Good afternoon. I want to thank Chairman Garbarino and Ranking Member Swalwell for organizing this important hearing and Director Easterly for coming to testify before the subcommittee today.

The subject of today's hearing is of particular importance to me, since I was one of a small group of legislators who spent years working on legislation to remake CISA's predecessor agency.

Thank you, Chairman Garbarino and Ranking Member Swalwell for organizing this important hearing.

Let me say for the record that in each time that the request for increasing the numbers in the Border Patrol, Democrats on this committee have always supported the increase, it has been my Republican colleagues who oppose the increase.

I was really heartbroken to hear that you didn't understand the strategy of the cartel.

We do need to dial the rhetoric down in the country and apparently in the committee.

We absolutely need to take care of them.

The President's fiscal year 2024 budget requests $103.2 billion for the Department of Homeland Security to carry out its mission of safeguarding the homeland and the American people, while preserving our values.

I commend the Biden administration for launching a national strategy for countering domestic extremism.

You and I pledge that going forward, we will make every effort to get back to the civility that this committee has been known for ever since we have been in existence.

Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with those who were killed or injured in those tragic attacks and their families.

I understand the strength and concern, but there is a way that we ought to conduct ourselves.

we have gotten to the point of the language that we are using is not the kind of language that, historically, we as Members of this committee, we have used.

I just want us to get back, Mr. Chairman.

We have a history of being a bipartisan committee that work on solutions.

It's good to see that the Biden administration not only talks the talk on equity in disaster response but is also walking the walk when it matters most.

Whatever our challenge along the Southern Border, it didn't start 2 years ago, it has been here.

A comprehensive immigration policy will get us to where we need to be.

That is a double standard. That is partisan politics and that is Washington for you.

that is a double standard. That is partisan politics and that is Washington for you.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank Secretary Mayorkas for his responsiveness to Congress not just today, but since taking the job over 2 years ago.

I think what has been displayed by the committee is not who we are as a committee.

I would venture to say on the record that this debt ceiling debate and debacle is more having to do with the dollar than anything else.

President Trump continued to express frustration with the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan.

Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with those who were killed or injured in those tragic attacks and their families.