Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 1615. In November of 2014, it was reported that DHS had received and processed the most FOIA requests out of any Federal department. It holds the largest backlog of unprocessed FOIA requests of any Federal agency. In fact, since 2010, DHS FOIA requests have increased by over 65 percent, and DHS currently holds almost half of all Federal FOIA requests of any government agency--about 50,000 of 95,000 requests. In addition, 3 weeks ago, I was informed that the increase in DHS FOIA requests was partly due to requests for immigration records for people requesting information for their future deferred action cases. My bill, H.R. 1615, the DHS FOIA Efficiency Act of 2015, streamlines the process to address the tremendous workload and backlog and bring transparency to the cost of FOIA requests to the Department. In the recent past, DHS has received poor evaluations regarding its efficiency in handling FOIA requests. For these reasons, my bill directs the chief FOIA officer of DHS to work with other officers within the Department to update their capabilities in handling the large amount of FOIA requests and identify the total annual costs associated with processing these requests.…”