in reserving the right to object, this is an astounding thing. This is a conversation that has happened today about amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act. Now, I haven't been here very long, but, typically, an NDAA takes…

All right. Mr. Jeronimo, we continue to deal with obviously a large flow of methamphetamines coming into the country from Mexico.

We have seen before, with areas like when Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was announced, the coyotes used that moment to be able to work families in Central America and say, 'If you get your kids to America they are going to…

That is the $100,000 amount?

Thank you. Ms. Sabatino, I want to continue this conversation that you had raised in your opening statement as well about individuals who had false documents when they crossed the border at the land ports of entry.

I would love to be able to maintain this conversation, to be able to keep this going, because this is one that needs to be resolved.

So your assumption is, at this point, if we have multiple agencies that come through, and obviously our land ports of entries do, CBP not being the owner, GSA being a third-party owner is a better model for that.

So let me tell you what I hear, because I have visited, over the last 7 years, a lot of different land ports of entry.

At our last hearing on this issue on the ports of entry along the Southwest Border that we held in June we had encountered about a 20-year high in the number of migrants that had attempted to cross the Southwest Border.

If we have everything on our side of the border ready to go and Mexico does not have their portion ready to go, that is not going to matter.

There are serious issues that we have to be able to resolve there, and I would like to have an ongoing dialogue.

So you can actually prosecute those individuals that are imposters, that are showing legitimate documents, just not the right person.

Obviously, that has been a high priority on both sides of the aisle on non-intrusive inspections.

Terrific. I hope we never do. But we will see a lot of other incentives and a lot of things that have been twisted around in the past on this.

So then the question is, what happened to those legitimate documents then?

One hundred thousand people died between April 2020 and April 2021. It is the first time that drug-related deaths have reached six figures in any 12-month period.

It is rare for us to have CBP and GSA sitting at the same table together.

But you expect that to take how long?

During that same window of time, CBP interdicted over 10,000 pounds of fentanyl, the highest amount in our recorded history, a tenfold growth from when the government first encountered fentanyl in 2016.

We had another enormous surge, which has not really slowed, during the Biden administration, with individuals that have been told who knows what from Central America and other countries as they are being told by coyotes.

I know that is an allocation of priorities, and it is always going to be great if Congress will give us a little more money.

This crisis is significantly straining the Federal Government's resources. It has invited active harm into our communities.

It is a very expensive process to be able to hire, train, and equip and be able to reach out to bring on additional folks.

We recently concluded fiscal year (FY) 2021, where we saw the U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered over 1.7 million migrants. That is the highest number of encounters in American history.

Because we cannot have a situation where it takes 7 years to be able to move things through the study phase when we have tremendous needs.