I will give you my full support.

Today, our Committee will consider the nomination of W. Craig Fugate to be Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

The law requires that the FEMA Administrator have a demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management and homeland security and at least 5 years of executive leadership and management experience.

I found it deplorable that people coming here asking for asylum based on political discrimination at home, religious discrimination, or other forms are subjected to this kind of detention while their cases are being determined.

I am going to again introduce legislation, the Secure and Safe Asylum and Detention Act, to address these problems.

The issues and challenges facing ICE are considerable, and I want to continue the dialogue we have started in the confirmation process.

I do not believe that these issues are insurmountable.

The extraordinary record of experience in emergency management that Mr. Fugate has is, of course, very important, and I want to say how historically important it is to this Committee and put it in some context.

I think that, as I said earlier, this is not a question of whether or not the agency detains people, but it is a question of who does it detain, how does it detain them, and are there better ways to do this--and I think there are--that are…

Again, an encouraging response. Please keep in touch with that because I agree with you that there is just no sense, except for turf protection, for your agents not to have Title 21 authority.

The Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act--authored by Senator Collins and myself in 2006 to address the failures uncovered by this Committee's investigation into the response to Hurricane Katrina--requires that the FEMA…

I am very pleased, I will say personally, that you have been nominated to lead ICE.

I think we are going to have to really spend some more effort and resources.

Senator Lieberman yesterday had a Committee field hearing in Arizona, and there some of the witnesses talked about the obstacles in Fusion Center participation.

I thank you for what you are doing every day on this challenge to our security and to our neighbor's security.

I will focus this morning on the very real consequences for communities along the Mexican border associated with activities of the Mexican drug cartels and their nightmarish violence.

We are going to consider the spillovers of this criminal behavior into the United States, the crime that has already occurred, and we are going to ask if we are prepared to deal with more if it does occur and what we in the Federal…

Iran's actions and rhetoric have in fact prompted our partners in the Gulf to seek closer relationships than we have had with some of these nations in some decades.

I appreciated very much the President's announcement of policy with regard to Afghanistan and Pakistan on Friday.

There is an unsettling perception in Afghanistan and Pakistan that the U.S. is not in this for the long haul.

the Kerry-Lugar bill that is I think being considered by the Senate represents the kind of sustained substantial commitment that we're talking about--I think it's 5 years, $1.5 billion.

I thought the President spoke very eloquently on Friday about the fact that there hadn't been adequate civil-military cooperation.

One of the lessons we learned painfully in Iraq is that numbers matter.

This is a remarkable people, with a remarkable history.

Just as importantly, I think, was the President's unambiguous political commitment to defeat the Islamist extremists of South Asia.