Lucille Roybal-Allard: “Let me begin by thanking the ranking member of the subcommittee, Chuck Fleischmann, for the courteous way in which he…”

“Let me begin by thanking the ranking member of the subcommittee, Chuck Fleischmann, for the courteous way in which he represented and fought for the minority's priorities. The negotiations on the DH funding bill were among the hardest I have experienced to date. Although we did not win every battle, we won many. We prevented new funding for immigration enforcement field personnel. We secured funding to increase detention facility inspections from once every 3 years to twice a year. We won funding to increase detention facility compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act to provide more victim assistance specialists and to expand the Alternatives to Detention program, including $30.5 million for family case management. We held firm on a provision to prevent ICE from using information from the Office of Refugee Resettlement to detain and remove sponsors of unaccompanied children. We improved transparency by requiring ICE to make information public about the numbers and categories of people in its custody. While I am not happy with the outcome on border fencing, we did limit funding for border fencing to only $1.375 billion, no higher than last year. We also won protections for several ecologically sensitive areas in Texas. And we secured hundreds of millions of dollars for humanitarian efforts to ensure migrants who spend time in CBP custody are appropriately cared for.…”