During a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Brad Knott (R-NC) spoke about 'deficient' border screening under the Biden Administration.
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NewsTranscript
00:00I would now like to recognize for five minutes of questioning the gentleman from North Carolina,
00:06Mr. Knott.
00:07Thank you, Chairman.
00:08Witnesses, thank you all for being here.
00:12Rather than take up most of the time with speaking, I would love to go in and ask some
00:16questions about the previous four years and the border disaster that I saw firsthand.
00:23I want to start with Ms. Lange.
00:26One of the OIG reports under the Biden administration described the screening and the vetting implementation
00:35as soiled.
00:37Are you familiar with that report or the vetting procedures that seem to have been, I would
00:42say deficient during the previous administration?
00:46I'm going to defer to my colleague, Ms. Bernard.
00:49Ms. Bernard.
00:51If that is referring to our 2023 report, and I'm guessing that it is on port of entry screening
01:01and vetting.
01:02Yes.
01:03Are you familiar?
01:05What led to that conclusion?
01:09In that particular report, like I said a moment ago, we were looking at the technology and
01:14the processes that CBP and ICE are using at ports of entry.
01:21One common theme that we see in that report and time and time again is just the lack of
01:27situational awareness.
01:29There's a lot of, as Ms. Lange pointed to earlier, there's a lot of manual procedures,
01:34data inaccuracies and other lags in getting information from partners that can just reduce
01:40situational awareness.
01:43Every land port of entry is different, has different technological capabilities and infrastructure.
01:49Is there a system that could have facilitated appropriate screening of 11 million encounters
01:55at the border?
01:59I think there's a lot of nuances to that question, but it all goes back to volume, and DHS has
02:07certainly struggled to keep pace with the volume.
02:10Do you know where the decisions were made to allow or to facilitate the number of illegal
02:16immigrants at the border or to admit them?
02:18Was that in the White House?
02:19Was it the DHS boss?
02:22Who made those decisions?
02:23I think that would be a combination of DHS guidance and federal regulations at the time.
02:30Okay.
02:31Was there ever any discussion about limiting the number of inflows so that we could vet
02:35them more thoroughly?
02:38We wouldn't get involved in those policy decisions at the Inspector General's office.
02:43That would be for DHS.
02:44Okay.
02:45Ms. Lange, were you familiar with any discussions that went on about limiting the number of
02:49people who were coming into the country?
02:51No, I'm not familiar with that.
02:54Okay.
02:55Mr. Curry, in regards to your role in identifying how the department functions most, I would
03:01say with the highest level of functionality, were you aware of any discussions with leadership,
03:08the White House, under the Biden administration about limiting the number of illegal immigrants
03:12who were coming into the country?
03:13No, sir.
03:14Okay.
03:15Were there any concerns that were relayed to the administration about, you know, we
03:18have terrorists coming in, we have drug dealers coming in, we have human traffickers coming
03:23in, there are people that want to harm this country coming in because it's a sheer volume.
03:28We missed some of them.
03:29Were those concerns relayed to your superiors and to the folks in the White House?
03:34Well, in our work, I mean, we've certainly done a lot of work over the last four to five
03:38years on CBP's role at the border and the processing, and certainly the influx has had
03:43an impact on CBP's mission and the number, for example, the number of staff they need
03:47to process all those people.
03:48So from that standpoint, we've assessed those aspects.
03:51Can CBP process 11 million people, known encounters, I mean, I submit there's more than 11 million
03:56people that crossed over, but is that a feasible ask to say CBP, you need to process 11 million
04:03people in four years?
04:04Well, traditionally, they've been very short staffed and struggled with hiring, for example.
04:09It's been a big problem to meet the numbers they need in general.
04:12So it's been a huge challenge.
04:14So is the agency able to facilitate 11 million people coming into the country?
04:20Can you facilitate vetting?
04:21Can you know with confidence these people are not a threat to the country?
04:25Well, I'm not, honestly, I'm not sure about the exact number of 11 million and what they
04:30could do.
04:31But I would say that based on our work, that we know that they've struggled to meet their
04:34mission for a long time and hire the number of people they need in regular times, let
04:39alone when there's a surge.
04:40In regards to the number of employees that you think CBP needs to secure the border and
04:45to effectively protect the homeland, how many more people do you think you need?
04:50I don't have the exact hiring targets at the tip of my tongue right now.
04:53They actually, CBP does set a target of what they need.
04:56And I know that they've had challenges meeting that and hiring enough agents.
05:01We've done a lot of work on that.
05:02Part of the problem is the process.
05:03It's like a multi-year process.
05:05To hire somebody?
05:06Yeah, at CBP.
05:07It's particularly challenging.
05:08And that's been something DHS has been trying to address for quite some time.
05:12Mr. Chairman, I yield back.