At today's House Homeland Security Committee hearing, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) battled with Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) over her Special Interest Alien Reporting Act.
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NewsTranscript
00:00I yield myself five minutes for a few comments and questions, and I actually am going to yield
00:05to Ms. Green and just, but I want to ask a couple of questions. As I understand it from looking at
00:11your bill, this just publishes the numbers, correct? Yes, that's correct. So I'll take claim,
00:18reclaim my time. Does it report any protocols on how these gentlemen or women that are on this list
00:26are questioned? No. Is it any protocols on how they're identified and detained? No. Okay. So it
00:36just publishes the pure numbers. Is that correct? Just making sure. Just tells the American people
00:41how many SIAs have come into the country. Does it report their names? No. Okay. All right. I yield.
00:48Is there anybody else who wants to make a comment about this? Mr. Goldman, you're recognized.
00:52Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think there's actually a lot of ground for
00:59common bipartisan effort here. I can assure all of my colleagues that the immigration issue is top of
01:09mind, that Democrats are very concerned about whether there are convicted criminals who remain in this
01:19country and because of our immigration laws, including the fact that a country has to be willing to take
01:30someone who is removed in order for that person to be removed. There certainly are lots of things that
01:38that we can address here. Our national security is at a very perilous point. The fact that we are seeing
01:50such egregious breaches of security clearance classified information that warrant members of governments of
02:00other countries to start to say they're going to reevaluate their intelligence sharing with us
02:06should give everyone in this room serious pause about how we are tackling national security. Now,
02:14publishing the number of SIAs, you know, it may be nice to talk about. Certainly, the transparency is
02:25something that we support, but it does nothing to ultimately secure our homeland. And I wish we were
02:33spending a lot more time on efforts to shore up our classified information, to shore up our relationships
02:40with our allies who provide us with intelligence information so that we can stop a terrorist attack. A real
02:46terrorist attack, not a terrorist attack based on alleged accusations of terrorism by members of this committee or
02:59members of the White House. You see, you aren't actually a terrorist just because a member of Congress from
03:08Georgia says you are. There actually has to be evidence provided to support that. That's how our country
03:16works. That's how due process works. That's how the rule of law works, is the president doesn't get to
03:22determine that someone is or is not a terrorist. Members of Congress don't get to determine whether
03:29someone is or is not a terrorist. But that does not seem to be something that some of my colleagues
03:36understand. There's a reason why we have due process in this country. And you may think that due process
03:44is not warranted for someone who is not a citizen of this country. Or you may think that due process
03:53is not warranted for someone who's accused of being a member of a Venezuelan gang or terrorist organization.
04:01But once you start going down that slippery slope, then our basic foundations of due process
04:10come undone entirely. And I don't understand what the problem is with allowing a neutral
04:21arbiter based on evidence to determine whether someone is a terrorist or not. What is the objection
04:30that this administration has to presenting evidence to a judge to say this is the evidence that this
04:40person is a member of a particular cartel? What we've seen in one particular case that is top of mind
04:48right now is that there's a confidential informant who has said that someone was a member of a
04:55foreign gang, a foreign terrorist organization now designated, and that he wore a particular type of
05:04baseball hat. There's no corroboration. There's nothing else to corroborate or to confirm what that
05:12confidential informant says, at least that has been presented. And I know there are some lawyers on the
05:19other side, some former prosecutors on the other side of the aisle who, like me, would never ever present
05:26to a judge a non corroborated statement from a confidential informant as the basis for establishing anything.
05:35And so we're a little off topic, but I did feel I need to address my colleague from Georgia's comments
05:43about all of the alleged terrorists who are being, who are those, there are those who are supporting
05:53them to stay in. Nobody is supporting any member of a foreign gang to stay in here. We would just like
05:59to make sure that people are adjudicated and determined to be a member of a foreign gang
06:06by someone other than the President of the United States or a member of Congress. And I yield back.
06:11The gentleman yields. I now recognize Mr. Guest for five minutes.
06:14Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, at this time I would like to yield as much of my time as
06:19she may consume to Ms. Green. Thank you. The ladies recognize.
06:23Thank you. I think my colleague across the aisle is very confused and maybe
06:27uneducated and uninformed of what a special interest alien is. SIA is a non-U.S. person who is based on an
06:36analysis of travel patterns potentially poses a national security risk to the United States or its
06:44interest. Special interest aliens are people from countries identified by the United States government
06:52as having conditions that promote or protect terrorism or potentially pose some sort of national
06:59security threat to the United States. It's hard for me to fathom that anyone on this committee would be
07:07opposed to simply reporting the number of special interest aliens that that that homeland that are
07:16are great men and women that served as border patrol agents that any of our police any of our ice agents
07:23happen to detain and it's just the number. We're just telling the American people how many. That's it.
07:32Would the general aid yield for a question? No, I will not yield. The Department of Homeland Security
07:36officials have publicly posted information about special interest aliens in the past including the
07:43current border patrol chief and his predecessor. Custom and Border Protection already published similar
07:50numbers on its public site. For example, the terrorist screening data set and just just to go further
07:59and this is this is always an interesting dynamic to me. On our side of the aisle, we trust the American
08:06people and we believe they're they deserve transparency. They deserved the truth from the federal government
08:14because it is after all that we swore an oath to serve the American people and the
08:20American people are the taxpayers that pay all of our paychecks. They pay for this building. They fund
08:27this government even though the government has plunged them into 36 trillion dollars in debt and opened up
08:34the borders for the past four years and allowed it to be flooded with illegal aliens and then the Biden
08:40administration gave them social security numbers. You see this this that we are trying to pass today
08:47and we would love to have your participation. We would enjoy and really would thank you for caring about
08:54transparency and providing information to the American people that so deserve it instead of arguing
09:02back and forth and watching you all defend special interest aliens, defend terrorists who have come in our
09:09country and defend dangerous violent cartels who have been deported out of our country. I know too many people
09:19that have been murdered by cartels. I know too many people and I know their families and have watched them
09:26mourn because they're they have a family member that was killed by illegal alien crimes or murdered by an illegal alien or a cartel member.
09:34This should be a simple conversation. We are all Americans and we serve this country not foreign countries.
09:46And that should be a simple fact that we can all recognize not have political disagreements about.
09:54Congress by the way has previously released information as it relates to special interest aliens through
10:01hearings and committee reports, including the October 3rd, 2024 report from the House Judiciary Committee titled the Biden-Harris border crisis, at least 1.7 million potential national security threats.
10:18DHS has an obligation to the American people to be as transparent as possible. We owe it to the American people to be as transparent as possible.
10:30This is not targeting some innocent migrant or someone that is seeking to be a citizen of the United States.
10:39We're talking about special interest aliens, potentially terrorists, people who are linked to terrorist organizations,
10:46people who share their travel patterns, people that all of us should not want in the United States.
10:52And the American people don't want them here either.
10:54This isn't giving their name. This isn't telling what country they're from.
10:58This isn't giving their address. This isn't saying where they work. This isn't saying anything.
11:03It's not showing their picture. It's simply saying how many came across the border each month.
11:11It's very simple, Mr. Chairman. I yield back the remainder of my time.