Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Michael McCaul (10th District of Texas)
WASHINGTON – Congressman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) — chairman emeritus and current vice chair of the House Committee on HomelandSecurity — questioned Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons at a committee hearing, entitled “Oversight of the Department of Homeland Security: ICE, CBP, and USCIS.”
Full Exchange:
McCaul: A decade ago, when I chaired this committee, Mr. Thompson and I passed a bill to authorize ICE into law. It was a bipartisan effort. It passed the House overwhelmingly — both Republican and Democrat.
A decade later, here we are. The [Democrats] have called to abolish ICE; now they’re trying to shut it down. So what has happened in that ten years?
Let’s go back to the last four to five years. What happened in this country and at the border? As someone who lives in a border state, Texas, we saw the most dangerous wide-open border that I’ve seen in my 22 years in Congress.
Ten to twelve million people — and that’s what we know about, [but] I think it’s far greater — came into this country, many of them dangerous, violent criminals [and] some known or suspected terrorists, which I find extremely dangerous.
That’s why I served as an impeachment manager for Mayorkas because he violated federal law. The federal statute says — as a former federal prosecutor I know this — “shall” detain aggravated felons. What did Mayorkas do? He told his agents, “that’s discretionary; you can release them.”
As a result, we had tens of thousands of aggravated felons left on the streets of America to roam freely — not to mention the human sex trafficking of children, Mr. Lyons, as you pointed out.
So what is the administration trying to do? They’re trying to remove a public safety threat from the United States of America.
That is their job. Restoring public safety should be the number one priority.
And one of the problems here, as I examined it, is that Minnesota — Minneapolis in particular is a sanctuary city. What does that mean? That means it’s a magnet. … They’re protected under the current situation because state and locals will not cooperate with federal law enforcement.
In fact, Mr. Lyons, is it not true that they were not honoring ICE detainers that were put on dangerous felons in prison so that you could remove them from the United States?
Lyons: That is correct sir. The detainers were not honored at the local level in Minneapolis.
McCaul: This is the number one violation. In addition, the rhetoric on the Left led to [an] over 1,000% increase in assaults on ICE officers, an increase of over 8,000 [percent on] death threats to them.
All this created a perfect storm for our officers being thrown into this situation. And then Agent Bovino came into the picture, and I would argue, in fairness, that he escalated the situation by the way that was handled.
Your officers are not trained to effectuate crowd control; they are trained to move in surgically, [to] go in and remove these dangerous, violent criminals from the United States of America.
I’ve called for de-escalation after the two deaths, the two shootings that took place. I believe these roving patrols should be done at the border, rather than in the major cities of the United States.
So when the president decided to remove Agent Bovino and put in Tom Homan, whom I’ve known for years, a consummate law enforcement professional, I commended the president. And what has been done since Mr. Homan came into the job?
We now have targeted law enforcement operations. He is returning to the original mission of ICE. He is working with state and locals to do the crowd control. He is getting them to honor the ICE detainers. He is also getting the body cameras put on them. And the roving patrols, in his words to me, should be done at the border, not in major cities.
My question to you, Mr. Lyons: [Are Mr. Homan’s] operations in Minneapolis now bringing the situation under control?
Lyons: We’ve seen de-escalation in the fact that the protests — while they still go on — have subsided, and ICE has been allowed to do their targeted, intelligence-driven enforcement operation.
Just the other night, local authorities arrested 54 protestors at the local level, where ICE officers did not have to be engaged in that.
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