights. This should matter to both parties.
06:49Madam Secretary, thank you for being here and I look forward to your testimony.