Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, I just heard my friend and chair of the subcommittee say something that I completely agree with, which is we need real solutions to immigration and the border crisis, and that is true. This takes a piecemeal approach that is unnecessarily broad and unnecessary in general. To our knowledge, there is no current or planned use of active military bases to support DHS' need for temporary or long-term detention of migrants crossing the southern border. Certainly, if the claims by my colleague from New York are correct, that is worthy of debate. However, the amendment goes much further than that particular point. It says that the military cannot provide any assistance to the Department of Homeland Security to house persons on a military installation. Therefore, we have to ask the question: Is that too broad in an amendment? Let's take a look at a couple of examples or at least one example in particular. It would apply in that case to governmentwide efforts like Operation Allies Welcome, which was the evacuation of Afghan refugees after the collapse of the government in Afghanistan in 2021. The DHS at the time worked with the Departments of Defense and State to use military installations to temporarily house Afghan refugees fleeing imminent danger and persecution. This was a critical tool to save lives.…”