Bennie Thompson

I commend former Chairwoman Clarke on everything she accomplished last Congress with then-Ranking Member Garbarino.

This subcommittee has an impressive record of bipartisan action.

I want to congratulate Chairman Garbarino and Ranking Member Swalwell on their first hearing as the leaders of the subcommittee.

Further, the Biden administration has created a new program to provide an orderly pathway for people from Cuba and Haiti, as well as Venezuela and Nicaragua, to come to the United States.

Rather than falling for this politically-motivated rhetoric, we must meet these challenges with smart investments in personnel, technology, and equipment to safeguard our maritime domain.

America is a shining beacon of hope for people across the globe that come to our shores seeking a better life.

The people who work at this agency do the Lord's work.

Yes. We want to do it in a very efficient way, obviously, as we are planning laying these out, that are strongly bipartisan.

Yes, absolutely. We are very blessed to have just a long-term, great working relationship with Ranking Member Scott.

America has long welcomed those coming to our shores seeking protection from persecution, and we are a better Nation for it.

Stand firm against anti-immigrant rhetoric and efforts, and firmly reject attempts to exploit Congressional hearings.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I ask unanimous consent to submit statements from the First Focus campaign for children, Human Rights First, and Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights.

We know that last year, 13,000 pounds, 13,000 pounds of fentanyl was seized in 2023.

That is enough to kill all the residents of Oklahoma City, 650,000 people.

In 2021, there were 299 fentanyl overdose deaths in my State of Oklahoma.

We owe it to the American people to focus on all of the threats to the homeland, including those at the Southern Border.

I hope that going forward, we will not lose sight of the fact that the intelligence community has been clear that domestic extremism is one of our other most serious threats.

These are human beings who are running away from something in the vast majority of cases, and they deserve to be treated with humanity and respect.

Show me the money. Your budget shows your priorities.

The bill we passed helps to do that.

I say we, based on Democrats we had 216 Democrats voted for this bill. Only 9 Republicans joined in.

Fixing our broken immigration system will not only help migrants fleeing persecution and poverty, but it will also help us manage our border human smuggling, put them out of business, free law enforcement to focus on drug smugglers, and…

This should not be politicized. It's not about race. Fentanyl doesn't care about race.

But 100,000 die every year and nothing's being done. Not enough is being done. Numbers are going up, not down.

Now, if we had Chinese troops lining up along our Southern Border with weapons aimed at our people, with weapons of mass destruction aimed at our cities, you damn well know you would do something about it.